The question of God is not simple. You will have to hear more than once: "Here you Christians tell us about God, prove that He exists. And who is He? Who are you talking about when you say the word "God"?"

I'll start very far away, don't be surprised and be patient for a minute. Plato, a student of Socrates, has the following idea: first principles (simple things that have no complexity) cannot be defined. They are impossible to describe. Indeed, we can define complex things through simple ones. And through what? If a person has never seen the color green, how do we explain to him what it is? There is only one thing left - to offer: "Look." It is impossible to tell what the green color is. Father Pavel Florensky once asked his cook, the simplest, most uneducated woman: "What is the sun?" She looked at him in bewilderment: "Sun? Well, look at what the sun is." He was very pleased with this answer. Indeed, there are things that cannot be explained, they can only be seen.

The question "Who is God?" has to be answered as follows. Christianity says that God is a simple Being, the simplest of all that exists. It is simpler than the sun. He is not a reality about which we can reason and through this understand and know it. It can only be "seen". Only by "looking" at Him can one know Who He is. You don't know what the sun is, look; you don't know who God is, look. How? - "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8). I repeat, not all things lend themselves to verbal description and definition. We cannot explain to the blind what light is, and to the deaf what the sound C of the third octave or D of the first octave is. Of course, there are as many things as you want that we talk about and explain them quite clearly. But there are many that go beyond the boundaries of conceptual expression. They can be known only through direct communication.

Do you know what was called theology in pre-Christian Greco-Roman literature, and who was called a theologian? Theology meant stories about the gods, their adventures, and deeds. And the authors of these stories were called theologians: Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus. (What we find among them, I will not say.) So much for theology and theologians. Of course, there are interesting ideas about God in Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other ancient philosophers, but these ideas were not popular.

And in Christianity, what is called theology? The term "theology" is the Russian translation of the Greek word "theology." In my opinion, this is a very unfortunate translation, because the second part of the word "theology" - "logos" - has about 100 meanings (the first - Theos, or Theos, is clear to everyone - God). In the ancient Greek-Russian dictionary of I. Dvoretsky there are 34 nests of meanings of the word "logos". Each nest has several more values. But if we talk about the basic religious-philosophical meaning of this concept, then most of all, I believe, it corresponds to "knowledge", "cognition", "vision". The translators took the most common meaning, "word," and translated theology with such a vague concept as theology. But in essence, theology should be translated as knowledge of God, knowledge of God, knowledge of God. At the same time, knowledge in Christianity means something completely different from what the pagans thought - not words and reasoning about God, but a special, spiritual experience of direct experience, comprehension of God by a pure, holy person.

St. John Climacus formulated this idea very precisely and concisely: "The perfection of purity is the beginning of theology." Other Fathers call it feoria, i.e. contemplation, which takes place in a state of special silence - hesychia (hence hesychasm). St. Barsanuphius the Great said beautifully about this silence: "Silence is better and more amazing than all narratives. Our fathers kissed him and worshipped him, and they were glorified by him." You see, how ancient, patristic Christianity says, or rather, spoke about theology. It is the comprehension of God, which is realized only through the correct Christian life. In theological science, this is called the method of spiritually experiential cognition of God, it gives the Christian the opportunity to truly comprehend Him and, through this, to understand the true meaning of His Revelation given in the Holy Scriptures.

There are two other methods in theological science, and although they are purely rational, they also have a certain significance for the correct understanding of God. These are apophatic (negative) and cataphatic (positive) methods.

