God Is Not Defined

Throughout reading Professor Chris Anderson's book and even in class while discussing Augustine's, I have been confused. We, as a class, have talked about how God is undefinable and no one can say that certain facts proved that God is or did such and such. I am just confused.

Quoting from my professor's book:
[He is quoting from Augustine] "'O highest and best, most powerful, most merciful and most just, most deeply hidden and most nearly present, most beautiful and most strong, constant yet incomprehensible. . . . My God, my Life, my holy sweetness, what does any man succeed in saying when he attempts to speak of you?' (19; 1.4)
The answer: nothing. No one can succeed in saying anything sufficient or definitive about God. Yet it’s just this greatness that calls forth our creativity and our imagery and all our language. In the face of such beauty we must abandon propriety and abandon logic and let our hearts swell with what we long for and what we believe.” (110-Teaching as Believing)

It seems to me that logic is what teaches us what truth is, not our feelings or our experience or our senses. Those things can lie. Perceptions are not necessarily true.
I don’t understand how we can know any of God’s qualities then. How can we say He is all-powerful, or just. I guess I just do not understand how we can say can is anything unless we have observed it.

I agree with what Augustine says when he says, “I wanted to be just as certain about things which I could not see as I was certain that seven and three make ten.”(Book 6 Chapter 4)

In my professor’s book he quotes Friedich von Hugel, he says, “’Never try to get things too clear. Religion can’t be clear. In this mixed up life there is always an element of unclearness. How can it be otherwise if Christianity is our idea? If I could understand religion as I understand that two and two make four, it would not be worth having. To me, if I can see things through and through, I get uneasy – I feel it’s a fake. I know I have left something out, I’ve made some mistake. (123- Teaching as Believing)

Maybe I am misunderstanding what Augustine is saying, but I think the two are saying the exact opposite thing. Ambrose was preaching that the Bible did not need to be taken literally, but Augustine did not know if this was true or not. He wanted to know what truth was no matter if it was unseen or seen. He did not want to jump to any conclusions about what truth was until he studied it out further.

I don’t think that we need to disbelieve or distrust what we see just because we can see it. God gave us those sensibilities for a purpose, plus he gave us reason , judgment, and logic. I don’t think we should disregard these. They were God given.