Proposed Title: What Do You Think?

MindWalk,

Here is a quotation from Evagrius of Pontus, used by Kallistos Ware as an epigram to one of this chapters.

"God cannot be grasped by the mind.  If he could be grasped, he would not be God."

I was just flipping through The Orthodox Way and noticed this, and realized that it is basically a perfect way of summarizing what is core to my essential point about mystery (a point to which you seem not to have responded as yet).  The basic thrust of this is that any God who is graspable is not God...thus whatever other theists are trying to "prove" is, ipso facto, not God.

So that now puts our conversation in a strange bind - anything we could prove to you to exist would not be God, because the provability of a thing is a demonstration of its not being God!  And yet, we are also arguing that the existence of God, God being Existence itself, is as plain as your own existence is to yourself. 

God is the same kind of contradictory problem as proving that there is something rather than nothing, or trying to prove by logic that logical reasoning is the right way of proceeding (if you say "it makes predictions!" I will only ask why predictions are a good).  It is, indeed, the same kind of question as that essential Platonic problem of "what is the Good?"  We know it to be, yet we seek it infinitely without ever grasping the whole. 

Indeed, God is the Good, is Existence and is Logic, according to scripture and the Fathers, so not only are these questions similar, but they are one.  

In sum, when you think about the problems of existence, or logic, or the Good, or many other similar issues, you are thinking about the same thing as we are when we talk about God...so I remain insistent that we find ourselves at the exact same starting point.  The differences between you and the Orthodox Tradition are in our manner of describing what is at the centre of that question, and in our beliefs about what human life is, and is meant to be, in light of the Eternal Existent.

Okay, one more quick one.

What if I were to introduce the idea of a distinction between the statement that "God Exists" vs. "God exists," with the former bearing the meaning I keep trying (and, of course, failing) to get at in my posts, and the latter bearing the meaning that God is what I've previously called an "entity?"  The difference in capitalization is an innovation I'm introducing right here in this very forum - do you find some sense in it?  If we accept the vocabulary, I would propose that virtually all of the people that you usually talk to about this are attempting to prove that "God exists" while we Orthodox are not teaching that at all, but instead we teach that "God Exists."

A last quotation.  From St. Gregory of Nazianzus [d. 390], Oration 28 (translation Browne and Swallow).  I want to give a sense of how ancient the ideas are that I'm trying to express here....it's the other "Christian" arguments you are used to, MindWalk, which are novelties.  Our Orthodox position predates them by millennia.  Here's Gregory:

"X.  Now since we have ascertained that God is incorporeal, let us proceed a little further with our examination.  Is He Nowhere or Somewhere.  For if He is Nowhere, then some person of a very inquiring turn of mind might ask, How is it then that He can even exist?  For if the non-existent is nowhere, then that which is nowhere is also perhaps non-existent.  But if He is Somewhere, He must be either in the Universe, or above the Universe.  And if He is in the Universe, then He must be either in some part or in the whole.  If in some part, then He will be circumscribed by that part which is less than Himself; but if everywhere, then by one which is further and greater—I mean the Universal, which contains the Particular; if the Universe is to be contained by the Universe, and no place is to be free from circumscription.  This follows if He is contained in the Universe.  And besides, where was He before the Universe was created, for this is a point of no little difficulty.  But if He is above the Universe, is there nothing to distinguish this from the Universe, and where is this above situated?  And how could this Transcendence and that which is transcended be distinguished in thought, if there is not a limit to divide and define them?  Is it not necessary that there shall be some mean to mark off the Universe from that which is above the Universe?  And what could this be but Place, which we have already rejected?  For I have not yet brought forward the point that God would be altogether circumscript, if He were even comprehensible in thought:  for comprehension is one form of circumscription."

This probably sounds like an argument for your position, MindWalk...and yet this, Gregory's understanding of the Divine, led him to a life of Christian holiness, and he became one of the great defenders of Trinitarian theology in the history of the world.

