Throughout theological antiquity, the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility has enjoyed a pride of place in theological prolegomena. The cast of theologians whose pen wrote of an incomprehensible God is vast, spanning both continents and centuries. From the theological orations of the Cappadocians to the homilies of Chrysostom, divine incomprehensibility received considerable contemplation and treatment.
Though the doctrine has received much treatment in church history, it’s treatment as an individual doctrinal emphasis in contemporary theology is light. This paper has two goals: (1) the first goal will be to “locate” the doctrine. This means that I wish to show where the proper soil is for the doctrine of incomprehensibility. Throughout church history, a few possible locations have been mentioned, however, I would like to argue that any location outside of the Creator-creature distinction will not have the proper soil to truly ground the doctrine. (2) The second goal of this paper will then be to ask, why does rooting the doctrine of incomprehensibility in the Creator-creature distinction impact what we think of glorification, especially in the doctrine of the beatific vision. In many ways this is a paper which is part retrieval and part construction: I hope to retrieve a historical, and Nicene, doctrine of incomprehensibility and then will look to construct why the doctrine has deep significant for the beatific vision.
Overall, the argument of the paper will be: The (only) proper location for the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility is the Creator-creature distinction; this distinction between the Creator and the creature will not be erased in the creatures receiving glorification so even when the creatures receives the blessed vision, God will still be incomprehensible. While at first this may come as bad news that even in the afterlife the creature will not fully comprehend God, I will conclude the paper trying to demonstrate why this truth is infinitely glorious as God’s perfections are inexhaustible, even with an eternity to explore them.