This article is taken from PN Review 204, Volume 38 Number 4, March - April 2012.
Catchwords 14
Lord of unlikeness
The most memorable definition of negative theology (outside the definitions of God in the writings of Plotinus and John Scotus Erigena - 'who does not know what He is, because He is not a what, and is incomprehensible to Himself and to all intelligence') is probably the one expressed in the Upanishads, when Yajnavalkya is questioned by his students on the nature of God: he chants 'neti neti' meaning 'neither this nor that'. God is beyond the scope of words, superessential: He repels all attributes. What humans speak about when they talk about God is actually something else: the intellect at its highest level.
The first person in Western culture to appreciate this essential otherness was a poet, Xenophanes of Colophon, who attacked Homer and Hesiod for their anthropomorphisms: 'One god is greatest amongst gods and men,/ Not at all like mortals in body [form] and thought'. For Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed, no discussion was possible - there was no accessible 'likeness' that might constitute a relationship. That is what Islam says too (Sura 112); and some of its thinkers, such as Al-Kirmānī, upheld God's unique oneness in rigorously negative terms: God was not the First Being, since the beginning of a series is, in spite of its primacy, still a part of that same series. God is utterly unknown and unknowable. Without predication, it is impossible to say anything about the First Being at all.
Yet the negative ...
The most memorable definition of negative theology (outside the definitions of God in the writings of Plotinus and John Scotus Erigena - 'who does not know what He is, because He is not a what, and is incomprehensible to Himself and to all intelligence') is probably the one expressed in the Upanishads, when Yajnavalkya is questioned by his students on the nature of God: he chants 'neti neti' meaning 'neither this nor that'. God is beyond the scope of words, superessential: He repels all attributes. What humans speak about when they talk about God is actually something else: the intellect at its highest level.
The first person in Western culture to appreciate this essential otherness was a poet, Xenophanes of Colophon, who attacked Homer and Hesiod for their anthropomorphisms: 'One god is greatest amongst gods and men,/ Not at all like mortals in body [form] and thought'. For Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed, no discussion was possible - there was no accessible 'likeness' that might constitute a relationship. That is what Islam says too (Sura 112); and some of its thinkers, such as Al-Kirmānī, upheld God's unique oneness in rigorously negative terms: God was not the First Being, since the beginning of a series is, in spite of its primacy, still a part of that same series. God is utterly unknown and unknowable. Without predication, it is impossible to say anything about the First Being at all.
Yet the negative ...
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