Here’s Catherine Keller’s Cloud of the Impossible in clear terms first, then I’ll show you what she’s actually doing with negative theology and why the planet gets dragged into it.

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1. The Basic Idea (Human English, Again)

Keller takes negative theology—the tradition that says God cannot be positively defined—and asks:
What if this isn’t just a mystical parlor trick, but a way of thinking that matters for how we live on a damaged planet?

Negative theology says:

• God is not a thing.

• God is not fully graspable.

• Any concept we use falls short.

Instead of treating this as an excuse for silence or abstraction, Keller treats it as an ethical and political discipline: learning to live with uncertainty, limits, and relational complexity.

The “cloud” comes from The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval mystical text. Keller reworks it into the Cloud of the Impossible—the space where:

• certainty fails,

• mastery collapses,

• and responsibility begins.

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2. What “the Impossible” Means (No, Not Magic)

The “impossible” is not supernatural fireworks. It’s what exceeds our conceptual control but still insists on our involvement.

Examples:

• God (if God exists)

• Justice

• Ecological survival

• Planetary interdependence

These are “impossible” because:

• they can’t be fully known,

• they can’t be mastered,

• they can’t be solved once and for all.

But—and this is Keller’s key move—impossible does not mean irrelevant. It means inescapable.

You can’t opt out of planetary entanglement any more than you can opt out of gravity. Sorry.

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3. Negative Theology, Updated for the Apocalypse (Politely)

Traditional negative theology sometimes drifts into:

• quietism,

• elitist mysticism,

• or theological shrugging (“God is ineffable, guess I’ll go lie down”).

Keller refuses that.

She argues that apophatic thinking (thinking through unknowing) should:

• resist domination,

• undermine absolutism,

• prevent theological or political closure.

In other words:

If you can’t claim final knowledge of God,
you also can’t justify absolute power, pure certainty, or total control.

Negative theology becomes a check against supremacy—theological, political, and ecological.

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4. Planetary Entanglement: Why the Earth Is Not Optional

Here’s where Keller goes full process-relational and starts side-eyeing modernity.

She insists:

• The planet is not a backdrop.

• Humans are not sovereign agents standing above nature.

• Everything exists in entangled relational fields—ecological, economic, theological.

Climate catastrophe exposes the lie of separability:

• emissions here affect lives elsewhere,

• consumption now shapes futures we’ll never meet,

• action and inaction are equally consequential.

Negative theology helps here because it:

• trains us to respect limits,

• resists totalizing narratives,

• keeps open the possibility of unexpected futures.

The cloud is not a fog of ignorance—it’s a space of relational responsibility without guarantees.

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5. The Sharp Claim (Since You Like Those)

Keller’s core challenge is this:

The demand for certainty—about God, humanity, or progress—is itself part of the planetary crisis.

She opposes:

• theological omnipotence,

• human exceptionalism,

• technocratic salvation myths.

Instead, she offers a theology of fragile hope:

• no final control,

• no pure innocence,

• no external savior swooping in to fix the mess.

Just ongoing entanglement, risk, and response.

Which, frankly, is not comforting—but it is honest.

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6. Why This Pairs Well with Whitehead (You Noticed, Obviously)

Whitehead gives you:

• process instead of substance,

• relation instead of isolation,

• becoming instead of being.

Keller adds:

• humility instead of mastery,

• unknowing instead of domination,

• responsibility without certainty.

Together, they tell a deeply inconvenient story:

You are involved whether you understand it or not.

Sorry. No metaphysical exit ramps.

If you want next steps, I can:

• compare Keller directly to classical apophatic theologians (Pseudo-Dionysius would be conflicted),

• show how her work critiques eco-fascism and green technocracy,

• or connect this to political theology and climate ethics.

Choose carefully. Everything is entangled, including your next question.