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Faith And Experience: XII Christian Experience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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In the past few articles we have been tracing some of the ways in which philosophers and theologians have used the idea of the ineffability and incomprehensibility of God. They warn us insistently not to suppose that we know more about God than we actually do. Whether our understanding of God derives from philosophy or from revelation or from our own experience, they remind us that he is still largely unknown to us, mysterious and transcendent.
Those who are drawn by the idea of that “infinite ignorance” which was proclaimed by Evagrius may find all this quite delightful. But may not some people rather feel that they are left with almost no God at all? We may recall the tragic conclusion of Cassian’s account of the anthropomorphite controversy in Egypt. When at last old Paphnutius is convinced of the truth of the anti-anthropomorphite theology, he throws himself on the ground, howling. “Poor, poor me!” he cries out. “They have taken away my God and now I have no God to hold on to. I do not know whom I am to worship now or whom I am to pray to” (Coni. 10,3).
As Bowker says, “No matter how ‘God’ is constituted, if there is no feedback at all into the actual situations and experiences of life, plausibility is under maximum strain; if no effect of God can ever be discerned or specified, then in effect God is nowhere” (The Sense of God p. 84). Now maybe there is good reason for saying that that is precisely where God is. But does our negative theology not tend to make God so remote from our actual situations and experiences, does it not make it so difficult to accept anything at all as an “effect of God”, that it eventually ceases to be plausible to talk of God at all?
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- Copyright © 1980 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Kephalaia Gnostica III 63; Practicus 87.
2 Cf Georg Strecker, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen, pp. 171ff.
3 Clem. Recogn. I 36; Origen, c. Cels, III 2-3; Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 26, 15; Bede, Hist. Eccl. I 30; Anselm of Havelberg, Dial. I 5; Peraldus, Summa de Virt. III 5,6,3.
4 Guide for the Perplexed III 32 (quoted by Raymund Martin, Pugio Fidei III d. 3 ch. 12, xiii.
5 Cf Marcel Simon, Saint Stephen and the Jerusalem Temple (JEH 1951, pp. 127-142).
6 Insistence on maintaining external practice: Migr. 89ff. For allegorical interpretation, e.g. Spec. Leg.; Vit. Mos. passim.
7 Cf J. Leclercq, Lu crise du monachisme (Bulletino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 70 (1958), pp. 19–41; H. Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, pp. 391f; K. V. Selge, Die Ersten Waldenser, I pp. 267f. Cf PL 172, 1411; PI 181, 1720.
8 Theog. 550, 613. Cf M. L. West on Theog. 551f.
9 Epicurea 360ff Usener. For the critique, cf Greg. Thaum, Or. ad Orig. 152;
9 Origen, e. Cels, II 27; Atticus, fr. 3 Des Places; Porphyry, ad Marc. 22.
10 B 5; 14; 15 DK (86; 87; 50 M). For the interpretation, cf M. L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, p. 145 (I accept his first interpretation).
11 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 94 n.2 (Fountain ppb.).
12 Cf T. D. Barnes, Tertullian, p. 201.
13 Ad Uxorem II 8,6ff. Cf Jean Steinmann, Tertullion, p. 121.
14 L’Abandon, p. 71. All references to de Caussade are to the editions by M. Olphe-Galliard
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