I know Fathers who lyed in order to save someones life (see Lausaikon), but noone in order to prosilitize.

We dont want great numbers, we want quality members.

But those are always the questions I am interested in: "What do you (NOT) believe? And why do you (NOT) believe it?" In other words, what do you think is true, and why do you think it's true? It sounds as though you will answer such questions for me.

In red are MindWalk’s and the whole text with blue additions are mine questions to MindWalk. and I am still waiting…

Law and Ethics is the same for you. It isn’t for me. I asked where you base your ethics.

Holy light

The church is philanthropist and is not a charitable institution.¶

There are¶ThereT ocular witnesses of Resurrection, appearances of Christ for 40 days after and finally the Undertaking. ¶However all these students could have "interest" (?!). Paul however that was a terrible persecutor of Christians, how is explained his change? ¶

¶Generally however it is not subject of reasonable comprehension but faith. ¶The blind in the Temple was known from everybody from when he was a small child that was given birth blind and however when became the marvel, reveled who remained blinds in their heart. ¶Until his parents they were terrorized in order to say that made lying the blind all his life. ¶Each one believes what wants to believe…

Great point Anastasios the witnesses of Christ are recorded in the bible.  the devil worshippers and atheists have no answer for that.

I have an answer. Were it so clear, historians of the Biblical era would agree that the Resurrection happened, and we'd learn about it in history class in school. Historians of the era do not agree that it happened. We don't learn about it in history class. If the experts are not agreed that it happened, why should I be convinced that it did?

MindWalk,

1.  (The salvation issues you allude to)  No, Orthodoxy does not view salvation as something like "believe in Jesus and you will be saved" and, conversely, there is no assumption that all those who do not believe in Jesus in this lifetime are necessarily hell-bound.  We are entirely agnostic with regard to other religions.  We know that God loves all human beings, and we know that our Faith leads to salvation.  That's all we know - and for us, it's all we need to know...this path leads to salvation, so we're not interested in looking around for others.  What your fate, for instance, will be in the afterlife, I have no possible way of knowing - I pray for you like anyone else.  Some Fathers of the Church (Gregory of Nyssa) actually thought that all people, and even Satan would be saved in the end!  The Church ultimately refuted Gregory's point on this and teaches that we must acknowledge that those who truly hate God will not be in his kingdom (it would be cruel of God to put them there, after all, since they truly hate him), but that's as far as we can go.  Anything further is simply speculation.

We also do not maintain the view that those who have made a declaration of loyalty to Jesus are automatically "saved" permanently.  We view salvation as a continuing process to theosis.  In that sense "works" are more important, as you mention, but it's important to note that Orthodoxy was never a party to the Western faith/works debate.  The Orthodox view on this is pretty well summarized in the letter of James (which Luther so hated) the two are really inconceivable without each other.  What does it mean to have a faith that results in no good works?  How can good works for Christ not draw us, conversely, towards a stronger faith?  The Western debate there creates a false dichotemy.

2. (Existence etc.)  So here we may have gotten down to some bedrock in our conversation. I see a sentence like "God is Existence" as taking something (namely, Existence) to be a metaphysical existent that isn't. There might be an important difference between what you denote by "existence" and what you denote by "Existence," though.  I do not think of "Existnce" as itself a metaphysical existent, and my grounds for saying this return to the foundational importance of mystery.  Even a statement like "God is Existence" is kataphatic in nature - it is a way of human language pointing towards that which exceeds human language.  The idea that Existence exists is question-begging - what my language is attempting to point to is the idea that the unnamable foundation of existence itself is God.  If there appears to be a false attribution of certain characteristics to Existence in there (making me out to be, perhaps, a Stoic of some sort) then that is a result of the poverty of (my) language on this point.  But when I say God is Existence, I do not mean that Existence itself is any kind of existent thing.

