I'm not sure why you sometimes hesitate to write auto-biographically, it's always far and away your most powerful and thought-provoking writing. I'm fascinated by your journey and I want further essays on each part of your journey (especially Sufism!). I have an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov in my daughter's bedroom and I love him very much. My second son's middle name is Isidore, and as a hideously theoretical man who loves Florensky, I feel compelled to learn about his spiritual father now. Thank you for bringing him to my attention. I've always been drawn to the figures who wed the affective and the discursive: Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Bonaventure, Soloyvov, Bulgakov, Florensky, and of course, the great mystic and conceptual artist Al-Ghazali. I'm obsessed with Nicholas of Cusa and his theological metaphysics, but I've also been to his body and placed my hand on his grave. Reading his texts goes hand in hand with praying for his help.
Much appreciated, brother, thank you for your kindness! (BTW, do you know that Semyon Frank, my favorite Russian religious philosopher, said that Cusanus was "in a sense, [his] only religious teacher"?
Ah, amazing! That makes sense. Would you believe I don't own that? Must remedy that. His "God With Us" was balm for my soul for years. Still is really.
I loved this article. I used to really enjoy reading theology books. I used to be enthralled by apologetics. And now, after a lot of hard life experiences in the last few years, I’ve come to find that it’s never the theologians who come to mind anymore when life is going poorly. It’s the poets, the novels, and the spiritual writings I’ve read. I have a piece on here about the limits of theology and the need for art. To me, the difference between the two is best found in Dante and Aquinas. Aquinas can define to me what love is. Dante shows me love, and in showing it to me, gives words to my own experience, my loftiest sensibilities and actions. Preachers can tell me how to live, but novels show me what life looks like from another person’s eyes. I am increasingly willing to say I don’t know the answers to the deep theological questions, and far more centered on trying to become more like the Christ I see in the gospels, because amazingly, that’s where so many of the great artists point me.
Amazing, isn't it, how suffering/hard experiences help us to wisdom. Can you link that piece you refer to, I would love to read it. There are some great lovers of spiritually powerful fiction here -- John Carr, Jonathan Geltner come to mind immediately. Your last sentence -- chef's kiss, I agree entirely! And to me, the saints are the poets of life, of the soul. The storytellers who tell the story in flesh and blood!
If you enjoy it, you might like another article I wrote, “A Wilde Look at Christian Sex Scandals,” which examines Oscar Wilde’s life and writing as a way of examining contemporary Christian sex scandals.
What a beautiful and an important message. Thanks for writing this. And it wasn't too long at all!
It reminded me of how the Greek word *pistis* is the same word that is used to describe the trust between two people -- not quite the same flavour of cognitive belief that we use in English, but a more relational and interpersonal experience, the same as in a relationship with a spouse. Indeed if we clung white-knuckled to every piece of "evidence" that our spouse was trustworthy, paradoxically, our *pistis* in the relationship would be totally extinguished because we would be more invested in our evidence than in the relationship.
There are some of us who read theology and find God reflected in it. It isn’t theology per se that is the issue as I see it. It is the attempt to confine God with words which is the issue, rather than gesturing towards God foolishly out of love. True theologians are poets, even in their prose such as St. Maximus. The point isn’t to encompass God with our mind by reading these saints, but to feel into their heart and dare we say God’s heart through the words. Some people are like that-the intellect and the heart are strangely intertwined. Not that this is a requirement either-people should connect most to which ever saints and writings are most helpful to them.
But I agree with much of what you say. Did you see this note of mine on a related topic?
There is much in this article that I sympathize with. I'm among those who think sincerely that the "God of the Philosophers," properly understood, can yield fruit in the intellectual and spiritual life. In fact, ironically, it is Plato and Aristotle that have buttressed my own faith in times when dogma, tradition, and belief seemed unsound. Intellectualism come under a lot of fire from Christians these days. But I don't think intellectual Christianity need be hollow, shallow, or naive. It certainly isn't everywhere and always incompatible with charity and a real Christian life.
