THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2008
The Noetic Life
The Second in a series of
Catechetical Talks
In him was
life, and the life was the light of men.
--John 1:4
The
word "noetic" comes from the Greek word nous and refers to the soul and
its capacity to receive the Spirit of God and to know Him. For us, the nous is
that image of God in which we were created and therefore exists within every human being.
This noetic capacity can be embraced or rejected, nurtured or suppressed. Even though a
person may reject the nous it cannot be removed--its source is God and to God it
shall return.
The
noetic life is a life that recognizes this capacity. It is aware of an inner woundedness:
a void or precisely sculpted absence that can only be filled with certain presence, the
presence of God. This experience is expressed in an inner longing for God as the words of
psalmist vividly illustrate:
As a hart
longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for Thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for
the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? (Psalm 41:1-2)
The noetic life
is a life drawn to God. A person might possess this longing their whole life and yet
remain unfulfilled until a certain moment or revelation. Many people who come to the
Orthodox Church described their first experience as a certain "gravity" that
drew them closer and closer to Him through the Church. Even though they initially may have
had a distaste for our services they admit that, like Fr. Peter Gilquist describes,
"Even though at first I hated it, it stayed with me, I simply could not shake
it."
Several years
before his death in 2006, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with Dr. Jaroslav
Pelikan who was a professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale and, at the time, a recent
convert to the Orthodox Church. When I asked him why, after so many years of an affinity
for the Orthodox Church, did he finally decide to enter it. He replied, "I came to
realize that you can only circle the airport for so long until you finally have to land,
so I landed."
The noetic life
is the life that God intends for us, all of us. God expresses this through the Prophet
Ezekiel:
Have I any
pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn
from his way and live? (Ezekiel 18:23)
The first step
in becoming Orthodox is to recognize, embrace and nurture the noetic life. A longing
for God is natural to our existence and puts us on the path of salvation. Even those who
reject God, by their very rejection, acknowledge "a something" in relation to
God; for one cannot reject "a nothing."
Next:
Part 3--The Kerygmatic Moment
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