John Saward

Towards an Apophatic Anthropology

According to Karl Rahner, one of the distinctive features of theological
anthropology is that it regards man as a mystery, ’mystery in his essence,
his nature’.’ In what follows it will be argued that in so far as theology as
a whole can be spoken of as apophatic, then theological anthropology also
shares this characteristic. Both western and eastern sources will be drawn
upon, for the apophaticism which I shall describe is at the heart of the
common tradition of the Church. Finally, it will be claimed that within
the western European cultural tradition the apophatic approach has
reasserted itself in our own time.

THE APOPHATIC TRADITION

It is not within the scope of this article to write a history of apophatic
theology.2 There are, however, several general points to be made. The
first concerns the distinction sometimes made between two kinds of
apophaticism. On the one hand, according to the view which upholds this
distinction, there is the approach, directly dependent on some form of
Platonism, which sees the incomprehensibility of God as a consequence of
the limitations of the mind: God is inaccessible because of the weakness
of human reason as obscured by the flesh. The second approach maintains
a more biblical perspective: God is a dells absconditlls, in some sense
inaccessible by nature, who can never be fully comprehended or contained
by man. Many would associate Origen, Evagrius, and (in the Byzantine
period) Barlaam with the first position. It reached perhaps its most
extreme form in the Calabrian monk, Barlaam, for whom apophaticism
was conceived of purely in philosophical terms: God cannot (logically) be
known by the human intellect, for it has only limited possibilities, so God
remains unknown to us.3 In contrast to this position we have the second
current of apophatic thought, with which we can associate St Gregory of

1. K. RAHNER, ’On the Theology of the Incarnation’, Theological Investigations Vol. iv.
ET (Baltimore & London 1966) 108.
2. See the work of V. Lossky, especially ’La théologie négative dans la doctrine de
Denys l’Aréopagite’, RSPTxxviii (1936) 204 ff.; The Mystical Theology of the Eastern
Church ET (London 1957) passim; Théologie négative et connaissance de Dieu chez
Maître Eckhart (Paris 1960) passim.
3. See J. MEYENDORFF, A Study of Gregory Palamas ET (London 1964) 203 ff. for a
useful summary of the Barlaam/Palamas debate on apophaticism.
 223

Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, St Maximus the Confessor, and St Gregory

Palamas.
That, very briefly, is the distinction as it is often made. Danidlou believes
that it has been overworked, particularly in relation to Gregory of Nyssa4
He prefers to use the latter’s own distinction between the night of the
senses and the night of the spirit. Here there is a distinction between an
ignorance based on the inadequacy of our knowledge of God in comparison
with that of other objects of understanding and an ignorance based on the
naked inadequacy of the mind as such in relation to God as the supreme
object of its desire.5 According to Dani6lou, Gregory’s night of the senses
is a Christian version of the Philonic ’night’, in which God is inaccessible
to simple reason. The second type of night expresses a different reality,
one that is ’properly. mystical’; it demonstrates the absolutely inexhaustible
character of the vision of God. ’Of these two darknesses the one is relative
and transitory, ceasing with the beatific vision. This vision does not,
however, terminate the second kind, which is on the contrary absolute
and permanent.’6 It is apophaticism understood in this second sense that I
hope to show to have relevance for theological anthropology. Or rather
this article will be concerned with an understanding of apophasis which has
some real continuity with Gregory’s second kind of night. For it would be
absurd to suppose that this Cappadocian insight can be extracted from its
context and just ’set to work’; this would be to neglect the developments
in the apophatic tradition after Gregory. Above all, it would bypass the
revolution which the tradition underwent in both East and West during
the Middle Ages. We can only adequately give content to the ascription
of ’apophatic’ to the theology of man from a perspective which takes
seriously the radicalization of negative theology by St Thomas Aquinas in
the West and St Gregory Palamas in the East.
’Revolution’ and ‘radicalization’ are strong words. Lossky is more
restrained; he speaks of St Thomas’s ’prudent correction’ of Dionysian
apophaticism.7 It may. also seem ludicrous to speak of Aquinas and
Palamas in the same breath, since their relation has still to be thoroughly
explored.8 Nevertheless, despite all the obvious differences, both can be
4. J. DANIÉLOU, Platonisme et théologie mystique. Essai sur la doctrine spirituelle de
Saint Grégoire de Nysse (Paris 1944) 210.
5. See H.-CH. PUECH, ’La ténèbre mystique chez le Pseudo-Denys’, Et. Carm. xxiii
(1938) 42.
6. DANIÉLOU, op. cit. 210.
7. LOSSKY, Théologie négative et connaissance de Dieu chez Maitre Eckhart (Paris 1960)
23.
8. For a summary of some of the discussion see E. L. MASCALL, The Openness of Being.
Natural Theology Today (London 1971) 221 ff.
224

