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Negative Theologies and the Cross

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Paul Rorem
Paul Rorem*
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary
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Extract

So many postmodern theologians are busy retrieving “negative theology,” while others label such retrievals “misconstruals,” that observers might be tempted to conclude that there was, or is, such a single thing as “negative theology.” Yet anyone seeking a definition or even sampling relevant texts encounters a diverse array of premodern apophatic authors with a multiplicity of negative theologies. I here survey some of the diverse strands of Christian negative theology and argue in favor of one strand of that tradition in relation to Christ, the incarnation, and the cross.

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ARTICLES
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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 101 , Issue 3-4: Centennial Issue 1908–2008 , October 2008 , pp. 451 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © President and fellows of Harvard college 2008

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References

1 I thank Harvard Divinity School for the invitation and hospitality surrounding the Dudleian Lecture on 17 April 2008. I am most grateful to Sarah Coakley for her specific critique, as partially reflected in this revised text.

2 Negative theology has “both a grammar and a vocabulary … the positive vocabulary of saying,” not just a grammar of unsaying, writes Mark Burrows, “Words that Reach into the Silence: Mystical Languages of Unsaying,” in Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality (ed. Mark Burrows and Elizabeth A. Dreyer; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) 213.

3 But see Denys Turner, “Apophaticism, Idolatry and the Claims of Reason,” in Silence and the Word (ed. O. Davies and D. Turner; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 11–34, for links from some of these same premodern authors to various postmodern discussions.

4 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses 2.227 (trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson; New York: Paulist Press, 1978) 114.

5 Gregory, Life of Moses 2.230.

6 Ibid. 2.234–235.

7 Ibid. 2.239.

8 Ibid. 2.251.

9 Ibid. 2.252.

10 Ibid. 2.231.

11 For an overview, see Daniélou, “Platonisme et théologie mystique (Paris: Aubier, 1944); for more detail, see Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (4 vols.; New York: Crossroads, 1994) 1:14. McGinn describes Gregory's as “the first systematic negative theology in Christian history.”

12 Gregory, Commentary on the Song of Songs (trans. C. McCambley; Brookline, Mass.: Hellenic College Press, 1987) 218.

13 McGinn, The Presence of God, 2:216.

14 Ibid., 2:260; William of Saint Thierry, The Way to Divine Union (trans. M. Basil Pennington; Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1998) 95.

15 On Contemplating God (ed. Sister Penelope; Cistercian Fathers Series 3; Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1977) 137.

16 “The Trace of the Other,” in Deconstruction in Context (ed. Mark C. Taylor; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 359. I owe this reference to a helpful conversation with Stacy Johnson.

17 Contra Eunomium 1.291, lines 15–20 (trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson; PG 45:340D; NPNF2 5:62) 112. See Deirdre Carabine, “Gregory of Nyssa on the Incomprehensibility of God,” in The Relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity (ed. T. Finan and V. Twomey; Dublin: Four Courts, 1992) 98.

18 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names 1.589B. All translations of Pseudo-Dionysius are from Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works (trans. Colm Luibheid; New York: Paulist Press, 1987).

19 Ibid.

20 Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 53–57; 194–205, with other studies mentioned there.

21 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology 1.1001A.

22 Ibid., Divine Names 13.981B.

23 Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (ed. Simon Tugwell; New York: Paulist Press, 1988) 158, trans. adjusted.

24 McGinn, Presence of God, 4:23–24; see also my Commentary, 214–25.

25 Albert and Thomas, 198.

26 Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense (ed. Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn; New York: Paulist Press, 1981) 199–203. To be abbreviated as Essential Eckhart.

27 Essential Eckhart, 280; Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher (ed. Bernard McGinn; New York: Paulist Press, 1986) 70. To be abbreviated Eckhart, Teacher.

28 Essential Eckhart, 206–7. Si comprehendis, non est Deus. “If you understand [it], it is not God.” (Augustine's Sermon 117.3.5 (PL 38:663).

29 Eckhart, Teacher, 117.

30 Ibid., 118; Pseudo-Dionysius, Letter One 1065B.

31 Eckhart, Teacher, 254.

32 Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995) 131.

