Bonhoeffers Theology, Negative and Positive .PP Negative theology holds that the human maind can no nothing about God, and that the only characteristic of deity which is reliable is that it cannot be characterized. .PP Positive theology has no such traditional definition, but may, for purposes of exposition conveniently be defined as the negation of negative theology, namely the assertion that the features of deity and its will its perception are indeed knowable, inwardly by inspiration or outwardly by manifestation. .PP The history of Jewish theology may be interpreted as the continuing dialectical interplay of these two mutually exclyusive assertions. .PP The Bible begins with the bold assertion of the similarity between God and man. God made man in his own image. The God so described was like a landlord who banished two disobediant tenants from his garden for spoiling his favorite tree; a powerful ruler who drowned almost all his subjects (except Noah) for their disloyalty or disobedience, who tested the loyalty of his chosen subject Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice his son Isaac, and who as the ruler of his people engaged in international rivalry with another ruler, Pharaoh, to prove himself the stronger. .PP And then God gave the Ten Commandments which prohibited his people from making images (of him) and even from pronouncing his name. These commandments are the roots of negative theology. It was Philo, in the early Christian era, who formulated this theology explicitly .... .PP The notion of negative theology is also useful in interpreting Bonhoeffers work. I mention two examples that are of particular interest to me. The non-specific invocation of God, and especially of Jesus Christ. I mention two examples. The use of a magic formula as indicative of the infinity and unspeakableness of God. The antinomy of absolute and situational ethics which has already been commented upon. On the one hand the catalogue of mandates on the other hand the rejection of law and legality. Within the mandates, internally, the incongruities and contradictions. the competing claims of authority and conscience. Conscientious objection to war? The legitimation of killing under some circumstances. The absolute distinction between human and animal life. If these mandates are from God, then they are characterizations of his mind, of his purposes. With the incarnation God appears to become irrevocably anthropomorphic.