glorycloud's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Living in mystical devotion to God is the only way to knowing God Living in mystical devotion to God is the only way to knowing God It is Saturday morning and the sun is shining. I always feel better about facing another day of my Life when the sun is shining. I woke up at 8:10 AM this morning. I rarely sleep that late on the last day of the week. Today is my day of rest. I do not know what I will do today to make this day a red letter day? Last night I left here around 6:30 PM to pick up Josiah at Calvin College. Bethany called around 5 o'clock PM to tell me she was going somewhere with friends and to drop off her INV Bible at the dorm desk. I miss my girl! I miss my baby girl! My girl has become a college woman. I miss Bethany's smell in the house. I miss the smell of soap, hair spray and perfume in the bathroom. Carol does not wear perfume. I miss the smell of femininity in the house. So here I sit in front of the computer recording my life before they put me in a pine box and bury me. I look forward to the Day of Resurrection when my body will be united to my spirit to dwell forever in heaven gazing upon the beauty of the King of Glory the Lord Jesus Christ. "Beloved now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is" 1 John 3:2. It is a blessing to know that God the Holy Spirit is working in me to conform me to the image of the Son of God Jesus Christ. "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord" 2 Corinth. 3:17,18. I picked up Josiah around 8 o'clock PM last night as he was getting off work. We drove to his house where he lives with four other college guys to get his dirty clothes. On the way home we stopped at a grocery store. I bought Josiah food to take back to his place. Josiah is a poor college student and as his Dad we like to help him. When we got home we ate food and listened to music. Josiah wanted me to Hear the new Josh Ritter CD "Hello Starling". So we ate food and listened to music. At 10 o'clock I wanted to watch the TV show 'Boomtown'. After the television show we listened to music and talked till 1 o'clock in the morning. I went to bed and now here I sit listening to the new CD by Josh Rouse. Yesterday while waiting for Josiah I read an essay titled "Drawn Eastward: The Attraction of Eastern Orthodoxy for Western Christians" by James R. Payton, Jr in the book THE PRACTICAL CALVINIST: An Introduction to the Presbyterian and Reformed Heritage". I find these following observations true to my own personal Christian spirituality as a Calvinist and my attraction to Eastern Orthodoxy (and to Experimental Calvinism/the English Puritans). "Eastern Orthodoxy stresses, indeed, that we can know God, but this knowledge is not particularly something to be intellectually grasped; rather, consonant with scriptural emphases, such knowledge is wrapped up in intimacy and love. The affirmation that 'the man [Adam] knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain' (Gen. 4:1) intended something more than intellectual acquaintance: it indicated the intimacy of marital union. God's declaration to Israel, 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth' (Amos 3:2), implied no ignorance on God's part, but focused on the special and intimate relationship he had granted of old to the descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Jesus Christ confessed in prayer to his Father in heaven, 'This is eternal life . . . [to] know you, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent' (John 17:3). In biblical teaching knowledge of God and his truth is never merely an intellectual accomplishment. It is always rooted much deeper within us than that; it is a knowledge that reaches into and fills the innermost recesses of the center of our beings---our hearts. Reflecting this biblical background, in Eastern Orthodoxy Knowing God means having intimate communion with him, not just mastering a wealth of information about him. Knowing God in this sense is, for Eastern Orthodoxy, the prerequisite to all teaching about God and his works. Knowing God in this sense means far more-and yet, paradoxically, much less---than intellectual expertise in revelatory, doctrinal, and confessional data about God. Knowing God in this sense means communion with him in a life of openness toward and wonder before him. Knowledge of God involves a fellowship between the Creator and the creature that does not bridge the chasm between them and yet brings them together in intimacy. Not mastery of but submission to data marks this knowledge---and yet the submission is not to data but to the divine persons. Knowing God in this sense means Loving God without reservation. Such knowledge of God reaches far beyond thought to the innermost recesses of the one who would know God. In the practices of Eastern Orthodoxy, from antiquity to the present, meditation before and contemplation of God are the way to know him. Of course, divine revelation is foundational to such meditation and contemplation. Even so, what God has made known about himself and his ways toward humanity is not so much to be analyzed as to be imbibed; one needs to be saturated with it through wonder, rather than to connect its elements in intellectual curiosity. In the history of Eastern Orthodoxy, those who have been respected for their understanding of God and his ways have not been the academically trained, but those who have devoted themselves to meditation and contemplation: such a lifestyle was both the root and the evidence of knowing God. Living in mystical devotion to God is the only way to knowing God, and knowing God in this sense is necessary for an acceptable speech about him. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian fathers (so influential in Eastern Orthodoxy), stated this perspective memorably, in an epigram often cited within Eastern Orthodoxy: 'If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian.' No mention is made of specifically academic learning of data about God, although such learning is not proscribed; open communion with him is the prerequisite and authentication of a theologian. In Western Christianity, such a cautious attitude about human intellection has not been entirely unknown, but the results to be found among us suggest that it has been displaced in favor of other concerns. Over the centuries, we have manifested an overweening confidence in thought and argument to lay out the truth about God and his works. If we reflect for a moment on the numerous doctrinal systems developed within Western Christianity; the unending stream of books on doctrine; our penchant for arguments over ever more arcane points of doctrinal disagreement; and our confidence that others would come to agree with us if only they would consider the evidence honestly and read the Scriptures fairly---all these indicate that we in Western Christianity have great confidence in human rationality and language to 'speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth' as we pronounce on God and his works. . . ." pp.60,61 Well I need to go fix myself breakfast. I need to seek the face of God in contemplative prayer. [listening to Josh Ritter "Hello Starling"] 9:58 a.m. - 2003-09-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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