Verbum Vitae, 2023, T. 41, nr 3

Stały URI dla kolekcjihttps://theo-logos.pl/handle/123456789/28525

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The Antinomic Method of Gregory Palamas: Between Transcendence and Immanence, God’s Essence and Energy, Single and Multiple Trinity
Zhukovskyy, Viktor (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
The article examines the theological method of antinomy and the conceptual solution to the problem of the ontological “gap” between transcendence and immanence of the Holy Trinity in the theological thought of the outstanding Byzantine theologian of the 14th century Gregory Palamas. The article analyzes how Palamas, in his patristic teaching on the distinction between the essence and energy of the Holy Trinity, substantiates the unity, trinity, and multiplicity of divine action in the world, and how he interprets this distinction in God’s nature. Particular attention is paid to biblical and patristic analysis and the significance of Palama’s methodological “triangle”: apophatic, cataphatic, antinomy; his understanding of the personal dimension of the energies of the hypostases of the Trinity, and the problem of the “simplicity” of the Triune God.
Christian Apophaticism in Jean-Luc Marion’s Early Works
Zachhuber, Johannes (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
In this article, I investigate Jean-Luc Marion’s early interpretation of Christian apophaticism with special reference to his reading of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. I observe that the most remarkable, but rarely noted, aspect of this interpretation is Marion’s avoidance of the typical derivation of Dionysius’ negative theology from the Platonic tradition. Instead, he places him in the tradition of the critique of idols in the Old Testament. I argue that this intuition should not be lightly dismissed as early Christian apophaticism was at least partly developed in the context of Christian polemic against pagan idolatry. If Christian apophaticism is understood against this background, Marion’s claim that it foreshadows the modern and postmodern critique of theism appears more plausible than his detractors have been willing to admit.
Apophasis and System. Dogmatic Theology in Apophatic Perspective
Woźniak, Robert (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
The subject of the article is the nature of theological apophasis in relation to the systematic aspirations of theological reflection. This relationship is analyzed from the perspective of the three essential truths of Christianity that form the hard core of its message: the Trinity, the personal union of the two natures in Christ, and deification. Accordingly, Trinitarian theology, Christology and anthropology are characterized, each area separately and in relation to the others, by a high degree of systematization. They constitute compact, organic and interrelated theological systems which, as constituent parts, form an organic whole. All three contain significant apophatic themes. An analysis of the connection between their systematicity and their apophatic dimension allows us to draw broader and more general conclusions about apophaticism in general and its place in theological systematization.
Negative Theology: Its Use and Christological Function in Late Antiquity and Subsequent Developments
Steenbuch, Johannes Aakjær (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
This article discusses the historical development of negative theology from its formulations in early Christianity to its later forms in Medieval Neo-Platonism. First analyzing how in early Christian thought negative theology was often used for a Christological purpose, the article goes on to discuss the implications of the Neo-Platonic notion of God as beyond being. While primarily applying a historical methodology, the article concludes by encouraging a rediscovery of the Christological orientation for negative theology found in its early Christian formulations.
Apophaticism, Mysticism, and Epoptics in Ancient and Patristic Philosophy: Some Important Examples
Ramelli, Ilaria L.E. (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
This article investigates mystic apophaticism in a set of Greek Patristic theologians, profoundly informed by philosophy, especially imperial Platonism: Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and PseudoDionysius. Both the terminology and the argumentative structure will be examined in each author and important connections among themselves and with ‘pagan’ Neoplatonists (including Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus) will be drawn. The reciprocal interrelations among epoptics, ἔρως and ἀγάπη, epektasis, and ἐπιστροφή and ἀποκατάστασις will be pointed out. The article will argue for the intended double-reference strategy to both ‘pagan’ and Christian Platonism, as well as Dionysius’ veiled response to Porphyry qua accuser of Origen, and the meaning of the charge, levelled against Dionysius himself, of “making unholy use of Greek things” – which is what ‘pagans’ had already charged Origen with. Dionysius retorted, “it is the Greeks who make unholy use of godly things to attack God!”, and this is again what Origen had responded.
