‘Duae res sunt Deus et Scriptura Dei’: On the relation between unknowability and clarity in the thought of Martin Luther

Abstract

Can humans know God? The possible answers to that question are yes and no, and then some variations in between. In my book What no mind has conceived I have tried to develop and defend the position that the fairly consistent answer of the Christian church to this question during the first thirteen hundred years of its history was a “no, at least not apart from his incarnational revelation.” The reasons for considering this as the basic answer are partly the insistence of divine unknowability among the biblical authors, partly the development of this position by the church fathers by means of the Neoplatonic idea of the unknowable One.