Indescribable

By Douglas Groothuis, PhD

Lyrics to “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin (2004)

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea

Creations revealing Your majesty

From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring

Every creature unique in the song that it sings

All exclaiming

Indescribable, uncontainable

You placed the stars in the sky

And You know them by name

You are amazing, God

All powerful, untameable

Awestruck, we fall to our knees

As we humbly proclaim

You are amazing, God

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go?

Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow

Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light?

Yet, conceals it to bring us the coolness of night

None can fathom

Indescribable, uncontainable

You placed the stars in the sky

And You know them by name

You are amazing, God

All powerful, untameable

Awestruck, we fall to our knees

As we humbly proclaim

You are amazing, God

You are amazing, God

Indescribable, uncontainable

You placed the stars in the sky

And You know them by name

You are amazing, God

All powerful, untameable

Awestruck, we fall to our knees

As we humbly proclaim

You are amazing, God

Indescribable, uncontainable

You placed the stars in the sky

And You know them by name

You are amazing, God

Incomparable, unchangeable

You see the depths of my heart

And You love me the same

You are amazing, God

You are amazing, God

I have long criticized the idea that God is ineffable, beyond the reach of language and thought. Much of Hinduism and Buddhism makes this claim about ultimate reality, but it is out of place for Christian thinking. However, there is a worship song called “Indescribable,” by Chris Tomlin. If God is “indescribable,” then nothing else can be said about God. If the song goes on to describe God, then it contradicts itself. Contracting yourself, especially in a worship song, is not a good idea.

The lyrics to “Indescribable” can be taken two ways. The first is that God is simply indescribable; nothing can be said about God. If so, then the song contradicts itself, since it says that God is “all powerful,” “amazing,” and more. It would also deny biblical teaching, which ascribes attributes to God, such as holy, just, loving, everywhere present (omnipresent), and more. However, second, the song can be taken to mean God is far greater than what our words can say. That is true. Moreover, the ways of God are often beyond our understanding, as the Apostle Paul confessed in a doxology.

³³ Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!    

How unsearchable his judgments,    

and his paths beyond tracing out!

³⁴ “Who has known the mind of the Lord?    

Or who has been his counselor?” 

³⁵ “Who has ever given to God,    

that God should repay them?” 

³⁶ For from him and through him and for him are all things.    

To him be the glory forever! Amen (Romans 11:33-36).

Paul says that God’s judgments are unsearchable and that we cannot know the mind of God, at least fully. Remember that Paul has in the previous chapters in Romans addressed the nature and character of God, the way of salvation, the fate of the Jews, and more. So, he cannot be claiming that we know nothing about God or that he is indescribable. We can describe him, but not fully. But we can have genuine knowledge without total knowledge. As finite and fallen beings, we do not have total knowledge of anything. Our limits in light of God’s greatness should bring about awe and worship, and “Indescribable” aims at that.

In my book, Christian Apologetics, I spoke about mystery and the knowledge of God. Here is that section, without footnote references.

MYSTERY AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Before addressing the Christian worldview, some comments on mystery are needed, since some Christians take the essential claims of Christianity to be mysteries beyond human ken. If so, apologetics would be vain, since mysteries (of this kind) cannot be rationally analyzed or defended. So, we need clarity about mystery.

In the New Testament, especially in Paul’s writings, a mystery is not an unsolvable enigma, but a momentous truth that has been revealed after having been concealed, hidden, or only intimated. To the Ephesians, Paul writes of the mystery made known to me by revelation . . . which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus (Eph 3:3, 5-6). There is nothing mysterious about this mystery. It is a matter of knowledge for Paul and his readers.

In the broader Christian tradition, mystery has been taken in several ways, some compatible with apologetics and some not compatible. I cannot canvass the whole topic, but will, rather, explain what I take to be a theologically accurate and apologetically savvy perspective on mystery.

God is not ineffable—beyond human concepts, propositions, and language. If so, then we would know precisely nothing about God, since knowledge comes through concepts, propositions, and language (although it is not limited to them). The Christian who claims that God is ineffable commits a reductio ad absurdum, since Christianity is a knowledge tradition. Jesus came to make the Father known (Jn 1:18).

The doctrine of ineffability with respect to God finds its dark home not in Christianity, but in most forms of Eastern mysticism and in all Gnosticism. Perhaps the classic statement is “The Tao that can be spoken is not the Eternal Tao.” (If so, there is no reason to read the rest of the book.) Similarly, for nondualistic Hinduism (as articulated by Sankara), Brahman in itself is unknowable. The Buddha was an “ineffabilist” about ultimate matters. But that didn’t stop him—or his followers—from talking about it.

The astute early apologist Irenaeus was known for refuting the Gnostics, who falsely claimed to represent the deeper Christian teaching, the hidden core or gnosis. In so doing, they described the ultimate reality as unknowable; yet, nevertheless, they used mystical sounding words to describe it and its emanations. So, Valentinus “maintained that there is a certain Dyad [twofold being], who is inexpressible by any name.” If so, we cannot call it “Dyad,” and Valentinus refutes himself by assigning a name to the nameless and unnamable.

Irenaeus employs a clever reductio ad absurdum against this ineffability claim and is not afraid of mockery. He writes of “a renowned teacher among” the Gnostics who, “struggling to reach something more sublime,” spoke of a “primary Tetrad,” involving “a certain Proarche who existed before all things, surpassing all thought, speech, and nomenclature, whom I call Monotes [unity].” To cut through the metaphysical clutter a bit, I will summarize the rest. Added to the unnamable named being “Monotes” proceeds Henotes (oneness), Monad, and Hen (one), and from these power proceeds “the remaining company of the aeons [creations].”

Since these entities lie beyond “thought, speech, and nomenclature,” Irenaeus makes sport of the Gnostics by assigning his own names to these beings. Parodying the exact language of the Gnostics, he writes of a “Proarche, royal, surpassing all thought . . . along with it there exists a power I term a Gourd; and along with this Gourd there exists a power which again I term Utter Emptiness.” Gourd and Utter Emptiness “produced a fruit . . . which fruit language calls a Cucumber. Along with this Cucumber exists a power of the same essence, which again I call a Melon.” Irenaeus reasons that if any names can be used for the unnamable, why not fruit names? In fact, fruit names have the advantage since they are “in general use, and understood by all.” Let us not follow the Gnostics into the metaphysical fruit basket.

Some critics of divine revelation claim that since biblical language is symbolic, it can communicate no literal truth, which means we are left in the dark about God. But Carl F. H. Henry puts the lie to this. “But if so-called nonliteralists hold that, because of their conventional or symbolic nature, words can convey no literal truth, then their thesis is self-refuting, since if no literal truth can be conveyed because words are symbolic, it is impossible to communicate even this literal truth about the nature of truth.” Thus, such claims are self-refuting and, therefore, false. Graphic and literary symbols communicate literal truth all the time. If Mary is dogged, she is literally tenacious. If John is statuesque, he is literally noble-looking. And so on. There is no reason to forbid the Bible’s use of symbols from communicating literal truths about its subject matter. If God is a rock, he is dependable and sturdy (Deut 32:4; 2 Sam 22:2-3).

It is epistemically apropos, however, to say that God is incomprehensible. According to Keith Yandell, “To ascribe incomprehensibility to God is to say that there is more to God than we can know.” But this is not unique to God, since “the whole story of the universe is way beyond what we can know.” One can know that P is true (1) without knowing everything about P and (2) having a great deal of ignorance about P. However, one needs to know what state of affairs P picks out. The physics of how a bee flies is incomprehensible to me, because I have not studied it. But a bee-specializing entomologist will comprehend it. It is incomprehensible to me why my first wife contracted and died of a rare form of dementia. However, that opacity in my knowledge did not obviate what I do know about God and his plan for the ages. It is a pocket (if a deep one) of ignorance within a framework of knowledge, since the Christian worldview is true, rational, and pertinent to all of life.

Although the Almighty has revealed himself to us, his ways are, in many respects, unfathomable. In that sense, you might call them mysteries. Even an apostle, a recipient of divine revelation, revels in his invincible ignorance of God’s ways. Paul’s doxology in Romans, chapter 11, is extraordinary: he had just written in the previous eleven chapters of the most thorough presentation of Christianity theology in the entire Bible. After having written of God natural revelation to us, our fallen state, the way of salvation in Christ, Paul cries out, Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Rom 11:33-36; see also Deut 29:29)

Paul lauds and praises the Lord in the context of what God has revealed. He is not worshiping in a cognitive vacuum or taking a blind leap of faith in the dark. Given what Paul knows about God, he infers that there is far more to God than he can know—“the riches of his wisdom and knowledge,” his “unsearchable judgments” and his “paths beyond tracing out.” God does not take us into his counsels and receives nothing from us for which he must pay us back.

The idea of mystery concerns a truth claim in relation to its intelligibility and the reasons given to support it. Theological affirmations such as the Trinity and the incarnation are often taken to be mysteries. If they are unintelligible claims that, in turn, can produce no evidence in their support, then we are stuck in fideism and apologetics is removed from the heart of the Christian worldview. There is a better way.

The Trinity and incarnation are rational-verbal revelations from God made known in history, in the Bible, and through the church’s confessions. We cannot work up these doctrines from reason and empirical evidence without God communicating them to us in Scripture. Yet the doctrines are intelligible; that is, they specify states of affairs through meaningful words. What they affirm is not contradictory. God is three-in-one (Trinity); not three equals one. Christ has both a human nature and a divine nature, but is one person (incarnation); not two persons and one person. I will not defend the intelligibility of these doctrines here, but, on the face of it, there is nothing unintelligible or impossibly opaque about them.

Thus, in the sense described, it is fair to say that the Trinity and incarnation are mysterious and that God’s ways with us are often mysterious. Notwithstanding, these mysteries are not absurdities. In fact, they are rooted in factuality. Partial knowledge is still knowledge.

As Paul said, “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor 13:12; see also Deut 29:29; Eccles 8:17-20; Rom 11:33-36). We see a reflection, but we may still see. We know in part, but we may still know. [1]

[1] Groothuis, Douglas. Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (pp. 74-78). InterVarsity Press.