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

all being. In relinquishing any created thing so as not to fracture God’s perfect unity,
Gelassenheit is about achieving a state of indifference that mirrors the Godhead’s own
undifferentiation.
Apophasis refers to the breakdown of speech that must occur when one tries to
apply created language to God. Whereas Eckhartian Gelassenheit refers primarily to the
union between God and soul, Dionysian apophasis grows out of his conviction that all
created things participate in God. It was therefore appropriate to name God using
language drawn from all creation, but that because these created things are by definition
imperfect and limited, these names must also then be denied of God. In a final step, one
must also deny that the denials say anything more true about God, which leaves nothing
to do but lapse into silence. On this account, because God is both unnameable and
omninameable, any name for God is just as correct or incorrect as any other: created
language, in other words, is applied to God indifferently.
Indifference was not an abstract interest for Weigel but a way of answering an
urgent question with important practical consequences for him: is one obliged to risk
martyrdom by speaking up and defending one’s beliefs? Weigel asked this question
because, in Saxony in the sixteenth century, Church and State had joined forces and
attempted to purify doctrine by publishing doctrinal statements requiring subscription,
backed up by secular power for those who refused to sign. Weigel disagreed with both
the practice of producing confessional documents and with much of the theological
content of the document he was asked to sign, the Formula Concordiae—but he signed it
all the same. A central theme in Weigel’s writings is how to relate to a church in which
he was an ordained minister, one whose theology had formed him, and one that he had
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