Preface
This brief reflection is taken from a discussion I had about philosophy and theology at a Catholic forum back in December of 2009. I am including my original forum comment, and the question posted by my interlocutor, as a type of preface:
My Original Comment
Eastern theologians tend to hold Greek philosophy (i.e., speaking in particular about metaphysics) in low regard: at least when it comes to philosophical speculation in connection with matters that are properly theological (see the sections of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy anathematizing John Italus).
St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his Seventh Homily on Ecclesiastes, says that the created human mind — through its natural powers — cannot transcend its own created existence. In other words, philosophical reasoning concerns only the created world, for it cannot transcend the gap between the created (diastemic and kinetic) and the uncreated, and a man considers himself a genius if he thinks that he has transcended his creaturely status through philosophical speculation and come into direct contact with God.
Ultimately, from an Eastern Christian perspective philosophy really concerns knowledge of the created order, which means that it is limited by its very nature. The most that one can discursively know about God through created wisdom is that He exists, but that knowledge should never be confused with experientially knowing God, which is something possible for man, and which alone is truly salvific.
The Eastern Fathers taught that the divine essence is utterly transcendent and unknowable, both in this life and in the eschaton, and that is why — even when using apophasis — there can be no analogia entis, but only an analogia energeia. This has been discussed before, click the link to peruse the older thread: God as Unknowable
Interlocutor's Question
As an Eastern Christian, can you say of God that He is not composite or that He is not finite? It seems if they are true statements, then we are able to know somewhat what God is like.
Eastern Christians, both Catholic — which I happen to be — and Orthodox, like to use paradoxical phrases when speaking about God (e.g., God is indivisibly divided in His many energies, etc.). That said, I would never call God finite, nor would I say that He is composite, but I also would not say that His essence is to be infinite, nor that His essence is to be non-composite, because He infinitely transcends both of these concepts. In fact, God essentially transcends anything that we can conceive in our mind, which is why I reject the idea that there is analogy of being between God, who verily is, and creation, which comes from nothingness into being at His Word.
It is in coming into contact (experientially through worship) with God's energies that allows a man to formulate concepts (i.e., what the Cappadocians called "epinoetic conceptions") about God, but — even when this kind of concept formation occurs — the concepts themselves are distanciated from the energies that man experienced and which caused him to formulate the concepts in the first place. Moreover, there is a further distanciation when a man takes the concept that he has formulated about God's activity and puts it into words. To put it another way, nothing that we say about God is said about His essence, for He is adiastemic, while human beings are diastemic, and the gap between uncreated and created essence can only be bridged unidirectionally by God who bestows His energies upon man and the whole of creation. Here is what St. Gregory of Nyssa said in an extended quotation from the text mentioned above said concerning this issue:
However, the person attempting to comprehend God who cannot be circumscribed by limitations, does not admit that God transcends the universe. He sets his own reason up in opposition, considering it to be such and such a thing which can contain any type of thought. He does not know that God in whom we believe transcends our knowledge and that every consideration befitting him serves to guard his true existence. Why is this so? Because every created being looks to what is connatural, and no being can remain in existence apart from itself. Fire cannot exist in water; neither can water be present in fire, dry land in the depth, water in dry land, earth in the sky nor the sky in the earth. Everything is limited by its own nature as long as it exists and stays within its own bounds. If anything created goes outside itself, it will lose its own essence just like the senses which cannot transgress their natural functions. The eye does not function like the ear nor does our sense of touch speak; hearing does not taste, but each sense is limited by the power natural to it. Thus all creation cannot transgress its natural limitations by a comprehensive insight; it always remains within its own bounds and whatever it may view, it sees itself. Should creation think it beholds anything which transcends it, this cannot be because it lacks the capacity to look beyond its own nature. The contemplation of beings is restricted by a certain notion of temporal interval [diastema] which cannot be transgressed. Indeed, for every conception which the mind gives birth an interval of time is considered along with the substance of that which had thought it; an interval of time is nothing other than creation. The good which we strongly encourage to seek, guard, to unite ourselves and cling to transcends creation and thought. Our mind functions by using intervals within time, so how can it grasp [God's] nature which is not subject to temporal extension? Through the medium of time the inquisitive mind always leaves behind any thought older than what it just discovered. The mind also busily searches through all kinds of knowledge yet never discovers the means to grasp eternity in order to transcend both itself and what we earlier considered, namely, the eternal existence of beings. This effort resembles a person standing on a precipice (Let a smooth, precipitous rock which abruptly falls off to a limitless distance suggest this transcendence whose prominence reaches on high while also falls to the gaping deep below). A person's foot can touch that ridge falling off to the depths below and find neither step nor support for his hand. To me, this example pertains to the soul's passage through intervals of time in its search for [God's] nature which exists before eternity and is not subject to time. His nature cannot be grasped because it lacks space, time, measure and anything else we can apprehend; instead, our mind is overcome with dizziness and stumbles all over the place because it cannot lay hold of transcendent reality. Being powerless, it returns to its connatural state. Our minds love to know only about God's transcendence of which they are persuaded because his nature differs from anything we know.
Ultimately, whenever a man talks about the divine essence, he is really talking about creation, because it is impossible for a man to transcend the diastemic gap (the interval of time, space, and movement) that essentially separates the creature from the Creator.
A Brief Reflection: Concerning Philosophical and Theological Discourse About God in Eastern Christianity
by Steven Todd Kaster
Original Version: 9 December 2009 (from a thread at the Phatmass Phorum)
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