said to offer critiques of what one might call ’philosophical apophaticism’,

that is, the view which sees apophaticism as a cognitive theory, an account
of the limitations of human knowfedgc. In the prima pars of the Sitnitita
Theologiae St Thomas at one stage uses Dionysius to formulate the third
objection.9 In the reply he points out that God is not said to be ’not there’
(noll existens) in the sense that he does not exist at all; it is not that he is
deprived of all existence. Rather it is because he is his own existence (esse)
that he transcends all that ’is there’ (omrie existens).10 It is not that God
cannot be known at all but that he is beyond all that can be known of
him which is what is meant by saying that he is incomprehensible. St
Thomas is criticizing an absolutized apophaticism which by denying all
knowledge denies all contact, communion, between creature and Creator.
Against this, he wants to afhrm his understanding of esse, which is precisely
a unifying vision, a vision of connectedness and communion. St Thomas
channels Pseudo-Dionysius’s apophatic enthusiasm into the via eminentiae,
in which ’all knowledge of created being converges on the universal
Principle of existence and knowledge, which however is unknowable in
the absolute simplicity of his Essence’.&dquo; St Thomas preserves an idea of
the incomprehensibility of God which is by no means exclusive of esse.
This Thomist transformation of apophasis, which no longer denies
the being of God, is existential and analogical; it enables one to
speak of God as eminently Being without ’circumscribing’ him in
-

univocal concepts, yet without lapsing into the equivocal. 12

St Thomas preserves the divine darkness,13 yet brings this into relation
with a vision of the divine/human relation in which there is real communion
and participation. The vision of esse parallels Palamas’s perspective
according to which, although God in his essence remains unknowable,
man can know him by being taken up into his life-giving energies.14

9. ST 1a, 12, 1; Editiones Paulinae (Rome 1962).

10. I follow here the translation and interpretation of Fr Herbert McCabe, O.P. in vol.
iii of the new translation of the ST (London 1964) 7.
11. LOSSKY, op. cit. 24 f.
12. LOSSKY, op. cit. 29.
13. Consider, for example, this remarkable statement: ’It is because our human
intelligence (intellectus) is not equal to the divine essence (substantiam) that this same
divine essence surpasses our intelligence and is unknown to us (a nobis ignoratur): and
so the highest point of human knowledge about God is to know that one knows him
not, inasmuch as one knows that what God is transcends whatever one conceives of
him’ (De pot. 7, 5, ad 14; ed. Marietti, Turin & Rome). For an excellent introduction to
the apophaticism of St Thomas, see J. PIEPER, The Silence of St Thomas ET (London
1957).
144; PG 150,1221A. Of course, ’Palamas’s perspective’
14. See, for example, Cap. Phys.
is also the perspective of a whole tradition of the Greek Fathers. See below.
 225

