Apophatic Anthropology

[Thomas]

Anytime he speaks of the “appropriation of the human body and acts by God the Word,” St. Cyril declares it as “ineffable, beyond the mind,” “an unuttered and mysterious unity by which the Word became mysteriously and incomprehensibly man and Son of man.” The typical expressions of apophaticism appear spontaneously, being the only ones able to offer a comprehension of mystery.

The supreme theophany, God’s perfect manifestation in the world by the incarnation of the Word fully maintains its apophatic character. “Jesus’ mystery was a hidden mystery: there is no word, nor mind, that would comprise it; on the contrary, it is inexpressible as long as you speak, and unknown as long as you understand it with the mind… In his humanity, Christ the Supra-essential One was manifested in a human being without ceasing to be hidden beneath this manifestation or, to express myself in a more divine fashion, in this manifestation itself.”

“All the affirmations that have as object the Holy humanity of Jesus Christ have the excellence and the value of the most formal negations.” The basis of a theandric union is found in the unity of the two natures in one person, but its mechanism, the “how” that is so dear to any discursive knowledge, from which it begins and to which it ends, remains inaccessible to conceptual determinations and incomprehensible for cataphatic categories.

Fr. André Scrima, Apophatic Anthropology (The two un-cited quotations are from St. Dionysius the pseudoAreopagite, Epistles III & IV.)

 

[CircleoftheWay]

Your post made me think of the words of Thomas Merton, from "Raids on th Unspeakable", where he speaks of the nature of Reality:-

But the magicians keep turning the Cross to their own purpose. Yes, it is for them too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the religious magician who makes the Cross contradict mercy. This of course is the ultimate temptation of Christianity. To say that Christ has locked all doors, has given one answer, settled everything and departed, leaving all life enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of which there is seriousness and damnation, inside of which there is the intolerable flippancy of the saved - while nowhere is there any place left for the mystery of the freedom of divine mercy which alone is truly serious, and worthy of being taken seriously.

There often seems to be an entire lack of "mystery" in so many theologies, not to mention humility! All has been revealed and explained, all that is needed now is to "believe", then the job is done. Merton says elsewhere that there is no door, no key. The temptation is to become satisfied with any door we might have found, along with trying to give our key to others - and if rejected, judgement!

 

[Thomas]

I've just read the essay ... And now to Prometheus: A Meditation.

The element of "mystery" – well, don't start me talking on that one ... The Mysteries have been replaced with anodyne custom-fitted spiritualities and gods of the boutique to quote David Bentley Hart. The awful blasphemy of the religious magician speaks, in part, to a fundamentalism which Merton was, like secularism, only too aware of.

Hart's essay goes on to say:
The triviality of this sort of devotion, its want of dogma or discipline, its tendency to find its divinities not in glades and grottoes but in gift shops make it obvious that this is no reversion to pre-Christian polytheism. It is, rather, a thoroughly modern religion, whose burlesque gods command neither reverence, nor dread, nor love, nor belief; they are no more than the masks worn by that same spontaneity of will that is the one unrivalled demiurge who rules this age and alone bids its spirits come and go.

 

[CircleoftheWay]

The triviality of this sort of devotion, its want of dogma or discipline, its tendency to find its divinities not in glades and grottoes but in gift shops make it obvious that this is no reversion to pre-Christian polytheism. It is, rather, a thoroughly modern religion, whose burlesque gods command neither reverence, nor dread, nor love, nor belief; they are no more than the masks worn by that same spontaneity of will that is the one unrivalled demiurge who rules this age and alone bids its spirits come and go.

Ah ha! Perhaps difficult to tell the difference between such a "religion" and those who are truly expressing the freedom of the "sons of God"! I'm saying nothing.......

 

[Thomas]

Well, I side with Merton and Hart in that discussion ...

 

[CircleoftheWay]

Well, I side with Merton and Hart in that discussion ...

Yes, I too.