In this dark season of the year that is also Advent that leads into Christmas in the Christian calendar, we are meditating on the Apophatic Divinity, the God of Darkness, the Godhead. Divinity as Mystery in contrast to Divinity as Light or the Cataphatic divinity.
Eckhart talks about God therefore as the Ineffable One, the “One Without a Name Who Will Never Be Given a Name.”
He calls God the “Unnameable.” Indeed, he says God is “without a name and is the denial of all names and has never been given a name—a truly hidden God.”
Such a teaching allows us all to relax and to cease projecting and certainly to cease going to war against one another “in the name” of whatever God we do or do not worship.
Atheists too can get stuck and overly attached to the name “God.” Recently I heard this joke: “What I most dislike about atheists is that they are so busy talking about god all the time.”
Who is this, what is this, that is without a name and whom we can never name? This “It” must be quite amazing because we humans are great at naming everything and anything that comes our way—but we need to cease naming and projecting when it comes to Divinity.
God is the experience of God: The experience of Awe and Wonder and Gratitude that delight the heart; of Silence; of Grief and Emptiness to which we surrender. The experience of Creativity and Flow; the experience of Compassion and of Justice making, Celebration and Healing.
How eager we sometimes are (or our institutions are) to seize and to hold and to name and to categorize and to box up into concepts and then rules and then doctrines and then dogmas all we think God is.
But Whoa! Stop! This “God” thing does not yield to such human control compulsions. “God” is the one without a name who will never be given a name. Just being. And non-being. And silence. And….
Words fail us in the face of mystery, as Thich Naht Hanh reminds us, “we know the Holy Spirit as energy and not as notions and words.” This is why we emerge from our silence to utter our deepest feelings and experiences by way of art and music and dance and to silence in response to the Ineffable One. And, hopefully, the art of living—which includes resisting.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable God, pp. pp. 128 – 132
And Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, pp. 42-44.
And Fox, The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: Engraving of Otto van Veen (1660), who negatively describes God as Quod oculus non vidit, nec auris audivit (Vulgate), “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Thich Naht Hanh that we know the Holy Spirit as energy and not as notions or words? What follows from that? Do you experience God at times as “unnameable”?
Recommended Reading
Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God …Including the Unnameable God
Too often, notions of God have been used as a means to control and to promote a narrow worldview. In Naming the Unnameable, renowned theologian and author Matthew Fox ignites our imaginations by offering a colorful range of Divine Names gathered from scientists and poets and mystics past and present, inviting us to always begin where true spirituality begins: from experience.
“This book is timely, important and admirably brief; it is also open ended—there are always more names to come, and none can exhaust God’s nature.” -Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, author of Science Set Free and The Presence of the Past
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book
A centering book by Matthew Fox. This book of simple but rich meditations exemplifies the deep yet playful creation-centered spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century Dominican preacher who was a mystic, prophet, feminist, activist, defender of the poor, and advocate of creation-centered spirituality, who was condemned shortly after he died.
“These quiet presentations of spirituality are remarkable for their immediacy and clarity.” –Publishers Weekly.
The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times
A stunning spiritual handbook drawn from the substantive teachings of Aquinas’ mystical/prophetic genius, offering a sublime roadmap for spirituality and action.
Foreword by Ilia Delio.
“What a wonderful book! Only Matt Fox could bring to life the wisdom and brilliance of Aquinas with so much creativity. The Tao of Thomas Aquinas is a masterpiece.”
–Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit
6 thoughts on “Apophatic Divinity, continued”
Matthew, Today you say: “Who is this, what is this, that is without a name and whom we can never name? This “It” must be quite amazing because we humans are great at naming everything and anything that comes our way—but we need to cease naming and projecting when it comes to Divinity.” Eckhart also says: “Outside of God there is nothing but nothing” and when I took the class on The New Cosmology at UCS we found that outside of the universe is “nothing but nothing.” And so it seems that God is not outside of the universe where nothing is. And Eckhart also says: “God is nothing. No thing. God is nothingness; and yet God is something. God is neither this thing nor that thing that we can express. God is a being beyond all being; God is a beingless being.” You say, “Recently I heard this joke: “What I most dislike about atheists is that they are so busy talking about god all the time.” I’m doing a class on Neil DeGrasse Tyson view of the universe, and I have found if you look on youtube.com under his name, you will find talks that he has given debunking religion in general and the existence of God in particular. Carl Sagan did the same. Finally you ask: “Do you experience God at times as ‘unnameable’?” I experience God as the great mystery, shrouded in darkness, and nameless…
There were two words that were mentioned in the video clip, regarding apophatic theology that caught my attention. The first being ENCOUNTERING and the second being RESPONDING. Both of these words speak to me of relationship with. Everything that exists emits energy, even darkness. Encountering is about being open to the Mystery, the Spirit of this energy… present to its presence and at times its absence. Our responses to this mystery, are vastly diverse.
My sense is that an acceptance of and a surrender to, both intuiting the encounter and simply allowing the response to arise… without judgement, criticism, or reasoning it away; is an important element to this Mystery of relationship with, unfolding evolving and emerging naturally… in creative, imaginative and transformative ways.
There’s an ancient elder saying, that one should not speak of one’s encounter with Mystery right away… that one is to hold it for awhile as a gift and then slowly unwrap it, responding first by taking it into oneself before sharing its giveaway with others.
Like I mentioned in my comment yesterday, I’m comfortable (at peace) with my limited human understanding of the Divine Being both our mysterious/unnameable Apophatic Divine Essence, And our Beautiful Cataphatic Creator God within/among All ongoing co-Creation~Evolution as different spiritual dimensions of DIVINE LOVE~WISDOM…These are my human words that nurture the evolving consciousness of my eternal soul in Oneness within/among our Present Divine Nature in All of the Divine multidimensions and multiverse Cosmos…. This limited human understanding of my incarnated evolving eternal soul/spirit is always open to further experiential transformative growth and understanding/wisdom in my heart to our Divine Eternal Creative Conscious Diverse Oneness Spirit of LOVE~WISDOM — ALL IN ALL….
🔥💜🌎🙏
I agree with Thich Naht Hanh that we know only by experience of the energy or force field or whatever poor words can describe as God. Our minds cannot comprehend or try to name God, and the best posture is one of humility and openness to what is always in and around us, whether it seems darkness or light or both. There is such freedom in the letting go of our mind’s insistence on knowing and being quite at home and comfortable with not knowing, and then to use this energy to do some good in the world.
Metaphors are the time-honored, intuition-guided tools we use to reach from mystical intuitive experiences to the intellect, but the ego/intellect translates them very differently and seizes the words to build elaborate constructions of analysis and argumentation, then debates endlessly over the nuances and validity of its masterful constructions. Nowhere is this more true than in mysticism. Yes, we need words to convey and pass along mystical knowledge, but the mystical experience and the teachings of it are nuanced and complex, BOTH “apophatic” and “cataphatic”.
Also, confusion surrounds the concept of “mystery” in connection with mysticism, when people insist that mystics do not and MUST not make assertions of any Truth. This is a distortion created by over-generalizing the idea of “unknown” to EVERYTHING in the revelation and the Path. It demands agnosticism instead of participation in the mystical Truth (or in any religion, for that matter). It also exalts the intellect and the ego over direct intuitive experience, since “unknown” is such an easy, arrogant, comfortably dualistic yes-or-no category to shove complex, nuanced intuitions into.
Mystical revelation is experienced AS TRUTH.
Trying to convey that Truth to others has always been… complicated.
Melinda, You are right that mysticism get s a bad rap seeming to be anti-intellectual and “only” intuitive.. So I like that you comment today simply: “Mystical revelation is experienced AS TRUTH. Trying to convey that Truth to others has always been… complicated.”