The importance of the Thomist ’prudent correction’ of apophatic

theology is that he thereby holds three things in tension. First of all,
there is the sense of the divine darkness, which is more than a literary
device, arid is a true expression of the divine/human relationship. This
sense, which is related to the mystical tradition of darkness from St
Gregory of Nyssa to St John of the Cross, allows for an understanding
of the divine incomprehensibility and of the limitations of human language,
which is more than, as it were, inverted positivism. No, and this is the
second element, St Thomas integrates language and silence. By emphasizing
the approach to God per emÍnentiam rather than per remotiol1em, thus
transforming apophaticism ’existentially and analogically’, he is able to
show that we need to speak in order to ’get on’ to silence, that analogical
speech preseves an authentic, rather than a guilty or incompetent, silence ,
before God. Analogy is not a way of getting to know about God now that
every other way is blocked; it is a commentary on our use of language. It
brings out the importance of silence, of the unsaid, ivilhiii language. St
Thomas is anxious to show that although God cannot be circumscribed
by what we say, our language can mean more than it means to us, ’that
we can use words to &dquo;try to mean&dquo; what God is like, that we can reach
out to God with our words even though they do not circumscribe what
he is’.15 And, finally, the third element held in tension by St Thomas is
the idea of a divine/human connectedness, which is threatened by the
crudest versions of apophaticism.
I have included this lengthy discussion of the apophatic tradition for
two reasons. The first is that it facilitates the construction of a definition
of ’apophatic’ as applied to the theology of man in which language and
silence are dialectically related. The second is that it shows that, even if
’there is such a ’apophatic anthropology’, apophatic theology is
thing as

already an anthropology. For, as we have said, St Thomas wanted an

understanding of apophasis which was not exclusive of esse, which was
not narrowly cognitive, but which would accommodate, so to speak, the
ontological communion of God and man. The crude apophaticism of a
Barlaam has disastrous anthropological consequences: on that view,
because of his cognitive incompetence, man has no real point of contact
with the divine and can presumably only relate to God as creature to
’wholly other’ Creator. In this article I wish to speak of theology as
apophatic not as a prosaic account of the limits of knowledge but as a
vision of the communion between man and Derrs abscollditus-though, as

15. MCCABE,
. cit
op . 106.
226

will be shown below, this is only strictly possible because man also is
homo abscoftdittrs.
St Thomas shows that apophaticism is not merely a useful theological
’tool’. The sense of the divine darkness surpasses the theology of the
negations; there is an apophasis beyond apophasis. As Palamas pointed
out in his controversy with Barlaam; ’it is not only a God who surpasses
beings, but more-than-God (~ru~peEoS); the excellence of him who
surpasses all things is not only above all affirmation, but also above all
negation; it surpasses all excellence which could enter into the mind.’16
Understood as a theological or philosophical technique, the via uegativa
has some modest value, but like all other techniques it must be surpassed.
Understood in Palamas’s sense, however, it can be seen as an aflirmation
(the paradox is deliberate) of the divine darkness as the way man encounters
the living God, as the way in which he is mysteriously caught up into
communion and love, in which he participates in that love which is the
life of the Godhead.
The apophatic attitude is not an even more successful method of
natural knowledge of God but a way which coincides with the
affirmation of the human person, that is, which defines a universal
’attitude’ towards truth, a sign of freedom in the face of the sufficiency
of rational definitions. Renunciation here is liberation from the
despotic rule of reason. It signifies the affirmation of a new dimension
of knowledge, which is defined by the capacity for personal dialogue. 17
Apophaticism in this sense is already anthropological. To speak apopha-
tically of God in this sense is to acknowledge and to realize a relation of
love between God and man, who in that relation becomes sovereignly
free. To understand this further, we must consider the distinction already
mentioned between essence and energies as made by the Greek Fathers.
Thus St Basil says: ’we say that from his energies (~x 700V ÈVEPYE100V)
...

we know our God, but his essence (oU6ia) itself we do not profess to

approach’.18 And according to St John Damascene, whatever we say

cataphatically about God, we say not of his nature (qnJalV) but of the
things which relate to his nature (Ta ITEpi -r~v pfaiv),19 Despite
differences in terminology what we find here in the Greek patristic tradi-
tion is a distinction that preserves the dual insight that, while God is
16. Gregoire Palamas, La défense des saints hesychastes. Triade ii, vol. ii. ed. J.
Meyendorff (Louvain 1959) 3, 8, p. 403.
17. c. YANNARAS, De l’absence et de l’inconnaissance de Dieu. D’après les écrits aréo-
pagitiques et Martin Heidegger (Paris 1971) 88.
18. Ep. 234; PG 32, 869AB.
19. F.O. 1, 4; PG 94, 800C.
 227

