The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Is God Indescribable? Implications?

Warning: Ten (short) paragraphs of rambling ahead; proceed with caution

I read a near-death experience a few months ago that challenged my perception of God. I have no way of knowing what NDEs really are and whether they can be trusted, but I became aware that my view of the god was very small and provincial. I had been thinking of the creator as being very much tied to us, as if we were the center of his world. (I have heard someone say that we are “the center of his affection”.) I had put this god in some very small boxes in my mind.

Putting aside revelation for a moment, I start with the vastness of the universe. (Maybe some of you saw the photo of the universe taken by Hubble: bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19728375 .) The earth alone is just massive in comparison to our small bodies. Even our mountains are small on the crust of the earth. And then there is our solar system and our galaxy. And then there are all the galaxies that seem to stretch on infinitely. If there is a creator, what must this being be like? I have been increasingly thinking that the creator is just too vast to be understood by us. And then at school the other night our guest lecturer mentioned that Aquinas (and I think Maimonides) and other earlier theologians had a much stronger sense of god’s indescribability. That word really resonated with me.

Is the god* indescribable*? How would that vast being relate to our little world? Would he? Why would he create us in the first place (my biggest life question at the moment)? How much can our sin offend him? Are his laws given only for our sake, so that we might live together more peaceably? What would be the implications of that, if true?

It seems to me that we will understand Jesus differently if we can keep in mind the indescribability of the creator. We will see differently what Jesus gave up to become one of us. I’m not sure how we extrapolate back from Jesus, god revealed, to his original form. Someone has written a book recently which says that God is smaller than we think. I think he means that god is more approachable than we think. But is he? Jesus is the very essence of god. In what way?

Why did this creator choose one people to work through? Or did he? Is it possible that all people who believe in a creator are getting some glimpse of him? Are we like the blind men with the elephant? Each only seeing a small part of the actual whole?

How much of what we think comes from human attempts to make sense of all this? How can our little lives either please or offend him?

Even to speak in terms of gender or parental roles seems to limit what the creator must be.

He is so vast, I can hardly imagine why he might be at all concerned with us. And yet, whose is that voice that speaks to us? Why do we long for something that we know does not exist here?

Space looks so lifeless, though stunningly beautiful. We are so small and insignificant in it. But I cannot believe we are accidental. Or that the world comes into being by itself. At least, if it does, the world itself must be the self-existent being we call god. Something must be self-existing, or there could be nothing.

But so much of what we believe seems so odd in light of the vastness of this being.

Well, if you’ve gotten this far along in my ramblings, I hope you’ll also take time to post your own thoughts on this topic.

Kelli

Hi Kelli –

That’s a lovely post. Now I vowed silence on the subject of metaphysics this morning – for the time being - I’ really am ‘philosophised out’. But I hate to see you unanswered – so I’ve just cut and pasted something from a couple of sites for you concerning the apophatic/negative tradition in Christian theology.

***Apophatic (or negative) theology is an attempt to describe God by what cannot be said of Him. Many of the terms used to describe God’s attributes have within them an apophatic quality. For example, when we say God is infinite, we’re also saying is that God is not finite (i.e., not limited). Another example would be describing God as a spirit being, which is just another way of saying that God is not a physical being.

In church history, the apophatic method was popular among theologians such as St. Cyril of Jerusalem and the Cappodocian Fathers (including Gregory Nyssa The Universalist). The most influential proponent of apophatic theology was Pseudo-Dionysius (who was quoted many times in the Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas). Apophatic theology is also prevalent in Eastern Orthodox Christianity and is seen as superior to positive (or cataphatic) theology. Because of God’s transcendence, it is thought, further knowledge of God must be gleaned from a direct experience of Him. This leads to mystical approaches to attaining a knowledge of God.

