A Better Understanding of God

Western Civilizations conception of God has been largely polluted by the philosophy of the Greeks, who saw theology as something to argue about during their drunken dinner parties, but they never seemed themselves to take it very seriously, as no tradition comes down to us of Greek Mystics or even of Greek ascetics. They talked about it but never actually did anything. Greek Theology comes from Greek Intellectuals, and from them, only after Happy Hour. Oh, in defense of the Greeks, as a complete Culture, they DID have their own Mystery Religions, but these were kept secret.

The big problem with Greek Philosophy was that they desired everything to fit into some Systematic Model, which necessitated a bare-bones simplicity. God was to be Absolute in all things – All Powerful, All Knowing, Eternal, blah blah blah. In other words, God was only supposed to be some logical counterpoint to the Material World, the other end of some simplistic equation. God was never much more fleshed out than just any clever point being made in a drunken debate.

Now, from actual Spiritual and Mystical Cultures, where some experience was deemed an asset when engaged in Religious Speculation, then we find not Intellectual Traditions of Theology but Revealed Traditions. Revelation is much different from sitting around and thinking of how to be clever in one’s religious arguments. Revelation involves keeping some Historical account of Mystical and Miraculous experiences and occurrences. Of course, regarding these, we may suppose some distortion as regards to normal tendencies for people to exaggerate, and then we may suppose that people may often come to wrong conclusions regarding the meaning of what they see and hear, but at the very basis, there are some actual experiences and actual events. To come to some correct understanding of God, we must consult such experiences and events.

So the best references for Religious Study should come from the Saints and the Mystics, particularly those who evince some miraculous occurrences, as those Spiritualists known only for their inspirational poetry are as little to be trusted as the intellectuals, it needing to be decided whether we should trust logic more than aesthetics when it hasn’t been decided whether either is really much closer to the core of Spirituality. The Truth of Religion should not be entirely entrusted to Taste.

But where Miracles are concerned, supernatural occurrences show a definite Other-Worldliness which may lead us to God more surely than just isolated mental cogitation or isolated mental imagination – Philosophy and Poetry.

The first set of conclusions we can encounter when evaluating the Saints is that miracles tend to operate only within their vicinity or connection. Yet the Saints, for the most part, attribute these Miracles only to God. Well, here we should consider that we have only the testimony of Saints who had not been instantly put to death for espousing heretical doctrines. Then there is the testimony of Saints whose testimony is allowed to lapse because it may not be doctrinally pure. And then again, even in relatively tolerant Societies, the Saints seem to have been careful to attribute miraculous occurrences entirely to God, but still we might expect any Saint from anywhere to be careful as to what he says, it being something of a Universal Truth that of all subjects, it is perhaps most easy to offend others when we speak of Religion, and so the Saints, perhaps from their life experiences, learned to put forward a studied humility. We only have to refer to the Life of Christ – for thirtythree years he thrived while being humble, but in just one week after leading his own parade, even on just a donkey, he was dead.

So, once we discount what the Saints may be telling us out of caution or coercion, we have a paradigm in which miracles closely follow certain Saints. Now, when they do tell us anything regarding the mechanics of these miracles, we are told of helping spirits from the ‘other side’ – Angels, or other Saints though deceased, or we hear of low or dark miracles being accomplished with the help of demons or earth spirits. While the Saints speak of God, when we look at the actual dynamics, there is always some Agent or intermediary. We’ve never seen God in His Fullness. Even Moses, who spoke of God Himself, only saw a bush.

Considering nobody had ever experienced God acting directly, it seems a miracle of incredulity that the Greeks could ever have arrived at the Doctrine of Divine Absolute Power, when in every instance, God had been limited by whoever or whatever was His Agent or Angel.

So, what do we have so far? We have miracles sourcing from certain ‘Saints’ and these saints are being provided for by certain Angels, whose power, though supernatural enough, still seems to have been entirely finite. While being able to do a lot, by ordinary human standards, we have not seen anything extensive enough to suggest Omnipotence. And where events had seemed tremendous, as in the case of The Miracle of Fatima, there we can suppose many more Angels were involved than only just one or two. Then we can distinguish certain saints by the qualities of their Miracles. It seems obvious that different Saints are supported by different Angels.

Well, then, if even the Saints themselves have had only any direct contact with Angels, than why such emphasis on God? Perhaps a more practical Religion would involve attention to the Realm of Angels. There it is commonly argued that loyalty to God assures the solicitude of the Angels. However, we have some certain Religious Doctrines that completely reject any Angelic Intercession. For instance, do not the Protestants insist upon a “personal relationship with Christ”? When examined in detail, what we see of the Spiritual World is a Realm consisting of Hierarchies and Principalities of Angels and Saints that pile upward and upward, eventually reaching up to God. Man is at the bottom of this Hierarchy. And yet Protestants suppose they can jump over everybody and everything and be Best Friends with the very Guy whom they endorsed for Murder so they could enjoy free guiltless sin. Well, if Christ is anything close to what he had claimed to be – the Incarnate Commander of All the Angels, then there are quite a few levels between Him and any of us. So any Personal Relationship seems at best implausible.

In the battles we face while living in the World, we can hardly expect The Most Supreme Heavenly General to come himself and follow in our tracts, fighting each of our small skirmishes personally. A General will send a solder to deal with such things. Jesus will send Angels.

This brings us to Free Will. While experience tells us clearly that we have Free Will, it may also be that Angels have Free Will in regards to the actions of their Agency. God might not be micro-managing everything. However, there is some experiential evidence indicating that we may suppose that God is entirely informed, as well as the Angels. It seems to be part of the Mystical Experience to be All Knowing, or rather, to think at the time of the experience that one is All Knowing. Now, when coming out of the All Knowing Experience, there is a problem with the limited human brain REMEMBERING much of the mind boggling details, but essentially what we are told regarding the Experience of All Knowing is that, at the time, EVERYTHING is or seems to be revealed. So it is probably very likely that the Angels, with the background of this All Knowing, act in such a way as to approach closer to whatever Perfection this All Knowingness may be envisioning. This can best be described as the Conscious Evolution of the Universe.

Its often said that “reasonable people can reasonably differ”, which is said to promote a degree of tolerance and civility where argument and debate can often get quite heated. But, honestly, where some Mystical Knowledge can seem to approach some experiential absolute, can there really be a problem with Mystics coming to significantly different conclusions and choices. After a certain point does not a preponderance of Knowledge forestall Free Will. It is perhaps like being pushed off a cliff, the only real choice is to fall.

But as far as the Experience goes, the choices are being made locally and while the choices may seem obvious or even determined by a correctness that seems absolutely certain, they are Free choices in the sense that God is leaving the decisions up to the Agents and Beings out on the Scene, out in the Field, so to speak. This combines with the problem of the Saints having slim actual memory of anything that may have overwhelmed them during their Mystical Experiences, and so we can account for the variations of behaviors we see among the Saints. And then, what they do remember may be largely influenced by their traditions and pre-dispositions. The Mystical Experience may serve to illuminate aspects of one’s Knowledge that corresponds in some way with Actual Truth, or which is close enough to catch some manner of Light. But in instances where some Simple Minded Saint had never given anything a single Thought, than the Enlightening Experience may have very little to shine upon.