The Source Antinomy of the Mystery of the Trinity as the Foundation and Hermeneutical Key of Christian Apophaticism in the View of Vladimir N. Lossky
Płóciennik, Michał (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
For some time now, there has been a definite revival of interest in apophatic theology within religious thinking as well as at its antipodes. It often takes the form of criticism of religion, including Christian Revelation, and thus the theology based on it. From a Christian perspective, this provides an invitation to reflect on the rich heritage of apophaticism and to show its specificity as a consequence of what constitutes the specificum christianorum, i.e. the Trinitatis mystery. Important clues in this regard can be found in the thought of Vladimir N. Lossky, a prominent 20th century Orthodox theologian, a radical defender of the specific apophatic nature of Christianity and a theologian faithful to Trinitarian orthodoxy. Looking at the most important issues related to the Trinitarian dogma, we will point out that in the Russian’s view, the Trinitarian antinomy is the source and foundation of Christian apophaticism and its hermeneutics. This conclusion will be based on revealing the Trinitarian antinomy as what is primordial, unconditioned by nothing, non-derivable from anything and therefore as a purely religious given and truth par excellence, accessible to man through Its free Revelation, which It also infinitely transcends.
Negative Theology as an Expression of God’s Freedom in the Torah of the Book of Deuteronomy and Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible
Otto, Eckart (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
This paper traces the history of the negative theology of YHWH from the beginning of the integration of YHWH into the Canaanite pantheon to the post-exilic period in the Torah through the interpretation of the She ma’ Israel from its mono-Yahwistic understanding to monotheism as an expression of God’s freedom. In the second step, the development of negative theology is traced from the pre-exilic proverbs, which understand God as a limit of knowledge, to negative theology in the Book of Job and Qohelet, as well as the overcoming of negative theology in the paradise-narrative in Genesis 2–3 through the freedom of choice granted to man by God.
The Platonic-Biblical Origins of Apophatic Theology: Philo of Alexandria’s Philosophical Interpretation of the Pentateuchal Theophanies
Mrugalski, Damian (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
This article examines Philo’s philosophical interpretation of the three theophanies in Exodus, which would, centuries later, continue to be considered by the great thinkers responsible for developing negative theology, such as Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite. Although Exod 33:11 clearly states that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as if someone were to speak to his own friend, according to Philo, the lawgiver neither saw the face of God, nor learned the proper name of God, nor was he able to comprehend the essence of God. These very statements became the inspiration for later apophaticism. The present article seeks to establish to what extent Philo’s theses were influenced by Plato’s philosophy or by later Middle Platonism, and to what extent Philo, by commenting allegorically on the Pentateuch, becomes the initiator of new ideas hitherto unknown in philosophical discourse. In the course of the analyses, three great questions of apophatic theology are discussed: 1. the unnameability of God; 2. the unknowability of God’s essence; and 3. the knowability of God’s nature by grace.
The Via Negativa and the Aura of Words
Mortley, Raoul (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
The negative capacity is essential to creative thinking; we find it in the transcendentalism of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, though the Neoplatonist explanation of unknowing goes far further than simply pointing to the beyond; the idea of aura provides some understanding of how a word retains its influence even when negated; words or names are crucial in the move upwards in the mystical journey, and in the Neoplatonist and Christian tradition names or words are said to be fundamental, despite the via negativa; the linguistic ontology of Platonism underpins the existence of the names: but we do not have to believe in the ontic status of names for their aura to operate as we meditate over them.
Apophatic and Anthropomorphic Visions of God in Philo of Alexandria
Mackie, Scott D. (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
Despite his core theological convictions that God is incorporeal, formless, invisible, and unchangeable, in some of his most carefully crafted visio Dei texts Philo portrays God “changing shape” and temporarily adopting a human form. However, these are only “seeming appearances” and actually involve God projecting a human-shaped “impression,” or “appearance” (φαντασία) from his shapeless, immaterial being. By accommodating the overwhelming reality of God’s being to the perceptual and conceptual limitations of the human percipient, these docetic theophanies allow humans to more confidently relate to the deity, while at the same time preserving God’s absolute transcendence and apophatic otherness.
