When scientific investigation is pursued into the micro - it bottoms out in the quantum world, which is not understood. Similarly on the macro - temporal investigation ends when it encounters the Big Bang, leaving you either way facing a miracle at the beginning of space and time.
Finite intelligence is surrounded by a cloud of mystery and something akin to the miraculous, which acts as a buffer between the finite and the infinite.
There is a danger in reducing religious faith to the rational. God allows reason to intersect with revelation, and faith allows one to place confidence in the logical conclusion of the evidence presented. There will be a gap in perception where faith is necessary because a finite mind is contending with an infinite mind.
"If you’re finite in your intelligence, as all men are, then near the limits of understanding—whether the macrocosm of the universe or the microcosm of the psyche—there lies an unknown wrapped in a miracle."
The primary limits to human understanding are established by the Agrippa Trilemma, also known as the Münchhausen trilemma, which demonstrates logically that any attempt to prove a truth through autonomous reason must fail by falling into infinite regress, circularity, or dogmatic assumption.
In an autonomous epistemological system, where the human mind attempts to function as the ultimate authority, justification becomes an illusion because finite beings cannot traverse an infinite series of proofs, and "self-evident" axioms are just arbitrary stops in the chain of reasoning.
Human understanding is limited by the "Myth of the Given," which argues that raw sensory data cannot logically justify propositional beliefs; sensations merely cause beliefs but do not provide an account of why those beliefs are true.
The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God (TAG) shifts the focus from individual truth claims to the preconditions for the possibility of knowledge itself.
TAG asserts that the only way to avoid the skepticism inherent in the trilemma is to acknowledge that logic, science, and morality require a non-contingent, personal foundation. Any other position in impossible: if the Christian worldview is not presupposed, then the very foundations of rationality, such as the laws of logic and the uniformity of nature - cannot be justified and knowledge becomes impossible.
TAG maintains that any truly ultimate standard must be self-attesting; for God to be the highest authority, He cannot be judged by a standard outside of Himself. Thus, while human reason is finite and prone to skepticism, it can attain true knowledge by surrendering its pretended autonomy to divine revelation.
In this framework, understanding is no longer a matter of building up to God from sense data (as in Natural Theology), which often leads to worshipping a generic philosophical concept. Instead, knowledge is received as a gift from God, bridging the unbridgeable gulf between man and transcendent Truth through the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ.
TAG impacts understanding by providing a theonomous epistemology where God’s Word is the foundation that authenticates everything else, making the world and our experience of it truly intelligible. Consequently, the limit to understanding is the rejection of the Creator; conversely, the beginning of knowledge is the presupposition of the Lord.