Ryan Haecker

University of Cambridge, Faculty of Divinity, Graduate Student

The University of Texas at Austin, History, Undergraduate

The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information, Graduate Student

University of Nottingham, Theology and Religious Studies, Graduate Student

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My research asks contemporary questions of Christian, systematic, and historical theology.

I have recently been awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Theology and Religious Studies from Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Divinity. I have previously been awarded a Peterhouse Graduate Research Studentship to study for a Doctor of Philosophy in Theology and Religious Studies under the supervision of Rowan Williams.

My doctoral dissertation titled 'Restoring Reason: Origen's Theology of Logic' should show, through a deep and creative reading of Origen of Alexandria, how logic is ontological, ontology is theological, and theology is trinitarian. I hope to help inaugurate a new field of research in the theology of logic for the development of a future trinitarian ontology.

eThesis Abstract:
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336313

I have previously studied history, philosophy, and theology at the University of Texas, the University Würzburg, and the University of Nottingham. I have published over three dozen articles and presented over one hundred papers around the world. I have written a genealogy of the analogy of being and dialectical logic from Plato and Aristotle, through Aquinas and Ockham, to Hegel and Przywara.

I have taught students at all levels from new undergraduates to older postgraduates. I have been served as a tutorial supervisor for the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. I am a member of the European Academy of Religion (EAR). I participate in the William Temple Foundation Ethical Futures Project. And I am a reviewer for Reviews of Religion and Theology (RRT).
Supervisors: Rowan Williams

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Papers by Ryan Haecker

Gothic Fireflies: The Trinitarian Grammar of Analogy in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Analogia, 2024

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite should be celebrated as the Doctor of Darkness (Doctor Tenebrarum... more Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite should be celebrated as the Doctor of Darkness (Doctor Tenebrarum). In a Gothic style that reflects the depth of his many masks, his enduring achievement has been to have conceived of a theological grammar to speak of God beyond the haunting spectre of both ancient and modern nihilism. His Christian theological grammar is distinguished by speaking in the sense of a hyperbola (ὑπερβολή) or excess of signification, which signifies beyond yet within the world: first in the positive or cataphatic grammar, a positive judgment speaks of God; second in the negative or apophatic grammar, a higher or hyper-negative judgment annuls the positive, even as it speaks of God ‘beyond being’, and ‘beyond intellect’, as the absolutely originary source of any such positive judgment; and, third in the proportionate or analogical grammar, this procession of divine Power reciprocally annuls the infinite repetition of all such negative judgments, even as, from the centre of this cycle, it constitutes the absolutely higher ground from which alone speech of God is warranted. At the centre of this cycle, Christ can be acknowledged by faith to descend into the depths of the negative so as to shine from within the essentially proportioned and hyperbolic grammar of analogy. The elements of the Latin Scholastic analogy of being can, as this commentary will show, be reconstructed from Pseudo-Dionysius’s hyperbolic grammar. In these hyperbolic arcs, the infinite repetition of hyper-negative judgments is annulled, and yet, in a reciprocal determination, equally constituted to virtually proceed from a higher ground in the essential proportions of analogy. Like fireflies that carry the torch of the Sun before the doors of night, the theological grammar of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite can be shown to be radically shaped by a Christian and Trinitarian theology, in which Christ the Logos is the originary ground and source, not only of the hyper-negative, but of the essential proportions of the analogia entis.

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Via Digitalis: From the Postdigital to the Hyperdigital

Postdigital Science and Education

The way beyond the digital can be discovered, not outside, but rather in and through the digital ... more The way beyond the digital can be discovered, not outside, but rather in and through the digital at its highest point. Since its introduction, the postdigital has neither been adequately defined nor scientifically demonstrated to be indefinable. If, on the contrary, the postdigital can be defined by a conceptual and genealogical analysis as a circuit of reflections upon the essential rupture of the digital, then the way that, in the digital, we calculate in writing can, in the postdigital, be assumed into a hyperbolic reflection in and from its more originary creative source. In this theological critique of Maggi Savin-Baden and John Reader’s volume Postdigital Theologies, I prosecute three theses: first, the postdigital has failed; second, postdigital theology is incompatible with Christian theology; and third, for mystical theology, the hyperdigital is the truth of the postdigital. The postdigital is not ‘ineffable’ but rather only appears indefinable because of a prior and contes...

