The Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom says of God: “It is right and just to sing of You, to bless You, to praise You, to thank You, to worship You everywhere in Your domain, for You are God — ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, always existing and ever the same.”
This prayer describes the infinite God, but it also reflects man's limits in knowing and speaking of God. God is ineffable, incapable of being expressed in words. God is inconceivable — it is not possible to form a thought or image of God. God is invisible, not able to be seen. This does not merely mean that He is hidden from man's sight. It means that God is, by His very nature, beyond the possibility of man's knowing through his own eyes. God is incomprehensible, impossible to understand.
Yet man still tries to know and speak of the infinite God, inadequate as his ideas and words must be. They must be inadequate because man is finite and the God he tries to express is infinite. Man is limited in his being, his understanding, and his words. God is infinite, totally limitless, and immeasurable in every way. This causes a great inadequacy in man's words about God.
One evidence of man’s limits is his tendency to express the immaterial in a material way. This shows in the communication of his own immaterial ideas. Man tries to express his ideas in a material way through gestures, sounds, images or the like. At best, he communicates his ideas with words, verbal expressions whose meanings are commonly agreed upon. A great number of misconceptions and misunderstandings result from this human limit when the subject is man and his ideas; how much more inadequate then, are man's words about God.
St. John tells us that “no one has ever seen God” (1 Jn 4:12); St. Paul describes God as dwelling “in inaccessible light, Whom no man has seen and no man is able to see” (1 Tm 6:16). Since man is a bodily being who knows through his senses, he must turn to the material things around him to understand the Immaterial God. He then applies the perfections he finds to God. Man understands that God must have these same perfections found in creation, but to an infinite degree. By this means man does arrive at some idea about God, although it is an indirect and faint understanding. St. Paul says man's knowledge of God is like seeing “a dim reflection in a mirror” (1 Cor 13:12).
A concrete example of this might be shown in man's attempt to understand God's life. His life, just as anything else which is His, is a mystery, a truth which can't be fully understood. It will never be fully understood by any creature.
Nevertheless, man, in his material way of learning, tries to understand God's life through creatures. He then applies his earthly knowledge of life to God's life. At worst it results in an image of God as a wise old man seated on a throne in the clouds. At best it results in a well-thought-out concept, such as St. Augustine's understanding that what is called life in God is His very being. Although Augustine's conceptual attempt to understand God's life is better than the image of the old man, both reflect man's material way of understanding, and are inadequate in describing God's life. Both poorly describe God's life because both the image and the concept are finite and can't contain the infinite.
In attempting to teach about God, man uses symbols such as diagrams and technical terms which are designed, just as in other sciences, to avoid misunderstandings. Among many technical terms employed to make distinctions in theology are those which distinguish between acts which begin and end in God (ad intra acts) and those which begin in God and end as effects outside of God (ad extra acts). An example of an ad intra act would be God's self-thought. An example of an ad extra act would be creation. But it is important to note the inherent imperfections of these teaching tools when applied to theology. Never forget that man's study of theology is the study of the Infinite God by finite beings. Consequently, every diagram and word will fail to represent God as He really is. The mystery will always remain and will enchant us for eternity.
Fr. Sullivan, M.J., is a priest with the Miles Jesu order. Miles Jesu is an Institute of Consecrated Life dedicated to promoting reverence to the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to our Lady and faithfulness to the official teachings of the Church. For information on Miles Jesu and its Seminary Program, please call 1-800-654-7945 or visit their website.
