Dear Theophilus,

You point out that in the last letter that I had mentioned that to love God, we must know Him. And you confess that it is exactly here that you are having difficulties - in getting to know God. Arguments about the existence of God leave you unsatisfied and at most, give you temporary answers. I understand what you are saying because you touch on a very common symptom of our age. We somehow feel that belief in God is compatible with a less developed civilization and now that we have grown in our knowledge of the universe and are in the position through our study of nature to address some basic questions, belief in the existence of God seems somehow archaic and incompatible with what we know.

Unfortunately, doubt is a companion of man for all of his life. We will never get to the point of saying definitively and finally, that we have no questions, that we have no doubt. The reasons for this are complex and revolve around that terrible gift of freedom. Just as we have freedom, so does God and what we try to do sometimes, is to pin God down, to control Him. This obviously is impossible.

The other point that I want to make, which I have made in the past but it needs repeating, is that there are different ways of knowing. We are too hung up on a specific mode of knowing which is applicable to the study of the natural world. But this is a limited approach, although all kinds of exaggerated claims have been made for the so-called scientific method. A lot of pain that we feel in this century and it was already felt in the last, was brought on by the dominance attained by this one very specific method of knowing. This is a very powerful approach because it has produced such marvellous results in many areas and disciplines. And people feel powerless in standing up and challenging it when it oversteps its boundaries of application.

If you know a little bit of history of Christianity, you will probably know about the division that arose in the Church over the use of icons. Some members of the Church felt that the use of icons was idolatrous and should not be permitted in the Church. Others felt otherwise and their position won the day and this holds to the present day in the Eastern Church. The reason why I raise this dispute is that it has some bearing for us in the twentieth century.

One aspect of this dispute revolved around the question of how we assimilate and pass on information. The iconoclasts, those who wanted icons banned from Church use, were supporting a non-image transmission of information. They saw nothing wrong with written representations; it was graphic representations that incurred their wrath.

But, you see, it was the pictorial representation that reminds man that there are more ways of knowing than simply the rational, as represented in the written word. There are depths in man that require non-rational approaches so as to reach in and touch people with life changing messages. In the end, the Church opted for a widening in man's scope instead of a narrowing, as the iconoclasts wanted. This is an important lesson for us, reminding us that in order to know, the rational is only one of the pathways that can be used.

When we approach the study of nature, we have an arsenal of approaches that have been very successful and fruitful. The personal, with its attribute of freedom, defies the application of a scientific approach and therefore, an alternate method has to be used. What is the best way to know what is personal? By interacting with the person. We get to know about God by knowing Him. And this is the essence of worship, of prayer, of faith: to meet God. This is not a one instant matter; it usually takes a lifetime. We, in our impatience, however, want results right now and when we do not get them, we give up and say that it does not work.

When we feel the absence of God, or when we doubt His existence, there is a blessing hidden in there. What is being done is to rid us of an idolatrous picture of a what we pass off as god. This is one of the roles of atheism - to rid us of false gods, albeit atheists go toofar. But even they have a role to play. When the cosmonaut Gagarin said he went up into space and found no god there, he thought he was undermining the Christian faith. He couldn't have been farther from the truth.

A lot of damage has been done to Christianity by the idol of the sadist-father who was passed off as the God of Christianity. God was a policeman in the sky who looked on man with a stern eye and when man fell, when he sinned, he was banished for eternal suffering in hell. We are still feeling the aftershocks of this distorted, idolatrous picture of god. Is it surprising that there has been such a reaction against the perceived god of Christianity in Marxism? Religion had made man seem small, a slave, and in reaction to this, we have the loss of faith of the twentieth century.

As man advanced in his achievements in science, in investigating nature and manipulating nature for our benefit, man's hubris, his self-pride, grew. This became another impediment for knowing God. God has to be approached in obedience and worship and man feels that this demeans him. God is not like some object; He is unique and therefore the way of knowing Him must be unique. If it is not, then we are definitely dealing with an idol, a false god. This call for worship and obedience does not take away from man's freedom and dignity. What it does, is underline the fact that God cannot be approached as just any other object in the universe.

In view of the above, it may come as a surprise to many people that religious knowledge is not some pie in the sky but experiential knowledge, that is knowledge that comes through the experiences of people. Our faith is not the result of some abstract speculation but is based on occurrences that happened and happen within our history. But, as soon as we mention experience, the caution flags are raised. When we talk of experience are we not simply talking about investigating our feelings which really have no bases in objective reality?

This point is valid and important and this is one of the reasons why we have a Tradition in the Church. Theological knowledge is never merely a solitary exercise but is always, verified and judged by the community of believers. It is perilously easy for an individual to go off the track and get into all kinds of fantasies. A person's experiences must be brought before the community of believers, the Church, for verification and confirmation. This is one of the ways that false teaching is guarded against. But it cannot be overemphasized: there can be no theology where there has been no experience. I think that this point is rarely raised but it is still of fundamental importance. And one of the reasons why the numbers of believers seems to be dwindling is that not many believers have experienced God in a palpable way in their lives.

The last point I want to make in this letter is the following. Whenever we judge some event or occurrence, we use various criteria to see what the supporting basis is. Are there witnesses; are there material results of an event; and so on. In other words, either we or certain data sit in judgement over an occurrence and say: yes, this happened or no, it did not. When it comes to God, the matter is diametrically different. How can we use anything in the created universe, including our reason, to ascertain the existence or non-existence of God? What this tells us is that the authoritative knowledge of God cannot be derived from creation but must come from a direct confrontation with God. Our meeting with God carries with it the authentication of its truth. We cannot conclude, or infer, or arrive through rational argument that God exists.

This makes us somewhat wary because we are not in control. This is one of the reasons why some find this approach to knowing unsatisfactory. There have been, it must be stated, abuses in the past, and these continue to this day where people make false assertions and claims and this has challenged the credibility of anyone speaking about experiencing God. People have gotten rich through false claims of messages from God and so on. There is, therefore, a credibility gap that has remained to this day. The jibe has often been made throughout history that Christians do not behave as if God exists. This is not a totally fair or impartial assessment of the matter; there are many saints whose lives have exemplified a living Christian faith. By ignoring them, we are looking at only part of the evidence.

In summary, what I am saying is that God is unique and therefore He has to be approached in a unique manner. The knowledge of God is self-authenticating and cannot be disproved through rational or other means. What is asked of us is a certain spirit of obedience, of righteousness and a deep willingness to change in a radical manner the way we live and the way we see the world.

I have said enough for you to mull over in this letter and I bid you goodbye, until the next time.

Yours truly,

Bar-Abbas.