fbpx
Wikipedia

Apophatic theology

January 01, 1970

"Via negativa" redirects here. For The X-Files episode, see Via Negativa (The X-Files).

Apophatic theology, also known as negative theology,[1] is a form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God, the Divine, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God.[web 1] It forms a pair together with cataphatic theology, which approaches God or the Divine by affirmations or positive statements about what God is.[web 2]

The apophatic tradition is often, though not always, allied with the approach of mysticism, which aims at the vision of God, the perception of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception.[2]

Etymology and definition edit

"Apophatic", Ancient Greek: ἀπόφασις (noun); from ἀπόφημι apophēmi, meaning 'to deny'. From Online Etymology Dictionary:

apophatic (adj.) "involving a mention of something one feigns to deny; involving knowledge obtained by negation", 1850, from Latinized form of Greek apophatikos, from apophasis "denial, negation", from apophanai "to speak off," from apo "off, away from" (see apo-) + phanai "to speak," related to pheme "voice," from PIE root *bha- (2) "to speak, tell, say."[web 3]

Via negativa or via negationis (Latin), 'negative way' or 'by way of denial'.[1] The negative way forms a pair together with the kataphatic or positive way. According to Deirdre Carabine,

Pseudo Dionysius describes the kataphatic or affirmative way to the divine as the "way of speech": that we can come to some understanding of the Transcendent by attributing all the perfections of the created order to God as its source. In this sense, we can say "God is Love", "God is Beauty", "God is Good". The apophatic or negative way stresses God's absolute transcendence and unknowability in such a way that we cannot say anything about the divine essence because God is so totally beyond being. The dual concept of the immanence and transcendence of God can help us to understand the simultaneous truth of both "ways" to God: at the same time as God is immanent, God is also transcendent. At the same time as God is knowable, God is also unknowable. God cannot be thought of as one or the other only.[web 2]

Origins and development edit

According to Fagenblat, "negative theology is as old as philosophy itself;" elements of it can be found in Plato's unwritten doctrines, while it is also present in Neo-Platonic, Gnostic and early Christian writers. A tendency to apophatic thought can also be found in Philo of Alexandria.[3]

According to Carabine, "apophasis proper" in Greek thought starts with Neo-Platonism, with its speculations about the nature of the One, culminating in the works of Proclus.[4] Carabine writes that there are two major points in the development of apophatic theology, namely the fusion of the Jewish tradition with Platonic philosophy in the writings of Philo, and the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who infused Christian thought with Neo-Platonic ideas.[4]

The Early Church Fathers were influenced by Philo,[4] and Meredith even states that Philo "is the real founder of the apophatic tradition."[5] Yet, it was with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor,[6] whose writings shaped both Hesychasm, the contemplative tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the mystical traditions of western Europe, that apophatic theology became a central element of Christian theology and contemplative practice.[4]

Elijah's hearing of a "still, small voice" at I Kings 19:11-13 has been proposed as a Biblical example of apophatic prayer.

Greek philosophy edit

See also: Epoché, Pyrrhonism, and Skepticism

Pre-Socratic edit

For the ancient Greeks, knowledge of the gods was essential for proper worship.[7] Poets had an important responsibility in this regard, and a central question was how knowledge of the Divine forms can be attained.[7] Epiphany played an essential role in attaining this knowledge.[7] Xenophanes (c. 570 – c. 475 BC) noted that the knowledge of the Divine forms is restrained by the human imagination, and Greek philosophers realized that this knowledge can only be mediated through myth and visual representations, which are culture-dependent.[7]

According to Herodotus (484–425 BC), Homer and Hesiod (between 750 and 650 BC) taught the Greek the knowledge of the Divine bodies of the Gods.[8] The ancient Greek poet Hesiod (between 750 and 650 BC) describes in his Theogony the birth of the gods and creation of the world,[web 4] which became an "ur-text for programmatic, first-person epiphanic narratives in Greek literature,"[7][note 1] but also "explores the necessary limitations placed on human access to the divine."[7] According to Platt, the statement of the Muses who grant Hesiod knowledge of the Gods "actually accords better with the logic of apophatic religious thought."[10][note 2]

Parmenides (fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC), in his poem On Nature, gives an account of a revelation on two ways of inquiry. "The way of conviction" explores Being, true reality ("what-is"), which is "What is ungenerated and deathless,/whole and uniform, and still and perfect."[12] "The way of opinion" is the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful. His distinction between unchanging Truth and shifting opinion is reflected in Plato's allegory of the Cave. Together with the Biblical story of Moses's ascent of Mount Sinai, it is used by Gregory of Nyssa and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to give a Christian account of the ascent of the soul toward God.[13] Cook notes that Parmenides poem is a religious account of a mystical journey, akin to the mystery cults,[14] giving a philosophical form to a religious outlook.[15] Cook further notes that the philosopher's task is to "attempt through 'negative' thinking to tear themselves loose from all that frustrates their pursuit of wisdom."[15]

Plato edit

 
Plato Silanion Musei Capitolini MC1377.

Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC), "deciding for Parmenides against Heraclitus" and his theory of eternal change,[16] had a strong influence on the development of apophatic thought.[16]

Plato further explored Parmenides's idea of timeless truth in his dialogue Parmenides, which is a treatment of the eternal forms, Truth, Beauty and Goodness, which are the real aims for knowledge.[16] The Theory of Forms is Plato's answer to the problem how one fundamental reality or unchanging essence can admit of many changing phenomena, other than by dismissing them as being mere illusion.[16]

In The Republic, Plato argues that the "real objects of knowledge are not the changing objects of the senses, but the immutable Forms,"[web 5] stating that the Form of the Good[note 3] is the highest object of knowledge.[17][18][web 5][note 4] His argument culminates in the Allegory of the Cave, in which he argues that humans are like prisoners in a cave, who can only see shadows of the Real, the Form of the Good.[18][web 5] Humans are to be educated to search for knowledge, by turning away from their bodily desires toward higher contemplation, culminating in an intellectual[note 5] understanding or apprehension of the Forms, c.q. the "first principles of all knowledge."[18]

According to Cook, the Theory of Forms has a theological flavour, and had a strong influence on the ideas of his Neo-Platonist interpreters Proclus and Plotinus.[16] The pursuit of Truth, Beauty and Goodness became a central element in the apophatic tradition,[16] but nevertheless, according to Carabine "Plato himself cannot be regarded as the founder of the negative way."[19] Carabine warns not to read later Neo-Platonic and Christian understandings into Plato, and notes that Plato did not identify his Forms with "one transcendent source," an identification which his later interpreters made.[20]

Middle Platonism edit

Main article: Middle Platonism

Middle Platonism (1st century BC–3rd century AD)[web 6] further investigated Plato's "Unwritten Doctrines," which drew on Pythagoras' first principles of the Monad and the Dyad (matter).[web 6] Middle Platonism proposed a hierarchy of being, with God as its first principle at its top, identifying it with Plato's Form of the Good.[21] An influential proponent of Middle Platonism was Philo (c. 25 BC–c. 50 AD), who employed Middle Platonic philosophy in his interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures, and asserted a strong influence on early Christianity.[web 6] According to Craig D. Allert, "Philo made a monumental contribution to the creation of a vocabulary for use in negative statements about God."[22] For Philo, God is undescribable, and he uses terms which emphasize God's transcendence.[22]

Neo-Platonism edit

Main article: Neo-Platonism

Neo-Platonism was a mystical or contemplative form of Platonism, which "developed outside the mainstream of Academic Platonism."[web 7] It started with the writings of Plotinus (204/5–270 AD), and ended with the closing of the Platonic Academy by Emperor Justinian in 529 AD, when the pagan traditions were ousted.[web 8] It is a product of Hellenistic syncretism, which developed due to the crossover between Greek thought and the Jewish scriptures, and also gave birth to Gnosticism.[web 7] Proclus of Athens (*412–485 C.E.) played a crucial role in the transmission of Platonic philosophy from antiquity to the Middle Ages., serving as head or ‘successor’ (diadochos, sc. of Plato) of the Platonic ‘Academy’ for over 50 years.[23] His student Pseudo-Dionysius had a far-stretching Neo-Platonic influence on Christianity and Christian mysticism.[web 7]

Plotinus edit

 
Plotinus, 204/5–270 AD.

Plotinus (204/5–270 AD) was the founder of Neo-Platonism.[24] In the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus, the first principle became even more elevated as a radical unity, which was presented as an unknowable Absolute.[21] For Plotinus, the One is the first principle, from which everything else emanates.[24] He took it from Plato's writings, identifying the Good of the Republic, as the cause of the other Forms, with the One of the first hypothesis of the second part of the Parmenides.[24] For Plotinus, the One precedes the Forms,[24] and "is beyond Mind and indeed beyond Being."[21] From the One comes the Intellect, which contains all the Forms.[24] The One is the principle of Being, while the Forms are the principle of the essence of beings, and the intelligibility which can recognize them as such.[24] Plotinus's third principle is Soul, the desire for objects external to itself. The highest satisfaction of desire is the contemplation of the One,[24] which unites all existents "as a single, all-pervasive reality."[web 8]

The One is radically simple, and does not even have self-knowledge, since self-knowledge would imply multiplicity.[21] Nevertheless, Plotinus does urge for a search for the Absolute, turning inward and becoming aware of the "presence of the intellect in the human soul,"[note 6] initiating an ascent of the soul by abstraction or "taking away," culminating in a sudden appearance of the One.[25] In the Enneads Plotinus writes:

Our thought cannot grasp the One as long as any other image remains active in the soul [...] To this end, you must set free your soul from all outward things and turn wholly within yourself, with no more leaning to what lies outside, and lay your mind bare of ideal forms, as before of the objects of sense, and forget even yourself, and so come within sight of that One.

Carabine notes that Plotinus' apophasis is not just a mental exercise, an acknowledgement of the unknowability of the One, but a means to ecstasis and an ascent to "the unapproachable light that is God."[web 10] Pao-Shen Ho, investigating what are Plotinus' methods for reaching henosis,[note 7] concludes that "Plotinus' mystical teaching is made up of two practices only, namely philosophy and negative theology."[28] According to Moore, Plotinus appeals to the "non-discursive, intuitive faculty of the soul," by "calling for a sort of prayer, an invocation of the deity, that will permit the soul to lift itself up to the unmediated, direct, and intimate contemplation of that which exceeds it (V.1.6)."[web 8] Pao-Shen Ho further notes that "for Plotinus, mystical experience is irreducible to philosophical arguments."[28] The argumentation about henosis is preceded by the actual experience of it, and can only be understood when henosis has been attained.[28] Ho further notes that Plotinus's writings have a didactic flavour, aiming to "bring his own soul and the souls of others by way of Intellect to union with the One."[28] As such, the Enneads as a spiritual or ascetic teaching device, akin to The Cloud of Unknowing,[29] demonstrating the methods of philosophical and apophatic inquiry.[30] Ultimately, this leads to silence and the abandonment of all intellectual inquiry, leaving contemplation and unity.[31]

Proclus edit

Proclus (412–485) introduced the terminology used in apophatic and cataphatic theology.[32] He did this in the second book of his Platonic Theology, arguing that Plato states that the One can be revealed "through analogy," and that "through negations [dia ton apophaseon] its transcendence over everything can be shown."[32] For Proclus, apophatic and cataphatic theology form a contemplatory pair, with the apophatic approach corresponding to the manifestation of the world from the One, and cataphatic theology corresponding to the return to the One.[33] The analogies are affirmations which direct us toward the One, while the negations underlie the confirmations, being closer to the One.[33] According to Luz, Proclus also attracted students from other faiths, including the Samaritan Marinus. Luz notes that "Marinus' Samaritan origins with its Abrahamic notion of a single ineffable Name of God (יהוה‎) should also have been in many ways compatible with the school's ineffable and apophatic divine principle."[34]

Christianity edit

See also: Credo quia absurdum and Sola fide
 
Engraving of Otto van Veen (1660), who negatively describes God as Quod oculus non vidit, nec auris audivit (Vulgate), "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard" (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Apostolic Age edit

The Book of Revelation 8:1 mentions "the silence of the perpetual choir in heaven." According to Dan Merkur,

The silence of the perpetual choir in heaven had mystical connotations, because silence attends the disappearance of plurality during experiences of mystical oneness. The term "silence" also alludes to the "still small voice" (1 Kings 19:12) whose revelation to Elijah on Mount Horeb rejected visionary imagery by affirming a negative theology.[35][note 8]

Early Church Fathers edit

The Early Church Fathers were influenced by Philo[4] (c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD), who saw Moses as "the model of human virtue and Sinai as the archetype of man's ascent into the "luminous darkness" of God."[36] His interpretation of Moses was followed by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus the Confessor.[37][38][5][39]

God's appearance to Moses in the burning bush was often elaborated on by the Early Church Fathers,[37] especially Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395),[38][5][39] realizing the fundamental unknowability of God;[37][40] an exegesis which continued in the medieval mystical tradition.[41] Their response is that, although God is unknowable, Jesus as person can be followed, since "following Christ is the human way of seeing God."[42]

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) was an early proponent of apophatic theology.[43][5] Clement holds that God is unknowable, although God's unknowability, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers.[43] According to R.A. Baker, in Clement's writings the term theoria develops further from a mere intellectual "seeing" toward a spiritual form of contemplation.[44] Clement's apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the "mystic vision of the soul."[44] For Clement, God is transcendent and immanent.[45] According to Baker, Clement's apophaticism is mainly driven not by Biblical texts, but by the Platonic tradition.[46] His conception of an ineffable God is a synthesis of Plato and Philo, as seen from a Biblical perspective.[47] According to Osborne, it is a synthesis in a Biblical framework; according to Baker, while the Platonic tradition accounts for the negative approach, the Biblical tradition accounts for the positive approach.[48] Theoria and abstraction is the means to conceive of this ineffable God; it is preceded by dispassion.[49]

According to Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240),

[t]hat which is infinite is known only to itself. This it is which gives some notion of God, while yet beyond all our conceptions – our very incapacity of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is. He is presented to our minds in His transcendent greatness, as at once known and unknown.[50]

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (313–386), in his Catechetical Homilies, states:

For we explain not what God is but candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning Him. For in what concerns God to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge.[51]

 
Filippo Lippi, Vision of St. Augustine, c. 1465, tempera, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) defined God aliud, aliud valde, meaning "other, completely other", in Confessions 7.10.16,[52] wrote Si [enim] comprehendis, non est Deus,[53] meaning "if you understand [something], it is not God", in Sermo 117.3.5[54] (PL 38, 663),[55][56] and a famous legend tells that, while walking along the Mediterranean shoreline meditating on the mystery of the Trinity, he met a child who with a seashell (or a little pail) was trying to pour the whole sea into a small hole dug in the sand. Augustine told him that it was impossible to enclose the immensity of the sea in such a small opening, and the child replied that it was equally impossible to try to understand the infinity of God within the limited confines of the human mind.[57][58][59]

The Chalcedonian Christological dogma edit

See also: Kenosis and eternal super-kenosis

The Christological dogma, formulated by the Fourth Ecumenical Council held in Chalcedon in 451, is based on dyophysitism and hypostatic union, concepts used to describe the union of humanity and divinity in a single hypostasis, or individual existence, that of Jesus Christ. This remains transcendent to our rational categories, a mystery which has to be guarded by apophatic language, as it is a personal union of a singularly unique kind.[60]

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite edit

Apophatic theology found its most influential expression in the works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th to early 6th century), a student of Proclus (412–485) who combined a Christian worldview with Neo-Platonic ideas.[61] He is a constant factor in the contemplative tradition of the eastern Orthodox Churches, and from the 9th century onwards his writings also had a strong impact on western mysticism.[62]

Dionysius the Areopagite was a pseudonym, taken from Acts of the Apostles chapter 17, in which Paul gives a missionary speech to the court of the Areopagus in Athens.[63] In verse 23 Paul makes a reference to an altar-inscription, dedicated to the Unknown God, "a safety measure honoring foreign gods still unknown to the Hellenistic world."[63] For Paul, Jesus Christ is this unknown God, and as a result of Paul's speech Dionysius the Areopagite converts to Christianity.[64] Yet, according to Stang, for Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite Athens is also the place of Neo-Platonic wisdom, and the term "unknown God" is a reversal of Paul's preaching toward an integration of Christianity with Neo-Platonism, and the union with the "unknown God."[64]

