Re: MD Absolute Quality between ZMM and Lila

From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Tue Nov 12 2002 - 13:49:20 GMT

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    Hi Matt, Scott,

    The question of being/essence is, as you may already know, something which
    theologians enjoy debating. It is central to a correct understanding of
    Christian mysticism, for example, which provokes language rather similar to
    that of the Abe quote, viz:

    " 'Contact with human creatures is given us through the sense of presence.
    Contact with God is given us through the sense of absence. Compared with
    this absence, presence becomes more absent than absence'. (Simone Weil).
    This cannot rightly characterize the negativity of the apophatic tradition.
    For manifestly, if a 'present' God were 'just another thing' of which we had
    a 'sense' or 'consciousness' then the absence of God would be nothing more
    than the absence of just that thing, and the sense of the absence of God but
    the consciousness of the absence of that thing... The apophatic is not to be
    described as the 'consciousness of the absence of God', not at any rate, as
    if such a consciousness were an awareness of what is absent. For if we do
    not know what God is, and if we cannot be conscious of God's presence, then
    we do not know, and cannot be conscious of, what it is that is absent."
    (Denys Turner, The Darkness of God)

    I won't say more here, because this is something which I will talk about
    further in my discussion with David B (traditions of mysticism). It would be
    good if at some point we could combine the two threads. Also, if you were so
    inclined (and had the stomach for the technical language of NeoPlatonism), a
    good survey of recent theological/ philosophical thinking on this topic is
    on the web, at: http://www.mun.ca/animus/1999vol4/hankey4.htm.

    Sam
    www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html

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