God’s Incomprehensibility Explained

Question 2037

God’s incomprehensibility is the truth that the Lord is so great in his being that no creature can ever fully understand him, even though he has made himself truly known. The word can be misheard, as though it meant that God is unknowable or that talk of him is so much guesswork. That is not what it means at all. God’s incomprehensibility teaches that what we know of God is true, while always insisting that there is far more to him than we will ever grasp. The Creator is known, and yet he overflows every category the creature can bring to him.

This sits near the centre of how we think about God, and it guards us from two opposite mistakes. We will look at what God’s incomprehensibility does and does not mean, hear the witness of Scripture, and see why this doctrine is a comfort rather than a frustration.

What God’s Incomprehensibility Does and Does Not Mean

It is worth drawing a careful line at the start. God’s incomprehensibility does not mean that God is unknowable. The Bible everywhere assumes that we can know God, love him, and walk with him, and Jesus prays that eternal life is to know the Father and the Son whom he has sent. To say that God cannot be comprehended is not to say that he cannot be known. It is to say that he cannot be known exhaustively, wrapped up and mastered by a finite mind.

The difference is the difference between knowing truly and knowing fully. A small child can know his father truly, loving him and trusting him, long before he understands all that his father is. So it is, on a far greater scale, with God. We know him truly because he has revealed himself, yet we never know him fully, because he is infinite and we are not. God’s incomprehensibility marks the line between true knowledge and total knowledge, and it places total knowledge for ever beyond the creature.

This means God’s incomprehensibility is not a counsel of despair but a mark of reverence. It keeps us from the proud notion that we have God figured out, and it keeps our worship from shrinking God down to a manageable size. The God we know is always greater than the God we have so far understood, and that is precisely as it should be.

The Biblical Witness to God’s Incomprehensibility

Scripture states God’s incomprehensibility in many places. When God speaks through Isaiah he says that his thoughts are not our thoughts, and his ways are not our ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are his ways higher than ours and his thoughts than ours. You can read it at Isaiah 55:8-9. The gap between the Creator and the creature is not a small one that study will close. It is the distance of the heavens above the earth.

Paul reaches the same height at the end of Romans 11, where he breaks into praise at the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgements, he cries, and how inscrutable his ways. The apostle who had just written eleven chapters of the most closely argued theology in the Bible ends not by claiming to have explained God but by adoring a God who cannot be explained to the bottom. God’s incomprehensibility turns careful theology into worship rather than away from it.

Moses had taught Israel the same lesson long before. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, he said, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children. There is a hidden side to God that he has not disclosed, and there is a revealed side that he has graciously given. God’s incomprehensibility concerns the secret things, while it leaves us holding firmly to the revealed things on which our faith and obedience rest.

Knowable Yet Beyond Us

Hold these two truths side by side and a balanced picture emerges. God is knowable, because he has revealed himself in his works, in his word, and supremely in his Son. God is beyond us, because his being is infinite and ours is small. God’s incomprehensibility is simply the second truth stated honestly, and it never cancels the first. The God who is beyond us is the very God who has drawn near to be known.

Think of the way we speak of God’s attributes. When we say that God is eternal, or faithful, or just, we are saying something true and reliable, yet each of those words opens onto more than we can take in. His faithfulness is deeper than any loyalty we have known, his justice purer than any court, his love stronger than any human bond. We have looked at how these perfections fit together in our study of the relationship between God’s attributes. Every attribute is true, and every attribute exceeds us.

This is closely tied to the truth that God exists from himself, owing his being to no one. Because God is the self-existent One, the great I AM, his life is of a wholly different order from ours. We have explored that ground in our articles on divine aseity and on the divine name I AM. The God whose very being is self-existent is the God we should expect to exceed our understanding.

God’s Incomprehensibility and His Self-Revelation

The wonder of the Christian faith is that the incomprehensible God has spoken. He did not leave us to grope after him in the dark. He revealed his power and nature in the things he has made, he spoke through prophets and apostles, and he came among us in his Son, who is the image of the invisible God. God’s incomprehensibility and God’s self-revelation are not rivals. The God who cannot be fully grasped has made himself truly known.

This is why the doctrine should make us humble rather than silent. We can speak about God with real confidence, because he has told us the truth about himself, and we should speak about him with deep reverence, because we are always handling realities greater than our minds can hold. The person who has understood God’s incomprehensibility will be the last to speak of God flippantly and the first to fall down before him in awe.

Common Misunderstandings

One misunderstanding treats God’s incomprehensibility as a licence for vagueness, as if we could say almost anything about God because no one really knows. That gets the doctrine exactly backwards. The reason we cannot grasp God fully is that he is so completely real and definite, not that he is fuzzy. What he has revealed is clear and binding, and his incomprehensibility never gives us permission to ignore his word or to invent a God to our own taste.

Another misunderstanding swings the other way and supposes that careful doctrine somehow tames God or shrinks the mystery. But sound theology does the opposite. The more truly we come to know God from his word, the more we sense how much further his greatness runs. Those who study him most closely are usually the ones most overwhelmed by him, which is why Paul ends his deepest chapter on his knees, lost in praise rather than satisfied with explanation. The pattern holds across the saints, that growth in the knowledge of God brings a growing sense of how far his greatness outruns us. God’s incomprehensibility grows, rather than shrinks, as our knowledge of him deepens.

So, now what?

Let God’s incomprehensibility lead you into worship. When you reach the edge of what you can understand about God, you have not hit a dead end but arrived at holy ground. The right response to the unsearchable depths of God is not frustration but adoration, joining Paul in praising a God whose ways are past finding out.

Let it also bring you peace when his dealings puzzle you. There will be seasons when you cannot trace why God has allowed what he has allowed. God’s incomprehensibility tells you that this is to be expected, since his thoughts run higher than yours, and it invites you to trust the character he has revealed even where the reasons stay hidden. The secret things belong to him, and they are safe in his hands, far safer than they would be in ours. What he has chosen to keep hidden he keeps for good reason, and what he has chosen to reveal he has given so that we might walk with him in trust.

And let it keep you near his word. Because you cannot reach God by speculation, you must come to him where he has spoken. The God who is beyond you has bent down to make himself known, and the way to know him truly is to receive what he has said and to come to his Son.

“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.” Isaiah 55:8-9