“What would it mean to understand the hyperphatic in dialectical fashion?” Yes, yes—that’s the question. So much of contemporary “apophatics” is a form of kataphasis in despair—a pious skepticism. What you’re articulating here also hints toward why Hegel’s unapologetic quest for the unity of thinking and being is *not* some totalizing endeavor but a desire for theosis. Thanks for this continued generative work.
Good stuff! If you favor more Zizek’s description of dialectic over Milbank’s paradox, are there also areas in which you feel Zizek falls short? Isn’t Milbank’s peaceful difference an attempt to ground finitude and diversity while preserving at least SOME sense of divine aseity? Would you say Zizek has accomplished an appropriate theology of the peace of the divine nature?
Right, so that's why I got excited by Jordan's Maximus book, which allows for an impassible divine nature generated by the Incarnation itself while it remains fully true that God suffers. One could also express this in vaguely Barthian fashion as the Incarnation being that by which God stays the same
Beyond the fact that in spite of the brilliance of the thinkers named and there seeming unawareness of the fact that the purpose of the apophatic—though it may be outside the discourse here—is to clear the way for a true beyond which is nevertheless immanent—a mystical experience of radiant darkness, an uncreated light which has no adequate explanation or concept. Like the Catholic understanding of natural theology often seen as being proofs for God where as in the east it takes on more theophanic content, I feel like here we’re speaking a different language than pseudo-dyonisius or Maximus the confessor. Nevertheless it just happens that I wrote a price largely relevant if not surprisingly a sort of response to this problem: https://open.substack.com/pub/nasmith/p/an-initiation-into-the-mystery-of?r=32csd0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Anyway, if one cannot understand that God is and is not—which of course is the point of the apophatic notion of beyond being—then inevitably one has lost touch with the intuition and handed over to the form to too great a degree if I’m to speak hegelianese.
“What would it mean to understand the hyperphatic in dialectical fashion?” Yes, yes—that’s the question. So much of contemporary “apophatics” is a form of kataphasis in despair—a pious skepticism. What you’re articulating here also hints toward why Hegel’s unapologetic quest for the unity of thinking and being is *not* some totalizing endeavor but a desire for theosis. Thanks for this continued generative work.
Good stuff! If you favor more Zizek’s description of dialectic over Milbank’s paradox, are there also areas in which you feel Zizek falls short? Isn’t Milbank’s peaceful difference an attempt to ground finitude and diversity while preserving at least SOME sense of divine aseity? Would you say Zizek has accomplished an appropriate theology of the peace of the divine nature?
Right, so that's why I got excited by Jordan's Maximus book, which allows for an impassible divine nature generated by the Incarnation itself while it remains fully true that God suffers. One could also express this in vaguely Barthian fashion as the Incarnation being that by which God stays the same
It's basically that you can have the classical attributes which Jenson or Zizek deny but also what they affirm.
Beyond the fact that in spite of the brilliance of the thinkers named and there seeming unawareness of the fact that the purpose of the apophatic—though it may be outside the discourse here—is to clear the way for a true beyond which is nevertheless immanent—a mystical experience of radiant darkness, an uncreated light which has no adequate explanation or concept. Like the Catholic understanding of natural theology often seen as being proofs for God where as in the east it takes on more theophanic content, I feel like here we’re speaking a different language than pseudo-dyonisius or Maximus the confessor. Nevertheless it just happens that I wrote a price largely relevant if not surprisingly a sort of response to this problem: https://open.substack.com/pub/nasmith/p/an-initiation-into-the-mystery-of?r=32csd0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Anyway, if one cannot understand that God is and is not—which of course is the point of the apophatic notion of beyond being—then inevitably one has lost touch with the intuition and handed over to the form to too great a degree if I’m to speak hegelianese.
wow! This is a very interesting essay and it got me really thinking about apofatic and katafatic theology. Thank you for writing this.