Unknowing: The Way of Knowing

Sunday, January 12, 2025: Unknowing: The Way of Knowing

This week we dive deeper into the Mystery of the Divine. There is a 14th century work titled, “The Cloud of Unknowing,” whose authorship is unknown. The underlying message of the book is that our thoughts about God can actually be a hinderance in knowing God and that the path to know God is to let go of who and what we think God is. By surrendering our conceptions and “unknowing,” we may begin to glimpse the nature of God and come to know him by love. The author says it better:

For He can well be loved, but he cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held. And therefore, though it may be good at times to think specifically of the kindness and excellence of God, and though this may be a light and a part of contemplation, all the same, in the work of contemplation itself, it must be cast down and covered with a cloud of forgetting.

It might be easier to think of this on a human level. Have you ever had an image of what someone was like? But, when you meet them, you find out they are not as you thought? If you hang on to your preconceived idea, you have an internal conflict between your image and your experience. It will create distrust and you will not be able to really know this person.

It is the same way with God. In fact, a lot of people experience cognitive dissonance between their experiences of Gods grace and love and what they have been taught. As a result, their relationship remains fractured or distant with their Creator. But, if we are able to let go of what we think about God and instead focus on loving God, we will have an entirely different experience. We need to know less about God and more of knowing God.

Our beliefs about God can become idols in a very real sense. An idol is a representation of a deity, and the more certain we are that we fully understand God, the more deeply we engrave that image into our minds. This certainty risks violating the spirit of the first commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” Words, pictures, ideas, and imaginations are merely representations—they are not the reality itself. When we place too much trust in our limited understanding, we move further from true understanding. It is only by acknowledging our limitations and letting go of certainty that we can open ourselves to a deeper, truer experience of the Divine.

This week, consider what you might need to un-know to know God better.

Monday, January 13, 2025: Letting Go of Certainty

• Meister Eckhart: “To reach the God beyond all knowing, a person must pass beyond everything comprehensible and dwell in unknowing.”(Sermons and Treatises, Volume I)
• Simone Weil: “We know God only by unknowing Him.” (Waiting for God)
• Nicholas of Cusa: “God is not attained by knowledge, but by the absence of it.” (De Docta Ignorantia)
• Gregory of Nyssa: “The mind, by withdrawing from what is visible, comes to know the invisible.” (The Life of Moses)
• Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”

Question to Ponder:How might surrendering your need for certainty open the door to deeper trust in God?

Action to Take: Sit in prayer and offer God your uncertainties, asking for the grace to trust Him beyond understanding.

Tuesday, January 14, 2025: The Path of Negative Theology (What God isn’t)

• Dionysius the Areopagite: “The cause of all is neither soul nor mind… It is beyond assertion and denial.” (The Divine Names, Chapter 1)
• John of the Cross: “To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing.” (The Ascent of Mount Carmel)
• The Cloud of Unknowing: “By love, God may be gotten and holden; but by thought, never.” (The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 4)
• Job 28:12, 28: “But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? … Behold, the fear of the Lord – that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”

Question to Ponder: What does it mean to embrace God as the One who cannot be defined?

Action to Take: Spend time meditating on the name of God, allowing its mystery to fill your heart.

Wednesday, January 15, 2025: The Wisdom of Unknowing

• St. Augustine: “God is best known in unknowing; in loving Him, we experience the truth of His essence.” (Confessions)
• Maximus the Confessor: “God is infinite and incomprehensible, and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility.” (Ambigua to John, 10)
• Tao Te Ching 1: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
• Søren Kierkegaard: “To truly understand, we must first unlearn all that we think we know.” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript)
• Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

Question to Ponder: How can unknowing lead you closer to the infinite God?

Action to Take: Read Ecclesiastes 3:11 and reflect on what it means to hold eternity in your heart.

Thursday, January 16, 2025: Ascending the Mountain of Unknowing

• Evagrius Ponticus: “Silence is the mystery of the age to come.” (Chapters on Prayer)
• Henri Nouwen: “The mystery of God lies not in what we know but in what we cannot know.” (The Way of the Heart)
• St. Teresa of Ávila: “The closer one comes to God, the less one understands.” (The Interior Castle)
• Bhagavad Gita 18:66: “Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto Me.”
• Psalm 145:3: “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and his greatness is unsearchable.”

Question to Ponder: What does it mean to “surrender unto” God in unknowing?

Action to Take: Sit quietly with Psalm 145:3, repeating the words, “His greatness is unsearchable.”

Friday, January 17, 2025: Unknowing as Faith

• Karl Rahner: “The incomprehensible God can only be approached by the path of unknowing faith.” (Foundations of Christian Faith)
• Rabindranath Tagore: “The infinite lies in the surrender of all our finite selves.” (Gitanjali, Poem 46)
• Rumi: “Don’t seek God in concepts; throw your net into the uncharted seas of silence.” (The Essential Rumi)
• Nicholas of Cusa: “In silence, the mind enters the incomprehensible presence of the divine.” (De Docta Ignorantia)
• Philippians 4:7: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Question to Ponder: How does faith thrive in the absence of full understanding?

Action to Take: Offer a prayer of surrender, asking God to fill your unknowing with His peace.

Saturday, January 18, 2025: Unknowing: The Way to Knowing

• Meister Eckhart: “To reach the God beyond all knowing, a person must pass beyond everything comprehensible and dwell in unknowing.” (Sermons and Treatises, Volume I)
• The Cloud of Unknowing: “By love, God may be gotten and holden; but by thought, never.” (The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 4)
• Søren Kierkegaard: “To truly understand, we must first unlearn all that we think we know.” (Concluding Unscientific Postscript)
• St. Teresa of Ávila: “The closer one comes to God, the less one understands.” (The Interior Castle)
• Rabindranath Tagore: “The infinite lies in the surrender of all our finite selves.” (Gitanjali, Poem 46)

Question to Ponder: What else do I need to unknow, that I might know better?

Action to Take: Write down you think you know about God and offer it up as a sacrifice of your ignorance.