Brian Hamilton

The apophatic structure of theology

But whichever you think the ascending scale ends in, affirmation or negation, the common mistake—as I should think it to be—is in the shared misconstrual of the relationship between the moments of affirmation and the moments of negation; for that relationship structures theological utterance at every stage: indeed, it is this interplay of negativity and affirmation which structures all theological discourse precisely as theological….

Many students of the medieval “mysticisms” broadly categorise them into “apophatic” and “cataphatic” forms. Eschewing altogether the question how how they come to be called “mysticisms in the first place, Bernard of Clairvaux is obviously going to have to be a “cataphatic” mystic on the strength of the floridly erotic affirmativeness of his Sermons on the Song of Songs; so too is Julian of Norwich, whose exuberance of affirmative metaphor is unrivalled in the medieval period even by Bernard. But then by contrast the Cloud of Unknowing will have to be typically “apophatic”, characterised as that text is by “unknowings” and “nothings”, “nowhere’s” and “darknesses”; so too Eckhart, got his “deserts”, “abysses” and “no why’s, no whatnesses and no things”. Well indeed, but since when was a negative metaphor not a metaphor? Since when was the preference for negative metaphors any less or more a vote of confidence in speech than the preference for affirmative? The fact is that Julian’s riotous prolixity of affirmative metaphor is no less apophatic than the Cloud’s astringency; nor is the language of the Cloud any less dense of metaphor than is Julian’s. Though the metaphors differ and the apophatic strategies approach from different directions, they converge in a common perception that all language of God fails all the way along the line (or up the ladder): and in fact, this sense of the simultaneous necessity and deficiency of language is in some way exhibited more sharply in Julian’s habit of constructing metaphors which subvert themselves in the act of their very utterance; as when she shatters the imageries of gender precisely in the exploitation of the their full potential: “In our Mother Christ,” she says, “we grow and develop; in his mercy he reforms and restores us.”

—Denys Turner, “The Darkness of God and the Light of Christ: Negative Theology and Eucharistic Presence,” Modern Theology 15.2 (April 1999): 146-47.

30 April 2008 |
tags: Negative Theology