To the point about Saints: the ones I "get" the most are Newman and Aquinas. Their "beauty is actually recognizable to the eyes of *my* heart," such as it is.
Any theological system is going to suffer from serious lacunae. Some of those lacunae are not simply overwhelming but impossible to understand, and this article points some of them out. I have felt a deep fellow-feeling with Ivan Karamazov, in his desire to "return his ticket" in the face of some of them. In the face of others, I have had to accept that while I may find myself able to "know" that God exists, I cannot then understand other (finite) things as existing in relation to him. The free-will question is one such question. The question of creation is another.
But, despite this, and on a purely intellectual account, I have failed to discover an explanation of reality, one that adequately accounts for human experience, that does not "include" God; not as someone known in himself, but as someone proved by his works. I take the convertibility of being and goodness for granted. I take it for granted that my experience is not, per se, an insubstantial lie. Two necessary truths that seem incompatible do not negate each other. But, however painfully, the answer must be deferred.
None of the above is original. But I think that "faith" both as an indwelling reality of the person and as a tradition and an intellectual/dogmatic structure has the ability to provisionally complete the life of the mind, until that day when all tears shall be wiped away. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
This essay speaks to my heart for I do not have the rich vocabulary to explain the truth as you did. Yet I get it. You are truly sincere in what you had said spoken in truth and love.
Loup des Abeilles, I looked up the meaning of your name. Your writing resonates with me. Is that why the name? All theology is incomplete, imperfect but love? A challenge?
Very nice article. The autobiographical presentation mirrors the content of your message, because you had to give something of your self, place your heart out there at the mercy of the social media world.
This resonated with me. In our cultural environment, where it's common for people to think of faith as belief or some kind of intellectual commitment, it’s an important reminder for practitioners, regardless of the religion they follow.
You call them saints, in Hinduism they are Sri Guru. The via medium for knowledge of God, the knowledge is dancing in their heart, it comes to life there. In theology and the intellect, the knowledge is static, frozen in a material form. Knowledge of God doesn’t mean intellectual facts, it’s relational, like how you know a person as opposed to facts about them you get from reading their resume.
One of my favourite quotes is from a book called Sri Guru and his Grace - “Before an open and unbiased eye, the sat guru (real guide) shines above all professors of phenomenon.”
Encountering Sri Guru is kinda like looking into the sun, at such times the intellect is irrelevant.
Finally got around to reading this, and all I can say is wow. I needed this article and your words at this moment. Your writing is so compelling, emotional, and beautiful that I never wanted it to end, and I related to your words. I want to reread this again and again to remind myself I’m not alone. I suppose I’ve always thought of the saints as “not real people” (by this I mean logically I know they were real people, but not ones like you and I if that makes sense), like they weren’t human in some fundamental way, that they had some edge the rest of us don’t. But they all wept, loved, lived just like everyone else, thank you for reminding me of their importance, I will try to read more of their lives!
"Part of the problem is that we don’t really even understand them. We take up the traditional doctrinal formulations, for example, and we handle them as if they were translucent to our penetrating intellect, as if we really grasped them. We don’t. We manipulate, explicate, criticize, and deploy them all from within a framework of fundamental ignorance — and I don’t mean ignorance as a lack of information; I mean ignorance as an unenlightened heart. And we can acquire more and more information — study languages, for example, become scholars, develop our rational and critical acuity to awe-inspiring degrees, write articles and books of blazing and incisive articulate cleverness that scatter all their foes before them1 — and yet remain fundamentally spiritually ignorant because our hearts have remained unchanged." - Beautifully said. I had to reread certain parts of this. Your words here are a blessing, and something all of us who wrestle with God should truly take to heart.
Excellent post. Thank you. I too have a heart for the Orthodox saints persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism. And being a mathematician I am prone to depending on logic to understand things. But Jesus gate crashes that barrier! Opening one's heart to God is always the answer.
There are progressional theologians who need not even to have real faith or communion with God and then the true theologian—the one defied and who proclaims through there life and the grace at work in them.
