Where’s the Mystery?

Anatolios argues that one of the differences between theologians of the unity of will like Arius (Father begets Son by will) and theologians of the unity of being like Alexander and Athanasius (Son is of the Father’s very being) is the location of mystery. Arius located the apophatic limit in the Unbegotten “Father” himself. Alexander, by contrast, said that Son was equally incomprehensible with the Father.

But more intriguingly, the mystery is not located in the Father and Son separately, but in the ineffable reality of their relationship, of the eternal begetting and being begotten. This relation is simultaneously, however, the point of access for knowledge of the Father, since then Father is known in the Son: “Knowledge of God is thus in the first place a transaction between the Father and the Son, and the mystery of God is identified with that relationship itself rather than exclusively with the Unbegotten. Positive access to the knowledge of God is coincidental with access to the mutuality of that relation, which in turn is predicated upon a correct confession of the true nature of that mutuality.”

One of the implications of this relocation is that the mystery of God is less to do with “metaphysics” and instead is located in the relationships of the Persons. What is incomprehensible about God is not merely or mainly His transcendence but His love: The mystery of God is the mystery of the world, which is the mystery of love. Mix in Heidegger’s “Why is there something?” question, add a dollop of Augustinian pneumatology, and we’re on to something.