God’s incomprehensibility is the doctrine that says while thoughts about God in the mind of man can be true and accurate, they can never be complete. This requires God to reveal himself to us and to do so in a way that we can understand what He has chosen to reveal. In fact, Presbyterians confess that “[t]he distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant” (WCF 7.1).

While growing up, my church would sing an old gospel song that said Christ “hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock and covers me there with his hand.” It’s a repeated line, clearly intended to be remembered. The lyrics were an obvious play on Exodus 33 where Moses, hearing God’s willingness to confirm his ongoing presence with Israel on the journey from Sinai to the Canaan, asked the LORD, “I pray, show me Your glory” (Exodus 33:18). Consider for a moment all that Moses had seen to this point: his own physical salvation as an infant, the bush that burned and was not consumed, his call to ministry from the LORD, the plagues upon Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea on dry ground, the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, manna and water miraculously provided in the desert, meeting with the LORD on the top of Sinai for the delivering of the Law, and, to top it off, we read just prior to Moses’ request for a full disclosure of His glory that “[t]he Lord spoke to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11). Moses had witnessed, again and again, the power and glory of God in his life. Yet, Moses wants more. How will the LORD respond? Will He grant Moses’ request and show him His glory, which Moses must perceive to be above and beyond all that he had already seen?? Here we see a near ideal intersection of God’s Incomprehensibility and Revelation.

Shortly put, God’s incomprehensibility is the doctrine that says while thoughts about God in the mind of man can be true and accurate, they can never be complete. This requires God to reveal himself to us and to do so in a way that we can understand what He has chosen to reveal. In fact, Presbyterians confess that “[t]he distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant” (WCF 7.1). Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 4:7, “And what do you have that you did not receive?” In other words, what do we have that didn’t come from somewhere or someone else?

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