The Via Negativa v The Via Positiva: East Meets West in Spiritual Thought,

Where Does Unity Fall?

A Paper Presented

By

Deborah Hill-Davis

Unity Institute Lyceum

April 14, 2011

What is the relationship of matter to Spirit and Spirit to matter? This question is

at the crux of the discernment of the mystics and theologians of all ages. What is it to

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“know” God? The search to understand this relationship of Spirit to our human

condition, to suffering, to salvation or enlightenment is at the bottom of the human desire

to understand the nature of God and the nature of man and the complex interrelationship

of the two natures. Do we “know” God through (cataphic) epistemology or (apophatic)

mystical experience? Fillmore speaks repeatedly of our “carnal” mind, by which he most

often means material or physical being. His vision of “spiritualizing” matter through

realization of the Divine within and by way of the faculty of thought is akin to the Desert

Mystics who were embracing the experience of complete Oneness with God. And the

mystical understanding of the Eastern traditions seeks the Way of apophasis, of the

knowing and the unknowing to reach the place of No-thing-ness, or complete Oneness

with all that is or ever was. In the journey to discovery of what God is or is not, and the

relationship of creator and created, what are the pitfalls? And where do the Fillmores, as

Christian mystics of the modern era, land and what do they prescribe for the spiritual

seeker, the Unity Truth student? Is it the Via Positiva or the Via Negativa?

It is not possible in the scope of this paper to unpack and explore all there is to

know about the Via Positiva and the Via Negativa for these terms simultaneously

describe a spiritual practice and embrace a theological conundrum. The journey has been

an ongoing “aporia” which is an “insoluble contradiction or paradox in a text’s meaning.”

There is no “true” or logical resolution of the issue of the relationship of matter to Spirit,

the human –divine, the finite-infinite, and the binary nature of the Spirit/Matter universe.

This paper reflects the struggle of the author with the dilemma, the “aporia” and includes

an exploration of both the cataphatic theology of the Via Positiva and the apaphatic

theology of the Via Negativa and the possibilities of resolution in the theological and

spiritual journey.

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The western Christian orthodoxy has attempted to resolve this in the

divine/human being of Jesus Christ. However, contemporary theologian Catherine Keller

poses the problem with this “divine embodiment:”

Divinity comes, after all, encumbered by the projection of all manner of finite images derived from our bodily life: images of a lord or a warrior, a friend or a father, a humanoid love, and minimally, an inconspicuous little personal pronoun (as in “He is not a person, He is beyond gender….”)...in coming to us divinity submits-quite problematically- to bodily encumbrances while nevertheless remaining irreducible to them. 1

The traditional Christian theological orthodoxy has been a cataphatic journey to define,

describe and thereby limit or reify the nature of God; to define and understand our

relationship to God through the nature of Jesus Christ. The Via Positiva is the way of

speaking of all of the positive attributes of God so that one can merge with or become

imbued with these Godlike characteristics. However, in the 2000 years of “speaking”

God, it has been a male, heterosexual conceptualization and discourse, which has omitted

a significant portion of the Christian community, or “body of Christ.” Is it possible for

all “bodies” to become “God like” in a Christian understanding of God?

A return to the mystical apophatic tradition of the first and second century

Christians offers an understanding of God by “unspeaking God” and seeking Oneness

with the God that cannot be spoken. The eastern mystical journey attempts to resolve it

in dissolution of all into the Oneness without a Supreme Being or God. As the first line

of the Tao Te Ching states, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.” 2 The

Christian mystical tradition ultimately is an apophatic journey of “unspeaking” what has                                                                                                                1 Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller, ed., Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality, ed. Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller (New York, New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 4.

 2 S. Mitchell, ed., The Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tzu, ed. S. Mitchell, July 20, 1995, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/tests/taote-v3.html (accessed April 2, 2011).

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been spoken of God. As the Catholic mystic, Meister Eckhart expressed so clearly,

“ God is a Word but an unexpressed Word. . . . Who can speak this word? No one can

except for one who is this Word. God is a Word which speaks itself…” 3 Fillmore’s

understanding of God as Principle comes down solidly with the Apophatic theology of

the early Christian mystics.