If you personally buck a lot of trends and accept the idea that infinite regress is an accetable philosophical explanation for something, then I would say that the infinity into which all regresses is thus itself foundational, and therefore is God, while if you do not accept infinite regressive arguments, I will note that the point at which it all stops, which point is beyond our description or comprehension (you've noted this), is God.  In my mind, those two things are the same.

Is that what you have in mind--that the existence of God is a foundational metaphysical assumption for you?  In a certain way, yes, but not in the sense of having just decided I want to believe in God, and thus making that a foundational assumption for me.  My point is basically that there are foundational metaphysical assumptions which we all make...one of which is that there is something rather than nothing, but there are more (here's where the Trinity starts coming into play, but more on that later).  Neither you, nor I, nor anyone can get away from making a certain set of assumptions.  Now, I have a fairly high regard for human experience as governed primarily by real things.  So, a true Cartesian skeptic will never admit that he knows he's not a brain in a vat, or living in "The Matrix," but I am not a Cartesian skeptic in that way (neither are you, it's clear).  So, it is my view that some of the key metaphysical assumptions at the core of any human thought are reflections of reality - not necessarily physical reality, of course.  What these assumptions reflect is a reality which cannot be described, but which is known by all human beings who in any way engage in thought.  Thus I keep harping on 'Existence' because predicate to all that we say and think is the idea that there is first something.  The reality which underlies that metaphysical assumption made by all people (even those Cartesian skeptics!) is God.

3.  (Describing God)  As an Orthodox Christian, I describe and talk about God all the time (this is called kataphatic theology).  I say all kinds of things about God's nature, God's Love, God's mercy, God's Grace.  I'll even talk about God's thoughts and feelings, and ask with the Psalmist questions that, from a very technical point of view, should seem absurd like "How long will [God] sleep?"  But in the Orthodox tradition all these kinds of statements, acceptable and normal as they are, are also tempered strongly with the apophatic approach, and the realization that God is Mystery.  The idea that "God sleeps" is not something that is techincally accurate...rather it is language that captures something about the human experience of God - in this case, the sense that we sometimes have of God's absence.  The truthfullness of the statement can't be judged except in regard to what it's actually trying to communicate.  When I tell my wife she's the "most beautiful woman in the world" neither of us makes the mistake of thinking that after decades of research, seeing pictures of every woman on the planet, I've concluded that my wife tops them all in terms of phyiscal attractiveness.  We know I'm trying to express that the sight of her is, to me, the most beautiful sight I know.  We would totally misjudge the statement if we didn't account for its intent.

This is also true with kataphatic talk about God.  So, you're right, we can say a lot about God, but we Orthodox also do it with a very strong sense of what we don't mean by these things.  This creates a natural and holy tension in our minds when approaching God.  God is something we talk about all the time, but in a sense can never say anything about.  "God loves you" is far more true than "God hates you," but not in the sense that God has either of these human emotions as I understand them - from that perspective both statements are absurd and false. 

I will require some convincing that the ungraspability of God entails the complete impossibility of giving even a partial description of God.  Thus, as per above, we cannot give a "partial description" of God that bears any resemblance to the kind of truth we're getting at when we say that that tiger has stripes.  The "truth" attained in kataphatic statements about God is of a different kind entirely.  We cannot observe the kinds of truths about God that we can about a physical object.  That would be "grasping" God.  Instead, when we speak kataphatically about God, we knowingly speak from our own highly delimited human point of view.  We aren't fool enough to think that "God sleeps" but we say this because it expresses another truth.  Even the most sublime theological statements like, "The Son is one in essence with the Father," do not express the same kind of "fact" about God that the statement "a banana is yellow" expresses. I think the traditions you're used to interacting with have really lost a sense of the distinction here, which goes down again to the apophatic/kataphatic issue.

4.  Are you sure that ontological arguments, despite failing to do what they're supposed to do, aren't attempts to prove the Existence of God (capital "E")?  Yes, I'm sure about that given what I'm trying to express with things like "Existence."  The arguments for God's existence listed by someone like Dawkins are not designed to address what I mean by "God Exists."  Now, if it's not coming across why there is a distinction there, then I'm still not doing my job well enough in expressing myself, but when it comes to how my thought functions on this point, these two are not at all the same.

