God is not what we think – 13 July 2018

Fr Laurence Freeman, among others, likes to say that God is not what we think.  He means two things, mainly.  First, that all attempts to define or describe God by thinking, logically, rationally, wind up less than a howling success.  In the sub-tribe of the Christian tradition I come from, the chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 entitled “Of God and of the Holy Trinity” is a triumph of rich, ornate language over simple clear truth.  God is not what we think. 

Secondly, Fr Laurence means, if we insist on finding God down the road of reason and debate, we are looking in the wrong place anyway.  The Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet of the Middle Ages, Omar Khayyam, famously wrote:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went…[1]

Of course, it’s not a criticism of reason and logic.  The homely writer of the Cloud of Unknowing tells it in another way, in plain language:  But now you will ask me, “How am I to think of God himself, and what is he?” and I cannot answer you except to say, “I don’t know!” …Therefore I will leave on one side everything I can think, and choose for my love that thing which I cannot think!  Why?  Because he may well be loved, but not thought.  By love he can be caught and held, but by thinking never.[2] 

It does not mean that we leave our brains at home.  But it does mean that our world and our understanding are widened.  “Knowing”, it turns out, may be not necessarily understanding, but a matter of becoming still and open to change, learning to receive what we call grace.  For Jews, any attempt to describe or depict God simply ends in distortion or idolatry.  For followers of Jesus, we learn from St Paul for instance, that it is Christ who is the image, the icon, of the invisible God.[3]  For St John, God is understood only by love.[4]  Indeed, love is the test.  Hate speech, for instance, or attitudes, however disguised, cannot be in the name of God.

So -- continues the writer of the Cloud of Unknowing -- although it may be good at times to consider the kindness and worthiness of God, and though it may be enlightening and part of contemplation, nevertheless, in this work, it should be cast aside and covered with a cloud of forgetting.  Step on it resolutely and enthusiastically with a devout and kindling love, and try to penetrate that darkness above you.  Strike hard at that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love.  And whatever happens, don’t give up.

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[1] Rubaiyat, Quatrain 27

[2] Cloud of Unknowing, ch.6.  Also 2^nd quote, final paragraph.

[3] Colossians 1:15.  “Image” in Greek is eikōn (εικων)

[4] eg. I John 4:7-21