“God has shed abroad his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us” Look at the intensely personal relationship Jesus had with the Father, utterly non-philosophical. He came so he would be our Elder Brother, firstborn among many brethren who know the Father as he did. My suggestion really examine the in action spirituality recorded in the New Testament, Psalms, Abraham, David, Moses, Elijah. It does say in Romans that “the paths of God are past finding out” but we have this in the here and now - “God has shed abroad his love . . . . . . “ Frankly the methodology is that of a little child with an invisible friend, you know “ become as a little child”
A beautiful essay. I resonate with it to a high degree. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever fallen in love with a proper saint—one of the sage and ascetic masters duly consecrated by the authority of the Church. The ones I’ve fallen in love with have been great artists—writers, painters, composers and musicians (those last most of all, perhaps).
Perhaps then your great feast is All Saints' Day, when all those unsung saints are also remembered. (For us, it's the Sunday after Pentecost, essentially, the last celebration of the Paschal cycle, the end to which the entire cycle leads, which to me is just glorious.)
I am curious how you got to know the saints well enough to fall in love with them. I find the short descriptions in the online calendars of the saints or the Prologue give me the barest hint of their lives but not enough to hang a relationship on.
Reading Wounded by Love by St. Porphyrios has brought me a little closer; same with the epistles of St. Cyprian. So perhaps I should seek out the longer form biographies or writings, but there are so many that it seems like a haphazard exercise.
I'm not sure why you sometimes hesitate to write auto-biographically, it's always far and away your most powerful and thought-provoking writing. I'm fascinated by your journey and I want further essays on each part of your journey (especially Sufism!). I have an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov in my daughter's bedroom and I love him very much. My second son's middle name is Isidore, and as a hideously theoretical man who loves Florensky, I feel compelled to learn about his spiritual father now. Thank you for bringing him to my attention. I've always been drawn to the figures who wed the affective and the discursive: Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Bonaventure, Soloyvov, Bulgakov, Florensky, and of course, the great mystic and conceptual artist Al-Ghazali. I'm obsessed with Nicholas of Cusa and his theological metaphysics, but I've also been to his body and placed my hand on his grave. Reading his texts goes hand in hand with praying for his help.
Anyway, please write more about your life!
Much appreciated, brother, thank you for your kindness! (BTW, do you know that Semyon Frank, my favorite Russian religious philosopher, said that Cusanus was "in a sense, [his] only religious teacher"?
I will write something about Sufism!
Tremendous! It was through S.L. Frank’s Solovyov anthology that I first came to Sophiology.
Ah, amazing! That makes sense. Would you believe I don't own that? Must remedy that. His "God With Us" was balm for my soul for years. Still is really.
I loved this article. I used to really enjoy reading theology books. I used to be enthralled by apologetics. And now, after a lot of hard life experiences in the last few years, I’ve come to find that it’s never the theologians who come to mind anymore when life is going poorly. It’s the poets, the novels, and the spiritual writings I’ve read. I have a piece on here about the limits of theology and the need for art. To me, the difference between the two is best found in Dante and Aquinas. Aquinas can define to me what love is. Dante shows me love, and in showing it to me, gives words to my own experience, my loftiest sensibilities and actions. Preachers can tell me how to live, but novels show me what life looks like from another person’s eyes. I am increasingly willing to say I don’t know the answers to the deep theological questions, and far more centered on trying to become more like the Christ I see in the gospels, because amazingly, that’s where so many of the great artists point me.
Amazing, isn't it, how suffering/hard experiences help us to wisdom. Can you link that piece you refer to, I would love to read it. There are some great lovers of spiritually powerful fiction here -- John Carr, Jonathan Geltner come to mind immediately. Your last sentence -- chef's kiss, I agree entirely! And to me, the saints are the poets of life, of the soul. The storytellers who tell the story in flesh and blood!
James 1:22 yields an improv translation: "Be ye poets of the Logos." The saints. Doers of the word. Us too, blessed and guided.
