The Agnostic Dimension Revisited
[“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the son, but the Father alone” (Mt 24:36).]
O Lover,
The current religious aspect of our society weights heavily the safety and security of knowledge, an inclination oxymoronically characterizing the empirical/materialist sector as well. While the lure of the notion of certitude in whatever context is both fetching and reassuring, it consistently neglects the massive role of unknowing, an awareness particularly prominent in the mystical traditions. Conscious of the complicated history of such unknowing across the millennia of western literature, I nevertheless seek not only to rehabilitate but to reverence that theme in seeking language for the far reaches of You beyond the gropings of cognitive knowledge.
More clarification is in order. Most of the mystics in the tradition of Jesus have given major attention to the terrain out beyond the reach of the intellect. Indeed, the entire two millennia of the mystical edge of that tradition—e.g., the Pseudo-Dionysian Corpus (c. 500), the “God as No-thing” theme of Eckhart (c.1260-1328), the anonymous The Cloud of Unknowing (c. 1385), Nicholas of Cusa’s Of Learned Ignorance (1440), the apophátic (“imageless”) bent of Juan de la Cruz (1542-91)—contain a profound trans-cognitive quality. And while I perceive most mystics as embracing a measure of intellective knowledge of You, they repeatedly wax affective (e.g., Franciscans) or apophatic (e.g., The Cloud) in also declaring the limits beyond which the mind cannot go. While both the rational and the trans-rational are necessary, the crucial issue is the relative balance of the two. I find it helpful to restrict the use of the word “knowledge” to the cognitive resorting to words like “awareness,” “consciousness,” “intuition” and Mystérium for the realms transcending the intellect. I thus seek to avoid use of terms such as “certitude,” “infallible,” and “inerrant” when speaking of beliefs. To paraphrase Augustine, the deity whom I understand is not You.
Well You know, O Lover, that the previous paragraph reflects my life-long passage away from viewing the world and You as comprehensible, a rational bent to which all fundamentalism and much creedalism/theology is susceptible, toward a burgeoning envelopment in Mystérium of which I have but momentary inkings. While the list of dogmas professed has steadily waned, what I experience as intimations of You has waxed. Stated otherwise, as the opaque of certitude has receded, the translucence of the incandescence of You Yourself has mushroomed. To paraphrase Holy Writ: while in the past our senses have not apprehended You, we love You; and though in the present we do not “see” You, we trust You amid glorious and inexpressible joy (I P 1:8).
In short, faith reduced to the cognitive, whether a reasoned apologetic, Anselm’s ontological argument, a calculated Pascalian “wager,” or an authority system (biblical or ecclesial), is but a husk, a “dry weary land without water” (Ps 63:1). The cultivation of an awareness of Your indescribably amorous ubiquity is to surrender to Your drawing of us far beyond all words, reasons, theologies, images, and transactional models. The fruit of life lived in Your uncharted voluminosity is thus increasingly more “wisdom” than “knowledge,” more “trust” than “certitude,” much more “experience” than “factuality.” Mercifully, sometimes within said husks, sometimes seemingly distant from them, You inexplicably penetrate into our awareness, You the pervasive seed, You Justyn Martyr’s Lógos spermátikos, You the One whom we are invited to love with all that we are (a la Mt 22:37-38). Nothing supports the thrust of this post for me as does the confluence in the Christ of openness to You as Mystérium and deference to You in all respects including that of cognitive knowledge (e.g., Mt 24:36).
Having thus unburdened myself, O Lover, You of whom I have here lamely sought to speak, I acknowledge within myself a measure of agnosticism, an awed and reverential practice of unknowing.
