“Never known as anything but an absence, I dare not name him as god:” queer theology and the via negativa

ABSTRACT

Farley draws a parallel between the philosophical anti-essentialism of queer theory and the theological anti-essentialism of apophatic theology. She argues that absolutizing interpretations of authority conspire with dogmatic theology to strip reality of its mystery and human beings of their dignity. Greater attention to anti-essentialist theology provides one strategy toward appreciation of plurality, not least queer embodiments of the human adventure.

KEYWORDS:

• Apophatic
• essentialism
• queer theology
• poetic
• divine beloved

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Wendy Farley is emeritus faculty from Emory University where she chaired the doctoral program in theological Studies for many years. She is currently directing spirituality studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary, emphasizing the connections between contemplative practice and social justice. She is the author of several books, most recently Gathering Those Driven Away: A Theology of Incarnation and The Thirst of God.

Notes

1 Continental philosophy has concerned itself with this problem for decades, using different kinds of language to evoke it. One thinks of Husserl’s “Vienna Lectures,” or Levinas’s evocation of the face against the logic of totality.

2 Rilke, The Eighth Duino Elegy, my translation, based on Stephen Mitchell’s in The Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell.

3 Farley, Ecclesial Reflection, 167.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol III, 98.

7 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 342.

8 Lim, “The Bible Tells Me to Hate Myself: The Crisis of American Spiritual Leadership,” Semeia 90/91 (2002), 318.

9 Ibid., 317 emphasis in text

10 Althaus-Reid, The Queer God, 171.

11 Pseudo-Dionysius’s masterful “Divine Names” and “Mystical Theology” are the urtexts of apophatic theology within the Christian tradition. Other important masters of negation would include Gregory of Nyssa, Marguerite Porete, Nicolas of Cusa, Schleiermacher and many others.

12 Cheng, Rainbow Theology.

13 Schneider, Beyond Monotheism, 206.

14 Lingering in the background of this analysis is Husserl’s phenomenology of essence in Ideas 1.

15 Weil, “Power of Words,” Selected Essays 1934–1943, 222.

16 Cheng, Rainbow Theology, 4 quoting Laurel Schneider, “Queer Theory,” in Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation, 206.

17 Buechel, That We Might Become God, 5.

18 Cheng, Rainbow Theology, xiv.

19 Quote from Cheng, Rainbow Theology, xv. Kelly Brown Douglas enjoins a similar discussion of the triple bind of black lesbians within the black community (Sexuality and the Black Church, 103–6).

20 Stuart, Gay and Lesbian Theologies, 107.

21 Kent Brintnall makes a cognate point in a more sophisticated way in his discussion of Bataille: “to say that the universe is formless is not to reject all claims of resemblance, but rather to make the terms of resemblance incredibly unfamiliar” Ecce Homo, 102).

22 Anselm, Proslogion, 26.

23 Miller, “To Jesus on Easter,” If I Had Wheels or Love.

24 Pseudo-Dionysius is often read as a metaphysical mystic, but when one reads his letters the radical ethical vision that arises from his metaphysics is clearer. Letter 8 relates an anecdote in which a holy man prays for two evil men who betrayed their conversion to fall into the pit of hell, only to realize that Jesus, “moved by compassion” came down to rescue the “unfaithful two.” Letter 8 1100C. Marguerite Porete insists that one cannot advance in contemplation until one has perfected the twin love commandment, no longer even wishing harm on anyone. Mirror of Simple Souls, Chap. 3.

25 Porete, Mirror of Simple Souls, Chap. 122.

26 The Triads, F. Essences and Energies, III.iii.5 12, 108.

27 Ibid., II.ii.5 19, 55.

28 Oliver, “The White Owl Flies into and Out of the Field,” New and Selected Poems, Volume 1.

29 Thomas, “Adjustments,” Collected Poems.