Language and Transcendence

Our scientifically oriented knowledge seeks to master reality, explain it, and bring it under the control of reason, but a delight in unknowing has also been part of the human experience. Even today, poets, philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists find that the contemplation of the insoluble is a source of joy, astonishment, and contentment.

One of the peculiar characteristics of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that exceed our conceptual grasp. 

We constantly push our thoughts to an extreme, so that our minds seem to slide naturally into an apprehension of transcendence.....Language has borders that we cannot cross. 

When we listen critically to our stuttering attempts to express ourselves, we become aware of an inexpressible otherness. “It is decisively the fact that language does have frontiers,” explains the British critic George Steiner, “that gives proof of a transcendent presence in the fabric of the world. It is just because we can go no further, because speech so marvellously fails us, that we experience the certitude of a divine meaning surpassing and enfolding ours.”

George Steiner, Language and Silence (London: 1967), 58-59.

Karen Armstrong, The Case for God (Alfred A. Knopf: 2009), xiv, xviii.