Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation

Negative theology or apophasis - the idea that God is best identified in terms of 'absence', 'otherness', 'difference' - has been influential in modern Christian thought, resonating as it does with secular notions of negation developed in recent continental philosophy. Apophasis also has a strong intellectual history dating back to the early Church Fathers. Silence and the Word both studies the history of apophasis and examines its relationship with contemporary secular philosophy. Leading Christian thinkers explore in their own way the extent to which the concept of the apophatic illumines some of the deepest doctrinal structures of Christian faith, and of Christian self-understanding both in terms of its historical and contemporary situatedness, showing how a dimension of negativity has characterised not only traditional mysticism but most forms of Christian thought over the years.

Oliver Davies is Reader in Philosophical Theology in the University of Wales Paul S. Fiddes is Principal of Regent's Park College, Oxford and University Research Lecturer in the University of Oxford David F. Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge Bernard McGinn is Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago Herbert McCabe joined the Order of Preachers after studying philosophy at the University of Manchester. From 1964-7 and 1970-9 he was editor of New Blackfriars. He lectured in philosophy and theology at Blackfriars, Oxford, and in the Department of Theology and Herbert McCabe died on 28 June 2001. Mark A. McIntosh, Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago He also serves as Chaplain to the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, USA Janet Martin Soskice is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Jesus College Denys Turner is the Norris-Hulse Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Cambridge and former H. G. Wood Professor at the University of Birmingham Graham Ward is Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics at the University of Manchester Rowan Williams is Bishop of Monmouth and the Archbishop of Wales. He has been Dean of Clare College, Cambridge and Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford