Negative theology is the reflection of the absolute qualitative difference between the divine and the human mind that purports to apprehend the divine. The 14th edition of Windelband-Heimsoeth "Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie" traces "negative theology" as far back as the Neo-Pythagoreans and their identification of God with unity or the number 1. It was the theologian and philosopher Philo who postulated a distinction between all things finite and deity so great that no qualities whatsoever can be ascribed to him. Since God is above all earthly things one can say nothing about him except that no specific characteristics can be attributed to him. God cannot be described in the terms that the human mind predicates of other things. Philo's interpretation was accepted by the Christian apologists, especially Justinian, and by some of the Gnostics. According to Windelband, similar notions occur in Neoplatonism, and in Plotinus who postulates a formless unity which is prior both to the spiritual and to the physical world. Plotinus' successors went even farther: Iamblichos wrote of God as an unspeakable origin (pante arretos arche). The only characterstic which this ancient "negative theology" permitted to be attributed to Hod was infinity. Subsequently, the boundlessness of deity became an important theme of medieval mysticism. Eckhart believes that being and knowledge are one. Windelband summarizes Eckhart's thought as follows: "Sein und Erkennen ist eins, und alles Geschehen in der Welt ist seinem tiefsten Wesen nach Erkennen. Ein Prozess der Erkenntnis, der Selbstoffenbarung ist das Hervorgehen der Welt aus Gott, ein Prozess der Erkenntnis, der immer hoeheren Anschauung, ist der Rueckgang der Dinge in Gott. Die ideelle Existenz alles Wirklichen - so sagte spaeter Nikolaus Cusanus, - der sich diese Lehre Eckharts zu eigen machte - ist wahrer als die in Raum und Zeit erscheinende koerperliche Existenz. Deshalb aber musz der Urgrund aller Dinge, die Gottheit, ueber Sein und Erkenntnis hinausliegen; sie ist Uebervernunft, Uebersein, ihr fehlt jede Bestimmung, sie ist "Nichts". Aber diese "Gottheit" der negativen Theologie offenbart sich in dem dreieinigen Gotte, und der seiende und erkennende Gott schafft aus dem Nichts die Kreaturen deren Ideen er in sich erkennt; denn dies Erkennen ist sein Schaffen. (Windelband 287) Negative theology became an important element in Spinozas thought. According to Windelband, its most recent exposition is in Schelling, one of the philosophers cited by Bonhoeffer in his early theoretical writings. I recite this book-learning with some diffidence, because my own reading of the authors cited is too spraing to enable me to form my own opinions. On the other hand I think we do each other injustice when we purport to explain Bonhoeffer to each other without reference to the theological and philosophical background that produced it. My own interpretation traces negative theology back much, much further, to the reluctance of the Jews even to voice the Name of God, which I interpret as meaning that nothing can be said about God which does not contradict his being. My surmise that negative philosophy is especially congenial to the Jewish experience of deity, appears to be corroborated by the circumstance that two of its most prominent representatives, Philo and Spinoza drew heavily upon the Jewish tradition. As I read Bonhoeffer, the logical discontinuity between negative theology and positive theology is vividly reflected both in the content and in the style of Bonhoeffer's work. So far as the content is concerned, there is in the Ethics the unresolved discrepancy between the affirmative mandates of of family, church, work and authority in which Bonhoeffer specifies the demands which he believes God makes of us, and the assertion of contextual or circumstantial ethics that God's demands upon us cannot be codified and must be extrapolated from the specific circumstances under which we are required to act. From the perspective of negative theology Moses breaking the tablets of the law may reflect not his anger with the idolatrous people of Israel (the herd, as Nietzsche would have referred to them) but his frustration and despair with the paradox that an infinite and unknowable God should express himself in Ten Commandments, written in stone, the the specificity of which, especially the last eight of those commandments, appears to be incompatible with the inscrutable anonymity of their author. .PP But it is not only on the ethical but also in the epistemological aspects of his theology, that the discontinuity between positive and negative theology becomes apparent. .PP In the first place we consider Bonhoeffers acceptance of the Jesus of the Gospels, the incarnation, in which God defined himself as human. One might think that this would put an end to any controversy or uncertainty about negative theology; but in fact it does not. It only translates the scene on which the competition between positive and negative theology is carried out. And the appearance of the Messiah, far from resolving the theological problem makes it infinitely more difficult. For while the God of the Old Testament is far more susceptible to negative theologic interpretation; the emotional and figurative immediacy of Jesus, whose very humanity so impresses us, of whom we are tempted to speak as of a guest in our living room or an honored speaker at our conventions. The paradox is that Jesus is like us and not like us. To defamiliarize Jesus, assert his infinity, to place him in the universe as a cosmic force, to apply to him, whose finite earthly sojourns have been so eloquently and persuasively recorded in the gospels, the parentheses of negative theology is a task of which only the beginning has been made. .PP And yet the human, the familiar Jesus, the Jesus at the barbeque does not satisfy our needs and seems somehow wrong, primitive, idolatrous. It is perhaps not unfair to argue that Bonhoeffer evades this problem; and he evades it in a manner which is both conventional and unique. .PP Bonhoeffers habit of invoking God or Jesus Christ is of course his priestly prerogative, but nonethelss we in attempting to understand and to interpret him, must ask ourselves what it is that he means, what it is that he is saying or trying to say when he appends to a sentence which is apparently complete in meaning the words, through Jesus Christ or in Jesus Christ. .PP The positivistic philosophers of recent memory (no relation to positive theologians) tell us that a sentence is meaningful to the extent that it is mathematically parsable that it can be translated into algorithms of mathematical logic. to the extent that it can be represented in the binary logic of electronic computing. Bonhoeffers invocations of God and Jesus Christ fail this test. Wemay say that they have an emotive, a poetic meaning is to come closer to the truth. I think they are in fact expressions of negative theology; expressions of the fact that the nature of God and of Jesus as God is such as to be beyond decription, that Bonhoeffer lapses into a metalanguage which idicated the undefinablilty of God. which neither he nor any of his readers can define. The manner in which this metalanguage is understood is a separate topic which I would like to defer for the time being. .PP At this point I should note that negative theology is an inevitable outcome expression of a certain kind of religious experience. And that theologians inevitably return to it, and would do so more often if the large number of sensitive intelligent and reverent individuals who are "turned off" by conventional religious ceremony were included. It is not, however conducive to or supportive of academic theology; because, like mysticism, it is impervious to doctrine. .PP So far as Bonhoeffer is concerned, I have found no references to "negative theology" as such; but I explain his remarkable statement that one might base dogmatics on a consideration of the church rather than of God as reflecting a belief that dogmatics is incapable of defining God except in a negative way. .PP I am also impressed by the profusion in all of Bonhoeffer's wiritng that I have read of references to God without any attempt at elaboration or explanation; so that the crude inference might be made that the attributes of God should be so universally known that any enumeration of them was superfluous, or that the references to God were a kind of ritual incantation without deeper meaning. .PP The frequency with which Bonhoeffer refers to God is of course equalled or exceeded by the frequency with which he invokes Jesus Christ, of whose life we have an historical record so that with reference to Jesus the concept of negative theology should be inapplicable. .PP This circumstance leads me to suggest an expansion of the concept of negative theology. If the proposition that nothing can be articulated about the _existence_ of God except for negatives, what he is not, is supplemented with the proposition that anything that can be articulated about the _function_ of God in the experience of individuals is inadequate to the fullness of that experience, then Bonhoeffers frequent unqualified allusions to Jesus Christ will also begin to fit into a framework of negative theology. .PP Finally, in the context of our discussions about Bonhoeffer and Nietzsche, that the statement that God is dead acquires a different significance in the context of negative theology. For if the statement that "God is alive" is meaningless (and therefore harmless) with respect to the reality of God inasmuch as he is beyond all description, then the statement that "God is dead" is equally meaningless and therefore equally harmless with respect to the reality of God. .PP But if in the light of negative theology the statement "God is alive" is misleading and deceptive in so far as God's living whatever it be, is so beyond our power to conceive, then the statement "God is dead", while saying nothing about God, serves to neutralize and to render spiritually harmless the misleading claims about God's life. .PP This interpretation for which I expect that crosses will be burned on my lawn, figuratively if not literally, can be extended to protect Nietzsches other religious arguments from obloqui, specifically his rejection of Christianity, his rejection of sympathy, and his exaltation of power. .PP The corollaries of negative theology are important. If all that can be said truly of God is negative, the positive statements purporting to assert characteristics or qualities of God fail in their intent, The god who is so named would be an idol. And the true believer is not he who prays in public but who, like the atheist shuts the door of his closet before he prays to the father in secret. Matthew 6:5-6 I believe it is more impossible for a man to live without God than in is to live without air. The atheist, therefore, is one who closes the door of his closet and prays to God in secret. His atheism, his rejection of God, his Umwertung aller Werte; If I remember correctly, Jesus said that that was o.k. with him. .PP Negative theology as the correlative of pantheism.