the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

negativa is getting at the same point as the step/not beyond, 402 both of which are
impossible journeys undertaken without known goals, similar to Derrida’s destinnerant
and contre-allée: “And what is the via negativa if not the way or path marked by the not,
the passage to a shore we will never reach, a step/not beyond? Why can I not stop
speaking of God, of whom I cannot say a thing?” 403 The via negativa is explicitly made a
figure of the “postmodern condition,” which, for Caputo, is far from being new but rather
“also very ancient,” as his reference to apophaticism (“why can I not stop speaking of
God?”) suggests. 404 The question is then whether Christianity as a whole is “rescued” for
post-modernity, or whether Dionysius is “rescued” for Christianity.
But while Caputo proclaims the good news of deconstruction to practitioners of
negative theology, one might wonder whether deconstructionists are equally pleased to
hear this news. Derrida, though he deliberately gave negative theology a fair hearing,
ultimately remains skeptical about whether différance and negative theology are indeed
walking along the same trackless path, suspecting that negative theology “seems to
reserve, beyond all positive predication, beyond all negation, even beyond Being, some
hyperessentiality, a being beyond Being.” 405 More concretely, he also draws attention to
the ease with which an ecclesiastical or celestial hierarchy can slip into a political
hierarchy. Dionysius’ Mystical Theology, for instance, begins by imagining Moses
ascending Mount Moriah to meet God in the cloud—an ascent that begins, as Dionysius
Meister Eckhart," in Mysticism and Social Transformation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press,
2001), 77; Derrida, "Denials".
402 This is the awkward translation of the pas-au dela, where pas is a homonym in French, meaning both
step and not. Caputo takes the term from Maurice Blanchot. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, 42ff.
403 Ibid, 54.
404 Ibid, 56.
405 Jacques Derrida, "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," in Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of
Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory, trans. Ken Frieden, 3-70 (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1989), 7-8.
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