What is God like? Incomprehensible!

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.
‘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)

So far we’ve seen some incredible things about God’s power (omnipotent), knowledge (omniscient), and mind-boggling greatness (transcendent, independent, immanent, simple). So it’s a bit of a no-brainer to describe God as incomprehensible – totally above and beyond our ability to wrap our heads around!

What is the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility?

We could start with philosophy on this one: the concept that we cannot understand a mind or a being that is greater or more complex than our own mind and being. But it’s simpler (and better) to start with Scripture. Think about the way the Bible consistently speaks of God as infinitely wiser than us (look, for example, at Isaiah 40:13-14, Job 28:20-24 or Romans 11:33-36). But let’s just consider Isaiah 55:8-9 for a moment:

‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’

In other words, if we ever get to the point when we think we “get” God, we then need to slap ourselves around the face with the metaphorical wet kipper and think again! There is no-one who fully “gets” God, no-one who fully understands Him. His thoughts and ways are simply too far above ours; His mind too far beyond our minds’ ability to comprehend. And isn’t that as it should be?

What does this mean for us?

But that isn’t to say that we can’t know God at all, as some theologians mistakenly say. God’s ways and His thoughts are higher than ours, just as the heavens are higher than the earth – that’s true. But God reveals His heart and His mind to us, as much as He desires and as much as we can take, in the words of Scripture. What a blessing! That’s why He says through Moses in Deuteronomy 29:29,

The secret things belong to the Lord our God,
but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may follow all the words of this law.

Do you see how the two halves of this verse work? How we need to hold them in tension? “The secret things belong to the Lord our God,” and so we should not expect to be able to comprehend Him fully – and we’re kidding ourselves if we think we do. “…but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever,” so we should never think that we can’t understand God at all. Augustine famously said of John’s Gospel that it is deep enough for an elephant to swim in and shallow enough for a child not to drown – and the same can be said of the knowledge of God! A toddler can grasp something of the nature of God, while a theologian can devote a lifetime to His study without exhausting the subject matter.

As we close, let’s just note the last part of that verse in Deuteronomy 29: “…that we may follow all the words of this law.” There’s the goal of knowing God – that we follow Him. God is simply too big, too marvellous, too glorious for us to grasp, and yet He reveals Himself to us so that we can know Him. But it’s never with the aim of simply knowing Him for knowledge’s sake. We know Him so that we can follow Him. In fact, in a very real sense, we know Him by following Him! And what better subject could be found that is worth committing our entire lives to studying?