The Unity journey begins with the essentially mystical experience of Myrtle’s

healing, a “spiritualizing” of her body in the healing process. This is not unlike the

“unspeaking” of God of the early Christians inasmuch as it is a spiritual experience with

no articulated “theology” of the nature of God. Myrtle “experienced” God and healing,

an intimate personal experience of Spirit that transformed her physical being. While

Western philosophy has an unrelenting dualistic disjunction and Christianity a pervasive,

and logically insurmountable theology of separation, Unity began with an experience of

Spirit and Body integration. That is a radical departure from the orthodoxy! In seeking

to understand what happened to his wife, Charles developed a theology unencumbered by

traditional Christian orthodoxy. In centuries of evolution of Christianity, “speaking”

intimately of God, the negative edge of cataphatic theology, according to Catherine

Keller, is theolatry, whereby what is said becomes “God.” As Meister Eckhart, a 14th

century mystic so succinctly stated, “I pray God to rid me of God.” 4Charles’ version was

                                                                                                               3 Meister Eckhart, Theosophy Trust-Great Teacher Series@ Theosophy Trust, 2011, theosophytrust.org/tlodocs/articlesTeach.php?d=MeisterEckhart.htm&p=80 (accessed April 2, 2011).

4    Chris  Boesel  and  Catherine  Keller,  ed.,  Apophatic  Bodies:  Negative  Theology,  Incarnation,  and  Relationality,  4.  

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to “go to headquarters” in meditation to experience God. In that action, he returned to the

practices of the first century Christians, the Via Negativa.

The early Christian Church theologians in seeking to resolve the “aporia,”

developed the concept of theosis: the process whereby through the sacrament of Baptism,

God is poured into human beings, and we do become “God like,” but not like the “triune”

God and therefore not worthy of worship. This was very important to the early Christian

church to not have humans become “God like” to the point of idolatry. As noted in an

article by Ed Marks from the journal Affirmation and Critique, on the deification of man:

The early church fathers used the term deification to describe the believer’s participation in the divine life and nature of God but not in the Godhead. We human beings need to be deified to be made like God in life and in nature, but it is a great heresy to say that we are made like God in his Godhead, but in His life, nature, element, essence and image.5

The episode of the Transfiguration reported in the Christian Scriptures by the writers of

Mark and Matthew in which Jesus, Moses and Elijah all have a “shining and

noncorporeal” appearance and are resplendent with light and the three disciples are

allowed to witness this gives authority to the possibility of theosis, or the pouring in of

“God” to humans. It is also through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that our

deification is possible at all. There is no other means whereby we participate in the

Divine nature of God. And we will eventually participate in the resurrection experience

of Jesus when we die and have a resurrected body. Until then, the orthodox Christian

waits for the coming reign of God, hoping for God to draw near and make His Presence

known to us through Scripture.

                                                                                                               

5    Ed Marks, "Deification by Participation in God's Divinity," Affirmation & Critique: A Journal of Christian Thought, October 2002, http://www.affcrit.com/archives/ ac 02 02/html (accessed March 31, 2011), 48.

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However, in the cataphatic practice of contemplating all the positive attributes of

God, we have the possibility of anthropomorphizing God, making God in our image and

likeness according to our limited human understanding of God. Throughout the

evolution of Christianity and the mystical tradition there has been this dynamic tension

between the infinite and the finite, the creator and the created, the transcendent and the

immanent God. This “aporia,” or insoluble contradiction cannot be solved in language,

in either speaking all that can be said about the nature of God in the cataphatic tradition

or unspeaking all in the apophatic tradition. In truth, both the cataphatic and apophatic

traditions are inextricably entwined and each contributes to the depth of the other. In the

essay, De docta ignorantia of Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, a 14th century reformer in the

Catholic Church, Cusa asserts:

Therefore the theology of negation is so necessary to the theology of affirmation that without it God would not be worshiped as the infinite God, but as creature; and such worship is idolatry, for it gives to an image that which belongs only to truth itself. 6

The ancients saw the “gods” as other and as impacting the physical world in response to

the offerings and rituals, which were provided and conducted in a barter or appeasement

theology. Even Jewish theology and religious practice had that understanding and

practice. When Jesus came on the human scene and spoke of “God within” and claimed

to be the “son” of God, the tension of the human divine relationship appeared in the

human evolutionary drama in a significant way. In the resurrection of the body, Jesus

presented what was understood to be his true Divine nature, in overcoming the final

limitation of the human body, death. Hence the focus of Christianity became that process

of “theosis” whereby the followers of Jesus could also attain that “divine status” of also

overcoming death by believing in Christ.

                                                                                                               

6   Catherine Keller, "The Cloud of the Impossible: Embodiement and Apophasis," in Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation and Relationality, ed. Chris and Keller, Catherine Bosel (New York, New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 31.

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The earliest Christians did not have an extensive cataphatic theology of God and

they sought God through experience and the hesychastic or contemplative way of prayer.

