From: Charles Roghair (bogart_215@mac.com)
Date: Wed Aug 17 2005 - 17:21:45 BST
Sam:
Isn't most of what you say here another way of stating that God is an
abstract construct of human consciousness? Like infinity?
Just wondering.
C.
On Aug 16, 2005, at 6:51 AM, Sam Norton wrote:
> Hi Kevin, (and Paul, anyone interested, especially DMB)
>
> This is part 2. I wanted to explain the context of my remarks about
> God's existence etc.
>
>
>> What I'm denying is the _existence_ of God, because a) God is not
>> an entity,
>> so b) God doesn't "exist" in any way in which we can give the
>> words much
>> sense. God is not a member of a class, so he's not a member of the
>> class of
>> existing things.
>>
>
> Paul responded: Then you have to also state that God does not not-
> exist, otherwise it belongs to a class of non-existent things.
>
> I would place my understanding of God within the Christian
> tradition, specifically, in the context of classical Christian
> mysticism. So to explain some of the core sense of that, I'll need
> to use two words 'cataphatic' and 'apophatic'. (I've written about
> this to DMB before, but probably nobody else noticed).
>
> Can God be spoken about or not? The cataphatic answers the question
> positively, saying that there are things which can truly be said
> about God - so the language used in the Bible to talk about God is
> meaningful language. And it is also possible to say true things
> about what God is not. So God is NOT X, Y or Z. In contrast, the
> apophatic tradition answers this question negatively, so apophatic
> mysticism is the 'negative' tradition, which says 'not this, not
> that' etc. Specifically, it says that all language about God is
> meaningless so we should shut up and not 'yelp about God'.
>
>
>
> The important thing to know is that these two answers to the
> question are siamese twins, rather like yin and yang, and they
> cannot exist without the other. The mainstream mystics in the
> western tradition (Denys, Eckhart, Julian of Norwich etc) have
> their different emphases and 'flavours' but in each case the
> language of their writings is predicated on the truth of both
> answers. So first there is the cataphatic response to the question,
> and there is an overflowing abundance of language referring to God,
> eg saying 'God is light' and then, in dialectical movement, there
> is the negation of this, eg saying God is darkness (this is STILL
> the cataphatic, NB), and then - *and this is the key 'apophatic'
> moment* - this distinction of positive and negative is itself
> negated by saying 'God is dazzling darkness'.
>
>
>
> So, just to ensure this is understood, the cataphatic is *both*
> statements (God is light, God is darkness) and the apophatic is the
> paradox *beyond* the statements, that state of understanding or
> enlightenment when the soul has absorbed or developed the truth
> about God. In other words, the mystical writers in the Western
> tradition are using the natural language of theology, for "Good
> theology... leads to that silence which is only found on the other
> side of a general linguistic embarrassment" (Denys Turner). It is
> the difference between knowing nothing (the state of innocence) and
> knowing that you know nothing (the state of wisdom) - and the
> mystical tradition is a way of enabling the journey from the one to
> the other, _through_ the dialectic of cataphatic and apophatic.
>
>
>
> (This mystical tradition, just to head off a possible criticism,
> isn't exclusively Christian. It has two parents - Moses going up
> the Mountain, and Plato's allegory of the cave - and it's the
> latter which brings out its relevance to Pirsig, for he is a neo-
> Platonist.)
>
>
>
> So when I say 'God does not exist' I'm using the _first_ bit of
> cataphatic language (ie I'm denying 'God exists'). And Paul is
> quite right to say that I'm committed to saying 'God does not not-
> exist'. That is the apophatic response, and this is the paradox and
> failure of language to capture the reality of God.
>
>
>
> Much more interesting than that technical stuff, however, is the
> spiritual journey within which that language makes sense. That is,
> the soul aspires to union with God, but is prevented from enjoying
> that union as a result of sin. Putting that in MoQ terms, our
> fourth level patterns seek to be fully open to Quality, yet are
> restricted by the social patterns which are harmfully static. The
> process of mysticism (as I understand it) is the discipline of
> renouncing all the static patterns so as to enable mystical union.
>
>
>
> "In the Pauline and Johannine writings of the New Testament, life
> in Christ consists in a dynamic union with God. Depending on the
> emphasis, this union is presented as being with Christ as with
> God's divine self-expression, or with God (the Father) in and
> through Christ. God's spirit seals the union and initiates an ever-
> growing participation in the intimacy of the divine life. The
> presence of the Holy Spirit endows the Christian with a 'sense' of
> the divine that if properly developed enables the believer to
> 'taste' (_sapere_) God and all that relates to him." (Louis Dupre,
> 'Unio Mystica')
>
>
>
> In other words, what motivates the quest for God is love; as
> Augustine put it, our hearts are restless until they find their
> rest in Him. I understand the mystical tradition to be a process of
> breaking the back of the intellectual ego, so as to allow the soul
> to grow in wisdom, and grow into God.
>
>
>
> I'll need to write a part 3 on this as well, but it'll have to wait.
>
>
>
> Sam
>
>
>
>
>
>
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