According to Corrigan and Harrington, "Dionysius' central concern is how a triune God, ... who is utterly unknowable, unrestricted being, beyond individual substances, beyond even goodness, can become manifest to, in, and through the whole of creation in order to bring back all things to the hidden darkness of their source."[65] Drawing on Neo-Platonism, Pseudo-Dionysius described human ascent to divinity as a process of purgation, illumination and union.[62] Another Neo-Platonic influence was his description of the cosmos as a series of hierarchies, which overcome the distance between God and humans.[62]

Eastern Orthodox Christianity edit

Main article: Eastern Orthodox Church

In Orthodox Christianity, apophatic theology is taught as superior to cataphatic theology. The fourth-century Cappadocian Fathers[note 9] stated a belief in the existence of God, but an existence unlike that of everything else: everything else that exists was created, but the Creator transcends this existence, is uncreated. The essence of God is completely unknowable; mankind can acquire an incomplete knowledge of God in His attributes (propria), positive and negative, by reflecting upon and participating in His self-revelatory operations (energeiai).[67] Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395), John Chrysostom (c. 349 – 407), and Basil the Great (329–379) emphasized the importance of negative theology to an orthodox understanding of God. John of Damascus (c.675/676–749) employed negative theology when he wrote that positive statements about God reveal "not the nature, but the things around the nature."

Maximus the Confessor (580–622) took over Pseudo-Dionysius' ideas, and had a strong influence on the theology and contemplative practices of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.[61] Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) formulated the definite theology of Hesychasm, the Eastern Orthodox practices of contemplative prayer and theosis, "deification."

Influential 20th-century Orthodox theologians include the Neo-Palamist writers Vladimir Lossky, John Meyendorff, John S. Romanides, and Georges Florovsky. Lossky argues, based on his reading of Dionysius and Maximus Confessor, that positive theology is always inferior to negative theology, which is a step along the way to the superior knowledge attained by negation.[68] This is expressed in the idea that mysticism is the expression of dogmatic theology par excellence.[69]

According to Lossky, outside of directly revealed knowledge through Scripture and Sacred Tradition, such as the Trinitarian nature of God, God in His essence is beyond the limits of what human beings (or even angels) can understand. He is transcendent in essence (ousia). Further knowledge must be sought in a direct experience of God or His indestructible energies through theoria (vision of God).[70][71] According to Aristotle Papanikolaou, in Eastern Christianity, God is immanent in his hypostasis or existences.[72]

Western Christianity edit

 
In The Creation of Adam painted by Michelangelo (c. 1508–1512), the two index fingers are separated by a small gap [3⁄4 inch (1.9 cm)]:[73] some scholars think that it represents the unattainability of divine perfection by man.[74]

Negative theology has a place in the Western Christian tradition as well. The 9th-century theologian John Scotus Erigena wrote:

We do not know what God is. God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything [i.e., "not any created thing"]. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.[75]

When he says "He is not anything" and "God is not", Scotus does not mean that there is no God, but that God cannot be said to exist in the way that creation exists, i.e. that God is uncreated. He is using apophatic language to emphasise that God is "other".[76]

Theologians like Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross (San Juan de la Cruz) exemplify some aspects of or tendencies towards the apophatic tradition in the West. The medieval work, The Cloud of Unknowing and Saint John's Dark Night of the Soul are particularly well known. In 1215 apophatism became the official position of the Catholic Church, which, on the basis of Scripture and church tradition, during the Fourth Lateran Council formulated the following dogma:

Between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude.[77][note 10]

The via eminentiae edit

See also: Credo ut intelligam and Fides et ratio

Thomas Aquinas was born ten years later (1225–1274) and, although in his Summa Theologiae he quotes Pseudo-Dionysius 1,760 times,[80] stating that "Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not"[81][82] and leaving the work unfinished because it was like "straw" compared to what had been revealed to him,[83] his reading in a neo-Aristotelian key[84] of the conciliar declaration overthrew its meaning inaugurating the "analogical way" as tertium between via negativa and via positiva: the via eminentiae (see also analogia entis). In this way, the believers see what attributes are common between them and God, as well as the unique, not human, properly divine and not understandable way in respect of which God possesses that attributes.[85]

According to Adrian Langdon,

The distinction between univocal, equivocal, and analogous language and relations corresponds to the distinction between the via positiva, via negativa, and via eminentiae. In Thomas Aquinas, for example, the via positiva undergirds the discussion of univocity, the via negativa the equivocal, and the via eminentiae the final defense of analogy.[86]

According to Catholic Encyclopedia, the Doctor Angelicus and the scholastici declare [that]

God is not absolutely unknowable, and yet it is true that we cannot define Him adequately. But we can conceive and name Him in an "analogical way". The perfections manifested by creatures are in God, not merely nominally (equivoce) but really and positively, since He is their source. Yet, they are not in Him as they are in the creature, with a mere difference of degree, nor even with a mere specific or generic difference (univoce), for there is no common concept including the finite and the Infinite. They are really in Him in a supereminent manner (eminenter) which is wholly incommensurable with their mode of being in creatures. We can conceive and express these perfections only by an analogy; not by an analogy of proportion, for this analogy rests on a participation in a common concept, and, as already said, there is no element common to the finite and the Infinite; but by an analogy of proportionality.[87]

Since then Thomism has played a decisive role in resizing the negative or apophatic tradition of the magisterium.[88][89]

20th century edit

 
Herman Dooyeweerd

Apophatic statements are still crucial to many modern theologians, restarting in the 1800s by Søren Kierkegaard (see his concept of the infinite qualitative distinction)[90][91] up to Rudolf Otto, Karl Barth (see their idea of "Wholly Other", i.e. ganz Andere or totaliter aliter),[92][93][94] the Ludwig Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, and Martin Heidegger after his Kehre.[95][96]

C. S. Lewis, in his book Miracles (1947), advocates the use of negative theology when first thinking about God, in order to cleanse our minds of misconceptions. He goes on to advocate refilling the mind with the truth about God, untainted by mythology, bad analogies or false mind-pictures.[97]

The mid-20th century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, who is often associated with a neo-Calvinistic tradition, provides a philosophical foundation for understanding the impossibility of absolutely knowing God, and yet the possibility of truly knowing something of God.[98] Dooyeweerd made a sharp distinction between theoretical and pre-theoretical attitudes of thought. He argues that most of the discussion of knowledge of God presupposes theoretical knowledge, which involves reflection and attempts to define and discuss. Theoretical knowing, for Dooyeweerd, is never absolute, always depends on religious presuppositions, and cannot grasp either God or the law side. Pre-theoretical knowing, on the other hand, is intimate engagement, exhibits a diverse range of aspects, and can grasp at least the law side. According to Dooyeweerd, knowledge of God, as God wishes to reveal it, is pre-theoretical, immediate and intuitive, never theoretical in nature.[99][100] The philosopher Leo Strauss considered that the Bible, for example, should be treated as pre-theoretical (everyday) rather than theoretical in what it contains.[101]

Ivan Illich (1926–2002), the historian and social critic, can be read as an apophatic theologian, according to a longtime collaborator, Lee Hoinacki, in a paper presented in memory of Illich, called "Why Philia?"[102]

21st century edit

Karen Armstrong, in her book The Case for God (2009), notices a recovery of apophatic theology in postmodern theology.[103]

Philosopher and literary scholar William Franke, particularly in his 2007 two-volume collection On What Cannot Be Said and his 2014 monograph A Philosophy of the Unsayable, puts forth that negative theology's exploration and performance of language's limitations is not simply one current among many in religious thought, but is "a kind of perennial counter-philosophy to the philosophy of Logos" that persistently challenges central tenets of Western thought throughout its history. For Franke, literature demonstrates the "infinitely open" nature of language which negative theology and related forms of philosophical thought seek to draw attention to. Franke therefore argues that literature, philosophy, and theology begin to bleed into one another as they approach what he frames as the "apophatic" side of Western thought.[104]

