Introductory notes for readers of this thesis - Theses - Flinders ...

In this positive re-framing and re-imagining of his sensory-deprived experience of‘praying’, Rahner has drawn on the theology of the dark night and similar materials tofind a basis for his interpretation of the silence of God.Dark mystery of incomprehensibility; a language of love beyond words or knowledgeApart from the Rahner’s explicit mention of the dark night, others’ references to the darkmystery of God 59 seem to offer further echoes of the apophatic tradition of silentspirituality. Rowan Williams describes this tradition as ‘an advance into darkness’ andrefers to Gregory of Nyssa (one of Rahner’s patristic influences) who combines the‘cloud’ of Exodus with the ‘night’ of Song of Songs to conceptualise a ‘darkness’ ofGod’s incomprehensibility where words and knowledge are inadequate and ‘love is[mystically] consummated’ 60 . The anonymous author of the fourteenth century text‘Cloud of Unknowing’ counsels the spiritual pilgrim to ‘learn to be at home in thisdarkness’, explaining that this darkness is ‘the absence of [intellectual] knowledge’; aspilgrims learns to live in this cloud they ‘take up the contemplative work of love’ 61 .Intrinsic to the concept of the mystical darkness of God is the idea of the via negativa 62which Bradley Holt ascribes to Dionysius’ text 63 The Mystical Theology:leave behind you everything perceived and understandable, all that is not and allthat is, and with your understanding laid aside, to strive upward as much as youcan toward union with him who is beyond all being and knowledge. By anundivided and absolute abandonment of yourself and everything…you will be64uplifted to the ray of the divine shadow which is above everything there is .Holt explains thatDionysus argued that since any human concept is inadequate for God, onlydenials of the likeness of God to human categories could properly apply. For59 Ibid, 11–12.60 ‘Dark Night, Darkness,’ in Wakefield, S. ed., A dictionary of Christian spirituality, (London: SCM Press,1983), 103. See also Egan, An anthology of Christian mysticism, 33.61 In Egan, An anthology of Christian mysticism, 369.62 The negative way63 A late fifth-century to early sixth-century Syrian monk writing under a pseudonym. .64 In Thirsty for God – a brief history of Christian spirituality (second edition), (Minneapolis: Fortress,2005), 74.71