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this affirmation falls well short of the mark, and we could just as easily say that God is lifeless because life is a property of beings, and God is not a being, but rather the source of being. And since both statements are true, and are also the opposite of one another— and so cannot both be true without violating the rule of non-contradiction—then we are forced to say something nonsensical: God is lifeless life, or, just as infelicitously, God is lively lifelessness. In the Mystical Theology, Dionysius lets this exercise in apophatic speech run riot, affirming and negating a whole litany of Divine names, starting with the lowest names (God is not material, God is nonexistence, God is not life and so on) all the way up to the highest names: God is not knowledge, not truth, and not understanding. Scandalously, this even applies to the incarnation: “Jesus is hidden even after this revelation...hidden even amid the revelation...he was neither human nor nonhuman”. Calling Jesus the God-Man is a perfect example of negating a negation. Indeed, one might see the structure of the Divine Names as leading to apophasis just as the Mystical Theology does, even though it does so by virtue of its effusive naming of God in a way that reverses the structure of creation. The Divine Names begins with the name Good (the name for the “outermost” procession), and ends by giving God the name of One (in which the processions are gathered back up and enfolded into unity, which only God truly has). Dionysius concludes by stating that “no unity or trinity, no number or oneness, no fruitfulness, indeed nothing that is or is known can proclaim that hiddenness beyond every mind and reason of the transcendent Godhead which transcends every being.” The final step in the Divine Names is to say that God is beyond both assertion and denial. 216
This is admittedly a nonsensical assertion within the bounds of everyday language, but a necessary conclusion in Dionysius’ logic: God is beyond assertion and denial because denying something requires us to know what we are denying, and knowledge of God of any kind is not possible. 590 To be able to mean anything when I deny that the sun is shining, I need to know what I mean when I say that the sun is shining. When I say that, for instance, God is not good, this denial is not, properly speaking, a denial, because I cannot by definition know precisely what is meant by the proposition “God is good.” Denying that either my assertion or my denial truly signifies anything amounts to a double negation. 591 And so, having affirmed and negated every possible name for God, and having negated that negation, what else is there left to do but fall silent? Dionysius falls silent at this point as well, as the Mystical Theology ends with this double negation. With this grounding in the basic concepts of Dionysius’ philosophy—that God is one, that God’s unity implies the participation of all things in God through a process of emanation and return, that therefore God can be named by every name and yet is nameless, and that, finally, the most responsible way to talk about God is to fall silent—I now turn to Weigel’s works, exploring how Weigel puts these ideas to work in his critique of the confessional church. The next section shows how Weigel, in an early work that constitutes the first proof of his having read Dionysius, he uses the Dionysian dialectical hierarchy to imagine a universe where man not only issues forth from God in the act of creation, and so remains irrevocably connected to his creator. The implication 590 My understanding and explanation of this point relies on Denys Turner’s clear exposition of the subject. Turner, Darkness, 39. 591 As Turner puts it, we don’t even know how far short of the mark our language about God falls: “For whereas in non-theological cases, for example scientific, we are normally able to state in what respect a metaphor falls short of what it metaphorises, in the case of God the only language we have for describing the inadequacy itself falls short, as deficient in the description of the difference. We can only say that every utterance about God falls short of God 'infinitely'. But to say that is to say that we have no conception at all of the degree of shortfall, and therefore no language at all in which to describe it. Turner, Darkness, 39. 217
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MYSTICISM & CONFESSIONAL CONFLICT I
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ABSTRACT This dissertation investig
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INTRODUCTION • ES IST DIR NICHT B
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mostly undisturbed by his Lutheran
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yet have signalled his assent with
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in a context where action is expect
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Protestant Mysticism: Not a Contrad
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interest, 31 and praised the Theolo
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one can observe the texture of the
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discourse and reasoned debate, or t
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with fragments of Eckhart and Taule
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Dionysius and Eckhart (for differen
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movement, but also profound shifts
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schools, as well as universities wh
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allowed them to cooperate effective
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made clear, would result in dismiss
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and in these external dealings, the
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same laws of physics, but while the
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Tertullian’s De Fuga in Persecuti
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as a martyr. Moreover, Holy Scriptu
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Alternatively, the so-called four-f
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tzeyger und unterrichter ist ynn di
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fellow Lutherans in studying books
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provoked into action unnecessarily,
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masses for the dead (for instance)
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traditional proof texts about the o
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positive understandings of indiffer
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insofar as their imperfection is ra
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Of these forms of indifference, I f
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to Dionysius’ authority. Two grou
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PART I • VALENTIN WEIGEL AND MEIS
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investigating his early modern read
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was a devilish heretic to others (
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his neglect of Eckhart. 158 For ins
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“unheilvolle Kompliziertheit”).
