Introduction

Unsaying God ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Aydogan Kars

This chapter introduces the framework and the content of the book and discusses the basic conceptual problems revolving around “negative theology.” It argues that we should not only move from “negative theology” to “negative theologies” in order to approach Islamic intellectual landscapes, but we should also qualify the particular question of theology we are examining. Discussions of negative theology as such tend to confuse divine attributes and the divine essence and reduce apophaticism into a hunt for negative particles and statements. The chapter narrows down the scope of the book to the negative theologies of the divine essence. It also presents justifications for its boundaries and its linguistic preferences, and it defines some technical terms that appear throughout the book. It provides a conceptual introduction to negative theology and a compass to the subsequent chapters of the book.

Unsaying God ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 73-128
Author(s):  
Aydogan Kars

In the centuries following al-Kindī, Muslim philosophers developed a coherent family of apophatic theological positions on the divine essence and its accessibility. The recurring aspects of this philosophical apophaticism were (1) a negative theology of divine attributes that reads them as negations, (2) the unknowability of the divine essence, closely connected with an Aristotelian version of the Neoplatonic distinction between discursive thought [dianoia] and non-discursive intellection [noēsis], (3) the necessary dissimilarity of God as the first cause of everything else, and (4) a philosophical hermeneutics that protects divine oneness and dissimilarity. Most of these aspects were established in conversation with the Muʿtazilites. As early as al-Kindī, Muslim philosophers adopted such a philosophical apophaticism of the divine nature, which later would take diverse forms, while preserving strategic resemblances.


2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Andrija Soc

In this paper I discuss a dispute between Jewish medieval philosophers about the status of divine attributes. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, I outline Philo?s and Saadia?s reasons as to why God must be thought as perfect and simple. Using the aristotelian distinction ?substance/accidence?, I explain why it is problematic to ascribe to God, as seen within Judaic tradition, properties such as omniscience, power, goodness, and others. In the second part, I examine Maimonides? negative theology. Maimonides holds that one must not predicate anything to God. Because God and human beings are incommensurable, any such ascription would be equivocal. Under the influence of Saadia, Maimonides maintains that one cannot say anything about God except that He exists. To prove his thesis, Maimonides was prepared to interpret the content of Jewish Holy writs as being highly metaphorical and it?s most profound meaning as beyond the grasp of the majority of those practicing the principles of Judaism. Even though Maimonides? influence was felt on many subsequent Jewish thinkers, many of them didn?t always agree with him. In the third part of the paper, I sketch Gersonides?, Crescas? and Albo?s alternative solutions to the problem of ascribing attributes to God. Aside from discussing a question of the status of Divine attributes, in this paper I also try to put forward a thesis that goes beyond the framework of the mentioned dispute. Namely, Jewish philosophers, Maimonides being the paradigmatic example, didn?t simply adopt the official interpretations of religious dogma, nor did they compromise with it when it comes to proving their theses. In that regard, they came very close to early modern philosophers, who discussed philosophical and theological problems in light of principles of rational examination, rather than accepting the claims of ecclesiastical authority.


