Abrahamic religions The term Abrahamic religions is used to group together monotheistic religions revering the Biblical figure Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The religions share doctrinal, historical, and geographic overlap that contrasts them wit ...

, the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility says that

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

is not able to be fully known. says "his understanding no one can fathom". Most theologians will balance this by saying that God is able to be known in some ways.

In Christianity

Protestant theologians are usually quick to clarify that we are able to know God, since God reveals himself to us. R. C. Sproul notes, "Theologically speaking, to say God is incomprehensible is not to say that God is utterly unknowable. It is to say that none of us can comprehend God exhaustively." Some older English versions of the

Athanasian Creed The Athanasian Creed—also called the ''Quicunque Vult'' (or ''Quicumque Vult''), which is both its Latin name and its opening words, meaning "Whosoever wishes"—is a Christian statement of belief focused on Trinitarian doctrine and Christolo ...

confess "the Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Spirit incomprehensible" as a translation of the Latin ''immensus''. Modern English translations have "immeasurable", "infinite", or "unlimited". Divine incomprehensibility was said to be a point of conflict in the Clark- Van Til Controversy in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church The Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) is a confessional Presbyterian denomination located primarily in the United States, with additional congregations in Canada, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. It was founded by conservative members of the Presbyte ...

during the 1940s, but John Frame argues that the issue there was the relationship between human knowledge and divine knowledge, rather than human knowledge and the

being Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one do ...

of God.

References

{{reflist Attributes of God in Christian theology Conceptions of God Epistemology