Hesychastic prayer is a practice of stillness, or silence to find that inner calm or place of

peace that passes all understanding. It is practice of contemplative prayer, which

removes all thoughts, beliefs and opens one to an experience of the Divine. It is a way of

prayer and meditation that empties one of all sense of self in a “therapeutic” manner

initially. It is sitting “still” in silence for hours to clear out all that is of the outer world to

make way for the experience of the Presence of God. This is the experience of the

Desert Fathers and Mothers of very early Christianity. The 4th century bishop, Gregory

of Nyssa (c.332-395) says that “every concept formed by our understanding which

attempts to attain and to hem in the divine nature serves only to make an idol of God, not

to make God known.” 7 Apophasis is not an intellectual process, but something lived day

and night and is an experience of God, not discourse about God, not a worship of God.

According to Jean-Yves Leloup in Being Still, “The hesychastic tradition affirms the

transcendence of God and our real sharing in the life of Christ.” 8 The language of

apophasis is replete with negative terms relative to God: invisible, ineffable, infinite,

uncreated, inaccessible. As St. Thomas says, “Concerning God, one cannot say what

God is, but only what God is not.” 9

God is completely Other, a different nature which is incomprehensible to us,

therefore it is futile to try to comprehend God. God is more than being, beyond being

itself, completely transcendent. As St. John Damascene states it:

                                                                                                               

7    Jean-­‐Yves  Leloup,  Being  Still:  Reflections  on  an  Ancient  Mystical  Tradition,  ed.  O.S.A.  M.S.  Laird,  trans.  O.S.A.  M.S.  Laird  (Mahwah,  New  Jersey:  Paulist  Press,  2003),  55.  

8    Ibid.,56.  

9    Ibid.,  56.  

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Concerning God, it is impossible to say what God is in Himself; it is more precise to speak of God by negations. God is not, in fact, another thing. This is not to say that God does not exist, but that God is above all that is, beyond being itself. 10

By establishing God in this way, the Apophatic Fathers take God out of the trap of

“aporia” and God becomes as Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme state, ‘a pure Nothing’,

whereby nothingness becomes the pre-condition and origin of being. The desert mystics

rightly note that to grant ontology to God is to step into the binary conundrum of

orthodox Christianity. This also sounds somewhat familiar to the Buddhist

“Nothingness” out of which All that is, is and the Oneness of the All, but without God as

a precursor. As the gospel writer of John tells us in John 1:18, no one has ever seen God.

And Paul, in 1 Timothy 6:16, adds that God lives in inaccessible Light whom no one has

seen or can see. At this point in the evolution of Christianity there is no Christian

theology, rather a theologian is one who prays. According to Leloup, “The word ‘God’

itself, Deus in Latin, means ‘luminous day.’ It is a symbol of Light which illumines all

things but remains invisible.” 11 The total Transcendence of God keeps the Apophatic

Fathers out of the “aporia” or theological paradox thus far, or does it?

Another of the Apophatic Fathers, an early Christian mystic who made significant

contributions to the mystical tradition was the unknown who took the name (Pseudo)

Dionysius the Areopagite, the first bishop of Athens. In his Mystical Theology, IV-V, he

states the following about the nature of God:

….the Universal Cause, which transcends the entire universe, is neither matter….nor has a body. It has neither figure nor form not quality nor mass. It is in no particular place and cannot be grasped by the senses….we now say that this Cause has neither soul nor intelligence. One cannot grasp it intellectually. It is not knowledge, truth, kingship, wisdom, one, unity, divinity or good. It is not spirit or sonship or paternity in any way we can understand. Nor is it anything which is accessible to our knowledge or to the knowledge of any other being or to anything that pertains to being. Nor one knows it as it is….It escapes our power to reason,

                                                                                                               

10    Ibid.,  57.  

11    Jean-­‐Yves  Leloup,  Being  Still:  Reflections  on  an  Ancient  Mystical  Tradition,  56  

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name and know. It is neither dark not light, neither true nor false. One can affirm or deny nothing of it. When we make affirmations and denials that relate to inferior things, we affirm or deny nothing of this Cause. For every affirmation remains on this side of its transcendence, which is deprived of everything and is beyond everything. 12

Within a biblical context, the Dionysius understanding of God is like the God of the

Hebrew Scriptures, a hidden God, one who refuses to reveal his name to Moses in the

burning bush. Moses is directed to walk in God’s Presence to understand “I am, who I

will be..” And Moses ascended to the mountaintop to enter the mystical darkness and let

go of all he knew to belong entirely to God.

