Comprehending Divine Incomprehensibility
A theological paper exploring the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility, defending it against agnosticism and mysticism while affirming our ability to know God truly.
(This article was originally written in March 2024 for my coursework at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary)
"And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3)[1].
Starting a paper on divine incomprehensibility with a quotation of Jesus proclaiming that eternal life comes from knowing God feels like a strange move. If God is incomprehensible, how then can anyone be saved? Contemporary discussions about this attribute of God will be fruitless if we don't carefully define what has historically been meant by incomprehensibility. Wayne Grudem helps us here by assuring us that an older and less common sense of the word is what has been intended by scholars that have used it[2].
In common usage today, incomprehensibility means not understandable. However, as it is used in the theological discussion, it means not fully understandable. To play with the root word, incomprehensibility has to do with not understanding comprehensively, rather than inability to comprehend.
God declares in Isaiah 46:5, "To whom will you liken me and make me equal, and compare me, that we may be alike?" Matthew Barrett explains in None Greater that God is an altogether unique kind of being[3]. "I am God, and there is no other like me" (Isaiah 46:9). He is the creator, we are the creature, therefore we cannot fully understand Him. "The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable" (Isaiah 40:28). Our creaturely finitude means we are incapable of fully grasping God's infinite understanding. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9).
Our finitude is one of several limitations John Frame cites for man's inability fully understand God[4]. Another limitation is our fallenness. In our radical sinfulness, we distort, suppress, ignore, and misuse the truth about God. We exchange it for a lie. Even a Christian's redeemed state, there remains indwelling sin, but even without sin, we would be limited by immaturity and human weakness. Jesus, in his humanity, "grew in wisdom" (Luke 2:52), and "learned" obedience (Hebrews 5:8)[5]. If the sinless Savior Himself gained wisdom and learned, how much more must we? Another limitation mentioned by Frame is that God has chosen to not reveal Himself comprehensively. Deuteronomy 29:29 refers to "secret things" that belong to the Lord and contrasts them with "revealed things" that belong to us[6].
The scriptural authors confess this limitation in a way that overflows into praise of God's surpassing wisdom. "Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure" (Psalm 147:5). Romans 11:33-34 exclaims: "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?"
This posture of worship, awe, adoration, and humility sets the stage for the way in which we do know things about God. We can know true things about God, and we are called to, in humility, pursue and increase in our knowledge of Him!
"Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord" (Jeremiah 9:23–24)
Geerhardus Vos says that we only know God insofar as He reveals Himself.[7] And He has revealed Himself! We know Him because He has revealed Himself to us in the Scriptures through His Son and by the Holy Spirit.
Jesus makes the invisible God visible. "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known" (John 1:18). "He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…" (Hebrews 1:3). Jesus taught us what The Father gave Him to teach us. "And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true…" (1 John 5:20). Through Jesus's life, ministry, teaching, death, burial, and resurrection, we can see and know God truly. We know His love for us, demonstrated by sending His Son to die in our place. We know the Scriptures more accurately; Jesus having clarified that "they speak of me" (John 5:39). We know the gravity of God's commandments; Jesus having clarified the heart of the commands in His earthly ministry.
The Holy Spirit guides us into all truth (John 16:13). "For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God" (1 Corinthians 2:11). By the Holy Spirit God works in us both to will and to work according to His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). This helps combat our sinful tendency to distort, misuse, ignore, or exchange God's truth for lies. The Holy Spirit carried the human authors of the Scriptures along as they wrote (2 Peter 1:21), giving them verbal, plenary, inspiration so that we have God's revealed word very accurately written down for us.
God is infinite, perfect, invisible, dwelling in inapproachable light. We do not have immediate access to His essence, and if we did, in our creaturely finitude we would be incapable of comprehending it. God is incomprehensible in His fullness. But in Christ, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are able to see, comprehend, and rightly understand His works and the things He has revealed.
Opposing Views Considered
Two oppositions to incomprehensibility must be addressed. The first is agnosticism which denies any knowledge of God whatsoever. The second is mysticism which may profess belief in God, but refuses to acknowledge any specifics about this God, appealing to utter transcendence to elude definition.[8] The first we will address at length, and the second we shall investigate briefly.
One influential western agnostic philosopher is David Hume. Hume was a Scottish philosopher and historian who lived and wrote in the 1700s. He was a controversial figure at the time due to his agnosticism, being denied at least one academic position as a result.[9] Hume believed that all knowledge must come from empirical evidence.
