exalted solitude into the material world, so he began by discussing the more elevated and lofty divine attributes. At first, each one sounds perfectly appropriate, but closer examination reveals it to be inherently unsatisfactory. It is true that God is One—but this term properly applies only to beings defined by numerical quantities. God is Trinity but that does not mean that the three personae add up to any kind of triad that is familiar to us. God is Nameless—yet he has a multiplicity of names. God must be Intelligible—and yet God is Unknowable; God is certainly not “good” like a “good” human being or a “good” meal. Gradually, we become aware that even the most exalted things we say about God are bound to be misleading. 71
Then, following God’s descent into the depths of the material world, we consider the physical and obviously inadequate images of God in the Bible. These texts cannot, of course, be read literally, because they are full of “so many incredible or fictitious fairy tales.” From the very first chapter of Genesis, the Bible calls God a creator “as if he was a mere artisan” but goes on to say even more ludicrous things. Scripture supplies God
with horses and chariots and thrones and provides delicately prepared banquets and depicts Him drinking and drunk, and drowsy and suffering from a hangover.And what about God’s fits of anger, His griefs, His various oaths, His moments of repentance, His curses, His wraths, the manifold and crooked reasons given for His failure to fulfil promises? 72
But crass as this seems, it is valuable, because this gross
theologia
shocks us into an appreciation of the limitations of all theological language. 73 We have to remember this when we speak about God, listen critically to ourselves, realize that we are babbling incoherently, and fall into an embarrassed silence.
When we listen to the sacred text read aloud during Mass and apply this method to the readings, we start to understand that even though God has revealed these names to us, we have no idea what they can mean. So we have to deny them, one after the other, and in the process make a symbolic
ascent
from earthly modes of perception to the divine. It is easy to deny the physical names: God is plainly
not
a rock, a gentle breeze, a warrior, or a creator. But when we come to the more conceptual descriptions of God, we find that we have to deny these too. God is
not
Mind in any sense that we can understand; God is
not
Greatness, Power, Light, Life, Truth, Imagination, Conviction, Understanding, Goodness—or even Divinity. 74 We cannot even say that God “exists” because our experience of existence is based solely on individual, finite beings whose mode of being bears no relation to being itself:
Therefore … God is known by knowledge and by unknowing; of him there
is
understanding, reason, knowledge, touch, perception, opinion, imagination, name and many other things, but he is
not
understood,
nothing
can be said of him, he
cannot
be named. He is
not
one of the things that
are
, nor is he known in any of the things that are; he
is
all things in everything and
nothing
in anything. 75
This was not simply an arid logical conundrum that left people in a baffled, thwarted state. It was a spiritual exercise that, if properly performed, would bring participants to the same kind of stunned insight as did the Brahmodya competition.
Denys’s spiritual exercise took the form of a dialectical process,consisting of three phases. First we must affirm what God is: God is a rock; God is One; God is good; God exists. But when we listen carefully to ourselves, we fall silent, felled by the weight of absurdity in such God talk. In the second phase, we deny each one of these attributes. But the “way of denial” is just as inaccurate as the “way of affirmation.” Because we do not know what God is, we cannot know what God is not, so we must then deny the denials: God is therefore
not
placeless,
Then, following God’s descent into the depths of the material world, we consider the physical and obviously inadequate images of God in the Bible. These texts cannot, of course, be read literally, because they are full of “so many incredible or fictitious fairy tales.” From the very first chapter of Genesis, the Bible calls God a creator “as if he was a mere artisan” but goes on to say even more ludicrous things. Scripture supplies God
with horses and chariots and thrones and provides delicately prepared banquets and depicts Him drinking and drunk, and drowsy and suffering from a hangover.And what about God’s fits of anger, His griefs, His various oaths, His moments of repentance, His curses, His wraths, the manifold and crooked reasons given for His failure to fulfil promises? 72
But crass as this seems, it is valuable, because this gross
theologia
shocks us into an appreciation of the limitations of all theological language. 73 We have to remember this when we speak about God, listen critically to ourselves, realize that we are babbling incoherently, and fall into an embarrassed silence.
When we listen to the sacred text read aloud during Mass and apply this method to the readings, we start to understand that even though God has revealed these names to us, we have no idea what they can mean. So we have to deny them, one after the other, and in the process make a symbolic
ascent
from earthly modes of perception to the divine. It is easy to deny the physical names: God is plainly
not
a rock, a gentle breeze, a warrior, or a creator. But when we come to the more conceptual descriptions of God, we find that we have to deny these too. God is
not
Mind in any sense that we can understand; God is
not
Greatness, Power, Light, Life, Truth, Imagination, Conviction, Understanding, Goodness—or even Divinity. 74 We cannot even say that God “exists” because our experience of existence is based solely on individual, finite beings whose mode of being bears no relation to being itself:
Therefore … God is known by knowledge and by unknowing; of him there
is
understanding, reason, knowledge, touch, perception, opinion, imagination, name and many other things, but he is
not
understood,
nothing
can be said of him, he
cannot
be named. He is
not
one of the things that
are
, nor is he known in any of the things that are; he
is
all things in everything and
nothing
in anything. 75
This was not simply an arid logical conundrum that left people in a baffled, thwarted state. It was a spiritual exercise that, if properly performed, would bring participants to the same kind of stunned insight as did the Brahmodya competition.
Denys’s spiritual exercise took the form of a dialectical process,consisting of three phases. First we must affirm what God is: God is a rock; God is One; God is good; God exists. But when we listen carefully to ourselves, we fall silent, felled by the weight of absurdity in such God talk. In the second phase, we deny each one of these attributes. But the “way of denial” is just as inaccurate as the “way of affirmation.” Because we do not know what God is, we cannot know what God is not, so we must then deny the denials: God is therefore
not
placeless,
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