Embodied Apophaticism

"Let me confess too that I do not know myself. For what I know of myself I know because you grant me light, and what I do not know of myself, I do not know until such a time as my darkness becomes 'as noonday' before your face."

- St. Augustine - Confessions -

Before I begin, I am indebted to the research & writings of a blog I happened across one day on Twitter. Through my journeys in various Christian backgrounds & denominations I had not yet encountered a rich resource of Eastern Orthodox theology until I found Alvin Rapien's blog. Here, I discovered a well of clearly & succinctly written entries spanning issues in interpretation, theology, & church practice. So to begin, I will point you to the resources which enabled me to write today's essay here, here, & here.

In this essay, I will address an important and often neglected reality of our everyday life: how difficult it is, on the whole, to know oneself. Identity, especially engendered and sexed identity, contends to be the most insatiable topic of our time. So where do we look to understand one's identity? Do we situate our self-knowledge in a social context? In subjective experiences? In desire? Here, I will argue that the inherent difficulty in knowing oneself is in fact a great clue to a constructive formulation of one's identity. I suggest we recognize an embodied apophaticism.

What is apophaticism?

Say it with me: Apophaticism. As difficult as it is to pronounce, it is more difficult to nail down exactly what it means. So, let me throw another big word at you: Cataphatic. No, not someone obsessed with cats. Cataphatic theology concerns positive or affirmative ways to think about & discuss God. God is eternal. God is Triune. God is a lot easier to say than apophatic or cataphatic. Most of us, myself included, always experienced theology as a study of things we know about God. However, I was unaware that a distinction exists between what we can say about God affirmatively contrasted with things we can say about God negatively. In way-too-simple terms, apophaticism is speaking by negation.

But let's move beyond way-too-simple terms. Alvin Rapien suggests the following definition, "Thus, one may define apophatic theology as the discourse about God which is a failure of speech when faced with God's incomprehensibility & Otherness." In theology, apophaticism is a way to learn more about a God who is inherently incomprehensible yet is made known, Other yet inviting us into unity with Him. Part of the failure is on our own language & experience to speak truly about God. I may believe that God is love, but my understanding of love is such that compared to God's love, what I speak of is so limited & inaccurate to the reality that I may perhaps also say, "God is not love." This is not intended to be a simple contradiction, but rather a kind of affirmation in light of one's own limits & finitude.

As we consider our own existence, there is also a gap between our identity & who we really are. I wrote previously on the importance of thinking things through, the reality of our own experience speaks to how difficult it is to use tools to define & understand oneself. Part of the failure falls on our limited experiences & language, but beyond this exists an additional issue. We are more than our own self understanding. We are more than our self-constituted identity. The Christian Scriptures call it being made in the Image of God, and if we are made in His image, then there is a sense in which we reflect His incomprehensibility & otherness. Thus, we exist in a tension of knowing enough to know that we are, in some ways, unknowable. We are familiar with ourselves, but there is an Otherness at heart in the self. In the end, the language of apophaticism only begins to express a deeper reality of unknowability. So, what does it mean to live in light of this apophaticism?

Living in the Tension

We tend to associate doubt as a problem of knowledge, as if knowing is the answer and not part of the problem. But the words of Christ show doubt is an issue of faith & not one of mere knowledge. If we are to live in the tension of our own unknowability, then we cannot propose to simply know more. An embodied apophaticism is the way of humility & courage.

In the opening quote of this essay, Augustine begins with two important words, "I confess..." Further, he acknowledges that what self-knowledge he has is already a gift from God, but there still remains a further gift yet to be given. An embodied apophaticism humbly confesses what we don't know & humbly accepts what we do know as a gift. Pride enables the egoist to cut down all in his path to protect what he thinks he knows of himself. Pride prevents you & I from accepting the quiet & consistent affirmations from those around us that we are known, loved, & seen. Humility accepts the Otherness of the self & receives the gift of being seen by an Other.

Notice also the imagery Augustine uses of light, darkness, & noonday. The self-aware person does not see the fullness of herself. She sees glimpses. She sees in part, not in full. Now think about the phrase, "until such a time." The present reality for a Christian is one of not-yet. We humbly receive the gifts of grace & light through Christ. This is embodied apophaticism. Humbly accepting what is now given, humbly waiting for the fullness to come. For then, we shall fully know even as now we are fully known.

The Church will never hold all the answers, but in the preaching of the Word & the Sacraments, she points to who we really are. Our existence is the gift of embodied apophaticism. We begin when we humbly accept what is known, humbly confess what is lacking & unknown, & humbly hoping for what will come to be & be known. So be of good courage. Take courage that in Christ you are called sons & daughters of God. Take courage that in Christ you are called to a body meant to build one another up in love. When you consider yourself, count it a joy to rest in what you know, confess what you don't, and express who you are in Christ, with courage.