You've probably heard of them. The apophatic method proceeds from the unconditional truth of the fundamental distinction of God from all created things, and therefore of His incomprehensibility and inexpressibility by human concepts. This method essentially forbids saying anything about God, since any human word about Him would be false. To understand why this is so, pay attention to where all our concepts and words come from, how are they formed? Here's how. We see, hear, touch, etc., and call it accordingly. They saw it and named it. They discovered a planet and called it Pluto, discovered a particle and gave it the name neutron. There are concrete concepts, there are general ones, there are abstract ones, there are categories. Let's not talk about it now. This is how the language is replenished and develops. And since we communicate with each other and pass on these names and concepts, we understand each other. We say table, and we all understand what we are talking about, because all these concepts are formed on the basis of our collective earthly experience. But all of them very, very incompletely, imperfectly describe real things, give only the most general idea of the subject. Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, rightly wrote: "The meanings of all concepts and words formed by the interaction between the world and ourselves cannot be precisely determined... Therefore, it is never possible to arrive at the absolute truth by rational thinking alone" (V. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, Moscow, 1963, p. 67).

It is interesting to compare this thought of a modern scientist and thinker with the statement of a Christian ascetic who lived a millennium before Heisenberg and did not know any quantum mechanics, St. Symeon the New Theologian. Here is what he says: "I... mourned the human race, since, in search of extraordinary proofs, people cite human concepts, things, and words, and think that they depict the Divine nature, that nature which none of the angels, nor of the people, could see or name" (St. Simeon the New Theologian, Divine Hymns, Sergiev Posad, 1917, p. 272). Here, you see what all our words mean. If they are imperfect even in relation to earthly things, then they are all the more conditional when they relate to the realities of the spiritual world, to God.

Now you understand why the apophatic method is right, because, I repeat, no matter what words we use to define God, all these definitions will be wrong. They are limited, they are earthly, they are taken from our earthly experience. And God is above all created things. Therefore, if we were to try to be absolutely precise and stop at the apophatic method of cognition, we would simply have to be silent. But what would faith and religion turn into then? How could we preach and generally talk about true religion or false religion? After all, the essence of every religion is the teaching about God. And if we could say nothing about Him, we would cross out not only religion, but also the very possibility of understanding the meaning of human life.

However, there is another approach to the teaching about God. It, although formally incorrect, is in fact as correct, if not more so, than apophatic. We are talking about the so-called cataphatic method. This method asserts that we must talk about God. And they must because this or that understanding of God fundamentally determines human thought, human life and activity. Think about it, there is a difference between the following statements: I have nothing to say about God; I say that God is Love; I say that He is hatred? Of course, there is a great difference, for each indication of God's attributes is a guideline, a direction, a norm of our human life.

Even the Apostle Paul writes about the Gentiles that they could know everything that can be known about God through the consideration of the world around them. It is about some of the attributes of God, about how you perceive some of the actions of God, this simple Being. And we call these attributes of God. His wisdom, His goodness, His mercy, and so on. These are only individual manifestations of the Divinity, which we can observe on ourselves and on the world around us. God is a simple Being.

Therefore, although all our words are inaccurate, incomplete and imperfect, nevertheless, Divine Revelation for our teaching says quite definitely that God is Love and not hatred, Good and not evil, Beauty and not ugliness... Christianity says: "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (1 John 4; 16). It turns out that the doctrine of God-Love is not some kind of indeterminacy, abstraction, no, it is the very essence of human life, He is a really existing Ideal. Therefore, "he who does not love his brother abides in death"; therefore, "everyone who hates his brother is a murderer"; therefore, "no murderer has eternal life in him" (1 John 3; 14:15). In other words, know, man, that if you have enmity towards even one person, you are mistaken and bring evil and suffering to yourself. Think what a great criterion is given to man by the positive teaching about God and His attributes. By it, I can evaluate myself, my behavior, my actions. I know the great truth: what is good and what is evil, and, consequently, what will bring me joy and happiness, and what will insidiously destroy me. Is there anything greater and greater for man?! This is the power and significance of the cataphatic method.

Do you now understand why there is a Revelation of God, which is given in human concepts, images, parables, why He, inexplicable and indescribable, speaks to us about Himself with our harsh words? If He had told us in the language of angels, we would not have understood anything. It is as if someone would come in and speak Sanskrit now. We would open our mouths in bewilderment, although it is very possible that it would communicate the greatest truths - we would still remain in complete ignorance.