The Deus Absconditus of Scripture: An Apophatic Hermeneutic for Christian Contemplatives

The Unity of Scripture

Up until the 12^th Century, Christian contemplative prayer consisted almost entirely of meditation on the scriptures. Even as monastic reforms broadened to incorporate contemplative practices beyond this narrow association with scripture the two have never been severed. Indeed, much of medieval exegesis is concerned to demonstrate the overall “unity” of the scriptures in Christ (cf. de Lubac: 225ff.). Christ is the “lens” through which both Old and New Testaments are allegorically or typologically interpreted and through whom both Testaments are shown to have an overall coherence and unified structure. As Alister McGrath has observed of this exegetical approach,

The general landscape of the Bible is thus understood as “self-referential,” whereby ambiguous passages can be explained by referencing other books within the canon under the assumption that all scripture has God as its author and Christ as its interpreter. Furthermore, this unity of scripture, while grounded in faith, is not merely a theological invention imposed from the outside but is modeled within the scriptures themselves, as later methods of historical criticism would help to uncover. In fact, while this manner of spiritual exegesis can be seen in both Hellenistic Jewish and Greek religion, Christianity is unique in its integration and appropriation of older texts in light of new events throughout the construction of the New Testament canon itself. Perhaps this is nowhere more obvious than within the Matthean birth narrative in which Jesus is “exegeted” through the prophets of the Old Testament even as these same prophetic texts are themselves given new christological meaning through the life and person of Christ (cf. Pizzuto: 737; see also, Matt 5:17–19; 26:54; Luke 4:21; 1 Cor 10:6, 11 and Gal 4:24 where Paul respectively identifies “types” and “allegorizings” of the Jewish scriptures in the gospel message—and cf. also McGinn: 68).

Prior to the modern development and application of historical criticism there were broadly accepted assumptions about the christological “unity of scripture,” which could be demonstrated through allegorizing historically dissimilar texts. The legitimacy of this method was certainly not without debate, especially between the ancient schools of Alexandria and Antioch, for example, who sparred about the extent to which such allegories can be effectively mined. An avid defender of allegorizing the Bible was the prolific third century Alexandrian scholar, Origen (c. 185–254 ce). Savvy to the historical and theological discrepancies and limitations of certain biblical texts centuries before his time, Origen was also the first to categorize the so-called three “senses” of scripture (which, by the medieval period would have developed into “four” senses, cf. Origen: First Principles, IV.ii–iii). Comparing his three senses to the layers of an almond, Origen identifies the exterior “bitter rind” with the historical or literal reading of the text, which he argues in many cases needs to be rejected because it is the “letter that kills.” Secondly, the ethical sense of the text is the protective shell that one must penetrate in order to grasp the third and deepest level—the kernel, or spiritual sense—by which the soul feeds on the mysteries of God's wisdom (Origen: Numbers, 9.7).

By the Age of Enlightenment with the onset of historical-critical methodology this overall insistence on the unity of the scriptures and its multiple “senses” was undermined, if not altogether lost, as the Bible became subject to historically contextualized (rather than christologically motivated) investigation. Thus, rather than allegorize or “spiritualize” incongruous or violent aspects of the Bible, modern methods of interpretation would seek to segregate them from what Vatican II would call “that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures” (Dei Verbum, §11). Avery Dulles has observed the careful wording of this phrase, which he said intentionally “leaves open the possibility that individual authors may have erred, especially with regard to scientific and historical matters not connected with salvation” (Dulles: 119). This ability to segregate rather than internalize aspects of scripture that are deemed culturally and ideologically obsolete is a modern achievement worth investigating for its implications for modern contemplative approaches to scripture.