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Postdigital Theologies: Technology, Belief, and Practice, MaggiSavin‐Baden, and JohnReader (eds), Springer, 2022 (ISBN 978‐3‐031‐09404‐00), xxx + 251 pp., hb £89.99

Reviews in Religion & Theology

The First Principles of Origen’s Logic, An Introduction to Origen’s Theology of Logic, Ryan Haecker

Progress in Origen and the Origenian Tradition, 2023

Origen has been acknowledged as a great theologian, but he has not yet been recognised as a logic... more Origen has been acknowledged as a great theologian, but he has not yet been recognised as a logician. He hardly ever appears today in histories of logic. Ancient logic has typically been narrated to begin with Aristotle and end with the early Stoa. Origen’s logic has come to be relegated to little more than a footnote to Stoic logic. Robert Somos has recently argued that Origen’s logic cannot be simply reduced to Stoic logic. Yet he has declined to develop its implications into a genuinely theological interpretation of Origen’s logic. Origen has, however, clearly indicated a theological interest in logic, when, in the prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, he describes how logic may be “interwoven” in and through all of the sciences, even as it is presupposed in language and rhetoric, and, most of all, as it is completed in what he calls the mystical or “epoptic” science of theology. This “epoptic” science appears to supersede logic as the science of the intelligible attributes or epinoia of the Logos, communicated by Christ, through the Trinity. Origen’s logic is, on this account, not, as it has so often been misread, simply a machinic calculation of Stoic or Peripatetic syllogisms, but, more mysteriously, a way of speaking in and with the Logos, which, beginning with the Sophia, can be communicated by Christ, in and through the divine hypostases of God as Trinity.

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Arcades of Analogy: The Theological Grammar of Walter Benjamin’s 'Arcades Project

Journal of the Oxford Graduate Theological Society, Nov 4, 2021

The city is a library of analogy. Analogy is a form of grammar in which one thing is compared to ... more The city is a library of analogy. Analogy is a form of grammar in which one thing is compared to another. The analogy of being (analogia entis) had been conceived among the Medieval Scholastics as a theological grammar of participation, in which any speech on being is spoken of in two or more senses, and from the higher ontological ground of a mediating proportion. However, from Dons Scotus to Gilles Deleuze, it has been reduced to an increasingly univocal grammar of aesthetic proportions. Once reduced, it ranges across the spaces of the earth, and the city. The first city was founded as a cybernetic engine of writing, and of calculation for computing the administration and allocation of productive surpluses. In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin rendered the Fourierist 'harmonies' of urban spaces as material traces of the symbolic forms of analogy. The production of symbolic commodities thereafter accelerates across successive virtual plateaus of civic designs and urban environments. Walter Benjamin's 'city of arcades' can recall Charles Fourier's 'theory of universal analogy', which gestures beyond the unfulfilled desires of the earthly towards an eschatological 'heavenly city'. Since analogy must be related from its extremes, the analogia entis should be spoken of, not as abstractly prior to, but concretely as it is spoken of in a theological grammar of analogy that shapes the spaces of the city of man, as of the city of God. This study of the city has previously been hinted at in Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was an eclectic German Jewish philosopher, associated with the Neo-Marxist Frankfurt School of critical theory. In 'The Arcades Project' (1927-40), he collected a 'palimpsest image' of the unfulfilled hopes of the city of Paris, which he styles as 'the capital of the nineteenth century'. 4 Traces of analogy can be discovered in a city among the lateral axes of its streets, the vertical elevation of its towers, and even among its ornaments, markets, and altars. The production of symbolic commodities thereafter accelerates in the city through successive virtual plateaus of civic designs and urban environments. In its poetics of labour, it appears productive of symbolic media for ends both human and divine. 5 The city carries the memory of many unfulfilled desires. It has previously been studied by Plato,

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Triadic Circles

Studia Patristica. Vol. CXI - Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019, 2021

Analogy and dialectics: a genealogical comparison of Hegel and Przywara

Analogy and dialectics are principles of logic, grammar, and metaphysics for intermediating the e... more Analogy and dialectics are principles of logic, grammar, and metaphysics for intermediating the elements of theology. Analogy is a grammatical relation that differentiates many distinct terms that remain related by a proportionate similitude, while dialectics is a logical relation that opposes many contradictory theses for the purpose of resolving these contradictions into a synthetic unity of opposites. Each may be abstractly divided by definition but both must be concretely united, through the shared semiotic medium of signs, in the essential relations of the Trinity. The Trinity is the consummate centre in which analogy and dialectics completely coincide. Both principles have been alternatively championed for the purpose of constructing the metaphysical infrastructure of theology: analogy has been presented as a metaphysical-causal principle of the proportionate participation of imperfect analogate in perfect analogon terms; while dialectics has alternatively been presented as an...

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Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy, SimoneKotva, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020 (ISBN 978‐1‐3501‐1365‐7), pp. xiv + 230, hb £85

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2021

The Book of Angels: Seen and Unseen, StephenMiller, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019 (ISBN 978‐1‐5275‐3434‐6), xiv+179 pp., hb £61.99

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2020

The angels though unseen must be seen to be believed. For as invisible spirits, the angels cannot... more The angels though unseen must be seen to be believed. For as invisible spirits, the angels cannot be seen, read, or written with the aid of any visible media. And yet as heavenly messengers, the angels may also be believed to communicate messages in many different media. Stephen Miller's The Book of the Angels: Seen and Unseen is a multimedia study of the literary sources of the angels in dialogue with the visual arts. It can be read as a triptych, which, in a dialogic opening from the textual to the visual, unfolds into three spheres for the study of the nature, orders, and place of the angels as unseen in spirit yet seen in the arts. In ostensible imitation of the angelic hierarchy, it is divided into nine parts, consisting in an introduction, eight numbered chapters: (1) On the Nature of the Angels; (2) On the Hierarchies and Orders of Angels; (3) Seven Heavens; (4) The Archangels; (5) Other Angels; (6) Fallen Angels; (7) Contemporary References to Angels in Popular Literature, Film, and Television; and (8) More Things in Heaven and Earth. The first three chapters on the (1) nature, (2) orders, and (3) place of the angels form the three panels on which he presents the middle chapters on the (4) archangels, (5) angels, and (6) demons that index divisions within the second sphere of the (2) orders of the angels, and the introductory and (8) concluding chapters as successive elaborations upon the third sphere of the place of the angels in dialogue with the visual arts. The text is framed by this dialogue with the visual arts. It is neither naïvely empirical nor sufficiently critical for a philosophic demonstration. Miller writes, instead, with an open invitation to a gallery of curiosities for those who, with Rowan Williams, may be curious to learn of that for which 'we have no real idea' (p. 109). He disavows any pretense of a scientific angelology as he acknowledges that 'little is categorically known' of the angels, except as it can be 'pieced together from tradition, lore, and legend, scattered documentation, witness, testimony and theological, philosophical and artistic meditation insight and imagination' (p. 1). He acknowledges, with St Paul, that there are angels not yet known to us, the inadequacy of past reflections on the angels (p. 6), and the insufficiency of angelology as a 'simplistic reflection of the manifold reality' of the angels (p. 112). And he definitively renounces any attempt to 'rationalize' the mystery of the angels (p. 115). Yet he nevertheless insists that this study of the angels need not be an entirely 'fruitless' task (p. 112). For he also curates from among the visual arts a collection with which to 'map out traditions and associated lore and legends surrounding angels' in an illustrative cartography of the angelic orders and manifestations (p. 116). Miller draws from the 'tradition, lore, and legend' (p. 1) of Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity (pp. 80, 91, 97, 111), a 'general