Islam edit

Various traditions and schools in Islam (see Islamic schools and branches) draw on sundry theologies in approaching God in Islam (Allah, Arabic الله) or the ultimate reality. "Negative theology" involves the use of تَعْطِيل, ta'tīl, defined as "setting aside", "canceling out", "negation", or "nullification".[105] The followers of the Mu'tazili school of Kalam, the spread of which is often attributed to Wasil ibn Ata, are often called the Mu'aṭṭilah ("cancelers" or "negators"), a description, sometimes employed derogatorily, deriving from the school's descriptions of the Islamic God.[106]

Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī, an Iranian and Shi'ite philosopher and mystic of the 17th century, is credited with instilling an apophatic theology in a generation of philosophers and theologians whose influence extended into the Qajar period.[107] Mulla Rajab affirmed the completely unknowable, unqualifiable, and attributeless nature of God and upheld a general view concerning God's attributes which can only be negatively 'affirmed' (that is, by affirmingly negating all that is not God about God).[107]

Shia Islam largely adopts "negative theology".[note 11][108] In the words of the Persian Ismaili missionary, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani: "There does not exist a tanzíh ["transcendence"] more brilliant and more splendid than that by which we establish the absolute transcendence of our Originator through the use of these phrases in which a negative and a negative of a negative apply to the thing denied."[109]

Literalists completely reject and condemn any negation that would clash with the wording of the Islamic Scriptures or with the narratives ascribed to the Islamic Prophet. They therefore hold that descriptors and qualifiers that occur in the Qur'ān and in the canonized religious traditions, even if seeming or sounding humanlike such as "hand", "finger, or "foot", are to be wholly affirmed as attributes of God (not limbs).[110]

Many Sunnites, like the Ash'aris and Maturidis, adhere to some middle path or synthesis between negation and anthropomorphism, though the kind of each combination of negation and affirmation varies greatly.[110]

Judaism edit

See also: Tzimtzum § Inherent paradox, Divine simplicity § Jewish thought, and Free will in theology § The paradox of free will
 
Maimonides, 1138–1204 AD.

Maimonides (1135/1138-1204) was "the most influential medieval Jewish exponent of the via negativa."[3] Maimonides - along with Samuel ibn Tibbon - draws on Bahya ibn Paquda,[citation needed] who shows that our inability to describe God is related to the fact of His absolute unity. God, as the entity which is "truly One" (האחד האמת), must be free of properties and is thus unlike anything else and indescribable.[citation needed] In The Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides states:

God's existence is absolute and it includes no composition and we comprehend only the fact that He exists, not His essence. Consequently it is a false assumption to hold that He has any positive attribute [...] still less has He accidents (מקרה), which could be described by an attribute. Hence it is clear that He has no positive attribute however, the negative attributes are necessary to direct the mind to the truths which we must believe [...] When we say of this being, that it exists, we mean that its non-existence is impossible; it is living — it is not dead; [...] it is the first — its existence is not due to any cause; it has power, wisdom, and will — it is not feeble or ignorant; He is One — there are not more Gods than one [...] Every attribute predicated of God denotes either the quality of an action, or, when the attribute is intended to convey some idea of the Divine Being itself — and not of His actions — the negation of the opposite.[111]

According to Rabbi Yosef Wineberg, Maimonides stated that "[God] is knowledge," and saw His Essence, Being, and knowledge as completely one, "a perfect unity and not a composite at all."[112] Wineberg quotes Maimonides as stating:

This [form of unity] wherein G‑d's knowledge and so on is one with G‑d Himself is beyond the capacity of the mouth to express, beyond the capacity of the ear to hear, and beyond the capacity of the heart of man to apprehend clearly.[112]

According to Fagenblat, it is only in the modern period that negative theology really gains importance in Jewish thought.[3] Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994) was a prominent modern exponent of Jewish negative theology.[113] According to Leibowitz, a person's faith is his commitment to obey God, meaning God's commandments, and this has nothing to do with a person's image of God. This must be so because Leibowitz thought that God cannot be described, that God's understanding is not man's understanding, and thus all the questions asked of God are out of place.[114]

Jacques Derrida edit

The work of Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida, and in particular his critical method called deconstruction, has frequently been compared to negative theology, and led to renewed interest in apophaticism in the late 20th century, even among continental philosophers and literary scholars who may not have otherwise have been particularly invested in theological issues.[115] Conversely, the perception that deconstruction resembled or essentially was a form of secular negative theology also - according to Derrida himself - took the form of an accusation from his critics, implicitly positing both negative theology and deconstruction as being elaborate ways of saying nothing of any substance or importance. However, Derrida strongly repudiated this comparison for much of his career, arguing that any resemblance between his thought and apophaticism is purely superficial. Derrida argued that the aims of negative theology - to demonstrate the ultimate, incomprehensible, transcendent reality of God - are a form of ontotheology which runs fundamentally counter to deconstruction's aim of purging Western thought of its pervasive metaphysics of presence.[116]

Later in his career, such in as his essay "Sauf le nom", Derrida comes to see apophatic theology as potentially but not necessarily a means through which the intractable inadequacies of language and the ontological difficulties which proceed from them can brought to our attention and explored:[117]

There is one apophasis that can in effect respond to, correspond to, correspond with the most insatiable desire of God, according to the history and the event of its manifestation or the secret of its non-manifestation. The other apophasis, the other voice, can remain readily foreign to all desire, in any case to every anthropotheomorphic form of desire.[118]

Scholars such as Stephen Shakespeare have noted that - despite Derrida's pervasive concern with many aspects of Jewish theology and identity - his writing on negative theology draws almost exclusively on Christian writing and couches the topic in the language of Christianity generally. Derrida's thought in general, but in particular his later writing on negative theology, was highly influential in the development of the Weak Theology movement, and of postmodern theology as a whole.[119]

David Wood and Robert Bernasconi have highlighted how Derrida explains what deconstruction is in an overwhelmingly negative, "apophatic" fashion.[120]

Indian parallels edit

 
Adi Shankara, 788-820 AD.

Early Indian philosophical works which have apophatic themes include the Principal Upanishads (800 BC to the start of common era) and the Brahma Sutras (from 450 BC and 200 AD). An expression of negative theology is found in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, where Brahman is described as "neti neti" or "neither this, nor that".[121] Further use of apophatic theology is found in the Brahma Sutras, which state:

Whenever we deny something unreal, it is in reference to something real.[122]

Buddhist philosophy has also strongly advocated the way of negation, beginning with the Buddha's own theory of anatta (not-atman, not-self) which denies any truly existent and unchanging essence of a person. Madhyamaka is a Buddhist philosophical school founded by Nagarjuna (2nd-3rd century AD), which is based on a fourfold negation of all assertions and concepts and promotes the theory of emptiness (shunyata). Apophatic assertions are also an important feature of Mahayana sutras, especially the prajñaparamita genre. These currents of negative theology are visible in all forms of Buddhism.

Apophatic movements in medieval Hindu philosophy are visible in the works of Shankara (8th century), a philosopher of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism), and Bhartṛhari (5th century), a grammarian. While Shankara holds that the transcendent noumenon, Brahman, is realized by the means of negation of every phenomenon including language, Bhartṛhari theorizes that language has both phenomenal and noumenal dimensions, the latter of which manifests Brahman.[123]

In Advaita, Brahman is defined as being Nirguna or without qualities. Anything imaginable or conceivable is not deemed to be the ultimate reality.[124] The Taittiriya hymn speaks of Brahman as "one where the mind does not reach". Yet the Hindu scriptures often speak of Brahman's positive aspect. For instance, Brahman is often equated with bliss. These contradictory descriptions of Brahman are used to show that the attributes of Brahman are similar to ones experienced by mortals, but not the same.

Negative theology also figures in the Buddhist and Hindu polemics. The arguments go something like this – Is Brahman an object of experience? If so, how do you convey this experience to others who have not had a similar experience? The only way possible is to relate this unique experience to common experiences while explicitly negating their sameness.

