Wisdom and Knowledge

No one has ever seen God, but God, the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made him known (Jn.1:18)

 

The hidden nature of God is shielded from human understanding by a "sort of cloud of unknowing." Because God is not a concept, he cannot be known by the intellect.  But what cannot be thought may yet be known by love.  Through the sharp arrows of love directed toward God in contemplative prayer, it is possible to pierce the "cloud of unknowing" and attain blessed union with God.  This requires that we wrap ourselves in a "cloud of forgetting," abandoning all images and concepts of the divinity and overcoming our attachment to the world. -- from the commentary on The Cloud of Unknowing, a treatise by an unknown 14th century author. ( Commentary by the editors of  Give Us This Day.)

 

God can be known, but not thought.  No man can reveal to us the true nature of God, what he is like, because no man has ever seen God.  It would take God Himself to reveal Himself to us.  In the Bible, we have stories of men and women who came to know God -- not philosophers and kings and wise men -- but simple men and women who came to know God through what he did for them, in them, and through them.

 

We tend to focus on the protagonists-- the central characters of the story.  But the biblical writers were focusing on God -- who was He?  He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of all the prophets.  He is the God of Israel.  When He becomes our God, we will know who He is.

 

Jesus told the Scribes, "You search the Scriptures because by them you think you will have life, but you refuse to come to me that you might have life."  We will never know God through the intellect, or through knowledge, though the study of nature may provide some insight.  The only way to know God is through the heart of Jesus.  Once we enter into Him, the mysteries of God unfold to us, enlightening our minds and lifting our hearts.  In heart-to-heart communion with Jesus, the Spirit that animates Him begins to stir in us:  Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke? said the disciples on the way to Emmaeus.  In Him, the Scriptures begin to unfold to us, and our understanding is enlightened -- beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he unfolded the Scriptures to them.

 

Forget everything else:  know Jesus, and you will know everything, for He is the wisdom of God Himself.