Hence the apophatic way is not simply a negative theology, it is an experience of

God as Nothing and Everything, as knowing and not knowing. God is the Mystery that is

beyond every negation and every affirmation. As Leloup explains it:

Ultimate Reality is beyond both the negation and affirmation, that is, beyond the dual operation of the mind: neither this nor that. Apophasis is the direct apprehension of the Real as it is, without the projections of the discursive mind that distort the Real. It is to see without the eyes, to comprehend without the mind. And if it is only ‘like that knows like’, it is necessary to become God in order to know God. 13

This is the apophatic experience of the Via Negativa of the Desert mystics. The

experience of Moses, on the mountaintop does not lead him to Nothing, but through

‘Nothing’ to Union. The goal of the Apophatic Way is ecstasy, supreme happiness, the

hesychastic experience of union and the profound stillness or peace that passes all

understanding. There is a paradox in negative theology, however which does not go

unnoticed because there is still the presumption of what we call God as Rozenweig notes,

“Of God we know nothing; but this ignorance is ignorance of God.” 14 While the

                                                                                                               

12    Ibid.,  58.  

13    Jean-­‐Yves  Leloup,  Being  Still:  Reflections  on  an  Ancient  Mystical  Tradition,  59.  

14    Catherine  Keller,  "The  Cloud  of  the  Impossible:  Embodiement  and  Apophasis,"  in  Apophatic  Bodies:  Negative  Theology,  Incarnation  and  Relationality,  32.  

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cataphatic theology reifies God, the apophatic or negative theology cannot escape the

Presence in which it experiences Union. The aporia continues.

Charles Fillmore approaches this “aporia” as a Divine Paradox, an assertion that

may appear contradictory or opposed to common sense, but is nonetheless true. When

we explore what Charles posits about God, we need to remember that he is working

backward from experience to all that lies behind his experience of Spirit in the Silence

and Myrtle’s healing experience, which resulted from her spiritual practice of affirmative

prayer. In Charles Fillmore’s theology, God is Principle: “God is the name we give to

that unchangeable, inexorable principle at the source of all existence.”15 God is not

Person, but Principle and “By Principle is meant definite, exact, unchangeable. It best

describes the unchangeableness that is an inherent law of Being.” 16 Myrtle also speaks

to this in How to Let God Help You, “Though personal to each one of us, God is IT,

neither male nor female, but Principle. God is not a cold, senseless principle like that of

mathematics, but the Principle of life, love and intelligence.” 17 This Principle that is God

is what is Source for all that is and the Substance out of which all that is exists. When

Fillmore speaks of God as “Being” he is not using at a noun that is a synonym for God.

Rather it is used as Paul Hasselbeck noted, “more like a verb denoting action or energy

than as a static noun.” This sense of action or energy is better conveyed by the word

                                                                                                               

15    Charles  Fillmore,  "Lessons  in  Truth,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),94  

16    Charles  Fillmore,  "Atom  Smashing  Power  of  the  MInd,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),  90.    

17    Myrtle  Fillmore,  "How  to  Let  God  Help  You,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),  90.  

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Beingness…” 18The Fillmores thereby escape “reifying” God in the cataphatic tradition

for God is not to be worshiped so much as God is to be experienced.

While Fillmore appears to walk the apophatic path by calling God “Principle,” he

also steps into cataphatic theology with his assertions of God as Beingness, with his

understanding of the two aspects of Being, the visible and invisible. This understanding

is one of the ways Fillmore resolves the “aporia”, and his referent for this frequently is

Jesus, who emphasized the invisible aspect of Beingness. It is also worth noting that

Fillmore did not posit God , “Principle” as the creator of the physical universe. Rather, in

Mysteries of Genesis, he states that. “God is Mind, and all God’s works are created in

Mind as perfect Ideas.”19 Later in the same book he states, “God creates through the

action of God Mind and all things rest on ideas.” 20 Fillmore’s understanding of God as

Divine Mind is neither clearly cataphatic nor apaphatic; it is unlike the God-concepts of

orthodox Christianity and not in alignment with the discourse offered by Dionysius as

noted earlier.

There are several additional features of Charles’ theology that together move him

to a place apart from both the unresolved dualism of orthodox Christian theology and the

attempted transcendence of the Apophatic Way. These are his understanding of

Consciousness which is not just intellect but a characteristic of human awareness that

Fillmore defines in Revealing Word as “ Conscious mind-The mind that makes one know

of one’s mental operations and states of consciousness; that phase of mind in which one

                                                                                                               

18    Paul  Hasselbeck,  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  Missouri:  Unity  House,  2010),  92.  

19    Charles  Fillmore,  "Mysteries  of  Genesis,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),  103.  

20    Charles  Fillmore,  "Mysteries  of  Genesis,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings,  103.  

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is actively aware of one’s thoughts. The mind through which one establishes one’s

identity.” 21 And he continues, “Mind-the starting point of every act of thought and

feeling: the common meeting ground of God and humankind…”22 It is in our

consciousness, our mind, that the opposites or the creator-created paradox is resolved.

