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Speaking of the UnSayable

Postmodern problems of language and theological ways of knowledge

Peter Hardt, Cologne & Christian Bauer, Berlin

Theology and postmodernity are not compatible! To be convinced one has just to imagine a virtual dialogue between Thomas Aquinas and Jean-François Lyotard: contradictorary worlds of discourse would meet each other. To stage this ‘clash of discourses’ - or to be theologically and politically correct: this ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ - as an experiment within the secured frame of a theological laboratory, is the attempt of this theo-philosophical reconnaissance in-between postmodernity and scholastic thinking. We undertake this expedition on the borderland of both discourses as theologians with philosophical luggage - not lacking a postmodern wink, while for methodological reasons forcing back the desire to baptize.

So, what happens if what is brought together simply does not seem to fit? In order to pose this question we will draw on an old form of theological discourse, which has been practiced since the Middle Ages, but which is not so common any more: the so-called quaestio. Since Aquinas’ “Quaestiones disputatae” this form of argument has served as a method of introducing theological practices into scientific discourse. On a crash-course for postmodern descendants of the medieval theologian the basic structure of this form of argument would be described like this: first the question of the quaestio is outlined, followed by, in negating speech and affirming counter-speech, the relevant thesis (Ad primum) and anti-thesis (Sed contra) coming both from Scripture and Tradition, which are brought to a final conclusion (Resondemus).

Quaestio

Is theology as the art of speaking of the UnSayable compatible with postmodern skepticism?

Ad primum

Postmodern skepticism assumes a negative answer, for its deconstructive gesture rejects a final foundation. Postmodernity is opposed to any notion, that wants to produce ontological Weltanschauung by means of foundational meta-theories. In short, it is opposed to any metaphysical discourse. Hasn’t theology for centuries been the moving force behind metaphysics? Isn’t its speaking of God a grand narration, that urges every phenomenon to take its place in a metaphysical order? That is exactly the critique of Jean-François Lyotard.

All that can no longer be valid in postmodernity: »The grand narration has lost its credibility« (Lyotard 1994: 112). The end of meta-narratives results in a plurality of axiomatic systems, whose different language games show an irreducible and incommensurable relation: mathematics, biology, education, theology or philosophy stand in fundamental relation of differend concerning an adequate interpretation of the world. The result is a fragmented world of scientific discourse, which has its counterpart in a radically plural differentiation of social systems. The differend does not allow a ‘peace-making’ meta-theory, that could transform the war of thesis and anti-thesis into an Hegelian synthesis. The practical consequence for Lyotard is an appeal for epistemological modesty: non of these struggling kinds of discourse are allowed a super-ordinate meta-position, all have to restrain from claiming an absolute perspective on the world - preventing to the last totalitarian movements.

Theology though, is a discourse that does work on a topic with an universal demand per se: it speaks of God. God appears in theological discourse as an »absolute witness« (Lyotard 1989: 100), and could therefore authorize a repressive conduct of Christians, especially of the Roman Catholic Church: »Following Rome, Rome, having become Christian, will rule« (Lyotard 1995: 49). As theological speech of God touches something universal ‘per definitionem’, that contains the potential of absolute demands, Lyotard goes into battle with the words »War to the whole, let us testify the non-presentable, let us activate the difference, let us save the difference, save the honour of the name.« (Lyotard 1990: 48).

Sed contra

In what follows the structural similarities of both discourses will be put into the limelight in order to challenge the postmodern rejection of theology as a meta-narrative that has to be deconstructed. Lyotard’s critical point of view on Christianity is to be countered with those texts within the Christian tradition that bear a ‘dangerous memory’, which is compatible with postmodern skepticism. These texts resemble Trojan Horses of intellectual subversion, that can be pulled into the fortress of theological discourse. One of the texts, which is often ignored by ecclesiastical authorities, but nevertheless figures as an authentic part of Church tradition, is the doctrine of analogy of the 4th Lateran Council in 1215. As a basic rule for the speech of God, the text commits itself to the following: »between the creator and the creature cannot be stated such a great similarity, that there could not be stated an even greater dissimilarity.« (Denzinger 1999: Nr. 806).