33 Bernard McGinn, “The Hidden God in Luther and Some Mystics,” in Silence and the Word, 103–10. See also McGinn's forthcoming essay, “Three Forms of Negativity in Christian Mysticism,” in Sciences and Religions: Knowing the Unknowable about God and the Universe (ed. John W. Bowker; London: I.B. Tauris).

34 For Eckhart and Dionysius, see Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart (New York: Crossroads, 2001) 177–78.

35 See especially the discussion between Derrida and Marion in Jean-Luc Marion, “In the Name, How to Avoid Speaking of ‘Negative Theology,' ” in God, the Gift and Postmodernism (ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon; Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1999) 42–47, 68–70. Jeffrey Fisher argues for the compatibility of Derrida and Dionysius in “The Theology of Dis/similarity: Negation in Pseudo-Dionysius,” The Journal of Religion 81 (2001) 529–48.

36 PG 4:429; of uncertain authorship, not by John of Scythopolis, perhaps by Maximus.

37 Grace Jantzen, Power, Gender, and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 109; Beverly Lanzetta, “Via Feminina and the Un-saying of ‘Woman,' ” in Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Theology (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005) 15–16.

38 PG 4:421AB. See Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) 244.

39 PG 4:432B, Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis, 248 [emphasis added].

40 Maximus, Chapters on Knowledge 2.82–83, in Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings (ed. and trans. George C. Berthold; New York: Paulist Press, 1985) 144.

41 Maximus, Chapters on Knowledge 2:76; Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996) 52–54.

42 Ysabel de Andia has written eloquently on the Dionysian apophatic and on the cross in Dionysius: “La théologie négative et la croix,” in Denys l'Aréopagite. Tradition et métamorphoses (Paris: J. Vrin, 2006) 107–27. Yet she does not establish any direct linkage between the apophatic and the cross in Dionysius, in my judgment.

43 Letter Three, 1069B. I owe this qualification to the helpful critique of Charles Stang, whose Harvard dissertation develops a Dionysian apophatic anthropology in another way.

44 Bonaventure, The Soul's Journey into God 7.4 (ed. and trans. Ewert Cousins; New York: Paulist Press, 1978) 113.

45 Ibid. 7.5.

46 Ibid. 7.6.

47 Paul Rorem, “Martin Luther's Christocentric Critique of Pseudo-Dionysian Spirituality,” Lutheran Quarterly 11 (1997) 291–307.

48 Luther's Works (ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann; 55 vols.; St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–) 36:109; Luthers Werke (ed. J. F. K. Knaake et al.; 57 vols.; Kritische Gesamtausgabe; Weimar: Bohlau, 1883–) 6:562, lines 8–13 (hereafter cited as WA).

49 Luther's Works, 10:119–20; WA 3:124, lines 32–35.

50 See also Luther's comment that “inexperienced monks rise into heaven with their speculations and think about God as He is in himself. From this absolute God everyone should flee who does not want to perish,” Luther's Works 12:312; WA 40/2:329.

51 Luther's Works, 13:110–11; WA 40/3:543, lines 8–13.

52 See now Vitor Westhelle, The Scandalous God: The Use and Abuse of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006). In the fourth (1954) edition of Walther von Loewenich's classic Luthers theologia crucis (Munich: Kaiser, 1954), his new “Afterword” reconsidered how Luther's theology of the cross related to prior traditions of mysticism (245–48).

53 WA 5:176, lines 27–33. Cf. WA 56:299, line 27, to 300, line 3; Luther's Works, 25:287.

54 Scholia 340.4 on Divine Names 7.865B; Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis, 226.

55 David Tracy uses and advances Brian Gerrish's categories of Hiddenness 1 and Hiddenness 2, in “The Hidden God: The Divine Other of Liberation,” Cross Currents 46 (1996) 5–16.

56 Luther's Works, 42:10; G. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997) 3, 8.

57 Besides his direct expositions of Maximus, such as The Cosmic Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003), see the eloquent little “elucidation” on “The Unknown God,” Elucidations (trans. John Riches; London: SPCK, 1975) 18–25.