The purpose of this dissertation is to chart the ways in which four seminal, pre-modern figures in the church's history-- Aurelius Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther--understood the mystery and incomprehensibility of God. ;Two have consistently analogical programs which assume their termination to be in a beatific vision of the utter intelligibility of God: Augustine and Thomas. Augustine has what appears to be a fourfold distinction: God eludes us due …
Read moreThe purpose of this dissertation is to chart the ways in which four seminal, pre-modern figures in the church's history-- Aurelius Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Thomas Aquinas, and Martin Luther--understood the mystery and incomprehensibility of God. ;Two have consistently analogical programs which assume their termination to be in a beatific vision of the utter intelligibility of God: Augustine and Thomas. Augustine has what appears to be a fourfold distinction: God eludes us due to our sinfulness as we are confronted by God's freedom in salvific self-revelation, due to our created finitude as we encounter the infinite and triune creator, due to our inability to discern how God providentially orders history, and due to our impotence to penetrate the divine predestinating decision. Thomas' thought seems more naturally divided in a twofold manner: God is hidden due to the limits of reason in the context of sin and due to the limits of faith in the context of grace. ;The remaining two introduce hyperlogical elements that break the analogical project. Pseudo-Dionysius' analogical program broadly parallels Thomas: God is hidden due to creaturely privation and due to natural but salvific limitations. At the height of this, however, a hyperlogical or mystical theology overturns it and directs attention to the divine beyond hiddenness and revealedness, beyond affirmation and negation. Luther's approach broadly mirrors Augustine's: hiddenness at the limits of fallen reason; hiddenness as contrary to reasonable and experiential expectation; hiddenness at the limits of faith; hiddenness as contrary even to faith's expectations. Hyperlogy occurs at the second level, but in such a way that its final goal actually becomes that of analogy: beatific vision. ;All assume what we may call an organic divine hiddenness and a hierarchical one. With this investigated, these are then brought into dialogue with process, Heideggerian, liberation, and postmodern thought for further clarification. In this context, brief studies of the approaches of E. Jungel, J. Macquarrie, M. Bookchin, V. Araya, R. R. Ruether, G. Kaufman, H. Frei, G. Lindbeck, R. Thiemann, and T. Tracy are also presented
