Effects of Defining God as The Unknown

God being defined as the unknown and absolutely different emphasizes the lack of ability to comprehend Him. God is able to make Himself understood by man through various approaches. The first approach being that He could create a unity through an ascent, where He would draw the learner higher towards himself and let the learner forget their misunderstandings. God can also reveal Himself to the learner, to which the learner owes Him everything for he now understands the truth that sets him free. However, these two options are rejected on the basis of not promoting equality.

In order for God to be equal to man, God ultimately needs to descend and become a man Himself. In fact, He will appear “equal to the lowliest of persons”, in the form of a servant. Yet another paradox unfolds as God will appear as an individual who looks like everyone else. The problem arises, for how can people understand God if they possess no ability to do so? God being defined as the unknown forcibly causes man to realize that he is unable to comprehend God’s existence. Thought is incapable of knowing the absolutely different, since by doing so it will invalidate it.

The demonstration of proving God’s existence is nullified as it is impossible to do so. By calling God the unknown, it means that God exists subjectively. If an individual learns something about the unknown, then they will recognize that it is absolutely different from himself. God is incapable of making Himself understood because of His differences to man, for He has not committed sins, and man has. Individuals were made different from God but they made themselves absolutely different to the point of possessing no capabilities for comprehending him. Through God, man is able to know that God is different from himself, however, since it is incapable of comprehending the absolutely different, it poses the question of: How could it understand the absolutely different?

Evidently, there is another paradox, for a man needs God to know that he is absolutely different from God. This paradox “manifests itself as the absolute” (47). If an individual stops attempting to prove the existence of the unknown, then God appears. If they let go, then there is a leap of faith present. God became so different from individuals that they do not know him.

In fact, proving the existence of anything is difficult without prior assumption of its existence. While man wants to understand God, it is difficult as their absolute difference causes a rigid division between them. God employs many methods in attempts to prove his existence, including an ascent and descent, and becoming the lowliest of man, a servant. But, God exists subjectively, and is unable to be understood by man because he has committed sins while God has not. God’s efforts to reveal Himself to man fall short due to the inability for man to understand the unknown. Man, who is unbeknownst to the existence of God, is unable to conduct an examination to prove his existence without presupposing his existence. A paradox emerges considering if man wanted to understand the absolutely different, then man must know that he is absolutely different from God, to which he needs God to understand this. Without God, one must take a leap of faith in believing in his existence.