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Hegel's Theology or Revelation Thematised, StephenTheron, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018 (ISBN 978‐0‐19‐065210‐4), xxii + 410 pp., hb £64.99

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2020

approaches to religion within the USSR coalesced. There followed a period of 'law-based stability... more approaches to religion within the USSR coalesced. There followed a period of 'law-based stability' where religion was tolerated but also repressed and controlled. CARC as replaced by the Council for Religious Affairs (CRA) from 1967, bureaucracy increased but real power waned. Unregistered and unofficial expressions of Islam increased in number and reach. The Epilogue to Soviet and Muslim documents the final three years of Soviet relations with Islam. The details of exactly what happened and why are not entirely clear, but what is clear is that there was rapid change as Soviet-era institutions unraveled, losing political power and control. Tasar reiterates his main argument that Muslim institutions and ideas were both shaped by, but also shaped, the political and social context of Soviet Central Asia during the period 1948 to 1989. Islam was then, and remains to this day, a central part of the identity and political reality of these countries. Soviet and Muslim is an interesting and absorbing read. Students of global Islam, as well as those interested in the history of Central Asia, will benefit from reading this book. Tasar acknowledges the limitations of his study; his necessary reliance primarily on official documentation means the picture he presents, while fascinating, is not as full as it could be. One can only hope that complementary studies will emerge in due time.

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Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity, GregorModer, Northwestern University Press, 2017 (ISBN 978‐0‐8101‐3541‐3), xiv +186 pp, pb $34.95

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2019

To speak of what is not, we must first speak of what is, of being, and of metaphysics. Such posit... more To speak of what is not, we must first speak of what is, of being, and of metaphysics. Such positive speech of being thus seems to proceed any speech of nothing. And yet it is also possible to argue that, since we cannot begin to speak of being until we first speak of what being is not, negative speech is not less but arguably even more originary than any positive speech of being. Much of European philosophy since Martin Heidegger has inherited this assumption of the primacy of negativity, of negative speech, and of the nothing (das Nicht). For it often speaks of the nothing as something in a discourse of nihilism. Yet in such a discourse, the nothing is not simply discarded but, to the contrary, always already related back through speech to the metaphysical source of any speech of being. The discourse of nihilism may thus often appear to lapse into the sophistic spectacle of negativity, of a negative ontology, or of a 'meontology' masquerading as an inverted escape from the tradition of metaphysics from Plato to Hegel (Conor Cunningham, The Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies of Nothing and the Difference of Theology, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. xv-xvii). Gregory Moder has, in Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity, staged a critical comparison between anti-Spinozist readings of Hegel and anti-Hegelian readings of Spinoza for the purpose of showing the merits of reading Hegel and Spinoza together at once. Moder argues both for and against the criticisms of Hegel and Spinoza. Hegel had argued that Spinoza was constitutionally incapable of thinking of a productive or determinative negation; of the determinacy of substance becoming subject for the freedom of subjectivity; and indeed of any dynamic surprise in an utterly inert substance (pp. 5-8). He describes Hegel's question as 'a question of movement, specifically of movement or contradiction of the beginning, of the primordial' self-determination of the dynamism internal to the being itself of absolute substance (p. 8). And yet Moder also recommends a Neo-Spinozist reading of the Hegelian dialectic, where, with Althusser, Hegel can be reproached for reducing the form of dialectic to a 'mechanical finalism' of preformulated stages without any anticipated surprise at its end in 'absolute knowing' (pp. 11-14). Moder presents a dilemma: either the beginning of Hegel's Logic is included or excluded from the beginning of his philosophical system (p. 24). The difference between thinking and not thinking is, for Moder as for Žižek, the fundamental presupposition of Hegel's Logic (p. 27). He proposes to read Hegel and Spinoza over this difference between thinking and not thinking (p. 23). The beginning of the logic itself may in this way be 'redoubled' in the process in which it begins, in the motion of a Reviews 673

