*
It has always been mysterious to me what Charles Williams was aiming-at with his writings on the Positive Way – also called the Via positiva or the path of “affirmation of images”.
But I think I understand now.
*
The Negative Way is the best known method of attaining sanctity, deification or theosis. It is the path of asceticism, as practiced by many monastics through Christian history; and still a focus of Eastern Orthodoxy exemplified by Mount Athos.
*
The Negative Way is merely a means to an end, not the end in itself – yet the ‘technique’ has proved itself many times – it entails (for example) long periods of prayer and chanting (often extending into night vigils), physical deprivation (heat or cold) and exercises (standing, prostrations), fasting, celibacy… In general, the purpose is to enable the aspirant to control worldly desires thus to enable a direct awareness of reality – that is God.
*
The Negative Way is the most direct and proven route to sanctity, yet it is apparently a path to which few are called – it is generally believed among Christians that there are other paths – less steep, and perhaps leading less high, but valid nonetheless, and perhaps more generally applicable.
*
What, then, is the Positive Way? Clearly it is not the opposite of the Negative Way; since that route would (presumably) lead to damnation.
As a married man with a child, a poet, writer, inspirational lecturer, conversationalist and spiritual counsellor; Charles Williams was deeply engaged with the world, and did not feel called to the ascetic path. He tried, therefore, to walk – and to clarify for others in similar state - the lesser known Positive Way.
In this he was, I think, only partly successful – at least, I have been unable until now to understand what he meant – and the explanations of Charles Williams scholars have not been clear to me.
*
The clue is in the alternative term Affirmation of Images – that behind the images is reality. The Positive Way is that the images of things – God’s works, and Man’s works that come from God – are visions of reality: visions, that is, of The Good: of God.
*
By images is meant words – poetry, prose, the worlds of scripture and ritual; also music; also the visual arts of painting, architecture, beautiful things… insofar as these beautiful things are divinely inspired – insofar as these things are consecrated to God.
The difficulty of the Positive Way is to engage with these images such that the individual may participate in the reality of Good.
*
In sum, the Positive Way is a kind of Platonism – in which the initiate sees past the change and corruption, distortions and deceptions of the world and perceives the eternal ideas underlying this. It is an instance of the principle that every small and transient thing is symbolic of greater and timeless things, the world is a microcosm, ‘as above so below’.
Hence (perhaps) Charles Williams attention to poetry and literature generally, his attention to the minutiae of everyday life, love and work – and his swift and sure relation of these worldly matters back to eternal principles.
It was this he hoped to teach by daily interactions, by formal lectures, from his books and writings, and through the Companions of the Co-inherence.
*
By means of various techniques such as the purposive use of contracts of exchange – the deliberate and explicit sharing of joys, fears, burdens - (techniques which could be considered analogous to the ascetic methods of the Negative Way) C.W. aimed to (or hoped to; albeit was sometimes corrupted and distracted away from) train his followers into habits of consecration: habits of referencing the mundane to the divine.
*
(And without any trace of approximation or dishonesty – he insisted upon maximum accuracy and precision in perceiving the phenomena which were to be referred – no blurring or haziness was to be permitted.)
***
No comments:
Post a Comment