Can one know God through language?

[lapis_lazuli]

Is it possible to come to an understanding of God through language? Wasn’t Eve’s eating of the knowledge of Good and Evil that which lead her and Adam to know their nakedness, to be able to distinguish between things? So, following from that, isn’t language, our system of labelling and distinguishing things, the very thing that separates us from God (ironically, because it is God’s [God is known as the Word, I imagine, because no word can define Him, so he is known as The Word, or all words and none simultaneously], and humans do not have the capacity to distinguish between things whilst retaining the concept of the whole thing i.e. God?)

This puts the fall into the context of the fallibility of human knowledge, and how language and knowledge drives us from God. This also seems to me to highlight the importance of faith over reason, however tempting human reason may be.

Thoughts?

 

[lapis_lazuli]

And, to elaborate a little further, considering God created the Heavens and the Earth with His word, and is known Himself as the Word, doesn’t that put Original Sin in the context of the grave misuse of the divine principle of God i.e. language?

If what I am saying is at all heretical or offensive, please forgive me, I am ignorant of many things, but I am eager to learn, always. I do however think, that if I am speaking nonsense, that it pretty much re-enforces my point about the fallibility of language and human reason and how it drives us further from God.

I also apologise to any intellectuals that see this as an attack on thought and language (a possible interpretation, I think). Not my intention.

Eager to hear your thoughts on this, as well as anything in the Bible, the Catechisms, or general philosophy (Derrida and Wittgenstein come to mind, although I have only surface knowledge of their work currently) that might be relevant.

 

[Vouthon]

As He is in Himself, no.

"…The beatific vision is one unique, unbroken act, measured by the one unique instant of an unchangeable eternity. It is an act that cannot be lost. It is the source of the happiness of the elect and, as we shall see later, of their absolute impeccability.

Between God and ourselves there will be not even an intermediary idea, [566] because all created ideas, even infused ideas, however elevated, can be only limited participations in the truth, and cannot therefore represent God as He is in Himself: supreme Being, infinite Truth, Wisdom without measure, infinite and luminous source of all knowledge. No created idea could ever represent as He is in Himself Him who is thought itself. Thus the child’s cup cannot contain the ocean. [567]

Further, we cannot express our contemplation in one word, even in an interior word, in a mental word, because this word, being created and finite, cannot express the Infinite as He is in Himself.

This contemplation without medium absorbs us in some sense in God, leaving us without a word to express it, because only one word can express perfectly the divine essence, namely, the Word begotten from all eternity from the Father. The divine essence itself, sovereignly intelligible, more intimate to us than we ourselves are, will take the place of all created ideas, impressed and expressed. [568] In the order of knowledge we cannot conceive one more intimate than this, even though it be distinguished by different degrees…"

- Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877 - 1964), in "Life Everlasting: Heaven"

 

[lapis_lazuli]

As He is in Himself, no.

I’m not sure what that means to be honest. Are you saying God is a separate, closed-off entity, living in some other realm/dimension? Isn’t that a Gnostic idea?

No created idea could ever represent as He is in Himself Him who is thought itself. Thus the child’s cup cannot contain the ocean.

I don’t understand that either. Seeing as how this mentions a ‘created idea’ does that mean that there is an idea that was not created? Is that God – infinite, omnipresent, omniscient? Is this sentence simply stating the oneness of reality and how God permeates Being, being Being Himself? That’s an idea I’m familiar with, but I did read someone else on the forum say that that was a pantheistic idea and was not in line with the Church’s teachings. True? It doesn’t sound like it is true, I admit, I think of God being in all things myself, and of Him being existence itself.

 

[Vouthon]

I’m not sure what that means to be honest. Are you saying God is a separate, closed-off entity, living in some other realm/dimension? Isn’t that a Gnostic idea?

No, I’m saying that there is a limit to human knowledge when it comes to God. By grace the blessed soul in heaven is granted the gift of seeing God, intuitively by his mind, without anything created acting as an intermediary between them. Language, words, are barriers between man and God. Nothing created can ever be a proximate means of union with God in Himself. One can only know God as He is in Himself by passing beyond all created modes of being. This cannot be done by man through human effort. Only God can elevate us to this state, partially in this life as in a foretaste and fully in the next through the Beatific Vision.

 

[Hieronymi]

Romans 10:14–18 (D-R)

How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things?

But all do not obey the gospel. For Isaias saith: Lord, who hath believed our report?

*** Faith then cometh by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ. ***

But I say: Have they not heard? Yes, verily: Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends of the whole world.

 

[Judas_Thaddeus]

Is it possible to come to an understanding of God through language? Wasn’t Eve’s eating of the knowledge of Good and Evil that which lead her and Adam to know their nakedness, to be able to distinguish between things? So, following from that, isn’t language, our system of labelling and distinguishing things, the very thing that separates us from God (ironically, because it is God’s [God is known as the Word, I imagine, because no word can define Him, so he is known as The Word, or all words and none simultaneously], and humans do not have the capacity to distinguish between things whilst retaining the concept of the whole thing i.e. God?)

This puts the fall into the context of the fallibility of human knowledge, and how language and knowledge drives us from God. This also seems to me to highlight the importance of faith over reason, however tempting human reason may be.

Thoughts?

Well first, just a two-cents comment twocents:
I consider the story of the Fall as allegory (Please be Nice! lol), and that what
the sin, however it was enacted, pretty much was is that Man placed his own
judgement above God’s own. Just a theory (not the same sense as evolution).

Now on to language:
If your reading an English translation of the Bible, I would hope you under-
stand that that’s all it is, a translation, and that it is subject to the original
Greek/Hebrew of the Scriptures. If one happens to know what the Bible is
actually saying, particularly in the “more expressive than English” Greek,
that one can know God a little more than the other who is simply reading
the Bible in their own language.

Not to say that it is absolutely necessary to know these languages, though it is help-
ful in understanding God if you are ever confronted by a Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness,
Muslim, Baha’i, Oneness Pentacostalist, etc.