This post arose out of an email
conversation with Bruce Charlton during which he expressed the opinion that
negative theology was unsuitable for our times. I agreed though I would say
it's especially unsuitable for now as I believe it to have
shortcomings which render it of limited use at any time. It certainly makes
important points but it also has the defects of its qualities so would always
need to be balanced by a more positive attitude to God and the universe.
In negative or apophatic theology God is considered in terms of his unknowability. He is divine darkness rather than light, the inexpressible truth beyond form, the unmanifest Void behind the created world. This approach to God, springing from Neo-Platonism rather than anything Jesus taught, has always been attractive to a certain type of intellectual but, unless it is balanced by an approach that focuses on the positive qualities of God, it can potentially mislead the would-be mystic. The sort of temperament drawn to it might be confirmed in its own weaknesses and take refuge in a reductionist spirituality which ignores the truth in creation and in ourselves as created beings. We are meant to fully embrace creation though always seeing it in the light of the Creator.
Negative theology can be a useful
corrective in a culture which sees God in strong anthropomorphic terms or else
one over-fixated on ritual and commandment. It can help to reduce focus on the
form of God when that becomes too prominent. But in a basically God-denying
society such as ours it can become an escape into abstraction and an evasion of
spiritual responsibility. From a certain perspective there is
a profound truth in it but if negative theology were what really
mattered then the life story of Christ would have ended at the Crucifixion.
However, it went on to the Resurrection and the Ascension, both of which
involved the validation of the body which in a negative theology can have no
real meaning or purpose.
The Buddha last words were, ‘Work hard to
gain your own salvation’. Sound advice but not very inspiring and somewhat dry.
This is negative theology. Christ's last words to his disciples were, "I
am with you even unto the end of days". What could be more beautiful and full
of love? That's the opposite to negative theology.
If you are tempted in the direction of
negative theology, be aware of its shortcomings. Seemingly a philosophy
pointing to a high spiritual state, it can actually be a rejection of the
goodness in creation and the idea of a personally loving Creator. Its Christian
advocates try to fit Jesus into their scheme of things but really they go
against what he taught. Jesus’s first miracle was changing water into wine. In
their worldview there's no real difference between water and wine so he
was wasting his time.
What the negative theologians miss is the
importance in spirituality of quality. God is in everything but he is not in
everything equally. That is the apparent paradox which they do not resolve but
it is easy to resolve if you accept creation as real. And people as real for
that matter because people are not really real in a negative theology
universe. They are outgrown when you see the truth just as in certain forms of
Indian philosophy.
When all is said and done, negative
theology, the theology of darkness, is reductionist and, being the polar
opposite to materialism, has a lot in common with it. The materialistic atheist
and the non-theistic negative theologian both miss that life is not just spirit
and not just matter but a creative union of the two together which is much
richer than either on its own.
God is not unknowable. We can never
comprehend the totality of him but we are made in his image and we certainly
can know him when we turn to him in our hearts. He is there, not as impersonal
being but as our loving Father. "Show us the Father" said the apostle
Philip, to which Jesus replied "Anyone who has seen me has seen the
Father."
It might be said that I have argued in
this piece not against negative theology itself but against the misuse or
misunderstanding of negative theology. Possibly so, but the fact is by its very
nature this doctrine lends itself to misuse. Unless counterbalanced by a strong
awareness of God as Creator and the reality of the human soul and the truth in
creation plus an awareness of the hierarchical nature of the divine qualities
of goodness, beauty and truth, it can result in the extinction of the self
rather than its raising up into spiritual glory which is God’s purpose in creating
us as demonstrated at the Ascension. Jesus did not rise up into darkness. He
rose into light. This is the purpose of creation. To make darkness into light
not to return to darkness.
Well said. In the end, I suspect that the negative theology people are not Christian and do not want to go to be resurrected nor go to Heaven after death. I think some people yearn deeply and sincerely for peace, stillness, loss of ego and the end to all suffering. I expect God will grant them what they want, but it is not what Jesus came to give us.
ReplyDeleteThanks for setting me off on this train of thought.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is peace, stillness, loss of ego and the end to all suffering might be seen as wonderful in the light of the travails of this world, and they are wonderful. I'm not disputing that for a moment. But are they enough, given we have eternity? I don't think so. I believe, as do you, I know, that God has more to give us if we wish to take it.
It is important to not equate all births as the same. At the very least, the distinction between a good birth and a bad birth must be preserved. Even among good and bad births, there is further gradation.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, a distinction between a practice that improves the character, and a practice that detoriates the character.
It is also noticible that getting a better birth involves sacrifice, not only of the lowest happiness but also of your current highest happiness.
For example, in my own case, I am averse to bodily pain. I find myself preferring meditating walking/lying down rather than sitting. Improvement demands that I sit and meditate, even though it is not as peaceful & also painful at times.
So, I cannot unconditionally extoll the best meditative states I can reach. Sometimes, sacrifice is also of the very best states one can achieve, so that foundations for an even better height are laid.