Bahá'í Faith edit

Bahá'í's believe that God is an ultimately unknowable being (see God in the Baháʼí Faith) and Bahá'í writings state that "there can be no tie of direct intercourse to bind the one true God with His creation, and no resemblance whatever can exist between the transient and the Eternal, the contingent and the Absolute." According to the Bahá'í Faith, the only way to grow nearer to God is to gain knowledge of the Manifestation of God, who is a reflection of God's reality in a similar way to how a mirror reflects an image of the sun. Stephen Lambden has written a paper entitled, "The Background and Centrality of Apophatic Theology in Bábí and Bahá'í Scripture"[125] and Ian Kluge has also looked into the Apophatic Theology and the Baha'i faith in the second part of his paper, Neoplatonism and the Bahá'í Writings.[126]

Apophatic theology and atheism edit

Even though the via negativa essentially rejects theological understanding in and of itself as a path to God, some have sought to make it into an intellectual exercise, by describing God only in terms of what God is not. One problem noted with this approach is that there seems to be no fixed basis on deciding what God is not, unless the Divine is understood as an abstract experience of full aliveness unique to each individual consciousness, and universally, the perfect goodness applicable to the whole field of reality.[127] Apophatic theology is often accused of being a version of atheism or agnosticism, since it cannot say truly that God exists.[128] "The comparison is crude, however, for conventional atheism treats the existence of God as a predicate that can be denied ("God is nonexistent"), whereas negative theology denies that God has predicates".[129] "God or the Divine is" without being able to attribute qualities about "what He is" would be the prerequisite of positive theology in negative theology that distinguishes theism from atheism. "Negative theology is a complement to, not the enemy of, positive theology".[130] Since religious experience—or consciousness of the holy or sacred, is not reducible to other kinds of human experience, an abstract understanding of religious experience cannot be used as evidence or proof that religious discourse or praxis can have no meaning or value.[131] In apophatic theology, the negation of theisms in the via negativa also requires the negation of their correlative atheisms if the dialectical method it employs is to maintain integrity.[132]

See also edit

Buddhism
Christianity
Hinduism
Islam
Judaism
Taoism
Philosophy

Notes edit

  1. ^ Hesiod's Theogony was highly referred in the time of Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BCE), and Plato's Timaeus shows a profound familiarity with Hesiod's Theogony.[9] See also Timaeus e39-e41.[web 4]
  2. ^ Richard G. Geldard: "[M]ore than any other pre-Socratic thinker, Heraclitus embodies the apophatic method. He "unsaid" the myths of the Archaic tradition on his way to transforming the ideas of divinity through the divine Logos. It was a transformation affirmed by Plotinus 800 years later."[11]
  3. ^ Identified by various commentators with the Form of Unity.[further explanation needed][citation needed]
  4. ^ See The Republic 508d–e, 511b, 516b.
  5. ^ As opposed to mere rationality.
  6. ^ Compare Korean Chon (Zen) master Jinuls "tracing back the radiance":

    "Question: What is the mind of void and calm, numinous awareness?

    Chinul: What has just asked me this question is precisely your mind of void and calm, numinous awareness. Why not trace back its radiance rather than search for it outside? For your benefit I will now point straight to your original mind so that you can awaken to it. Clear your minds and listen to my words."    [web 9]

    See also Buswell, Robert E. (1991), Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul's Korean Way of Zen, University of Hawaii Press
  7. ^ The Neoplatonic concept of henosis has precedents in the Greek mystery religions[26] as well as parallels in Eastern philosophy.[27]
  8. ^ According to Michel Masson, Elijah's theophany is an "apophatic revelation," a mystical experience which is akin to nirvana and Böhme's Ungrund." Michel Masson (2001), Rois et prophètes dans le cycle d'Élie. In: Lemaire, André (2001). Prophètes et rois. Bible et Proche-Orient. Paris: Éditions du Cerf. pp. 119–131. ISBN 978-2-204-06622-8.. Quoted by Lasine, Stuart (2012). Weighing Hearts. Character, Judgment, and the Ethics of Reading the Bible. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 121. ISBN 978-0-567-42674-1.
  9. ^ Basil the Great (330–379), who was bishop of Caesarea; Basil's younger brother Gregory of Nyssa (c.332–395), who was bishop of Nyssa; and a close friend, Gregory of Nazianzus (329–389), who became Patriarch of Constantinople.[66]
  10. ^ Latin: Inter Creatorem et creaturam non potest similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo.[78][79]
  11. ^ Encyclopædia Iranica: "God Himself comprises two ontological levels: first, of the Essence (ḏāt). This is said to be forever inconceivable, unimaginable, above all thought, beyond all knowledge. It can only be described by God through revelations and can only be apprehended by a negative apophatic theology. This recalls the Deus absconditus, the unknowable that forms the hidden, esoteric level of God, the level of the absolute abscondity of God."

