The believer is happier than the one who seeks the Truth in the pangs of doubt. But it is impossible to say which of them is better and which is more righteous before God. "Everyone has their own path and their own task; and one completes the other. How will he who believes doubt, or how will he who doubts? And he who is stung by doubt should not stifle it in himself, should not close his eyes, but should doubt it to the end, not resting in indifferent skepticism and not hypocrisy before himself and God. God does not need hypocritical and forced faith. God wants His free sons to come to Him, one with his free faith, the other with his free doubt. And God's Truth is complete only if it is accepted by all, accepted by childlike faith and through the furnace of doubt. It is necessary to assert the right and duty of doubt fearlessly and with all one's will. It is necessary to doubt to the end. And when a person, having come to God through doubts, ceases to doubt and seek, but rests on external faith in external authority, he betrays himself and God, becomes a lazy and cunning slave. God called him to be a son.

The path of doubt is the path of knowledge, the goal of which is the indubitable. However, under the guise of pious doubt, it is often asserted that it is impossible to comprehend the Divinity, even imperfectly and approximately. With imaginary and selfish profundity, they proclaim: "As limited and relative beings, we cannot think of the Infinite and the Absolute."

Every act of our thought refutes the objection just quoted, and it refutes itself. As you can't say:

"Do not love God," just as you cannot say: "Do not know Him." No prohibitions or advice are valid, being themselves already a certain knowledge of God. Of course, our opponents will first of all accuse us of satanic pride. But we will return this accusation to them. "Isn't it pride to try to put fetters on man and God?" On the other hand, their assertion is false in its very essence. It rests on the preconceived and unwarranted assumption that we are only limited, relative beings. But how do we know this, and how can it be proven at all? How can "only a limited being" say something about God, even affirm His incomprehensibility? For to say that God is unknowable is to say something about Him, and at any rate to go beyond one's limitations.

In trying to approach the Truth, we reject all preconceived hypotheses, and in particular deny that we are only limited beings. We strive to assert ourselves in our Christian self-consciousness, in the self-consciousness of the sons of the sons of B. We do not dream of a knowledge of God that is in any way equal to God's Self-consciousness; and we do not think to deny that we are sinful and prodigal sons. We hope only to approach the Abyss of Incomprehensibility and only to begin an endless immersion in it, which has no end on earth, and no end in heaven, until God Himself completes us to His Fullness. We believe that Christ, having accepted the limitations of the world, overcame it, that we can become His true brothers, and that the Kingdom of God grows within us. Christ overcomes the limitations of the world in us as well. That is why we are aware of it and can move forward endlessly in overcoming it, nowhere and without encountering an absolutely insurmountable limit. True, in our sinful-empirical existence we are not able to exhaust infinity. We believe that it is inexhaustible in general and always, but in such a way that in perfect God's existence, while remaining inexhaustible, it is somehow and completely accessible to us. Even here, on earth, through faith and hope in Christ Jesus, we are already transfigured, we are already entering our innermost place, into the Kingdom of God. The earth is already connecting with the sky, it is already miraculous.

2. Defending the significance of the knowledge of God, the right and religious duty to know God, from those who are gifted with faith, but do not understand the possibility of doubts, and even more so from those who are fearful and hypocritically humble, we defend the knowledge of God that is rationally expressible and partly rationally provable. Here we are confronted with the now fashionable references to the "irrationality" and incomprehensibility of the Divine, to a special "spiritual experience" and mysticism. In fact, mystics constantly speak of the "incomprehensibility" and "ineffability" of what they experience. However, these words are a peculiar way of cognition and expression. To say: "It is ineffable" means to somehow delineate, to define the sphere of what is being said, to point to the "inexpressible". In addition, in the mystics themselves, the words "inexpressible," "ineffable," "ineffable," "incomprehensible," etc., appear as the completion of other, positive, and meaningful words, after much has already been "said" about the "ineffable." With all these words, mystics only "exalt" their statements, removing their definiteness and limitation. If what the mystic sees were absolutely incomprehensible, he would comprehend nothing and say nothing, and we would understand nothing in his words. In speaking of the "ineffable," the mystic is far from considering his speech to be empty idle talk, although he is aware of all the imperfection of his definitions, of all the discrepancy between them and what he is trying to define with their help, although it seems to him that he is not talking about God, but is uttering blasphemy against God. And we, for better or worse, understand the mystics, understand their "revelations," and evaluate them in different ways.

