International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-020-09762-y

ARTICLE

The ineffability of God

Omar Fakhri1 

Received: 17 December 2019 / Accepted: 2 May 2020 / Published online: 26 May 2020
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Abstract
I defend an account of God’s ineffability that depends on the distinction between
fundamental and non-fundamental truths. I argue that although there are funda-
mentally true propositions about God, no creature can have them as the object of a
propositional attitude, and no sentence can perfectly carve out their structures. Why?
Because these propositions have non-enumerable structures. In principle, no crea-
ture can fully grasp God’s intrinsic nature, nor can they develop a language that fully
describes it. On this account, the ineffability of God is explained in terms of the ina-
bility of our language and mental capacities to grasp God as he really is. I will moti-
vate my account by distinguishing it from a rival proposal. According to this rival,
there are no fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature. I argue
that this rival proposal faces problems that my account does not face. And unlike
this rival and other accounts of ineffability, my account provides a fitting explana-
tion of why God is ineffable. God is ineffable because the structure of his intrinsic
nature is infinite.

Keywords  Philosophy of religion · Classical theism · Fundamentality · Ineffability ·

Apophaticism

Something is ineffable just in case it cannot be described by a language. Many tra-

ditions accept the ineffability of God or the ineffability of ultimate reality.1 God’s
ineffability is intimately linked to God’s transcendence: language cannot properly
describe God because of God’s otherness. God is so distinct from any other being
that our language falls short. This requires a certain story about language. Namely,
that one main purpose of language is to carve out the finite world. Our notion of an
apple, carves out a certain fruit that tastes a certain way and looks a certain way.
1
  Knepper and In Kalmanson (2017) examine the claims of ineffability in nine different spiritual tradi-
tions.

* Omar Fakhri
omar.d.fakhri@gmail.com
1
UC Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
 26 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

This circumscribed object can be captured by our language. God’s intrinsic nature,
which is not circumscribed, cannot be fully captured by our language.
God’s ineffability raises all sorts of problems. If God is completely ineffable, then
is it true that God is completely ineffable? For if God cannot be described by lan-
guage, then we cannot describe God as ineffable. One important distinction to keep
in mind is that the ineffability of God is a thesis about God’s intrinsic nature.2 For
example, the property of creating the universe that God possesses is typically not
understood as a property that is completely intrinsic to God’s nature because God’s
creation is contingent according to many classical traditions, such as the Abrahamic
religions. This distinction, however, does not completely solve the problem. There
are propositions about God’s intrinsic nature that many traditions claim to know,
such as: God is a Trinity, God is sovereign, God is omnipotent, and so on. If God’s
intrinsic nature is completely ineffable, then how can we utter true statements about
his intrinsic nature?

The need for a literalist account

Plenty of accounts have been proposed to explain God’s ineffability and the prob-
lems that go with it. In this paper, I defend an account that is crucially different from
analogical accounts and metaphorical accounts in that on this account, we can make
claims about God that are both literally true and do not fully describe God.3 This lit-
eralist account should be of interest to everyone, including proponents of these rival
accounts, especially the analogical account.
Consider the notion of being good, which is understood as an equivocal notion
under the classical analogical view of God’s ineffability. If when we say that ‘God
is good’ and ‘Theodore is good,’ we are not using the word ‘good’ in both instances
univocally. They do not have exactly the same meaning. However, we do not want
these two instances of the word ‘good’ to be completely unconnected. They have to
be connected somehow. Otherwise, God’s goodness would have nothing in common
with how we use the term. If that were the case, then it is possible that God’s good-
ness is something that we would not recognize as good in any way. This would be
a serious problem for the analogical view. There must be a connection between the
two instances of ‘good.’
One solution is that there is an aspect to the goodness we ascribe to finite things
that is literally true of the goodness we ascribe to God. On this take, the two uses
of ‘good’ are still equivocal; it is just that they are not equivocal in all respects. In
both uses of the term ‘good,’ there is a proper part, and only a proper part, of the
term that is understood literally. However, the classical understanding of God’s inef-
fability seems to block that type of literalist move because some have understood the

2
  I will often not include the qualifier, ‘propositions about God’s intrinsic nature,’ and instead just say,
‘propositions about God.’ When that happens, the latter should be read as the former.
3
  For an analogical account, see Aquinas’ Summa, Prima Pars, Q. 13, and White (2010). For a meta-
phorical account, see Alston (1989).

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 27

doctrine of ineffability to mean that we cannot say anything literally true of God.
The ineffability account that I will be defending will be able to help the analogical
account, without at the same time sacrificing a robust understanding of God’s inef-
fability. The literalist account builds a bridge that connects equivocal notions about
God.
The literalist account can also build a bridge for metaphorical accounts. Meta-
phors require two conditions: (1) the exemplar is sufficiently similar to the subject in
some unspecified way; and (2) there is some specific attribution that is derived from
the metaphor. These conditions show that metaphors with truth-values are not meta-
phorically irreducible. That is, a metaphor can be reduced, at least in part, to literal
terms.4 Like analogical accounts, metaphorical accounts also require a literal term
to bridge the exemplar and the subject of the metaphor. The literalist account can be
the bridge. This is just one of the many fruits that the literalist account has to offer.
Thus, even if you are a devout proponent of the analogical or metaphorical view, the
literalist view that I will be defending should be of interest to you as well.

Two versions of the two‑truths account

I call this literalist type of account, The Two-Truths Account, because the account
depends on a twofold distinction about truth. My version of the two-truths account
owes a debt of gratitude to Jonathan Jacobs’ defense of ineffability.5 I motivate my
account by first examining Jacobs’ defense of ineffability, and then I will expose
a weakness in the defense. My account has all the advantages, but it lacks the
disadvantages.
The two-truths account depends on the notions of fundamentality and non-fun-
damentality. A fundamentally true proposition describes reality as it really is.6 The
proposition ‘carves nature at its joints.’7 Carving occurs if the structure of a proposi-
tion8 is isomorphic to some portion of the structure of reality, where ‘structure’ is
a primitive notion. 9 For example, many think the proposition that electrons have a
mass of 9.10938291 × 10−31 kilograms carves the structure of reality. By contrast,
the following proposition is non-fundamentally true: the bred region—where the

4
  See Alston (1989), Essay 1, for a defense of this claim.
5
  Jacobs (2015).
6
  On fundamentality, see Fine (2001), Cameron (2008), and Sider (2013).
7
  Talk of ‘carving nature at its joints’ can be found as early as Plato’s Phaedrus, 265d-266a. In recent
years, the phrase finds its home in David Lewis’ natural properties and David Armstrong’s universals.
See Armstrong (1978), and Lewis (1983) and Lewis (1986).
8
  I am assuming that propositions have structure. See Salmon (1986) and Soames (1987) for a defense of
structured propositions.
9
 Isomorphism is too fine-grained to be a necessary condition. A coarse-grained equivalence rela-
tion would be more accurate, but because of space constraints I will not cash it out here. See Shapiro
(1997), pp. 90–91, for a way to cash out this equivalence relation.

13
 28 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

bred region is everything above the dotted line in the figure below—is equal to the
rue region.10

BRED

RUE

Unlike blue and red, bred and rue do not carve at the joints.
To make things more precise, let us introduce the following formal operator: F  .
F(𝜙 ) means that 𝜙 is fundamentally true. I take this to be a factive operator that
ranges over propositions.11 That is, F(𝜙 ) implies 𝜙 . Note, however, that ¬F(𝜙 ) does
not imply ¬𝜙 nor does it imply F¬(𝜙).

First version: groundless propositions

Jacobs does not offer an account of ineffability, but a defense. A defense of a thesis
amounts to showing that the thesis is not incoherent or inconsistent. In other words,
to defend a thesis, one must show that the thesis is metaphysically possible. Jacobs
states his thesis in the following way:
Ineffability Thesis (IT): For any true proposition 𝜙 , if 𝜙 is about God’s intrin-
sic nature, then ¬(F(𝜙 )) and ¬(F(¬𝜙)).
According to (IT), there are no fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrin-
sic nature. This part of the defense gives us a robust doctrine of ineffability. How-
ever, we also need there to be truths about God in order to affirm the claims made
about God. This is where non-fundamentally or derivatively true propositions come
in.12 The only truths about God’s intrinsic nature are non-fundamental truths.13
Thus, that God is Triune or omnipotent is a non-fundamental truth about God’s
intrinsic nature.
The Ineffability Thesis naturally leads to the following question: in virtue of
what are non-fundamentally true propositions true? The non-fundamental is said to

10
  This example is slightly different from the examples in Sider (2013), p. 2, and Jacobs (2015).
11
  Note that not everyone takes this operator to be a factive operator.
12
  For the rest of the paper, I will use non-fundamentally true instead of derivatively true.
13
  Note that on this account there could be a fundamentally true proposition about God, but it can’t be
about God’s intrinsic nature. For example, it could be a proposition about God’s act of creation. This
example might be contentious for proponents of absolute divine simplicity who think God’s creative act
is in some sense identical with God. Thus, whether there are fundamentally true propositions about God,
but not God’s intrinsic nature, depends on your views about God.

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 29

be primarily dependent on the fundamental. In fact, the way we typically come to

understand or grasp non-fundamentally true propositions is through paradigmatic
examples where the non-fundamental is grounded in the fundamental. But accord-
ing to IT, there are no fundamentally true propositions about God. This leaves non-
fundamental propositions about God ultimately groundless. Thus, IT requires the
following thesis:
Groundless Thesis (GT): for any proposition 𝜙 about God’s intrinsic nature,
if 𝜙 is non-fundamentally true, then there is no proposition 𝜓 such that 𝜓 is a
fundamentally true proposition about God’s intrinsic nature and 𝜓 grounds 𝜙.
The Groundless Thesis claims that non-fundamentally true propositions about God’s
intrinsic nature are not grounded in fundamental propositions.14 A proper defense of
the Ineffability Thesis would require a defense of the Groundless Thesis because the
former requires the latter.
Notice that IT requires GT even if non-fundamentally true propositions are
grounded in the entity God, and not in a proposition or something that is proposition-
like, because GT is specifically about propositional grounding, and not about any
type of grounding. However, my initial worry with proposition-to-entity grounding
is that it is not clear how entity-grounding can get the job done. Non-fundamentally
true propositions are supposed to be propositions that do some carving but don’t
carve nature at the joints or they do not carve perfectly. We can put the issue in the
form of a dilemma: if non-fundamental propositions do not carve the entity at all,
then in what sense are they non-fundamental? if non-fundamental propositions do
carve the entity, then in what sense is this different from proposition-to-proposition
grounding? These questions and concerns are not decisive objections against entity-
to-proposition grounding, but they expose how little we know about such a relation.
Until more is said about this peculiar relation, it is difficult to assess its merits.
Moreover, IT requires GT even in a gunky world, where gunk is a thing that
can be divided endlessly. On this view, non-fundamentally true propositions are
grounded in other non-fundamentally true propositions, all the way down. It is true
in gunky worlds that non-fundamental propositions are more or less fundamental
than other propositions, but it is also true that there are no fundamental propositions.
For any proposition, there is one more fundamental than it. However, these gunky
worlds might be true of propositions about the cosmos, but it is difficult to see how
they can be true of God. Is God gunky? What would that mean? Does it mean that

14
  What does it mean to say that non-fundamentally true propositions are grounded in fundamentally
true propositions? The answer has to do with the structure of the world. Like the the bred region and the
rue region from the above figure, reality has a natural structure or joints. Fundamentally true propositions
are structured and if the structure perfectly carves out the structure of the world, then they are fundamen-
tally true. If they do not, then they are non-fundamentally true. As such, non-fundamentally true proposi-
tions depend, or are grounded, in fundamentally true propositions in that the portion of the structure of
the non-fundamentally true proposition that carves, albeit imperfectly, is a proper part of the structure
of the fundamentally true proposition that carves perfectly. On this proposal, the dependence relation is
explained in the following way: the portion of the structure of non-fundamentally true propositions that
carve is a proper part of the structure of fundamentally true propositions.

13
 30 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

God is potentially (or actually) gunky? It is hard to make sense of this when applied
to God.
The overall goal, for Jacobs, is to defend GT, and not to argue for its truth. At a
minimum, giving a defense involves consistency and coherence, and being coher-
ent is compatible with being false and even being implausible. Generally speaking,
giving a defense typically amounts to showing a claim to be both intelligible and
internally consistent. Those things are compatible with the claim being false and
implausible. However, the situation changes once we consider a defense of a neces-
sary thesis.
By a necessary thesis, I mean a thesis that is either necessarily true or necessar-
ily false, in the ‘broadly logical sense.’15 A necessary thesis changes the situation
because giving a defense of a necessary thesis requires the satisfaction of the follow-
ing plausible principle: for any necessary thesis 𝜙 , a successful defense of 𝜙 requires
evidence that 𝜙 is at least possibly true. The type of possibility in question is alethic
possibility, not epistemic possibility. Epistemic possibility is cheap and easy to get.
Showing that a thesis is epistemically possible is hardly a defense of any thesis. One
can simply say this: it is epistemically possible that in the future there will be an
argument that shows the consistency of GT and IT. Isn’t that epistemically possi-
ble? And wouldn’t this also show that it is epistemically possible that GT and IT are
coherent? I think so, but this is hardly a defense of the two theses.
A quick example will show the plausibility of the principle. Suppose I genuinely
utter the following claim (about a necessary thesis): ‘I have successfully defended
thesis 𝜙 , but 𝜙 is possibly false.’ The claim makes little sense because if 𝜙 is a nec-
essary thesis (which means it is either necessarily true or necessarily false), then
possibly not-𝜙 implies that 𝜙 is necessarily false. Hence, an equivalent utterance
would be: ‘I have successfully defended the necessary thesis 𝜙 , but 𝜙 is necessarily
false.’ A defense that leaves a thesis necessarily false is not much of a defense at all.
By contrast, consider this claim (about a contingently true thesis): ‘I have success-
fully defended thesis 𝜙 , but 𝜙 is possibly false.’ Unlike the former claim, this one
makes perfect sense. In fact, switching the term ‘possibly false’ with ‘implausible’
would not change the result. Providing positive evidence for the possible truth of a
necessary thesis is a necessary condition for a successful defense of the thesis. But
is the Ineffability Thesis a necessary thesis?
It is a necessary thesis. God is not only ineffable in the actual world, He is inef-
fable in all possible worlds.16 Claims about God’s intrinsic nature are necessary
claims because God’s intrinsic nature cannot change. What I have said can be cap-
tured by the following principle:

15
  See Plantinga (1974), pp. 1–2.
16
  I am assuming that views like Swinburne (1977),  pp. 241–308, are false, and that God exists in all
possible worlds. However, even if God is a contingent being, it is still true that God is ineffable in all the
worlds in which God exists.

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 31

Principle of Necessity: For any proposition 𝜙 , if 𝜙 is about God’s intrinsic

nature, then 𝜙 is either necessarily true or necessarily false.17
This principle implies that the Ineffability Thesis is either necessarily true or neces-
sarily false:
Strong Ineffability Thesis (SIT): Necessarily, for any true proposition 𝜙 , if 𝜙
is about God’s intrinsic nature, then ¬(F(𝜙 )) and ¬(F(¬𝜙)).
SIT implies that not only are there no fundamentally true propositions about God,
but it is impossible for there to be any. Consequently, the same form of reasoning
applies to the Groundless Thesis: GT is either necessarily true or necessarily false.
Thus, we will end up with SGT, Strong Groundless Thesis.
As we have seen, in order to defend SGT, a necessary thesis, one must at least
show that it is possibly true. It is not enough to refute objections against the coher-
ence of SGT. It might be the case that currently there are no good arguments against
the coherence of SGT, but it does not follow from this that SGT is in fact coherent.
One must provide some positive evidence to show that SGT is at least possibly true.
How does one go about showing that a proposition is possibly true? In the context
of modality, philosophers tell us to contemplate on the proposition and see whether
you can conceive of its possibility. When I contemplate the proposition, unicorns
can exist, I can easily conceive of a world in which that proposition is true. How-
ever, when this method is applied to the possibility of a necessary thesis, it is not
clear how to conceive of such a thing.18 Philosophers are quick to point out that con-
ceivability does not imply possibility, and I am happy to grant that.19 We can settle
for the weaker claim that conceivability provides some evidence for possibility.
Even then, as far as I can tell, my evidence for the proposition, SGT is possibly
true, is epistemically indistinguishable from my evidence for the proposition, SGT
is possibly false. Namely, I either have no evidence for either proposition or what-
ever evidence I can muster up from conceivability, the two propositions will have an
equal backing from the point of view of conceivability. But I must admit that I am at
a loss to understand how I would go about conceiving a possible world where SGT
is true. I am open to other forms of evidence, but I know not where to find them.
Once we examine what SGT is really saying, we will see how implausible it
sounds. It might be plausible to say that some propositions are groundless, but SGT
is saying something much more provocative than that. SGT is saying that there are

17
 Some proponents of non-classical conceptions of God might think they must reject this principle.
They might think that God has different beliefs, desires, and choices in different possible worlds. Moreo-
ver, these beliefs, desires, and choices, at least in part, are intrinsic to God. However, I do not think
propositions about what God contingently beliefs, desires, chooses are propositions about God’s intrinsic
nature. These propositions might be about things that are intrinsic to God, but they are not things that
pick out what God’s nature actually is. Consider this analogy. I might have different beliefs and desires at
different times, but this does not mean that my intrinsic nature changes at different times.
18
  What needs to be shown is ◊□GT, not ◊GT, because GT, as I have argued, is a necessary thesis.
19
  Some philosophers point to the following counterexamples to the claim that conceivability implies
possibility: Water is not H­ 2O or Hesperus is not Phosphorus. For more on the connection between con-
ceivability and possibility, see Gendler and Hawthorne (2011).

13
 32 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

non-fundamentally true propositions that do not carve reality at all. The way we
grasp the distinction between what is fundamental and what is non-fundamental is
through this notion of carving the structure or the joints of reality. What makes a
proposition non-fundamentally true, as opposed to true simpliciter, is that the propo-
sition at least does some carving, but it doesn’t carve reality perfectly. Fundamen-
tally true propositions carve reality perfectly. Understood this way, SGT says that
there are propositions of the type that carve, but they do no carving of reality at all,
and they are still true.20 Thus, at best one should be agnostic about the truth of SGT,
and at worse one should reject it. But since SIT requires SGT, one should also be
agnostic about SIT. This should be enough to motivate an investigation for an alter-
native approach.

Second version: grounded propositions

In what remains, I shall explain and defend an alternative approach that does not
require SGT. Although I will make use of the operator F  , there is another operator
that is more central to my account: L  . Unlike F  , which ranges over propositions,
L ranges over bits of language and thought.21 By ‘bits of thought,’ I mean mental
thoughts and the concepts that are constituents of thoughts.22 For simplicity, I ignore
concepts and thoughts. Whatever I say about bits of language could be said about
bits of thought.
To say that L (‘electron’) is to say that the word ‘electron’ is a fundamental
notion in a language. Notions are not the sorts of things that can be true or false.
However, notions can carve reality at the joints. The operator also ranges over sen-
tences. L(A) means that the sentence A is fundamentally true.23 A sentence A is
fundamentally true iff the structure of A perfectly carves the structure of 𝜙 , where
F(𝜙 ). A sentence A is non-fundamentally true iff the structure of A perfectly carves
the structure of 𝜙 , where 𝜙 is a non-fundamentally true proposition.
Notice that a sentence can perfectly carve non-fundamentally true propositions,
although the sentence itself is not fundamentally true. Thus, whether a sentence
perfectly carves is not the thing that determines whether it is fundamentally true.
What determines its fundamentality is the type of carving the proposition in ques-
tion is doing. Another important distinction to keep in mind is between the sentence

20
  The defender of SGT can instead say that non-fundamentally true propositions about God do imper-
fectly carve reality, but then they will have to say more about the thing that those propositions carve, and
why there can’t be propositions that carve that thing perfectly. Also, see footnote 13.
21
  This is the same operator that is in Sider (2013), pp. 91–96, except mine ranges over bits of language
and bits of thought.
22
  The structure of concepts has been spelled out in different ways. I find the theory-theory view to be
plausible, see Gopnik and Meltzoff (1997). My view implies that thoughts are also structured because
concepts make up thoughts.
23
  Some hold that sentences are not truth bearers. Rather propositions are the truth bearers. My account
is compatible with this claim. Instead of talking about a sentence being true, we can talk about it being
derivatively true or true in a non-primary sense, i.e. true in virtue of the proposition in question being
true. For simplicity, I will continue to talk as if sentences are truth bearers in the primary sense. Moreo-
ver, by sentence, I don’t mean a question or any form of a sentence that doesn’t have at truth-value.

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 33

intended or the speaker meaning and the speaker’s utterance. I can utter that ‘my
stomach is making all kinds of noises,’ but my utterance really means that I am hun-
gry. The structure of the utterance is not what I am interested in here. Rather, what I
am interested in is the speaker’s meaning. I am interested in the structure of the sen-
tences that are intended by the utterance (whether spoken or written utterance) and
not the utterance itself. With that in mind, I can state my thesis as follows:
Apophatic Thesis (AT): Necessarily, for any linguistic notion or sentence A, if
A is about God’s intrinsic nature, then ¬(L(A)) and ¬(L(¬A)).24
AT does not imply that there are no fundamentally true propositions about God.
Rather, if there are any fundamentally true propositions about God, then, in prin-
ciple, there are no sentences that perfectly carve their structure. However, if a sen-
tence A—e.g. ‘God is three persons in one nature’—is non-fundamentally true, then
there is a proposition 𝜙 such that A perfectly carves the structure of 𝜙 and 𝜙 is non-
fundamentally true. Unlike the Ineffability Thesis, my account is fully compatible
with 𝜙 being grounded in a fundamentally true proposition about God’s intrinsic
nature. Moreover, this fundamentally true proposition perfectly carves God’s intrin-
sic nature.
It is important to distinguish between a sentence carving the structure of a propo-
sition and a sentence referring to a proposition. The apophatic thesis is compatible
with the claim that there are sentences that merely refer to fundamentally true prop-
ositions. This would be equivalent to using the gesture of pointing at a thing without
knowing anything intrinsic about the nature of the thing. Suppose there is a window-
less room next to me, and I know virtually nothing about what is in that room. I do
not know if there are tables, chairs, cows, TVs, or ghosts in the room. I can point
and say, ‘I wish I knew what that thing is in the room.’ Likewise, I can use a sen-
tence to ‘point’ to fundamental propositions, so to speak. I can say, ‘there are funda-
mental propositions about God’s intrinsic nature.’ This sentence does not carve the
specific structure of those fundamental propositions, but the sentence does refer to
them. This distinction is important to keep in mind because it shows that we can talk
about fundamentally true propositions about the intrinsic nature of God, but we can-
not produce sentences that capture the internal structure of those propositions.
For example, suppose that the intrinsic nature of water is ­H2O. Further, suppose
that the intrinsic nature of water is ineffable. I might be able to use all sorts of sen-
tences to refer or talk about the intrinsic nature of water without using a sentence
that captures or carves the intrinsic nature of water. For instance, I can say, ‘Water
has an intrinsic nature.’ This is a sentence that refers to the intrinsic nature of water,
but it does not tell us anything substantive about the internal structure of the intrin-
sic nature of water. Fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature
perfectly carve the internal structure, and according to the apophatic thesis, we can
talk generally about those propositions by referring to them, but it is impossible, in

24
  One might object that the Apophatic Thesis does not seem to be as strong as the Strong Ineffability
Thesis. This is not the case because AT has the power to accommodate all the non-fundamentally true
propositions that SIT accommodates, but it doesn’t have the extra added baggage of requiring SGT.

13
 34 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

principle, to produce sentences that perfectly capture the structure of those funda-
mentally true propositions.25

AT at work

One benefit of my account is that it provides a fitting explanation of why God is, in
principle, ineffable. That is, the account provides an explanation of why no sentence
can perfectly carve the structure of a fundamentally true proposition about God’s
intrinsic nature, and this explanation points to something we would expect any
explanation of this sort to point to.26 The explanation makes use of God’s infinitude.
We would expect any fitting account of God’s ineffability to say something about
God’s infinitude. My account does just that. But before laying out the explanation, a
few formal clarifications are in order.
Let us spell out some formal features of a structure. Here ‘structure’ is a model-
theoretic notion that is distinct from the primitive notion discussed earlier. Earlier,
the structure was about the structure of the world, and such structure has no inform-
ative definition. A model-theoretic notion of structure aims to abstract away from
that structure and only map some formal features of that structure. This notion of
structure can be characterized as an ordered pair < D, R > , where D is a non-empty
set, and R is a set of ordered pairs < x, y > such that x, y ∈ D . That is, R is the set of
relations among the things in the set D. Let us also introduce:
Non-enumerable Structure: A structure Ω is non-enumerable iff the set D in
Ω is non-enumerable.
I want to stay neutral about the members of these sets. Perhaps they are constituents
of propositions or terminal nodes. Whatever they might be, the important thing here
is that they’re non-enumerable. What are non-enumerable sets? A non-enumerable
set is an infinite set that cannot be counted.27 A countably infinite set is a set that can
be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the set of natural numbers (or positive
integers). This could be done by providing a bijection, where a bijection is a func-
tion that maps every element of a set to exactly one element in another set and vice
versa. A non-enumerable set is an infinite set that cannot be put in a one-to-one cor-
respondence with the set of natural numbers. An example of a non-enumerable set is
the unit interval [0, 1].28

25
  I am open to the fact that perhaps sentences that refer to fundamentally true propositions do not carve
at all. Perhaps they do some carving (i.e. they are non-fundamentally true), or perhaps they do not carve
at all (i.e. they are true simpliciter). The important thing is that they do not perfectly carve, if they carve
at all.
26
  Unlike Jacobs’ defensive strategy, I offer a plausible story that explains why it is impossible for cre-
ated beings to fully describe God as He really is. This explanation gives us evidence for AT. Whereas
with Jacobs’ defensive strategy, we do not get any positive evidence for the possibility of SGT, and SGT
seems to be independently implausible.
27
  In 1874, Georg Cantor proved that the power set of positive integers is not enumerable. See Boolos
et al. (2007), pp. 16–20, for an explanation of the proof.
28
  The cardinality of infinite sets are represented by the Hebrew letter ’ ℵ ’. The smallest is ℵ0 , which
refers to the cardinality of the natural numbers. Given the Continuum Hypothesis, ℵ1 refers to the higher

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 35

My claim is that fundamentally true propositions about God have a non-enumera-

ble structure. There is nothing to say about the intrinsic structure these propositions
have, except for the apophatic and non-fundamental claim that they are not enumer-
able.29 As such, it is impossible for any finite (or countably infinite) sentence to refer
to a fundamentally true proposition about God. The structure of any intended sen-
tence uttered by a finite creature cannot, in principle, be non-enumerable. That is,
necessarily, it is not the case that there is a sentence A and a proposition about God’s
intrinsic nature 𝜙 such that the structure of A perfectly carves the structure of 𝜙 and
F(𝜙).
Why is non-enumerability required? It seems that the notion of not-being-finitely-
expressible is sufficient for our purposes.30 I agree. The minimal requirement of the
view is that there are no finite sentences that can fully express or carve the struc-
ture of fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature. However, one
question lingers: why is this true? The answer, I take it, is that because fundamen-
tally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature are infinite in structure, and it’s
impossible for a finite structure to perfectly carve an infinite structure.
Lastly, why must the structure of fundamentally true propositions about God’s
intrinsic nature be non-enumerably infinite as opposed to being enumerably infinite?
The answer to this last question is twofold. First, recall that a countably infinite set is
a set that can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the set of natural numbers
by providing a function that maps every element of a set to exactly one element in
another set and vice versa. If so, then perhaps someone might object that there is
a way to express countably infinite structures with functions that consist of finite
structure. Moving to the non-enumerable avoids this possible worry. Second, and
more importantly, it would be odd to think that there are sets of infinities (e.g. the set
of all irrational numbers) that consist of more elements than the structure of God’s
intrinsic nature. Perhaps you do not find these two reasons convincing. If so, then
replace non-enumerable with the notion of not-being-finitely-expressible where it is
fitting. The main claims of this paper would, I believe, remain the same.

Non‑enumerable propositions

This leads to an important question: why think that non-enumerable propositions

exist? There are two possible views to hold in response to this question. The first
view is platonism about abstract objects. If platonism is true, then propositions
are abstract objects that exist necessarily.31 This means that propositions with

Footnote 28 (continued)
cardinality of the real numbers; and so on. We can make the stronger claim: for any cardinality ℵx , the
cardinality of the structure of fundamental propositions about God is more than ℵx.
29
  One way to understand the apophatic tradition is that the tradition seems to think negative claims, by
their very nature, do not carve or at least do not perfectly carve. Rather, negative claims either merely
refer or if they carve, they do not carve perfectly.
30
  Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing this out to me.
31
  For a defense of Platonism, see van Inwagen (2004) and van Inwagen (2009). For a response to van
Inwagen (2009), see Craig (2011).

13
 36 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

non-enumerable structures would have always been non-enumerable, and there is

nothing obviously impossible about that.32 In other words, these non-enumerable
propositions have always existed and they necessarily exist.
On the other hand, starting from the finite and then arriving at the non-enumera-
ble at some point in time is obviously problematic. Sentences uttered by finite crea-
tures, unlike eternal propositions, cannot exist by necessity. No created thing can
begin with a finite language and arrive at a non-enumerably structured sentence.
Imagine starting with the first positive integer and counting upwards. At what point
would you reach a non-enumerable infinite number? Or imagine you start with a
simple descriptive sentence and continue to add more structure to it. At what point
would this sentence contain a non-enumerable structure? I would say never, even
if you had all the time in the world. For instance, your counting can be potentially
infinite, but it will never be actually infinite, given that you started out with a finite
number.
The second view is conceptualism. According to this view, propositions are in the
divine mind.33 This view is not as ontologically costly as platonism. According to a
theist’s ontology, God exists. When we add these propositions in the divine mind,
we are not adding any other entities in our ontology, unlike platonism.34 Moreover,
platonism seems to be in tension with God’s divine aseity. On a traditional concep-
tion of platonism, there are infinities upon infinities of abstract objects that exist
necessarily and are not created by God.35 But with divine conceptualism, there is no
such tension because these propositions are not external from God.36 For these (and
other) reasons, I prefer the latter option, but for the purposes of this paper, not much
turns on this question. As long as it is possible that there are non-enumerable propo-
sitions, the account works.
Whatever the story, a good reason for thinking that there are fundamental propo-
sitions about God is that God, being omniscient, fully knows his intrinsic nature.

32
  There are arguments against the existence of actual infinities, see David Hilbert’s 1924 lecture in Hil-
bert et al. (2013), and Pruss (2018). These arguments at best show that actual infinities cannot exist in the
concrete world, which is consistent with my claims and in fact strengthens my claims, and at worst show
that actual infinities are very strange. What is strange need not be impossible.
33
  See Davis (2011) for a defense of this view.
34
  One might object: on conceptualism, there are just as much new entities in the divine mind as there
are assumed by platonism. Moreover, these new entities will have to be taken as primitives, just like the
abstract objects postulated by platonism. So there is no ontological cost. In response, traditionally, divine
ideas are not “entities.” Instead, they are modes of the divine mind because these ideas cannot be sepa-
rated from the divine mind. That is, these ideas do not exist on their own. By contrast, platonism postu-
lates a host of independently existing, full blown, entities. Lastly, whether these entities are primitives
does not prevent the cost. The more primitive entities a theory postulates, the more costly it is. A concep-
tualist is already committed to theism. The cost of adding modes to the divine mind is similar to the costs
of drawing dots with a marker on your white t-shirt. The platonist multiples the number of t-shirts. The
conceptualist multiples the number of dots.
35
  There are other views of theistic platonism, where either God creates abstract objects or these abstract
objects exist necessarily but still depend on God for their existences by some type of grounding relation.
See Craig (2016) and Craig (2017) for a case against the different varieties of theistic platonism.
36
  In Craig (2016), pp. 72–95, he also rejects divine conceptualism, but he does so because he finds no
use for it. My view, on the other hand, makes great use of it.

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 37

If so, then plausibly there are such propositions. Moreover, on my account, these
propositions ground non-fundamentally true propositions about God. As such, SGT
is not required. This is a virtue of the account.

Commitments

My account is committed to the following claims:

(1) It is possible that there are fundamentally true propositions about God’s
intrinsic nature that ground non-fundamentally true propositions about God’s
intrinsic nature.
(2) It is impossible for finite creatures to produce sentences or thoughts that
perfectly carve fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature.
(3) It is possible for finite creatures to produce sentences or thoughts that per-
fectly carve some non-fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic
nature.
(4) It is possible for finite creatures to produce sentences or thoughts that refer
to fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature.
The motivation for the first claim is that God, given that he is omniscient, would
fully know his intrinsic nature.37The second claim follows from the fact that one
cannot arrive at the non-enumerably infinite from the finite. The third claim is
assumed by theistic religions that claim to know anything about God’s intrinsic
nature. For example, Christianity claims that God is three hypostases in one ousia.
This proposition does some carving, and that is what makes it true, but it does not
carve perfectly, far from it, and that is what makes it non-fundamentally true. Ear-
lier in this paper, I have motivated the fourth claim with the example of water being
­H2O. We can use sentences to refer to the proposition that water is H ­ 2O, without
carving that proposition perfectly. This can be done by simply saying: ‘Let x be
the intrinsic nature of water.’ Notice that x is simply a variable that “points” to the
intrinsic nature of water, and it does not say anything substantive about the internal
structure. If this is true, then we can do the same with God’s intrinsic nature. We can
say, there are such fundamental propositions, and that these propositions are non-
enumerable, where this notion of non-enumerability is not perfectly carving. These
claims are true claims about those propositions, but they do not capture the intrinsic
structure of the propositions.

37
  One might object here and say that God does not propositionally know his intrinsic nature. Maybe
God only has personal, or Franciscan knowledge of his intrinsic nature (on Franciscan knowledge, see
Keller (2018)). There is no reason to think that God couldn’t or does not know his intrinsic nature, at
least in part, propositionally. In the apophatic tradition, it seems that some do say that God knows his
intrinsic nature in this propositional sense. For example, while explaining the eternal generation of the
Son of God in the Trinity, St. Gregory the Theologian says, ‘But the manner of His generation we will
not admit that even Angels can conceive, much less you. Shall I tell you how it was? It was in a manner
known to the Father Who begot, and to the Son Who was begotten. Anything more than this is hidden by
a cloud, and escapes your dim sight’ (Third Theological Oration (Oration 29), ch. VIII).

13
 38 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

The second claim points to an important virtue of the account. It grounds God’s
ineffability in God’s infinitude. The non-fundamentally true propositions about
God’s intrinsic nature that we know about are infinitely beyond capturing the inter-
nal structure of the intrinsic nature of God or who God really is.38 We would expect
any plausible account of ineffability to make reference to God’s infinitude. This
account does exactly that. Thus, The apophatic thesis doesn’t only provide an expla-
nation of God’s ineffability, it provides a fitting explanation.

Consequences of the Account

There are some striking consequences of this account. First, my account suggests
that there is an infinite gap between what we currently know about God and what
God’s intrinsic nature really is. Recall that according to my account, fundamen-
tally true propositions about God have a non-enumerable structure. What is the gap
between non-enumerably infinite structures and finite structures? The gap is infinite.
I see this as an advantage of the account and not a problem. For in the afterlife, we
will continue to learn about God for an eternity and still never fully grasp his intrin-
sic nature.
Another, and more serious, consequence is that God’s intrinsic nature seems to
have a structure. The account does imply that God’s intrinsic nature has a struc-
ture.39 For how can a fundamentally true proposition about God’s intrinsic nature be
true if there is no structure to carve? For some this might not seem like a problem.
For others, it is a very serious problem because it seems to imply that God is not
metaphysically simple.40 If God has a non-enumerable structure, then how can God
be without parts? This is a difficult question to answer, and given the scope of this
paper, I cannot provide a fully satisfactory answer.
However, for those who accept the simplicity of God, they can either reject this
account or accept the claim that there could be an infinite structure without any parts.
The latter option can be motivated by the following two analogies. Think about the
structure of your phenomenal consciousness. Although there is structure there, does
the experience have parts? I do not think so. Your experience seems to have a strong

38
  Unlike the Ineffability Thesis, where non-fundamentally true propositions about God’s intrinsic nature
are groundless, the apophatic thesis tells us that there is an infinite gap between our knowledge of God
and who God really is. This infinite gap is grounded in the fact that fundamentally true propositions
about God’s intrinsic nature are infinitely far from the non-fundamentally true propositions that we know
about. By Contrast, since the Ineffability Thesis rejects the existence of fundamentally true propositions
about God’s intrinsic nature, then there is nothing that grounds the infinite gap between the non-funda-
mental and the fundamental.
39
  The claim that God’s intrinsic nature has structure is also a non-fundamentally true claim because that
claim does not carve God’s intrinsic nature perfectly. It merely refers to the fact that it has a structure,
e.g. the proposition that water has a structure does not carve the structure perfectly; it merely claims that
there is such a structure
40
  There are different conceptions of divine simplicity, and here I’m not talking about any specific con-
ception, but a more general conception of divine simplicity. For different conceptions of divine simplic-
ity, see Bradshaw (2010).

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 39

unity. The experience might have conceptual parts, as in parts that we can mentally
separate by our power of imagination, but it is not clear that it has actual metaphysi-
cal parts. The experience is simple, in some relevant sense of that word. Here is a
second analogy: consider our power of thinking about different things. I can think
about a cat, a tree, an abstract object, a person, and so on. My power of thinking has
structure. However, is it plausible to say that for each thing I think about, there has
to be a part in my intellect for that thing? If so, then my intellect would potentially
have an infinite amount of parts. A part for thinking about a cat, another part for
thinking about a dog, and so on. However, a more plausible and parsimonious view
is to hold that our intellect is simple but it has the power to produce many different
things. It has structure, but without the complexity. Another motivation to consider
comes from anyone who happens to be a trinitarian. A trinitarian must say, at the
least, that there are three divine persons who are not numerically identical with one
another. This claim seems to introduce some structure in the Godhead. This struc-
ture cannot imply complexity because if it did, then the trinitarian would be accused
of tritheism.
Of course, what I have said here is incomplete. Much more needs to be said to
defend the claim that there could be structure without any metaphysical parts. I, for
one, think some version of divine simplicity is compatible with God having struc-
ture, although I admit that it is not an obvious claim. I hope I have at least shown
that the claim is not completely and obviously incoherent with the example of phe-
nomenal consciousness and the power of the intellect. Moreover, a theist might have
other commitments (e.g. trinitarianism) that would force her to accept the claim that
there could be structure without complexity.

Conclusion

God’s ineffability is a perplexing topic. In this paper, I have argued for an account of
ineffability that relies on the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental
truths. This account is inspired by Jonathan Jacobs’ defense of ineffability. Unlike
his defense, however, my account has more to offer. First, my account does not
require the groundless thesis, a thesis that I argued we should be agnostic about, at
the very least. Second, my account does more than merely provide a defense for the
ineffability of God. It also provides a fitting explanation of why God is necessarily
ineffable. The explanation is the infinitude of God. It is fitting because it points to a
feature of God that we would expect any account of ineffability to point to. Surely if
God is ineffable, his infinitude has something to do with it. My account connects the
two in a clear and obvious way. God has an infinite structure and no finite creature
can produce a sentence or a thought that can perfectly carve God’s infinite structure.
The claim that God has an infinite structure seems to be intension with the
claim that God is simple. In order to accept the account and some version of sim-
plicity, we must then adopt a notion of structure that does not entail complexity.
We can find support for this notion in examples such as, our phenomenal con-
sciousness and our power of thinking about different things. Our vivacious expe-
riences seem to have structure, but they are also perfectly unified and without

13
 40 International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41

non-conceptual parts. Similarly, we have the power to think about many different
things, but we do not have a separate part for thinking about each one of those
things. Thus, although much more could be said about this notion of structure,
these examples suffice to show that this notion is not completely and obviously
incoherent. If so, then we have a few reasons to think that my account is compat-
ible with some versions of divine simplicity.

References
Alston, W. P. (1989). Divine nature and human language: Essays in philosophical theology. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
Armstrong, D. M. (1978). Universals and scientific realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boolos, G., Burgess, J. P., & Jeffrey, R. C. (2007). Computability and logic. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bradshaw, D. (2010). Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the division of Christendom. Milton
Keynes UK: Lightning Source.
Cameron, P. R. (2008). Truthmakers and ontological commitment: Or how to deal with complex
objects and mathematical ontology without getting into trouble. Philosophical Studies, 140(1),
1–18.
Craig, W. L. (2011). Nominalism and divine aseity. In J. L. Kvanvig (Ed.), Oxford studies in philoso-
phy of religion (Vol. 4, pp. 44–65). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Craig, W. L. (2016). God over all: Divine aseity and the challenge of platonism. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Craig, W. L. (2017). God and abstract objects: The coherence of theism: Aseity. Cham: Springer
International Publishing.
Davis, R. B. (2011). God and the platonic horde: A defense of limited conceptualism. Philosophia
Christi, 13(2), 289–303.
Fine, K. (2001). The question of realism. Philosopher’s Imprint, 1(1), 1–30.
Gendler, T. S., & Hawthorne, J. (2011). Conceivability and possibility. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gopnik, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (1997). Words, thoughts, and theories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hilbert, D., Ewald, W., Sieg, W., & Hallett, M. (2013). David Hilbert’s lectures on the foundations of
arithmetic and logic, 1917–1933. Heidelberg: Springer.
Jacobs, J. (2015). The ineffable, inconceivable, and incomprehensible God: Fundamentality and apo-
phatic theology. In J. L. Kvanvig (Ed.), Oxford studies in philosophy of religion (Vol. 6, pp.
158–176). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Keller, L. J. (2018). Divine ineffability and Franciscan knowledge. Res Philosophica, 3, 347–370.
Lewis, D. K. (1983). New work for a theory of universals. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 61(5),
343–377.
Lewis, D. K. (1986). On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: B. Blackwell.
Knepper, T. D., & In Kalmanson, L. (2017). Ineffability: An exercise in comparative philosophy of
religion. Cham: Springer.
Plantinga, A. (1974). The nature of necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Pruss, A. R. (2018). Infinity, causation, and paradox. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Salmon, N. U. (1986). Frege’s puzzle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shapiro, S. (1997). Philosophy of mathematics: Structure and ontology. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Sider, T. (2013). Writing the book of the world. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Soames, S. (1987). Direct reference, propositional attitudes and semantic content. Philosophical Top-
ics, 15(1), 47–87.
Swinburne, R. (1977). The coherence of theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
White, R. M. (2010). Talking about God: The concept of analogy and the problem of religious lan-
guage. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.

13
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (2021) 89:25–41 41

van Inwagen, P. (2004). A theory of properties. In D. W. Zimmerman (Ed.), Oxford studies in meta-
physics (Vol. 1, pp. 107–138). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Inwagen, P. (2009). God and other uncreated things. In K. Timpe (Ed.), Metaphysics and God: Essays
in Honor of Eleonore Stump (pp. 3–20). London: Routledge.

Publisher’s Note  Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

13