This article
was first published in The
Catholic Herald
The Dazzling
Darkness or the Light of
Life?
By Dwight
Longenecker
In his
first interview with the
BBC, the new Archbishop
of Canterbury admitted
that he was a man with
more questions than answers.
We have to admire his honesty.
We also have many questions.
One of them is whether
the new Archbishop believes
that his lack of answers
is filling churches or
emptying them.
The
lack of answers within Anglicanism
is not simply the new Archbishop’s
problem. He is a proper
representative of modern
Anglicanism. He is the
mouthpiece for that breed
of urbane bishops and theologians
who pull the levers of
power so smoothly in the
Church of England. Cardinal
Manning once told the young
Hilaire Belloc that all
human conflict is essentially
theological, and this is
true of the conflict at
the heart of Anglicanism.
The problem is this: theologically
speaking the Anglican Church,
like the tin man, has no
heart. At its centre is
a nihilistic void. However,
rather than despair at
this emptiness, Anglican
leaders have dressed it
up in mystical and poetic
language.
In
Keith Ward’s excellent book, God:
A Guide for the Perplexed, we
are taken on a whirlwind
tour of Western philosophy
and theology. The book
provides a brilliant exposition
of the history of our thought.
But it ends with, at best,
a vague pantheism and at
worst a God who is not
there. Ward quotes with
satisfaction the Anglican
poet priest R.S.Thomas, ‘Why
no! I never thought other
than/That God is that great
absence/ In our lives,
the empty silence/ Within,
the place where we go/
Seeking, not in hope to/Arrive
or find. He keeps the interstices/
In our knowledge, the darkness
between the stars.’
Likewise,
in his book God Outside
the Box the Bishop
of Oxford, quotes Thomas
on God, ‘It is this
great absence/that is like
a presence, that compels/me
to address without hope/of
a reply.’ This breed
of Anglican theologian
is also fond of the fourteenth
century spiritual book, The
Cloud of Unknowing. Rowan
Williams also sings the
mysterious marvels of the ‘dark
night of the soul’ and
has actually written an
excellent study of Teresa
of Avila. In one of his
essays in Open to Judgement Williams
also quotes the poet Henry
Vaughan, ‘There is in God
(some say)/ a deep and
dazzling darkness.’
There
is a kind of theological
sleight
of hand going on here.
Have you seen the trick?
The old fashioned ‘God
is dead’ theology has been
dressed up in the language
of poetry and mystical
theology. Now God is not
dead, he simply isn’t at
home. This is Christianity
that is all form and no
content. When you read
the contemporary Anglican
theologians closely they
are really promoting a
kind of ecclesiastical
version of agnosticism.
They don’t believe ‘anything
meaningful can be said
about God’ but this agnosticism
is paraded in a restrained,
melodramatic way as a kind
of ‘dark night of the soul’.
I
must not judge the state
of
their eternal souls, but
it seems to me that their
self- deception is reminiscent
of a character in Graham
Greene’s Burnt Out Case. In
that novel there is an
apostate priest who lives
in mortal sin; but he mistakes
his loss of faith for the
highest levels of mystical
experience. He then compounds
his apostasy with pride
by boasting to others that
he is experiencing the ‘dark
night of the soul.’
Don’t
get me wrong. There is a
fine
strain of spirituality
and theology that does emphasize
the via negativa or
the way of negation. Apophatic
theology is the way of
talking about God that
looks beyond all created
categories of sensation
and thought to the God
who is beyond all our mental
concepts and images. This
way of doing and praying
theology has a venerable
history stretching back
to Gregory of Nyssa and
Evagrius Ponticus in the
fourth century. However,
there is an important difference
between the genuine apophatic
theologians and the modern
Anglicans. The Church fathers
spoke of their inability
to know the essence of
God himself, but they did
so within an orthodox understanding
of the mystery of the Incarnation.
When we study the writings
of contemporary Anglican
theologians this orthodox
understanding of the Incarnation
is missing. Instead Jesus
is ‘that human person who
most fully shows us what
God is like.’
That
Anglican theologians should
end up in agnosticism is
logical, because when you
deny the reality of the
Incarnation you do end
up with a distant God who
is cut off from humanity,
and it is right that, from
a human perspective, we
can know nothing about
him. Because of this human
inability Catholic spirituality
and theology has always
insisted that an orthodox
Christology is vital to
everything else.
It
is true that God is beyond
all our human understanding.
But it is also true that
God reveals himself to
mankind. God was always
distant, but he also spoke
to his people and ‘In these ‘latter
days he has spoken to us
by his Son.’ (Heb. 1:2)
At Christmas we celebrate
the fact that the Word
was made flesh and came
to dwell among us. (Jn.
1:14) Contemporary Anglican
theologians write beautifully
at times. They offer a
tragic, post-modern vision
of Christian belief. It
is a belief that seems
fated to die a lonely,
poetic death. Happily,
there is an option. The
Catholic theologian, John
Saward writes even more
beautifully of the wonders
of the incarnation. In
his books, The Mysteries
of March, Redeemer in the
Womb and Cradle
of Redeeming Love Saward
helps us to meditate on
the Christmas mystery.
He does so with great erudition
and a wonderful spirituality.
His books deserve the widest
readership in theological
circles because they are
the perfect antidote to
the sweet poison of Anglican
agnosticism.
The
antidote is not only theological.
Contemplative prayer is
vital for a fervent faith.
In his encyclical Into
the New Millennium the
Pope says that the new
evangelisation must be
motivated and fuelled by
the contemplative life.
We engage in contemplation
not by emptying our minds
or by staring at the ‘dazzling
darkness’, but by gazing
on the face of Christ.
Jesus is the Way to Truth
and Life, so it is through
the rosary and by contemplation
of the Holy Face that we
enter into the mystery
of the Incarnation and
therefore into the mystery
of God himself. This is
Christianity with both
form and content, and the
pope recommends this because
he realises that while
God is unknowable, ‘Christ
is the image of the unseen
God’ (Col. 1:15). The Christ
child in the stable is
not a dark absence, but ‘God
from God, Light from Light,
Very God of Very God.’
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