Encyclopedia of Spiritual Theology

Knowing God

Knowing God

Knowing God is not easy.
In order to worship God, we must first know Him. But unfortunately, many worship God without knowing Him at all.
My question, “Do you know God?” is not directed to the atheist or the unbeliever, but rather to many of those who repeat the Creed saying: “Truly we believe in one God…,” and who fast, yet still stand before the saying of the Baptist: “There stands One among you whom you do not know” (John 1:26).

He said: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), and He said: “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20). Yet despite the fact that He is with us and among us, many of us do not know Him.

Here I remember Augustine speaking about the period of his youth, saying to God: “You were with me, but in the excess of my misery I was not with You.”
I also remember what was said in the Gospel of John: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him” (John 1:10). Yes, He is the true Light. And this Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

Intellectual knowledge

You ask those people who raise their hands saying: “Our Father who art in heaven” (Matthew 6:9): what do they know about this heavenly Father?
Most knowledgeable among them answers: He is the Creator God, filling heaven and earth, the Eternal One alone, whom no place can contain, almighty, unlimited. And he repeats phrases he has read in books, without knowing their Author.

He describes the God spoken of by books, theological institutes, and theoretical theology, without any personal knowledge.
But I say that books alone are not enough, lectures and information are not enough. All they do is fill the mind with ideas, while the heart may remain empty, without feelings, without love, without emotion or sensation. It is the condition of a person who reads about God but does not know Him. As one of the Fathers said: “What benefit is it to you to know all the information about the Holy Trinity, if the Holy Trinity does not dwell in you, and you do not dwell in Him?”

It is knowledge of the mind only, not of the heart.
The knowledge of scholars, not the knowledge of worshippers or lovers.
It may turn into debates in theology and conflicts over knowledge. Theology itself may turn into philosophy that only an elite of intellectuals can reach. And you ask: then who knows God?

Perhaps as the Scripture says: “Knowledge puffs up” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Many who speak about theology may have their hearts lifted up and boast in their knowledge, while some simple people may know God more than them and be closer to His heart. Our father Adam, in his simplicity and innocence, knew God; but when he ate from the tree of knowledge, he became ignorant.

His ignorance appeared in his saying to the Lord: “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10). His mere hiding indicates his ignorance of God. For if he truly knew Him, he would have known that hiding behind trees could not conceal him from God, who sees him wherever he is, and even sees what is inside his heart and thoughts. Adam also did not know God in His love and forgiveness.

And people’s ignorance of God continued, and their distance from Him continued.
Thus we see the Lord Christ saying in His long prayer to the Father: “O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You” (John 17:25).

The world did not know God, including the Jews who worshipped Him, offered sacrifices and burnt offerings, kept feasts, prayed and fasted, and believed in Him with a correct faith. But it was an intellectual faith only, resembling that mental knowledge. That knowledge and faith did not lead them to love God. Saint James the Apostle says: “Even the demons believe—and tremble!” (James 2:19). It is an intellectual faith, based only on mental knowledge, and it is useless because it is without love.

Therefore the Lord Christ said about His disciples, in the same prayer to the Father:
“And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26).

Knowledge of fellowship and love

This is the true knowledge that leads to the love of God. Therefore the Lord places before us a clear truth: every knowledge that does not lead to the love of God is false knowledge. Religion is not merely information and doctrines that feed the mind; rather, religion in its essence is to know God and to love Him.

Religion without God is nothing. God is the center of religion in its entirety—its goal and its means. Even if we attain all righteousness and virtue, but do not reach God, we are nothing. Our righteousness would not be true righteousness, nor our virtue true virtue; such virtues would merely be practices or works of the Law. The one virtue from which all virtues branch is the knowledge of God and love for Him.

If you know God, you will inevitably love Him; and if you love God, your knowledge of Him will increase.
Yes, if you know God and know His beautiful attributes—if you know His love, wisdom, goodness, meekness, kindness of heart, and forgiveness—and if you know how He is “fairer than the sons of men” (Psalm 45:2), then you will surely love Him.

And if you love Him, God will reveal Himself to you, and you will know Him more and more, with a knowledge not obtained through people or books.
When I say knowing God and His attributes, I mean experiential knowledge in your life: knowing His love for you by experience, His wisdom through what you see in the management of your life, His forgiveness through the peace He pours into your heart when you repent, and so with the rest of His beautiful attributes.

Thus, there are three types of our knowledge of God:
a) Intellectual knowledge—and we have said that it alone is not sufficient.
b) Experiential knowledge through your fellowship with God and your life with Him.
c) Knowledge of revelation and disclosure—when God reveals Himself to His beloved in various ways. The Lord promised this when He said: “He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21).

The last phrase, “I will love him and manifest Myself to him,” is without doubt the Holy of Holies. You need to remove your sandals from your feet as you approach it, bow down in thanksgiving, and say to the Lord: “You have given me the knowledge of Your knowledge.”

I want to record an important truth: our knowledge of God begins here on earth, but it does not end; it continues into eternity and never reaches its complete fullness.
Knowing God is not an easy matter. As the Apostle Paul says: “Now I know in part… For now we see in a mirror, dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

How amazing this is: Paul the Apostle, who enjoyed a great measure of “abundance of revelations” (2 Corinthians 12:7), who was caught up to the third heaven and “heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter” (2 Corinthians 12:4), this great saint Paul says that he knows only in part.

He struggles and strives and gives everything in order to know. He says: “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ… for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord… that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:7, 8, 10).

