Bonhoeffer, paradox and negative theology.

Some weeks ago, Frans Nelson inquired about Bonhoeffer
and negative theology. In my limited reading of Bonhoeffer,
I have found no explicit references to negative theology,
but I believe that the implicit dialectic of Bonhoeffer's
theology is a dynamic expression of the same negative theology
of which earlier writers had attempted explicit formulations,
among them: Philo of Alexandria, in whose writings negative
theology is said to have its origins, Meister Eckehart,
the Prior of the Monastery in Erfurt which Luther was to
attend a century later, and also the Dutch philosopher Spinoza.

Negative theology holds that God is such that the human mind
is incapable of describing him, and the only attribute which
can properly be ascribed to him is the negative one of boundlessness
or infinity.  This doctrine obviously entails paradox when one then
presumes to speak about God. The purported existence of something
which one cannot describe creates a dilemma which has been
articulated more recently by positivistic philosophers to the
effect that only that is real which can be specified in unambiguous
(protocol) sentences.  The refusal to describe God has been
equated with the denial of God, and the proponents of negative
theology in withholding their assent to the conventional attributes
of God have been charged with denying God altogether.

On the other hand, once it is made explicit, negative theology is
inescapable. For who can presume to define, to set boundaries on God;
and what kind of god would permit humans to draft his charter or to
specify his powers? At the same time it is readily understandable 
that an apodictic negative theology will provide a most awkward basis
for public worship: it deprives the preacher of his sermon; it denies
the unsophisticated parishioner his prayers; and it consigns theologians
to the ranks of the unemployed.  There is, however, an eminently
workable solution to the dilemmas created by negative theology: the
acceptance of dialectic as a method of hermeneutics, the tolerance of
paradox and contradiction. 

By admitting images which are unclear, and propositions which are
ambiguous, by building a conceptual edifice of which contradictions
and paradoxes are integral structural members, Bonhoeffer has in
effect sanctioned a negative theology of a higher order. The theses
and antitheses of the dialectic paradox neutralize each others
limitations and errors. The synthesis in which thesis and antithesis
are potentially reconciled is the divine, and is beyond our power to
define, just as, according to traditional negative theology, the
attributes of God are beyond human faculties to declare.  The paradox
points beyond itself, and that to which it points, but which we cannot
reach, we call God. Thus dialectic is the functional expression of
negative theology, but far more practical, far more acceptable,
inasmuch as it permits the preacher to preach his sermon, enables the
parishioner to say his prayers, provides ample grist for all theological
mills, furnishes Christians who hate one another with weapons of
reciprocal aggression, and Christians who love one another with bridges,
however tenuous, of reconciliation.  It is Bonhoeffer's dialectic and
the negative theology it implies, which, more than anything else, make
this discussion-list a feasible enterprise.

Hoelderlin, a fellow student with Hegel at Tuebingen, opened his great
theological poem "Patmos" with the words:

          Nah ist
        Und schwer zu fassen der Gott.
        Wo aber Gefahr ist, waechst
        Das Rettende auch.
        Im Finstern wohnen
        Die Adler und furchtlos gehn
        Die Soehne der Alpen ueber den Abgrund weg
        Auf leichtgebaueten Bruecken.
        Drum, da gehaeuft sind rings
        Die Gipfel der Zeit, und die Liebsten
        Nah wohnen, ermattend auf
        Getrenntesten Bergen,
        So gieb unschuldig Wasser,
        O Fittige gieb uns, treuesten Sinns
        Hinueberzugehen und wiederzukehren.

As I reread it today, I cannot conceive of a more apt account
of negative theology in both its apodictic and its dialectical
expressions.