Basic HTML Version
34
B. The Possibility of Knowing the Being of God.
From the preceding it already appears that the question as to the possibility of knowing God in
His essential Being engaged the best minds of the Church from the earliest centuries. And the
consensus of opinion in the early Church, during the Middle Ages, and at the time of the
Reformation, was that God in His inmost Being is the Incomprehensible One. And in some cases
the language used is so strong that it seemingly allows of no knowledge of the Being of God
whatsoever. At the same time they who use it, at least in some cases, seem to have
considerable knowledge of the Being of God. Misunderstanding can easily result from a failure
to understand the exact question under consideration, and from neglecting to discriminate
between “knowing” and “comprehending.” The Scholastics spoke of three questions to which
all the speculations respecting the Divine Being could be reduced, namely: An sit Deus? Quid sit
Deus? and Qualis sit Deus? The first question concerns the existence of God, the second, His
nature or essence, and the third, His attributes. In this paragraph it is particularly the second
question that calls for attention. The question then is, What is God? What is the nature of His
inner constitution? What makes Him to be what He is? In order to answer that question
adequately, we would have to be able to comprehend God and to offer a satisfactory
explanation of His Divine Being, and this is utterly impossible. The finite cannot comprehend
the Infinite. The question of Zophar, “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out
the Almighty unto perfection?” (Job 11:7) has the force of a strong negative. And if we consider
the second question entirely apart from the third, our negative answer becomes even more
inclusive. Apart from the revelation of God in His attributes, we have no knowledge of the Being
of God whatsoever. But in so far as God reveals Himself in His attributes, we also have some
knowledge of His Divine Being, though even so our knowledge is subject to human limitations.
Luther uses some very strong expressions respecting our inability to know something of the
Being or essence of God. On the one hand he distinguishes between the Deus absconditus
(hidden God) and the Deus revelatus (revealed God); but on the other hand he also asserts that
in knowing the Deus revelatus, we only know Him in his hiddenness. By this he means that even
in His revelation God has not manifested Himself entirely as He is essentially, but as to His
essence still remains shrouded in impenetrable darkness. We know God only in so far as He
enters into relations with us. Calvin too speaks of the Divine essence as incomprehensible. He
holds that God in the depths of His Being is past finding out. Speaking of the knowledge of the
quid and of the qualis of God, he says that it is rather useless to speculate about the former,
while our practical interest lies in the latter. Says he: “They are merely toying with frigid
speculations whose mind is set on the question of what God is (quid sit Deus), when what it
really concerns us to know is rather what kind of a person He is (qualis sit) and what is
appropriate to His nature.”[Inst. I. 2.2.] While he feels that God cannot be known to perfection,