1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoni Gonzalo Carbó

Resumen: La capacidad visionaria que se traduce en valoración consciente de la Imagen como tal, es discernible en toda la obra de Ibn ʿArabī. Según el gran maestro andalusí, el conocimiento más elevado de la desnudez absoluta de la Esencia divina está más allá de toda imagen (la Entbildung del Maestro Eckhart o el Bildlosigkeit de Enrique Suso). Si en contexto de la mística renana del siglo XIII el Maestro Eckhart habla de la «imagen sin imagen» (bîld âne bîld) de Dios, un siglo antes el gran místico persa Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār se refiere a la Realidad divina en similares términos a las teofanías akbaríes más allá de las formas o de las imágenes: no-imagen (per. naqš-bi-naqš, bi-ṣūra, bi-nišān; cf. el Bildlosigkeit de Enrique Suso), i.e., la imagen original del mundo Invisible. Según Ibn ʿArabī, Él está más allá de cualquier representación, pero también más allá incluso de la ausencia de representación. Las teofanías más allá de las imágenes, que revelan la esencia divina en su completa desnudez, exigen la aniquilación del sujeto, la abolición provisional del yo, que, en el fondo de la experiencia, ignora incluso que está viendo a Dios. Solo puede aprehender ese portentoso hecho una vez que retorna a su conciencia ordinaria: «Si Me encuentras no Me verás, mas Me verás si Me pierdes»; «El que me ve y sabe que me ve, no me ve». El conocimiento supremo de Dios coincide con la ignorancia absoluta del propio yo, estando reservado para quien, sumido en la noche de su nada original, ha olvidado incluso su propio ser. La poesía de Mallarmé y de Rilke nos sirven para introducir, en el contexto de la espiritualidad islámica que nos ocupa, dos temas relacionados con la teología negativa: en primer lugar, el sentido simbólico que en el sufismo la blancura tiene como expresión del mundo invisible, y en segundo lugar, y estrechamente afín con el anterior, la trascendencia, abstracción e ignorancia que, en la mística de Ibn ʿArabī, van vinculadas a las teofanías más allá de las imágenes en el marco de la visión suprema del Increado. Su traslación al arte lo encontramos en los recursos a la pantalla vacía de imágenes en el cine de Robert Bresson o en la extinción de la imagen en el de Abbas Kiarostami.Abstract: The visionary ability that translates into a conscious appraisal of the Image as such, can be discerned in all of the works of Ibn ʿArabī. According to this great Andalusian master, the highest knowledge of the absolute nakedness of the divine essence lies beyond all images (e.g., in the Entbildung of Meister Eckhart or the Bildlosigkeit of Henry Suso). If in the context of the Rhineland mysticism of the thirteenth century, Meister Eckhart speaks of the «image without image» (bîld âne bîld) of God, a century earlier the great Persian mystic Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār refers to the divine Reality in terms similar to the akbarian theophanies beyond form and image: the non-image (in Persian, naqš-bi-naqš, bi-ṣūra, bi-nišān; cf. the Bildlosigkeit of Henry Suso), i.e., the original image of the invisible world. According to Ibn ʿArabī, He is beyond all representation, but also beyond even the absence of representation. Theophanies beyond images, which reveal the divine essence in its complete nakedness, demand the annihilation of the subject, the provisional abolition of the self, which, in the depths of experience, does not know even that it looks upon God. One only apprehends this prodigious fact on returning to ordinary consciousness: «If you find Me you will not see Me, but you will see Me if you lose Me»; «He who sees me and knows that he sees me, does not see me». The supreme knowledge of God coincides with absolute ignorance of the self. It is reserved for those who, immersed in the night of their original nothingness, have forgotten even their own being. In the context of Islamic spirituality as it concerns us here, the poetry of Mallarmé and Rilke serves to introduce two subjects related to negative theology: the first is the symbolic meaning that whiteness takes on in Sufism as an expression of the invisible world; and the second, which is closely connected to the first, is that transcendence, abstraction and ignorance, in the mysticism of Ibn ʿArabī, are linked to the theophanies beyond images in the framework of a supreme vision of the Uncreated. This vision is translated into art through the use of the blank screen, emptied of images, in the cinema of Robert Bresson and also through the extinction of the image in the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami.


1992 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-67
Author(s):  
J. A. McLean

Theology is intrinsic to the Bahá’í revelation. While community attitudes have tended to view the discipline of theology somewhat suspiciously, the term and field of “Bahá’í theology” remain valid and are indispensable. One can distinguish source theology or revelation theology, contained in holy writ, from derivative theology (commentary), which is more relative and subjective. The relativity of religious truth, while it plays a useful role in deabsolutizing dogmatism and in promoting interreligious dialogue, is itself relative and currently runs the risk of becoming another absolute. Bahá’í theology is both apophatic (negative) and cataphatic (affirmative). An abstruse, apophatic negative theology of a hidden God is explicit as background to Bahá’í theology. Apophasis rejects defining God and honors God by remaining silent about the divine essence. If apophasis does speak of God, it does so by via negativa, by describing God through a process of elimination of what God is not, rather than making affirmations about what God is. The main substance of Bahá’í theology, however, is manifestation theology or theophanology, that is, a theology calculated upon an understanding of the metaphysical reality and teachings of the divine Manifestation. This manifestation theology is cataphatic. Cataphasis dares to speak about God but recognizes that God transcends the human analogies used to describe divinity. Bahá’í theology is, moreover, based in faith rooted in the person of Bahá’u’lláh and his divine revelation, has a strong metaphysical bias, eschews dogmatism, and welcomes diversity.


