Heller M, Woodin W.H. (eds.) Infinity. New research frontiers (CUP, 2011)(ISBN 1107003873)(O)(327s)_MAml_

CHAPTER 13God and Infinity: TheologicalInsights from Cantor’sMathematicsRobert John Russell13.1 IntroductionWestern monotheism begins with the fundamental assertion that God is AbsoluteMystery, the incomprehensible ground and source of being itself, and that we canspeak about God only because God first speaks to us in revelation received in faith andunderstood always inadequately through reason, tradition, and experience. Theologyas self-critical reflection on revelation and religious experience starts with what wedo not understand before it seeks to say something about that which we understandat least in part. In the long traditions of Western monotheism, the way of unknowingleads, and the way of knowing follows behind. These ways have come to be calledthe via negativa (the negative way of denial) and the via positiva (the positive way ofaffirmation), respectively. This means, in turn, that when we talk about God we shouldbegin by attempting to say something about those divine attributes that we only knowby negation, that is, by their utter contrast with our experience of ourselves and ouruniverse. We should begin with what are called “apophatic” statements, from the Greek for “negative” or “denial.” With this we return full circle to the fundamentalassertion that the most inclusive divine attribute is the incomprehensibility of God. Butthis incomprehensibility, too, tells us something inestimably important about God’srelation to the world: it is only by being incomprehensibly different from this worldthat God can be the source of this world and its final home. Thus, the way of unknowingis, paradoxically, a way of knowing and a source of confident hope.With this in mind, we may also attempt to speak about what God has made knownto us about God’s nature and purposes, particularly through that dimension of cultureshaped by the great discoveries of the natural sciences and modern mathematics in thepast four centuries. Here we can talk about God not by sheer contrast but by making apositive analogy with key experiences in our own lives, with key events in history, andThis paper is a revised and expanded version of chap. 2, “The God Who Infinitely Transcends Infinity: Insights fromCosmology and Mathematics,” in Russell (2008, pp. 56–76). The latter is a slightly revised version of achapter with the same title in Templeton (1997).275