Concept

Divine Incomprehensibility

Intro

Christians say God is incomprehensible. That does not mean God is a blank, or that nothing true can be said about Him. It means no created mind can ever take the full measure of God. You can know something truly without knowing it completely. A child can truly know that the ocean is salty and deep without knowing every current in it. We can truly know that God is good, powerful and faithful without ever reaching the bottom of His goodness, power and faithfulness.

This matters because a popular kind of spirituality says the ultimate reality is so far beyond us that nothing at all can be said about it. The trouble is that the people who say this then keep saying things about it: that it is one, that it is simple, that everything comes from it. Each of those is a description. "It cannot be described" is itself a description. The Christian position avoids that trap. God cannot be exhausted, but He can be known, because He has made Himself known in creation, in Scripture, and above all in Jesus Christ.

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In full

The doctrine of divine incomprehensibility holds that God's essence infinitely exceeds every created intellect, so that no creature, in this life or the next, comprehends God, if "comprehend" means to know a thing as fully as it is knowable. It is distinct from two neighbouring claims with which it is often confused. It is not agnosticism, the claim that nothing can be known of God. Nor is it total ineffability, the claim that no predicate truly applies to God. Scripture joins both halves: God's greatness is "unsearchable" (Psalm 145:3, KJV), yet "that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them" (Romans 1:19, KJV). Eternal life itself is to "know thee the only true God" (John 17:3, KJV).

The classical tradition holds the two halves together by three distinctions. (1) Apprehension versus comprehension: to know God truly (apprehension) is not to know Him exhaustively (comprehension). Augustine's formula, si comprehendis, non est Deus (Sermon 117), says that what a mind has fully grasped is not God; he did not conclude that nothing true could be said, since his works are full of true statements about God. (2) That versus what: Aquinas holds that from creatures we can know that God is and what belongs to Him as their first cause, while His essence as it is in itself exceeds our grasp (Summa Theologiae I, questions 12 and 13). (3) Analogical predication: words like "good" and "wise" apply to God neither univocally (in exactly the creaturely sense) nor equivocally (in an unrelated sense) but analogically, signifying a real perfection that exists in God in a higher mode. The apophatic way (denying of God creaturely limits: not finite, not changing, not composite) and the cataphatic way (affirming revealed perfections) therefore work together rather than cancel. See Anthropomorphism for analogical predication in detail.

Three positions compared

Why total ineffability refutes itself

Suppose someone says: "The ultimate reality cannot be described. It is the One, beyond all distinction, from which the many come." Every clause after the first is a predicate:

1. "It is one" attributes unity.
2. "It is beyond distinction" attributes simplicity.
3. "The many come from it" attributes a causal relation.
4. "It cannot be described" attributes a property too: indescribability.

To truthfully attribute any property to something is to describe it in some respect. So the position either takes back its first sentence or empties all the others. Denying that one is describing, while describing, does not make the predications disappear. The consistent alternative is the classical one: the ultimate reality cannot be exhaustively described, but some things can be truly said of it.

What Romans 1 actually says

Romans 1 is sometimes cited to mean that God is "so obvious that nothing can be said about Him." The text says the reverse:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20, KJV)

Paul predicates three things of God in one sentence: He is invisible, He has eternal power, and He has divine nature. Something is truly known through His effects, while His being exceeds them. That is incomprehensibility, not ineffability.

Knowing truly, knowing in part

Three pictures help:

• The ocean. You can know truly that the ocean is salty without knowing the position of every molecule. True knowledge is not exhaustive knowledge.
• The menu. A menu can truly describe a dish without giving you the taste. Description can be accurate without being complete acquaintance.
• Face to face. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12, KJV). The limit is real and the knowledge is real; neither cancels the other.

Why it matters in apologetics

1. Against "God is beyond logic." Incomprehensibility does not mean contradiction. God exceeds our concepts; He does not violate non-contradiction. See Law of Non-Contradiction and God is Impossible Paradox Cluster.
2. Against the New Age and Neoplatonic "One." The Christian God is not an indescribable abstraction but a personal God who speaks, promises and acts. See New Age Spiritualism and Pantheism.
3. Against the charge that theology is empty. If God could not be known at all, "God is good" would say nothing. Analogical predication shows how it says something true.
4. For humility. The same doctrine rebukes the apologist who talks as though God fits inside his syllogisms. See Divine Simplicity.
5. Revelation in Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son ... he hath declared him" (John 1:18, KJV). The incomprehensible God makes Himself known in a person.

Scripture

• Job 11:7, can you find out the Almighty to perfection?
• Psalm 145:3, His greatness is unsearchable
• Isaiah 55:8-9, His thoughts higher than ours
• Romans 11:33, His ways past finding out
• 1 Timothy 6:16, dwelling in unapproachable light
• Romans 1:19-20, known through the things that are made
• Jeremiah 9:24, let him who glories glory that he knows the LORD
• John 17:3, eternal life is knowing the only true God
• John 1:18, the Son has declared Him

See also

• Divine Attributes, the attributes that are truly, though not exhaustively, known
• Anthropomorphism, analogical predication and bodily language for God
• Divine Simplicity, why God is not composed of parts
• Sensus Divinitatis and Innate Knowledge of God, how God is known without argument
• Argument from Apophatic Convergence, an argument built on the limits of formal systems
• Stroud Objection to Transcendental Arguments Defeater, on knowing reality through the mind