Psalm 147:5 New American Standard Bible
5 Great is our Lord
and abundant in strength;
His understanding is infinite.
The NASB gives a marginal reading for [a] (the word “infinite”) as literally “innumerable.”
In 1968 I took a graduate course in Mathematics labeled Set Theory. There was a very astute Catholic nun in our class. We sort of gravitated to each other because we both openly identified ourselves as Christian. We often compared notes with each other and encouraged each other in the faith. One day our teacher talked about infinity. An obviously infinite set is the regular counting numbers[2] Z = {1, 2, 3, …}. This set Z is clearly infinite because there is no biggest number. [You can reason that if x is the biggest number in Z then clearly x + 1 is also n Z, so our assumption was false.]
Our teacher then reasoned that the set of all fractions Q of integers is also infinite because it contains the integers [{1/1, 2/1. 3/1, …} are all fractions.] He then proceeded to show that Q has no more numbers in it than Z. So, he called this kind of infinity countable or numerable. Then our teacher went on to show that the set of all real numbers R is infinite, but Cantor proved very ingeniously that R is not numerable. So, the infinity of R is a bigger infinity than that of Z. We call it uncountable or innumerable.
Realizing that there are at least two different infinities, one bigger than the other, the natural question is: “Are there more infinities, even bigger than the two we have discovered?” He went on to show that there are bigger and bigger infinities.
My nun friend and I walked out, both of our heads buzzing with this new concept we had talked about. Finally, she looked at me and stated, “I don’t care about all that. For me God is Infinity and Infinity is God! That’s all I need to know!”
Is God infinite for you? If so what kind of infinity is your God? How does this affect your concept of God?
[1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/egPANcJWOWs/maxresdefault.jpg
[2] We use Z because the word for counting numbers in German is Zahle. We use Q because the set of fractions can be described as the set of quotients of integers. And we use R for all numbers including numbers that are not quotients of integers, such as π, √2, √3, e, etc.
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