References edit

  1. ^ a b McCombs 2013, p. 84.
  2. ^ Belzen & Geels 2003, p. 84–87.
  3. ^ a b c Fagenblat 2017, p. 4.
  4. ^ a b c d e Carabine 2015, p. 1.
  5. ^ a b c d Meredith 2002, p. 545.
  6. ^ Berthold 1985, p. 9.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Platt 2011, p. 52.
  8. ^ Platt 2011, p. 51.
  9. ^ Boys-Stones & Haubold 2009, p. xiviii.
  10. ^ Platt 2011, p. 53.
  11. ^ Geldard 2000, p. 23.
  12. ^ Cook 2013, p. 109-111.
  13. ^ Cook 2013, p. 111-112.
  14. ^ Cook 2013, p. 109.
  15. ^ a b Cook 2013, p. 112.
  16. ^ a b c d e f Cook 2013, p. 113.
  17. ^ Kahn 1998, p. 61.
  18. ^ a b c Phillips 2008, p. 234.
  19. ^ Carabine 2015, p. 21.
  20. ^ Carabine 2015, p. 21-22.
  21. ^ a b c d Mooney 2009, p. 7.
  22. ^ a b Allert 2002, p. 89.
  23. ^ Zalta, Edward N. "Proclus". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab. Retrieved 29 October 2023.
  24. ^ a b c d e f g Gerson 2012.
  25. ^ Mooney 2009, p. 8.
  26. ^ Angus 1975, p. 52.
  27. ^ Gregorios 2002.
  28. ^ a b c d Ho 2015, p. 20.
  29. ^ Ho 2015, p. 20-21.
  30. ^ Ho 2015, p. 26.
  31. ^ Ho 2015, p. 25-27.
  32. ^ a b Louth 2012, p. 139.
  33. ^ a b Louth 2012, p. 140.
  34. ^ Luz 2017, p. 149.
  35. ^ Merkur 2014, p. 331.
  36. ^ Buxhoeveden & Woloschak 2011, p. 152.
  37. ^ a b c Louth 2003, p. 220.
  38. ^ a b Lane 2007, p. 67.
  39. ^ a b Boersma 2013, p. 243.
  40. ^ Mayes 2016, p. 117.
  41. ^ Glasscoe 1992, p. 57.
  42. ^ Louth 2003, p. 221.
  43. ^ a b Hägg 2006.
  44. ^ a b Baker 2000, p. 88.
  45. ^ Baker 2000, p. 89.
  46. ^ Baker 2000, p. 92-92.
  47. ^ Baker 2000, p. 92.
  48. ^ Baker 2000, p. 92-93.
  49. ^ Baker 2000, p. 98-103.
  50. ^ Tertullian, Apologeticus, § 17.
  51. ^ Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem (c. 335), "Catechetical Homilies, VI §2", in Schaff, Philip (ed.), Nicene and Ante-Nicene Fathers (2nd Series), vol. VII, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. (published 1994), p. 33, retrieved 2008-02-01
  52. ^ Vessey, Mark, ed. (2012). A Companion to Augustine. With the assistance of Shelley Reid. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 107. ISBN 978-1-405-15946-3.
  53. ^ .
  54. ^ Fitzgerald, Allan D., ed. (1999). Augustine Through the Ages. An Encyclopedia. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 389. ISBN 978-0-802-83843-8.
  55. ^ Bretzke, James T. (1998). Consecrated Phrases. A Latin Theological Dictionary. Latin Expressions Commonly Found in Theological Writings. Saint John's Abbey, Collegeville: Liturgical Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-814-65880-2.
  56. ^ Migne, Jacques Paul, ed. (1841). Patrologia Latina. Vol. 38. Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 663. ISBN 978-0-802-83843-8.
  57. ^ Augustine (2010). "Introduction (p. XIII)". Selections from Confessions and Other Essential Writings. Annotated and Explained. Contributor: Joseph T. Kelley. Woodstock, Vermont: SkyLight Paths Publishing. ISBN 978-1-594-73282-9.
  58. ^ Myers, Rawley (1996). "St. Augustine". The Saints Show Us Christ. Daily Readings on the Spiritual Life. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. ISBN 978-1-681-49547-7.
  59. ^ Alister, McGrath (2002). Knowing Christ. New York City: Crown Publishing Group. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-385-50721-9.
  60. ^ Gergis, Emmanuel (2015). "Chapter 12. T.F. Torrance and the Christological Realism of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria (pp. 267—285)". In Baker, Matthew; Speidell, Todd (eds.). T. F. Torrance and Eastern Orthodoxy: Theology in Reconciliation. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 279. ISBN 978-1-498-20814-7.
  61. ^ a b Berthold 1985, p. 9
  62. ^ a b c MacCulloch 2010, p. 439.
  63. ^ a b Stang 2011, p. 12.
  64. ^ a b Stang 2011, p. 13.
  65. ^ Corrigan & Harrington 2014.
  66. ^ "Commentary on Song of Songs; Letter on the Soul; Letter on Ascesis and the Monastic Life". World Digital Library. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
  67. ^ McGinn, Bernard (2014). "4. Hidden God and Hidden Self (pp. 85ff.)". In DeConick, April D; Adamson, Grant (eds.). Histories of the Hidden God. Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-844-65687-5.
  68. ^ Lossky, Vladimir (1976). The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, Yonkers: SVS Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-913-83631-6.
  69. ^ Lossky, Vladimir (1976). p. 9.
  70. ^ Lossky, Vladimir (1976). p. 81.
  71. ^ Lossky, Vladimir (1964). The Vision of God. Leighton Buzzard: Faith Press. p. 26.
  72. ^ Papanikolaou, Aristotle (2006), Being With God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine–Human Communion (1st Edition), Notre Dame, Indiana:University of Notre Dame Press, p. 2, ISBN 978-0-268-03830-4.
  73. ^ Lubbock, Tom (January 5, 2007). "Buonarroti, Michelangelo: The Creation of Adam (1510)". The Independent. Northcliffe House, Kensington. Retrieved April 26, 2023.
  74. ^ Tallis, Raymond (2010). Michelangelo's Finger. An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence. Ormond House in Bloomsbury, London Borough of Camden: Atlantic Books. pp. v-vi. ISBN 978-1-848-87552-4.
  75. ^ Quote on Google Books.
  76. ^ Indick, William (2015). The Digital God. How Technology Will Reshape Spirituality. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-786-49892-5.
  77. ^ CCC .
  78. ^ (in Latin) DS .
  79. ^ (in Latin) CCC .
  80. ^ Ware, Kallistos (1963), The Orthodox Church, London: Penguin Group, p. 73, ISBN 0-14-020592-6
  81. ^ ST 1a, q.3, prologue (Benziger Bros. edition, 1947). Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province.
  82. ^ White, Roger M. (2010). Talking about God. The Concept of Analogy and the Problem of Religious Language. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. p. 189. ISBN 978-1-409-40036-3.
  83. ^ Murray, Paul (2013). "10. The collapse, the silence". Aquinas at Prayer. The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry. London: A & C Black. ISBN 978-1-441-10755-8.
  84. ^ Przywara 2014, p. 38 ("Thomas Aquinas stands out as Aristotle's most important medieval commentator — both for having clarified received notions of analogy and for assessing its theological uses").
  85. ^ Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, q. 7, a. 5, ad 2. Cited in International Theological Commission (2012). "La teologia oggi: prospettive, principi e criteri" [Theology Today: Perspectives, Principia and Criteria]. Holy See (in Italian and English). (at n°. 97)
  86. ^ Langdon 2014, p. 189a-189b.
  87. ^   One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Sauvage, George (1913). "Analogy". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  88. ^ Payton, James R. Jr. (2007). ""POSITIVE" AND "NEGATIVE" THEOLOGY" (pp. 72-78)". Light from the Christian East. An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic. ISBN 978-0-830-82594-3.
  89. ^ See for example the Regensburg lecture delivered on 12 September 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany:
  90. ^ Kierkegaard, Søren (1941). Training in Christianity, and the Edifying discourse which 'accompanied' it. Transl. by Walter Lowrie. Oxford University Press. p. 139 ("the infinite qualitative difference between God and man").
  91. ^ Law, David R. (1993) [1989]. Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian (illustrated, reprint ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-198-26336-4.
  92. ^ Webb, Stephen H. (1991). Re-figuring Theology. The Rhetoric of Karl Barth. Albany, New York: SUNY Press. p. 87. ISBN 978-1-438-42347-0.
  93. ^ Elkins, James (2011). "Iconoclasm and the Sublime. Two Implicit Religious Discourses in Art History (pp. 133–151)". In Ellenbogen, Josh; Tugendhaft, Aaron (eds.). Idol Anxiety. Redwood City, California: Stanford University Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-804-76043-0.
  94. ^ Mariña, Jacqueline (2010) [1997]. "26. Holiness (pp. 235–242)". In Taliaferro, Charles; Draper, Paul; Quinn, Philip L. (eds.). A Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 238. ISBN 978-1-444-32016-9.
  95. ^ Noble, Ivana (2002). "Apophatic Elements in Derrida's Deconstruction (pp. 83–93)". In Pokorný, Petr; Roskovec, Jan (eds.). Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Exegesis. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-3-161-47894-9.
  96. ^ Nesteruk, Alexei (2008). The Universe as Communion. Towards a Neo-Patristic Synthesis of Theology and Science. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 96 ("according to Heidegger (after his Kehre), the oblivion of Being was effected by this Being itself, as its withdrawal and it is through this withdrawal Being manifested itself, although in an characteristically apophatic way"). ISBN 978-0-567-18922-6.
  97. ^ Brazier, P. H. (2012). "Transposition and Analogy (pp.181-83)". C.S. Lewis — Revelation, Conversion, and Apologetics. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1-610-97718-0.
  98. ^ Friesen, J. Glenn. "The religious dialectic revisited" (PDF). jgfriesen.files. Retrieved 5 May 2018.
  99. ^ VanDrunen, David (2009). Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms. A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought. Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans. pp. 351-68. ISBN 978-0-802-86443-7.
  100. ^ Skillen, James W. . First Principles. Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Archived from the original on 5 May 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2018.
  101. ^ Smith, Gregory B. (2008). Between Eternities. On the Tradition of Political Philosophy, Past, Present, and Future. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-739-12077-4.
  102. ^ Hoinacki, Lee 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine.
  103. ^ Blackburn, Simon (4 July 2009). "All quiet on the God front". The Guardian. Guardian News and Media. Retrieved 7 April 2017.
  104. ^ Franke, William (2014). "Pre-face". A Philosophy of the Unsayable. University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 1–19. ISBN 978-0-268-02894-7.
  105. ^ Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P.; Lecomte, G.; Bearman, P. J.; Bianquis, T. (2000). Encyclopaedia of Islam. Vol. X (T–U) (New ed.). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. p. 342. ISBN 9004112111.
  106. ^ Hughes, Thomas Patrick (1994). A Dictionary of Islam. Chicago: Kazi Publications. p. 425. ISBN 978-0935782707.
  107. ^ a b Faruque, Muhammad U. and Mohammed Rustom. "Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī's Refutation of Ṣadrian Metaphysics" (PDF). mohammedrustom.com. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
  108. ^ Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali. "Shiʿite doctrine". Encyclopædia Iranica. Columbia University. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
  109. ^ Walker, Paul.E. (1993). Early Philosophical Shiism, The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abá Ya'qáb al-Sijistání. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0521060820.
  110. ^ a b Campo, Juan Eduardo (2009). Encyclopedia of Islam. New York City: Infobase Publishing. pp. 45-46. ISBN 978-1-438-12696-8.
  111. ^ The Guide for the Perplexed, 1:58.
  112. ^ a b Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah Ch. 8
  113. ^ Fagenblat 2017, p. 2.
  114. ^ Zev Golan, "God, Man and Nietzsche: A Startling Dialogue between Judaism and Modern Philosophers" (New York: iUniverse, 2008), p. 43.
  115. ^ Jacques Derrida (1992). Coward, Harold (ed.). Derrida and Negative Theology. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. p. 128.
  116. ^ Shakespeare, Stephen (2009). Derrida and Theology. London: T&T Clark. pp. 100–111. ISBN 9780567032409.
  117. ^ Shakespeare, Stephen (2009). Derrida and Theology. London: T&T Clark. pp. 111–123. ISBN 9780567032409.
  118. ^ Derrida, Jacques (1995). On the Name. Stanford: Stanford UP. p. 36. ISBN 0804725551.
  119. ^ Caputo, John D. (2006). The Weakness of God. Bloomington: Indiana UP. ISBN 0-253-34704-1.
  120. ^ Wood, David, and Bernasconi, Robert (1988): Derrida and Différance, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  121. ^ Tharaud, Barry. Emerson for the Twenty-First Century: Global Perspectives on an American Icon. Rosemont Publishing and Printing Corp, 2010. p. 453. ISBN 978-0-87413-091-1.
  122. ^ Verse III.2.22, Brahma-Sutra, Translated by Swami Gambhirananda.
  123. ^ Coward, Harold G. and Foshay, Toby. Derrida and Negative Theology. State University of New York, 1992. p. 21. ISBN 0-7914-0964-3.
  124. ^ Renard, John. Responses to One Hundred One Questions on Hinduism. Paulist Press, 1999. p. 75. ISBN 0-8091-3845-X.
  125. ^ Lambden, Stephen. "The Background and Centrality of Apophatic Theology in Bábí and Bahá'í Scripture: Studies in the Babi and Baha'i Religions". Revisioning the Sacred: New Perspectives on a Bahá'í Theology, Studies in the Babi and Baha'i Religions. 8: 37–78.
  126. ^ Kluge, Ian. "Neoplatonism and the Bahá'í Writings Part 2". Lights of Irfan. 12: 105–193.
  127. ^ Pondé, Luiz Felipe (2003). Crítica e profecia: A filosofia da religião em Dostoiévski. São Paulo: Editora 34. pp. 74–92. ISBN 8573262842.
  128. ^ Jacobs, Jonathan D. (2015). "7. The Ineffable, Inconceivable, and Incomprehensible God. Fundamentality and Apophatic Theology (pp. 158 — 176)". In Kvanvig, Jonathan (ed.). Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. Volume 6. Oxford University Press. p. 168. ISBN 978-0-198-72233-5.
  129. ^ Fagenblat 2017, p. 3.
  130. ^ Bryson 2016, p. 114.
  131. ^ Lonergan, Bernard (1972), "Method in Theology", New York, N.Y.: Seabury Press, ISBN 0-8164-2204-4.
  132. ^ Buckley, Michael J. (2004), "Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism", New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, pp. 120ff, ISBN 0-30009384-5.

