That's a really good point to keep in mind. A big reason for this misconception is that the average person isn't going to learn about this until they get into the more advanced theology classes (or is otherwise well-suited for autodidactic study of God). I've even seen some top, tenured theologians get this one wrong!
Alan, versions of the via negativa show up in Taoism around 500 BC, and in Zen by what... the 400s CE? Plotinus had a version of it in pagan philosophy around the 200s CE. Some of the Greek fathers were introducing it into Christianity a little after that.
So Maimonides and Aquinas were latecomers to this game!
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose
Wasn't the Jew Moses Maimonides the first to champion the via negativa, even before St. Thomas Aquinas?
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good point to keep in mind. A big reason for this misconception is that the average person isn't going to learn about this until they get into the more advanced theology classes (or is otherwise well-suited for autodidactic study of God). I've even seen some top, tenured theologians get this one wrong!
ReplyDeleteSilas, we are agreeing on a point of theology!
ReplyDeleteI guess I picked the wrong week to stop popping pills.
Alan, versions of the via negativa show up in Taoism around 500 BC, and in Zen by what... the 400s CE? Plotinus had a version of it in pagan philosophy around the 200s CE. Some of the Greek fathers were introducing it into Christianity a little after that.
ReplyDeleteSo Maimonides and Aquinas were latecomers to this game!