The Nature of God
The conclusion to my final paper for Ancient Greek and Philosophy about how to discuss the nature of God:
Toward the end of his life, Aquinas said, "all that I have written seems like straw to me." Many sources record this, but it remains puzzling that one of the most voluminous theologians in history would suddenly recognize the limit of his words. Most ascribe the shift to some spiritual conversion. Describing God forces us face-to-face with the ineffable.
The ineffable permeates our lives. Certain emotions cannot be described accurately; analogy, imagery, scientific quantification-our methods of description-strain but fail to capture them. Experience and concept can exist beyond the range of diction. Perhaps this is why abstract expressionists spatter paint or poets throws words into incomprehensible whirlwinds. They long to express, but their methods trap them.
Face-to-face with the ineffable we also come face-to-face with the unknown. Our world is a world of description. This is how we know: we recognize tones, descriptions, patterns, qualities. To express something that transcends all these frail concepts, language itself must bend and give way.
To me, silence can be the only approach to God. All else is mere poetry and sound, used to point one into deeper silence. Only the human heart can contemplate infinity because it does not try to grasp it. But it must yearn, and stretch, and break for a lifetime to do so. Augustine uses the image of wine skins: try to fill one up with wine and its capacity remains limited. Stretch it through use, and it can carry gallons. The heart is finite infinity, but it must be stretched and activated through experience and reflection. Thus, reflection and experience are the next best thing we have to discussing God’s nature-what God is like, not what he is. The rest is like straw.
Toward the end of his life, Aquinas said, "all that I have written seems like straw to me." Many sources record this, but it remains puzzling that one of the most voluminous theologians in history would suddenly recognize the limit of his words. Most ascribe the shift to some spiritual conversion. Describing God forces us face-to-face with the ineffable.
The ineffable permeates our lives. Certain emotions cannot be described accurately; analogy, imagery, scientific quantification-our methods of description-strain but fail to capture them. Experience and concept can exist beyond the range of diction. Perhaps this is why abstract expressionists spatter paint or poets throws words into incomprehensible whirlwinds. They long to express, but their methods trap them.
Face-to-face with the ineffable we also come face-to-face with the unknown. Our world is a world of description. This is how we know: we recognize tones, descriptions, patterns, qualities. To express something that transcends all these frail concepts, language itself must bend and give way.
To me, silence can be the only approach to God. All else is mere poetry and sound, used to point one into deeper silence. Only the human heart can contemplate infinity because it does not try to grasp it. But it must yearn, and stretch, and break for a lifetime to do so. Augustine uses the image of wine skins: try to fill one up with wine and its capacity remains limited. Stretch it through use, and it can carry gallons. The heart is finite infinity, but it must be stretched and activated through experience and reflection. Thus, reflection and experience are the next best thing we have to discussing God’s nature-what God is like, not what he is. The rest is like straw.