Is it completely impossible to have any knowledge of God without a special revelation from Him?
Without a special revelation from Him, human beings may attain some true knowledge of God by contemplating what he has created. Yet, this natural knowledge is imperfect and insufficient for salvation; it serves as a preparation for faith and a help toward the knowledge that comes from revelation. The Apostle affirms both its reality and its limits:
For since the creation of the world, his invisible things are clearly seen. They are perceived through created things, even his everlasting power and divinity. This is so that they may be without excuse. (Rom 1:20)
The Wisdom of Solomon teaches the same, gently reproving those who stopped at the beauty of creatures without ascending to their Maker: “For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator” (Wis 13:5). St Paul, preaching in Athens, presents the whole ordering of nations and seasons as God’s pedagogy, “so that people should seek the Lord and perhaps reach out for him and find him, although he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live, and move, and have our being!’” (Act 17:26–28; see Q119, Q607). St Basil the Great traces the same ascent: by attentively examining the creation of the world, we perceive that God is wise, powerful, and good; “from this knowledge, faith may follow, and from faith worship” (St Basil the Great, Epistle 235; see Q017, Q024).
The same witness has been pressed upon catechumens in more recent times. St Innocent of Alaska, writing in 1833 for the newly enlightened of the Aleutian islands, takes the restlessness of the human heart as the plainest evidence that it was made for God, and so as the natural knowledge spoken of by the Apostle, felt rather than reasoned (see Q307):
Nothing in this world but God can fill our heart or fully satisfy our desires. A fire cannot be put out with brushwood and oil, because only water will put it out. In exactly the same way, the desires of the human heart cannot be satisfied with the goods of this world, because only the grace of God can quench the thirst of our desires. Everything we desire pleases us only so long as we do not possess it; and when we get it, we soon get tired of it… We are strangers on earth, pilgrims and travelers; our home and fatherland are there in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom; and there do not exist on earth things which could perfectly satisfy our desires. (St Innocent of Alaska, Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven, Introduction)
Created in the image and likeness of God, human beings, even after the tragedy of the fall, retain a capacity for God, for “the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands” (Psa 19:1 [18:2 LXX]; see Q118, Q542). St Athanasius teaches that the soul, made according to the divine Image, was created to be a mirror in which to see the Word and, in him, the Father, a mirror which sin has clouded but not destroyed (St Athanasius, Against the Heathen, 34; see Q033, Q095). Yet, to know God truly, and to increase in that “life and knowledge,” requires more than acknowledging a Creator; it demands the ardor of the seeker:
If you cry out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. (Prv 2:3–5)
The Orthodox tradition therefore distinguishes what can be known of God from what remains forever beyond us: God’s essence is unknowable and unapproachable, but God truly gives himself to be known and shared in his energies, his grace, glory, and operations toward us (St Basil the Great, Epistle 234: “we know our God from his energies, but we do not undertake to approach his essence”; cf. St Gregory Palamas, Triads, III.2; see Q017, Q024). This glorious knowledge, fully granted in communion with Jesus Christ, is the eternal and life-giving quest of those who, called and drawn by God, respond to his love with faith and obedience, a knowledge that ends not in comprehension but in doxology:
Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how unfathomable are his ways!… Indeed, from him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him be the glory unto the ages! Amen! (Rom 11:33, 36)
