There is so much about God that we simply cannot know or comprehend – this side of eternity. So much of the mystery of God that, even if Jesus had told it all to us, we would still find it impossible to process.
God is so completely beyond our understanding that our ability to fathom the divine mysteries is illusory. Any idea that we
develop about God is based on some truth. It is an analogy to what we understand human goodness to be, but still totally inadequate to express God’s overwhelming goodness. If we say that “This is fully what God is,” then we are deceiving ourselves, and run the danger of constructing a false god or an idol. It is a normal tendency to confuse one powerful insight with the whole truth. But it stops God from being God – always something other, something more, a God of Surprises (to quote the title
of the book by Gerard W. Hughes).
But this does not mean that we can say nothing about God at all. God is the inveterate communicator. God finds ways to make Godself known, even though our thoughts and concepts are limited. God is hidden in mystery, but comes to us in ways that words can’t express.
How modest am I in my claims to know God? How has God surprised me,
revealed other faces to me? How do other people’s notions of God enlarge my own vision?
Reflections by Peter Knox SJ