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and Jerome (wearing what looks like
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title page, as mentioned above, des
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of a respectable though not fanatic
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himself, but rather cultivated part
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church that Luther, Melanchthon and
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kan”), and specifically the role
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soul become convinced that nothing
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that salvation can be attained thro
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more importantly, a theology that a
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Mit Recht der Meister genannt: Mode
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These role-reversal dialogues were
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As this chapter has shown, Eckhart
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philosophers from Hegel and Schopen
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CHAPTER 2 • GELASSENE GELASSENHEI
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the relationship between Tauler and
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e “as it was when it was not.”
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Eckhart agree that spiritual povert
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one-of-a-kind thing, or the best ki
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einvaltig stille), an uncreated lig
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e as free of willing and desiring a
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nestling inside the soul, but rathe
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Gelassenheit, das ist, das er nicht
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(necessarily inferior) knowledge pr
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context is that he picks up on Eckh
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he begins to steer the discussion a
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further proof for Weigel’s theory
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understood that the mind cannot pos
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wait in stiller Gelassenheit, recei
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truth as an educated theologian or
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ungewisser”) and finds that his f
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die Blinden an ein ander gehetzett,
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gesagett das ist er selber und ist
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Gelassenheit for the Bible, which i
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that the kind of Gelassenheit Weige
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indifference that allows Weigel to
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teacher. 366 However, the turning p
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Weigel gives the passage an unexpec
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Murren”)—and they do this “in
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and all the more so since he saw li
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the strength of the intellectual re
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CHAPTER 3 • DIONYSIUS, WHOEVER HE
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demonstrated for Eckhart, I will de
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destroyer that Dionysius is most of
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ears good news to the church.” 39
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points out, with a purification, a
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served as cornerstones in defences
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(Acts 17: 15-34), one of the skepti
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to make the interpretation of these
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Outside the universities, Dionysius
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Page 179 and 180: The primary piece in the compilatio
Page 181 and 182: It is hardly surprising that Cochla
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Page 189 and 190: Dionysiacum. For Lefèvre d’Étap
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Page 193 and 194: enlightens all great thinkers in ev
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Page 207 and 208: Weigel concludes that, precisely be
Page 209 and 210: apart, he suggested that true Chris
Page 211 and 212: and so did not dwell on the fact th
Page 213 and 214: Names, as the title suggests, is ba
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Page 217 and 218: of being.” 580 As we will see lat
Page 219: (“God is a rock”) or even a neg
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Page 225 and 226: Dionysius to show that, just as God
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Page 229 and 230: argues that there cannot be more th
Page 231 and 232: dicitur una.” 616 The stress that
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Page 239 and 240: alternative—namely prayer. 643 We
Page 241 and 242: Dionysius writes that the summit of
Page 243 and 244: leibet er illimitatus.” 658 Weige
Page 245 and 246: work, Weigel had written explicitly
Page 247 and 248: Luther did not ever use the exact p
Page 249 and 250: as opposed to an office-holder, an
Page 251 and 252: writing. By calling his Layman der
Page 253 and 254: Others are loyal to mere men (the P
Page 255 and 256: zuerzeigen einen rechtschaffen vnd
Page 257 and 258: and ceremonial ones at that. 694 Th
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Page 261 and 262: all being. In relinquishing any cre
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Page 265 and 266: than resolve it, because the proble
Page 267 and 268: parcels God, who by rights is supre
Page 269 and 270: Appendix • The Works of Valentin
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Abad, J. M. (1999). Th
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Chenu O.P., M.-D. (1968). In M.-D.
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Eckhart, M. (1993). Werke I (Vol. 1
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Israel, A. (1888). M. Valentin Weig
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MacCulloch, D. (2010). Christianity
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Payne, R. J. (Ed.). (1981). Meister
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Schindling, A., & Ziegler, W. (1990
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Verkamp, B. J. (1975). The Limits u
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