Shall we turn out the light?

I pulled out a book this morning that I had read (and have re-read) many times, A History of God, by Karen Armstrong. In the short time every day I have for my blogging, I clearly cannot make it through the whole of her 400 plus page volume (minus notes, suggested reading, index, etc.) I decided to page back to the final chapter, "Does God have a future?" which honestly might be a good title for this blog. In that final chapter, she takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of many contemporary theologies of the last century. Read quickly, it sets one's head spinning very fast.
I decided to go instead to the index and do a little browsing after looking up references to the via negativa school of theology and philosophy. Without making any presuppositions about the nature of "God," the via negativa tries to put into words something of a more-than and at the same time, less-than, approach to the numinous than traditional theism. It does not, of course, take very long to see that non-theism is not really a novelty, even in the Christian West, which has tended to emphasize a more concrete/rational approach to religion than many others. I found it captivating to read her summary of the theological method of Erigena. Her discussion is so good, that I hope that I am not doing wrong by inserting an extended quote:

Erigena used the dialectical method...in his own discussion of God, who could only be explained by a paradox that reminded us of the limitations of our human understanding. Both the positive and the negative approaches to God were valid. God is incomprehensible: even the angels do not know or understand his essential nature, but is is acceptable to make a positive statement, such as "God is wise," because when we refer it to God, we know that we are not using the word "wise" in the usual way. We remind ourselves of this by going on to make a negative statement, saying "God is not wise." The paradox forces us to move on to Denys's (Denys the Areopagite sometimes referred to as pseudo-Denys) third way of talking about God, when we conclude: "God is more than wise." This was what the Greeks called an apophatic statement, because we do not understand what "more than wise" can possibly mean. Again, this was not simply a verbal trick but a discipline (emphasis added) that by juxtaposing two mutally exclusive statements helps us to cultivate a sense of the mystery that our word "God" represents, since it can never be confined to a merely human concept.

She goes on to illustrate how Erigena used this same "discipline" in the examination of the statement "God exists." You can work it out yourself, of course. This leads to "God does not exist" and then "God is more than existence." Finally, this is, of course, incomprehensible since we cannot really understand something that is "more than existence." This means that God is not a being. In fact, God is "nothing."

The employment of the "via negativa" or the paradox is not unique to Christianity. Any of us who have encountered the "Koan" for example of Zen can understand that the use of paradox is, if you will, a "discipline" that allows us to perhaps escape in a limited sense our use of language in talking about the numinous. This is, of course, a paradox again in that if we admit that we cannot use language to talk about God, we have just done that. It is the logical partner of "This statement is false."

I think that, as we introduce ideas for "consideration" to help us live an answer to the "Does God have a future?" question, we should always have in our minds this essential paradox. To the extent that we do not negate each/every positive statement about "what God is" we are simply bringing back a "God-being" in a new disguise. For every "light" that we turn on, we must acknowledge the shadows that we are to create.

Perhaps again, a little silence to be the "negative answer" to speech?

Don't worry, I'll turn out the light.

Jeffrey Shy
(sittin' in the dark)
Mesa, Arizona