Consciousness is the only thing that is able to resolve the paradox of the Oneness and all

of Beingness with the polarity of the planes of existence. Fillmore asserted in The

Mysteries of Genesis, that:

God created two universal planes of consciousness, ‘the heavens and the earth.’ One is the realm of pure Ideas, the other of thought forms. God does not create the visible universe directly, as a person makes a concrete pavement, but God creates the Ideas that are used by the intelligent “image and likeness” to make the universe. Thus God’s creations are always spiritual. Humankind’s creations are both material and spiritual according to humankind’s understanding.23

However, it leaves the human open to the possibility of idolatry as a result of this paradox

being resolved in the human consciousness. It could be Fillmore has not yet resolved the

“aporia,” but in his understanding of Christ, it might be possible.

In orthodox Christianity, Jesus as part of the Triune Godhead as both divine and

human, offers the believer the possibility of deification through baptism. In the apophatic

tradition, the same is true: the presence of Christ in the world deepens the apophatic way.

That God incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ is what makes it possible for full

communion between the human and divine and the incomprehensibility of this is the

mystery, why God would do this is an unanswerable question, another dimension of the

“aporia.” As Maximus the Confessor noted in Ambigua 5                                                                                                                

21    Charles  Fillmore,  "Revealing  Word,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),9.  

22    Charles  Fillmore,  "Revealing  Word,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings,  9.  

23    Charles  Fillmore,  "Mysteries  of  Genesis,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings.  8.  

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The incarnation is a mystery more inconceivable than any other. In taking on human flesh, God made Himself understood only by appearing even more incomprehensible. God remains hidden even in this self-manifestation. Even while making himself known, God remains ever unknown. 24

It is ironic to note that “in-conceive-able” is the descriptor used for this mystery of

Divine incarnation! It is not surprising that explanation via “virgin” birth entered the

“theolatry” at some point! It is because of this paradoxical union of human/divine in

Jesus that humanity has any possibility for realizing the full potential for which it was

created. While orthodox Christianity offers salvation through the existence, death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ, the apophatic position is that it allows human beings the

“reality of the experience of God while continuing to affirm his transcendence.”25 God’s

immanence and transcendence is affirmed in the divine human man, Jesus Christ.

The hesychastic experience offers an “affirmation of divine transcendence, of

God’s inaccessible essence, and the nearness of God, God’s immanence and presence in

each of us, the divinization of humanity through the energies of the Word and Spirit.” 26

This sounds remarkably like Charles Fillmore’s understanding of Jesus as the Christ, the

presence of God energy within each individual human being. Fillmore’s foundational

belief about Jesus Christ is:

Jesus Christ, metaphysically, is that perfect fulfillment in humankind that is manifested as the result of the conscious union of the Christ Idea and the Jesus activity in the human consciousness. 27

Fillmore elaborates further in Keep a True Lent: “In every person the Christ, or the Word

of God, is infolded; it is an ideal that contains ideas.” 28 In The Revealing Word, he                                                                                                                

24    Jean-­‐Yves  Leloup,  Being  Still:  Reflections  on  an  Ancient  Mystical  Tradition,  p.61  

25    Ibid.  p.62  

26    Ibid.  p.64.  

27    Charles  Fillmore,  "Foundations  of  Unity,  Series  Two,  Vol.  1,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010).  P.145.  

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states: “Jesus Christ is a union of the two, the idea and the expression, or in other words,

He is the perfect human demonstrated.” 29 It is Fillmore’s understanding also in The

Revealing Word, “Christ abides in each person as…potential perfection….Each person

has the Christ Idea within, just as Jesus had. Each person must look to the indwelling

Christ in order to recognize their divine origin and birth.” 30 But Fillmore offers a caution,

a caveat which is an echo of the “aporia,” suggesting that he has not completely resolved

the spirit/matter paradox. He states in Atom Smashing Power of Mind:

To say that we are human as Jesus Christ was a human is not exactly true, because He had dropped that personal consciousness by which we separate ourselves from our true God self….He proved in His resurrection and ascension that He had no

consciousness of separation from that of Being, therefore He really was this Being to all intents and purposes. 31

Jesus is the avatar of human, and inasmuch as we are able, we also manifest the Divine

pattern that is also who we are. But Fillmore admits that in the experience of our

personal consciousness, we experience our “matter” or non-divinity, our sense of

separation, or sin. We are born whole, but unaware of our wholeness, or True divine

nature. It is through the activity of the Christ and the Divine Mind of which we are

emanations, that we begin to realize who we really are.

The Apophatic path sees this as a “pouring in” of spirit or divinization. As

LeLoup noted from the Apophatic Fathers, including:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

28    Charles  Fillmore,  "Keep  a  True  Lent,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010).  p.  144.  

29    Charles  Fillmore,  "Revealing  Word,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings,  p.112.  

30    Charles  Fillmore,  "Revealing  Word,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings,  p.144.  

31    Charles  Fillmore,  "Atom  Smashing  Power  of  the  MInd,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings,  p.145.  