inaccessible, yet man communes with him and is called to share his life,
and this is the foundation of all anthropology: that God is completely
unknown in his essence, yet he can be approached and participated in
through his energies.2°. The divine energies in the eastern tradition are the
foundation of apophaticism. Apophasis does not conceal a void within
man’s cognitive capacities but expresses the Church’s experience of man’s
participation in the glory of God and her hope for the deification of man.
Apophasis must thus be seen in the context of man’s personal communion
with God, his sharing in divinity. The divine energies create an experience
of participation in the imparticipable divinity and this experience con-
stitutes the only way of knowing God. It is apophaticism understood in
this way that is important for the theology of death. The apophatic
tradition reveals the impossibility of a neatly structured rationalistic
theology in which every question is answered and the whole divine/human
relationship thus encapsulated. It shows that knowledge of God is not
simply intellectual but a passion. In the eastern tradition not even the
word ocyarnr) is sufficient to describe this communion of persons, this
passionate inter-relatedness, which is at the heart of revelatory knowledge.
The ’more divine’ name is ËpCù).21 Apophaticism in this sense is not the
narrow intellectualist system it sometimes became under Neoplatonic
influence. Here is a glimpse of communion and deification, of the recon-
ciliation of knowledge, being and love. Apophasis is the partial realization
of the language of the future, the language of silence and love which man
in the Word will speak in heaven. It was silence thus conceived eschato-
logically that was of such interest to the Syrian tradition.
The things of the world-to-be do not possess a true name, but only
simple cognition which is exalted above all names and signs and forms
and colours and habits and composite denominations ... Silence is
a symbol of the future world. Speech is an organ of this world.

THE POSSIBILITY OF AN APOPHATIC ANTHROPOLOGY

Apophaticism, then, is not just one technique among many, but is

20. There is no space to develop this, but there are striking parallels here with St
Thomas, for whom only esse determined by an essence, the act of existing which
actualizes the quod quid est res, can be known by natural powers, not the pure act of
existing, the puritas essendi, the ipsum esse subsistens. See LOSSKY, op. cit. ch. 1, and also
L.-B. GEIGER, La participation dans la philosophie de S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris 1942)
passim.
21. Pseudo-Dionysius, D.N. 4, 11-12; PG 3, 708B-709C. For a discussion of ϵρω&sfgr; in
St John Climacus, see c. YANNARAS, La métaphysique du corps. Étude sur S. Jean
Climaque (Paris 1970) ch. 5.
22. Isaac of Nineveh, Mystic Treatises. Translated from Bedjan’s Syriac text with an
introduction and registers by A. J. Wensinck (Amsterdam 1923) 114, 315.
 228

expressive of an essential dimension in everything which Christians believe.

Apophaticism teaches us above all a negative meaning in the dogmas
of the Church: it forbids us to follow natural ways of thought and to
form concepts which would usurp the place of spiritual realities. For
.
Christianity is not a philosophical school for speculating about
abstract concepts, but is essentially a communion with the living
-

G od. 23
In this sense, all theology is apophatic: Christology, pneumatology,
anthropology. Thus Pseudo-Dionysius believed that Christology was
apophatic. He says of ’the things armed about the love towards man of
Jesus’ that ’they possess the force of superlative negation (6fvayw
Û1TEPOXIKfís åïro<påO&dquo;Ecvs)’.24 Elsewhere, he says that Christ is ’hidden
even after the manifestation’ or rather ill it. There is a ~Vo-níPl0V with
respect to Christ which is not arrived at verbally or mentally. Even when
it is verbalized, it remains unsaid and unknown 2s In the Divine Names
Dionysius says that the most conspicuous fact of all theology is that the
God-formation of Jesus among us (f) Kcx6’i}l1êiS ’lnao0 6EOTIÀO:o-r(o:) is
both unutterable by every expression and unknown to every mind- even
to the angels. 2G Even Christology is apophatic, and here also the limits of
speech are more than philosophical. The obscurity and silence are the
result of the kenosis of the Son which, according to St Cyril of Alexandria,
is ’the entire mystery of salvation’.27 Pneumatology is also apophatic
because of the kenosis of the Spirit.28
But can there be an apophatic anthropology? Can silence and obscurity
really be involved in what Christians have to say about man? The fact
that we have shown that speech about God has this characteristic implies
that to some extent the same must be true of man. For man is made in
the image of God, and in and through Christ the full image and likeness
is restored. As St Clement of Alexandria says; man is like God and God
is like man (åv6pCùTIOEI0t)S).29 God is incarnate in his living image;
man is the human face of God. Thus human nature is a mystery which

