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.

So, how does Christianity teach about God? On the one hand, it says that God is Spirit and, as a simple Being, cannot be expressed by any human words and concepts, because any word is, if you like, a distortion. On the other hand, we are faced with the fact of God's Revelation given to us in Holy Scripture and the experience of many saints. That is, God speaks of Himself to man in his own language, and although these words are imperfect and incomplete in themselves, they are nevertheless necessary for man, since they indicate to him what he must do in order to come, at least partially, to the saving knowledge, the vision of God. And that the knowledge of God is partly possible, the Apostle writes about this: "Now we see as through a glass darkly, divinationly, then face to face; now I know in part, and then I will know, even as I am known" (1 Corinthians 13:12). And the Lord Himself says: "This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3). Earthly life is the beginning of this eternal life.

God the Lord condescends to our limited understanding and expresses the truth to us in our words. I think that when we die and free ourselves from this "conceptual" language, we will look with a smile at our ideas about God, the spiritual world, angels, eternity... that we had, even reading Revelation. Then, on the one hand, we will understand all the wretchedness of these ideas of ours, and on the other hand, we will see how good this hidden Revelation of God about Himself, about man, about the world was for us, for it showed us the way, the means, and the direction of the salvific life. That is, all this is directly related to the spiritual life of a Christian. We are all filled with passions, we are all proud, we are all selfish, but at the same time there is a huge difference between people. Which? One sees it in himself and fights with himself, and the other does not see and does not want to see. It turns out that the positive (cataphatic) teaching about God gives a person the right criteria, yardsticks, with the help of which he can correctly evaluate himself if he really wants to be a believer. Of course, he may hate his brother, calling himself a believer, but then, if his conscience is not yet completely burned and his mind is not completely darkened, he can understand in what demonic state he is.

You know, there are natural and supernatural religions. Natural religions are nothing but the expression in images and concepts, myths and legends of the direct, natural human sensation of God. Therefore, such ideas always have either a primitive anthropomorphic or an intellectually abstract character. Here are all kinds of images of gods, filled with all the passions and virtues of man, here is the divine Nothingness, here is the idea of Plato's Demiurge and Aristotle's Prime Mover, etc. But all the truths of these religions and religious-philosophical ideas have a pronounced human origin. Supernatural religions are distinguished by the fact that God Himself makes Himself known who He is. And we see what an amazing difference exists between the Christian understanding of God and that which is outside of it. At first glance, both here and there are the same or similar words, but the content of these religions is essentially different from each other. How strikingly this distinction was beautifully expressed by the Apostle Paul when he said: "But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, but to the Greeks foolishness" (1 Corinthians 1:23). Indeed, all specifically Christian truths are fundamentally different from all their former analogues. This is not only Christ crucified, but also the teaching about the Triune God, about the Logos and His Incarnation, about the Resurrection, about Salvation, etc. But let's talk about one of these truths now. There is one more unique truth of the Christian teaching about God, which decisively distinguishes Christianity from all other religions, including even the religion of the Old Testament. Nowhere except in Christianity do we find that God is Love and only Love.

Outside of Christianity, we will encounter all kinds of ideas about God. At the same time, the highest understanding of Him, to which some religions and some ancient philosophers came, was reduced to the teaching of a just Judge, the highest Truth, the most perfect Reason. As for the fact that God is Love, no one knew before Christ. Here is an example. In our Church there is a commission for dialogue with the Muslims of Iran. At last summer's meeting, the question of the highest virtue and the highest attribute of God was raised. And it was interesting to hear Muslim theologians, one after another, say that justice is such a property. We answered: "If so, then the most fair is the computer. And do you not say to Allah, "O Most Merciful and Merciful?" They say, "Yes, merciful, but Judge. He judges justly and in this his mercy is manifested." Why did not the non-Christian consciousness (even if it calls itself Christian) know and does not know that God is precisely Love and nothing more? Because we, people, have distorted the very concept of love. In human language, love means: all-forgiveness, the absence of punishment, that is, freedom to arbitrariness. Do what you want, that's what "love" means in human terms. We forgive everything to a friend, and to someone who is unpleasant to us, we cling to every nonsense. We have perverted the concept of love. Christianity, on the other hand, returns to us its true understanding.

What is Christian love? "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Love is sacrifice. But sacrifice is not blind. Look at how Christ reacted to evil: "Serpents, the offspring of vipers." I remember one episode from the book of Archbishop Alexander Tien Shansky, when he was 14-15 years old. He wrote: "I took a book and began to look at a picture in which horses were mating. And suddenly my mother saw it. I had never seen such anger in her. She had always been very gentle and kind, but here she indignantly snatched this book from my hands. It was the wrath of love, which I remember with gratitude all my life."

People do not know what the wrath of love is, and by love they mean only indulgences. Therefore, if God is Love, then do what you will. Hence it becomes clear why justice has always been considered and is considered the highest virtue. We see how, even in the history of Christianity, this highest teaching was gradually belittled, distorted.

The Christian teaching about God the Love was deeply accepted and revealed by the Holy Fathers. However, this understanding turns out to be psychologically inaccessible to the old man. The most striking example is the Catholic teaching on salvation. It boils down, according to the correct words of A. S. Khomyakov, to a continuous litigation between God and man. What kind of relationship is it? A relationship of love? No, the court. If you have committed a sin, bring appropriate satisfaction to God's justice, for by sin you have offended the Divinity. They do not even understand that God cannot be offended, for otherwise He is not an all-blessed Being, but the most suffering Being. If God is constantly offended by human sins, constantly shudders with anger against sinners, then what all-bliss, what love is there! This is the judge. From this came the proud teaching about the merits and even super-due merits of man, which he can supposedly have before God. Hence the teaching about the Sacrifice of Christ as the satisfaction of God's justice, the teaching about purgatory, hence indulgences. All Catholic teaching is reduced to the Old Testament doctrine: "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." All of it follows directly from a deeply distorted understanding of God.