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Gregory of Nyssa, in Homilies on the Beatitudes 6: ‘One can truly say that “the pure in heart see God”, and that no one has ever seen God. Indeed, he who is invisible by nature becomes visible through his works.’ And Basil of Caesarea, Letter 234: ‘We affirm that we know God in his works, but we can hardly expect to approach the divine essence itself; for God’s essence remains inaccessible, whereas God’s energies come to us.’ And from Maximus the Confessor, cited by Etyyme Zigabene, Dogmatic Panoply, 3: ‘We can partake of God only in so far as God communicates himself to us, but of God’s ineffable essence we may never partake.’ 32

The Apophatic Fathers conclude that we can participate in God and truly experience God,

but we can never completely understand or contain all of God. We desire God, we

experience God, and God fulfills this desire and forever empties it because God is forever

more or greater than we are but as we move continually into this experience of God, we

are continually exalted. God is the most High and remains so forever. We can experience

more and more of God, but never all of God. As Gregory of Nyssa expresses it in

Homilies on the Song of Songs, 8: “Thus the person who rises never stops, going from one

beginning to another beginning by means of beginnings which never end.”33 We can never

know God completely or become completely divine as Jesus was. Does Fillmore agree?

In Mysteries of Genesis, Fillmore appears to maintain some kind of separation of

God and human, with Jesus providing the same possibility as the Apophatic Fathers

posited. He stated:

God is carrying humankind along in God Mind as an ideal quantity, the image-and-likeness human of God’s creation, and God’s divine plan is dependent for its success on the manifestation by humankind of this idea. The divine plan is furthered by the constant idealism that keeps humankind moving forward to higher and higher achievements. The image-and-likeness pours into “humankind” a perpetual stream of ideas that the individual person arranges as thoughts and forms as a substance and life. While this evolutionary process is going on there seem to

                                                                                                               

32    Jean-­‐Yves  Leloup,  Being  Still:  Reflections  on  an  Ancient  Mystical  Tradition,  p.63.  

33    Jean-­‐Yves  Leloup,  Being  Still:  Reflections  on  an  Ancient  Mystical  Tradition,  p.64  

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be two people, one ideal and spiritual and the other intellectual and material, which are united at that consummation, the ideal human, Christ. 34

With this assertion, Fillmore again makes the point of contact between the Divine and

human the idea, or mind. Human beings are not just seeking to know or experience more

and more of God as the Apophatic Fathers suggested. Rather human beings receive these

Divine Ideas as thoughts and then manifest them to form substance and life. The

exemplar of this was Jesus, for he united the material and spiritual. However, Fillmore

clearly states that there is a separation, or “two people” one ideal and one spiritual, and

thus the “aporia” is not resolved, but perhaps somewhat “unpacked” in that man as a

material being is identified as having a spiritual purpose in the “evolutionary process”

that Fillmore references.

We noted earlier that on the cataphatic path of “divinization” the early Christians

were aware of the possibility of idolatry and avoided it via salvation through believing in

the death and resurrection of Jesus. What are the possibilities of idolatry on the apophatic

path and how did the early Apophatic avoid them? How is it one can “know” God more

and more and not have that morph into some form of idolatry? Is it possible for Truth

Students to stray into this “idolatry” when they ask another truth student, “what was in

your consciousness that created this?”

There are several possible answers from the anonymous 14th century author of

The Cloud of Unknowing, a practical guide written by a contemplative of that time to aid

the seeker in the Apophatic Way. This treatise is dense with insights, guidance and

understanding of what is demanded in the journey of experiencing God in the way of

apophasis and many scholars have explored and elucidated its contents. The intention in

the present context is to highlight the some essential ideas in order to consider what the                                                                                                                

34    Charles  Fillmore,  "Mysteries  of  Genesis,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings,  p.106.  

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idolatry pitfalls might include on the apophatic path, and how to transform them. There

are four key words in this text, which offer an overall framework for understanding and

they are God, sin, humility and love. The contemplative is seeking to “know” God

through experience, not through thinking. Therefore, one must reject all thought, be it

good or bad, positive or negative. “Sin” in this understanding is the “knowing and

feeling of our being”35 because there is an awareness of self that brings joy and gratitude

and an awareness of self that bring suffering. The “self” that is separate from God is the

self that suffers. This separation from God, or “sinful” self finds it is necessary to

undergo a purification process to rid one of “self-ful-ness,” which ultimately is not

completely possible.