It is very common to identify mystical experience with one of its types, "emotional mysticism." And this limiting identification partly explains the exaggerated estimation of ineffability. In fact, feelings, activity, and cognition can be mystical. And, of course, we must talk about the mystical experience of Plotinus, Eriugena, Nicholas of Cusa, Baader, Schelling, Hegel. However, many mystics are not able and are not able to bring others closer to what they see and experience with the help of rational concepts and techniques. Many mystics are able to designate what they perceive only figuratively, symbolically, or only by emotional quality. But (regardless of the value of what is comprehended, which in all forms of mysticism can be very different) this is not a virtue, but a defect. J. B e m e is a genius not because of his incomprehensibility, but in spite of his incomprehensibility.

There are different degrees of mystical giftedness; but to one degree or another (sometimes, however, insignificant) it is characteristic of every person. And the duty of every person gifted with reason is not at all to neglect this gift of God and to accept with blind faith everything that is "revealed" to holy and brilliant mystics. "We must understand as much as possible and, having understood, check and evaluate. From this follows no right to frivolous and hasty denial that we are "incomprehensible" and "unconvincing," but only an imperative duty to reach a state where we understand and, having understood, are able to accept or reject. Negation is something quite different from doubt; and one must learn to wait and abstain for the time being, both from unfounded denial and from blind or, even worse, humble faith. This abstinence does not at all coincide with passive indifference. It contains a greedy search and heavy torments of doubt. It is our religious duty. And the way out of it is not in the self-abasement of a saint, not in oblivion and not in an attempt to affirm one's limited subjective thought, but in the acquisition of true authenticity.

Ineffability is not an authority or a confirmation of the Truth, although truth is ineffable, but a call to seek it. The ineffability of mystical experience is referred to by people who are little acquainted with mysticism, who hastily leafed through several mystical creations and came from them to a state of admiration, not admiration. It is also referred to by secret or explicit, conscious or unconscious positivists. They make a beautiful and generous gesture with this. "Such is our breadth of vision and what impartiality! We are zealots for exact knowledge; and we say neither yes nor no about what we ourselves have not experienced. Maybe there is some undeniable mystical experience. But it is subjective and ineffable, and without it, we do not consider ourselves entitled to refer to it." "Think what impartiality! In fact, such "impartiality" and such "zeal for the truth" are subtly negligible and religious indifference. And it is good to have "exact" knowledge that turns away from the cognizable without even making an attempt to look at it! Not only does he turn away, but he also teaches others to do the same, since the "noble gesture" has a great effect on the gullible admirers of "exact" science.

The ineffability of mystical experience is still appealed to by people of little faith or by those who believe timidly. For them, the words of mystics are not convincing, but they want to believe. In such a case, however, the strengthening of one's faith by reference to the authority of "ineffability" has a very calming effect: doubts weaken to the point of imperceptibility, and no religious labor is needed, since "how can we, weak people, comprehend the incomprehensible!" However, more malicious are the references to ineffability on the part of religious impostors, in the old terminology – false prophets. We must be fair to them as well. "Sometimes they feel something. Sometimes the Divine flashes over them. And they only do not want to bother to clarify what they have vaguely felt, but prefer to rest on the recognition of what flashed in their consciousness as the "ineffable," and themselves as clairvoyants.