reflects the mystery of God. This is set out brilliantly by St Gregory of

Nyssa in his treatise De lronzinis opificio. For Gregory the nature of man is
aEcbpTi-ro5. ’ &dquo;Who has known the spirit (vocrv) of the Lord?’ says the
23. LOSSKY, MT 42.
24. Ep. 4; PG 3, 1072B.
25. Ep. 3; PG 3, 1059B.
26. D.N. 2; PG 3, 648A.
27. See, for example, Cyril of Alexandria, Chr. un.; PG 75, 1308, 1332.
28. See below in ch. 3. Also LOSSKY, MT 168 f.
29. Str. 6, 9; GCS 52, p. 468; PG 9, 293B.
 229

Apostle. For mypart I say also: &dquo;Who has known his own spirit (voirv)&dquo;?’30
He outlines all the philosophical puzzlement about vous. It is undoubtedly
different from the senses, but what is it? Is it multiple? How can the spirit
be composite? Is it simple? How then is it spread out in the diversity of
the senses? How is the multiplicity to be reconciled with the unity, and
vice versa? All these questions, says Gregory, are unanswerable. Because
man is made in the image of the incomprehensible God.31

one of the attributes we contemplate in the divine nature is

Since
incomprehensibility of essence (TO åKo:Té0T)1ITOV Tfí&scaron; o*cr[as), it is
clearly necessary that in this point the image must resemble its
archetype. If the nature of the image could be comprehended, while
the archetype transcends comprehension, this diversity of attributes
would prove the defect of the image. But since the nature of our
spirit evades knowledge, it has an exact resemblance to the superior
nature; it is a figure of the incomprehensible nature because of its
own mysteriousness.32 .

Made in the image of God, man reproduces the unspeakable mystery of

the Trinity. In this sense ’it is easier to know the heavens than oneself
Corresponding to Dells abscorzditus there is homo abscofidiiiis, to apophatic
theology there is apophatic anthropology. Commenting on Ps 42(41):7
(’Deep calls to deep at the thunder of thy cataracts’), St Augustine says
that the two abysses here are man and God. While it is true that God’s
judgments are a great abyss (Ps 36 (35) :6), so also is the mysterious heart
of man.
For what is deeper than this depth? ... I do not think it absurd to
understand by this depth man of whom it is said elsewhere: man
shall come to a deep heart and God shall be exalted ... For every
man, whether holy, or just, or proficient in many virtues, is an abyss,
and ’calls to abyss’, whenever he preaches to a man about some matter
of faith or truth concerning eternal life.34
This of the mystery of man is reflected in the Greek patristic usage of
sense
Û1TócrrexO’lS. The distinction between vrr6crraoi$ and ovaia, made in
relation to the Trinity, is of immediate anthropological significance. When
we speak of the mystery of man, we are speaking of the irreducibility of

