Question Can the proposition, "God is unknowable" be defended? If something is unknowable, how can we know that it is unknowable?

Accepted:
November 25, 2005

Comments

You raise an interesting issue. At the outset, I'm afraid, I must say that much depends upon what in this sentence is meant by "knowable."

On the face of it, however, the statement "X is unknowable" is paradoxical, even incoherent. To use the name or term, "X." meaningfully seems possible only if something is known about X.

Still, it seems to make sense to say things like, "The velocity and position of an electron are unknowable" (by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle); "The temperature of every meter foot of atmosphere on the planet currently closest to Alpha Centauri is unknowable"; "The Power Ball number for the next lottery is unknowable today." "The last thought of Abraham Lincoln is unknowable." "The name of every human being is unknowable."

Of course, none of these statements imply that nothing at all is known about the topics they address. We can know, for example, that the last thought that crossed through Abraham Lincoln's mind was a thought, that the Power Ball number will be a number, and that the temperature of any cubic meter of atmosphere on the planet currently closest to Alpha Centauri is a temperature and is a temperature greater than absolute zero.

But "God" seems to be something else. It's not at all clear what God's nature is at all or whether God exists. Is God transcendent? Immaterial? A trinity? Eternal? One? Omnipotent? Omnipresent? Spatially limited? In time? Loving? Perceptible by any of the five senses? Comprehensible by the human mind?

No definite answer to any of these questions is available. Different people answer each of these questions in different ways, depending upon their theological commitments, and no consensus or way of reaching agreement seems to be possible.

But let's look at this from a different angle. Perhaps the sentence can be defended on just these lines. That is, the sentence "God is unknowable" might be taken to mean that deciding which definition or description of "God" is the right one is not possible. In other words, the truth or falsehood about statements about "God" are what philosophers call "undecidable." One might then justify the statment simply on empirical grounds--the evidence of history shows it to be true.

One might also argue that something can be apprehended in a way different from the modes of apprehension associated with "knowledge." Through, for example, aesthetic experience, revelation, faith, poetic tropes like analogy or symbol, technical experiences, people acquire the ability to use terms meaningfully, but don't "know" the things referred to by the terms, where "knowledge" means being able to formulate a meaning in words, in literal language, or using the theories of science and philosophy.

For example, William James, describes the divine as something commonly regarded as "ineffable." Arthur Schopenhauer held that access to what he called "The Will" could be had through "aesthetic comprehension" but not the concepts of natural science. Romantics held similar positions. Kant described acquiring a "consciousness" of freedom in moral reasoning and a "negative exhibition" of the immortality of soul in experiences of sublimity. Aquinas held that God can be apprehended through "analogical" predication but not through literal uses of language. Dickens in "Hard Times" described a young stable boy who "knows" nothing of the scientific concepts used to "know" horses, but nevertheless understands how to care for them and live among them better than those who know the theory.

Curiously, in addition, the sentence, "God is unknowable," might I think make sense if the term "God" is meaningless. One might hold that as a limiting sort of idea, what's unintelligible or nonsensical is unknowable. So, "Bzlgwrxtl is unknowable" is a barely intelligible sentence since "Bzlgwrxtl" is nonsense.

Question Can the proposition, "God is unknowable" be defended? If something is unknowable, how can we know that it is unknowable? Accepted:November 25, 2005

Question Can the proposition, "God is unknowable" be defended? If something is unknowable, how can we know that it is unknowable?

Accepted:
November 25, 2005