Through a Glass Darkly: Volume IV Issue 1 "Out of the Darkness"

giving up knowing: 2000 words of trying not to speak

Rory Kunz

How can I stop what I am about to write from being meaningless? Or, if I am to avoid such a fault, how can I do so without expressing a meaning so far removed from what I am trying to express that what I write becomes no more than a dangerous – even a blasphemous – lie? I wish to say so many things, know so many things. ‘I desire God’ – may I not say that? If I were to say ‘I desire to know God; to know His ways, His works’, would I express what I yearn to say? And, if I would, do I dare? Human beings – mortals, made from the dust to which all shall fade again1 – have toiled so painfully to speak of “the infinity beyond being”,2 the ‘One who Thunders out of the Whirlwind’,3 the ‘One Who ɪs ᴡʜᴏ ʜᴇ ɪs’.4 But I tremble: how dare I speak when, ‘before God’, even the mouths of the innocent condemn them?5 If I, less righteous than Job,6 asked to know some small part of God’s ways as he did,7 if I pleaded with God to let me address Him, just for a moment8 – accepting even death that I may do so9 – would I not also “darken [His] counsel by words without knowledge”?10 I cannot bear to stop my chasing after wind11 –my longing to know what cannot be known, to speak of what is beyond speech – but I must. If I am ever to be taken ‘out of the darkness’, I must plunge deep into that same darkness of wordlessness and unknowing.12

“Absurdity of absurdity”,13 says Qoheleth, the teacher of Ecclesiastes. I do not understand the world when it is like this; two undeniable realities contradict each other, and I cannot comprehend it: this is what ‘absurdity’ is.14 “Absurdity of absurdities! Everything is absurd”.15 Wickedness is where justice should be;16 the righteous are treated as if they were the wicked;17 all we strive for either fails, or, when we die, all is given to someone else who has not worked for it.18 Yet, is it not also written that “God gives wealth, possessions, and honour”,19 that “He has made everything suitable for its time”,20 that “whoever obeys a command will meet no harm”?21 I will not say ‘God knows how these contradictions are solved’, or ‘the afterlife will put everything

into place’ – and this is certainly not a hope Qoheleth alludes to.22 Why can I – how could I – look beyond a ‘human perspective’ (and ‘into the mind of God’!) for answers to the absurdities of life? We are human beings, confined to the lives of human beings. When I ‘take on a perspective’ of something entirely other to me, I can never learn more than what it would be for me to take on that perspective.23 That there may be, from some completely other perspective, a way to reconcile the world’s absurdity, does not help me – for I am alive; I am a mortal! Any appeal to what is after my death does not help me navigate the absurd life 24 To do nothing is absurd – to let the absurd life subsume me whilst I merely wait for another, is even more so – not least because no one “knows whether the human spirit goes upwards [to heaven]”,25 for “the dead know nothing”.26 Appealing to a perspective I do not, and cannot, have cannot help me, for I do not have that perspective. Nothing has become clear, for it does not seem clear. No – we are constrained to our human unknowing, and that is all. And so, writes Qoheleth, “you do not know the work of God”27 – indeed, “God has made [everything the way it is] so that mortals may not find out anything that will come after them”;28 mortals “cannot find out what God has done”.29

The absurdity of the world is not without effect – “God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him”.30 We all remember righteous Job, who, well-fitting Qoheleth’s observations,31 was afflicted with such terrible loss. We must also remember, however, that in The Book of Job, the Accuser (Hebrew: hassatan; ‘Satan’) is a member of God’s heavenly council, acting as an ‘inquisitor of humanity’;32 he is not the ‘Archenemy of God’, a figure we meet only in later Jewish tradition.33 The Lᴏʀᴅ, without any provocation, suggests that the Accuser “consider[] my servant Job”34 – that is, the Lᴏʀᴅ decided to “destroy him for no reason”.35 Yet what can Job do? There is no arbiter to ensure the Lᴏʀᴅ deals justly with Job’s plea,36 (indeed, who could?), and, though Job knows that he is innocent, he will never be able to make the Lᴏʀᴅ listen to or pay attention to his case, for

the Lᴏʀᴅ will do whatever He wills.37 Again and again, Job seeks desperate answers; again and again he is told that to seek is to misunderstand.38 Oh, righteous Job – listen to the words of Qoheleth! To apply one’s mind “to know wisdom […] is but a chasing after wind. For in much wisdom is much vexation, and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow”.39 Oh Job, “consider the work of God; who can make straight what he has made crooked?”40 What can one do? – “with many dreams comes absurdity and a multitude of words; but fear God.”41 There is no gain in speech. We can only submit to God; there is nothing we can do but fear Him.

