Why Study Negative Theology with Simon Oliver

with me I have represented over and we want to try and explore one of the most difficult notions in theology negative theology apophatic theology Simon where do you start okay well negative theology is a tradition of theology that says in his boldest terms says that we can only say what God is not not what God is that God is so other so transcendent that we can't get a handle on God we can only say that God is not a creature or God is not evil or so on and so forth and that there's very little we compositors positively say about God now whether the tradition of negative theology can be clearly equated with what we call the apophatic tradition is is a scholarly debate but I think to understand this tradition of of seeing God as as beyond human language as deeply mysterious we need to go back all the way to to Plato and to the tradition that he spawned that was later known as Neoplatonism but if I could give you a story from Plato in Plato's dialogue the apology an associate a friend of of Socrates the principal character in many of Plato's dialogues an associate of Socrates Kyra form goes to the Delphic Oracle and says is Socrates the wisest person the Delphic Oracle says yes Socrates is very unsure about this because he thinks well I can't be wise because I don't know anything so he goes around the city and he's asking lawyers and rhetorician and so on and so forth are you wise do you know thing and they all say oh yes I'm terribly wise I know this I know this I know this and he comes to the conclusion that actually these are all very ignorant people they're very foolish and then he's and then he decides that actually he is the wisest person because while other people don't know anything they think they know something and they're fooled into thinking they have knowledge but he's Socrates he doesn't know anything and he realizes he doesn't know he realizes his own ignorance he realizes that truth and knowledge continually escape him and that it requires as it were effort and dedication to pursue these things and so Socrates is wise precisely because of his ignorant and this gives rise to a tradition in later Christian theology as well particularly exemplified I think in the 15th century German Cardinal Nicholas of coozer of what is called dr. ignorant Xia so the latin term that we can translate learned ignorant that where we begin all our intellectual explorations including our explorations of God is in realizing what we do not know in realizing that we do not know God in himself but the really curious thing for the Platonic tradition is that in realizing that we do not know something we already know something about it we know that we do not know it and that's what Plato calls be the a Poirier of learning that where does where does our knowledge actually begin even our ignorance of it is a kind of form of knowledge that seems to come from somewhere and he explores particularly in the dialogue the Meno so what Plato then says in his philosophy is that our ignorant of something is somehow that kernel from which knowledge comes is somehow comes from without us it's it's an address to us or it's something that's always already embedded within us and all our explanations are about unfolding this and this is what the philosopher does the lover of wisdom he begins from learning ignorance from what he does not know and tries to expound from that some kind of knowledge and so later Christian tradition that we call the apophatic tradition begins with realizing that we do not know God in himself we begin with our learning ignorance and we pursue that approach in order to avoid idolatry and I think if there's one principle aim of all Christian theology right through the ancient world and the medieval period it is the avoidance of idolatry it is confusing God for that which is not God it's talking the avoidance of talking about God as if God were a creature or a thing or an angel or whatever so it's it's and you approach the divine always by saying what God is not that's the negative way and this is it you know we can see this right through the medieval period is exemplified in the Jewish tradition as well in Maimonides who want to preserve the other nurse of God and of course then there's the paradox of the declared atheist because you have the person who says I do I know that God doesn't exist you which presuppose that I know what God is and yet the one thing I can't know there's it there's an interesting theology is driven by the question of what is God famously that the questions drives Aquinas but I think for many people it's not a case of what is God they think they know what God is and so the big and then they turn into a deterrent to change the question from a question of what where were you where you can at best of learn it ignorant to a question of counting how many gods are there and there might be one more than one or less than10 but actually if you think oh there is no good that actually presuppose you already know what God is society I mean and this is a actually a point that's made quite beautifully and lucidly by by a contemporary theologian now working at Yale Dennis Turner at OU mist thinker who wrote I think a very elegant lecture called how to be an atheist is inaugural lecture when he was a professor in Cambridge where he says the business of being an atheist is actually really very hard work because to deny the existence of God you've got to define what it is you're denying and the whole apophatic tradition wants to make that very