Negative Theology: A Short Introduction

Preface

How do we speak about what cannot be said? How do we speak about God if God is ineffable? These paradoxical questions lie at the heart of one of the strangest traditions of philosophical and theological thought: negative theology. As a tradition of thought, negative theology goes back to the convergence of Greek philosophy with Jewish and Christian theology in the first century. Beginning with a seemingly simple claim about the ineffability or unsayability of God, negative theology evolved into a complex tradition of thought and spirituality. Today, together with a growing interest in patristic and medieval studies, negative theology enjoys renewed attention in contemporary philosophy and theology. While much has been said and written about negative theology in recent years, my impression is that there is still a need for a short introduction to a theme that can sometimes seem impenetrable by its very nature.

It may be argued that the main insights, problems, and enigmas of negative theology are far from being exclusive to this particular tradition of Western philosophy and theology. Other religious and philosophical traditions have been equally aware that the deepest truths about the universe and human existence cannot be put into words. During the Middle Ages, Islamic and Jewish philosophers developed their own versions of negative theology. It could also be argued that it bears certain similarities to Eastern philosophy and religion. However, it would be a step too far to investigate these similarities, even if there may have been influences from, for example, Indian philosophy in late antique Neoplatonism.¹ This short introduction does not attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of negative theology in all its complexities, but only to tell a generally coherent story about what has been said about what cannot be said.

As such, this short introduction is confined to describing the tradition as it evolved from late antique Greek, Jewish, and Christian thinking through the Middle Ages and into contemporary philosophy and theology. This should be more than enough to begin with, which is also why much has been left out for the sake of brevity and narrative coherence. The purpose is not to say everything there is to say about negative theology, but only to give a brief overview of the tradition. Those who are interested in a more thorough investigation may gain some impression of where to dive in, though I will not throw in too many references. Instead, I provide a list of suggestions for further reading at the end of the book. Many of the texts discussed in the following pages are available in William Franke’s two volumes of On What Cannot be Said (University of Notre Dame Press, 2007) on which I rely heavily. I have also made good use of Deirdre Carabine’s The Unknown God (Peeters Press, 1995) as well as Denys Turner’s The Darkness of God (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and Raoul Mortley’s From Word to Silence (Hanstein, 1986), even if I do not always agree with their conclusions.

I have used the most easily available translations of texts quoted, while also providing my own translations when needed (this is also the case for Bible quotations). When referring to ancient texts I use the commonly used English titles in the footnotes. Some of the material is based on my Ph.D. dissertation from 2014 about the relationship between negative theology and ethics in early Christian thought. The practical consequences of negative theology are also dealt with in this introduction. I hope to make it clear that we are not just dealing with some obscure activity of speculative thought, but with a living engagement with the mysteries of faith and philosophy—one with real-life implications.

Thanks to Benjamin Marco Dalton, William Franke, George Karamanolis, Søren Gosvig Olesen, and Kristoffer Garne for comments on the manuscript.

—Johannes Aakjær Steenbuch

Nylars, Denmark 2022

1

. See Knepper et al., Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion and Franke, Apophatic Paths from Europe to China.

Introduction

What Is Negative Theology?

"No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us (1 John 4:12). These words from the First Epistle of John—and other similar statements made by New Testament authors—capture a core element of what was later to be termed negative theology." Simply put, negative theology is a form of theology that talks about the divine by using negations: God is ineffable, invisible, unlimited, infinite, incomprehensible, and so on. For modern readers, unfamiliar with theological reasoning, the term negative theology may sound like an objection to theology, or even like atheism or nihilism. The original purpose of talking about God in Christian theology in this way was, however, neither to deny the existence of God, nor to promote the kind of agnostic indifference to religious matters that is widespread in contemporary post-modern societies. Its main purpose was to emphasize that faith exceeds mere objective, theoretical knowledge. Faith is, as in the case of the First Epistle of John, a matter of practice rather than just theory. We cannot know God through abstract concepts, but by faith and love we live in and participate in the reality of God.

