A Negative Way: Dionysian Apophaticism and the Experiential
Religions August 20, 2024 Maria Exall
Modern spirituality often assumes that spiritual experiences are experiential events, but this 'experiential bias' misreads pre-modern texts like those of Pseudo-Dionysius, which describe faith through negative dialectics rather than positive experiences. Scholars Denys Turner and Bernard McGinn argue that classical apophatic tradition denies 'mystical experience' as experience per se. Yet theologians Sara Coakley, Karl Rahner, and Louis Dupré have integrated experiential interpretations into their theologies—Coakley through spiritual sense in bodily theology, Rahner through spiritual touch in grace, and Dupré through religious significance in atheistic emptiness. This paper contrasts these integrations with the classical critique of mystical experience.