Here’s the link to the article I mentioned.
https://open.substack.com/pub/noahdaniels/p/the-value-of-great-art?r=359q84&utm_medium=ios
If you enjoy it, you might like another article I wrote, “A Wilde Look at Christian Sex Scandals,” which examines Oscar Wilde’s life and writing as a way of examining contemporary Christian sex scandals.
What a beautiful and an important message. Thanks for writing this. And it wasn't too long at all!
It reminded me of how the Greek word *pistis* is the same word that is used to describe the trust between two people -- not quite the same flavour of cognitive belief that we use in English, but a more relational and interpersonal experience, the same as in a relationship with a spouse. Indeed if we clung white-knuckled to every piece of "evidence" that our spouse was trustworthy, paradoxically, our *pistis* in the relationship would be totally extinguished because we would be more invested in our evidence than in the relationship.
Perfect analogy!
There are some of us who read theology and find God reflected in it. It isn’t theology per se that is the issue as I see it. It is the attempt to confine God with words which is the issue, rather than gesturing towards God foolishly out of love. True theologians are poets, even in their prose such as St. Maximus. The point isn’t to encompass God with our mind by reading these saints, but to feel into their heart and dare we say God’s heart through the words. Some people are like that-the intellect and the heart are strangely intertwined. Not that this is a requirement either-people should connect most to which ever saints and writings are most helpful to them.
But I agree with much of what you say. Did you see this note of mine on a related topic?
https://substack.com/@pj12835079/note/c-163867785?r=2akcql&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
this is a good message.
I deeply appreciate that comment.
There is much in this article that I sympathize with. I'm among those who think sincerely that the "God of the Philosophers," properly understood, can yield fruit in the intellectual and spiritual life. In fact, ironically, it is Plato and Aristotle that have buttressed my own faith in times when dogma, tradition, and belief seemed unsound. Intellectualism come under a lot of fire from Christians these days. But I don't think intellectual Christianity need be hollow, shallow, or naive. It certainly isn't everywhere and always incompatible with charity and a real Christian life.
To the point about Saints: the ones I "get" the most are Newman and Aquinas. Their "beauty is actually recognizable to the eyes of *my* heart," such as it is.
Any theological system is going to suffer from serious lacunae. Some of those lacunae are not simply overwhelming but impossible to understand, and this article points some of them out. I have felt a deep fellow-feeling with Ivan Karamazov, in his desire to "return his ticket" in the face of some of them. In the face of others, I have had to accept that while I may find myself able to "know" that God exists, I cannot then understand other (finite) things as existing in relation to him. The free-will question is one such question. The question of creation is another.
But, despite this, and on a purely intellectual account, I have failed to discover an explanation of reality, one that adequately accounts for human experience, that does not "include" God; not as someone known in himself, but as someone proved by his works. I take the convertibility of being and goodness for granted. I take it for granted that my experience is not, per se, an insubstantial lie. Two necessary truths that seem incompatible do not negate each other. But, however painfully, the answer must be deferred.
None of the above is original. But I think that "faith" both as an indwelling reality of the person and as a tradition and an intellectual/dogmatic structure has the ability to provisionally complete the life of the mind, until that day when all tears shall be wiped away. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
This essay speaks to my heart for I do not have the rich vocabulary to explain the truth as you did. Yet I get it. You are truly sincere in what you had said spoken in truth and love.
Loup des Abeilles, I looked up the meaning of your name. Your writing resonates with me. Is that why the name? All theology is incomplete, imperfect but love? A challenge?
The name is, I must admit, just a play on my real name! But sure, yes -- a challenge, perhaps a gift *and* a challenge.
Very nice article. The autobiographical presentation mirrors the content of your message, because you had to give something of your self, place your heart out there at the mercy of the social media world.
This resonated with me. In our cultural environment, where it's common for people to think of faith as belief or some kind of intellectual commitment, it’s an important reminder for practitioners, regardless of the religion they follow.
You call them saints, in Hinduism they are Sri Guru. The via medium for knowledge of God, the knowledge is dancing in their heart, it comes to life there. In theology and the intellect, the knowledge is static, frozen in a material form. Knowledge of God doesn’t mean intellectual facts, it’s relational, like how you know a person as opposed to facts about them you get from reading their resume.
One of my favourite quotes is from a book called Sri Guru and his Grace - “Before an open and unbiased eye, the sat guru (real guide) shines above all professors of phenomenon.”
Encountering Sri Guru is kinda like looking into the sun, at such times the intellect is irrelevant.
Finally got around to reading this, and all I can say is wow. I needed this article and your words at this moment. Your writing is so compelling, emotional, and beautiful that I never wanted it to end, and I related to your words. I want to reread this again and again to remind myself I’m not alone. I suppose I’ve always thought of the saints as “not real people” (by this I mean logically I know they were real people, but not ones like you and I if that makes sense), like they weren’t human in some fundamental way, that they had some edge the rest of us don’t. But they all wept, loved, lived just like everyone else, thank you for reminding me of their importance, I will try to read more of their lives!
Thanks so much for your kind words! I am glad it reached you! And yes, find your special friends among the saints!
"Part of the problem is that we don’t really even understand them. We take up the traditional doctrinal formulations, for example, and we handle them as if they were translucent to our penetrating intellect, as if we really grasped them. We don’t. We manipulate, explicate, criticize, and deploy them all from within a framework of fundamental ignorance — and I don’t mean ignorance as a lack of information; I mean ignorance as an unenlightened heart. And we can acquire more and more information — study languages, for example, become scholars, develop our rational and critical acuity to awe-inspiring degrees, write articles and books of blazing and incisive articulate cleverness that scatter all their foes before them1 — and yet remain fundamentally spiritually ignorant because our hearts have remained unchanged." - Beautifully said. I had to reread certain parts of this. Your words here are a blessing, and something all of us who wrestle with God should truly take to heart.
Thanks so much, brother.
Excellent post. Thank you. I too have a heart for the Orthodox saints persecuted under Soviet totalitarianism. And being a mathematician I am prone to depending on logic to understand things. But Jesus gate crashes that barrier! Opening one's heart to God is always the answer.
A previous post I published on the topic is here: https://revfrpaul.substack.com/p/many-voices-but-just-one-heart
Peace and Blessings to you and yours! Keep up the good writing!
There are progressional theologians who need not even to have real faith or communion with God and then the true theologian—the one defied and who proclaims through there life and the grace at work in them.
Pascal - “not the God of the philosophers”
Forgot to quote him.
“God has shed abroad his love in our hearts by the Holy Spirit he has given us” Look at the intensely personal relationship Jesus had with the Father, utterly non-philosophical. He came so he would be our Elder Brother, firstborn among many brethren who know the Father as he did. My suggestion really examine the in action spirituality recorded in the New Testament, Psalms, Abraham, David, Moses, Elijah. It does say in Romans that “the paths of God are past finding out” but we have this in the here and now - “God has shed abroad his love . . . . . . “ Frankly the methodology is that of a little child with an invisible friend, you know “ become as a little child”
A beautiful essay. I resonate with it to a high degree. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I’ve ever fallen in love with a proper saint—one of the sage and ascetic masters duly consecrated by the authority of the Church. The ones I’ve fallen in love with have been great artists—writers, painters, composers and musicians (those last most of all, perhaps).
Perhaps then your great feast is All Saints' Day, when all those unsung saints are also remembered. (For us, it's the Sunday after Pentecost, essentially, the last celebration of the Paschal cycle, the end to which the entire cycle leads, which to me is just glorious.)
I am curious how you got to know the saints well enough to fall in love with them. I find the short descriptions in the online calendars of the saints or the Prologue give me the barest hint of their lives but not enough to hang a relationship on.
Reading Wounded by Love by St. Porphyrios has brought me a little closer; same with the epistles of St. Cyprian. So perhaps I should seek out the longer form biographies or writings, but there are so many that it seems like a haphazard exercise.