Psalm 99

"He is holy"

Psalm 99 is described as an enthronement psalm, a song of praise exulting the kingship of God. What strikes me about the psalm is the repeated refrain, "He is holy."

Holiness has moral, cultic, and ontological implications. I'd like to focus on the ontological. Specifically, the holiness of God, God's "set apartness," speaks to God's Otherness, God's qualitative difference from creation.  Nicholas of Cusa described God as non aliud, God as "not-other." That is, God cannot be "other" than us as a "different sort of thing." Which is why God is often called "Wholly Other," with a capital "O." God is so different that the word "different" doesn't apply. God is so other that the word "other" fails. 

Appreciating all this about God was a long time in coming for me. My mind was long poisoned by that literalness frequently found among atheists. But once the insight arrived beaome a touchstone in both my devotional life and theological thinking.

A breakthrough moment for me came in reading The Divine Names by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Writing in the 5th or 6th centuries, Pseudo-Dionysius creates in The Divine Names, along with his other works, a fusion between Neoplatonic philosophy and Christianity. In doing so, Pseudo-Dionysius becomes one of the great theologians of the apophatic and mystical tradition, what some call the Via Negativa of theology.

In regards to God's ontological difference, in The Divine Names Pseudo-Dionysius describes God as "the Nameless One." God cannot be named because God "transcends all things." God is "at total remove" from the "totality of existence." 

And yet, while God cannot be praised as "word or power or mind or life or being," God is "the cause of everything" and "at the center of everything." 

Pseudo-Dionysius goes on to pile up names and descriptions for God. God is the Source of every source.  God is the Being of beings. God is the Life of the living. God is the Sacred Stability upon which we stand. God is the Center around which all things revolve. God is the Destiny of everything. God is the Longing of every creature.

It goes on, these mystical descriptions, our achingly feeble attempts to catch a glimpse the Uncreated Light. 

But it all comes back to: "He is holy."

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