1. Introduction

In this post I want to consider a number of aspects of the question of whether and to what extent our claims about God’s nature are intelligible.  I will begin by considering the question of intelligibility on its own before applying those considerations to some of the things typically said about God in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  My conclusion will be that in regard to some things we say about God, e.g., that God is outside space and time, we are forced to choose between revising those claims, embracing irrationality, or rethinking the implications of those claims.

2. Intelligibility and Unintelligibility

If something is intelligible, then it is capable of being understood by someone.  What is it to understand something?  A paradigm instance of understanding concerns language.  To understand, “The weather is stormy,” is to know what those words mean, a part of which involves knowing what to expect if you were to look outside.  Similarly, if you don’t know German, then you won’t understand “Es regnet.”  Those words won’t be intelligible if you won’t know their meaning.

We also talk of a person’s behavior as being intelligible and unintelligible.  For example, say you have a friend who has been looking for a job and who reports that he has just been offered his dream job, but then reports that he turned it down.  If he claims that he did so for no reason, then we might likely say we can’t understand why he turned down the job.  His behavior is unintelligible; it doesn’t make sense.  If he had said that he turned it down because his wife just got diagnosed with cancer and he has to spend all of his time caring for her, then suddenly his behavior becomes intelligible.  So, in addition to the intelligibility of linguistic meaning, there is the intelligibility of an action in relation to the reasons for it.  If a person’s behavior contradicts their purported interests and goals, then it becomes difficult to understand.

Let us revisit the intelligibility of language for a minute.  There are various ways that the language someone uses might be unintelligible.  The first, as above, involves it being in a language that one simply doesn’t know.  A second kind comes from language that is poorly organized, structured, and/or worded.  For example, instructions on how to put together a bike might be unintelligible because the person who wrote them was not sufficiently careful in her description of how the pieces are to be fitted together.  A third kind of unintelligibility comes from the subject matter simply being beyond one’s cognitive abilities.  For example, imagine Einstein were to explain to you in mathematical detail the special theory of relativity as if you were a fellow physicist, his words would likely be individually meaningful, but the sentences would fail to be understandable because of your lack of background knowledge.  A fourth kind, and one that is related to the intelligibility of behavior, is language that involves inconsistent statements.  For example, if someone says that their house is now painted brown all over and then goes on to say that their house is now painted yellow all over, we don’t know what is being said.  The house can’t be both colors all over at the same time.  So while we know the meaning of the statements, they can’t both be true.  We are thus left wondering what the color of the house actually is.  A fifth kind of unintelligibility of language comes from what we might call the misuse of categories.  For example, my saying, “I read the color in order to hear the bumpiness of the table’s surface” lacks intelligibility because colors can’t be read in order to hear anything.

Another kind of intelligibility bridges the gap between the intelligibility of behavior and that of language.  What a person says may be intelligible or unintelligible in relation to the context in which it is said and the reasons for saying it.  If a person is in a philosophy classroom and suddenly exclaims 25 times 25 is 625, thereby interrupting the class, it would be natural to ask why he said that.  If he claims that there was no reason, not even the reason of trying to be funny or interrupt the class, then what is said, while being perfectly understandable in one way, is unintelligible in another way.  It doesn’t fit the context in which it was spoken.

Lastly, something might be intelligible or unintelligible in relation to the extent to which it is familiar.  If I pull out my cell phone, it is intelligible to you in the sense that you know what a cell phone is, you recognize this as one, and you thus understand what can be done with it and how its basic functions work.  If you traveled back in time 400 years and pulled out a cell phone, it and its function (granted it wouldn’t work as a phone) would be utterly unintelligible to anyone.  In general we interpret, or attempt to make intelligible, something new by referencing past experiences of things that appear similar.  So, if something is utterly unlike anything we’ve experienced, it intelligibility will be seriously affected.

