The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism

by Denys Turner

For the medieval mystical tradition, the Christian soul meets God in a "cloud of unknowing," a divine darkness of ignorance. This meeting with God is beyond all knowing and beyond all experiencing. Mysticisms of the modern period, on the contrary, place "mystical experience" at the center, and contemporary readers are inclined to misunderstand the medieval tradition in "experientialist" terms. Denys Turner argues that the distinctiveness and contemporary relevance of medieval mysticism lies precisely in its rejection of "mystical experience," and locates the mystical firmly within the grasp of the ordinary and the everyday. The argument covers some central authorities in the period from Augustine to John of the Cross.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, Christianity, Nonfiction, Spirituality

292 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Denys Turner is the Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale University, a position which he has held since 2005. He previously was the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. He received his B.A. and M.A. from University College, Dublin, and his D.Phil from the University of Oxford.

Turner's work covers several areas within the history of Christianity, with a special focus on mysticism and medieval thought. He has also published two works on Marx and the relationship between Marxism and Christianity.

Reviews

[Jana Light · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. It took me a LONG time to finish, as it required a greater focus and slower pace than most other books I've read, but it was well worth the hours I spent inside its covers. Denys Turner examines the dialectics and mystical theologies of several canonical and marginalized medieval Christian mystics, trying to guide modern Christians away from reading medieval mystics through our modern, more 'experiential' or 'sense-oriented' lens. He tackles the works and theologies of Denys the Areopagite, Augustine, Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, The Auther of _The Cloud of Unknowing_, Denys the Carthusian, Thomas Gallus (though in relation to other mystics) and St. John of the Cross. I had not read several of these Christian figures, and Turner provided a great introduction to aspects of their work, while deepening my understanding and contemplation of the ones I have read.

Some of my favorite examined topics:

* Metaphors of inward gaze/interiority: What we find when we look inward -- ourselves? God? ourselves in/as God? -- and how we proceed further inward without spiraling into self-obsession. How the metaphors break down and what they can reveal. (Augustine, Bonaventure, Echkart, _Cloud_ Author)

* Metaphors of ascent and Dionysian hierarchical ontologies: How the language of ascent towards God, specifically as 'climbing a spiritual ladder' breaks down into the apophatic. Same with the concept of hierarchies and our ontological 'nearness' to God. (Augustine, Bonaventure)

* Cataphatic --> Apophatic: Where the cataphatic (verbal diarrhea, here in the effort of a thorough description of God) ends up in contradiction (inevitable when trying to describe God in His entirety with the parsed-out, limit-bound, contradictory totality of imagery we have on Earth) and thus leads to or produces the apophatic (silence, and sometimes used to refer to those contradictory moments). Turner often discusses affirmation, negation and the negation of negation in these discussions. This was central to Turner's examinations of all mystics mentioned in the book.

* Experience vs. the critique of experience: Some mystics offer a critique of experience, rather than how they are traditionally read as describing the experience itself. I need to read this argument again, as I came away slightly uncertain of his reasoning and so remain, as of yet, unconvinced. However, this could have been because this was the last section I read and I was getting excited to read the summative conclusion drawing it all together. (Denys the Carthusian, St. John of the Cross)

* Knowing and unknowing: The different descriptions of how mystics believed that union with God is achieved -- a rejection of knowledge (Denys the Areopagite), an 'emptying' or failure of knowledge (_Cloud_ Author), a switch from an intellectual knowing to a 'knowing through love' (Thomas Gallus), or through detachment as a result of an inability to know (Eckhart).

* The nature of God: He is not a 'thing' or being like all of creation, therefore our discussion of relation to Him requires greater linguistic distinction and often rather confusing or seemingly contradictory argument, terms or statements. This can often lead to seemingly heretical views (Eckhart, _Cloud_ Author)

* Spiritual experience vs. psychological/physiological experience: Turner focuses primarily on St. John of the Cross for this discussion, and how St. John's 'Dark Night of the Soul' is distinct from purely psychological depression. Spoiler alert: experientially, they are the same; where they differ is in their source. How well a person can determine the source may be prohibitively difficult.

One of my favorite of Turner's overall arguments was for the modern reader's need to recognize that medieval mystics did not separate 'mysticism' from 'theology', like we do today. Mysticism, for many mystics in that time, was considered the zenith of theology, not a separate Christian pursuit or focus, and their mystical works deserve similar exegesis (though with a slightly different linguistic analysis) as their more philosophical theological works.

