Apophatic Theology and Its Vicissitudes

Abstract

This chapter explores Derrida’s work in relation to apophatic theology, examining the ways in which the Dionysian inheritance is transformed in his writings so as to repeat differently the four themes of freedom, materiality, hierarchy, and universalism according to a new configuration of eros and ontology. This new configuration in turn becomes a problem for theology. These responses to the apophatic elements of Dionysius’s work are perhaps best captured by the twin poles of radical orthodoxy and deconstructionist Christianity. Although these two appear initially to be dramatically divergent responses to Derrida, I will show that both ultimately retain the same colonizing universalism of systematic theology.