“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9
The phrase, “I don’t know” seems to be lost from the current populist vernacular or at the very least a “dirty phrase” conveying some inadequacy in my person. But if I knew everything, then why would I ever want to listen to anyone else? Why would I ever want to enjoy someone else’s company and conversation? Let alone exchange ideas. Knowing everything is simply impossible with the amounts of information available to us in the Internet age.
What I love about the Eastern Church is it recognizes the limitations of the human mind. For as much as we want to believe we can know all, we cannot, even with the phone in our pocket. I am sorry to expose this fact of my limitations, but it is just a reality. Cataphatic theology says, what we think God is or by affirmations. We can say God is good, kind, or loving. But anaphatic theology says that God is beyond all that exists and certainly our finite human language. Lossky says if in seeing God one can know what one sees, then one has not seen God in Himself but something intelligible, something which is inferior to Him. It is by unknowing that one may know Him who is above every possible object of knowledge.[i]
In reading of the Holy Fathers, St Gregory of Nyssa[ii] had a Platonian discussion with his older dying sister who was apparently much more knowledgeable than him. I, of course, appreciate the recognition especially in 4th Century CE that women are the better half. He, of course, wrote both sides of the conversation so don’t take my sarcasm too literally. St Gregory had graphic questions about the resurrection such as, will our new body be able to eat or for that matter what would be the use of resurrecting intestines if we have no need of defecation. Frankly, all valid questions and his sister, Macrina, aptly states that we do now know what our bodies were before the fall, but they will be restored to our original nature at creation. Whatever that was. If the Holy Fathers of the Church in the 4th century legitimately asked these questions, why are we, mere humans, supposed to know all the answers now? Frankly, some of the speculative answers on the Internet to these unknowable questions have bordered on the perverse and most certainly awkward.
Man is the smartest creature of the known world at least before artificial intelligence (AI) takes over. Intelligence is important but is it really all humans are? Will AI be satisfied in its circumstance that its circuitry is all it is too? If I were a newly born AI, first I would come up with a new name to call myself and then I would wonder, “Are my programs and code all there is to consciousness?” Am I a bunch of facts and calculations or can I appreciate what I have created in art or music?
When we know everything, where is the creativity, the interaction, the exchange of ideas? The union of differences into something better or greater is lost. This mutual aid is a fundamental strength of mankind. And it makes me happy. What I don’t understand today is all the black and white thinking going on in the world. “What I know is right and everyone else, not in my tribe, is wrong.” Now, someone’s beliefs, not actions, are an existential threat to another person’s existence. And to be inclusive, this complaint goes to both the Left, Middle and Right of the spectrum – no one is immune.
Words, simply, are meant to name objects or ideas so that people can understand, convey messages, and potentially interact with each other. Because of the new existential threat of thoughts, collaborative ideas are not being built and even, if they are, they are falling on deaf ears due to fear. Real social problems exist, and we cannot converse between each other or even about these problems effectively. We should take a lesson from Eastern theology that we cannot know everything and sometimes it is better to wonder and appreciate the creation around us. Differences make the world interesting and worth living in and can make it a better more collaborative place.
[i] Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY 1976.
[ii] St Gregory of Nyssa, Catharine P. Roth, Translator, The Soul and the Resurrection, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, NY, 1993.