My impression so far is that you have in mind some sort of something underlying or sustaining the universe's physical existence.  Well, not a "something" though, and I mean this radically.  A "something" is still in the realm of something I can conceive.  What I mean is not a "something" at all (this seems like Stoicism again), it's not like a "something" - it's Mystery in the absolute sense...we have no conception for it, but that is the point...if it were a something it would not be God.

http://www.oodegr.com/english/ekklisia/holylight.htm

http://istologio.org/?p=120

I want to see the text in prototype language (I know Greek!).

Even it is genuine John Chrysostom; I haven’t found anything to prove that Orthodoxs use deceit in order to proselytize.

From the text, I understood that he is talking about Old Testament and he is talking about something undeniable bad, war and killings. What he says is “if you have to go to war in order to avoid something worst, you better win and for winning you could use whatever trick, deceit, etc. against your enemies”. I don’t find anything bad with that interpretation.

“pocklecod”, your quotation From St. Gregory of Nazianzus [d. 390], Oration 28 (translation Browne and Swallow) is great!

pocklecod wrote: “The Truth carries on with me or without me, it carries on with you or without you...mission and outreach are not something we do to "save" you (as though anyone but God could save you) but rather are an invitation to a way of life which will bring you to See. There is never a need to lie to someone as a means of simply inviting them in.”

MindWalk answered: “ I like most of that, but I'm puzzled at the very low priority given proselytization. If the Orthodox believe in Hell, and in the need to accept Jesus as Saviour in order not to wind up there, I would think they would try to convert as many people as possible. I certainly would (in this way, maybe it's good that I'm not a believer--would you really want me knocking at your door and trying to convert you?). I understand the notion of living a good life and of trying to lead by example, but I would think that some direct effort at conversion would be made, too.”

Proselytization is illegal in Greece! We Evangelize and preach the Logos of God and try to bring everyone to Orthodoxy by our own example.

erotokritos wrote: “We dont want great numbers, we want quality members.”

MindWalk answered: “That's an interesting way of putting it! There seems to be an assumption among Western evangelicals that simply by becoming "saved," one is automatically a "quality member." Do I gather that works count for more in the Orthodox Church than in those branches that simply say, "Believe in Jesus and you will be saved"?”

We never become saved in this life but always after physical death and it is always a gift of God and not a “righteous” payment for our “good” acts of Law. Of course we have saints which had a “flavor” of Paradise in this life and as I already said somewhere before, if you don’t feel Paradise in this life you won’t live it in the other either. As you should have already understand, I believe in Jesus but in no way I see myself as already saved.

“If God exists, I imagine he is something that in most ways I would not know how to describe, and certainly I do not imagine that I could picture God in any way matching the reality of him.”

We can describe God from whatever His Love revealed to us by his energies and actions but we can’t define Him. If you mean the physical reality, you are right.

“There might be an important difference between what you denote by "existence" and what you denote by "Existence," though.”

With “E” we mean the Cause or Reason of all the other “existences” which without Him we are not existed. He is the Life! Without Him there is nothing.

“Please don't think I'm saying that murdering little children and helping them with their schoolwork are equally good because there is no good.”

What if by doing something bad like killing small scouter kids you avoid something worst like losing your army, losing the war and let the enemy slaughter your country mates, rape your family, etc?!

“God is thought of as an object in the universe or not,….”

Universe is an object in God! God is no object; He has nothing in common with material. Even His Angels (which are spirits) are materials in compare with Him.

“The church is philanthropist and is not a charitable institution.I'd understand saying that the church took people's money and redistributed it, often to do socially good things; but how is it a philanthropist and not a charitable institution?”

Big story… 2 tips:

1)    Church want to save your soul (and of course your reborn body) and don’t try to save your belly! Many saints died in tortures, in caves, with illnesses, cancer, in poverty, etc. They didn’t ask from church to save their bodies.