Much of this seems to evolve from the debate between God’s immanence and His transcendence. God’s immanence sees God as intimately involved with His creation and taking a keen interest in the lives of people. To protect against an over-emphasis on God’s immanence, there are those who want to stress God’s transcendence, His “wholly otherness.” But truth is not an “either/or” proposition in this case, but a “both/and” proposition. God is both immanent and transcendent. In His transcendence, it is appropriate to speak of what God is not (apophatic theology). We must also keep in mind that Christianity is a revealed faith and that, despite God’s transcendence, God condescended to reveal Himself to mankind. Therefore, we can make positive statements about God—that He is loving, gracious and merciful. Such statements need to be seen analogically. In other words, we can understand what goodness and love and mercy mean, but when applied to God, they are understood to be applied in perfection, i.e., they are applied analogically, from the lesser (us) to the greater (God).

Apophatic sayings:

• From Scripture
o No one has seen or can see God (John 1:18).
o He lives in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16).
o His ways are unsearchable and unfathomable (Job 11:7-8; Romans 11:33-36).
• By saints
o The true knowledge and vision of God consists in this—in seeing that He is invisible, because what we seek lies beyond all knowledge, being wholly separated by the darkness of incomprehensibility (The Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa).
o God is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility (On the Orthodox Faith, John of Damascus).***
Blessings

Dick :slight_smile:

Afterthought

In Acts in his speech on Mars’ Hill/Ares’ Hill/ The Areopagus, when saying that the Athenians worship ‘ ignorantly’ at the altar of ‘the unknown god’ Paul does not speak contemptuously. Indeed, ‘in him we live, move and have our being’ is a quotation from a pagan poet (probably originally addressed to Zeus). We can best translate ‘ignorantly’ as ‘unknowingly’ according to the modern Biblical scholar James Barr – and this indeed was the reading of the Eastern Fathers. Indeed, Dionysus the Areopagite – who according to the tradition of the Church of the East was one of Paul’s converts that day – was thought to be the author of the mystical treatise now known as Pseudo Dionysus. This is a classic text of apophatic theology. However we now know his was actually composed by a Syrian monk in the sixth century. IN medieval England it was very influential and went under the title ‘Denys Hid Divinity. It was a formative influence on the author of the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’, a work which contents the memorable phrase –‘By love God is gotten and holden. By thought alone never’.

These are beautiful words.

Thanks, Dick, for finding a way around your vows to respond to my post.

That’s wonderful Kelli :smiley: . My vow of silence? :laughing: - its’ not a religious vow, but just a vow to stop posting on philosophy threads on site because I’m tired of philosophy for the time being. 'By love God is gotten and holden… :stuck_out_tongue:

I can understand what it means to claim that the universe if infinite. It would mean that the universe extends infinitely in any direction. Travel as far as you like in any direction, and there will never be an end to galaxies, stellar systems, etc.

But I cannot understand what people mean when they say the God is infinite. Some songs speak of his “infinite love”, “infinite mercy”, etc. I don’t understand that either. Any clarification would be welcome.

I would however caution anyone who might suppose that God being “vast” or “big” suggests that he may be above relating to us. God made man in His own image—man a creature with whom He could relate and wanted to relate. There are many stories in the OT which show that God would even bend to man’s will, although He knew better. He wanted man to find out for himself that often his choices could and would have negative results. Then he would be in a better postion to accept God’s wishes for him—and God wants the very best for man. Even human parents often allow his teenage children to go their way, at least temporarily, so that they might learn to make better choices in the future.

God chose judges to deal with problems in ancient Israel. But they wanted a king, just as other nations had kings. God bemoaned the fact that they would not have Him to rule over them, but instead wanted a king to rule over them. But He gave them a king, warning that this would mean trouble for them—and so it did. It wasn’t that only man could respond to God, but God also responded to man. That is relationship! God listened to the reasonings of various persons whom He had chosen, and sometimes acted accordingly.

Hi Paiadon –

I remember a mathematician describing to me how he found the idea of infinite symmetry so fascinating – the idea if a blank sheet extending to infinity in all directions and having infinite translational , rotational and reflective symmetries because this. And I thought ‘there is no accounting for tastes’ :laughing: – but obviously the concept was something that his mind could play with.