The steps necessary for fully experiencing the Presence of God include both the

“cloud of forgetting” and the “cloud of unknowing.” The “cloud of forgetting” is the

deepest possible letting go of self, or personality and attachments to outer concerns of

any kind. It is a process of deep humility, which requires a complete giving of self to

God and it is a special calling. This humility is essential to experiencing God in the

Apophatic Way and it keeps us from the idolatry of believing that we are the ones doing

the knowing. As it is stated in Chapter 2 of The Cloud of Unknowing:

For in the beginning, it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind, or as it were, a cloud of unknowing. You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being.36

                                                                                                               

35    William  Johnston,  ed.,  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing  and  The  Book  of  Privy  Counseling,  First  Image  Books,  ed.  William  Johnston  (New  York,  New  York:  Doubleday,  1973),  11.  

36    William  Johnston,  ed.,  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing  and  The  Book  of  Privy  Counseling,  48.  

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This theme of naked intent is threaded throughout this mystical guidebook. That theme

continuously reminds the pilgrim that to open to the possibility of the experience of God,

one has to release all “self” that is not of God, which is frequently a painful process.

Many references are made in The Cloud of Unknowing to the story of Mary and

Martha with Jesus as related by the author in the gospel of Luke in 10: 38-42 in which

Martha is concerned with all things in the outer and Mary sits at the feet of Jesus to learn

and love. Jesus does not rebuke Martha, but observes that Mary has chosen to give her

attention and energy to her spiritual life, which can never be taken from her. This is the

way of contemplation, the way of stillness, of yielding of self completely to God. The

author of Luke tells us that Jesus told both women that Mary had chosen the better way,

the way of stillness, love and presence. The final word of the framework that is present

in this story of Mary and Martha is love, for that is the way that we can experience God.

The Cloud of Unknowing states it this way:

Try to understand this point. Rational creatures such as men and angels possess two principal faculties, a knowing power and a loving power. No one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with his knowledge, but each one, in a different way can grasp him fully through love. Truly this is the unending miracle of love: that one loving person, through his love can embrace God, whose being fills and transcends the entire creation. 37

It is in the stillness, with a complete surrendering of self in humility that we experience

God who is unknowable and the love that is God that is the true apophasis. It is in our

ability to love that we are present in God, without separation. It is God-Love that solves

the aporia without idolatry in the apophatic theological tradition.

                                                                                                               

37    William  Johnston,  ed.,  The  Cloud  of  Unknowing  and  The  Book  of  Privy  Counseling,  50.  

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The journey of the Unity Truth student is one of “contemplation” as well as

“activation” for the basic Unity teaching directs the individual to take the gifts of the

“silence” or contemplation into daily life. While the practice of the Silence and prayer

are the essential components of Unity’s spiritual teachings, the Truth student can be best

described as a “householder mystic;” one who is in the world, but not of the world. Unity

began as the Society of Silent Help whereby individuals gathered to sit in the Silence

together. The Silence is described by May Rowland, long time director of Silent Unity in

the following way, “The silence is not something mysterious. It is that inner place of

stillness, where you feel and know your oneness with God.” 38 This is a distinct contrast

to the Apophatic understanding of contemplative prayer, in that it is entrance into the

mystery of oneness, and a very deep “knowing” or experience of this oneness. In Teach

us to Pray, Charles and Cora Fillmore describe the Silence as having a purpose:

The purpose of the silence is to still the activity of the individual thought so that the still small voice of God may be heard. For in the silence, Spirit speaks Truth to us and just that Truth of which we stand in need. 39

The descriptions of the silence given by the Fillmores and other Unity teachers

consistently indicate that the seeker enters the Silence with an intention, not necessarily

with the complete surrender of self that the Apophatic Fathers taught. However, in

Myrtle Fillmore’s Healing Letters, she clearly indicates that love is present in the Silence

when she wrote:

Be still and know that at this moment (your heart) is the altar of God, of love; for love so sure and unfailing, love so irresistible and magnetic that it draws your

                                                                                                               

38    May  Rowland,  "The  Magic  of  the  Word,"  in  Heart  Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),  60.  

39    Charles  Fillmore  and  Cora  Fillmore,  "Teach  Us  to  Pray,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),  49.  

  20  

supply to you from the great storehouse of the universe. Trust God, use God’s wisdom, prove and express God’s love. 40

Contemporary Unity theologian, Paul Hasselbeck clarifies the understanding of the early

Unity thinkers when he describes the Silence as “the still point” or “the void.”