The Neoplatonic Roots of Apophatic Theology in Medieval Islam on the Example of Maqāmāt aṭ-ṭuyūr/Manṭiq aṭ-ṭayr (The Conference of the Birds) by ʿAṭṭār Nīšāpūrī (ca. 1145–1221)
Kościelniak, Krzysztof (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
This study will focus on the metaphysical and theological thought of Farīd ad-dīn ʿAṭṭār Nīšāpūrī, i.e. Abū Hamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (ca. 1145/6–1221). ʿAṭṭār’s best known masterpiece, Maqāmāt aṭ-ṭuyūr (Arabic Manṭiq aṭ-ṭayr), The Conference of the Birds, is seen as the finest example of Sufi love poetry in the Persian language after Rūmī. His thought is distinguished by its provocative and radical theology of love, as well as elements of apophaticism. ʿAṭṭār Nīšāpūrī’s vision of God should be analyzed in the context of Neoplatonism, which in a special way contributed to the development of apophatic Muslim thought. This approach challenged classical Islamic theism, whose representatives were convinced that they had sufficient knowledge of God from the Quran and Sunna. Aṭṭār’s doctrine focused on God who is a part of the universe. In other words, this author believed that whatever exists is part of God.
One God – Many Religions? The Role of Negative Theology in Contemporary Interpretations of Religious Pluralism
Kałuża, Krystian (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
The article discusses the role of negative theology in contemporary interpretations of religious pluralism in an analytical and synthetic way. One of such interpretations is the pluralistic theology of religion. In view of the problems encountered due to such a way of looking at religions, a different direction of interpretation is proposed in the article. Accepting the validity of the basic intention of negative theology, the author presents a thesis that a Christian theology of religious pluralism can be based on Trinitarian theology as a kind of “matrix” of religious experience. A systematic criterion was used in the elaboration of the subsequent steps: (1) The faces of transcendence, (2) The pluralist hypothesis, (3) Via negativa, (4) The limits of negation, (5) Experience and language, (6) The nature of transcendence, (7) Toward a Trinitarian interpretation of religious pluralism. The presented model of Trinitarian interpretation of religious pluralism can be called an integrative model. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to demonstrate certain similarities between the properties of the individual Persons of the Trinity and various ideas and concepts of Ultimate Reality found in different religions.
Does God Think the Same Way We Do? On the Logical Apophatism of Michał Heller
Grygiel, Wojciech P. (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
Apophatic theology is an approach in theology that emphasizes the limitation of human language and concepts in describing the nature of the Divine. Rooted in ancient religious traditions, apophatic theology has gained attention in contemporary discourse for its potential convergence with the scientific method. This paper expands on a novel application of this approach in which the formal methods of science such as logic and mathematics are engaged to inquire into how God thinks and to what degree the modes of human reasoning can be projected on the nature of the Divine mind. This application has been proposed by Michał Heller and is referred to as the logical apophatism. In the course of the analysis carried out in this paper more in-depth understanding of the logical apophatism has been obtained by contrasting it with classical approaches to negative theology such as the Triplex Via and supplementing with recent advances within the cognitive sciences. It is concluded that Heller’s use of the apophatic approach is manifestly non-standard and its novelty consists in the shift of emphasis from the negative character of the language of theology to the logic of the Divine mind and the logic that underpins the workings of the Universe.
A Positive Side to Apophaticism: Prolegomena
Gilski, Marek (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
The article synthetically presents positive aspects of apophaticism. It discusses its apologetic role, its importance in defending against magical thinking, its focus on experience, its openness to pluralism, and its inspirational role for a variety of disciplines in delimiting their cognitive boundaries. Some of the most important conclusions are: a) apophaticism played an important role in the early days of Christianity in polemics against both pagan cults and magical tendencies; b) already in ancient Greece apophaticism influenced the search not only for symbolic interpretations of Homer’s poems but also for religious experience; c) the limits of cognition discovered by theology are becoming a contemporary experience of other sciences (mathematics, physics).
