Can human reason understand God?

Human reason will never be able to understand who God is ideally. And yet its most legitimate ambition is, and will be, to penetrate as far as possible into his essence. The Church Fathers speak of man’s inability to penetrate the secrets of God’s nature. St. Hilary writes. God is invisible, ineffable, and infinite. No word can express him; no spirit can explore him. St. Basil writes God may be known from his works, but it is not granted to us to penetrate his nature. God’s essence remains beyond our reach. Even St. Augustine, perhaps more than anyone else, plunged into the depths of the divine, proclaims its incomprehensibility.

God is a being, unchangeable, invisible, and sovereign, and it cannot be measured merely by visible things that change. If we understood God, he would no longer be God. It behooves us to acknowledge our incomprehensibility humbly. Lord, you created all things, and you are beautiful because they are beautiful; they are good because you are good. But their beauty is nowhere near equal to your beauty. When I liken them to you, they cease to be beautiful, good. God is ineffable.

It is easier to say what God is not than to say what God is… You admire the earth, but it is not God… You are overwhelmed by the sea, nor is it God. Neither do all the creatures in the ocean or the air. Neither does the heavens. It is not God. You ask, who is God? He is that which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and has not entered the human heart. How would you like that to be revealed on the lips of a man who has not entered his heart?