Thus even the apostles did not reach complete knowledge.
This appears from the example of Saint Paul, and also from the Lord Christ’s words about them: “And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it” (John 17:26). What more will You declare to them, O Lord, to those whom You entrusted with teaching the whole world? There is surely much more knowledge—knowledge for which this earthly life is not sufficient.

Therefore the Lord says to the Father: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God” (John 17:3).

Knowledge in eternity

As long as we are in this world, surrounded by the fog of this material body, we will not reach complete knowledge of God. We see as in a mirror, dimly. But when we put off this body, our transparent souls, made in the image of God, will know more. When we enter the kingdom prepared for us, into what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man (1 Corinthians 2:9), then we will know more and more. But will we know everything about God in that glory?

Impossible. We are limited creatures, and God is unlimited.
How can the limited know everything about the Unlimited?

I remember a verse of poetry I said to the Lord in the poem “A Whisper of Love”:
The universe could not contain You—how narrow it is;
How then can the heart contain You?

What will happen is that God will expand our hearts and minds to contain more knowledge of Him. That astonishing knowledge will amaze us, and we will say to God: Enough, enough—we can bear no more. We will remain for a time in amazement at what He has revealed to us. When we recover—though I do not know when—and after we spend time enjoying what we have known, contemplating it and tasting what we have tasted, and how good it is, God will expand our hearts and thoughts again so that they can bear more knowledge, while they are “sick with love” (Song of Songs 2:5). Yet despite all this, these human minds and hearts remain limited by nature, unable to contain the Unlimited.

God, blessed be His name, remains as He is: unsearchable and incomprehensible.

So when will we know complete knowledge of God, if it were possible to know? The Good Teacher answers with His own words to the Father: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God” (John 17:3).

If this will be our state in heaven, while we wear the spiritual, heavenly body raised in glory (1 Corinthians 15), what then shall we say about our knowledge while we are on earth?
Does it not shame us that the Lord said to one of the twelve holy apostles: “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?” (John 14:9). If this was the apostle’s knowledge of the Lord during His incarnation, what about God in the glory of His divinity?

I can only say the following:
God grants us of His knowledge what is sufficient for us to believe in Him and to love Him.
And that is enough for now.

As for what our knowledge will be like in eternity, I do not know. All I know is that we will grow in the knowledge of God, according to what our human nature can bear in its transfiguration and in the glory granted to it.

God has revealed to us many things through revelation, and through His incarnation He revealed even more, so that Saint John the Apostle said: “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18). Truly the Son gave us much knowledge about the Father, yet much more remains unknown. Therefore He said: “I have declared… and will declare.”

Believe me, a single attribute of God is not enough for our entire lifetime to know it.
What then about all His attributes?

Even His commandments we have not known or entered into their depths as we ought. Concerning this, David the Prophet says: “I have seen the consummation of all perfection, but Your commandment is exceedingly broad” (Psalm 119:96). And regarding the ways of the Lord, he prays saying: “Show me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths” (Psalm 25:4).

We currently try to know what belongs to God, perhaps to reach some knowledge of God Himself. We love to know His Book, His Law, His commandments, which enlighten the eyes (Psalm 19).
We contemplate in order to know what can be known about His angels, who are ministering spirits sent forth to minister (Hebrews 1:14), and a flaming fire (Psalm 104:4). We also contemplate His heaven and the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the dwelling of God with men (Revelation 21). In all this, the wise among us says: “I do not know,” and the last thing he reaches is: “I know in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Pardon me, reader, if I say that until now we have not even known ourselves. What do we know, for example, about the soul—its essence and its departure from the body? What do we know about the spiritual body with which we will rise? If we have not known man himself, nor many secrets of the universe we live in, is it boldness to say that we know God?

Yet we say that here we grow in knowledge.
Through our fellowship with God and our experience of Him, our knowledge of Him grows. Just as Job the righteous said: “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5).

This resembles what the people of Samaria said. At first, the Samaritan woman called them to see Christ, saying: “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did.” When they came, saw, and believed in Him, they said to the woman: “Now we believe, not because of what you said” (John 4). What they saw had a far deeper and more wondrous effect on them.

This resembles, to some extent—though the comparison falls short—the feeling of the Queen of Sheba when she saw Solomon, of whom the Scripture says: “There was no more spirit in her” (1 Kings 10:5).

Amazement and renunciation

If you know God, you will fall into amazement, or become intoxicated with His love.
This is what some writers call states of “amazement,” because then you will know what has not entered the heart of man, or perhaps know words that cannot be uttered.

This knowledge creates in your heart feelings and emotions too lofty to be written. By knowing God, you will despise every other knowledge, which the Scripture calls “foolishness with God” (1 Corinthians 3:19). Your mind will be elevated in its thinking, and your spirit will receive satisfaction and refreshment.

If you truly know God, you will renounce everything in the world.
You will renounce “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). For if you love these things, “the love of the Father is not in you” (1 John 2:15), and you have not yet known God.

Look at the Apostle Paul, how he lost all things and counted them as rubbish for the excellence of knowing the Lord. He who knows God will surely be satisfied with Him and say with David the Prophet: “Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You” (Psalm 73:25).
And he also says in the same psalm: “But it is good for me to draw near to God.”

If you reach this spiritual level, you will have known God—I mean, you will have known Him in part. Knowing God is a knowledge of “Taste and see” (Psalm 34:8).

The important question that remains is: how can we know God here?
Forgive me—have I now opened before you the main door, which certainly is not the scope of this article? I ask your leave, beloved reader, to conclude my conversation with you now, and to meet again to complete it, if the grace of the Lord wills and we live.