With the above in mind, consider this question:  can a thing be intelligible or unintelligible in some way other than it’s being utterly novel or familiar?  For example, does it make sense to speak of a chair or a color as being intelligible?  Imagine I present to you a folding chair and that I ask you, “Is this chair intelligible?”  I take it that the question itself would be borderline unintelligible, for what could it mean?  You might imagine my asking whether it makes sense to use that kind of chair at a party, but the chair itself is presumably neither intelligible nor unintelligible.  However, it would make sense to ask whether the idea of a chair that is both a desk chair and a recliner is intelligible, in which case we would be asking if the idea of such a chair makes sense or could possibly exist (or be made).  Notice that we are now back to language again in that we are considering the intelligibility of an idea.  Thus, the main kinds of intelligibility seem to concern familiarity, behavior, and the various kinds of linguistic intelligibility from above.

To sum up, we’ve now seen ways in which language and behavior can be intelligible or unintelligible.  The intelligibility of behavior is connected with the intelligibility of language because the intelligibility of a person’s behavior is a matter of her actions being consistent or inconsistent with her aims and goals (those things that provide reasons for action), and those aims and goals are themselves given in language just as the behavior itself is describable in language.  And we’ve seen how genuine novelty can affect intelligibility:  we understand what something is, how it functions, what it will do, only in relation to past experience with similar things.

3. The Intelligibility of God

Let’s now turn to our main topic, namely, the intelligibility of God.  As we have seen above, the question of the intelligibility of God will likely concern the intelligibility of the language we use to speak about God.  What might the problem be of God’s intelligibility?  Well, what kinds of thing do we say about God, for example, in the Judeo-Christian tradition?  Here is a list of typical things said about God:

1. God is omniscient and omnipotent.

2. God is outside space and time.

3. God is quick to anger.

4. God listens to our prayers.

5. God punishes the wicked.

6. God created the world out of nothing.

7. God spoke to Moses.

8. God determines what is morally right and wrong.

Is there a problem saying such things about God?  None of 1-8 are terribly complicated sentences in regard to their structure or vocabulary.   Regarding number 1, we perhaps make sense of it by thinking that just as we know some things, e.g., that Atlanta is the capital of Georgia, that 2 +2 = 4, that bacteria don’t cause the common cold, God knows all that and more, much more, namely everything there is to know.  Regarding God’s power, we just say something like, “Anything God might want to do, he can do, no matter what it is.”  Regarding number 5, we might simply think of a person performing a wicked act and then imagine God sending that person to hell.  Regarding 7, we might imagine a booming voice coming from the air addressing an older, bearded fellow.

So far, so good, we might think.  But what exactly do we mean by saying that God listens to our prayers?  When we speak of listening, we usually mean one person speaks and another person with ears hears the spoken sounds and reacts accordingly.  But when I say that God hears my prayers, I don’t really mean that he heard my prayer or my thoughts with his ears.  That’s fine, perhaps God just “hears” with his mind.  You speak and as you speak your words are before God’s consciousness.  But what about number 2, the claim that God is outside space and time.  Is that intelligible?  Why might it not be?  First, “outside” is a spatial notion.  Saying that Bob is outside the house locates Bob in space.  So what might it mean to “locate” God outside of space?  We seem to be claiming that God is not spatially located but God is located somewhere, namely, outside of space.  There seems to be an inconsistency there.  (Notice that the theist who claims that God created the space-time world in which we live cannot easily give up the idea that God is outside space and time.)

Is there a meaning of “outside” that is not spatial?  If we say that my jumping, unaided over my house is outside the realm of physical possibility, is the “outside” here spatial?  Perhaps it just means that it is not a member of the set of physically possible things.  But being a member of that set or not is not a spatial notion.  So maybe if one says that God is outside of space that just means something like God is not any of the things that are in space.  We could reformulate that by saying that God is not a member of the set of things that is in space.  And his not being a member of that set does not imply that he is located somewhere despite being outside of space.

However, now we are left wondering what exactly it might mean to say 1) that God exists and 2) God is not located anywhere.  Most things that we speak of existing, we can and do locate in space.  My car is in the parking lot, my pen is in my pocket, my money is in the bank, my job is in Georgia, etc.  Are there other things that we agree exist yet are not located in space?  What about the number 5?  Does the number 5 exist?  That question isn’t asking about whether five of something, say, oranges, exist.  It is asking whether the number itself exists.  If we say that it doesn’t, then what are we claiming when we say that 2 + 3 = 5?  Let’s agree that the number 5 exists?  Where does it exist?  If we say that it exists as the written symbol, then that would mean that we could, if we destroyed all the written instances of “5”, destroy the number itself.  Surely that is an odd claim to make.  Does 5 exist in our minds?  Well, the same thing happens as before if we imagine all minds as ceasing to exist: so would the number 5.  The point here is simply that we might be inclined to speak of 5 existing, but once we begin to think about the way in which it exists, we run into difficulties, difficulties of understanding, difficulties of intelligibility.