In his words:
"When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."[10]
Hume argued strongly against miracles, of which he claimed prophecy and divine revelation were a subset. He engages in what C.S. Lewis calls "chronological snobbery" in dismissing the miracles recorded in the Bible (and all other religious texts) as coming from "ignorant and barbarous nations."[11] He also dismisses Christianity specifically because it is entirely predicated on miracles, both to prove it's truth, and to be accepted by the believer.
"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience."[12]
Hume, the quintessential skeptical agnostic has an a priori commitment to empiricism: only things that are supported by strong evidence and personal experience are to be believed. He is skeptical of all miracles, including divine revelation, on the basis that they violate natural laws and that (in his personal experience), evidence for them is always weaker than the likelihood of human error or deception. In short, "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."[13]
Following Hume, Immanuel Kant attempted to rescue faith from the trash heap Hume created, while also embracing empiricism. "I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith."[14] Kant denied the possibility of knowing God as He is beyond human senses, but did not deny the possibility and value of belief in God. This attempted middle ground did not help. The net result was the modern perception that being Christian involves blind faith and the rejection of science and intelligent thinking.[15]
The problem for both men, as well as their followers, is that they neglect that the knowledge of God is rooted in empirical evidence. It is not derived from some esoteric philosophical postulation. It is the announcement of historical facts about God's works in creation. God spoke through the prophets, with accompanying signs and wonders to validate their claims, and these events and words were recorded for us with great precision and transmitted from generation to generation with accuracy. Chief among these historical announcements is God's self-revelation through the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth.
These events were personally experienced and empirically proven in their day. The Scriptures do indeed deal with "matter of fact and existence" rather than "sophistry" and speculation. They do not ask of the reader to "subvert all principles of understanding" or to believe "what is most contrary to custom and experience." The gospel announcement of the most "contrary to custom and experience" event in history, the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, was in fact experienced by hundreds of eyewitnesses, and so has been proclaimed throughout the world. We do not preach a philosophy, or speculation. We proclaim the occurrence of a historic event. If the resurrection of Christ is true, then we must pay attention to the announcements of the resurrected Christ.
"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence" indeed. Consider the evidence. Hume would (did!) reply: "When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened."[16] And this is where Hume shows his hardness of heart most decidedly. Even in the face of hundreds of eyewitnesses, he prefers the idea of a mass delusion to the idea that the event could have indeed actually happened.
In the face of a life-changing miracle, Hume, and other agnostic skeptics like him, back into a corner of denial of what would otherwise be taken as credible evidence. In any other event, two or more witness would prove the veracity of a case. But what if you really want an event to be untrue? Mass delusion must be the only possible explanation. Miracles simply don't happen. So if hundreds of individuals witnessed one, they all must be deluded.
Or perhaps what we are talking about isn't a miracle at all. What could be more natural than for a creator to interact with his creation? Perhaps the unscientific stance is the one that says, "Everything must always be as I have experienced it in my lifetime in order to be real." Is that universally true? For the hundreds of eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection, must everything be for them as it has been for you in your lifetime? Or is it rather more likely that your information, your empirical evidence, your experience, is incomplete?
The skepticism of the agnostic is not, in the final analysis, the most rationale, scientific approach. It is instead an arrogant, intentionally blinded, close-minded approach that refuses to consider all the evidence available to it. This is to be expected. God's revelation says it will be so. The unbeliever actively "suppresses the truth in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18), and so did we all, prior to God's merciful self-revelation in Christ.
A strangely related opposition to incomprehensibility is mysticism, which also relies solely on experience and rejects reason as a way of knowing God. A popular example of a Christian mystic is St. John of the Cross, who taught that God is entirely beyond human understanding, and that we must abandon intellect and reason if we are to experience Him.
Some key reflections show the rejection of God-given reason in favor of a purely experientially driven approach. "To reach the All, desire to possess nothing. To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing."[17] And, "The more a soul aspires to be perfect in love, the more it seeks God in nakedness and emptiness, without clinging to any understanding, feeling, taste, or imagination, for all these are obstacles to the ascent."[18]
Like agnosticism, mysticism rejects the possibility that God can be known through our normal means of knowing. While agnosticism says knowing God is impossible, mysticism says that we must throw out intellect. Both require first-hand, personal experience of the divine to know anything. Both empty knowledge of God of any content.