30. Hom. Opif. 11 ; PG 44, 153D-156B.

31. The idea of the body/soul relation as a mystery recurs in St John Climacus, who
asks: &tau;&iacute;&sfgr; &tau;&ograve; &pi;&epsiv;&rho;&iota; &epsiv;&mu;&epsiv; &mu;&upsi;&sigma;&tau;&tau;&eta;&rho;to&nu; &tau;&iacute;&sfgr; &oacute; &lambda;&oacute;&gam a;o&sfgr; &tau;&eta;&sfgr; &epsiv;&mu;&eta;&sfgr; &sigma;&upsi;&gam a;&kap a;&alpha;&sigma;&epsiv;&omega;&sfgr; (Scal. 15, 50; PG 88, 904A).
32. Gregory, op. cit. 11, 3-4; PG 44; 156B.
33. Ibid. 257C.
34. En. Ps. 41, 13 : CCSL 38, 470; PL 36, 473.
230

man to his nature, ofÙ1róCïfacrlS to ooaia. There is not a static, definable

’stuff’, ’human nature’, of which persons are mere instances. For there
is an incomparable uniqueness about each person. Now this is not
individualism: precisely because a man is primarily an ÙTIÓCJ’TacrlS, he
must be seen not as contingently but necessarily in relation; a person is
ahvays, at the centre of an infinitely complex network of relations and
cannot be understood except in that context. When one speaks of the
irreducibility of u1TóOïacrlS to oocria, of the uniqueness of persons, one
is attempting to counter those reductionistic accounts of man which attempt
to define him solely in terms of one area of his network of relations, to
confine him to ’one-dimensionality’. A person is always part of a subtly
moving flow of connectedness, and this ‘fiow’ is part of the divine move-
ment of gpcos. The movement is truly movement; it is dynamic, it involves
change. Man is a mystery because his humanity is not a possession, not
something which he has already attained. The very term ’person’ (personal :
lrpócrCù1ToV), with its connotations of ’mask’, contains a profound philo-
sophy of the human person.
It teaches the non-existence of an autonomous human order, for. to
exist is to participate either in being or in nothingness. In participa-
tion man realizes the icon of God. Man does not have a face toart
court, a simply human face. In the Incarnation God is not only
God: he is God-Man. But this can be taken in two senses: man
also is no longer only man, but a being who is either ’theandric’ or
demonic. St Gregory of Nyssa puts it well: ’Mankind is composed
of men with the faces of angels and of men wearing the mask of the
beast’. 35
Man is faced with the challenge of realizing his humanity. The patristic
interest in the distinction between image and likeness is invaluable in
this connection, because it makes the point that while man already is in
the image, the restoration of the full likeness awaits the end of time. It
makes the point that man is a mystery because his meaning is eschatological.
As both image and likeness man is a mystery to be spoken of only
apophatically. There are limits to what we can say of him both because
he is made in the image of the ineffable God and also because the future
of man, when he enjoys the full restored image and likeness of God, is
not simply predictable from the present. Human history is not a matter
of making improvements within the structures of man’s world but a
radical change of these structures themselves. This is the insight of Gregory
of Nyssa, who saw that there were at least two kinds of change. First of
35. P. EVDOKIMOV, L’Orthodoxie (Paris 1959) 77.
 231

all, there is cyclic, repetitive change, the kind of change we observe in

nature, for example.in the movement of the sea and the continuous cycle
of eating and drinking.31 Man is confined within a prison of insubstantial
change, the continual ’round of hunger, satiety, going to bed, getting up,
emptying ourselves and filling ourselves-one thing constantly follows
the other, and we never stop going round in circles until we get out of the
mill’ 3’ But, says Gregory, there is another kind of change: transformation
from glory to glory, perpetual growth in the good. ’Perfection consists in
our never stopping in our growth in good, never circumscribing our per-
fection by any limitation.’23 The fundamental notion here is mÉKTacrlS,
.which Gregory finds in Phil 3:13, where St Paul ’teaches us, I think, that
in our constant participation in the blessed nature of the Good, the graces
that we receive at every point are indeed great, but the path that lies
beyond our immediate grasp is infinite. This will constantly happen to
those who thus share in the divine goodness, and they will always enjoy a
greater and greater participation in grace throughout all eternity.’39 On
this view, sin is a refusal to change. It is the tendency to stabilize, fix, con-
serve the intermediate stages of perfection. Gregory does not see this

