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The More We Apprehend Of God, The Greater God Becomes For Us

The More We Apprehend Of God, The Greater God Becomes For Us

Last updated on: September 3, 2026 at 3:07 pm by Henry Karlson

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The More We Apprehend Of God, The Greater God Becomes For Us 2026-09-03T15:07:06-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Nana B Agyei: Trying To Apprehend The Blinding Light / pxhere

God is incomprehensible; the more we apprehend of God, the more we will perceive God’s greatness, and the more we do that, the more we will realize how much greater God is than we ever thought before. We know God transcends us, but the greater we become, the greater our vision of God will be, allowing us to understand even better what God’s infinite majesty is like. God’s greatness, God’s glory, comes to us like a light which is so bright that it blinds us, at least for a time until we adjust to that light and see everything in and through that light. Every time we experience God, every time we apprehend something new from God, we will find ourselves taking in more of that light; it will, as it were, become a part of us, helping us grow, to become greater, making us a kind of light who should shine our light into the world. And, through that light, the more we take it in, the more our spiritual perceptions will approve, so we will be able to acquire even more apprehensions of God and God’s light. During the process of our transformation, our experience of God often will overwhelm else, stilling our thoughts in the process, having us encounter God in pure silence. We will find that all that we thought we knew becomes as nothing in comparison to what we gain in that encounter:

As the knowledge of God develops within us, it becomes the cause and agent of our ignorance of all other beings, and this includes God himself, for the immensity of his brilliant light blinds us to everything. Sensation which transcends all things is itself beyond sensation, and so it becomes insensible to everything outside itself.[1]

In this way, we are drawn away from ourselves, from our thoughts, and our ideas, every time we are bought into a greater union with God. This is one of the ways we are to interpret Jesus when he said we are to die to ourselves: we must not hold on to what we thought we knew, what we believed ourselves to be, so that we can be open to a transformative encounter with God.

Accepting this, accepting however learned we are, it is as if we are ignorant in relation to the greater truth, can be difficult to do. We have to give up what we thought we knew. We must not hold onto it as if it was an object to be seized. We must be rather look beyond it, and be receptive to what God will give us next. Every encounter with God allows us the chance to change, but only if we are willing to change, only if we are not attached to the way things are. With such change, everything will come to us in a new light, as the light of God becomes, as it were, even brighter than before. We will experience all kinds of new things through that greater light, giving us a new understanding and knowledge of those things which we thought we already knew. Similarly, we will come to know ourselves better in that light, casting aside false notions of ourselves which kept us apart from God, which is why St. Antony of Egypt was able to say those who do not know themselves do not know God. This is what we will all experience, if not in our temporal lives, then in eternity: “A new aeon will come in which truth will be revealed to all, when all will pass through the experience of shock, not only the living, but still more those who have died.” [2]

Mystics realize their experiences can never be properly put into words, and yet, many of them will try, because they know it will help others for them to hear what they have learned. Those who are good communicators will always warn us to take their words as metaphors or pointers to truths which transcend our ability to speak, let alone know. This will allow us to take what they say in the proper fashion, that is, it will make sure we will not take what they say in an extremely literal fashion. Paul, for example, talked about his own experience in third person, indicating, as he did so, that he was unable to speak about the things he heard or experienced:

I must boast; there is nothing to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows — and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter (2 Cor. 12:1-4 RSV).

The reason for such silence is simple: the more we try to speak about transcendent matters, the more likely people will misconstrue what we say, taking literally what is not meant to be taken literally. And in this way, listening to too many people speaking about it can become a trap, as we slowly take what they say and try to coordinate it all in a way which betrays our attempt to take it literally. Every time we do this, we will find ourselves putting a limit upon the truth, cutting it off from the absolute truth, which will, in the end, lead us to believe or do something wrong:

One can speak of one’s limited experience in life, but it is dangerous to write about it, for together with the truth some falsehood may be added which is still alive in the soul, and will cause harm instead of benefit. [3]

For example, listening to someone describing their experience of the blinding light of God, where their perception of everything is overwhelmed, so that nothing outside of that light is perceived, might lead us to question the reality of things outside of God. Do they even exist? Will they exist in eternity? If so, why were they not perceived? It would be easy to turn this into a nihilistic rejection of reality, which is, of course, always a temptation for those who carelessly engage apophatic theology.

Our faith should be like a journey; the more we travel along the path set up by Christ, the path of love, the more we should be open to and find ourselves apprehending the truth; the more we apprehend the truth, the more we will find ourselves taking that in to us, becoming a part of us, transforming us in ways which we need if we are to continue our journey and apprehend even more of the truth. This is exactly what God wants us to experience in eternity; God wants us to have eternal life, and in that eternal life to experience theosis, eternal progression, where we become more and more like God thanks to what God shares with us of the divine nature.

[1] St Symeon the New Theologian, “The Practical and Theological Chapters” in Symeon the New Theologian: The Practical and Theological Chapters & The Three Theological Discourses. Trans. Paul McGuckin OP (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications. 1982), 63 [2.2].

[2] Nicolas Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End. Trans. R.M. French (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952; 2nd. ed. San Rafael, California: Semantron Press, 2009), 72.

[3] Abbes Arsenia (Sebriakova), Striving Toward God. Trans. Mary Naumenko (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2016), 14 [Letter 7 to Peter Alexandrovich Brianchaninov].

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