Dear Aditya, Please don't punish yourself now in the hope of gaining a future advantage. Sacrifice means making something holy by renouncing all personal gain and doing it out of love for God or one of His creatures. If you read some of the Catholic mystics of the Middle Ages, you will see that sacrifice became sweet to them, as it increased their love of God. All evil is a holding back, an attempt to claim something for ourselves. Christ gave His all. I don't know how what you say relates to negative theology, but I might add that there is no place for personal love in the apophatic approach (and all love is personal). It seems to me that negative theology was a kind of footnote in Aquinas and others, not a major theme, for Christ was always at the center for Thomas and the better scholastics. It can be a way of keeping God and saving face for believers who want to keep their intellectual credentials but wish to dissociate themselves from "unsophisticated" devotion. Reincarnation should not become a principal concern in the spiritual life, but an aid to understanding and dealing with our present circumstances. It can be bypassed, which is wise if it becomes a distraction. We are not here to punish ourselves in this life so that we can get a better birth in the future. As St. Paul says, "Now is the acceptable time."
ReplyDeleteHello Edwin,
ReplyDeleteTheology is too grand a word for what I am trying to do. All I am trying to do is to map out meditative dwellings. A good theology has to attend to virtue, concentration, wisdom. This just attends to concentration.
A map for a meditation based on sense organs is as good as any other. The concentration dwellings thus obtained are called limitless dwellings.
For example, one could meditate on a red object. A red object is seen as red. This is the first dwelling.
As this dwelling is persued, the next dwelling comes to be. Here the object vanishes! That is, the red object becomes very hard to come into the mind. Instead, the all is seen as red.
In the second dwelling, we try make the red spread limitlessly (ie, to infinity, distence wise) in all directions.
Hence, there is a sacrifice of the meditative object here. All people begin with some or another kind of meditative object, but it vanishes for all of them equally in the second dwelling.
The third dwelling sacrifices direction. What is left is simply termed beautiful, for its limitless nature (it spatially goes to infinity) & purity of object (red).
There are five more dwellings. Infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothing, neither perception nor non-perception, washing out of perception & feeling. (Note: non-perception is distinct from washing out of perception & feeling)
As you see, it is only in the case of the last three that it truly becomes impossible to define in terms of what is here and now.
But a map can be drawn, where we can list the sacrifices.
(1) meditation object
(2) direction
(3) location
(4) infinite space
(5) infinite consciousness
(6) nothing
(7) neither perception nor non-perception
As taught to me, after the washing out of perception and feeling, there is nothing higher. I am very far away from that, however.
Finally, with regard to good-will: The highest release of good-will as a meditation theme, is the beautiful.
ReplyDeleteSo: there is good will to one object, good will to an entire direction, good will to all beings near, good will to all beings far, good will to all beings near & far.
There is no goodwill of infinite space.
On the other hand, love is a less precise word than good will. Love includes sympathetic joy, where one feels joy at the accomplishments of another. Sympathetic joy's greatest release is as high as nothing.
Apologies, for the triple post. I have made a mistake in the above post. Sympathetic joy's greatest awareness-release is infinite consciousness, not nothing.
ReplyDelete“And how is awareness-release through empathetic joy developed, what is its destiny, what is its excellence, its reward, & its consummation?
“There is the case where a monk develops mindfulness as a factor for awakening accompanied by empathetic joy… etc.… If he wants—in the presence of what is loathsome & what is not—cutting himself off from both, he remains equanimous, alert, & mindful. Or, with the complete transcending of the dimension of infinitude of space, thinking ‘Infinite consciousness,’ he enters & remains in the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness. I tell you, monks, awareness-release through empathetic joy has the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness as its excellence—in the case of one who has penetrated to no higher release.
Negative theology seems most prominent in the orthodox tradition, no? Whereas God gets more 'literal' in modernistic theology (perhaps in the wrong way as well). I like to use negative theology when dismissing what God is not (such as the caricature God of New Atheism), but I agree that it should not replace the personal with the 'vacuum'. This negative view of God is just one perspective of his totality anyway. God is both Being and A Being.
ReplyDeleteI generally find a lot of support for God in classical theism. Philosophically, we can't imagine consciousness coming from non-consciousness. But we can imagine matter existing in consciousness. And by definition, God can't lack qualities that we have, such as consciousness and subjective personal experience. This means we are small 'analogous' mirrors of God rather than God being a literal projection of us. God is not a talisman to "fill the gaps" of the unknown, but is rather the first cause of anything existing in the first place. As the thomistic saying goes - What something is doesn't explain That it is, which is God. So when God is an inescapable conclusion, we can turn to faith. Faith in the word of Jesus Christ, as the concrete personalisation of God. This means we can leave the natural world to itself, without getting rid of God, or making him into an abstract talisman. As well as leaving space for mystery, which might be the purpose of negative theology..!
Leaving space for mystery is an excellent description of the positive side of negative theology. I would have no argument with it in that sense. It's only when it's taken to be the deepest description of reality that I would disagree because it tends to obscure the all important personal nature of God or reduce that to a subsidiary place.
ReplyDeleteHello William,
ReplyDeleteThere is this statement: Among whatever beings there may be—footless, two-footed, four-footed, many footed; with form or formless; percipient, non-percipient, neither percipient nor non-percipient - this-gone is considered supreme among them.
Faith/Trust in this will:
1) make unarisen evil spirits not arise
2) make arisen evil spirits disapper
3) give rise to unarisen good spirits
4) increase, maintain, multiply & culminate arisen good spirits.