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When we speak about the limits of human understanding, we are not just talking about abstract ideas, we are talking about how our minds relate to ultimate reality. A quick thought exercise…

Imagine an infinite line running through the universe. Try to visualize what that would look like. Now recognize that if you doubled what you have just imagined, you still have not scratched the surface of what infinite actually is. No matter what you picture, double it in your mind. Then double it again. You are still nowhere close, because we are limited in our understanding.

Now take the conversation out of the abstract idea of “infinity” and look in front of yourself. We think we understand reality because we can describe the pieces in front of us. I sit at a table. I can see it, touch it, write on it. In my mind that feels like understanding. But if you zoom in, the table is a storm of molecules and what is mostly empty space. Nothing is still. Nothing is solid. My senses are giving me a simplified version of something far more complex. It works for daily life, but it is not the full picture. Zoom in too close or out too far and nothing makes sense.

Science helps us see how little we understand, but only when we view it through the lens of humility. Five hundred years ago, the best scientists thought they were cutting edge. They were, but they still understood their limits better than we often do today. In theology, at least in the best examples, there has always been some recognition that we are speaking about things beyond us.

There are limits built into being human. We handle the world by reducing it to something manageable. We do not see truth as it is. We see truth in a form we can survive. That alone should reinforce humility in us. If we cannot grasp the full reality of a table, how dare we think we can grasp the full reality of God?

Scripture already warns us about this. Philippians 2:12 (NIV) says to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Not because God wants us terrified, but because we are dealing with Someone who exists beyond our capacity to categorize. The Alpha and the Omega. The One who created time, who stands outside every structure we use to understand anything. The Bible first tells us we fall short in our capacity to understand Him. Isaiah 55:8–9 (NIV): “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Our attempts to understand God do not begin with a definition of omnipotence or eternity because it would still escape us. Our understanding must begin with humility and reverence. Proverbs 9:10 (NIV): “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

The mind wants to shrink God down to a set of attributes we can hold, a better version of ourselves. Like us, but omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, and infinite. Based on what we think those words mean, how we conceptualize them, they do not scratch the surface of who and what God is. They give us something to point toward, but not a complete picture. They are placeholders. Thomas Aquinas has great insight on this point: our creaturely words are drawn from our creaturely experience. We speak of God by analogy, not by equality. In the Summa Theologiae he writes, “We cannot know what God is, but only what He is not” (ST I.3).

Trying to describe God in human terms is like trying to describe the entire ocean by examining a cup of saltwater. You may have something real in your hands, but you do not have the thing itself. You cannot scale upward from the tiny sample to the fullness of what it represents.

A better picture is a child drawing his father. The drawing is real and resembles the father. It bears the father’s image, but it is not the father. It is a simplified, flat version with no depth, no life, no mind, no power. Now imagine the drawing trying to reconstruct what the real father must be like based on itself. It would assume reality is two dimensional. It would assume the father has the same limits it has. It would treat its own shape as the basis for understanding the one it is meant to reflect.

That is what humans do with God.

This is why arguments that try to imagine God into a coherent mental picture never get far. It is not because God is incoherent. It is because our scale and starting point are wrong. I can picture a very long line and call it infinite, but it is not even close. I can draw a picture of my father, and even if it is a photographic representation, it is not even close to helping someone understand who he was. Every mental image we can produce is grounded in this limited world. God is not.

So the starting point is not comprehension. It is orientation. Before I talk about morality or science or culture, I have to accept the limits of my own perception. I have to accept that I do not see reality clearly. I see a reduced version of it. What God has made is larger and smaller than anything my tools could ever measure.

This changes everything and nothing at the same time. It puts my place in order, but it does not give me a complete picture. It reminds me that I am not the judge of ultimate truth. I am a creature inside a world I did not design. I am a man whose senses and reasoning work well enough for the tasks in front of me, but not well enough to stand alone outside the One who gave those tasks to me in the world He created with His Word.

The Bible is reliable not because I can fully understand God, but because God understands me. He speaks at a level I can receive. He reveals what I need in a form I can carry. He gives me enough light to walk. He does not give me so much light that I can convincingly believe that I am the source of it.

Once that scale is accepted, humility becomes natural. And humility is the only ground where real knowledge grows. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

That is where we need to start. Recognize the scale, our own limitations, and recognize the One who stands outside all of it. We are creatures with limited tools trying to speak about an unlimited God. Knowing that every created thing has a creator lets everything else build from there.