2)    Good human and good Christian is not the same. There is a book in Greek with that title!

I said: “There are ocular witnesses of Resurrection, appearances of Christ for 40 days after and finally the Undertaking.”

MindWalk answered: “Were it so clear, historians of Biblical times would all agree, and we would all learn about the Resurrection of Jesus in school as a historical fact.” and “If the experts are not agreed that it happened, why should I be convinced that it did?”

I add that we have resurrections also in Old Testament also believed by Jews.

It is a historical fact in Greece! Although we don’t examine the life of Jesus Christ in the lesson of history but of Theology it is examined (in theology) in the sector of history with other historical persons like Mohammad, Buddha, etc.

The experts are the Fathers of our Church and not university teachers.

Your “experts” will never agree for anything.

What do you want for proof?

How we know that Socrates said whatever his students wrote that he said? How we know that Socrates really existed?! How we know for sure that man, beyond each doubt, really stepped on Moon?

Hebrews 11,1

Anastasios,

I'd add that, at least in North America, there are plenty of University professors who find the idea of Jesus' resurrection persuasive as a historical fact.  As a historian I would argue that the only reason to disbelieve it is if you don't believe resurrection is ever possible - and certainly, a lot of people don't believe it is.  But, if you have any willingness to accept that truly extraordinary things like a resurrection happen in the world now and then, then the resurrection of Christ is one of the better attested historical events of the period.

There are a lot of very loud scholars who will say highly skeptical things.  People like the "Jesus Seminar" for example.  Yet, these same people make their own leaps of faith.  For example, they believe whole-heartedly in the existence of an early Gospel that no one has ever seen ("Q").  They also believe that a bunch of people removed from the historical events of the Gospels by 2000 years sitting in a room and voting produces a more historically accurate picture of Jesus than consulting with the many sources much closer to those events.  What's most curious about ther approach is that it treats New Testament texts as fundamentally special historical sources - different from any other sources that exist.  It's the same thing that an Evangelical might believe, but it's then used in reverse.  The NT is fundamentally special, and so can never be trusted!  This is where you get arguments like, "these events are not attested anywhere outside the NT" which is actually a false statement anyway, but rings absurd to, for instance, a Roman Historian who has to rely constantly on single-source attributed events as actually happening.  Here people are saying that thing attested in four sources are invalid without even more attestation.  No other historical document is treated as though it is invalid de facto without outside attributions, and I know of absolutely no other historical events attested by four separate primary witnesses that are placed in the "false until proven true" category.

But, more to the point, I don't think that the hard-core skeptics even represent the mainstream of scholarship anymore, to say nothing of the wisdom of the Fathers (obviously).  There are very serious problems with the entire hermeneutical approach of 19th and 20th Century Liberal Christian scholarship, and more and more people are taking notice of that.  The result is that those who want to do historical study of the NT period have started treating NT texts like they would treat any other texts...and the strange irony of doing that is that what they contain becomes much more historically plausible when you do that. 

If you believe resurrection is absolutely impossible, then you will find other explanations for these texts, but it is not a cogent argument to say that the resurrection is insufficietnly attested as a historical event - it more than clears the bar set for any other subject in ancient history.  Even scholars have really started to realize that, and as the previous generation steps aside in the Academy, you'll see more and more people saying this, I believe.

mindwalk you do not seriously address Jesus Christ's existence.  we have more proof of his existence than we do of Julius Cesar.  We have more proof of Jesus Christ's existence that we do of your existence......

But why can't the point at which the causal chain stops be the initial state of the universe?

I've never met a human mind which would actually be satisfied by that.  It seems to me we are creatures of a paradox - if we present ourselves with a fundemental cause, we must ask "what came before?  what caused it?"  If we say there is no fundamental cause, we say, "everything has a cause!"  It's a paradox, which goes to my point - we very literally cannot conceive the kind of cause we are talking about here - it is removed even from our concept of cause because that concept of cause ultimately relies on a sense of infinite regress, whether we like it or not.  If you say that the universe "just is," then I will say that it's "just-isness" is what I'm talking about.

