Carol Harrison: Ordo Amoris and the Unknowability of God

Recent work on Augustine has highlighted the many ways in which his theology is informed by a conviction of God’s unknowability and ineffability. In this paper I would like to examine how Augustine uses the idea of an order of love to articulate something about the unknowable and ineffable Godhead. It will focus on those passages in which he reflects on naming God; his observation that names such as Deus or Idipsum are not so much names as gestures towards what cannot be named, and it will ask how these verbal gestures function. Using the work of scholars such as Roland Barthes ( A Lover’s Discourse) and Jean Luc Nancy (A l’Écoute), alongside what Augustine has to say about the double commandment of love as the meaning and end of Scripture, it will argue that words function in an order of love to evoke what they cannot express. It will pay particular attention to the role of voices which might be said to exceed words (and if there is space, compare Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa on the voice of the beloved in the Song of Songs).