problematic so when Richard Dawkins writes his books he seems to be very assured about what God is so that he can then deny God's existence but the whole apophatic tradition is saying is wondering to explore the question of God in a much more subtle way by problematizing all our language about God but I think if I could mention one thing that's that might distinguish the apophatic tradition from the viet from the negative tradition of theology it's that I think I'm right in saying that the the notion of apophysis can include within it the notion of being addressed and the notion of being as it were spoken to so in our philosophical reasoning or theological inquiry what we're doing is we're not being purely speculative just starting from our own point of view what we're doing is we're responding to something that has already been given to us that has already been addressed to us and in a sense Plato Socrates is doing that in realizing that you know he knows what he doesn't know he's responding to a knowledge that is already not the product of his reasoning but is already as it were within him and the this then in Christian theology gives rise to the idea that Christian theology doesn't as it were start reasoning from a completely blank slate and then you know reason up to God but what it does is it responds to an address response to something that's always already given and one really good example of this I think is that the Danish philosopher søren kierkegaard writing in the nineteenth century and his philosophical fragment says that the business of proving the existence of God is a very curious business because what we tend to do is we tend to define what God is and then we go out and look and see if that that definition actually pertains in reality does God exist and a lot of modern philosophy of religion does exactly that it defines God and says right does this thing exist whereas what Kierkegaard said is that ordinarily we do it the other way around we have an encounter and then we did try and describe that encounter so Kia Google says I do not try and prove that a stone exists but I try and prove that something that exists is a stout so you start with encountering something and then you try and say something about it and in a sense the apophatic tradition does start with something an address however mysterious Christian theology begins with revelation begins with an encounter and addressed to us and addressed to us a speech to us God's Word if you like I through the Jewish law or through the Incarnation for Christian tradition and tries to respond to that it's not completely a human initiative or a human working from a human definition it is humanity participating as it were in a conversation responding to an already actual address and it seems to me that that is really how Plato is conceiving philosophical inquiry is a response to what is given and how Christian theology responds to its task apathetically has just one there's just one other aspect of a profitless ISM negative theology which I think we should mention and that is that the word God and the things of God are talked about in preachers people who go to church on Sunday people who read theology whether they're Jews Christians Muslims whatever we throw the word got around it also stands there's a sort of a warning you don't know what you mean or to use the old Latin expression day of semper Meir God is always greater isn't isn't isn't there isn't one bullet up say like if I were asked to are asked to say if I would has to one inscription I want to put it in every in every religion building of every month every month theistic faith and put on the sort of on the computer screen of every of every theologian or student is God is always greater and in a sense isn't that another that that doesn't look that doesn't look negative but it's actually the kernel of it's got to be the case and um food for someone who I think stands within this tradition of a prophetess ism Thomas Aquinas he will always say that the statements that we make about God that appear to be literal statements we mean what we say God is good for example he will it be absolutely adamant that although we use that language we do not know its full meaning and implications if we talk about a tree being good or a human being being good we kind of know what it means for those things to be good to say God is good well if we were to really understand the full meaning and implications of that statement we'd need to know what God is but we don't have a handle on God in himself so Aquinas always thinks that although we use the language the language has a meaning way beyond that the the implications that we immediately draw out of it so I think this is a warning to theologians always to - this is what I was taught be very careful what you say in the presence of Almighty God on that point we'll just stop and I'll say thank you to you okay I hope negative theology the theology of the ineffable all I can say is thank you for watching goodbye you

Channel: University of Nottingham

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Keywords: mysticism, Simon, language, knowledge, philosophy, Arts, negative, transcendent, God, Oliver, university of nottingham, apophasis, limits, theology, Nottingham Uni, Nottingham University, Notts Uni, Uni of Notts, Higher Education, Russell Group, Learn, Study, Experience, Degree, Masters, PhD, Undergraduate, Research, #WeAreUoN, Extraordinary Nottingham, Postgraduate

Id: 1X2Buxlcv6g

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 29 2013