Sources edit

Printed sources edit

  • Allert, Craig D. (2002), Revelation, Truth, Canon and Interpretation. Studies in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, Leiden: BRILL, ISBN 978-9-004-12619-0
  • Angus, Samuel (1975) [1920], The Mystery Religions. A Study in the Religious Background of Early Christianity, Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-23124-0
  • Baker, R.A. (2000), Spiritual Contemplation in Clement of Aleandria's Stromateis
  • Belzen, Jacob A.; Geels, Antoon (2003), Mysticism. A Variety of Psychological Perspectives, Rodopi, ISBN 9-04201125-4
  • Berthold, George C. (1985), "Introduction" to Maximus the Confessor. Selected Writings, Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, ISBN 978-0-809-12659-0
  • Boersma, Hans (2013), Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa: An Anagogical Approach, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780191651328
  • Boys-Stones, G.R.; Haubold, J.H. (2009), Plato and Hesiod, Oxford University Press
  • Bryson, Michael E. (2016), The Atheist Milton, Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, ISBN 978-1-317-04095-8
  • Carabine, Deirdre (2015), The Unknown God: Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers
  • Cook, Brendan (2013), Pursuing Eudaimonia: Re-appropriating the Greek Philosophical Foundations of the Christian Apophatic Tradition, Cambridge Scholars Publishing
  • Corrigan, Kevin; Harrington, L. Michael (2014), Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Fagenblat, Michael, ed. (2017), Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity, Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0-253-02504-3
  • Geldard, Richard G. (2000), Remembering Heraclitus, Richard Geldard
  • Gerson, Lloyd (2012), Plotinus, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Glasscoe, Door Marion, ed. (1992), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England. Exeter Symposium V. Papers Read at the Devon Centre, Dartington Hall, July 1992, Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, ISBN 978-0-859-91346-1
  • Gregorios, Paulos (2002), Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy, SUNY Press
  • Hägg, Henny Fiska (2006), Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-199-28808-3
  • Ho, Pao-Shen (2015), Plotinus' Mystical Teaching of Henosis: An Interpretation in the Light of the Metaphysics of the One, Peter Lang GmbH
  • Kahn, Charles H. (1998), Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form, Cambridge University Press
  • Lane, Belden C. (2007), The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality, Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780199760428
  • Langdon, Adrian (2014), God the Eternal Contemporary. Trinity, Eternity, and Time in Karl Barth, Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publisher, ISBN 978-1-610-97998-6
  • Louth, Andrew (2003), "Holiness and the Vision of God in the Eastern Fathers", in Barton, Stephen C. (ed.), Holiness: Past and Present, A&C Black
  • Louth, Andrew (2007), The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, Oxford University Press
  • Louth, Andrew (2012), "Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology", in Hollywood, Amy; Beckman, Patricia Z. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism, Cambridge University Press
  • Luz, Menahem (2017), "Marinus' Abrahamic notions of the Soul and One (pp. 145ff.)", in Layne, Danielle; Butorac, David D. (eds.), Proclus and his Legacy, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, ISBN 978-3-110-47162-5
  • MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2010), A History of Christianity, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-141-02189-8
  • Mayes, Andrew D. (2016), Learning the Language of the Soul. A Spiritual Lexicon, Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, ISBN 978-0-814-64751-6
  • McCombs, Richard (2013), The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0-253-00647-9
  • Meredith, Anthony (2002), "Patristic Spirituality", in Byrne, Peter; Houlden, Leslie (eds.), Companion Encyclopedia of Theology, Routledge, ISBN 9781134922017
  • Merkur, Dan (2014), "From Seer to Saint: Psychotherapeutic Change in the Book of Revelation (pp. 316ff.)", in Ashton, John (ed.), Revealed Wisdom. Studies in Apocalyptic in honour of Christopher Rowland. Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, Leiden: BRILL, ISBN 978-9-004-27204-0
  • Mooney, Hilary Anne-Marie (2009), Theophany: The Appearing of God According to the Writings of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, Mohr Siebeck
  • Phillips, D.C. (2008), "Theories of Teaching and Learning", in Curren, Randall (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Education, John Wiley & Sons
  • Platt, Verity Jane (2011), Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion, Cambridge University Press
  • Przywara, Erich (2014), Analogia Entis. Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, Transl. by John R. Betz, David Bentley Hart, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN 978-0-802-86859-6
  • Stang, Charles M. (2011), "Dionysius, Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym", in Stang, Paul M.; Coakley, Sarah (eds.), Re-thinking Dionysius the Areopagite, John Wiley & Sons
  • Buxhoeveden, Daniel; Woloschak, Gayle, eds. (2011). Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church (1. ed.). Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 9781409481614.

