When Theology Comes from Experience

It Starts to Sound Like Love

There is a noticeable pattern that runs through the Christian tradition, even if it’s rarely named outright.

Those who come closest to God through prayer, silence, suffering, and lived encounter tend to speak of God primarily as love.

Those who come closest through systems, arguments, and institutional authority tend to speak of God in terms of order, rules, and control.

One way approaches God as a problem to be solved. It asks precise questions. It builds categories. It draws lines to protect truth from error. This approach values clarity, coherence, and definition. God is spoken about.

The other way approaches God as a presence to be encountered. It asks fewer questions and stays longer in silence. It is shaped by prayer, by loss, by love, and by endurance. This approach values transformation more than explanation. God is spoken from.

The Language of Those Who Have Been There

When you listen to the voices of Christian mystics, a striking consistency emerges.

They rarely begin with doctrine. They rarely linger on threat. They rarely seem interested in defending God.

Instead, they return again and again to love—not as a concept, but as a reality that rearranges the self.

Julian of Norwich, reflecting on visions received in the midst of illness and suffering, concluded that all shall be well because God is love—not because the world makes sense, but because love remains when explanations fail.

Meister Eckhart pushed language until it broke, insisting that God could not be grasped by concepts at all. What remains beyond knowing, he suggested, is union.

Teresa of Avila described prayer not as mastery but as friendship—an ongoing intimacy that reshapes the heart over time.

John of the Cross wrote that love matures precisely where certainty collapses, and that darkness itself can be a form of divine nearness.

These figures were not sentimental. Many endured suspicion, isolation, and suffering. Yet the closer they came to God through experience, the less interested they became in fear-based religion.

Why Experience Softens Theology

There is a reason lived encounter tends to emphasize love.

Sustained prayer has a way of dismantling images of God that rely on threat. Silence exposes how often religious certainty is propped up by anxiety. Long attention erodes the idea that God must be—even, can be—controlled, defended, or contained.

Those who remain with God long enough often discover that the harsh images they inherited do not survive contact with presence.

This is not rebellion. It is refinement.

As Gregory of Nyssa observed centuries ago, the closer one moves toward God, the more God is known through unknowing. And unknowing has a way of humbling power rather than reinforcing it.

Meanwhile, the Systems Keep Speaking

Academic theology, especially when untethered from contemplative practice, often moves in the opposite direction.

It seeks certainty. It prizes resolution. It organizes mystery into frameworks that can be taught, tested, and enforced. God may still be called love—but love is frequently subordinated to explanations about justice, wrath, hierarchy, or control.

When, in reality, everything else subordinates itself to love. Love is not constrained or restrained by justice, wrath, hierarchy, or control. All of that, and all that is, ultimately subordinates itself to love.

Even someone like Thomas Aquinas, whose work remains foundational to schools of theology, ultimately confessed that everything he had written felt like straw compared to what he had encountered in his direct experience of God. The system reached its limit. Experience did not.

A Quiet but Telling Pattern

Across centuries, cultures, and theological disputes, a quiet pattern persists:

• Theology rooted in encounter tends to sound like love.

• Theology rooted in abstraction tends to sound like management.

This does not mean doctrine is unnecessary. It means doctrine is at its best when it bows to experience rather than replacing it.

Or said more plainly:

The closer theology gets to lived encounter, the less it needs fear.

The farther it gets, the more fear fills the gap.

Why This Still Matters

This distinction matters because many people leave faith not because they have encountered God and found God lacking—but because they have encountered religion that never made room for love to become real.

If Christianity is to speak meaningfully today, it needs fewer arguments and more witnesses. Fewer explanations and more people who have stayed with God long enough to be softened by the staying.

Not everyone is called to be a mystic. But every theology worth trusting should be recognizable to those who have been changed by love.

And if a theology of God grows harsher the closer you examine it, that alone may be a sign worth taking seriously.