What is the incomprehensibility of God?

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The incomprehensibility of God is the truth that God, in His essential being, lies beyond the reach of the finite creature's understanding. He is infinite, eternal, and unapproachable in His own nature — yet He has been pleased to reveal Himself, and that revelation is the very foundation of Christian blessing. God in His Absolute Being is Unknowable to the Creature Scripture lays the ground for this truth in passages such as 1 Timothy 6:16 and Job 11:7. A. J. Pollock states the matter plainly: God in His absoluteness, in His essential Being is unknown. That great verse — 1 Timothy 6:16 — says, God "only has immortality [i.e. inherently] dwelling in the light that no man can approach to; whom no man has seen, nor can see." In the very nature of things this must be so, and less than this could not satisfy the searchings of the renewed mind. A. J. Pollock He then quotes the question of Zophar in Job: "Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? It is as high as heaven what canst thou do? Deeper than hell, what canst thou know?" C. H. Mackintosh draws attention to the very first title of God in Scripture: In the first chapter of Genesis we have the first great title — "God" (Elohim): "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." This presents God in unapproachable, incomprehensible Deity. "No man has seen God at any time." We hear His voice and see His work in creation; but Himself no man has seen or can see. He dwells in the light which no man can approach to. C. H. Mackintosh The Paradox: Incomprehensible, Yet Revealed The truth is not that God is unknowable in every respect, but that His essential Deity exceeds the creature's capacity — while He has graciously made Himself known through revelation. J. McBroom captures this paradox beautifully: He is unapproachable, yet brings us before Himself in love. He fills all space, yet dwells in a movable Tent to be approached and served in an intimacy of filial delight: Infinite, eternal, and incomprehensible, yet revealed to be known, loved, and adored (1 Tim. 6:15-16; Eph. 1:4; Exodus 25:8; Isa. 66:1). He explains the distinction: Both lines are called for, and the explanation lies in the distinction between what Deity is, in its own essential and impersonal excellence, and what it is as revealed in the holy intimacies of triune delight, as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the former, it is the veiled Majesty of essential Godhead, to which attaches the great awe-inspiring attributes of eternity, Omnipotence, etc. In the latter, it is the deeper features of Holiness and Justice, which embrace all His dealings with the moral order of creation. essential Deity The Incomprehensibility of His Attributes Even where God has revealed Himself, the extent of His attributes is beyond full comprehension. McBroom writes of omnipotence: Omnipotence is unlimited power. Like God's eternity it is both mysterious and incomprehensible to our minds. "The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth."... We cannot have an act without an actor, an effect without a cause, and in the same way a creation without a creator. But how the Creation came into existence, no creature can tell. extent The Incomprehensibility of the Person of Christ Since the Son is God manifest in flesh, He too surpasses creature knowledge. Edward Dennett writes: He was thus God and man — a union of extremes which was not possible in any other, and rendering His person so unfathomable, so incomprehensible, that He Himself said, "No man knows the Son but the Father" (Matt. 11:27). Edward Dennett J. N. Darby expounds the same verse, showing how the very incomprehensibility of Christ in His humiliation actually confirmed His deity: No one knows Him but the Father. Who among the proud could fathom what He was? He who from all eternity was one with the Father, become man, surpassed, in the deep mystery of His being, all knowledge save that of the Father Himself. The impossibility of knowing Him who had emptied Himself to become man, maintained the certainty, the reality, of His divinity, which this self-renunciation might have hidden from the eyes of unbelief. The incomprehensibility of a being in a finite form revealed the infinite which was therein. J. N. Darby The Incomprehensibility of God's Ways God's dealings also exceed our grasp. James Boyd points out that this is inherent to the Creator-creature distinction: The ways of God are intricate, inscrutable, and past finding out, and they are very often perplexing, but how could they be otherwise than mysterious to the finite creature? To any creature they must be simply incomprehensible. If He is pleased to bestow upon us His Holy Spirit that we may understand His wondrous thoughts, that is entirely another matter. James Boyd The Love of God: Incomprehensible Yet Manifested Even what God has revealed — His love — is in its fullness beyond our comprehension. W. J. Hocking writes: It being so that love is the very nature of God, that love of God is inscrutable, incomprehensible, inaccessible to the creature, as the divine nature must necessarily be. But in our day the choicest treasure of the Father's house has been manifested, being adequately and gloriously displayed in the Incarnate Son. "Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him" (1 John 4:9). He adds: His boundless love has been manifested to its utmost bounds, for the glory of His own name and the delight of His own heart. It is His will that we should know the love which passes knowledge, and that we should learn its rich plenitude in Jesus Christ, His Son. In Him, in Whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, dwells the love of God, which in its essence, its qualities, its activities, baffles all human comprehension. has been manifested the love of God, Synthesis The incomprehensibility of God, then, has several dimensions. In His essential being — His eternity, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience — God is entirely beyond the creature's reach: "dwelling in the light which no man can approach to." In the Person of Christ, God and man are united in a way that surpasses all knowledge except the Father's own. In His ways and in His love, even what has been graciously revealed to us has a depth that "passes knowledge." But this incomprehensibility is not a barrier placed to keep us out — it is the very thing that makes revelation so precious. Because God is inexhaustibly great, His self-disclosure in Christ and by His Spirit is an ever-unfolding treasure. As Pollock reminds us: "Realizing how far above our comprehension these things are, some would counsel that we should leave the subject alone. But that would be to slight Scripture." The incomprehensibility of God does not close the door to knowledge; it ensures that the knowledge of God — given through Christ — will occupy and satisfy the redeemed heart for all eternity.

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