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

apart, he suggested that true Christians should avoid voicing divergent views and should
instead cultivate an attitude of Gelassenheit, an indifference that mirrors God’s own unity.
In this chapter, I show how Weigel explores an interpretation of indifference
drawn from the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, arguing not only that the Church is
not worth reforming, but also that it need not exist at all. As such, Weigel considered the
effort expended by the confessional church to purify doctrine and then to discipline both
clerics and parishioners by means of secular power to be entirely in vain. Instead, Weigel
proposed an alternative theology, where theology is meant literally as a different way of
speaking about God—a theology that might be termed an irenic. The noun irenic has not
survived into modern usage alongside its antonym, polemic. The Duden does have an
entry for Irenik (defined as “das Bemühen um eine friedliche interkonfessionelle
Auseinandersetzung mit dem Ziel der Aussöhnung”), and the Oxford English Dictionary
lists two adjectival forms, irenic (meaning “pacific, non-polemic”) and irenical (meaning
“peaceful; pacific; tending to promote peace, esp. in relation to theological or
ecclesiastical differences”). 561 However, these non-technical usages do not capture the
idea of irenic as a rhetorical strategy or a way of communicating. 562 So if polemic means
561 “Irenik, die,” Duden Online, http://www.duden.de/node/685719/revisions/1110675/view (accessed July
19, 2013);"irenic, adj. and n.," OED Online, June 2013, Oxford University Press,
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/99414 (accessed July 19, 2013); "irenical, adj.," OED Online, June 2013,
Oxford University Press, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/99415 (accessed July 19, 2013).
562 This is how Müller uses the term Irenik in discussing the attempts to end confessional conflict in the late
16 th to mid-17 th centuries, after Weigel’s time. Far more than simply referring to the good intentions (or at
least battle-weariness) of the various parties who came together to conduct this Irenik, for Müller, it
constitutes an attempt at “Kommunikationsreform.” His study looks at the ways that scholars (theologians)
communicated, and how this affected religion in the public sphere. The attempt to find consensus, however,
often only led to more conflict. He is not trying to point out the oft-noticed hopeless partisanship of
confessionalized religion, but rather to examine the rules and practices that governed learned disputation.
Disputations were a socially determined way of defending and defining the truth that seemed completely
obvious to the theologians of the time. Irenik placed this method of “Wahrheitsverwaltung” under scrutiny
and therefore was itself vulnerable to attack. (Müller, Kommunikationsreform, 15) Moreover, in order to
have their ideas validated and thus have an impact, the Irenicists had to counter orthodox criticism in the
format that was normal at the time—in disputation. (Müller, 21.) Because Irenik seemed to undermine the
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