I can only have the sense of metaphysical reality's absence if my sensory connection to the world is somehow interrupted--as can happen. But I wouldn't take that to be the withdrawal of metaphysical reality--just my own mentality's apparent--and illusory--disconnection from it (illusory because in order to think I require the operation of my brain, and my brain is part of metaphysical reality). I take it this is evidence that you do not quite mean by "God" what I mean by "metaphysical reality."

No, we're in perfect agreement.  See my final comment as I think your concept of "metaphysical reality" is very much what I mean by God.  God is never actually absent - we just sometimes cause ourselves to feel that way.  But it's all on our side of things.  There are also times I feel much less real (like before I've had my coffee in the morning).  I'm not, in fact, any less real...I just feel that way.  It's all in my experience - thus with God's absence.  So, we're in simple agreement here.

As I said, I understand talking that way; but I always wonder whether there is really anything at all being expressed except a feeling. I used to be drawn to mysticism, but I eventually concluded that mystic feeling was just that: *feeling*. I concluded that it could conceivably be more--that it could conceivably be indicative of contact with a higher reality, or some such--but that since conceivability was not good reason for belief, I would not believe it.

This is a bit of another can of worms, but as an Orthodox I live a life of mysticism tempered by healthy distrust.  Not all "mystical" experiences are real.  We believe, in fact, that some are flat-out Satanic.  Our council is always: when in doubt, one must distrust any mystical experiences one has. 

So I connect with your distrust of mysticism, and certainly undirected mystical practice is not something I would ever recommend to anyone.  But I'll also raise a question to you: what other experiences in life do you attribute to the totally arbitrary feelings of the mind or body?  In my experience, virtually all of the feelings I feel have something to do with things that actually happen.  Even in dreams, my mind replays or remixes certain feelings I originally had in relation to the real world.  Now, this is not to say that my mind has nothing to do with this.  Indeed, I can even control most of my feelings about all sorts of things.  But I think one must make a defense of why mystical "feelings" are treated as distinct from other feelings by assuming that they are "just" feelings while other feelings have referents of some kind in reality.

"That greater than which none can be conceived" certainly seems close to what you have in mind. Isn't it?

That must be a deficiency in my expression because I reject the idea.  I might say something like, "that greater than the thing greater than which none can be conceived!"  That's a paradox (and rather tongue-in-cheek), reflective of the Mystery I am trying to talk about.  Don't take that as a "proof," by the way - my point is the paradox.

You seem to have in mind something which neither exists nor fails to exist. The closest I can come to understanding that is by the way I think of mentality: I do not think of my mentality as metaphysically existent (although my neurons surely are), but I certainly think of my mentalizing (thinking, feeling, and so on) as really occurring.

"Neither exists nor fails to exist" is very interesting language to me, and I like it at first blush.  Since you are, indeed, one of the most profoundly analytical people I've ever encountered, I don't want to sign on the dotted line for that statement since we remain less than totally certain what we mean by "existence."  But this seems to capture a certain sense of what I mean.

Your mental process is indeed a metaphor that captures a lot about what I'm trying to express.  In fact, it's no accident that St. Augustine uses this same metaphor in De Trinitate as foundational to his entire discussion.  Perhaps the issue of what you mean by what is "real" is something to be explored.  "existence" seems to be a bit tricky - so what is "realness" to you?  How can something be "real" and not "metaphysically existent?"

Hmm. I simply think of it as "metaphysical reality." Why would one also give it the name "God"?

This, I believe, is where the rubber hits the road.  What I've been trying to indicate is that I think (and continue to think) that you and I both believe in the "reality" that I call God.  In fact, in my many conversations with many people of all walks, creeds, intelligences and whatever else, I always walk away earnestly believing that I have never encountered a single person in my life who does not believe, in some basic way, in the God I believe in.  I've come to think that think human thought wouldn't even be even possible if one really disbelieved it.  It would be like trying to imagine someone who honestly believes that there is, actually, nothing...not something - absolutely nothing exists, not even himself.  It's, as far as I can tell, not something a human mind can genuinely think.

