KNOWLEDGE OF AN UNKNOWN GOD

   The problem today is our definitions of knowledge, which developed first in a disintegrating Roman Empire, and then spread to the Christianized Eastern Empire. Since then, and since the time of Saint Gregory Palamas, it has locked the population of Western Europe into an incorrect assumption that words are - ipso-facto - the same as facts. As a result, it is generally assumed that anything that can be put into properly-defined verbal form must be a true expression of some fact or facts.

  Few people seem to have noticed that the definition of knowledge which Saint Paul introduced when he began to speak in Greece, took the concept of knowledge developed by the greatest of the pre-Christian Greek philosophers a further philosophical step forward.

  It is that earlier truth that modern Christians must rediscover from the small number of. ˜elders': hermits, abbots, and senior monks, who have learned in their own experience to understand the original practical meanings of that tradition. Certain of these unique men and women become the new saints of our time. But they are now so few that we can pass through modern life totally unaware of their existence.  As a result, it is difficult for us to rediscover ourselves, because it seems difficult for us to overcome the loss of the knowledge once possessed by the Apostles.

  In fact, 'nothing is further from the truth.'