The Limits of Historical-Criticism for Contemplative Readings of Scripture

Beginning in the late 17^th Century until the late 20^th Century, the gradual introduction of historical-critical methods within academia have helped to explicate if not mitigate some of the Bible's conflicting images and difficult texts. At the same time, however, these methods isolated the study of scripture from the broader field of theology and the faith life of the church in general. While critical exegesis was not unknown to the church in prior centuries (think only of Origen's Hexapla, for example) for the first time in the history of biblical interpretation modern exegetical methods shifted the point of reference for determining the “truth” of the scriptures from within the biblical page itself, to a point of reference outside the scriptures, namely in history (O'Keefe: 9–13).

By definition, the primary objective of historical criticism is to determine as well as possible the text's so-called “original” meaning within the historical context in which it was written, thus bracketing questions of divine inspiration or faith-based explanations to determine the origins or meaning of a biblical passage. The point of historical-critical exegesis is neither to affirm nor deny propositions of faith, but rather to attempt interpretations of the Bible that are historically objective and proceed from a theologically or doctrinally “neutral” point of view. Thus there developed, and still largely remains, a disjunction between historical-critical forms of biblical interpretation and the field of theology, spirituality, and church doctrine. This has led to what Walter Moberly calls a “curious situation” in which

Thus, for the modern Christian contemplative two issues of importance remain unresolved. First, in recent decades biblical exegetes have begun to address both the indispensability of historical-critical methods and the limitations of such methods to exhaust the interpretive endeavor. They are indispensible because of Christian claims about the factum historicum (historical fact) of Christian revelation, which cannot be reduced to “stories symbolizing supra-historical truths, but is based on history … that took place here on this earth” (Ratzinger: xv). Yet, these methods are unable to exhaust biblical interpretation because precisely as historical methods they are relegated to reconstructing the historical past, when in fact the contemplative aspiration is to encounter God through the written Word in the present.

The second unresolved issue is thus a corollary of the first. Ever since biblical scholars began to recognize the limitations of historical-critical methodology there have been ongoing attempts to ameliorate the problem through the introduction of what are called “post-critical” or “theological” readings of the Bible, advocating for a return to various forms of spiritual exegesis. However, the vast majority of Christian laity have yet to be introduced to historical-critical methods in the first place owing to the fact that such methods presuppose a considerable degree of familiarity with ancient history, comparative literature, and now-defunct languages, to say nothing of the complexity of the methods themselves. Thus, a majority of Christian laity continue to operate out of naïve assumptions about the Bible and are thus unable to transmit it from an archaic worldview into our own. The need for just this kind of transmission, Olivier Clément argues, “justifies the whole scientific apparatus of hermeneutics and exegesis. But science cannot give a meaning. If it tries to do that, it conveys a ‘contraband type of philosophy.’ The meaning is revealed only to prayer. …” (Clément: 100). Yet, are we to assume that the “meaning” Clément attributes only to prayer refers exclusively to reflection on the sublime and beautiful moments of scripture? How might the dreadful images of God and the difficult readings in scripture provide meaning in the context of contemplative prayer as well? In preparation for the apophatic approach I will elucidate below, it will be helpful to provide two examples of what I mean to suggest by the term “difficult imagery” in the scriptures.

Weeds and Wheat

The pages of scripture abound with “weeds and wheat” as it were, moments of sublime beauty and transcendence adjoined to cries for vengeance and violence, made worse by images of a God who is at times described as wrathful (Ps 21; Ezek 25:17), jealous (Exod 20:5; Deut 6:15), and murderous (Gen 19:24–25; Deut 20:16–18; Isa 13:1–22). How are we to segregate these weeds from the wheat? How is the Christian contemplative to pray “Thy will be done” to a God whom scripture tells us endorses violence, demands genocide, and condones hate? Indeed, how are we to accept a biblical God who at times seems inferior to the very demands of a conscience forged by the gospel's unequivocal call to love (Matt 5:43–48)? In Christ's parable of the darnel (Matt 13:24–30) when the master is asked whether his servants should uproot from the wheat field the weeds that had been planted by the enemy, he tersely replies, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest” (Matt 13:29–30). Likewise, while historical criticism may well assist us in the arduous task of distinguishing the weeds from the wheat, we are left with a text that must nevertheless remain intact.