’progression* as a naively optimistic development. mÉKTacns is a more

violent concept than ’extension’: ’stretching to breaking point’ would be
a more adequate translation. It implies violent disruption and continuity.
It means a developing nakedness, a stripping away of the ’tunics’, the
outer layers which weigh men down. Only through successive deaths and
resurrections of this kind is the soul brought into intimate contact with
’

God who dwells at its centre.40

To really understand Gregory’s doctrine of enE~c’raw5 and its relevance

to an apophatic anthropology, we must consider its link with the idea of
the divine darkness already mentioned. It points to the importance for
the Christian of dispossession: the giving up of the desire to contain or
obtain things and persons and God. The one who thinks that the darkness
of God can be simplistically penetrated by philosophical investigation
cuts himself off from the true source of life; he has not accepted the
gospel’s teaching that the only way to find life is to lose it.
36. Hom. 1 in Eccl.; ed. J. McDonough and P. Alexander (Leiden 1962) 285 f. ; PG 44’
624D-625A; Hom. 3 in Eccl.; ibid. 113 f.; 648D.
37. Placil.; PG 46, 888D.
38. Perf.; ed. W. Jaeger (Leiden 1962) 214; PG 46, 285CD.
39. Hom. 8 in Cant.; ed. H. Langerbeck (Leiden 1960) 245 f.; PG 44, 940D-941A.
40. Hom. 12 in Cant.; ed. H. Langerbeck (Leiden 1960) 359; PG 44, 1029BC.
 232

The man who thinks that God can be known does not really have
life; for he has been falsely diverted from true Being to something
devised by his own imagination. For true Being is true life, and
cannot be known by us. If then this true life-giving nature transcends
.
knowledge, what our minds attain in this case is surely not life ...
Thus it is that Moses’s desire is fulfilled by the very fact that it
remains unfulfilled ... And this is the real meaning of seeing God:
never to have this desire fulfilled. 41

The way to true life means not clinging onto anything as we know it-
God, ourworld, ourselves-it means exposing oneself to darkness. The
apophatic tradition is crystallized by Gregory’s doctrines of the divine
darkness and of the importance of change. To refuse to settle for the
available definitions of God and of man is more than a convenient
philosophical position. It is to participate in the mystery of death and
resurrection; it means being dispossessed in faith. This is the nerve of the
argument for the apophaticism -of theological anthropology.

WITTGENSTEIN AND APOPHATICISM

So far I have looked at ’apophatic anthropology’ only in specifically
Christian tradition. To appreciate the complexity of the ascription of the
term ’apophatic’ to theological anthropology, one might usefully consider
the crisis of language in European literature and philosophy over the last
hundred years. 42 It could be argued that there has developed an ’apophatic
attitude’ to man, a sense of the mystery of man, which parallels the
apophatic anthropology discussed in this article. For over a hundred
years now, from Rimbaud onwards, silence has been embraced by poets
and other writers, sometimes out of despair, sometimes as a creative and
courageous act. There has been the perception that because language is a
social practice, because there is an intimate bond between speech and
community, the decay of a culture is reflected in the decay of language,
and in the face of this only silence is possible. This is seen in the work of
many German writers, especially that of the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus
(1874-1936). Kraus, who could say: ’Mir fallt zu Hitler nichts ein’,
explained his nine months’ silence after the accession of Hitler in 1933 thus:
Do not ask me what I have been doing all this time;
I am silent; .

And do not say, why.

41. V. Mos.; ed. H. Musurillo (Leiden 1964) 114 f. PG 44, 404AD.
42. Two recent studies are GEORGE STEINER, Language and Silence (London 1966) and
JERZY PETERKIEWICZ, The Other Side of Silence (London 1970).
 233

And itis still, since the Earth collapsed.

