Prima facie, the assertion seems self-refuting, for if none of our concepts apply to God, then even the concept of ineffability does not apply to God. However, the assertion of divine ineffability is often made by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Well , it does not trouble me particularly !!!!
For Hindus , nature and forces of nature is a form of god that we worship ...
I suppose it depends how we define ineffable. My inclination is to say that something ineffable cannot be completely described, not to preclude imperfect and incomplete attempts. And this leads to big problems, in practice.
Anything that is (said to be) beyond our comprehension cannot help but be ineffable. Any omniscient, omnipotent, eternal being is certainly not something that we can comprehend or describe completely. Isn't that why there are as many different ideas of what God is as there are humans on earth?
And this is easy enough to demonstrate. Cheap shot, no doubt, but we can see a whole spectrum of acts committed in God's name, from the sublime to the unspeakably atrocious. Common sense might suggest what makes sense and what makes no sense, but not much more than common sense. People like to make claims about what is the "true" God, or the "true" teachings of any particular religion. Don't these claims always come across sounding self-serving? We simply state that "truth" lies where we want it to lie, we use it to "justify" our thoughts and actions, but our claim is no more valid than the next person's. Not when it comes to religion.
The best we can do is to observe the results. Some are positive, leading to a more peaceful coexistence, and too many are negative, leading to atrocities. (Our perception of) God's ineffability is problematic. Clearly.
Definitely,
Because being human the great creation (!) of God couldn't go very far ! still we couldn't reach the moon(as there is much controversy), the Universe is expanded may be trillion trillion light years ! Is it possible to imagine or find out the power of God His capabilities and others by us! This is out of imagination !
In my view, ineffable is synonymous of impotence. It is true that sometimes a word can not explain a feeling or an expression. Maybe in the definition of God it can be incompleted but from the beginnings Artistotélic Society every word fulfils its function, even ineffable. For this reason God is God and it is not an "ineffable God". Perhaps for some people God has a broader meaning and can be added the adjective of "ineffable" but not ineffable involves the fact that can not be mentioned.
G-d=1 (one-ness), the creative and eternal upper force. Our physical and intellectual (spiritual) powers are not able to decipher the divine plan. We can only adapt and learn about cosmic law in a humble manner, e.g. like Abraham did. The tent of Abraham is the opposite of the tower of Babel.
If God were ineffable, the question would be why do religions exist? more specifically, do religions transgress the concept of ineffability in trying to explain who God was?
It is correct, since the word implies that the subject (God) can’t be defined by words.
That it cannot be defined by words, does not imply that it cannot be studied, or that we cannot talk about it.
In regard the concept of "ineffability" itself being apt to describe God, the distinction must be made that ineffable is a "negative term" it doesn’t express what something is, but what something is not (in this case, something is not definable by words).
We approach the topic of our negative-knowledge of God (knowledge of what God is not) which is likewise a certain knowledge of the subject for partial definitions or descriptions do help the knowledge of the whole subject. Talking about love as an emotion, or a chemical response, or a choice, or a character, or a natural treat, etc. as well as talking about what love is not (not an animal instinct, non-quantitative, non-mathematical) do increase the knowledge about what love is.
Ineffable means something you can not describe with words. If you think that human beings have nothing more than words to access God, it seems there is a paradox here, like you put it in your question. If you think that human beings use words only in an univocal sense, your question still maintains the paradox.
You can overcome your paradox, if you admit that you can use words in an analogical sense. In this way you may say many things about God, without denying that He is ineffable. For instance, you may state that God is good, in the sense humans use to speak about "goodness", but you may understand that God is not good in that human sense, because this human category is not sufficient to speak about Him (this is the apophatic moment, where you pay attention to the ineffability of God), and then you may conclude He is far above human goodness. This means you can say many things about God, real and true things, in a human manner, without falling in antropomorphism and without falling in agnosticism.
Beyond ineffable. And then beyond the beyond of ineffability. Yet, as close to you as your nose is to your mouth.
In the words of the ancients, God is: "What is impossible for the ear to hear and for the mouth to speak."
The personal God of Bible is not ineffable. He has an effable name and describable qualities. Of course we, humans, are not able to comprehend what is the supreme "God" but as far as Bible does this, we as well can describe or even be in close relation with "him". After this, philosophy of various kinds follows.
In the biblical context, God is not ineffable because He regrets what He does. He regretted that He created human beings and He destroyed most of them by the Flood. After the Flood He regretted the destruction of humankind and He promised not to do it again. Outside the biblical context, how can we know if God is ineffable or not? We cannot say with certitude. In my view, which is not certain, of course, God learns from human beings a lot. This is a kind of Hegelian view but otherwise is difficult to find a place for creation. God needs us as much as we need Him, if not no principle of love is reasonable to presume. www.godsfalsemirror.com
Not entirely. God is as different or 'Other' from us as He decides to be (I think John Sanders said that). Hence, the numerous descriptions about God in the Bible eg. He is loving, slow to anger, desirous of justice, etc.
Having said that, of course words don't describe God **completely** ("No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived etc etc - Isa 64:4, 1 Cor 2:9). So ya I guess it depends the degree of ineffability you're talking about).
Note: I'm obviously referring to the God of Judeo-Christian faith.
Hi Dears
According to some Quranic verses and traditions from holy prophet we are not allowed to think about the essence of God but we are encouraged to think about the different symbols of creation. Then God is ineffable due to his essence but can be described due to his creations.
Yes; we may say so. But that does not mean that people cannot have a personal relations with God.
God, in most understandings is an entity beyond normal human comprehension, so rather than try t apply a term to God let us see if the term can apply to something quite normal for humans. Is consciousness ineffable? Consciousness is something we undeniably encounter every minute of our waking existence, but what can we truly say about it? Now if we are limited in what we can say about consciousness, which we must encounter, what can we then say about God whom we may or may not recognize an encounter with?
We can only know of God that which he chooses or enables us to know.
How can we who are barely able to understand ourselves have the audacity to purport to understand anything about God?
Caesar said to Rabbi Yehoshua bar Chananyah: "I have been told that your God can count the stars in the heavens. Big deal. So can I." Said the rabbi: "How many teeth does Caesar have in his mouth?" Caesar began to count his teeth when the rabbi interrupted him: "Caesar needs to stick his finger in his mouth in order to count how many teeth he has, yet he claims to be able to count how many stars there are in the heavens?"
Nothing from what has been said here contradicts what you say. Some people can at least say something about their relationship with God...
In any case, Theology is an academic discipline and has a long history as such - so the specialists labouring in this field have work.
@ Gershon Winkler.
RE: How can we who are barely able to understand ourselves have the audacity to purport to understand anything about God?
That may not entail what you want it to entail, Gershon. People often invoke God as an explanation for the world's existence. They say the world's existence is mysterious and we need something to explain it, so God must've created it. But if we don't understand anything about God, we are trying to explain something that's mysterious in terms of something even more mysterious. No progress there: we end up with two mysteries instead of one. If we can't understand anything about God, we have no basis for talking about God or even for believing in God's existence because we wouldn't know what it is that we are supposed to be believing.
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