Certainly, the pages of scripture are also filled with beautiful, compassionate, and transcendent images of God—the “wheat” as it were—all of which make the Bible a rich source worthy of meditation. But the natural ability of these inspiring images to draw us in, to serve as wheat for the nourishing bread of our Lectio, presents an unexpected dilemma for the contemplative that cannot be addressed by the methods of historical criticism. The problem, as we will see, is precisely in our secret attachment to their beauty and spiritual appeal; an attachment that I hope to unmask by suggesting a more apophatic approach to the scriptures.

In what follows then, I will draw upon two psalms which I suggest present an intertwining of weeds and wheat—images of love and hate, justice and vengeance—that strike us at once as spiritually seductive and morally repulsive. We could well draw upon any number of biblical texts to exemplify the problem presented here, but I have limited myself to two examples taken from the psalter because of the preeminent place that the Psalms hold in Christian liturgical worship, especially the contemplative practices of Lectio Divina and Liturgy of the Hours.

Psalms 139 and 58

From the origins of Christian monasticism the Psalms have played an indispensible role in forming the contemplative life of Christians. Inherited from biblical Judaism and thus central to Jesus’ own piety, the Psalms have long been adopted as the cornerstone of the communal prayer life of the church, as they are believed to be a participation in the prayer of Christ himself. Already by the third century, Tertullian commented that “almost all the psalms look forward to Christ's person, and set forth the Son speaking to the Father, that is, Christ to God … [and that the Spirit speaks] as the third person about the Father and the Son …” (Tertullian: XI). Thus, the Psalms, like so much of the Old Testament's assimilation by the church have come to be interpreted “christologically,” that is in and through Christ. When the Church—as the Body of Christ—prays them collectively it serves as the very voice of Christ still crying out to the Father.

Thus we turn to Psalm 139, among the most eloquent examples of divine-human intimacy in the entire psalter, which nevertheless reaches its climax with a shockingly incongruous verse,

After being drawn into a Psalm for whom God is not only transcendent but omnipresent, not only omnipresent but immanent, not only immanent but intimate, this sudden turn to violence and hatred disorients the interior movement of one who seeks to become the very embodiment of prayer. How do I embody this prayer? Moreover, almost as if indifferent to such a vehement curse upon his enemy, the psalmist ends with a tranquil plea for God's presence and right guidance:

Granted, in this particular Psalm we are not presented with a scandalous image of God as much as a plea for the death of one's enemies on the part of the psalmist who declares his hatred toward others as a matter of fidelity to the God he is praising: “Do I not hate those who hate you?” Yet, how are we to find “inspiration” in such “prayerful” declarations which we can safely assume the psalmist believed were pleasing to God? In short, how do we integrate such incongruous verses in ways that sustain a life of contemplative prayer? Recognizing this dilemma, Merton admits,

Merton goes on to conclude that the case against the Psalms as texts worthy of Christian meditation would be “devastating” if we read them expecting to find a system of spiritual principles and methods of prayer for the interior life. Indeed, three psalms, notably Psalms 58, 83, and 109, have been deemed so violent and antithetical to the life of Christian prayer that they have been expunged from the Roman Liturgy of the Hours altogether. It is telling that in his commentary, Praying the Psalms in Christ, Laurence Kriegshauser explains that “Communities who recite the whole psalter need to find a way to pray [Psalm 58] comfortably as Christians” (Kriegshauser, 131). What exactly does “comfortably” mean? And how do we arrive at that comfort? A summary of Kriegshauser's interpretation will clarify.

