The Anarchē of Spirit^259for some will appear more like desolation and mystification than
a resolution to the problems of human suffering. From the dia-
lectical struggle between theism and anti-theism, I suggest, a new
expression of theism may emerge (perhaps even a new mystical
theology). But this new form does not dispel the antinomy. So too
must a new anti-theism arise against every new expression of the-
ism. In maintaining this perpetual struggle, consolation is always
countered by the spectre of desolation. The idea that ‘God is be-
yond good and evil’ does not resolve the anti-theistic agony of the
statement that ‘God is evil’. All it does is challenge it to re-assert
itself in a manner which struggles authentically with its antagonist.
Theology should be willing to express the goodness of God in a
mode which is capable of struggling with the concomitant sense of
the darkness of God.^89
The ongoing deferral of sublimation which arises from this
method may, furthermore, actually be more apposite to the strat-
egy of apophasis itself. Even the statement that ‘God is dazzling
darkness’ is vulnerable to the charge of mystification, just as a
mystical theodicy of a God of Providence ‘beyond good and evil’
remains vulnerable to the antagonistic reality of unjust suffering.
In other words, even the most apophatic of negative theologies
must struggle against the practical assertion, as exemplified by
Proudhon, that the idea of God can become far removed from
cries of human justice. Mystical theology must contend with the
temptation to occupy itself solely with a “God” who is “beyond”
to the point of mystifying detachment from the cries for justice
of those in suffering. The “practical” denials of Proudhon’s anti-
theistic struggle against God in the name of human suffering and
social justice cannot be fully negated, cannot be reduced to silence
by any totalising apophasis. Theism and anti-theism struggle in
the space between the affirmation and negation of God, between
the Kierkegaardian polarities of “faith” and “offence”. Such is
the indeterminate space in which the agonistic and apophatic di-
alectics of anti/theology might operate: a space marked by the
unsettling and unresolved cry “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?”.^90
In seeking to clear such a space for anti/theology I return fi-
nally to Kierkegaard who I suggest provides theistic grounds