Speaking About God

In defending the capability of human reason to know God, the Church is revealing her self-confidence in the possibility of discussing him to all men and with all men, and therefore of discussion with other individual religious beliefs, with viewpoint and science, as well with unbelievers and atheists.

Because our understanding of God is limited, our language about him is similarly quite limited. We can name God just by taking animals as our beginning point, and in accordance with our restricted human methods of knowing and thinking.

All creatures bear a specific similarity to God, many specifically man, developed in the image and similarity of God. The manifold excellences of creatures – their fact, their goodness, their beauty all show the infinite excellence of God. We can call God by taking his animals” excellences as our starting point, “for from the greatness and beauty of developed things comes a corresponding understanding of their Creator”.

God goes beyond all creatures. We need to for that reason constantly cleanse our language of everything in it that is restricted, image bound or imperfect, if we are not to puzzle our picture of God–“the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the unnoticeable, the ungraspable”– with our human representations. Our human words constantly fall short of the mystery of God.

Admittedly, in discussing God like this, our language is making use of human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though incapable to express him in his infinite simpleness. Also, we have to remember that “between Creator and animal no similitude can be revealed without suggesting an even higher dissimilitude”; and that “concerning God, we can not grasp what he is, but only exactly what he is not, and how various other beings stand in connection to him.”.