jsburbidge | Entries tagged with theology

I see via the Guardian that the Archbishop of Canterbury has caught up with actual serious theology regarding at least one of the asserted divine attributes.

However, the Guardian article does not go nearly far enough back as regards the predication of attributes to God. Here is pseudo-Dionysius, from about the Fourth Century:

"Ascending yet higher, we maintain that it is neither soul nor intellect; nor has it imagination, opinion reason or understanding; nor can it be expressed or conceived, since it is neither number nor order; nor greatness nor smallness; nor equality nor inequality; nor similarity nor dissimilarity; neither is it standing, nor moving, nor at rest; neither has it power nor is power, nor is light; neither does it live nor is it life; neither is it essence, nor eternity nor time; nor is it subject to intelligible contact; nor is it science nor truth, nor kingship nor wisdom; neither one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is it spirit according to our understanding, nor filiation, nor paternity; nor anything else known to us or to any other beings of the things that are or the things that are not; neither does anything that is know it as it is; nor does it know existing things according to existing knowledge; neither can the reason attain to it, nor name it, nor know it; neither is it darkness nor light, nor the false nor the true; nor can any affirmation or negation be applied to it, for although we may affirm or deny the things below it, we can neither affirm nor deny it, inasmuch as the all-perfect and unique Cause of all things transcends all affirmation, and the simple pre-eminence of Its absolute nature is outside of every negation- free from every limitation and beyond them all."

How, then does one attribute attributes to the Godhead? By means of predication per analogiam, For which one wants to go to St. Thomas, which is a bit beyond my ambit for this evening, but clearly well beyond the Guardian's ambit as well (and probably beyond Welby's, though not, I suspect, of his predecessor).