In part, the mystical is rationally provable, although in such a way that in mystical experience itself the rationally justified acquires even greater certainty, as if "certainty over certainty." But the mystical cannot be rationally substantiated in part. Nevertheless, in the second case, it is rationally expressible or symbolized. This must be remembered in our time. "Not so long ago, they tried to deny everything that has not been proven by reason and experience, that cannot be felt and weighed. Now fashion is changing. They want to put the "irrational", which is understood in a very diverse and vague way, the "antinomic", which is taken on faith, as the basis of everything. Now it is enough to express one's thought in the form of a logical conclusion to meet with disbelief and denial. The twilight of ignorant faith is approaching. Philosophers stop reasoning and prove their thoughts by saying that "there is something irrational here," and ordinary people are called a "philosopher" and are proud of it if they have the courage to use philosophical terminology. Having believed, they guard their "faith", as a miser guards his dead treasure; — they do not want to think about it, to delve into it; — are afraid to move and look beyond its boundaries. And when they vaguely see something, they hasten to declare: "This is the Truth! Those who doubt a new find are advised not to trust the human mind, but to believe in the "spiritual experience" of the finder.

Since "spiritual experience" means the connection of religious knowledge with religious life, the integrity of religiosity, we do not reject it and will return to it in Chapter II. But we must resolutely reject the concept of "spiritual experience" when its content is defined as rationally inexpressible, and its subject is endowed with the privileged position of its sole interpreter. In this case, "spiritual experience" becomes an "asylum ignorantiae" and a very bad argument. It is not enough to "spiritually experience" or to perceive mystically. It should be remembered that both "reason" and "spiritual experience" must permeate each other, and that the value of each of them is not great in isolation from the other. On every "spiritually experiencing" something lies the duty of truthfulness and work, i.e., the duty to express what he experiences rationally. Having found a precious stone, you need to cut it; and the "discovered" must be processed and expressed with the help of concepts. It also does not hurt to remember that behind the arguments of reason and dialectics there is always a certain "spiritual experience", the disdain of which is not justified by anything except the self-confidence and self-will of those who neglect it.

3. Neither the assertion of the absolute incomprehensibility of the Godhead (§ 1) nor the assertion of His absolute inaccessibility to rational thought, which is tried to be justified by unjustified references to mysticism (§ 2), has been proved. Nor are references to apophatic or negative theology any more convincing.

Apophatic theology rejects the applicability of any "name" or definition to God. However, by doing so, it applies to God not only the concept of ineffability, but also other "names" that it rejects by apophatic theology. Theologians who understood apophatic theology in the sense of purely negative always pointed to its connection with positive or affirmative, "cataphatic" theology. And if we do not want to consider apophatics as mere mystical idle talk, like the inarticulate cries of ecstasies or modern glossolalia, we must admit that it is not accidental that it denies the applicability of these names to God. Thus it teaches that God is not God, is not Good, Truth, Beauty, etc. But it does not say that God is not pen, paper, ink, stone..., although it would seem that the second series of negations is not less true, but more than the first. By denying the applicability of such names as Truth or Good to God, apophatics denies their applicability to Him as "definite," limited, and limiting. God, of course, is not the Truth, for the Truth is perceived in a necessary opposition to non-Truth or falsehood, i.e., to a certain being outside the Truth. And outside of God there is nothing, there is no non-Truth, as a certain being; Truth, which in itself contains non-Truth, must be called something else. Denying that God is Truth, we affirm that He is the source or beginning of Truth, that He contains all that is true in Himself and is higher than Truth, which, in itself, diminishes Him, although He is also Truth. And we deny only on the basis of this statement. God is not absolute, because He is not thought of in a necessary relation to creation, although He, being truly absolute, is both the Creator and the Almighty. God is not God. After all, we perceive God only by contrasting Him with something else, even if we ourselves. But although we are really opposed to God, there can be nothing outside of Him, if only He is really God. And is it still necessary to say that God is not God in the sense of the naïve and vulgar understanding of God, against which militant atheism falls with such fury (partly justifiable)? Incidentally, in the most naïve conception of God there is a certain contact with Him, which is not denied by apophatics, on the contrary, which is found and revealed by it. A naïve idea of God is often closer to Him than a developed and well-founded one. The second is too clear and definite, which is why it often leads to that which is lost. the consciousness of its insufficiency and its inconsistency with the Incomprehensible Divinity: breaking away from God, it moves away from Him. And it is necessary to reveal all its insufficiency in order to feel God through it. This is what apophatic theology does.