5 seems to exist, but not so clearly to exist in space, even though we can, of course, use symbols to refer to it.  Should we say something similar about God?  Perhaps, but there are important differences, obviously, between a number and God.  An important one is that unlike numbers, God is supposed to be capable of causally interacting with the physical world.  Numbers don’t.  Five gallons of water might drown someone, but the number 5 certainly won’t.  So God is not in space, but God is able to interact with spatial things.  However, the intelligibility of that idea is a bit questionable when you consider ordinary cause and effect occurrences.  Ordinarily when we speak of causation there is one thing, say a foot, that interacts with something else, say a ball:  the swinging of the foot and its impacting the ball cause the effect of the ball accelerating in space.  When using a remote control there is a sequence of such events: pushing the button, causing a circuit to be completed, causing a electromagnetic wave to be released, causing another circuit to be bridged, causing a change in the channel.  All parts of these ordinary cause and effect chains are spatially located “things.”  But God, from nowhere, causes the world to form, Adam and Eve to leave the Garden, and a bush to burn.  The effects are in space, but the causes are not.  Well, we might say, God is omnipotent, so of course he makes the bush burn if he wants.  But we should be a bit more cautious and not simply paint over the issue of the intelligibility of a non-spatial cause of a spatial effect with a claim that is itself perhaps not so intelligible.

Let’s return to the idea that God is omnipotent.  We said God’s omnipotence means something like God can do anything.  Well, what does it mean for you to do something?  Typically it involves your moving some part of your body in space.  But God has neither a body, nor by 2 above is God in space.  God acts, instead, we might say, simply by willing.  We don’t know how that “mechanism” is supposed to work in the way that we know the mechanism for how a music box reproduces music, but we know what it is to will something.  Whatever God wills, it occurs.  But consider this:  one moment God wills that there be light and a while later he wills that locusts plague the Egyptians.  Does such a description of God make sense if God is outside of time?  Is it intelligible to claim that something is not “in” time and that that same thing could one moment do x and the next moment do y?  Clearly, if we say that x occurred before y, we are placing those things in a temporal order.

One might try to respond by saying that the events of the “first light” and the locust plague are in the world and are thus unproblematically temporal, but that doesn’t imply that God has to be in time.  Couldn’t God be outside time and simply will both things simultaneously instead of one after the other?  That is, he wills them simultaneously but they occur at different times in the world and since God transcends the world, there is no problem.  But what is it supposed to mean to say that God is outside time and that he wills multiple things simultaineously?  For simultaneity is itself a temporal notion.

The temporality of willing points in the direction of a more general problem regarding God’s being outside of time, namely, the idea that God is conscious and outside of time.  States of consciousness have at least two essential features: 1) an object of consciousness, e.g., a bird singing, and 2) a temporal succession of moments, e.g., one note after the other of the bird’s song.  If that is correct, then we have a very strong inconsistency between claiming that God is both conscious and outside of time.

4. God’s Otherness and Human Intelligence

At this point, if not sooner, the theist is likely to get frustrated by our line of reasoning.  And it is at the point of this frustration that we come to the real problem regarding God and intelligibility.  The response that the theist might make to the above claims of unintelligibility is to say that that apparent unintelligibility comes from the fact that God is so other, so different, so beyond anything we encounter in our daily life of dealings with people, animals, cars, trees, chairs, etc.  Because of that extreme otherness, we cannot reasonably expect to be able to comprehend (to make intelligible) the nature of God and God’s relationship to the world with our limited, human intellects.  Further, even though statements such as 1-8 may be problematic, they are the best we can do to try to describe God nature, relationship to the world, and God’s actions.  And while they are problematic, they are still true.  Perhaps, one might continue, they are not all literally true, but nevertheless, they express truths.

The above response consists of three claims:

1) God’s being is beyond anything we encounter in this world and is so different that we are not able to (fully) understand it.

