Leave Space for X Quantities: Messianic Apophasis

From the Sketches in Messianism series

My friend over the sea Richard Kurth observed, on the back of a previous post here, that “the messianic attitude is a practice of equanimity requiring diligence, humour, friendship and skill. A continuous shifting of perspective…” On must exist between various refusals: the refusal to accept the world as it is; the refusal to become wholly besotted with one's own visions of the future; the refusal to brush aside ambiguities by appointing oneself a manager of the messianic estate, or by declaring oneself to be the messiah themselves. After all, the hellish millenarian movements of both past and present tend to hold in common a hubris of certainty about who’s who and what will happen next.

There is a particular virtue, or practice, that speaks to these measured refusals. I'm not sure what the virtue is called, but it is well summarised by something John Cage said. I read it on Sister Corita Kent's Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules. The tenth and final rule quotes Cage, reading thus:

“We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for x quantities.”

And Kent's ten rules sign off with the closing notice: “There should be new rules next week.”

I am interested here in what it means to leave room for x quantities.

I call this principle messianic apophasis. Apophasis is a Greek word which means something like, to leave be what is unknown, or, to leave something unspoken. Apophatic theology tends toward a kind of mysticism; a posture of awe before a God who should not be mistaken for an object of knowledge: something you can map or explain or reduce to a collection of facts. The principle might also be noted in the Jewish refusal to pen all three letters of the word G—d. Here is an awareness of the potentially enclosing violence of language: a way of capturing knowledge as a form of power.

The messianic practice that is mine to do will certainly be shaped by my own experiences and relationships, by my time and place in the world. This in itself is a limited realm of knowing. But what can I know of the not yet, this powerful stranger, this hope which may be hidden over the horizon? Hiddenness is characteristic of messianism. It acknowledges a longing toward something that remains yet unknown. Messianic apophasis leaves space for x quantities. It will be what it will be. G—d forbid that I should eradicate the ambiguity by falsely grasping hold of it, by enclosing it in a hubris of certainty, by taking control of it; that I should go forth leading some god or some messiah on a leash.

I'm very aware of two sensibilities in my own orbit that will not easily warm to this sort of apophasis.

This virtue does easily sit with Modernity, which always seeks knowledge. Knowledge in the Modern imagination is power, and a tool of conquest, the precondition of security. Knowing has been objectified, flattened into inanimate facts that can be isolated and filed and kept, for the keeper's use. Our place in the modern world has become characterised by I—it relationships. A great deal of the religious discourse of Modernity followed suit, enclosing God in the language of doctrinal facts. Faith, here, means assent to the correct collection of facts, and so, naturally, messianic apophasis undermines matters somewhat.

And so the principle is also objectionable to certain Christian sensibilities. In fact, I have found it to be objectionable across the conservative/progressive spectrum. There are those for whom everything hangs on “knowing Jesus,” to use an evangelical phrase. The virtue of leaving space for what is unknown would seem to move the wrong direction. Meanwhile there are also those progressives who have been fighting against conservative images of a cruel, violent and authoritarian christian god by putting forth contrary theological certitudes. The non-violent, uncontrolling and un-judgmental image of God which is revealed in the christian messiah Jesus would be a sad thing to relinquish by making the messiah mysterious and ambiguous again. I see this. I’m not insensible to either objection.

Though it is often forgotten in the haze of the age, there is an obvious difference between an object of knowledge and relational knowledge. An authentic relationship, in which one is said to know another, is not possible without leaving space for x quantities. It is an act of relational violence to cut across another’s autonomy and agency by announcing what they are or are not, what they will or will not do. A relationship requires that I do not know for sure what some dear other will do tomorrow, or in what manner they may choose to appear, or not appear. That is for the keeping of the other, and it is their otherness that makes love possible. To reduce them to an object of knowledge is to colonise, instrumentalise, and subsume them from thou to it.

Messianic apophasis suggests that confidence takes a relaxed grip. If certain groups would temper their hold on their special and privileged access to the messiah, they might become aware of what the First Century messianic saw very well, and with good humour: that the Messiah was constantly to be found outside the camp talking to some enemy, some heathen, some ghastly outsider; that the Messiah broke whichever religious boundary anyone presumed to draw around the situation; that even the Messiah, comically, claimed ignorance about the time and place and manner of the messianic age. The virtue described here was described by them also: “now we see dimly, as in a reflection,” they said, “but one day we will see face to face and will know…” If this acknowledgement of the unknown were not so unappealing to the religious imagination, there might be greater scope for a messianic commons, wherever there is good faith and goodwill amid the complex experience of the present.