The doctrine of incomprehensibility guards against both errors. God can be known! He cannot be known exhaustively, but He can be known truly. Simultaneously, the doctrine guards against an enlightenment-era impulse to believe that we can know God comprehensively with our unaided human reason.[19]
Incomprehensibility simultaneously encourages and humbles us as we engage in "faith seeking understanding", as Anselm put it. God has revealed Himself to us and desires us to know Him. This stops the mouth of the atheist, and wakes the mystic out of their arrogant slumber, by which they both are intentionally avoiding God's clear self-revelation. We stand accountable for the things He has revealed. We are without excuse.
Why Does This Matter
When it comes to knowing God, the stakes couldn't be higher. "… this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3). Our eternal destiny is in the balance. Mercifully, God has not left us in the dark, "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).
Through the light of nature, God makes His presence and nature abundantly evident. Through the church's proclamation of the Gospel, He makes His intentions known the whole world. Through the Scripture, He makes His will for humanity clear.
He has revealed to us all the knowledge we need. "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire" (2 Peter 1:3–4), and calls us to continue to pursue knowledge of Him, "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge…" (2 Peter 1:3–4).
God is incomprehensible because He is infinite, which means there is always more to learn about Him. No one is ever finished learning. I have met one or two elder saints who sit through preaching, neglect study, and do not attend opportunities to be equipped in the Word because "I don't need more teaching." They believe they have all the information. While it is possible that the church has not served them well by continually expositing the Scriptures, instead opting for a "how to do life" approach to "meet felt needs" (which can be exhausted, and gets exhausting), my fear is that they have instead gone the way of the "foolish old king who no longer knows how to take advice." (Ecc. 4:13).
Paul exhorts believers to be filled with the knowledge of God's will, and to be increasing in the knowledge of God. "And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God…" (Colossians 1:9–10).
We will never run out of knowledge of God to increase in. But this is no mere intellectual knowledge, it is relational knowledge. This knowledge is not "how to do life well" knowledge. It is a pursuit of deeper fellowship with the living God. We are to seek to understand how to please Him, in increasing ways, as life goes on. And then in the next life, on for eternity.
As we grow in our faith, we start to understand how little we know. The more we experience growth in knowledge of God, the farther away we see the finish line. This brings eternity into focus. How much we cherish each new discovery about God that we make in this life! How much we look back with fondness on major milestones in our faith and understanding of God's nature. Let this drive you on to still further discoveries of God's goodness, His beauty, His magnificence! Marvel at how wonderous an eternity of discovery of God's manifold perfections will be!
What a privilege that, as we behold God, as we understand Him more deeply, even if not fully, we are transformed in this life, and in the next, from one degree of glory to another (2 Corinthians 3:18). Further up, and further in!
Bibliography
Allison, Gregg R. Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.
Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2019.
Frame, John M. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013.
Frame, John M. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1987.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994.
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.
John of the Cross, St. The Ascent of Mount Carmel. Translated by E. Allison Peers. New York: Image Books, 1958.
John of the Cross, St. The Sayings of Light and Love. Translated by David Lewis. London: Thomas Baker, 1919.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1929.
Mossner, Ernest C. The Life of David Hume. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954.
Vos, Geerhardus. Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Theology. Translated and edited by Richard B. Gaffin Jr. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020.
Notes
1. 1. Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version (ESV) (Wheaton, IL, Crossway Bibles, 2016).
2. 2. Wayne Grudem, *Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine* (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 150.
3. 3. Matthew Barrett, *None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God* (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2019), 22.
4. 4. John M. Frame, *The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God* (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1987), 21.
6. 6. John M. Frame, *Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief* (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013), 703.
7. 7. Geerhardus Vos, *Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Theology*, trans. and ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), 12.
8. 8. Barrett, *None Greater*, 25.
9. 9. Ernest C. Mossner, *The Life of David Hume* (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 146.
10. 10. David Hume, *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), 165.
11. 11. Hume, *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, 120.
14. 14. Immanuel Kant, "Preface to the Second Edition," in *Critique of Pure Reason*, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1929), 103.
15. 15. Gregg R. Allison, *Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine* (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 205.
16. 16. Hume, *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, 128.
17. 17. St. John of the Cross, *The Sayings of Light and Love*, trans. David Lewis (London: Thomas Baker, 1919), 45.
18. 18. St. John of the Cross, *The Ascent of Mount Carmel*, trans. E. Allison Peers (New York: Image Books, 1958), 115.