Divine Opacity: Mystical Theology, Black Theology, and the Problem of Light-Dark Aesthetics

There is a polarized aesthetics of light and darkness pervading the Christian spiritual and theological imagination and modern culture alike.¹ According to the crudest form of this aesthetics, light symbolizes wisdom, goodness, beauty, purity, power, and all that is praiseworthy, and darkness symbolizes every corresponding antithesis: ignorance, evil, ugliness, impurity, weakness, and wretchedness of all kinds. Translated into the terms of a formal dialectic, this aesthetics construes light as positive and darkness as negative. In ontological terms, it suggests that light is being and darkness nothing. Although this simplistic metaphorization of light and darkness has not only functioned racially, it has in fact done so, lightly colored and darkly colored bodies have been organized into hierarchized racial collectives by this divisive symbolism.² In a sense, white supremacy is nothing other than this symbolism writ large—that is, this very aesthetics insofar as it forms conscious and subconscious categories of bodily perception, shapes cultural and political institutions predicated on such categories, and supports practices of violent exploitation and enforcement (slavery, segregation, lynching, profiling, and various macro- and micro-aggressions).³

Although secular streams of thought and politics emerging from the European “Enlightenment” must bear some of the responsibility for the perpetuation and globalization of this dichotomous aesthetics, especially in its racialized forms,⁴ the traditional Christian acclamation of God through metaphors of light and especially the regular association of darkness with the demonic must bear some of the responsibility as well.⁵ To develop Christian spirituality and theology in a way that resists the aesthetic underpinnings of white supremacy, it does not seem feasible or desirable to avoid light imagery altogether. This imagery is woven tightly into biblical and traditional theology and, as we shall see, remains beloved in certain black spiritual traditions. We must critique light-centric expressions of Christian faith to the extent that they risk turning lightness (particularly the lightness of skin) into an idol, but it seems we cannot excise the luminous aspects of Christian aesthetics entirely. By contrast, the employment of darkness as a supposedly obvious symbol of the demonic is an avoidable option worthy of censure. There is no legitimate theological or spiritual reason to vilify darkly colored embodiment.

Lo Desconocido

© Ruben Redondo

Sarah Coakley raises another possibility: recover the Christian appreciation for the darkness of God from the tradition of Dionysian mystical theology.⁶ Several representatives of this tradition (including Dionysius the Areopagite, Angela of Foligno, Bonaventure, and John of the Cross) treat darkness as a lofty divine name, indeed as a name that may in certain respects deserve to be ranked higher than the name of light. Coakley’s recommendation that we turn to this tradition to retrain our racial consciousness is an intriguing suggestion. The retrieval of mystical theology may be a welcome component of anti-racist resistance to the extent that mystical theology subverts any crudely hierarchized light-dark aesthetics and offers a spiritually attractive alternative with precedents in Christian scripture and tradition.

But there is also another, more direct option: turn to a black liberation theology and spirituality as classically elaborated, for example, by James Cone. In agreement with Cone, I would suggest that the willingness to affirm that God is black because God is actively present in the struggles of black communities oppressed by centuries of white supremacy is perhaps the most significant step that Christian believers need to take toward a more inclusive theological aesthetics today.⁷ Nonetheless, once one takes this crucial step of recognizing God’s liberative blackness, further questions and complications remain, which make it impossible to dismiss mystical theology as a valuable antiracist resource.

Instead of opting for either mystical theology or black theology, I propose a constructive synthesis of the two, not unlike that found in the works of James Noel.⁸ There are several reasons to prefer such a unified approach. On the one hand, mystical themes of unknowing, cruciform experience, and transformative closeness with God play important roles in the black spiritual and cultural traditions that inform black theology...