Describing God

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Onedayatatime

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In describing God … he is in the category of ineffable. That is cannot be described by words alone. As I am currently studying Catholic Theology, this poem came to mind. To describe what he is not.

There is no

There is no Brightness bright enough,
There is no Darkness dark enough,
There is no Love that’s deep enough,
There is no Strength strong enough.

There is no Warmth warm enough,
There is no Coolness cool enough,
There is no Space that’s wider,
There is no Hunger ever.

There is no Place that’s bigger,
There is no Silence that’s quieter,
There is no Sound that’s louder,
There is only Perfection.

There is no Greater than thee,
There is no One but thee,
There is no More to say,
But to Adore thee my God.
 
Nice poem.

We aren’t capable of fully describing God. We are limited by referring to God through created things. When we die and go to heaven, this limitation will be removed. It’ll be our biggest, “AHA!” moment! 🙂
 
Scoobyshme said:
Nice poem.

We aren’t capable of fully describing God. We are limited by referring to God through created things. When we die and go to heaven, this limitation will be removed. It’ll be our biggest, “AHA!” moment! 🙂
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10-4 on that Scooby. I can’t wait. The poem was written to define that he is beyond our comprehension, but perhaps that’s even a mistake to try and put that one down in ink.

Thanks for the comments

Mike
 
Well, I’ll be the killjoy and say what’s wrong with the poem. It mixes positive things like brightness and negative things like darkness indiscriminately. The main danger comes with the negative things.

Considering brightness or light in any number of metaphorical senses or as a reality in the physical world, certainly no creaturely brightness, no brightness we could see or imagine in our finite natures, is as great as the infinite perfection of God.

With darkness or silence though you have a problem. These are negative realities, absences, evils in a certain non-moral sense of the word. Applied directly to God we can only say that in God there is no darkness, no silence, no evil of any kind. God is infinite being, with no non-being at all. On the other hand you could look at it in terms of God’s Essence entirely transcending all creatures. Thus there is, for example, no light or sound emanating from (as opposed to created by) God and distinguishable from His Essence. In this sense you could apply the idea of darkness or silence, but in that case a complete darkness without a single photon, or a complete silence without any oscillation of pressure (like in a complete vacuum), do accurately describe this “darkness” or “silence” of God since they are both total absences.
 
Aelred_Minor said:
Well, I’ll be the killjoy and say what’s wrong with the poem. It mixes positive things like brightness and negative things like darkness indiscriminately. The main danger comes with the negative things.

Considering brightness or light in any number of metaphorical senses or as a reality in the physical world, certainly no creaturely brightness, no brightness we could see or imagine in our finite natures, is as great as the infinite perfection of God.

With darkness or silence though you have a problem. These are negative realities, absences, evils in a certain non-moral sense of the word. Applied directly to God we can only say that in God there is no darkness, no silence, no evil of any kind. God is infinite being, with no non-being at all. On the other hand you could look at it in terms of God’s Essence entirely transcending all creatures. Thus there is, for example, no light or sound emanating from (as opposed to created by) God and distinguishable from His Essence. In this sense you could apply the idea of darkness or silence, but in that case a complete darkness without a single photon, or a complete silence without any oscillation of pressure (like in a complete vacuum), do accurately describe this “darkness” or “silence” of God since they are both total absences.
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Perhaps I should have named it “Indescrible”. The title sorts of gives it away, where any potential reference that we have have in this world is not enough to even think of describing God. So this is a list of things that we might know and feel in the natural world, but they are even at their best, us grasping at straws to gain some insight as to what we might expect when we meet him in his own “heavenly essense”.

Bottom line we are tied to our own feelings of what is good and bad, certainly the use of words like darkness does not necessarily denote evil. God made night and day, night that we may rest … God did not make evil. Others provided that when free will was given to them.

Even trying to create a vacuous absent of matter is a stretch for us, as we don’t know what is on the other side until we “see the face of God”.

So the poem was more about describing what is out of this world and if any words in the poem might attempt to describe him, then “There is only Perfection” might be my worldly attempt that perhaps may not draw too much fire.

Thanks for your comments and thoughts.
 
Hello Onedayatatime; thanks for sharing,

Just rambling, I wonder if God the Father, and God the Son can be the greatest commandments.

When Jesus spent his time on Earth he would have lived by these commandments,

Jesus loves God the Father with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
Jesus loves each and every one of us as he loves himself.

Does God the Father respond to this love?

God the Father loves God the Son, with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
God the Father loves each and everyone of us as he loves himself.

Can God the Father or Son love us more than they love themselves.

peace

Eric
 
I_Thirst said:
Since you are studying Catholic Theology, I wonder if you have yet read much on apophatic theology?
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Am studying this area this semester. Will give you some summaries and comments when I get to the end of this term. As they say a little information is dangerous and this is a topic that if you have something to say, you better be able to defend it and ensure it’s in keeping with Church Doctrine.

I am not there yet on this topic …

Mike
 
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