Arabica ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Spannaus

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, very vibrant debates regarding the question of the divine attributes (ṣifāt), one of the central issues in the history of Islamic theology, arose among the Muslims of the Russian Empire. A continuation of pre-existing debates taking place at the time in Central Asia, the controversy over the attributes revolved around the question of their ontological relationship to the divine essence (ḏāt), and whether the predominant view, that of Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī, rendered the attributes too distinct from the essence, thus violating God’s oneness. One very prominent participant was the Tatar scholar Šihāb al-Dīn al-Marǧānī (d. 1889), who crafted a sophisticated critique of Taftāzānī and articulated a novel view of the attributes, based on the work of another Tatar scholar, Abū Naṣr Qūrṣāwī (d. 1812). This paper argues that not only do these debates show the continuation of the kalām tradition into the modern era, but they also represent important developments of that tradition in their own right, against the view that post-classical theology had become repetitive and derivative.


2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Adamson

The paper discusses al-Kindī's response to doctrines held by contemporary theologians of the Mu‘tazilite school: divine attributes, creation, and freedom. In the first section it is argued that, despite his broadly negative theology, al-Kindī recognizes a special kind of “essential” positive attribute belonging to God. The second section argues that al-Kindī agreed with the Mu‘tazila in holding that something may not yet exist but still be an object of God's knowledge and power (as the Mu‘tazila put it, that “non-being” is a “thing”). Also it presents a new parallel between al-Kindī and John Philoponus. The third section gives an interpretation of al-Kindī as a compatibilist, in other words as holding that humans may be free even though their actions are necessitated. In all three cases, it is argued, al-Kindī is close to the Mu‘tazilite point of view, though he departs from them in the arguments he gives for that point of view.


Unsaying God ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 23-72
Author(s):  
Aydogan Kars

This chapter introduces the contours of the classical Ismāʿīlī negative theology of the divine essence. The apophatic path developed by Ismāʿīlī scholars had distinct cosmological markers and a logical structure that enabled the performative self-cancellation of discourse about the inaccessible divine essence. Respecting their diversity, and without essentializing or dehistoricizing them, we can highlight three general features that widely circulated among Ismāʿīlī thinkers until the Mongol invasion: (1) They put the divine essence beyond the divine word, which lies beyond the first creation, the universal intellect. (2) The relative oneness of the divine word can be transcended only by two negations. The first one negates the positive ground and relationality, and the second cancels all (positive and negative) discursivity in order to indicate the beyond of the relative oneness beyond creation. (3) The absolute oneness of God is unknowable, beyond the impenetrable oneness of the divine word.


2019 ◽  
pp. 256-262
Author(s):  
Richard Cross

This chapter suggests that part of the early seventeenth-century debate between the theologians of Tübingen and the theologians of Giessen on the question of the communicatio idiomatum represents the conflicting structures of Brenzian and Chemnitzian accounts of the hypostatic union. At issue was the human nature’s possession of divine attributes during Christ’s earthly life, affirmed by the Tübingen theologians and denied by the Giessen ones. The 1624 Decisio saxonica ruled in favour of Giessen, and thus in effect against Brenzian understandings of Christ’s kenosis. Lutheran orthodoxy requires that some (and not all) divine attributes are communicated to the human nature. It concludes with puzzles about the way in which the genus maiestaticum might be possible at all, given the denial of any distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Johannes Aakjær Steenbuch

In early Christian thinking negative theology was often applied for polemi­cal purposes, as a means of asserting the Christian distinction between God and everything else. Only later did negative theology develop into a philosophical and contemplative method. But even then it often kept a polemical function. This was the case for Gregory of Nyssa who applied forms of negative theology in his spiritual and exegetical works as well as in his polemical works, especially those against Eunomius. Using a distinction between aphairetic and apophatic kinds of negative theology, it can be argued that Gregory’s theology, epistemology and philosophy of language, as developed during the Eunomian controversy, changed his negative theology in a fundamental way from an aphairetic theology, based on abstraction, to a thoroughly apophatic theology, based on negation in the sense of unsaying. It can further be argued that the results of this development influenced Gregory’s ethical theories, his moral epistemology in particular. The main texts in question, besides Gregory’s writings against Eunomius, are his early work on the inscriptions of the Psalms and his later work on the life of Moses. Both contain reflections on Moses’ spiritual development, but while the former uses mostly affirmative language, the latter involves a much higher degree of apophatic theo­logy. This change is likely to have occurred during the Eunomian controversy where such things as God’s infinity and the inability of human beings to grasp the divine essence became fundamental in such a way that apophatic, rather than aphairetic, language and thinking gained a central role in Gregory’s theology as well as ethics.


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