¹ Dupré, Louis, “From Silence to Speech: Negative Theology and Trinitarian Spirituality,” Communio International Catholic Review 9 (1984): 28–34.Google Scholar The book referred to is The Common Life: The Origins of Trinitarian Mysticism and Its Development by Jan Ruusbroec (New York: Crossroad, 1984).Google Scholar

² Ibid., 32 (emphasis added).

³ Dupré adds that Eckhart runs the risk of placing God's unity beyond the Father, i.e., beyond God's trinity. He might also have added that Eckhart gives in to the West's longstanding bias in the direction of a philosophic, monistic, modalist monotheism in trinitarian theology. Strikingly (but not really surprisingly), this conception of monotheism has been vigorously called into question in our day in works by two great Jewish thinkers: Martin Buber's Ich und Du, and (with splendid indignation) Emmanuel Lévinas' Totalité et infinité

⁴ Ibid., 33 (emphasis added). Readers familiar with the theology of the Cappadocian fathers will notice that Tauler retrieves—intentionally or coincidentally—the understanding of the Son as “archetype” (ἁρχέυποξ: the stamped image on a coin).

⁵ Ps 29:9; Is 6:3; Rev 4:8, 11; 5:9, 13.

⁶ Sir 43:27-30 (LXX).

⁷ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, 3 1094b14–15 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

⁸ What has been explained can also be put as follows: theologically and philosophically speaking, we cannot speak of God in denotative ways. We do not have any handles, any purchase on God, which would allow us to speak denotatively. Yet the culture we live in loves denotation. No wonder many will say that knowing and speaking of God is a matter of feeling: they will suggest that we speak of God only by connotation, and in fact we often do. That connotation is a factor at every level of human communication is, of course, well known, and interpreting faith in God in terms of pure feeling has interesting credentials in Romanticism. The problem is that the feeling elements in language both spoken and written cannot so easily be separated from the rational elements. So when we are told connotation signifies the “irrational part” of human communication we are skating on thin ice; for feeling is a quality of what we say, not a “part.” Besides, believers will claim that faith in God is not only deeply felt, but also reasonable, as well as a call to responsible action. To account for the “knowledge” of God on the basis of connotation alone is to ignore that all connotation is parasitical on denotation and performance. On “performative” language see Austin's, J. L. classic How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).Google Scholar

⁹ The capacity of single words to refer to specific realities is often called the “representative” power of words. Whether I say “elephant,” “pastel,” “garage,” “evergreen,” or “surfboard,” my friends and I know at once what I am talking about, even if we should be having lunch, i.e., when none of these things matter at all. I can even say: “That's a big If” or “I'd like to know the Why of it all” and be understood. Words “represent” apart from context or situation.

¹⁰ Note that the present discussion deals with rhetoric, not with logic or with the semantics of individual words. That is to say, it gives an account of how metaphors work, not of the legitimacy of the use of any words whatever to refer to the unseen world, and especially to God. For the latter issue, we must recur to the notion of analogy. But this is not all. My friend George Schner kindly reminds me that “metaphors and symbols on their own will not … do justice to the revelation which is the Christian God, nor the saving power that revelation has for our contemporary ‘denoting’ society and culture,” adding that “the ‘missing’ bit” in the present treatment is “the dynamism and linkage of metaphor and symbol which is provided by narrative.” He is right, of course. A fuller account of the manner in which metaphor and paradox refer to God, and indeed actualize the Presence of God in the world and humanity, would require treatments of, respectively, the manner of signification of “myth” and the moral and theological significance of “narrative.”

¹¹ The following structural-linguistic analysis of what happens in metaphors is interesting. At the heart of metaphoric denomination lies the disjunctive (i.e., selective) application of meaning-elements. To clarify this, let us explain ex contrario. Take the two sample phrases, and assume that, instead of yourself, the speakers are, respectively, a zoologist and a pastry baker. In their several contexts, odds are that the entire complex of meaning elements of “toad” and “honeybun” would apply, respectively, to an (ungainly) little animal or to an (attractive) piece of confection. After all, amphibiologists and pastry bakers are apt to refer to an actual toad and a ditto honeybun almost every day. In other words, they would use the two words denotatively; they would apply all the meaning elements of “toad” or “honeybun” together (“conjunctively”) to the amphibian or the piece of pastry. In metaphors, however, only a few selected meaning elements—the so-called “relevant” ones—are applied, respectively, to the unpleasant person and the attractive one. But that application is all the more forceful for being selective. Less denotation means stronger reference. Would you not rather deal with a little unpleasant amphibian croaking sotto voce and scrambling around your office than with a colleague you cordially detest, and is a charming friend not infinitely better company than the sweetest bun?

¹² Eliot, T. S., Four Quartets, East Coker, iv.Google Scholar

¹³ Hopkins, Gerard Manley, The Wreck of the Deutschland, 9.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I.v. 166–67.Google Scholar Cf. I.i.23.

¹⁵ Letter of August 2, 1955, Collected Works, ed. Fitzgerald, Sally, The Library of America, 39 (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1988), 943–44Google Scholar (emphasis added). To drive the point home, she adds, with characteristic sassiness: “Henry James said the young woman of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex.”

¹⁶ Both Hebrew dabhar and Greek logos mean “word.”

¹⁷ Aramaic talya' means “tender, young person or animal,” and hence “kid” (i.e., the young of a goat), “lamb” (i.e., the young of a sheep), “child,” but also “boy” (also as used for a servant). Greek pais means “boy,” both in the sense of “male child” and “servant” (cf. French gatçon).

¹⁸ Hebrew ruach haqqodeš and Greek pneuma hagiosynēs mean “spirit of holiness.”

¹⁹ Hebrew kabhod and Greek doxa both mean “glory.”

²⁰ Rev 8·1.