The Problem of the Unknowable Otherness of God

The world we inherited from Platonic thought had the understanding that God was the ultimate other to humanity. That is to say that God is omniscient, omnipresent, all-knowing, and above all unchanging, etc. For sake of brevity, let us leave the nuances of Platonic thought alone and focus on the basic premise that God is infinite and humanity is finite.
Christians accept, on faith, that, in some way, scripture gives information about God and his dealings with humanity (Placher 14). God, in both the Old and New Testaments, is not a passive and immovable deity. While He has created “things too wonderful for me (Job 42:3),” God intervenes on behalf of Israel and becomes man in the incarnation of Jesus. While God is infinite other (transcendent), He is also present and involved in the affairs of humanity (immanent).
If we are to assume that God has a latent interest in humanity and has revealed himself to us through the incarnation and the scriptures, then we can logically assume that God wants to have a relationship with us. The platonic construct of God as immutable other may be true, but if it is, then God has lessened Himself to take on some finite form. Humanity, being finite, can only understand things that are finite. Thus, God in some way and in some minute portion, was forced to reveal himself is some finite and digestible bit. Humanity would otherwise never have been able to know God had God, in his infinite otherness, tried to reveal the wholeness of God's infinitude to humanity. Humanity could never comprehend it; thereby, defeating the purpose of the revelation of the divine infinitude.
The process would be analogous of a teacher trying to reveal to an illiterate kindergartener the chemical equation for sodium pentethol. The kindergartener would not even be able to read the basic letters and numbers of the equation, much less even understand what sodium pentathol is to begin with. Both the equation and the substance would be a complete disconnect. The child would not even be able to process anything. My point for this example is that God must reveal to humans something that they can comprehend in terms they can comprehend, even if that means that the divine infinitude must in some way become finite,ost or revealed in the finite.

Comments

The Archer of the Forest said…
This is actually a snippet from a systematic paper I am attempting to write. This is, as you surmised, from a completely Christian perspective not an apology or anything like that. I mainly floated it to see what comments would surface. I am sort of befoozled as to where to go and what exactly is the point of this paper.
4/14/2005 3:35 PM
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