This interview appears in Issue 24 of The Mockingbird, now available to order in our store.
Who is God, really? This question is a foundational one for both religious inquiry and life itself. But in asking such a question we immediately bump up against very human limitations. We cannot know everything there is to know. Nor are we able to perceive beyond our imprecise and unreliable sense perceptions of the world. We see only in part, prone to misinterpreting even the simplest encounters.
Considering the frailty of our understanding, some say that God is a mystery. They’re not entirely wrong. But to say that God is a mystery who exceeds our understanding is not the same as saying God is entirely incomprehensible. It is in this in-between space that the theological category of mystery is both rich and complex, offering a more dynamic way of approaching how much and how little we can know about God.
I first met Ben DeSpain over a decade ago while he and I were studying for postgraduate degrees at Durham University. Amid our years of research and writing, we would regularly discuss a theology of mystery according to Thomas Aquinas. To my surprise, Ben talked about mystery in a wholly different way than from what I had heard before. The category of mystery does not undermine our understanding of God but enriches it. Today DeSpain is a Research Fellow at Australian Catholic University, where he has contributed to a number of academic projects ranging in theme from mysticism to theological ethics to the theology of art-making. He is also the author of Thinking Theologically about Divine Ideas: Reexamining the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (2022).
I was pleased to be able to revisit our former conversations again in this wide-ranging interview on the usefulness of mystery and a few of its many implications. If, as DeSpain contends below, “the mystery of God is the revelation of his fullness,” then the limits of our knowledge chasten prideful certitude while inviting us to marvel over who God is.
– Todd Brewer, interviewer
MOCKINGBIRD: In theological terms, how would you define “mystery”?
BEN DESPAIN: Specifically within the case of whether God is mysterious, we are thinking of “mystery” as a reference to human limitations — the limitations of our knowledge, the boundaries beyond which we cannot think, or whatever exceeds our ability to know.
And so a statement like “God is a mystery” is not suggesting that God is mysterious to God’s self — rather, God is completely known to God’s self — but it’s a reference to our own finitude, to the limit, the boundary, of our ability to know God.
We also use the language of “mystery” when referring to something within the natural order of the universe — that some event or chemical reaction is a mystery, meaning we do not know how it occurs. But that doesn’t mean the thing cannot be known by us. It’s just that, within our current field of knowledge, we don’t know what it is, but maybe we can suss it out — we can go through various forms of experimentation to figure out what it is — and then it’s no longer mystery. Then it is known. But when we’re talking about God, we’re talking about the infinite reality that, as finite creatures, we cannot comprehend.
And the distinction between comprehension and knowledge becomes really important, because to comprehend something means to fully understand it. But you don’t have to fully understand something to know it, right? We know people, we know friends, or acquaintances or just strangers walking down the street — we know some form of them just by the encounter, but we do not actually understand or comprehend the totality of their existence in that encounter.
So that distinction is important for situating where mystery is operative within theological terms, because it’s accounting for an ability to know, but not to comprehend.
M: To comprehend something is to know it in and out, upwards and downwards, whereas knowledge is more kind of circumstantial; it may be true, but it’s incomplete.
BD: Yes, there are degrees or variations to our knowledge of things: propositional accounts of facts, and existential and experiential encounters with people. But comprehension would mean being able to fully encapsulate an understanding of a particular thing’s existence, its reality, being — whatever it is — in all of its dimensions, all the way down.
M: If we maintain an appreciation of mystery in everyday life (whether in reference to God, or, as you mentioned, other people), what are some practical benefits to such a view?
BD: Yeah, so, in the approach I am outlining here, whenever we are in a space talking about God, we are being confronted with the mystery that the revelation of God is itself, meaning that we are reminded or constantly confronted with where our knowledge is incomplete. And the fullness of creation is somehow a finite reflection of the divine infinite. God has created all that exists as a reflection, an imitation of the divine, but no one thing here encompasses the totality of that reflection or image.
The practical implications for this are, at least initially, something like intellectual humility. If we ascribe something to God — say, “God is good” — we arrive at that statement analogously; we encounter goodness in the world as a positive thing and ascribe it to God. But we do not fully comprehend the meaning of God being good — it exceeds our capacity.
It means that in some respects, none of us have it all right. And none of us have it all wrong. Whenever we’re reflecting or contemplating or encountering or describing the divine, we do so within the limitations of our own finitude.
David Wallace Haskins, Image Continuous, 2010-21. From the Skycube series, Pyrolytic coated glass, aluminum 96 x 96 x 96 in. Part of David Wallace Haskins: Landscape + Light, Nov 2021 – Dec 2024. Edith Farnsworth House, Plano, IL.
M: What implications does that have for the study and practice of theology itself? Or why is it helpful for theology to have a recognition of our limitations?
BD: When it comes to theology, it’s important to maintain a nuanced sense of mystery for two reasons. The first is that this intellectual humility defines the way we understand the world. It actually means we cannot fully encapsulate within our minds anything in the world. Because to do that would require comprehending how everything in creation relates to God, and we would then have to know how God knows everything, and we cannot do that. But also, theologically, this means God is present through the dynamics of all that we encounter, because everything we encounter only exists because the divine mind has thought and created it. And yet in knowing that thing, we are confronted with our inability to capture its fullness in our mind. That is when the theological begins to inform our thinking about the world, and also how we relate to God.
The second point is that the language of limitation — the recognition that our comprehension is limited — has become more prominent in recent years within theological and philosophical reflections, which is great, but can itself serve as a limitation to our ability to think and reflect about God. Instead, it should encourage us to say as much as we can, because we’re never going to have enough words to encapsulate what God’s existence is.
God’s reality is, in fact — Denys Turner talks a great deal about this — where words break down. We as theologians are required to say as much we can, to keep talking until the words stop, until they break and fall apart, because that is when we are confronted with the reality of the divine.
M: What does it mean in more interpersonal terms that another person could be a mystery to us, could be known, but nevertheless be a mystery — whether that be a friend or a spouse or our parents?
BD: Interpersonally, we may encounter a deep sense of feeling for another person, or their feeling for you, and not be able to translate that into propositions that can account for it. We have idioms about this: “Words cannot express how much I love you.” The expansiveness of our being exceeds our capacity to articulate it.
Friends, loved ones, parents, and children are mysteries, because while we know them, we cannot enter into their minds — because to know them would require us to comprehend God, because all people, as created images of God, are always related to the divine as a reflection, as an imitation of what God has seen within the order of creation. As limited creatures we cannot think all the things someone else is thinking or feel all the things they’re feeling. We require communication just to obtain a fraction of that. In some sense, we as humans will always be a part of the mystery of existence.
When it comes to God, we pursue theological reflection — not just in academic settings, but in devotional prayer, contemplation, or other spiritual exercises — and through these pursuits, we attempt to know God beyond just sort of propositional accounts. We do this with our loved ones as well. We continue to pursue the development of our relationships. That development is never finished. There is always more room for the growth, which is somehow rooted in this thing that mystery is — a space that is never filled. We keep pressing into a thing that is never complete.
But another practical benefit, I think, of maintaining a richer sense of mystery, is that it does not restrict growth and knowledge of God; it does not set up academic theologians or church leaders as on the “highest” rung of knowing God. Just because theologians may have more propositions or more statements about God, that does not mean that they know God better than the devout layperson, because knowledge is itself diversified.
Throughout Christian tradition, there’s been a recognition of the great wisdom of the devout church member, because it’s understood that they know God even though they may not necessarily be able to translate that knowledge into words. The depth of their knowledge reflects an encounter, a relationship, which is why wisdom of the Christian is not reducible to a series of statements but saturates the way a person lives their life.
M: I’m thinking about the way a psychologist knows the dynamics of a person, the way their behavior conforms to certain patterns or general laws of psychology. That’s different than knowing a person throughout their entire life, say, as a best friend from high school. These different ways of knowing are not substitutes for one another or in competition.
BD: That’s exactly right. That’s an excellent example of this, because when we are talking about God, we are talking about knowing an agent, a being that we are related to, not a set of facts like the periodic table. We are relating God — the three persons of the Trinity — to persons. And we have different ways of knowing individuals. A psychologist can know an individual in one particular way, and that way of knowing is crucial and essential to the life of the person in therapy, but their partner or parent knows them in a drastically different, but not inaccurate, way. And so this is true of the divine — there are different ways of knowing that are not hierarchically reducible.
M: I’d like to pivot, to talk about revelation — another vibrant theological category. If divine mystery exists outside the bounds of what is revealed, then how does mystery not function like a curtain, behind which the real Wizard of Oz lurks? Luther called this the hidden God. If there’s a hidden God, is that the real God? How would you articulate a relationship between divine mystery and revelation?
BD: Perhaps, to clarify here what I said earlier, mystery does not signify a boundary between that which is knowable and that which is above or beyond the knowable world — rather, mystery is that which is revealed; revelation is the bearer of the mystery. Because if we take a step back in our articulation of God, we can say that God fully comprehends God’s self. God is in fact the most knowable, the most known to God’s self. The mystery of God is not an account of how God relates to God’s self, but an account of a limitation within human knowing.
And so when God reveals God’s self, the incomprehension only occurs within us. So mystery itself is born on the wake of revelation within creation, within sacred texts, for example. And it’s actually only in revelation that we encounter divine mystery. It’s not the opposite of revelation. We would not know our limitation — the limits of our knowledge — if God were not revealed as beyond our grasp. If God were hiding behind a curtain, we would not know of God’s mystery at all.
M: It’s only because of God’s revelation that we’re able to even postulate a mystery in the first place.
So how does this understanding of mystery not lead to agnosticism? Particularly within our pluralistic context.
BD: Yes — it would be nice if our knowledge in relation to the divine was easily reducible to “this is true and this is false,” bracketed in very clear black-and-white terms. But it becomes very difficult — we have been struggling for centuries upon centuries to think carefully in our relation to each other and in relation to the divine. We don’t want to fall into a form of agnosticism, where there’s no definitive way to say anything, because again, we are talking about revelation: an agent who has revealed himself in the fullness of his being, which itself conveys, communicates, and reveals truth.
M: I’m thinking of where Paul makes a distinction between knowing Jesus according to the flesh and knowing Jesus, which is classically understood as a kind of distinction between the historical Jesus (according to the flesh) and who Jesus is in a cosmic sense, who encounters the church today.
BD: The revelation of divine mystery is Christ, because it is here that we actually have — within theological reflection — an encounter that establishes different ways of knowing.
Knowing the historical Jesus, in the sense of, “Oh, he was a person I met on the street” — well, that would be a true knowing of Jesus in an actual event that occurred to people in the time of Christ’s life. But that’s not opposed to the mystery of the reality disclosed in that encounter.
Christ becomes the demonstration of the way we encounter divine mystery, just as we encounter our people and others in this world.
M: Yeah, as I’m reading the Gospels, I often think of the minor characters, someone like Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus carry the cross. Did he in that moment encounter Jesus as some dude who needed help, or did he see more there because it was there? It’s an interesting way of trying to bridge the gap between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith in classical, New Testament terms — as if they exist as nesting dolls that are all operative at once.
BD: To that example, I think the answer would be, yes. Simon encountered both Jesus who needed help carrying a cross and the fullness of God’s revelation in the Incarnation, whether or not he was aware of it. And that is what we all as human beings constantly encounter in the world, because the mystery of God is the revelation of his fullness, which is displayed in everything that exists around us. Sometimes it hits us and we are drawn to move deeper or further — we feel, we sense, we experience, that there is something greater in what we’ve encountered than what our senses initially tell us. But our senses are where we begin.
M: Yeah, so when Jesus asks his disciples in Mark 8, “Who do people say that I am?” and they give a myriad of answers, those aren’t necessarily wrong, they’re just incomplete. And Peter, by way of revelation, says what is more fully true.
BD: Yeah, but it should be noted that part of the point is not to say that it’s contrastively more true, meaning, “Oh, you’re just a carpenter” — “No, I am the son of God.” It is actually “You are the son of God as a carpenter.” It’s not a contrast, one or the other. Jesus is the fullness of the reality present within all the things that people encounter.
This can even be integrated with or developed with Christ’s saying about caring for the little ones — that in each one of these, you encounter God. Matthew 18:5: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
The caring for the little ones is not depicted as a contrast — as if you care for the little ones and then God is on top of that — but rather in the actual caring for the little ones, you care for God’s own presence there.
M: Yeah, that language actually appears in a number of places, like in Matthew 10: “Whoever receives you receives me.” It’s similar in Matthew 25. And in Matthew 28, we see a correspondence between the presence of Jesus and his earthly emissaries, right?
BD: Yeah, all of the references to “When you receive this or these ones, you receive me” suggest a way of saying that within this moment, there is a fuller reality that exceeds what you see. That is the mystery. It is not on top of, or beyond, but within the life lived out. And so pressing into the mystery of God does not mean leaving this world behind. It means being more present to this world, where God has revealed God’s self. This is where mystery is encountered in the life that we live before us, because in all of these things the fullness of God, which exceeds our comprehension, is revealed truly.
M: Yeah, to live life coram Deo (in the presence of God) in this way.
BD: In this way.
M: That’s a big theological term that’s totally gonna get edited out.
Thought provoking. Nice to read someone else who can put into words what another has been trying to express.