Canter Bridge

The biblical psalms speak candidly about the fact that we praise out of partial knowledge.

One cannot know YHWH exhaustively, we are taught. Paradoxically, praise seems most dynamically forthcoming precisely when the psalmist comes to the limits of his own capacity to know YHWH. It is not that praise inhabits the unfathomable vacuum of mystery. One does not hurl oneself into the great void, there to praise. Rather, one knows YHWH truly by means of observing his ways in creation, redemption, and instruction, then in time becomes aware that YHWH’s virtues surpass both knowing and articulation.

One starts with what one knows of YHWH and praises in that space.

Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.
One generation will commend your works to another;
they will tell of your mighty acts. (Psalm 145:3–4 NIV)

The one-hundred-forty-fifth psalm—as many others—juxtaposes YHWH’s inscrutability, on the one hand, and the straight-forward declaration that the normal passing of legacy from one generation to another will include the summons to know YHWH’s acts, on the other.

There is no mindless contradiction in this. On the contrary, YHWH engages the minds of individuals, communities, and generations. Yet those who know YHWH best remind themselves how little of him they know.

Praise is sufficient comportment for those who know YHWH. Yet is it never exhaustive.

‘True religion’, to borrow a phrase from the New Testament while speaking of the Old, does not suppose that the High and Holy is not know-able. That way lies mindless spirituality capable of enervating, boring, and entrancing in about equal parts.

Nor does it suppose that it knows him exhaustively. There lies protean idolatry.

The psalms urge us toward praise that is sufficient to what we can know of a self-disclosing God. It praises his works and expectantly hopes for more.

Yet it raises open hands towards his heaven rather than crafting images of him with controlling, grasping fingers.