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Reimagining the Analogia Entis : The Future of Erich Przywara's Christian Vision, Philip John PaulGonzales, Eerdmans, 2019 (ISBN 978‐0‐8028‐7671‐3), xxii + 386 pp., hb $80

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2019

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Logic and Argumentation in Origen, RóbertSomos, Aschendorff Verlag, 2015 (ISBN 978-3-402-13717-8), 240 pp., hb €45

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2019

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Geoffrey Holsclaw. Transcending Subjects: Augustine, Hegel, and Theology. Challenges in Contemporary Theology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. ISBN 978-1-119-16300-8 (pbk). ISBN 978-1-119-16308-4 (hbk). Pp. xii+256. Hardcover £65.00, €81.30. Ebook £24.99, €30.99

Hegel Bulletin, 2017

One of the most frequently asked questions in Hegelian studies is whether Hegel’s idea of God is ... more One of the most frequently asked questions in Hegelian studies is whether Hegel’s idea of God is immanent or transcendent. Answering this question is especially challenging because Hegel appears to have rejected both Augustinian divine transcendence and Spinozian divine immanence in favour of some more ambiguous mixture. This ambiguity can appear all the more puzzling in light of Hegel’s political philosophy. In Transcending Subjects: Augustine, Hegel, and Theology, Geoffrey Holsclaw attempts to solve this puzzle by contrasting the political theologies of Hegel and Augustine. He argues that Hegel produces a political theology of ‘self-transcending immanence’ while Augustine produces a political theology of ‘self-immanentizing transcendence’. Self-transcending immanence can be regarded as the activity of exceeding categories within the immanent domain of subjective thought, while self-immanentizing transcendence can be regarded as the activity of entering into these categories from the transcendent domain of objective being. Holsclaw places Hegel in the position of self-transcending immanence, Augustine in the position of self-immanentizing transcendence, and sides with Augustine to criticize Hegel for failing to transcend the domain of subjective thought. In his view, ‘Hegel claims that transcendence destroys freedom and Augustine claims that transcendence is the only means to freedom’ so that, ‘Augustine gives a better explanation of and therefore funds a better practice for freedom’ (8–9). Holsclaw thus advocates an Augustinian political theology for the purpose of protecting the Christian belief in divine transcendence and preserving the ideal of political freedom. Holsclaw develops a dialectical narrative of opposed positions which is meant to be resolved by the ‘plausibility and suitability of Augustine’s position over Hegel’s’ (10). He divides his study into two parts and six chapters: in each part, the initial chapters critique two opposed interpretations; the subsequent chapters examine the relation of transcendence to immanence; and the final chapters explore whether this relation frustrates or fulfils the ideal of freedom for political liberalism. doi:10.1017/hgl.2017.6 Hegel Bulletin © The Hegel Society of Great Britain, 2017 , 40/2, 334–338

Sacramental Engines: The Trinitarian Ontology of Computers in Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine

Religions

Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine can be recollected as a fossilized image of the first digital... more Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine can be recollected as a fossilized image of the first digital computer. It is essentially distinguished from all prior and analog computers by the transcription of the ‘mechanical notation’, the separation of the mnemonic ‘store’ from the cybernetic ‘mill’, and the infinite miniaturization of its component parts. This substitution of finite space for an accelerating singularity of time creates the essential rupture of the digital, in which a singular calculation of mechanical force stands opposed to the universal totality of space. Babbage’s criticism of Christian doctrine to preserve the mathematical consistency of mechanics and computing would result in the collapse of the Christian Trinity into a digital theology. This Arian subordinate difference of the Son to the Father would then be infinitely transcribed in a technical contradiction that would threaten to annul the metaphysical ground of any machine. Against digital and postdigital theologi...