But as you say, the whole point is that God is personal and draws lose in relationship to us – and our real knowledge of God comes through relationship. You can’t have a relationship with a blank sheet extending to infinity in all directions (as it were). God’s infinite ‘mercy’ is not a mathematical concept it’s a relational concept and also points to a contrast – as finite beings our capacity for mercy is limited; but hits is not so with God.
I used to love the writings of Marin Buber – the Jewish sage who influenced post-war Christian theology in many ways (although I’ve not read Buber for some time). I remember that his central idea is that we relate to the world, the universe and everything in two modes. There is the objective knowledge – which he terms ‘I-It’ which is knowledge about something. And there is relational knowledge – which he terms ‘I-Thou’. And Buber describes God as ‘the Infinite Thou’.
Western Theology is often ‘I-It’ often knowledge about God. And that’s OK – but we have to be careful not to mistake our limited concepts about God for the reality of God. Indeed this is even true of each human being that meets us. We can categorise them according to class, race, gender etc, and when we get to know them well we can get a fair idea about their history and what motivates them and their quirks of character. But even with another person there is always something that is not reducible to explanation – which we find out especially if we love person; there is always something ‘other’ about them that we can relate to but not describe. If this is true of other human beings – made in the Image of God -how much more this is true of God our creator.

So although we can and must attempt to ‘map’ God’s qualities with our limited understanding – God’s love. God’s mercy etc, in our ‘I-It’ understanding of God will always be finite. I think to understand this and understand it well is what is meant by ‘unknowing’.

Blessings

Dick

Hi Paiadon –

I remember a mathematician describing to me how he found the idea of infinite symmetry so fascinating – the idea if a blank sheet extending to infinity in all directions and having infinite translational , rotational and reflective symmetries because this. And I thought ‘there is no accounting for tastes’ :laughing: – but obviously the concept was something that his mind could play with.

But as you say, the whole point is that God is personal and draws lose in relationship to us – and our real knowledge of God comes through relationship. You can’t have a relationship with a blank sheet extending to infinity in all directions (as it were). God’s infinite ‘mercy’ is not a mathematical concept it’s a relational concept and also points to a contrast – as finite beings our capacity for mercy is limited; but hits is not so with God.
I used to love the writings of Marin Buber – the Jewish sage who influenced post-war Christian theology in many ways (although I’ve not read Buber for some time). I remember that his central idea is that we relate to the world, the universe and everything in two modes. There is the objective knowledge – which he terms ‘I-It’ which is knowledge about something. And there is relational knowledge – which he terms ‘I-Thou’. And Buber describes God as ‘the Infinite Thou’.
Western Theology is often ‘I-It’ often knowledge about God. And that’s OK – but we have to be careful not to mistake our limited concepts about God for the reality of God. Indeed this is even true of each human being that meets us. We can categorise them according to class, race, gender etc, and when we get to know them well we can get a fair idea about their history and what motivates them and their quirks of character. But even with another person there is always something that is not reducible to explanation – which we find out especially if we love person; there is always something ‘other’ about them that we can relate to but not describe. If this is true of other human beings – made in the Image of God -how much more this is true of God our creator.

So although we can and must attempt to ‘map’ God’s qualities with our limited understanding – God’s love. God’s mercy etc, in our ‘I-It’ understanding of God will always be finite. I think to understand this and understand it well is what is meant by ‘unknowing’.

Blessings

Dick

Thanks Dick. I especially resonated with the idea that no matter how well we “know” a person, there is always something more that we don’t know concerning the person himself. I thought I knew my first wife very well after having been married to her for nearly 35 years. But just 3 weeks prior to her death I discovered a depth of love in her for me — a depth of love I had never imagined!

So, as you indicate, how little we know of God whose characteristics are far greater both in number and in depth than that of any human being! So there must be an huge (if not infinite) extent of divine Personality which we have never imagined!

Thanks again, Dick. Increasingly, I have found your posts helpful. I also appreciate your attitude toward others.

May God bless you richly, and continue to provide for you His enabling grace!

Bless you my friend :smiley: