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God and the Philosophers

God & Humility

Benedict O’Connell argues we must recognise our limitations about knowing God.

As philosophers, we often like to think about what can be known. It is also important, however, to consider the reverse: what cannot be known – whether there may be certain truths that are simply beyond our understanding as human beings. I’m talking about ‘known unknowns’: things that we know that we don’t know, or that we simply cannot know. The philosophical candidates are varied: knowledge of the nature of objects as they are or ‘things-in-themselves’ rather than mere appearances of them; the nature of the mind and its relationship to the body; or the nature and existence of God.

I want to consider the theological question here, and how attitudes to God may be seen through the prism of the humility of recognising one’s limits.

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