Apophatic theology is an Eastern Orthodox doctrine that says we know God best by what He is not, that the knowledge of God is best acquired by negation, not by affirmation. Vladimir Lossky: “Proceeding by negations one ascends from the inferior degrees of being to the highest, by progressively setting aside all that can be known, in order to draw near to the Unknown in the darkness of total ignorance. For even as light, and especially abundance of light, renders darkness invisible; even so the knowledge of created things, and especially excess of knowledge, destroys the ignorance which is the only way by knowledge one can attain to God in Himself.” Robert Letham points out this concept of knowledge is not what we usually understand as knowledge, but total ignorance. It’s a blind mystical ecstasy.

The Apostle Paul puts the knowledge of God in a much more accessible category. How do we get to it? Not by negation, but by possessing God’s own Spirit. “These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:10-11). Like we possess our own spirits and therefore know our own thoughts, so God has given us His Spirit to know His depths. This really throws down false humility, asceticism, negation, and every secret or gnosto-mystical means of getting at God. Go stand on a pole in the desert or hide away in Egypt, you come more easily to the Father. Knowing the mind of God so closely makes us uncomfortable, for what excuse does it leave us? What knowledge or “degree” of relationship is left to attain? How can religious guys pretend to be holier or more steeped in the mysteries of theology if God has simply poured the Spirit out without measure upon the church, even the great unwashed Corinthians? Jesus continues to put the first last and the last first. He invites the meek by way of the Holy Spirit to come directly to Him. “Now we have received not he spirit of the world, bu the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12).