On Not Understanding God

Abstract

Theodicies are an extreme example of the philosophical reluctance to accept that there may be something beyond human understanding; not something accidentally or temporarily beyond it, but something necessarily beyond human understanding. Secular explanations, offered as alternatives to theodicies, exemplify the same reluctance. That something could be necessarily beyond human understanding seems to be an intolerable thought, the denial of a philosophical vocation. Surely, it is said, the philosopher must seek to understand anything. But, then, might not a philosopher come to understand that there is something beyond human understanding? My aim in this essay is to show that the great divide in contemporary philosophy of religion, is not between those who offer religious explanations, and those who offer non-religious explanations, of the limits of human existence, but between those who recognise and those who do not recognise, that the limits of human existence are beyond human understanding.