philosophical debates precisely as gender-laden holds better prospects of success, I
believe, than that of diverting the discourse to completely other fields (as in Anderson).
The second area for possible future rapprochement between analytic philosophy of
religion and feminist theory seems to me to reside precisely where Jantzen, for one, finds
least hope. This is in the area of apophatic discourse, on which analytic philosophy of
religion has made notably little contribution to date, for reasons that might also have
connection to its purported masculinism and literalism. It might seem odd that a topic that
Jantzen derides as supremely masculinist and elitist (negative theology in the Dionysian
tradition) could become a fruitful source of feminist critique of the discourse of analytic
philosophy of religion, which, until recently, has been so notably resistant to feminist
concerns. But Jantzen's over-hasty dismissal of the negative theology tradition fails to
acknowledge the purgative potential of this tradition in confronting sexist idolatry in the
naming and descibing of God. It is unfortunate in this regard that a whole generation of
“liberal” feminist theologians have adopted what William Alston (1989) has called the
“pan-metaphorist” strategy where God-talk is concerned; that is, they have declared in a
neo-Kantian vein that all talk of God is “metaphorical” and (necessarily, for them)
“nonliteral,” and so subject to revision simply according to the imaginative
“construction” of the feminist theologian. Deep issues are of course at stake here
concerning the apparent rejection of dominical and biblical authority, the skepticism
about the possibility of divine revelation, and a certain cavalier attitude toward the
complex nature of religious language. But it should simply be noted that the more it is
declared that the Kantian heritage demands an epistemological distancing from reality
(especially from divine reality)—a trait we have repeatedly commented on in Anderson's
work—the more an anthropomorphic or explicitly Feuerbachian projectionism becomes
the norm for religious utterance, whether in masculinist or feminist forms. What the
Dionysian tradition of apophaticism holds out as an alternative, then, is a form of
religious speech that rigorously denies not only its positive but its negative statements
about God, and simultaneously points to a transformative contemplative encounter with
God that transcends even this playful language-game of negations. As such, it claims to
participate in a consistent exposure of human projectionism and submits itself to an
ongoing purgation of human idolatry (whether in masculinist or feminist form). The
Thomistic variant of negative theology in contrast, makes an adjustment to Dionysius's
own position by allowing, on the basis of revelatory authority, an important distinction
between analogical and metaphorical speech for God, the former being “literal” but, at
the Godward end, humanly unknowable in its full semantic richesse, the latter being
“creaturely,” and thus technically inappropriate to God. The parody of Thomas's theory
of analogy presented by Jantzen (and briefly discussed above) thus fails altogether to
consider the feminist potential that this theory, too, holds, especially in its
end p.519
apophatic dimensions. That analytic philosophy of religion has attended rather sparingly
to the Dionysian tradition of negative theology—whether directly, or as mediated through
Thomas's work—seems, among other things, to be an indication of its lack of
appreciation of the pervasive problem of idolatry, and hence a sign of its concomitant
lack of concern about sexism. That feminist critiques of such a resistance could develop a