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

a (partially) skeptical response to hart and russell 297Logically, the difference consists in that, in the case of “ordinary” negation, the notionof infinity amounts but to the negation of serial finiteness, an endlessly extruded serieseach of whose parts is finite, because mutually exclusive, each being a “this” ratherthan a “that.” In the case of the divine being, however, we have to speak of an infinitythat transcends that known by force of “ordinary” negation of the finite, because thenegation required is the negation of that “ordinary” negation itself. As such, this “transcendent”notion of the infinite is such as to exclude all exclusion, not only, then, theexclusions of one finite by another, but also the exclusion of the finite by the transfinite.To put it more positively, God’s not being any sort of “this” rather than a “that”entails not maximum vacuousness and indeterminacy but, on the contrary, maximuminclusiveness – God’s being “all in all.” When, therefore, the Pseudo-Dionysius saysthat “there is no kind of thing that God is,” it is not to proclaim a God of absoluteemptiness, but, on the contrary, it is so as to be able to say “there is no kind of thingthat God is not.” God is maximally inclusive: is this what Hart and Russell mean whenthey speak of a “positive” notion of infinity? Perhaps. But if so, it is at least misleadingso to say, for what we have here is no contentful notion of the divine infinity, but adouble negation, the negation of exclusiveness, of which conception there is no possible“positive” understanding.Hence, to return to the beginning of this chapter, if such is true of “infinity,” thenthe same will be true of “difference” and “otherness,” for to say that God is “whollyother” is to say no more than that God escapes every form of finite difference, that is,every form of utterable difference. The sense in which God is “wholly other” is notone that possesses any positive content, as if it were an extension “by analogy” of ourcreaturely conception of “otherness” in this or that respect. When we say, rightly, thatGod is “wholly other,” we do not mean that there is some measure of how “other” Godis, but that, as of God, all conceptions of “otherness” fail – or, as the Pseudo-Dionysiusfamously said, God is “beyond both similarity and difference” (Mystical Theology,1048A). That failure of the language of “otherness” to capture the transcendence ofGod is exhibited precisely in the oxymoronic character of the phrase “wholly other,”for no “otherness” can be “total.” If “totally,” then not “other.” If “other,” then not“totally.” That was the point of Thomas’s objection quoted at the beginning of thischapter: “otherness” is always other in a certain respect. It was because of this thatNicholas of Cusa thought it just as well to describe God as “ly non-aliud” (the “notother”)as to describe God as “totally other.” Furthermore, it was for the same reasonthat Meister Eckhart said that God is distinct precisely in virtue of being the one andonly being that is not distinct, an unum indistinctum. Both propositions amount to thesame as that of the Pseudo-Dionysius mentioned earlier: all creatures fall within somefamily, whether of “difference” or “sameness,” and God does not. And that – not beingdistinct – is the distinction between God and creatures.For these reasons, then, it seems wrong, or at least misleading, of Hart to saythat “difference within being . . . corresponds precisely as difference [my italics] to thetruth of the divine differentiation.” On the account I have given of the purely negativecharacter, whether of infinity or of the divine difference, there is no relation of analogy,nor therefore of participation, between creaturely finitude and the divine infinity onthe one hand, nor between creaturely difference and the divine differentiations on theother. Once again, this is not to say that finite creatures do not participate in the infinite