Thursday, April 08, 2004

• last night i was reading a book about Orthodoxy (written by a Protestant). First he went through a summary of the history of the Orthodox church, and that was interesting and helpful. (Though history is subjective...perhaps I should also find an Orthodox history of Orthodoxy.) Then he started talking about positive theology (protestant approach) versus negative theology (orthodox approach). By saying positive and negative, he was not making any value judgment of either or comparing them. If I understand it, he meant that in the protestant faith, one talks about God generally in positive statements: God is good. God is more powerful than....etc. In contrast, orthodoxy says that we cannot make positive statements about God. As soon as we say "God is good." then we must also acknowledge that humans fall so far short of understanding God, that any statement we make about Him must not be completely accurate.

  At a completely theoretical level, that seems somewhat sensible to me. If a mouse tells me a dog is big, I still really don't know what size the dog is. (probably a bad analogy, but I'm fumbling to make sense of this) But if I cannot make any accurate statements about God, how can I know who He is?

  But perhaps I do not want to know who He is....I really want to know Him. It's like when asked to describe a friend. I might say he's tall and thin, and wears his hair quite shaggy. I could show you a picture. I might even tell you that he's quick with a joke and good at listening when I want to complain about life. But that would just tell you _about_ my friend. To actually know my friend, you'd have to meet him -- shake his hand, share a cup of chai or a meal together.

  And I don't want to know about God. I want to know Him. To climb up into His lap and feel Him hold me close when I feel like I'm falling apart. To sense His approval when I do something that pleases Him.

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