Psalm 58 begins with a plea for justice (vv 1–2) against those whom the psalmist regards as his enemies (vv 3–5), who are wicked from birth and hold venom like that of serpents. In the verses that follow the psalmist calls upon God to break their teeth and tear the fangs out of their mouths; to crush them as grass is trodden under foot; to dissolve them into slime as like a snail; and like miscarried fetuses, prevent them from ever seeing the light of day (vss 6–9). The final stanza (vss 10–11) then reads as follows:

Most significant about these final verses is that they attribute this kind of violence and horror to God's justice. Awash in the blood of the “wicked,” the righteous rejoice at God's vengeance through which they are assured of his sovereignty over the earth. Unlike Psalm 139, where the violence is limited to the prayerful yearnings of the psalmist, here such acts of violence are demonstrative of God's own justice.

As a commentary intended to help modern Christians pray the Psalms christologically, Kriegshauser presents us with an intriguing example of that ancient form of exegesis which seeks to find a fundamental unity of the scriptures in Christ. By linking Psalm 58 with a passage from the Book of Revelation he offers a christological reading of this Psalm attributing this violence to the Christ of the Apocalypse: “The cloak of Christ, rider of the white horse, the Word of God, a ‘judge with integrity, a warrior for justice’ is stained with the blood of those whose evil he has destroyed (Rev 19:11–16)” (Kriegshauser: 133). Thus, while Kriegshauser's christological reading of Psalm 58 typifies more ancient forms of exegesis which sought to highlight the overall unity of scripture, the Roman Catholic exclusion of this Psalm from the Liturgy of the Hours better exemplifies the modern historical approach to scripture which has become more adept at relegating texts to ideological obsolescence when they have become regarded as theologically, spiritually, or morally unsuitable for Christian edification.

Nevertheless, as Raymond Brown observed some years ago, the dissemination of historical-critical interpretations of the Bible will continue to be a slow and laborious process for all the reasons I have noted above (cf. Brown: 4). Yet, even as this “scientific apparatus” remains largely unknown to the laity, how might the contemplative Christian nevertheless profitably attend to that meaning which Clément insists is “revealed only to prayer”? That is, how might the meditative practice of Lectio Divina be fruitful amidst conflicting even repugnant images of God long enough to enable the often foreboding exterior of scripture to be cracked open, revealing, as it were, its crystalline beauty. In what follows I will propose that one solution may lie in a kind of spiritual exegesis that adopts an apophatic approach to scripture informed by the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

The Apophasis of Pseudo-Dionysius

The early 6^th-century theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius (hereafter, Denys) is known as one of the most masterful architects of Christian apophaticism. Despite its relative brevity, his collected works—the Corpus Dionysiacum—have had a sweeping impact on Christian theology especially in the West. Questions about his true identity will likely never be resolved and debates have long been waged as to whether his work represents a predominant Neoplatanism or a Christian adaptation and corrective to fundamental Neoplatonic ideas and structures (cf. Louth 1989: 84–87). One of the key points in this debate is whether his Corpus is sufficiently rooted in biblical revelation or whether the biblical God is obscured by a dominating Neoplatonism. The great reformer Martin Luther is among those who have been critical of Denys’ Christianity and more recently, Jan Vanneste and Eberhard Jüngel (Luther: 561ff; Vanneste: 286–306; Jüngel: 250–61). Those who would come to the defense of Denys’ commitment to Christian faith include the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky speaking for much of the Eastern church, as well as von Balthasar, William Riordan, Denys Turner, Andrew Louth, and Bernard McGinn in the West (Lossky: 99–100; von Balthasar: 144–210; Riordan: 71–112; Turner: 11–49; Louth 1989: 81–87; McGinn: 157–85).