The term similarity refers to the traces of God within creation: if one searches for God he has to address the world. The central comparative “similitudo in maiore dissimilitudine” claims in contrast to this similarity the greater dissimilarity of God and his creation: “Deus semper maior”. The principle dissimilarity exceeds “per definitionem” the relation of worldly analogies. These two contrasting ways of thinking, positive construction on the one hand and negative deconstruction on the other, are commented on by Karl Rahner, one of the most important theologians of the 20th century and a kind of “modern” (sic) Church father: »The 4th Lateran Council says explicitly that from the world, which means any conceivable starting-point of knowledge, no statement [...] about God is possible, without noting [...] the radical inadequacy of this positive statement. But in the praxis of theological business we [...] usually forget, that such an affirmation can only [...] be stated about God, if we at the same time also always take it back, if we endure the strange balance between Yes and No as the true and only stable point of our knowledge and let the statement fall into the silent incomprehensibility of God himself.« (Rahner 1984: 106f.).

Even though theology often has not been careful enough in speaking of the Unsayable, the truly great God-thinkers always knew about the greater incomprehensibility of God in the balance between Yes and No. Anselm of Canterbury formulated this in the mode of prayer: »God, you are not only greater than all, that can be thought, but even greater, that you could be thought at all« (Anselm 1966: 225). Following Aquinas the »utmost possibility of the human knowledge of God consists in man knowing that he knows nothing of God, as God is the one who transgresses all that we know of him« (Thomas 1980: 244). Nikolaus of Cues on the threshold of modernity could describe theology as Docta ignorantia (Cusanus 1964-1977) in the sense of a scholarly non-knowledge of God.

This line of tradition of negative theology, which is also represented by Dionysius Areopagita and Meister Eckhart, clearly states that God as the deepest mystery of the world is to be placed outside of human knowledge. Surprisingly this ‘subversive’ branch within the history of theology, whose deconstructive gesture has been codified by the 4th Lateran Council, is directly addressed by postmodern thinkers like Jacques Derrida (Derrida 1989) or Michel Foucault (Foucault 1987: 48f.). Negative theology on the whole resembles, amazingly, postmodern skepticism like Lyotard’s; everyday matters are broken up in favour of the dissimilarity of heterogenous discourses and in the fracture surfaces the unspeakability of universal knowledge.

Respondemus

Postmodernity and theology resemble each other from a structural perspective much more than both sides would assume - or probably would care to admit. This dazzling structural analogy results from the actual impossibility of speaking about the things discussed: both speak about something, which is by definition out of reach of adequate statements. A direct relation of representation and interpretation, which held together the world of modernity in the name of an adaequatio intellectus et rei, has irrevocably been blurred. Ariadne’s thread has been torn in the maze of postmodernity (Foucault/Deleuze 1977). All postmodern speech of the Unsayable is nothing other than affirmative speech, as it positively marks out the borders where language finds its necessary end. But is not this critique itself a contextual and therefore contingent statement, that in the end is subject to the same limits it imposes on language? This performative self-contradiction does not negate the legitimate intention of postmodern skepticism. Rather it shows the necessity of its radicalization: the need to drive language to its outer limit - to a place where according to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus silence has to begin.

In the dark areas of the Unsayable beyond modern projects of speech, postmodern philosophy will unexpectedly meet an old acquaintance: Christian theology. In the balance of positive and negative theology it has also always tried to pave trails of language in the barren regions between affirmation and negation. Postmodern thinkers like Gianni Vattimo (Vattimo 1997), Jacques Derrida (Derrida/Vattimo 2001) or Emmanuel Lévinas (Lévinas 1998) prove this structural proximity, but it is Jean-François Lyotard who has traversed this borderland most. He rejects the absolute, that necessarily accompanies the speech of God - namely with the aid of the absolute itself. The absolute figures in Lyotard’s thinking as the unpresentable beyond human projects of language. In his late book Ein Bindestrich - Zwischen »Jüdischem« und »Christlichem« Lyotard depicts a parallel between the absolute and the first Commandment of the Old Testament, which introduces the imageless God of the Exodus as the totally Other, whom suffices no presentation: “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. [...} You shall not make for yourself an idol« (Ex 20, 2.4).

In his book Le Différend, Lyotard had fostered a conception of the unpresentable as something mundane, outside of human discourse. In Ein Bindestrich the unpresentable appears as something transcendent: an immaterial, past voice without speaker speaks as a memory in the Torah, the holy book of the Jews - even if the word “God” does not surface at any part of Lyotard’s book, the trace of his commemoration is clearly engraved in the text. In deciphering this trace of memory lies the promise of redemption. Over hundreds of years this trace has been preserved and commented on in rabbinic schools, but never deciphered and possessed. In the différend of the conflicting interpretations does Judaism - different from the Roman Catholic Church - not have any authority, that decides the conflict from an ‘infallible’ meta-position. But when Lyotard brings ‘the Jewish’ into position against ‘the Christian’, then he forgets the Christian tradition of negative theology: the iconoclastical practices of Judaism and Christianity manifest the radical difference of God as the deepest mystery of the world.

