TALKING ABOUT THE UNKNOWN GOD [BİLİNMEYEN TANRI HAKKINDA KONUŞMAK]

Istanbul Şehir University Philosophy Talks 26
 
“Talking about the unknown God.” was presented on November 17th, 2016
at 3:00 pm at the West Campus, Room 2003 in Istanbul Şehir University in Istanbul / Turkey.

The Pseudo-Dionysian corpus seems best known for its contributions to the theme of unknowing and apophatic theology. This might well please the author who probably chose the pen-name Dionysius to help make this very point. According to Acts 17, Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus in Athens seized on the inscription of a nearby altar, “To an unknown God” (Agnôstôi Theôi), so the writings attached to the name of his Athenian convert are especially concerned with God as known and unknown. From this starting point, the Corpus Dionysiacum presents an elaborate hierarchical account of the universe, a complementary regimen of austere negative theology, and a description of deifying union with the “God beyond being” as “unknowing” (agnôsia). Pseudo-Dionysius’ entire mystical theology narrates the self’s efforts to unite with the “God beyond being” as a perpetual process of affirming (kataphasis) and negating (apophasis) the divine names. Pseudo-Dionysius’ conviction is that only by contemplating and then “clearing away” (aphairesis) all of our concepts and categories we can clear a space for the divine to descend free of idolatrous accretions. The result of such agnôsia, however, is no mere “agnosticism” but rather the indwelling of the unknown God (agnōstos theos) as Christ, on the model of Paul in Gal. 2:20, wherewith the aspirant simultaneously “unknows” God and the self. According to Pseudo-Dionysius, “complete unknowing is a knowledge of that which is beyond (hyper) everything known” and Moses is “united surpassingly to the completely unknown by an inactivity of all knowledge, knowing beyond (hyper) mind by knowing nothing.” The climax of the Dionysian method is not simply a negation of some concept about God, but the negation of the concept of negation itself. God is beyond all human words and concepts, including the utterance of denials and the idea of negation. Even the most sophisticated theological negations do not capture God. Beyond the last word is only silence. Then what is the exact means of talking about the unknown God?

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