Nevertheless, there is also a more obviously negative side to negative theology. Early Christian apologists often applied negative definitions of God in their attacks on pagan religion. If God cannot be known, seen, and comprehended, then everything we worship as idols must be rejected. Only later did negative theology become what can be called a speculative practice. At this point, pagan, Jewish, and Christian philosophers alike developed negative theology as a way of speaking about the otherwise ineffable God. In particular, this took place in the highly eclectic philosophical and religious milieus of first- to third-century Alexandria, Egypt. Beginning especially with the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 15 BC–50 AD), negative theology evolved in the Christian philosophy of Clement of Alexandria (150–215) and the pagan Neoplatonism of Plotinus (205–70). From that point on, negative theology developed in parallel in both Neoplatonism and Christian philosophy. This development culminated in the sixth century with Dionysius, whose synthesis of the Neoplatonism of Proclus Lycius (412–85) with Christian and Jewish doctrine became definitive for theology in the Middle Ages, not least as expressed by John Scotus Eriugena (815–77), Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c. 1328), and Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64).

Often, negative theology is also called apophatic theology, from the Greek word apophasis, which can mean denial or negation. As such, apophasis is typically understood in distinction to kataphasis, or talking in positive, affirmative propositions. Strictly speaking, though, apo-phasis means un-saying. When used as a rhetorical device, apophasis is a means of bringing up a subject by denying it (I will not mention that . . .). When applied to theology, this kind of negation can be understood as a kind of theology that unsays, withdraws, or retracts our concepts about the God we can perhaps have faith in, but not comprehend. God is not finite, God is not visible, God is not comprehensible, God can not be put into words, and so on. This is negative theology or apophasis in its most basic form. More broadly defined, however, negative theology can be thought of as any kind of discourse that emphasizes God’s ineffability, infinity, incomprehensibility, invisibility, and so on, even if such negative definitions are not used explicitly.

It may perhaps be argued that negative theology, for this reason, can by its very nature not be defined precisely. It is not as obvious as may seem at first sight that two instances of negative theology are actually parts of the same discourse, since the very object of negative theology cannot be defined in positive definitions. By its nature the meaning of negative theology is highly context-dependent as apophatic definitions always depend on what they deny. Negative theology cannot, for this reason, be abstracted from its wider theological, philosophical, religious, or even polemical, social, and political context. This should be kept in mind when considering negative theology as a tradition or history of thought.

Negative theology, despite its name, has rarely been applied for purely negative purposes. As already suggested, while applying negations to our definitions of God, negative theology does not for this reason deny the core beliefs of, for example, Christian theology, such as the divinity of the second person of the Trinity incarnate as Jesus Christ. On the contrary, negative theologians in the Christian tradition usually affirmed that God has revealed himself fully in Christ. But by doing so, God becomes both fully hidden and fully revealed, as Maximus the Confessor (580–662) would explain with reference to the Chalcedonian creed, where Christ is said to be both fully divine and fully human. Negative definitions of God are needed to preserve the mystery, as some Eastern Orthodox theologians are prone to say. The purpose is to avoid confusing our theology and dogmas about God with God himself.

The rejection of traditional metaphysics in the late Middle Ages led to new perspectives on negative theology. Following the Reformation in the sixteenth century, large parts of medieval philosophy and theology were rejected by Protestants and replaced by what was claimed to be a more scriptural approach to theology. Negative theology did not disappear, however, but took on novel forms as a result of the new emphasis on human depravity and the need for grace. With the speculations of Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) in the seventeenth century and strands of German idealism in the nineteenth century, once again, negative theology became influential in philosophy and theology. The somewhat mystical approach of medieval negative theologies was, nevertheless, often rejected by modern theology. In the twentieth century, Protestant theologians such as Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, and Eberhard Jüngel criticized traditional forms of negative theology for being too influenced by philosophical speculation, or the spirit of Plato.¹ They argued that we should focus on God’s revelation in Christ, since the idea of the hidden or the unknown God could easily become an excuse for inventing a God determined by us.² The true God is, however, revealed in Christ independently or even in opposition to whatever ideas and definitions—negative and positive alike—we may have of God.

Those adhering to some form of negative theology have typically replied that the opposite is just as much or even more the case: negative theology is, again, necessary so that we do not confuse our images and ideas of God with God himself. This, perhaps, explains why today negative theology enjoys renewed interest, especially among those who seek a vision of faith beyond the simplistic alternatives of fundamentalism and atheism. Negative theology points to a third way between or beyond two extremes that both fail to address the mystery at the heart of theology. I will not go into too much detail about these discussions, however, but only attempt to outline the wider historical narrative that informs some of the contemporary interest in negative theology.

The first part of this book