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Recollecting the Religious: Augustine in Answer to Meno’s Paradox

Studies in Philosophy and Education, 2021

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The Light of the Leaf: A Theological Critique of Timothy Morton’s ‘Dark Ecology’

Religions, 2021

The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is,... more The plant has recently emerged as a battleground of conflicting ecocriticisms. ‘Dark Ecology’ is, in the works of Timothy Morton, an ecocritical hermeneutic, in which the world can be subtracted into the parts of objects, of the plant, and of any leaf that exceeds the totality of abstract ‘Nature’. In dividing the whole into the parts, and combining the parts into an imminently subtracted whole, he has recommended a negative dialectic of virtual objects that can be collected into a ‘hyperobject’. This dialectic can, however, be argued to dissolve any whole into parts, and render the hyperobject internally fissured. We can, from the ‘darkness’ of this fissure, begin to read Nature according to the ‘via plantare’, that is, a mystical way of desiring an other as plant so as to know and love the visible light of the invisible God. ‘Vegetal difference’, the difference of the plant from the animal, should, I argue, be read for theology as a finite reflection of the divine difference of th...

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Recollecting the Religious: Augustine in Answer to Meno’s Paradox

Studies in Philosophy and Education volume 40, 2021

Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming i... more Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The ‘post-secular’ and ‘decolonial’ turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and intellectual context where the arguments of previous generations of philosophers may be challenged on account of positivist assumptions, there may be an opening for the reconsideration of alternative but traditional religious epistemologies. In this article, we pursue one such line of thought by revisiting a classic question in the philosophy of education, Meno’s Paradox of inquiry. We do this to revitalise understanding and justification for religious education. Our argument is not altogether new, but in our view, is in need of restatement: liturgy is at the heart of education and it is so because it is a locus of knowledge. We make this argument by exploring St Augustine’s response to Meno’s Paradox, and his radical claim that only Christ can be called ‘teacher’. Though ancient, this view of the relationship of the teacher and student to knowledge may seem surprisingly contemporary because of its emphasis on the independence of the learner. Although our argument is grounded in classic texts of the Western tradition, we suggest that arguments could be made by drawing on similar resources in other religious traditions, such as Islam, that also draw upon the Platonic tradition and similarly emphasise the importance of communal and personal acts of worship.

Origen's Speculative Angelology

Inventer les anges de l'Antiquité à Byzance. Conceptions, représentations, perceptions, 2021

Origen of Alexandria should be acknowledged as the founder of a Christian science of the angels, ... more Origen of Alexandria should be acknowledged as the founder of a Christian science of the angels, or angelology. In On First Principles (1.5-8.), he introduces the angels as the first created ‘rational beings’ who, in contemplating the divine Logos, freely choose to direct their will as holy angels in service to or as wicked demons in antagonism against the love of God. The rational beings are divided into three orders: the angels, the demons, and the neutral spirits such as human souls. The angels remain in contemplation of the Logos, yet, due to their negligence, descend to unfold in the angelic hierarchy. The angels and demons thereafter guide the movements of all spirits, substances, and signs in the created world. Human souls can freely choose to follow the guidance of either guardian angels or demons. And yet after the Incarnation, the angels can be distinguished from the demons by their choice to follow or oppose the coming of Christ. Origen’s angelology has often been regarded as an early Christian alternative to Middle Platonic daimonologies. After Karl Barth, his angelology has often been dispensed from Christian theology. However, as Jean Daniélou has observed, Origen had previously departed from the principles of Platonic daimonology in affirming that angelic mediacy must pass away like the light of the stars before the Logos of Christ. He had, in this way, assimilated the relative mediacy of the angels to the absolute mediation of Christ. And, in assimilating angelic to Christic mediacy, Origen also assimilates the reason with which the world is moved to the divine Logos of Christ in God as Trinity. Origen’s angelology can thus be read before and after Barth to recommend a new speculative angelology.

The Light of the Leaf: A Theological Critique of Timothy Morton’s ‘Dark Ecology’

Religions, 2021

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