How do we experience God? Do we hear voices? Do we sense a presence? Are there physical sensations involved? Should we see light or feel warmed?
Some may be surprised to hear that our belief in God is not based in an interior human experience. Such things stretch across an incredible variety (such is the nature of human experience). However, none of these are definitive, none of them meet the standard of canonical authority, and none of them make the stuff of persuasive religious argument.
I do not mean to suggest that the personal experiences of believers have no validity – only that they are private by nature (no one can get inside your head and judge for themselves what you are experiencing). Indeed, Orthodox spiritual culture tends to encourage people not to speak of such things, or to speak of them only in the context of confession and private spiritual counsel.
The ground of Orthodox believing is the historical revelation of Jesus Christ in the testimony of His disciples.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth….And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 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 1:14-18)
“And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” (John 20:30–31)
In the centuries following the deaths of the Apostles, the Church’s life has had an ongoing experience of God and the lived-out testimony of saints who have followed the teachings of Christ and the doctrine of the Church and born witness to its reliability and effectiveness. However, Orthodoxy does not have a history of “revealed” doctrines, or doctrines made known through special revelations or visions.
The landscape of Western Christianity, on the other hand, has undergone profound changes through the influence of various pietist movements over the past 400 or so years. There is not a striking difference between Eastern and Western descriptions of experience in their early histories. However, with the rise of the Protestant reforms, something of a “democratization” of religious experience becomes evident. I am most familiar with the details of the English Church, though what took place there had similar counterparts on the continent. The movements among the “non-conformists” (such as the Puritans, Quakers, Fifth Monarchist, Grindletonians, Muggletonians, Ranters, Seekers, Brownists, Diggers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Levellers, etc.) had a tendency to nurture private revelations of various sorts. Stories of individuals interrupting services in the Anglican Church with various preachings, prophesyings, and such were quite common. In the American colonies, during the period now called the First Great Awakening, similar experiences (and many others an ecstatic nature) were described. Churches across New England were divided by the movement and confused about the nature of what was taking place. This was not an outbreak of a great revelation – rather, it was an eruption of endless ecstasies and competing claims. Later descriptions, as found today within Evangelical lore, are highly sanitized and inaccurate.
That first Awakening has been followed, through the many decades since, by additional movements. In the 19th century, those movements tended to become enshrined in newly-created denominations (as well as occasional cult groups). Today, Evangelical Christianity and Pentecostalism are the two largest “umbrellas” under which these experience-based movements can be described. However, many of the assumptions of these pietist movements have been absorbed by society-at-large and imported into both Catholicism, and even corners of Orthodoxy. It is easily the fastest growing expression of Christianity across the world (and is extremely compatible with many of the assumptions of modernity).
A striking component of the awakenings were a doctrinal development that equated an inner experience (described variously) with being “born again.” Classically, the phrase “born again,” had always been associated with the sacrament of Baptism. However, the new definition replaced the sacrament with an experience. Inner experience was well on its way to becoming the defining criteria of belief and belonging.
The Christian faith rests on certain specific historical claims: that the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was, in fact, God incarnate, the only-begotten Son of the Father, and that He was crucified, dead, buried, and raised from the dead, having destroyed death by death. In light of these historical claims, and in accordance with His teachings, it is asserted that union with God (salvation) is made possible through Him. These essential teachings of the Christian faith are true regardless of anyone’s personal experience.
This same approach is true when considering the existence of God. Indeed, it is proper, as a Christian, to begin with the claims of Jesus of Nazareth when thinking about the existence of God. We do not reason from God to Jesus. We reason from Jesus to everything else. Whether I “feel” that there is a God, or whether I have a sense of His presence, does not belong to the same category as whether Jesus is the incarnate God who was crucified and raised from the dead.
Inner experience can be “all over the map.” Even the greatest of saints report experiences of emptiness and abandonment. In my own life, I think about my inner experience as information about myself – not information about God. My inner life is not the barometer of reality.
Orthodoxy is no stranger to inner experience. It has strong advocates, such as St. Symeon the New Theologian. Nevertheless, that experience is set in the context of sacramental and doctrinal stability. The interior life should not overwhelm all else. Such an approach would nurture instability – as witnessed by the multitude (over 30,000) of post-Great Awakening denominations.
The Divine Energies and Noetic Perception
The Orthodox Church teaches that we may know God “in His energies” but not “in His essence.” It is a distinction that is largely lost to the modern mind. Essentially, what it means is that who/what God is in Himself, on the level of the Divine Essence, is unknowable and beyond every possibility of knowing. However, in His energies (His actions, providence, His going forth towards His creation) He may be known and participated in. Famously, St. Gregory Palamas described the experience of the “Divine Light” as among the energies by which God may be known. This experience, however, is not common.
The single most common reference to the Divine Energies by which God may be known, particularly when reading in the early Fathers, is that of Divine Providence. We may know God in the goodness of His providential acts in creation.
“How manifold are Your works, O Lord, in wisdom have you made them all!”
St. Paul makes reference to this in Romans 1:19-20
“because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead,”
It is striking that St. Paul describes this as “what may be known of God.”
This reference to God’s invisible attributes (later known as the “Divine Energies”) being clearly seen in the things He has made does not mean to suggest that we are left with a rational contemplation of creation – simply thinking about providence, etc. Rather, we become participants in the Divine Energies. God’s invisible attributes encompass the whole of creation as well as human beings around us. We are not observers in a world of objects – separate – isolated – left only with thoughts and sensations. We are participants in creation, and we are created for participatory knowledge of God.
That participatory knowledge is known as “communion.” The organ by which we perceive this communion is the nous. That knowledge is described as “noetic.” There is an inherent difficulty in describing noetic experience. It can resemble trying to describe colors to the color-blind. St. Porphyrios famously declared that “to become a Christian, one must first become a poet.” It is not a literal statement, of course, but it teases our understanding towards the noetic. The Fathers describe silence as the “language of heaven.” This, too, is an attempt to express the character of noetic perception.
Noetic perception is not passive (whereas our experience of rational, objective knowledge champions passivity). Instead, it is an active and intentional participation in which we extend ourselves, grounded in love. Those practices which we generally describe with the term “asceticism” (fasting, confession, prostrations, etc.) are all geared towards the purification of the heart – that is – towards removing or healing the obstacles to love. A “pure heart” cannot be described as a heart merely devoid of sin. Rather, it is also understood as a heart that is transformed in and by love.
St. John has this to say:
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love…. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:7–8, 20)
Love is the key to noetic perception – of God and of the whole creation. Only love knows anything. Anger, fear, greed, envy, lust – the passions that enslave us – distort the world. Indeed, they make even rational objective knowledge problematic.
What God has done for us is seen both in His historical actions (such as the Crucifixion and the Resurrection) and in His providential goodness that upholds all things. Theosis, the transformation of our life in His image is the patient work of our loving cooperation with His grace that fills all things. For which we give glory.
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