To fear the Lᴏʀᴅ is to ‘submit affectively’ to Him; to be affected by His sheer and unfathomable power – his sheer beyondness – and to know, as Job began to know,42 that resistance to Him is beyond futility, that there is nothing to do but completely relinquish control.43 There is serenity in the absurd only for those who accept their relationship to it44 – but when there is nothing that can be done or said or known, all that is left is submission.

Yet, I will not say ‘show me God that I may submit to Him’;45 I do not understand what would come out of my mouth. Dionysius –that wise and secretive Areopagite46 – had difficult words to say on this matter: “When, for instance, we give the name of ‘God’ to that transcendent hiddenness […] what our minds lay hold of is in fact nothing other than certain activities apparent to us. […] As we consider that hiddenness […], we find ourselves witnessing no divinising, no life, no being which bears any real likeness to the absolutely transcendent”.47 So too were difficult words given to Job: “The Almighty – we cannot find him; He is great in power. […] Therefore, mortals fear Him”.48 Whenever I try, no matter how hard, to consider something ‘beyond thought’, I consider only something that is within thought – for, if something is thought of, it is thinkable. It is not that Job cannot find ‘one of the existing objects in the universe’; no, that for which Job seeks is “not contained in being, but being is contained in him”49 – He is (Oh, Lᴏʀᴅ – how

my assertions fail to reference you!) existent beyond existence; the source and foundation of all that exists, even of existence itself! If the things that are – the things that exist – are the things that ‘have being’, and if knowledge concerns what is the case, then whatever transcends being, transcends knowledge!50 “God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few”!51

And yet, still I yearn to say that ‘I desire to know God; to know His ways, His works’. And I have already failed in my restraint; I have uttered foolishness when all I desire is the power of God.52 If I may not know, then let me taste and see that the Lᴏʀᴅ is gracious! – for I will be happy in that refuge.53 Let me understand the man from Tarsus: “if anyone thinks that they have achieved knowledge, they have not begun to know as they ought to know”.54 If it has been written that “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise”,55 then let me destroy any understanding I have coveted and cloistered within me. If, as the Areopagite says, the ‘One who is above all things’ is above words and understanding –brighter than and beyond all light56 – then only to those who “leave behind them every divine light, every voice, every word

from heaven, and who plunge into the darkness where, as scripture

proclaims,57 there dwells the One who is beyond all things”, can anything be “made manifest”?58 “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise”;59 let me be a fool that I may understand!60

If thoughts about the ‘unthinkable’ can refer only to that which is thinkable, then, if words like ‘God is faithful’61 are doing anything meaningful, they cannot be doing this by ‘reaching out’ to an object and representing it like a ‘picture of reality’ that I can have. How often have I tried to have some god in my mind! But none can rest while lying on human wisdom62 – there exists only that which is built upon the giver and source of all speech and all knowledge.63 If all I believe – all that I am – is to rest on the “power of God”, I cannot be full of “plausible words of wisdom”. It is “in weakness and in fear and in much trembling” – in words spoken by one who “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” –that we see “a demonstration of the Spirit and of power”.64 I see no spectacle here –no meanings; only words without reference that tremble at the throat as they struggle to come out. These are words that shape me into the mind of Christ65 – into the knowing that is being known; and being known in my entirety! For in being known there is vulnerability;66 a vulnerability that opens me, that takes me over to Christ. It is ongoing, it demands prayer and contemplation,67 it is all consuming. It is to submit oneself entirely to the entirely unknown, even at being led into a profound sense of the mind’s

darkening – for, in that darkness, so will shift the very capacity to see.68

If I am to see what I long to see, I will find it in those trembling lips; lips that hang cut-blooded with gall, cut tongue spitting out breath – lips that gasp like death and the power of God: “Father, forgive them...”69

Rory Kunz lives between Oxford and the West Yorkshire moors. He is in his final year of studying Philosophy and Theology.