Apophatic Theology and Eschatology

Apophatic theology in Christianity involves more than a mystical union with a transcendent God; it traditionally anticipates an eschatological state of permanent beatitude, understood statically in the West and dynamically in the East. This rule of anticipation is not always maintained, as with Meister Eckhart, who identifies mystical experience with the eschaton itself rather than its anticipation. The chapter critically engages Eckhart by examining other apocalyptic discourses—such as the surplus of meaning in Revelation, the discretion of the Synoptic Gospels' 'little apocalypses,' and Paul's reflections on the event of Christ—where the apophatic is functional rather than constitutive. This is also true of modern apocalyptic theologies by von Balthasar, Bulgakov, and Protestant theologians influenced by Walter Benjamin, who articulates a messianism that refuses to specify alternatives to worldly power and suffering.

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Abstract

Abstract Apophatic theology in the Christian tradition connotes far more than a peak experience of union with the transcendent God who exceeds name and concept. For Christian thinkers East and West such experiences were considered an adumbration in time of the eschatological state as one of permanent beatitude, whether this state was considered more nearly in static terms (as in the West) or dynamic terms (in the East). Historically, however, this grammatical rule of anticipation has not always been maintained. Eckhart, for one, subverts it, since for him mystical experience does not anticipate the eschaton but is already identified with it. This chapter critically engages Eckhart by considering other forms of apocalyptic discourse in which kataphaticism is subverted—whether by a surplus of meaning (as in the symbols of the book of Revelation) or by the incredible discretion of the “little apocalypses” of the Synoptic Gospels or by Paul’s deliberations on the event that is Christ. In all these cases the apophatic is real, but functional rather than constitutive. This is also the case with a number of modern “apocalyptic” theologies—whether those of von Balthasar and Bulgakov who are aficionados of the book of Revelation, or any number of Protestant theologians (as well as the Catholic theologian J. B. Metz), who self-consciously take their cue from the Jewish thinker Walter Benjamin (who articulates a form of messianism that refuses to supply content to the alternative to the regimes of power and suffering that mark this world.