One more limit

I want to add one more limit to human reason that has recently been made explicit for me by a professor:

5) Our knowledge of God and His ways is adequate to relate to Him, but ultimately far from comprehensive. There will always be dimensions of the Triune God that elude our full grasp and understanding. There is in ineliminable amount of mystery about God that remains no matter how long we stay at seminary and no matter how long we live. In fact, I'd be willing to conjecture that we will never know all there is to know about God, even throughout eternity. It may be that we will forever gaze upon the beautiful and infinite face of God, never exhausting the riches of the knowledge of His glory. But it is important to understand that this is not the same as saying that within the domain of things we do know, something stands out as absurd. One good example of mystery is precisely how God creates the world out of nothing. We simply have no data on that subject, and I must confess to being unable to conceive of a way of comprehending it. Yet, so long as there is no successful rational objection against creation ex nihilo - and there isn't as far as I know - then this doctrine, with all of its mystery, remains rational. This is okay though, for faith is a risk that requires us to lack some knowledge. We do this all the time. How many of us know how a jet works before we trust ourselves to it? As long as we have some good reasons to trust the plane, our leap is not irrational - but it still remains a leap. The plane could crash. It may not pull through for us. There may be some reason we don't know of that renders it untrustworthy. But since our choices are often forced and momentous, and since our time is not unlimited in order to arrive at more certainty (even then, the plane STILL might fail!), the rational thing to do in such an indeterminate and forced situation is take the leap. Perhaps an even better analogy is love. Who of us fully understands the ins and outs of romantic love? But would that lack of comprehensive knowledge prevent any of us from desiring romantic love on the basis of the true knowledge we do have?

Mystery remains with God, and our reason finds itself coming up against the limits of a finite mind comprehending the Infinite. God is bigger than we can ever know. In the eminently eloquent words of Athanasius, "Thus far human knowledge goes. Here the cherubim spread the covering of their wings."