Abstract

For the theist, human knowledge of God’s nature is, at best, partial, and this implies that there are characteristics of God beyond our ken which I call ‘the unknown attributes’. However, this confessed ignorance, I argue, has largely unappreciated skeptical consequences for determining the scope of God’s power. Consider some mundane future state of affairs normally considered to be within the scope of God’s power. If it lies within the scope of God’s power, then it is consistent with God’s nature, and hence the unknown attributes. However, what grounds does the theist have for making this claim? More generally, we can ask: how do we know what God can do, if we don’t know what God is? I call this question The Problem of the Unknown Attributes, and take up and evaluate four plausible answers. I argue that the each of these answers fails, but close the paper by gesturing toward a partial reply. The overall aim of the paper is to draw out some of the skeptical consequences of human ignorance of God’s nature, and to thereby highlight an unrecognized tension in theistic thought.