Augustine’s ‘Si comprehendis, non est Deus’ – To what extent is God incomprehensible?

Jean Grondin

The idea of God is one from which contemporary philosophy, to say nothing ofWestern society at large, seems to have turned away from or replaced by otherquests. There is however no greater and more vital subject than the idea of God.It is essential because it is difficult to see how life can have an overridingmeaning if there is no God. Or, as Ivan Karamazov puts it in Dostoyevsky’snovel, if there is no God, all hell breaks loose. For philosophers and inquiringminds, God also happens to be one of the most cogent answers to the question asto why there is Being and not nothing. There is little to be gained by lookingdown on such an answer, which was revered as the highest Good in all culturesand epochs.