A digression into this debate would not serve the purposes of this essay, but I am convinced that despite Denys’ deep affinity for Neoplatonism, evidence for his scriptural rootedness can be found amid much of his Corpus, perhaps nowhere more clearly than in The Divine Names (DN). In this, his lengthiest work, Denys offers a sustained kataphatic reflection on that which can be affirmed about God through his immanence in creation as well as his self-revelation in scripture (Riordan: 42–43). Thus, we read:

While Denys is not the first Christian theologian to write about the names of God, this treatise is the first to offer a systemic exploration of the divine names that he identifies as having been revealed within Christian scripture. After three introductory chapters he begins with a consideration of the name “Good” followed by a series of reflections on many subsequent names (fifty-two in all) over the course of ten more chapters, culminating with a reflection on the “most enduring of them all,” the name “One” (Luibheid: DN 977B; cf. 596A for his list of names). Significant for the contemplative more so than the scholar, Denys insists that the fundamental motive for addressing God by the divine names that are revealed in scripture is neither for the purpose of academic inquiry nor for intellectually parsing the qualities of God, but rather for the sake of prayer and liturgical worship in praise of the love of God (Louth 2007: 166).

His treatise, however, is shot through with an underlying apophasis. Since names are merely the way in which human meaning is conveyed, he insists they ultimately fail to circumscribe the reality, nature, or being of God. Thus, we must strive as far as “the light of sacred scripture will allow” to name God with as many names as possible; a linguistic strategy that Denys Turner has observed, exposes the futility of language itself to name the One who is beyond all names (Luibheid: DN 596A). The Divine Names, therefore, cannot be understood apart from Denys’ concise and best known treatise, The Mystical Theology (MT), which Colm Luibheid identified as the key to Denys’ method and to the structure of the entire Corpus Dionysiacum (Luibheid: 133, 1n.).

The Mystical Theology serves as the apophatic grounding to the excessive language that dominates The Divine Names. It is a hermeneutical key to all of Denys’ work because through it he seeks to demonstrate that all theology (including that of his own corpus) must remain cognizant of—and grounded in—the ultimate unknowability of God. This is the end and goal of all theological discourse: to admit of its own futility. Fittingly, Denys concludes The Mystical Theology with an admission that the Supreme Cause of all is “… beyond every assertion … and it is also beyond every denial” (MT, Luibheid: 1048B; cf. DN 641A). Of this, Turner rightly observes that there is an interdependence between The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology in which kataphatic and apophatic language about God function not independently but dialectically. Speech about God (or addressed to God) is discovered to be “as exhausted as it is full.” We do not choose to be silent before the ineffability of God, rather we are reduced to silence when our speech is burdened to the point of exhaustion (Turner 2002: 3).

In chapter three of The Mystical Theology Denys demonstrates the methodological value of approaching affirmative theology in a descending order, predicating those affirmations that are most obviously true of God and moving gradually to those that are most obviously untrue. By contrast, he approaches negative theology in reverse, first denying those aspects of God that are most clearly false and then working his way to the denial of the most sublime images, until he transcends every assertion and denial. Thus he concludes the chapter with the question,

Thus, Denys senses (as he does elsewhere in his corpus) a certain hierarchy which is fleshed out more fully in the subsequent and final two chapters of his Mystical Theology (cf. Denys’ Celestial Hierarchies, Luibheid: 140C–145C). Within the excess of language about God, Denys identifies “similar” and “dissimilar” similarities between “perceptual” images of God (i.e., having to do with anything of which the senses can be aware: here, “drunkenness and rage”) which he locates at the lower end of the hierarchy of similarities. At the upper end of the hierarchy he addresses “conceptual” images of God (i.e., “speech and thought,” but also truth, oneness, goodness, divinity, etc.) which he says are “more similar” dissimilarities than the perceptual images. However, working his way up this hierarchy he ultimately negates all of the perceptual images in chapter four and all of the conceptual images in his final chapter five. Thus, this descending and ascending hierarchical approach to affirmative and negative language respectively is merely methodological and cannot rightly lead us to the conclusion that any image or concept is ultimately capable of grasping the “Supreme Cause” of all.

