Ian Kesarcodi-Watson, who together with his wife, translated
Vladimir Lossky's _Orthodox Theology: An Introduction_:

"Though I now instruct mainly in Indian spirituality, the shift in interest this may suggest away from the Orthodox tradition of Christendom may be more apparent than real. Indeed, my recent book, devoted mainly to Hinduism and titled *Eastern Spirituality* (Agam Prakashan, New Delhi, 1976), strives to illustrate its central endeavour by reference to words from Lossky's *Mystical Theology* in which he declares *his* "theological" task to be but "theos-logos" -- conveying. I admit an immense debt to Lossky, and feel rather that I have moved to a different tradition of *expression* in moving the while to the Hindu and Buddhist worlds, than in any sense away from the heart of this man's teaching, or rather, "conveying". I recall Nicolas Zernov, whose illustrated lectures on "The Icon" in the Ashmolean Theatre were a highlight of my years in Oxford, in conversation confessing with a wry smile that Orthodoxy numbers the Buddha among its saints. He was referring to the famous story of Sts. Baarlam and Joasaph, a Christianized version of a Buddhist legend, in all probability the work of St. John of Damascus. Yet the broader point he was trying to make holds true.

"Indeed, an interesting study could be done listing parallels between Lossky's expression of the Orthodox tradition and the Orthodoxy of Hinduism at least. I would not care to underrate the differences presented by the status of Christ in the former, but I nonetheless am ever more convinced that, in their truest *mysticisms*, much that is central to these two great traditions is largely shared...I mention these parallels or possible parallels only to show why I believe there may be more to the work of this great theologian than what he presents as an apologist for just one tradition. I think there is more. I think his message is universal in a way rarely found among those normally styled "theologians" in academies purporting to study this science. For Lossky's "conveying" is in the tradition of the Cappadocian Fathers, of Dionysius the Areopagite, and of Meister Eckhart (by whom he was much influenced), a tradition which speaks to the human condition where it is now, with its *present* context and spiritual affiliations, to the human condition *here and now, shared universally*, and not merely to some condition enjoyed only by a few of a certain tradition as paragon for the rest. I am not denying Lossky's affirmation of Christianity as in some way "superior"...I am merely suggesting that his *understanding* of Christianity, like that shared by the others I have mentioned, is one that has a cosmic embrace, and already *in some way* includes all people, merely earnest in Spirit, and not one merely parochial in context. In this, he stands as a salutary corrective to many of the destructive abuses Christianity of the more parochial kind has perpetuated in its own name..." (Ian Kesarcodi-Watson, pp. 8-10 of Foreword to Vladimir Lossky, _Orthodox Theology: An Introduction_, Crestwood, N.Y., St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1978 [trans. Ian and Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson].

Vladimir Lossky on Faith as "Apophasis" in Orthodoxy:

"...God as plenitude of being---still remains, however, on the conceptual sphere. We conceive being by starting from what we know as being from beings. It is not really a "separated" name. One must evoke God beyond all that can be known as being. As Hegel has shown, the concept of being is opposed to that of non- being; being and nothingness, while constituting two concept- limits, remain linked. God, the living God, is beyond this supreme conceptual couple. Hegel's critique stresses that being is the most vacuous of notions, the most abstract and impoverished of concepts, virtually identical to its opposite, non-being... The living God must be evoked beyond the opposition of being and non-being, beyond all concepts, including, of course, that of becoming. He cannot be opposed to anything. He knows no nothingness that would oppose Him. Thought must go beyond itself to approach Him---without naming Him. One must grasp Him by not grasping, know Him by not knowing. Such is the only natural theology for a Christian. "*Attingitur inattingibile inattingibiliter*," said Nicholas of Cusa, in a compact formula that may be translated thus: "That which is beyond all attainment cannot be attained except in a manner which does not attain it." One cannot fix God in a concept, even that of essence. Such is "learned ignorance."

"God therefore remains transcendent, radically transcendent by His nature, in the very immanence of His manifestation. That is why the apophatic (or negative) way has been adopted by Christians, finding its perfect expression in the Pseudo- Areopagite who wrote his *Mystical Theology* towards the end of the fifth century. The apophatic way, in the Dionysian sense, demands in speaking of God the negation of the highest names; even the One of Plotinus does not suit this God Who transcends every human notion. One would find the same attitude in St. Augustine: "God is He Whom we know best by not knowing Him." It is He about Whom we have no knowledge unless it be to know how we do not know Him (*De ordine*). And in his *De doctrina christiana*, Augustine stresses that one cannot even say that God is ineffable, since by saying this we say something and raise a "battle of words" which must be overcome by silence...

"Thus is demonstrated the breakdown of human thought before the radical transcendence of God...One must understand that the apophasis of Eastern theology is not borrowed from the philosophers. The God of the Christians is more transcendent than that of the philosophers. In Plotinus, the One, the Absolute, that cannot be named, is in a certain manner in continuity with the Intellect, and finally with the world. The universe appears as a manifestation, as a degradation of the Absolute---moreover, without any catastrophic process. One must remember Plotinus' aversion for the gnostics. Cosmogony coincides with theogony. For Christians, on the contrary, the break is radical between the living God---the Trinity---and the created world, as much in its intelligible modality as in its sensible modality. The Fathers have used the philosophical technique of negation in order to posit the transcendence, absolute this time, of the living God. The apophaticism of Orthodox theology is no technique of interiorization whereby one absorbs oneself into an absolute more or less "co-natural" with the Intellect. It is a prostration before the Living God, radically ungraspable, unobjectifiable and unknowable, because He is personal, because he is the free plenitude of personal existence. *Apophasis is the inscription in human language, in theological language, of the mystery of faith*. For this unknowable God reveals Himself, and, because He transcends, in His free personal existence, His very essence, He can really make Himself a participator. "No one has ever seen God: His only Son, He Who is in the bosom of the Father has manifested Him to us" (John 1:18). This mystery of faith as personal encounter and ontological participation is the unique foundation of theological language, a language that apophasis opens to the silence of deification." (Vladimir Lossky, _Orthodox Theology: An Introduction_, Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1978 [trans. Ian and Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson], pp. 22-25).

May, 1996

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