In the search for forgotten maps that might lead us further into these difficult grounds of the postmodern borderland of the Unsayable we want to draw attention to the Scholastic triplex via, the triple way of the speech about God. According to Thomas Aquinas in the trajectory of Dionysios Areopagita all predications for the mystery of God »are said about God in triple manner. The first affirmative, so that we can say: ‘God is wise’; this must be said about him, because in him is the arche-image of wisdom pouring forth from him. But as wisdom is not in God the way we understand and name it, is it to be adequately rejected, so that we can say: ‘God is not wise’. As again God is not deprived wisdom because he is lacking wisdom but because it is in him above all what we are capable of thinking and saying, we have to say: ‘God is superwise’ [...] And therefore the utmost possibility of the human knowledge of God consists in man knowing that he knows nothing of God, as God is the one who transgresses all that we know of him« (Thomas 1980: 244).

The simultaneous “sayability” and “unsayablity” of God leads along the triplex via to the construction of words like “UnSayability”, as the existential necessity of speaking forces us to transgress affirmation and negation of language in the via eminentiae. There are, according to the via positionis, possibilities of speaking of God: ‘God is like this.’ However, this affirmation has to be taken back in the same thought: ‘But is also not like this.’ Both assertions together have to be eminently transgressed: ‘In the end things are different anyway’ - the endless différend of signs on deus semper maior can begin again from the start. In the permanent balance of construction and deconstruction of the signs of God arises the never to be completed chain of interpretations of an infinite semiose (Peirce 2000: 375), that holds open the discourse about God. This principal infinity of every semiose in the God-discourse exemplifies Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Goethe 1986: 36) when he lets his Faust meditate on the prologue of the gospel according to John:

»the text reads thus: "In the beginning was the Word"
I'm stuck already! Who can help me out?
I cannot give the Word so high a value,
I must translate it differently,
If what my spirit tells me is correct.
The text should read "In the beginning was the thought."
Be careful now at the beginning
Don't let your pen rush forward without caution!
Is it the thought, that brings all into being?
The text should read: "In the beginning was the force!"
Yet, even as I'm writing down this sentence
A voice warns me, that I am still not finished.
My spirit sends me aid, and good advice,
At peace, I now write: "In the beginning was the act."«

In this semantical drift from the “word” over the “thought” to the “force” Goethe brings the infinite différend of signs of God to a remarkable point, when he allows it to end on the field of the “act”. With this reference to practical deed as the most ‘credible’ sign of God, Goethe shows the current speech of God its way in the middle of postmodern spiritualities and practices. In the logic of a pragmatistical semiotics in the trajectory of Charles S. Peirce could theology find possible places for - in accordance with the “pragmatical maxim” (Peirce 1935: 5.9) - true speech about the »incomprehensible mystery, which we call God« (Rahner 1983: 380): the active Nachfolge in the name of Jesus Christ is both the spiritual and practical ground for all speech of God. Such a Nachfolge in the trace of Jesus of Nazareth is realized in the creative difference of “prayer and activity of the righteous one” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer), “fight and contemplation” (Frère Roger Schutz) or “mystics and politics” (Michel de Certeau). While these spiritualities seek in silence before the mystery of God the proximity to what is beyond their language, these practices make actions speak in their resistance against the powers and forces of the world in the name of Jesus, when words alone must fail.

Christian Nachfolge in the difference of spiritualities and practices aims at transgressing theological discourse about God and forcing it outside itself. This movement of the transgression of the discursive dimension into the field of non-discursive spiritualities and practices offers postmodernity a possible way out of its self-contradictions. Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida cannot be understood without acknowledging their practical engagement for problems beyond the discourse. Their acts follow the spiritually loaded »postulate of unconditional optimism« (Foucault 1997: 117), which eludes a foundational discourse. The theological via eminentiae can serve postmodernity as a reminder of the future of its own project by leading it from the dead end of its problems of language in to the postmodern field of spiritualities and practices: What comes after deconstruction?

 

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[The article is published in German:

Bauer, Christian/Hardt, Peter, Vom UnSagbaren sprechen. Postmoderne Sprachprobleme und theologische Erkenntniswege, in: Dörfler, Thomas/Gobisch, Claudia (Hg.), Postmodern Practices. Beiträge zu einer vergehenden Epoche. Münster-Hamburg-London: Lit 2002 (Diskursive Produktionen; Bd. 4), 47-57.]