Mikaela Martinez Dettinger: Perelandrian Fruit

    The moment in Perelandra when Ransom describes the experience of trying the fruit was connected in class to Apophatic Theology. This brought to mind the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God which I was covering in a different class at the time. It made me wonder if just as Ransom could not describe the fruit and he could only describe what it was not like, Apophatic Theology works the same way with describing what God is not then this contradicts the Ontological Argument for God. The Ontological argument, as I have come to understand it, is that God's existence in inherent in being so if man can conceive of that than which nothing greater can be conceived than that, God, must exist. If it is taken that this is true than what is being conceived can be likened to the concept of form in Plato's Theory of Forms. Forms are lowered to being expressed through concepts because it is impossible to truly describe form. But, if you cannot even describe the concept, which I think is what Apophatic theology is saying, than is that form really conceivable? 

    This question comes from the idea expressed by Heidegger's Language as the House of Being. If we cannot put into words God's form the he takes in our minds than how can there be testimony to His existence. If Ransom cannot describe the fruit using language, but can only describe what it is not, then does the fruit really and fully exist? I'm sure there is a theory which answers this or maybe it truly comes down to personal belief. Truthfully, I think I may have just tangled myself so deeply in a web of different philosophies that I  have confused myself.


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