Table Of ContentPALGRAVE FRONTIERS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Negative Theology and
Philosophical Analysis
Only the Splendour of Light
Simon Hewitt
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion
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Simon Hewitt
Negative Theology
and Philosophical
Analysis
Only the Splendour of Light
Simon Hewitt
School of PRHS
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK
Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion
ISBN 978-3-030-49601-2 ISBN 978-3-030-49602-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49602-9
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For my parents.
Acknowledgements
I was funded by the Leverhulme Trust under their Early Career Research
fellowship scheme during the period in which this book was written.
Previous time spent with the ERC-funded Nature of Representation
Project at the University of Leeds allowed me the space for thinking
about language and mind which has found its way especially into Chap.
8. Robbie Williams led that project and was an excellent mentor, and
Gail Leckie was especially generous in spending time talking about issues
around linguistic priority. The Centre for Philosophy and Religion at
Leeds provided an excellent testing ground for the ideas contained in this
book. Parts of the material were presented to audiences at the International
Journal for Philosophy and Theology’s anniversary ‘Sisters in Arms’
Conference in January 2019 in Cambridge, to the Medieval Philosophy
Network in London, to the Leeds PRHS Work in Progress seminar and
to the Society for the Study of Theology. I would also like to thank Mikel
Burley, Brian Davies OP, Bob Eccles OP, Fiona Ellis, Jessica Eastwood,
Peter Hunter OP, Sam Lebens, Robin le Poedevin, Franco Mani, Rachel
Muers, Jonathan Nassim, Paul O’Grady, Rebecca Stephens, Sussanah
Ticciati, Catherine Wallis-Hughes, Roger White and Mark Wynn.
Tasia Scrutton deserves thanks for so much, not least for an enduring
love of the sort that is a model of how we created beings can faithfully
image that uncreated love which lies beyond the competence of our
concepts.
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Special thanks go to the London fraternity of the Lay Dominicans, of
which I am a member. In a sermon preached to the English provincial
chapter of the Dominican friars, Herbert McCabe set out a vision of the
Dominican vocation as being to proclaim the mystery of God, in particu-
lar that God is not a god, an object within the universe competing with
us for metaphysical space. Just before concluding he said,
This is the task of preaching that, it seems to me, we are here this week to
organise, the task of telling men that they can have images if they like, they
may do no harm, but they are not what we are talking about, none of them
are God: God is not part of the world, God is the unfathomable mystery of
love by which the world is; there are no gods, there is only this love.1
That is indeed our vocation, and I am grateful to the London Lay
Dominicans for helping me to live it.
But before any other vocation, and a prerequisite for it, stands the
vocation to be human. For that I was formed, and continue to be, by my
parents, Peter and Anne Hewitt, and I dedicate this book to them.
1 McCabe 1987, p. 242.
Contents
1 God Beyond Words 1
2 A nalytic Criticisms of Apophaticism 19
3 Analytic Apophaticisms 37
4 Referentialism and Religious Language 55
5 G rammatical Thomism 71
6 Th e Grammar of God-Talk 89
7 Speaking of God: Truthfully and Devotedly 109
8 Is God a Person? 127
9 Incarnation and Trinity 143
ix
x Contents
10 Politics, Kingdom, Beatific Vision 161
Bibliography 177
Index 189
