The Comprehensibility of the Incomprehensible God

Kyle Cupp, one of our newer bloggers at the Catholic Channel, just gave us this post on the incomprehensibility of god: God is Not an Explanation.

Now, he’s got a point. Pope Benedict in his Introduction to Christianity refers to God as the “Wholly Other”. We can’t really know God as He is in the fullness of divinity; the best we can do is rule out things that are obviously wrong. Consequently, when we seem to be saying something concrete about God, we’re really talking about something that we know He isn’t. When we say God is omnipotent, for example, we are really saying that His power, His abilities, are unbounded. Note that “un”—there are no bounds that we can put on God’s powers.

Per St. Thomas Aquinas, we can show that God, the creator of all that is, must necessarily exist; but natural theology comes to an end pretty quick, and we have to rely on God’s revelation to us in Christ. That’s the grand and glorious thing about the Incarnation: Christ is Emmanuel, “God with us”, God in a form that is intelligible to us.

However, because I am the pedant errant, I have to point out a distinction: God is incomprehensible to us, due to the weakness of human intellect, but He is not incomprehensible in Himself. The Divine Intellect understands Himself quite well, thank you.

In fact, that’s St. Thomas’ explanation of the Trinity. God knows Himself (the Father), and knowing Himself speaks Himself forth (the Son); and understanding the Word spoken and knowing that it is good, Loves the goodness; and that Love is the Holy Spirit.

Anyway: incomprehensible to us, but not unintelligible in Himself. There you go.

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