2) Our human minds are limited in what they are able to comprehend.

3) We can say true things about God, even if those truths are not literal.

Let’s look at each of these three individually.

Regarding the idea that God’s being is unintelligible because it is beyond anything we encounter in this world and is so different from anything we encounter in this world that we are not able to (fully) understand it, two issues need to be considered.  First, what exactly we mean when saying that God’s being is so other?  Second, in which, if any, of our previously considered senses do we want to say that that being is unintelligible?  The two questions are connected, since it is the kind of otherness that characterizes God’s being that results in its unintelligibility.

Presumably the nature of God’s being is supposed to be in part what we were trying to talk about with 1-8 above.  So let’s take the claim about God is outside space and time.  Everything we experience through our five senses is in space and time.  Therefore, God’s being is different from everything we know through the five senses.  If you were asked to imagine something that exists outside of space and time, what might you imagine?  Anything you picture in your mind’s eye will be something that is spatial.  Anything you “hear” before your mind’s ear, so to speak, will be temporal.  Any smell you try to imagine will be temporal if not spatial.  And we can say the same for tastes and feels.  What about imagining a number?  After all, we said that numbers are not spatial objects.  But other than imagining a symbol such as “5” or “V”, which are spatial, how would you imagine a number?  The point being that our imagination is constrained by space and time.  A God that is supposed to be outside space and time is, thus, something completely unfamiliar; and, thus, it seems we should say that the unintelligibility that comes from this is that of lack of familiarity.

However, given what we saw when we took the time to spell out the details and implications of what it means to say that God is outside space and time, there is another kind of unintelligibility, namely the fourth kind of linguistic unintelligibility concerning inconsistencies.  So we have, at least, two ways in which God’s purported otherness is unintelligible to us.  The important difficulty that now arises for the intelligibility of the above claims concerning God’s nature is that the unintelligibility that comes from the lack of familiarity is fairly innocuous whereas the unintelligibility that comes from inconsistency is highly problematic.  That is, something’s being completely novel does not tell against the possibility of its existence, whereas the standard response to a set of inconsistent statements is to recognize that they cannot all be true.  So, if I claim that my house is yellow all over and brown all over, what I say cannot be true.  The house simply cannot be the way I am describing it to be.  Similarly, if in claiming that God is outside space and time we end up with inconsistent statements when spelling out the details, then that means that God cannot be the way we are describing him to be.

(Notice that God’s otherness cannot save the description of his nature, for God’s otherness was that of being outside space and time, but it was the claim that God is outside space and time that lead to the inconsistencies.)

But what about number 2, the claim that our human minds are limited in their ability to comprehend things?  We might put it by saying that just as a dog or a chimpanzee cannot comprehend long division, we cannot comprehend God’s nature no matter how hard we try.  Or we might think about it in terms of Einstein considering the special theory of relativity and a preschooler “considering” the same.  The preschooler won’t even know where to begin.  But we should be careful with such comparisons.  We don’t want to make it sound as if we have absolutely no idea of what we are talking or thinking about when considering God.  After all, we do make various claims about God’s nature, past “actions,” and intentions.  All of which are things that a dog or chimpanzee couldn’t do in relation to long division or a preschooler in relation to the special theory of relativity.

We see here another serious problem in claiming that God is unintelligible because he is so other.  The theist wants both to be able to say intelligible things about God’s nature and intentions while simultaneously saying that our minds are not capable of grasping God’s nature, intentions, etc.  And that can seem very much like trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

Perhaps there is a way out of the above problems.  Perhaps the inconsistencies that resulted from considering God’s being outside space and time, as well as the problem of trying to balance claims about our limited human intellects and our saying intelligible things about God can be ameliorated if we read the claims made about God in some non-literal way.  That is, perhaps the above problems stem from reading the claims 1-8 about God literally.  What happens if we read them non-literally?  Perhaps that will allow us to make sense of saying that we partially understand God’s nature while saying that it is ultimately beyond our grasp.