I came away from this book with a greater respect for the potentials and failures of language, particularly when applied to the understanding and experience of God. Personally, it gave me so many different ways to conceptualize my relation to God, and then so many different ways to reject those conceptualizations. Oddly enough, I still came away richer, though, as regards my spirituality, discursively emptier. It's pretty awesome. Read it.

Also, Meister Eckhart is ca-razy. That dude is all sorts of wacked and I dig it.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book, I find it hard to imagine that any way of thinking could be more finely balanced than mystical theology.

Turner interprets and connects the work of the most prominent Medieval mystical writers, including Denys the Areopagite, Augustine, Eckhart, the Cloud of Unknowing author, Denys the Carthusian and John of the Cross. He works through a history of misreading and misapplication, some scholarly and some more popular and cultural. Turner’s “thesis,” if I understood it, is a polemic against a mysticism of “experience.” Experience can always be the object of a positivistic philosophy, and it was precisely against such premises, Turner argues, that these mystical theologians wrote. The Darkness of God works delicately to counter these trends, which are, essentially, failures to think outside the box.

Yet, while Turner seeks to locate the mystical tradition in the everyday and the ordinary – dethroning it from the enigmatic individualism of transcendent experiences – he only moves the pile of stones from one spot to another. Mysticism is no more accessible for its groundedness, for now its experiential privileges have only become intellectual privileges, inaccessible to all but the well-studied.

Of course, the fruits of mysticism have always hinged on the near-athletic capacity of its students to walk with it along the tight-rope of intertwined language and silence. It seems, almost, that the most difficult of God’s commands may just be the fourth: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Perhaps for this reason Eckhart, at the end of his life, “revoked and also deplored the twenty-six articles which he admitted that he had preached, and also others written and taught by him… insofar as they could generate in the minds of the faithful a heretical opinion, or one erroneous and hostile to the true faith.”

[Garrett Mikulka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly fantastic read and an obvious addition to any serious study of mysticism. An in-depth look at the dialectics on which the apophatic in theology was built and at how those dialectics were left behind in later centuries, leaving the language of earlier apophatic thought without its original substance. I will be thinking on the contents of this book for years to come.

[Stephanie McGarrah · Rating 3 out of 5]

An aesthetically beautiful and intellectually challenging book on negativity in Christian mysticism. Deny Turner is no joke! if you haven't read any of the source material like me, it will be very tough going. I gave up once, because it deals with the question of knowledge, experience and the self, I was interested enough to give it another shot, but again I just couldn't follow. If you have a good understanding of Augustine, Bonaventure, Eckhart, St. John of the Cross and The Cloud of Unknowing, this will be a fascinating read. Perhaps this is one I will come back to even though I am thoroughly intimidated.

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently blowing my mind.

[Flournoy Phelps · Rating 5 out of 5]

Turner uses two principle threads of western Christian thinking, the ascent and the inward gaze, to weave a narrative of mysticism that is lost to the contemporary Christian. His sources are not the typical authors for Christian mysticism, which begs the question of how general their perspectives correspond to their peers.
However, the novelty of their thought is exactly what makes Turner's work so important. It shows that modern Christians are primarily reading those ancient and medieval authors that make sense to the modern mind. But this operates on the assumption that these earlier authors employed modern paradigms. Reading with this general anachronistic method prevents the modern reader from being able to critically engage their own practice.
Too often we sit and judge the past with the assumption that the progress of time has necessitated the progress of thought and worship. Turner demonstrates that there is more than adequate room for our Christian forbearers to critique modern modes of worship and ascetic practices.
The high point for me is the fact that Turner achieves from a different starting point, the same conclusions regarding anthropology that I do. The authors he sites suggest that proper worship leads one to find God within the self, though this is a gross simplification. Given the impossibility of knowing God accepted within the tradition, this also suggests that there is something unknowable about the human person as well.
Getting at the infinite depth of human potential is the greatest need for Christian thought today. By erasing centuries of misanthropic and misogynistic focus on sin and starting instead with the sheer incomprehensibility of the human creature, all sorts of thought begins to change in Christian dogma and theology.

[Ephrem Arcement · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful treatment of the apophatic tradition! I've never understood Eckhart better!!