No word, that could be found:
One speaks only in one’s sleep.
And dreams of a sun that used to laugh.
’

It passes away:
.
Afterwards it was all the same.
The word fell asleep, as that world awoke.43
When the decadence of a culture makes humane speech impossible, to
try and speak will result either in capitulation to a distorted sensibility or
trivialization. But there is also the insight that there is another side of
silence, that silence, or the vision of darkness, is itself an experience of
ultimate reality, and therefore the most significant act of a writer is seen
to be his embracing of an authentic silence; indeed it is this to which
all his art tends. This insight demonstrates the difficulty of silence, its
paradoxical but irreducible connection to language.
Now it is this insight which-so some have argued-lies behind the
final thesis of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: ’Wovon man nich sprechen kann,
daruber muss man schweigen’ .44 It also helps us to understand the signifi-
cance of the so-called ’mystical’ theses, especially those concerned with

death, all of which are expressed negatively: ’at death the world does not
alter, but comes to an end’; ’Death is not an event in life; we do not live to
experience death’.45 Compare also: ’It is clear that ethics cannot be put -
into words.’46 Now these could be interpreted in the weak sense of
‘apophatic’ : that is, given certain a priori assumptions about the limitations
of human nature, one could draw positivistic conclusions about the total
impossibility of ethics and religion. But it seems fairly clear now that this
was not Wittgenstein’s intention. Particularly in the light of some recently

published correspondence, it seems that Wittgenstein was not writing off

the inexpressible but believed that what could not be expressed was more
important than what could. He does not argue, as the logical empiricists
do, that religion, ethics, and aesthetics are unimportant because unsayable,
but precisely the opposite: the unsayable alone has positive value: ’There
is the inexpressible’.47 As Max Black has pointed out, we should note the
implication in the woven of thesis 7 that there is something we cannot
43. A poem in Die Fackel, October 1933, p. 4. cited in F. FIELD, The Last Days of
Mankind. Karl Kraus and his Vienna (London 1967) 195.
44. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. transl. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness (London
1961), 7.
45. Ibid. 6. 431; 6. 4311.
46. Ibid. 6. 421.
47. Ibid. 6, 522.
234

speak about.48 It is now clear that Wittgenstein was deeply influenced by

Kraus and his circle, by those writers who in the Vienna of the turn of
the century were contemplating the death of the world in the death of
language. For them, as for Wittgenstein, silence was not the contemptuous
dismissal of the unsayable as ’nonsense’ (as in the case of the logical
empiricists) but the affirmation of ’wordless faith’, a profound
apophaticism. 49
Positivism holds-and this is its essence-that what we can speak
about is all that matters in life. 13’lreueas lVittgensteirt passionately
believes that all that really matters ill human life is precisely mhat, ill
his view. we mllst be silent about. When he nevertheless takes immense
pains to delimit the unimportant, it is not the coastline of that
island which he is bent on surveying with such meticulous accuracy,
but the boundary of the occan.50
Silence, for Wittgenstein, is all that matters in language and life. Silence,
indeed, is, on this view, part of language. Commenting on a poem of
Uhland, he once said:
’

The poem by Uhland is really magnificent. And this is how it is: if

only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost.
But the unutterable will be-unutterably--corrtairrecl in what has
been uttered. 51
These perceptions of Wittgenstein are becoming more intelligible now
being realized that he can no longer be regarded as an ’honorary
that it is
Anglo-Saxon’, but must be seen as a continental thinker (it is doubtful
whether he ever read any Locke, Berkeley, or Hume) .with interests which
extend beyond the narrow world of analytic philosophy. 52 In particular,
it can now be seen that his teaching about silence is part of a widespread
intuition about the nature of man and of his language, and about the
necessity to ensure an authentic silence with regard to the ultimate questions
of human existence. These contemporary experiences and intuitions of a
silence before the life and death of man which is not simply guilty or
defeatist constitute the way in which within the western European cultural
tradition the apophatic approach has reasserted itself.
48. A Companion to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Cambridge 1964) 377.
(
49. P. ENGELMANN, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein. With a Memoir. ET (Oxford
1967) 135.
50. Ibid. 97 51. Ibid. 83.
52. One writer who has been recently very much concerned to criticize the distortion
of Wittgenstein by the analytic tradition is S. Toulmin, especially in his recent
Wittgenstein’s Vienna (London 1973), which appeared too late to be mentioned in
detail in this paper.