Inscrutability

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” Romans 11:33 NIV

“The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.”

-Immanuel Kant The above quote from Kant highlights an important facet of our existence, i.e., while it is impossible to know with certainty why we exist, or why anything exists, the cosmos is intelligible. We can measure and understand the cause and effects of phenomena. The character trait of inscrutability is an important one in many eastern Religions. Sages and saints often speak in parables or allegorically, saying just enough to pique our interest, but not explicitly explaining everything in detail. This is not so that they might appear wise, but so that everyone may interpret and draw their own conclusions from what they say. In this way, a pithy aphorism truly becomes one’s own wisdom.

Philosophers have a habit of overexplaining. Sages and saints will often say very little and leave it to the listener to make their own truths. But there is another, and perhaps deeper reason to be inscrutable, and that is because God’s ways are inscrutable, and indeed unfathomable. Why is there something rather than nothing? Who can say?

(Perhaps it is because God is love and love always wants to share; creation is God’s way to share Himself.) Why is there evil in the world? Who knows? All the great truths of religion, and indeed existence itself, are inscrutable? We can formulate reasonable questions, questions that mean something, but there are no definitive answers, and in the end, we just have to say “We don’t know.” And that is why wise men and women are inscrutable. They also don’t know.

–Christopher Simon