Hasselbeck’s understanding is more akin to the early Apophatic Fathers, and suggests the

true mystical union of the human and divine, whereby the human sense of self dissolves

into Oneness or God. He states,

It is a state of no time, no thought, no sensation and no awareness. The Silence, then is the matrix out of which come guidance, inspiration and realization from our Higher Self. Guidance (“the Voice,”) inspiration, and realization are the effects of having been in the Silence. These experiences occur “just this side” of the Silence. 41

It is important to note the significant difference between what Hasselbeck states about the

experience of the Silence and what the original Unity writers and thinkers stated about

the Silence. Hasselbeck’s description is far more akin to the “empty of self”, completely

humbled and open to God experience of the Apophatic Fathers. Any “gifts” of the

Silence happen after one is no longer in that place of “no awareness” of self, or complete

yielding to Spirit. The Unity fathers and mothers, placing the divinity of Christ both

within God and within the human being, enter the Silence with the intention of

establishing/strengthening/realizing Truth/God and then directing or using that divine

realization with a purpose of establishing harmony, prosperity or health in the outer. This

leaves the Truth student to wonder, “what went wrong” if the intentions are not

manifested, or at risk of “spiritual pride” if the intentions are manifested. If entered

with true humility and love, then this Unity Way of Silence, in the awareness of Unity’s

                                                                                                               

40    Myrtle  Fillmore,  "Myrtle  Fillmore's  Healing  Letters,"  in  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  MO:  Unity  House,  2010),  55.  

41    Paul  Hasselbeck,  Heart-­‐Centered  Metaphysics:  A  Deeper  Look  at  Unity  Teachings  (Unity  Village,  Missouri:  Unity  House,  2010),  61.  

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prayer, “It is not I, but the Christ within, that does this work.” In this awareness, Unity’s

theology could be a resolution of the “aporia” a possibility to “know” God in Spirit and

in Love. Without humility and love, the Unity Truth student can evidence spiritual

arrogance, expressing “divine resignation” rather than a true understanding of Divine

Order and be open to accusations of idolatry in attempting to manipulate God by way of

magical thinking and misapplication of Divine Ideas.

In summary, we began with the “aporia” or insoluble contradiction of

transcendence and immanence of God. We speak of God in the cataphatic tradition and

“unspeak” of God in the apaphatic tradition. In attempting to “know” God, there is the

epistemological knowing and the experiential knowing, each offering a possible

resolution of the “aporia” of knowing the unknowable that is God. These spiritual paths

seek to know God without falling into the idolatry of mistaking what is not God for God.

The cataphatic theology places the resolution in the divine/human embodiment of Jesus

Christ and speaks of the in pouring of Spirit in humans through baptism. The apaphatic

theology emphasizes the transcendence of God, the unspeakableness of God and thereby

attempts to escape rather than resolve the “aporia.” The Apophatic experience of

hesychastic prayer offers the pilgrim the possibility of the experience of God through

complete purification (surrender of self), yielding to God in humility and in love with no

intention other than the “knowing.” Unity offers a path of “experiencing” God or

spiritual Truth in The Silence with the intention of manifesting the realization of Truth in

the material. It is our human/divine nature, our Christ nature that makes possible this

out-picturing of our true nature. Does Fillmore truly resolve the “aporia?” Is Unity the

Via Positiva or the Via Negativa?

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Boesel, Chris and Catherine Keller, Eds. Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation and Relationality. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

Eckhart, Meister. Theosophy Trust-Great Teacher Series @Theosophy Trust, 2001, accessed April, 2011. http://theosophytrust.org/tlodocs/articlesTeacher.php?d=MeisterEckhart.htm&p=80

Fillmore, Charles and Cora Fillmore. “Teach Us to Pray.” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity Teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village:Unity House, 2010.

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Fillmore, Charles. “Foundations of Unity, Series 2” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity Teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Fillmore, Charles. “Keep a True Lent.” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity Teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Fillmore, Charles. “Lessons in Truth.” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Fillmore, Charles. “Mysteries of Genesis.” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Fillmore, Charles. “Revealing Word.” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Fillmore, Myrtle. “How to Let God Help You.” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Fillmore, Myrtle. “Myrtle Fillmore’s Healing Letters.” In Heart-Centered Metaphysics: A Deeper Look at Unity teachings. Paul Hasselbeck. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Hasselbeck, Paul. Heart-Centered Metaphysics. Unity Village: Unity House, 2010.

Johnston, William, ed. The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counseling.New York: Doubleday, First Image Books Edition, 1973.

Keller, Catherine. “The Cloud of the Impossible: Embodiment and Apophasis.” In Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality. ed. Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller, 25-44. New York: Fordham University Press: 2010.

Leloup, Jean-Yves. Being Still: Reflections on an Ancient Mystical Tradition.M.S. Laird, O.S.A., trans. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2003.

Lao-tzu. Tao Te Ching. S. Mitchell, trans. [on-line-book] (last updates 20 July 1995, accessed April 3, 2011): available from http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/tests/taote-v.3html

Marks, Ed. “Deification By Participation in God’s Divinity.” [journal –on-line] (Affirmation and Critique: A Journal of Christian Thought, Vol. VII, No.2, October, 2002, accessed April 3, 2011): available from http://www.affcrit.com/arch /ac_02_02.html

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