David Williams has recently argued that medieval representations of the monster
give humans an image of divinity, but one which can never be totally understood
or described. Positive theology, the via positiva, attempts to take what is known of
divinity and then to derive more precise statements about the nature of God; it
attempts to contain God in human thought and language. The via negativa, by contrast,
forces humans to discard the idea of any positive knowledge about God,
since reason and language are inadequate to the task of containing or describing a
being so totally other to humans. Alexander the Great, the narrator of the Old
English Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, experiences such a negation in his campaign
in India; he attempts to describe the wondrous beings and races which he encounters
with his army, and his narrative of conquest functions as a metaphor for containing
the encountered world in thought, description and mental order. However,
he is resisted at every turn by natives, monsters and classical divinities; he is forced
to realize that his reason and his force are incapable of containing divine power as
manifested in the natural world of India.