Linguistic Interval as Spiritual Interplay: Przywara's “Dynamic Polarity” and Christian Language

Abstract This article aims to reflect on how Erich Przywara's concept of the analogical “dynamic polarity” can contribute to contemporary discussions regarding the role of language in postmodern theology. By opposing Przywara to the philosophies of the likes of John Caputo and Jacques Derrida—in particular their concept of the khôra , and the former's “weak theology” —it intends to elucidate the possibility of an approach to language which remains in keeping with the Christian theological (and thus metaphysical) tradition whilst also engaging with standard postmodern criticisms typically leveled at it. Beginning with a prefatory examination of the themes of presence, absence, and distance as they appear in Christian theology and postmodernism, it then examines how the dynamic polarity may play a conciliatory role in harmonizing the two. It then continues to employ the dynamic polarity as a basis for various forms of language, arguing that it reveals an inherently relational, dialogic, and ultimately prayerful structure of receptivity, one which constitutes and emboldens difference, enlivening it as the theatre for a fruitful analogical interplay between self and other, cataphatic and apophatic, and more.