Radical Apophasis. Todd Ohara
are Proclean elements in Pseudo-Dionysius’s corpus, the mode of analysis is internalist: by means of a close reading of Pseudo-Dionysius Ohara simply wants to ask what tendencies in his account of the ultimate and process of procession and return recall positions and strategies one finds in the Elements of Theology. Here Ohara does not so much compete with Gersh as complement him. It is also extremely interesting how in Ohara’s hands the horizon of the question of the relation between Proclus and Pseudo-Dionysius has changed. Usually when the issue of the relation of Pseudo-Dionysius to Proclus is raised, the horizon of the question is whether Pseudo-Dionysius’s Christianity is being compromised by a philosophical regime. Thus, there are incentives to deny the relation or downplay it, or if forced by the evidence to accept the reality of Proclus in the Dionysian corpus, one turn elsewhere for a purer form of mystical theology. With Ohara, however, the issue is not whether a biblical (and possibly liturgical) form of Christianity negotiates with (or can negotiate with) with Neoplatonic philosophy, but whether it negotiates with one that at worst does not interfere too much with some of its more basic commitments (e.g., the goodness of creation) and at best helps Christianity articulate its basic beliefs more clearly to itself and others. It is more certainly his judgment that Proclus helps underwrite and develop basic Christian convictions whereas Plotinus hinders their development and ultimately subverts them.
In the final substantive chapter of part 2 Ohara links in a concerted way the strategies of apophatic naming with mystical ascent towards the God who is beyond being. Ohara, of course, did much the same in part 1 when he discussed Plotinus. Here the connection between language of God and participation in God, however, is provided detailed treatment. Even if the realized destination involves an overcoming of language and an entry into silence, naming and especially apophasis will have been constitutive, and the metaphysical backdrop, which makes sense of this naming, essential. Here Ohara in the most gentle way possible seems to take on the purists, both premodern and postmodern, who want their mysticism free from pyrotechnics of apophasis and the weighing down of metaphysics.
While the deftness of analysis and the gradual nature of the unfolding of the “internal logic” of both Plotinus’s and Pseudo-Dionysius’s naming and un-naming of ultimate reality sometimes makes this a challenging book, the book rewards all the way through. It rewards because of the scrupulous nature of the interpretation of passages, but also because of the larger implications of the reading of two paradigmatic forms of unsaying in the Western tradition. I have drawn attention to a number of these in my opening framing of the book. I will end by making another. I indicated previously that by exposing the “internal logic” of Plotinian and Dionysian forms of unsaying, and by supplying us with conceptual tools to make a real distinction between these grammars, at the very least Ohara allows us to formulate more perspicuous interrogations of forms of philosophical and theological discourse where prima facie the level of unsaying seems abnormal. I gave as examples Eriugena, Eckhart, Porete, and Cusanus. I neglected to point out, however, that we are not dealing purely with a matter of taxonomy, such that all or any of these discourses laced with negation and teeming with denial are Plotinian or not Dionysian. While, of course, logically any one of the four could represent a pure retrieval of one or the other, it is antecedently more likely we might see that they are influenced to different degrees by both logics or grammars and that we are talking in the end about a dominant-recessive relation. I am convinced that the implications go further and that Ohara’s excavation of two contrasting “internal logics” of unsaying also helps us with the more standard cases of unsaying in the Western philosophical and theological traditions. I am thinking here of Albertus Magnus and, of course, Aquinas. There is a copious modern literature on Aquinas and apophasis beginning with Victor Preller and David Burrell, proceeding through Denys Turner, and finding expression in detailed works of Fran O’Rourke and Gregory Rocca. None of these thinkers would deny the force of the Dionysian tradition on Aquinas in the Summa, nor neglect to draw attention to Aquinas’s famous commentary on the Divine Names, even if they might not be anxious to play Pseudo-Dionysius against an apophatic Augustine in terms of influence. What Ohara gives us, I submit, is a complexification and a gift of another question. While it might well be true that Aquinas’s views of divine naming operate in general within a Dionysian horizon, might it not also be the case that there are moments even in Aquinas where one sees the interference of a different, more Plotinian grammar of unsaying?
Cyril O’Regan
Huisking Professor of Theology
University of Notre Dame
Acknowledgements
Of the many to whom I am indebted, and of the many who through their example, teaching, and friendship have led, pushed, and at times accompanied me on this journey of learning, I am delighted to acknowledge the following persons with admiration and gratitude from my heart. While in graduate school, I was blessed to have had a number of exceptional and outstanding teachers, each of whom has in some fashion influenced my work in the present book, and among whom I would gratefully like to thank the following: Professor Cyril O’Regan, Professor David Kelsey, Professor Nicholas Wolterstorff, Professor Marilyn McCord Adams, Professor Louis Dupré, and Professor Denys Turner. More specifically, I would like to thank Cyril O’Regan, David Kelsey, and Denys Turner, who graciously read and provided incisive and insightful suggestions for strengthening the book manuscript. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank others who, while unnamed, offered comments which led to refinements in the manuscript. Additionally, I want to highlight and warmly thank David Kelsey for his continued, strong support of this project. In particular, I want to extend my deepest gratitude and thanks to Cyril O’Regan, who has been a dear friend and mentor to me since my days at Yale Divinity School. His inspiring example and teaching have impacted me in ways that go beyond the academy. His kindness, unfailing encouragement, and support helped in no small way to see this project through to publication, Even more, I would like to express special thanks to Cyril O’Regan for the wonderful gift of so generously writing the foreword to this book. It is far more illuminating and penetrating than that which follows it. To be sure, all errors and weaknesses of the book are my own.
Of those colleagues who blessed me with their friendship during our time in New Haven, I would like to thank the following. Among those who met at the weekly philosophy of religion lunch discussions, I would like to thank Andrew Dole, Corey Beals, Andrew Chignell, Samuel Newlands, Stefano Penna, and Todd Buras. From the graduate student theology discussion group, I would like to thank Scott Dolff, Maurice Lee, Edwin van Driel, and Edward Waggoner. Going back to our time at YDS, I also want to thank Matthew McKinnon and Ed Sloan. Thanks for so many engaging and enjoyable philosophical and theological conversations.
Before concluding these acknowledgements, I would like to express thanks to the able and cheerful team at Wipf and Stock, especially Matt Wimer, Robin Parry, and Calvin Jaffarian, whose patient guidance helped to ready the book for publication.
Lastly and most importantly, I thank Marian Ohara, whose person and life it seems to me express the beautiful love and grace of God, and without whose profound love, care, encouragement, and tremendous support this book would not have been completed. I dedicate this book to her.
Introduction
The primary task of this project is to exhibit and articulate the internal “logic” and deep structure of the apophases and negative theologies operative in the philosophical and theological reflections of two thinkers in late antiquity: Plotinus and Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite.1 Having set forth the task in that way, I would like to state upfront that the approach this study takes is not primarily historical: I do not, for example, examine the social and/or cultural history surrounding either the texts or persons of Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius. Nor do I attempt to analyze Plotinian and Dionysian apophases primarily in terms of, say, the history of ideas: for example, the way(s) in which Plotinus’s conception of the One is related and indebted to Plato’s notion of the Good beyond being. Nor do I engage in a specifically philological examination of the texts and terms. Rather, the approach I intend to take is primarily systematic, conceptual, and excavatory in character, interrogating—by way of a deep reading of the texts themselves—the internal structure, “logic,” and rationale(s) that drive and underwrite apophasis in both Plotinus and Dionysius. To be sure, where germane to the analysis,