Negative Theology and Theophany in Dante’s “Paradiso”
Franke, William (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
Dante’s Paradiso presents a gothic theophany realizing the divine vision (visio Dei) in poetic language. Specifically, Dante’s vision of a line from Scripture (DILIGITE IUSTITIAM QUI IUDICATIS TERRAM) in the Heaven of Jove (Canto XVIII) gives a concrete form of written letters to his vision of God. Yet all that Dante actually sees is only a sign of the invisible, metaphysical reality of God and the supersensible universe of pure being or love. This tension between the sensory plenitude of his vision and the transcendent truth that Dante envisages lends his poem its extraordinary force and attractive power. The paradoxes of negative theology and its inevitable relation with an affirmative theology expressed as poetic vision are worked out with matchless subtlety in Dante’s descriptions and reflections, some of which are expounded in a speculative key in this essay drawn from a more detailed and comprehensive inquiry into the subject. The immediacy of Dante’s vision of letters of Scripture in the Heaven of Jove serves as a metaphor for an unmediated vision of God, but the vision’s content turns out to be nothing other than mediation – concretely, language as the medium mediating his relation to God as Logos. Dante’s vision from beginning to end of the Paradiso is placed under the sign of the ineffability topos, yet what he sees are words and language and ultimately letters. Dramatically displaying the mediations in which language consists becomes itself a metaphorical realization of divine revelation. The mechanisms of signifying in language made visibly manifest in writing and specifically as the first line of the Book of Wisdom in Scripture are unveiled as a negatively theological revelation of divinity.
How Negative Is the Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite?
Edwards, Mark (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
This paper considers three recent studies on the negative theology of the Neoplatonists and Dionysius the Areopagite. The first is that of Lloyd Gerson, who argues that the One in Plotinus does not lack transcend existence but only definite existence; the second is the contrary thesis of Eric D. Perl that not only the One of Plotinus but the God of Dionysius transcend all being in such a way that they cannot be credited with existence. After some criticism of both the paper turns to the argument of Timothy D. Knepper that even the ineffability of the divine cannot be stated on our present plane of knowledge; it concludes with some reflections on the appeal to present or future experience as alternatives to epistemology as this is commonly understood in the analytical tradition of philosophy.
Mysterian Social Trinitarianism: Responding to Charges of Projection, Anthropomorphism, and Apophasis
Bray, Dennis (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
The landscape of current trinitarian theology seems to be settling into three chief domains: Latin (or classical) trinitarianism, social trinitarianism, and apophatic (or mysterian) trinitarianism. In this article I look at three main objections to social trinitarianism. The first objection, voiced most forcefully by Karen Kilby, is that the social view follows a vicious pattern of projection. The second objection, related to the first, is raised on grounds of anthropomorphism. According to this objection, social trinitarians employ the notion of mutual love, a notion which raises big concerns among cotemporary Thomists. The third objection is grounded in the inability of humans to know much about the divine being, or for our language to make true statements about God. If we do not know about God’s essence, then social trinitarians do not know most (or all) of what they claim to know. This line of thinking is very recently proposed by Katherine Sonderegger. I detail the main contours of each of the three objections and argue that none of them are strong enough to warrant the rejection of social trinitarianism. However, if apophaticism ultimately forces trinitarians to reject the social theory, there is still some room for a mysterian social trinitarianism. I outline the contours of such a view and explain its motivations and limits.
The Limits of Rational Knowledge of God According to Joseph Ratzinger
Borto, Paweł (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, 2023)
Joseph Ratzinger’s theological thought is distinguished by the conviction that the Christian knowledge of God is closely associated with the concept of the Logos. Therefore, in his reflection, Joseph Ratzinger is a theologian who seeks to render the mystery of God in positive terms. Yet, it would be a mistake to leave this statement without adding that in the rational knowledge of God, theology should at the same time confront what constitutes the limit of rational knowledge. The aim of this article is therefore to provide an overview of how Joseph Ratzinger pointed to the limits of the rational knowledge of God. A two-step method was adopted to achieve this goal. With reference to the synthetic approach, it first accounts for the place that the question of the rational knowledge of God takes in J. Ratzinger’s theological reflection; then it points out how, according to the German theologian, we should understand the apophatic dimension of all theological knowledge; namely, that God, being the infinite Love, can only be known in aspects, and only in the attitude of surrender. In the next step, the most significant aspects of Joseph Ratzinger’s theological reflection on theological knowledge were selected. The analysis of representative texts demonstrates how the German theologian understands limits in the rational knowledge of God. Thus, the understanding of rationality closed to the knowledge of God was presented first, along with the requirements that reason has to meet in order to open itself to the knowledge of God. Then it was demonstrated which of the most important areas of J. Ratzinger’s theological reflection refer to the limits of rational knowledge, and how they do it. The article concerns the limits of knowledge determined by the Revelation, the mystery of God, and the personal centre of Revelation – Christ, as well as the ecclesiastical nature of the creed.

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