5. Language and Meaning

It can be easy to forget, but we often use language in non-literal ways.  If I say, “The book is on the table,” in answer to your asking where the book is, then I mean simply that the book is on the table.  As such, it’s an example of a straightforwardly literal use of language.  But we also say things like, “John runs like a gazelle,” “Beth’s smile is the noonday sun,” and “Life is like a bad joke: no one’s laughing at the end.”  The first is a simile, the second a metaphor, and third is a kind of analogy (though very much like a simile as well).  With the first John’s running is like that of a gazelle, presumably meaning that John is quick; with the second, Beth’s smile is clearly not literally the noonday sun, but as the noonday sun is the brightest thing, so is her smile; with life, it shares something in common with a bad joke, namely a lack of laughter at the end.  Let’s look at the claim concerning Beth’s smile.  Can we say the same thing in more literal language?  Instead of saying her smile is the noonday sun, we can say that her smile is bright, that it radiates light, brightening everything.  But that paraphrase is itself metaphorical, for her smile presumably doesn’t really radiate light, brightening everything, regardless of how white her teeth actually are.  Perhaps we just need to redo the paraphrase so that we explain literally the way in which her smile “radiates light.”  Let’s assume this is possible.  In such a case, then, the use of metaphor might just be seen as a colorful, imaginative way to save time, to achieve economy of expression.  But are there examples of simile, metaphor, or analogy in which we cannot paraphrase their meaning?

That last question is a difficult one and even if we cannot think of an example, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one.  So instead, let us ask another question, one that will save us some trouble:  Is there a way to understand the claims made about God’s nature that is non-literal?  The claim that has given us the most trouble so far is that God is outside space and time.  Is there a non-literal way to read, “God is outside space” or “God is outside time”?  Well, at least with simile, metaphor, and analogy there is a comparison of similarities between two things.  Saying that God is outside time does not involve a comparison of similarities.  If anything, it quite literally contrasts God with all of those things that are in time.

Granted we do often use non-literal ways of characterizing God.  We call God the Father, say God brings light into our lives, God is the Way, etc.  All that may be unproblematic when read non-literally.  But again, there doesn’t seem to be a non-literal way to read the problematic claim of God’s being outside space and time.  If there is not a non-literal way to grasp the claim that God is outside space and time, then we don’t have a way to claim that we partially understand what it means for God to be outside space and time.  And we had turned to non-literal uses of language as a means of making sense of the idea that God is both partially intelligible to us (enough so that we can at least have some idea of what we are talking about) while also being ultimately unintelligible or beyond our cognitive grasp.

6. Restating our Problem and Concluding Thoughts

The problem we are facing can be put by listing the following:

1) God is supposed to be outside space and time.

2) God’s being outside space and time leads to certain inconsistencies, e.g., that God is both conscious and outside of time.

3) Those inconsistencies indicate a certain unintelligibility of those claims, as they cannot all be true.

4) God is supposed to be beyond our understanding (unintelligible) because God is so other.

5) God is supposed to be more than our limited intellects can comprehend.

6) We are supposed to be able to comprehend God at least partially in order to say something intelligible about him.  For if we cannot say something partially comprehensible about God, then we don’t know what we talking about when we talk about “God.”

The real problem is trying to balance out 3, 5, and 6.  In order to get away from the inconsistencies in 3, the theist emphasizes 5.  But the more 5 is emphasized the more difficult 6 becomes to satisfy.  And the more we try to satisfy 6, the more we have to deemphasize 5, and the more problematic 3 becomes.

At this point the theist has three options:

A) Give up the idea that God is outside space and time.  The inconsistencies that result from God’s being outside space and time might be alleviated by simply claiming that God is not wholly outside space and time, and that he never was.  This, of course, would have profound implications for the idea that God created space and time.

B) Embrace the irrationality of accepting the inconsistencies mentioned in 2.  There are, however, various problems with embracing irrationality, not the least of which is that it undermines the strength of one’s whole belief system.

C) Go back and try to figure out a way to remove the inconsistencies mentioned in 2.  This would involve arguing that what appeared to be inconsistencies resulted from a misunderstanding of the issues involved.

The difficult question now is to figure out which of those three to choose.  One could, of course, choose to do all three, i.e., embrace all three, draw out the results of doing so and compare those results to see which is the best?  But consider this:  What kinds of standards would be used to determine which results are the best?  Rational?  Pragmatic?  Or…?