So, okay, you call it "metaphysical reality," and I call this God.  Now, you've asked exactly the right question...why do I call God "God?"

To be frank, I have a lot of different reasons to do that, and I don't think I could sit here and type them all out if I tried.  So I'll pick the three that seem most prominent to my mind right now.

1)  We have a relationship with metaphysical reality.  It is experienced by human beings as a personal thing.  Now, you're going to want to pick the words "relationship" and "personal" apart, which is fine.  I'll let your comments dictate how I should work to define them.  But, part of what I mean here is that metaphysical reality is not, I believe, a mere static thing - it is something that, to speak very crudely "moves" in a certain sense.  It is something that relates to me, and I to it.  To speak of ultimate reality as in a relationship with me, I must speak of God.

2)  I am grateful.  Why is this so, I do not know.  Yet I look upon my existence, my reality, and I feel a tremendous and totally unshakable sense that I am grateful for all of it.  This is what causes me to worship, and when I worship, I worship God.

3)  Most of all, so many truly great minds have called God "God."  I do not believe that I know all there is to know, and I do not believe that I am the wisest, most intelligent, best educated, or best informed person ever to live.  Since I don't believe those things, I look to other people who I think to be wiser etc. than me, at the very least in certain areas, to try and learn.  We all do this (unless we are psychotically arrogant).  The question of whom to choose to follow is an incredibly vexed one.  If we only follow those who say the things we already know, then we are not following at all.  Moreover, we are not being serious with ourselves - at some point we've listened to someone else in order to learn what we now do, in fact, think we know.  So when someone says something we do not already believe to be true, how do we know to trust him or distrust him?  I'm not actually sure how we do this, but I've often talked about the process of discerning that kind of thing about a teacher or thinker by saying that certain teachings "ring the bell of the soul." 

The first time I read Dostoeyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, many years before I became Orthodox, I put the book down, heart racing, and all I could think was "this man understands something...knows a truth that I do not know...but I know he knows it."  Years later, after becoming Orthodox, I read the book again - and all I could see was a simple Orthodox Christian teaching, written by a brilliant author.  That teaching is that real life is found when what I call the "idol of self" dies with Christ on the cross, and the real human being is born into life.  It was the same truth, I believe that I had detected, but not understood, the first time I read the book.  Those years before, I could see the arrows pointing the way long before ever coming to see what they pointed to.

I can't always rationalize why I follow whom I follow, but I would propose that you probably cannot either.  In this case, I simply somehow knew that Dostoevsky knew something that I didn't.  So, back to the point where I started this - the people whose writings have struck me as really wise and brilliant in this world (including Dostoevsky, St. Gregory Nazianzus, St. Augustine, St. Gregory Palamas, not to mention scripture) most often seem to talk about "God." 

Now, I want to make one thing clear as I make this point.  I did not grow up in a Christian home, I never attended church as a youth, and becoming Christian as an adult has only made more difficult my relationship with family and the friends I had before.  I have not been drawn to find these thinkers and teachers compelling by some social pressure.  For me, the social pressure is just the opposite.  I did not find myself here because I wanted to believe these things.  I found myself here because the best teachers I encountered in books, and, eventually, in life, all talked of God...and indeed, were very often (though not absolutely always) Orthodox on top of that.  At some point it was too great a pattern to ignore, and, in a very literal sense, I gave up and began talking of "God."  Today, in those moments when I am, for a brief time, the person I was created to be - when the world is real - I see why those thinkers would have it that way.

We choose the language of those around us who seem, to our minds, to really understand.  The point is not that this language is the most "accurate" in some sense - as I've been saying, God is Mystery, and no language captures that anyway.  We take the language of our communion, and so I take the language of God.