For a healthy balance between the apophatic and kataphatic we should look to the liturgy. The liturgy is a complex performance, a ritualized midrash on Holy Scripture that alternates between moments of knowing and not-knowing. Think of the Sanctus, where the seraphic hymn of “holy, holy, holy” declares the LORD’s radical otherness even as it announces his presence among us. The readings and their commentary in the sermon would seem to represent a powerfully kataphatic moment, and so they are; we do not proclaim the gospel with our fingers crossed. And yet the public reading of Scripture, a practice especially dear to Anglicans, reminds us that there is always more of Scripture than we can exhaust with our ideas about it. Sadly, the lectionary regularly edits out some of the weirder stuff in the Bible. We could use more of the weird stuff — more reminders that God is God, and that there is always more of God to know. Yet at the heart of the entire liturgy stands the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, in whom the invisible God has made himself startlingly well-known to us humans. The passion is a divine mystery that in a certain way excludes us; it is God who is the agent here, not ourselves. And yet the assembly that celebrates it is the body of Christ, the community of those who have been incorporated into Christ’s passion and death, and in him offer their worship to the Father.
