God's Incomprehensibility
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Impossible to comprehend. Though man can know God, God cannot be fully known. Man needs not to know God completely to know Him certainly.
Deuteronomy 29:29; Psalm 145:3; 1 Corinthians 2:11; Romans 11:33–34; Job 36:26
“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
and his greatness is unsearchable.
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.
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?”
Behold, God is great, and we know him not;
the number of his years is unsearchable.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
His essence, indeed, is incomprehensible, utterly transcending all human thought; but on each of his works his glory is engraven in characters so bright, so distinct, and so illustrious, that none, however dull and illiterate, can plead ignorance as their excuse.
In attestation of his wondrous wisdom, both the heavens and the earth present us with innumerable proofs not only those more recondite proofs which astronomy, medicine, and all the natural sciences, are designed to illustrate, but proofs which force themselves on the notice of the most illiterate peasant, who cannot open his eyes without beholding them. It is true, indeed, that those who are more or less intimately acquainted with those liberal studies are thereby assisted and enabled to obtain a deeper insight into the secret workings of divine wisdom.
Institutes of the Christian Religion Chapter 5: Knowledge of God Conspicuous in the Creation of the World
Still, none who have the use of their eyes can be ignorant of the divine skill manifested so conspicuously in the endless variety, yet distinct and well ordered array, of the heavenly host; and, therefore, it is plain that the Lord has furnished every man with abundant proofs of his wisdom.
The Danger of Ignoring God’s Incomprehensibility
The Argument of Islam and others
The Danger of Ignoring God’s Incomprehensibility
The Life of Job
Have you listened in the council of God?
And do you limit wisdom to yourself?
Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?
For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord
to see and to hear his word,
or who has paid attention to his word and listened?
In the quest to know God, it is vital to understand just what it means to really know him. Methods, expectations, and attitudes in studying theology are determined by one’s definition of “knowing God.” Central to understanding this is the fact that God is both incomprehensible and knowable.