We arrive then at the unexpected realization that for Denys negative language about God (The Mystical Theology) is in fact no more apophatic than affirmative language (The Divine Names). Again, the Cause of All is “beyond every assertion … and it is also beyond every denial” (MT, Luibheid: 1048B). Both assertions and denials serve as linguistic strategies for demonstrating, by means of language itself, that which ultimately lies beyond all language. In other words, what The Divine Names accomplishes through “superfluidity,” excessive speech, and paradox, The Mystical Theology accomplishes by way of negation (Turner 1995: 34–35). Thus, Turner would rightly summarize Denys’ apophasis as follows:

An Apophatic Hermeneutic

How then might Denys’ apophasis provide a hermeneutical key to a contemplative reading of scripture? Taking the two Psalms we looked at earlier, for example, can such vulgar or offensive passages be used as a fertile subject for meditation? Given that true apophasis is not the result of an elective silence, but one that necessarily results from excessive verbosity to the point of linguistic exhaustion, Denys reminds us in his Mystical Theology of the apophatic value of God-language that is precisely vulgar and offensive (MT, Luibheid: 1033B). Why? Because “the more obviously inappropriate our language about God is, the less likely it is to seduce us into supposing its adequacy” (Turner 2002: 17). Thus, in another Dionysian text, The Celestial Hierarchy (CH), Denys makes this point succinctly, “Indeed the sheer crassness of the signs is a goad so that even the materially inclined cannot accept that it could be permitted or true that the celestial and divine sights could be conveyed by such shameful things” (CH 141B–C).

Thus, the shocking and incongruent images of hate and violence that we encounter in Psalms 139 and 58, for example, are revelatory not in what they tell us about God, but in their capacity to pry loose our hold on the sublime images we would otherwise delude ourselves into accepting as adequate descriptions of the Divine. In other words, the danger in limiting our biblical readings to a few favored passages categorized neatly in our “canons within the canon” is that we would succumb to the illusion that our language and images of God have in fact captured the reality of God in some definitive way. Thus, says Turner, “Tactically preferable is the multiplicity of vulgar images which, because they lack any plausibility as comprehensive or appropriate names, paradoxically have a more uplifting efficacy …” (Turner 1995: 24–25).

Thus, when Psalm 58 tells us that God's justice will be revealed when the righteous “bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked” and when the Divine-human intimacy of Psalm 139 is unexpectedly interrupted with cries of hate and prayers for the death of an enemy, our secret stash of treasured images are exposed and shattered. The visceral rejection of a hateful and violent God should, in fact, shock us into asking why we don't just as vehemently reject the adequacy of the Bible's beautiful images of God. When read through an apophatic hermeneutic, offensive images of God are not historically contextualized, segregated, or redacted out of the tradition. Rather, they serve to dismantle our “secret” attachments to our most favored scriptural images, which themselves also fall infinitely short of grasping the Infinitude of God. Thus, the Bible's “positive” images of God are realized to be just as inadequate as its negative images.

Conclusion

Dissonant texts are plentiful throughout the Bible and should signal something to us about the nature of revelation itself. Primarily, that language about God—perhaps especially that of our sacred texts—must be profuse to the point of contradiction. Discordant images and concepts demonstrate not that some biblical language is adequate while some is inadequate, but rather that all language about God is finite and thus is necessarily an impoverished expression of the infinite. It is precisely at the point where the confines of our language break down that the expanse of Denys’ apophasis invites a whole new way of seeing, indeed a way of “unknowing,” thus yielding to a great spiritual expanse which to the intellect can often seem like darkness. As we press against the limits of the rational mind we are confronted with two options: retreat into historical-critical empiricism in order to justify why some images in the Bible are more accurate than others, or leap into the void of unknowing, where reason is not forsaken but transcended by the light of contemplative faith. Thus, christological readings of the Bible that identify the overall unity of Scripture in allegory or typology may well find a deeper apophatic hermeneutic in Christ who reveals God precisely as the Deus absconditus—the God who is unknown and unknowable.