The Best Apophatic Theologian

A case of contradictories, both of them true.

There is a God. There is no God.

Where is the problem? I am quite sure that

there is a God in the sense that I am

sure my love is no illusion. I am quite sure

there is no God, in the sense that I am sure

there is nothing which resembles what

I can conceive when I say that word.

Simone Weil, quoted in this format in the book for lovers of god everywhere, by Roger Housden, p. 148.

I never cease to be amazed at the wisdom of this young woman who chose to die in the Second World War in fellowship with the people of occupied France. She was born into a Jewish family in Paris, but remained agnostic most of her life. She was drawn to Christianity but refused to be baptized. She was too open to the wisdom of the ages to limit herself to the dogmas of the Church. T. S. Eliot famously called her “a woman of genius, a kind of genius akin to that of the saints.” She is indeed among the great cloud of witnesses not recognized by institutional Christianity. In this quote she expresses the dual cataphatic-apophatic aspect of theology better than any theologian or patristic scholar ever did.