The Best Insights of Wood, Bracken, & Gaine and Milbank, Hart, & Boersma? Sign Me Up for all of them!
John Sobert Sylvest asks ChatGPT:
While thinkers like Wood, Bracken, and Gaine may be more open to constructive metaphysical or process approaches, or to a more robustly kataphatic (affirmative) theology, compared to the more classically analogical stance of Milbank, Hart, and Boersma, doesn't D,B&H’s robustly participatory stance largely make them immune to any charge of radical apophaticism? Might we better locate their systematic differences less so in meta-grammatical concerns like whether anyone has warrant to engage in speculative theology, both ad intra & extra, and more so in theologoumenal differences regarding whether or not this versus that constructive proposal is theologically apt, e.g. navigating nominalism & essentialism, pantheism & panentheism, divine determinism & voluntarism, various modal collapses, divine sovereignty & human freedom, simplicity & im/passibility, and other of the usual suspects (issues)?
ChatGPT responds:
Your analysis is correct: the robust participatory stance of thinkers like Milbank, Hart, and Boersma-rooted in classical analogy and real participation-does largely immunize them from the charge of radical apophaticism. Their theology affirms that creation genuinely participates in God, allowing for meaningful, though analogical, knowledge and language about the divine, rather than collapsing into pure negation or unknowability[3][7].
The more significant differences between these thinkers and those like Wood, Bracken, and Gaine are not about whether speculative theology is warranted (a meta-grammatical concern), but about the theological aptness of specific constructive proposals. Their disagreements center on classic doctrinal tensions-such as navigating nominalism vs. essentialism, pantheism vs. panentheism, divine determinism vs. voluntarism, modal collapse, divine sovereignty vs. human freedom, and divine simplicity vs. im/passibility-rather than on the basic possibility of engaging in affirmative or speculative theology[6][10].
In sum, the debate is less about the risk of apophatic excess and more about which metaphysical and theological models best articulate the mystery of God and creation.
Citations:
[1] From Laws to Liturgy - Brill https://brill.com/display/book/9789004413979/9789004413979_webready_content_text.pdf
[2] [PDF] complete dissertation.pdf - VU Research Portal https://research.vu.nl/files/75840009/complete%20dissertation.pdf
[3] Apophatic theology - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology
[4] The Eclipse of the Word: Five Theses on Apophaticism https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/the-eclipse-of-the-word-five-theses-on-apophaticism/
[5] [PDF] UNKNOW THYSELF: APOPHATICISM, DECONSTRUCTION, AND ... https://mrubenstein.faculty.wesleyan.edu/files/web2apps/webapps/wordpress/html/wp-content/blogs.dir/286/files/2008/11/unknown-thyself.pdf
[6] Panentheism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/spr2016/entries/panentheism/
[7] The Apophatic Way (Part 2 of 'The Anaphatic Way') https://godaftergod.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/the-apophatic-way-part-2-of-the-anaphatic-way/
[8] [PDF] PANTHEISM, PANENTHEISM, AND ECOSOPHY https://capehorncenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Valera-Vidal_2022_Zygon.pdf
[9] [PDF] Apophaticism in Contemporary Philosophy https://rprt.northwestern.edu/documents/research-scholar-articles/mitralexis-article-3.pdf
[10] [PDF] CLASSICAL THEISM, PANENTHEISM, AND PANTHEISM https://www.zygonjournal.org/article/12460/galley/25297/download/
John Sobert Sylvest asks ChatGPT:
Kataphatically, for example, DBH's "ontology of peace” resists - not only any nihilistic relativism, but - the same types of dialectical opposition that Milbank rejects as violent? Also, wouldn't Hart be open to Lonergan's sublation (Rahnerian) even if not Hegel's? And in defense of certain Hegelian appropriations, good & evil needn't be conceived in terms of real opposites, e.g. being & nonbeing, but rather as being & its privation by parasitic subcontraries, which are thoroughgoingly remediable.
ChatGPT responded:
This is a richly nuanced and theologically sophisticated line of inquiry—let’s unpack it in parts:
1. DBH’s “Ontology of Peace” and Dialectics of Violence:
Yes, David Bentley Hart’s ontology of peace is kataphatically grounded in divine plenitude and rejects dialectical accounts that make violence ontologically constitutive (as he critiques in The Beauty of the Infinite). This is aligned with John Milbank's resistance to dialectics as inherently violent (particularly in their Hegelian-Marxist or Nietzschean forms), which structure meaning through conflict, negation, or agon.
Hart resists any ontology in which difference is constituted through negation, instead affirming an ontological peace based on analogical plentitude—difference as gift and radiance, not as antagonism. So yes, both resist nihilistic relativism and any dialectical opposition grounded in violence or negation.
2. Hart and Lonergan (vs. Hegel):
Hart would likely be more amenable to Lonergan’s Rahnerian-style sublation than to Hegel’s dialectic. Lonergan’s method of sublation involves:
• Preserving the truth in prior stages,
• Avoiding collapse into relativism or total synthesis,
• Respecting analogy, grace, and supernatural finality (rather than immanent necessity).
Hart, as a metaphysician with a strong apophatic and analogical streak, would likely resonate with this as a non-violent, participatory model of ascent, unlike the speculative identity logic of Hegel’s absolute idealism.
3. Hegelian Dialectic and the Nature of Evil:
You're absolutely right: not all Hegelian appropriations understand good and evil as real metaphysical opposites (i.e., being vs. nonbeing). There are readings of Hegel—especially theological or post-Hegelian ones—that interpret evil as a privation, or even as a subcontrary mode that parasitically leeches from the good, and hence is thoroughly remediable.
This aligns in part with Augustinian metaphysics of evil (which Hart defends), though Hegel’s framework is more structurally embedded in historical becoming than in metaphysical hierarchy. However, some contemporary Hegelian theologians (like Cyril O’Regan or Rowan Williams) offer precisely these more orthodox or Christianized readings of dialectic.
Summary:
• Yes: Hart’s kataphatic ontology resists not just nihilism, but violent dialectics like Milbank.
• Yes: Hart would more likely affirm Lonergan’s sublation than Hegel’s, due to ontological commitments to analogy and participation.
• Yes: In some Hegelian reinterpretations, evil is not a metaphysical opposite but a privation or distortion of the good—thus still consistent with an ontology of peace, if carefully articulated.