In Christian theology, mysteriousness is often listed among the essential attributes of God. Paul Tillich, for example, suggests that divine reality is “infinitely apprehensible, yet never entirely comprehensible.” This is the reason that Christian mystics sometimes spoke of the notum Ignotum;that is, the “known Unknown.” “If you understand it, if is not God,” admonished St. Augustine, as though continuing the thought, “and if it is God, you do not understand it.” This is not to say that there can be no possible perception or thought of God; only that veridical thoughts and perceptions of God will have an authenticating aspect of mystery. It is interesting to dwell on this idea. Consider: In the phenomenal realm “mystery” denotes a lack of knowledge—something strange, secret or poorly understood. The fate of Amelia Earhart and the Dyatlov Pass Incident are mysterious because there is something about these things which we do not understand—though one day, of course, someone may make the discovery that “solves the mystery.” Not so with God. On the view we are considering, mystery is one of His positive attributes—it is to Him what perspicacity is to Sherlock Holmes and villainy to Iago. No doubt part of the mystery of God is due (as in the phenomenal realm) to the fact that there is something about God one does not understand. But even if one comes to understand that something, they will discover a second thing they do not understand. And if they come to understand that, they will discover a third thing, and then a forth, and then a fifth, sixth, seventh—and so on ad infinitum. That abyssal depth is unique to—is characteristic of--the personhood of God. That intrinsic unfathomableness (and not merely the lack of knowledge that is its practical entailment) is the mystery. Imagine yourself in the presence of God. That presence is intensely distinctive, overwhelmingly real. But at the same time, you will properly understand it by failing to understand it; you will know Him by being ignorant of Him. [1] But this seems to entail a paradox. God is said to be both mysterious and omniscient. Omniscience, per definitionem, includes perfect self-knowledge. Mysteriousness, meanwhile, is the quality of being secret, strange or impossible to understand. It follows that if, on the one hand, God is omniscient, he does not experience one of his own essential attributes; namely, his mysteriousness. In that case, he is like an Iago with no notion of his own villainy or a Sherlock Holmes who is oblivious to his own perspicacity. But if, on the other hand, God does experience his own mysteriousness, then it follows that he is not omniscient—for there will be something about himself which is strange, secret or impossible to understand and from which arises his mysteriousness to himself. Either way, we seem to be left with a gap in God’s self-knowledge. I see at least two possible solutions. One is that mysteriousness is a relational attribute of God; that is, it is essential to God only that he be experienced as mysterious by non-divine persons. The second is more obscure and more interesting: The possibility of a sense of mystery that is not predicated on a lack of knowledge. Perhaps God alone, illuminated by perfect self-knowledge of his own infinite selfhood, experiences a sort of incandescent awe at Himself.
[1] In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce has Stephen Dedalus doubtfully envisage heaven as, “An eternity of bliss in the company of the dean of studies.” Along similar lines, more than a few atheists have suggested to me that eternal anything, even eternal ecstasy, would grow wearisome. It only takes a little theological imagination to see how wrong this is. Upon those who behold him, God will unfold infinite and inexhaustible novelty, beauty, wonder, truth and goodness—forever.