Abstract
J. P. Williams has written a thoroughly engaging exploration of apophatic spirituality, which in the West came to be known as ‘negative’ theology, the via negativa. It is basically a way of apprehending God that progresses dialectically, refining and sharpening our sense of God. It is a mode of theology that moves from statements such as ‘God is this’ to ‘God is not that’. But as with all modes of spirituality, this is as much a matter of the heart as of the head. It affects not only the language that we use as the scaffolding of the spirit, but extends to a whole way of seeing, of acting and reacting in the world. Apophatic theology delights in the language of paradox that brings us to the edge of silence and points beyond itself to mystery. As Williams suggests in the afterword here, the apophatic cry ‘I do not know’ is one that positively bristles with conviction and resurrection life.
The book is divided into five sections, covering, in turn, the terrain of biblical foundations, themes and emphases, pioneers of apophatic faith, its allies and its practices.
The third section provides clear but tantalizingly brief expositions of four key and predictable exponents of the apophatic way, set out in chronological order (from Gregory of Nyssa to Nicholas of Cusa), while the fourth extends the reach of the exploration in discussions of its philosophical roots, and by drawing intriguing connections with Keats and C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories. Here we see Williams’ evident feel and appreciation for the economy of the language of poetry, a sensibility that surfaces again in a short chapter in the final section entitled ‘Exuberance: saying and unsaying in parable and poetry’. The texture of the language of this book is appealing and accessible, and its register oscillates between searching theological enquiry and a more devotional tone. Indeed, there are sections that sound like a retreat address (for example, p. 50) or that could be read slowly and savoured as lectio divina (p. 30).
In terms of theology, a great deal is marshalled from Scripture and Christian tradition to support the apophatic way, and perhaps a little too much is claimed to validate this mode of Christian faith and life. As one might say in another realm of discourse, not all the facts fit the hypothesis. Nevertheless, here is an antidote to the prevalent kind of bullet point theology that seeks to capture God in fixed propositions and pious clichés. Some readers may find some of what is written here to be contestable or questionable. Rehearsing the old definition of liturgy as ‘the people’s work’, for instance, perpetuates what is probably a false etymology. Liturgy, rather, is work that benefits the people. Similarly, the reader may well infer that the progress along the mystical way was sequential, through the experiences of purgation, illumination and union. The Spanish Carmelites, both Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, were clear that very few people experienced the bliss of union, and more importantly warned their readers against seeing any religious experience as being unequivocal evidence of sanctity. Both were clear that the measure of sanctity was a person’s capacity to love and to suffer. This is the ‘health warning’ that could usefully be stamped on the cover of this timely and erudite book, which in its own way reconnects spirituality and theology, and eloquently demonstrates that the practice of prayer is the crucible of our best talk of God.