Web sources edit

  1. ^ Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu. "The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy: negative theology". Blackwell Reference Online.
  2. ^ a b Living Without a Why. An Interview with Deirdre Carabine. Holos: Forum for a New Worldview, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2009).
  3. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary: "apophatic".
  4. ^ a b ellopsos.net, Plato's TIMAEUS : Visible and created Gods. Timaeus 39e-41d (primary source).
  5. ^ a b c Encyclopedia of Plato, Plato 2017-04-12 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ a b c Moore, Edward. "Middle Platonism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  7. ^ a b c Moore, Edward. "Neo-Platonism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  8. ^ a b c Moore, Edward. "Plotinus". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  9. ^ zenmind.org, Tracing Back the Radiance
  10. ^ Centre for sacred Sciences, Living Without a Why. An Interview with Deirdre Carabine. Holos: Forum for a New Worldview, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2009)

Further reading edit

External links edit

 
Look up apophatic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Apophatic theology.
  • General
    • God and Other Necessary Beings, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    • At the Origins of Modern Atheism, Michael J. Buckley, Yale University Press 1987, ISBN 0-300-03719-8
  • Christian material
    • Negative Theology 2011-07-19 at the Wayback Machine, Austin Cline
    • Apophatic theology, The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
    • Saying Nothing about No-Thing: Apophatic Theology in the Classical World, Jonah Winters
  • Jewish material
  • Modern material

January 01, 1970
apophatic, theology, negativa, redirects, here, files, episode, negativa, files, also, known, negative, theology, form, theological, thinking, religious, practice, which, attempts, approach, divine, negation, speak, only, terms, what, said, about, perfect, goo. Via negativa redirects here For The X Files episode see Via Negativa The X Files Apophatic theology also known as negative theology 1 is a form of theological thinking and religious practice which attempts to approach God the Divine by negation to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God web 1 It forms a pair together with cataphatic theology which approaches God or the Divine by affirmations or positive statements about what God is web 2 The apophatic tradition is often though not always allied with the approach of mysticism which aims at the vision of God the perception of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception 2 Contents 1 Etymology and definition 2 Origins and development 3 Greek philosophy 3 1 Pre Socratic 3 2 Plato 3 3 Middle Platonism 3 4 Neo Platonism 3 4 1 Plotinus 3 4 2 Proclus 4 Christianity 4 1 Apostolic Age 4 2 Early Church Fathers 4 3 The Chalcedonian Christological dogma 4 4 Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite 4 5 Eastern Orthodox Christianity 4 6 Western Christianity 4 6 1 The via eminentiae 4 7 20th century 4 8 21st century 5 Islam 6 Judaism 6 1 Jacques Derrida 7 Indian parallels 8 Baha i Faith 9 Apophatic theology and atheism 10 See also 11 Notes 12 References 13 Sources 13 1 Printed sources 13 2 Web sources 14 Further reading 15 External linksEtymology and definition edit Apophatic Ancient Greek ἀpofasis noun from ἀpofhmi apophemi meaning to deny From Online Etymology Dictionary apophatic adj involving a mention of something one feigns to deny involving knowledge obtained by negation 1850 from Latinized form of Greek apophatikos from apophasis denial negation from apophanai to speak off from apo off away from see apo phanai to speak related to pheme voice from PIE root bha 2 to speak tell say web 3 Via negativa or via negationis Latin negative way or by way of denial 1 The negative way forms a pair together with the kataphatic or positive way According to Deirdre Carabine Pseudo Dionysius describes the kataphatic or affirmative way to the divine as the way of speech that we can come to some understanding of the Transcendent by attributing all the perfections of the created order to God as its source In this sense we can say God is Love God is Beauty God is Good The apophatic or negative way stresses God s absolute transcendence and unknowability in such a way that we cannot say anything about the divine essence because God is so totally beyond being The dual concept of the immanence and transcendence of God can help us to understand the simultaneous truth of both ways to God at the same time as God is immanent God is also transcendent At the same time as God is knowable God is also unknowable God cannot be thought of as one or the other only web 2 Origins and development editAccording to Fagenblat negative theology is as old as philosophy itself elements of it can be found in Plato s unwritten doctrines while it is also present in Neo Platonic Gnostic and early Christian writers A tendency to apophatic thought can also be found in Philo of Alexandria 3 According to Carabine apophasis proper in Greek thought starts with Neo Platonism with its speculations about the nature of the One culminating in the works of Proclus 4 Carabine writes that there are two major points in the development of apophatic theology namely the fusion of the Jewish tradition with Platonic philosophy in the writings of Philo and the works of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite who infused Christian thought with Neo Platonic ideas 4 The Early Church Fathers were influenced by Philo 4 and Meredith even states that Philo is the real founder of the apophatic tradition 5 Yet it was with Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor 6 whose writings shaped both Hesychasm the contemplative tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the mystical traditions of western Europe that apophatic theology became a central element of Christian theology and contemplative practice 4 Elijah s hearing of a still small voice at I Kings 19 11 13 has been proposed as a Biblical example of apophatic prayer Greek philosophy editSee also Epoche Pyrrhonism and Skepticism Pre Socratic edit For the ancient Greeks knowledge of the gods was essential for proper worship 7 Poets had an important responsibility in this regard and a central question was how knowledge of the Divine forms can be attained 7 Epiphany played an essential role in attaining this knowledge 7 Xenophanes c 570 c 475 BC noted that the knowledge of the Divine forms is restrained by the human imagination and Greek philosophers realized that this knowledge can only be mediated through myth and visual representations which are culture dependent 7 According to Herodotus 484 425 BC Homer and Hesiod between 750 and 650 BC taught the Greek the knowledge of the Divine bodies of the Gods 8 The ancient Greek poet Hesiod between 750 and 650 BC describes in his Theogony the birth of the gods and creation of the world web 4 which became an ur text for programmatic first person epiphanic narratives in Greek literature 7 note 1 but also explores the necessary limitations placed on human access to the divine 7 According to Platt the statement of the Muses who grant Hesiod knowledge of the Gods actually accords better with the logic of apophatic religious thought 10 note 2 Parmenides fl late sixth or early fifth century BC in his poem On Nature gives an account of a revelation on two ways of inquiry The way of conviction explores Being true reality what is which is What is ungenerated and deathless whole and uniform and still and perfect 12 The way of opinion is the world of appearances in which one s sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful His distinction between unchanging Truth and shifting opinion is reflected in Plato s allegory of the Cave Together with the Biblical story of Moses s ascent of Mount Sinai it is used by Gregory of Nyssa and Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite to give a Christian account of the ascent of the soul toward God 13 Cook notes that Parmenides poem is a religious account of a mystical journey akin to the mystery cults 14 giving a philosophical form to a religious outlook 15 Cook further notes that the philosopher s task is to attempt through negative thinking to tear themselves loose from all that frustrates their pursuit of wisdom 15 Plato edit nbsp Plato Silanion Musei Capitolini MC1377 Plato 428 427 or 424 423 348 347 BC deciding for Parmenides against Heraclitus and his theory of eternal change 16 had a strong influence on the development of apophatic thought 16 Plato further explored Parmenides s idea of timeless truth in his dialogue Parmenides which is a treatment of the eternal forms Truth Beauty and Goodness which are the real aims for knowledge 16 The Theory of Forms is Plato s answer to the problem how one fundamental reality or unchanging essence can admit of many changing phenomena other than by dismissing them as being mere illusion 16 In The Republic Plato argues that the real objects of knowledge are not the changing objects of the senses but the immutable Forms web 5 stating that the Form of the Good note 3 is the highest object of knowledge 17 18 web 5 note 4 His argument culminates in the Allegory of the Cave in which he argues that humans are like prisoners in a cave who can only see shadows of the Real the Form of the Good 18 web 5 Humans are to be educated to search for knowledge by turning away from their bodily desires toward higher contemplation culminating in an intellectual note 5 understanding or apprehension of the Forms c q the first principles of all knowledge 18 According to Cook the Theory of Forms has a theological flavour and had a strong influence on the ideas of his Neo Platonist interpreters Proclus and Plotinus 16 The pursuit of Truth Beauty and Goodness became a central element in the apophatic tradition 16 but nevertheless according to Carabine Plato himself cannot be regarded as the founder of the negative way 19 Carabine warns not to read later Neo Platonic and Christian understandings into Plato and notes that Plato did not identify his Forms with one transcendent source an identification which his later interpreters made 20 Middle Platonism edit Main article Middle Platonism Middle Platonism 1st century BC 3rd century AD web 6 further investigated Plato s Unwritten Doctrines which drew on Pythagoras first principles of the Monad and the Dyad matter web 6 Middle Platonism proposed a hierarchy of being with God as its first principle at its top identifying it with Plato s Form of the Good 21 An influential proponent of Middle Platonism was Philo c 25 BC c 50 AD who employed Middle Platonic philosophy in his interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures and asserted a strong influence on early Christianity web 6 According to Craig D Allert Philo made a monumental contribution to the creation of a vocabulary for use in negative statements about God 22 For Philo God is undescribable and he uses terms which emphasize God s transcendence 22 Neo Platonism edit Main article Neo Platonism Neo Platonism was a mystical or contemplative form of Platonism which developed outside the mainstream of Academic Platonism web 7 It started with the writings of Plotinus 204 5 270 AD and ended with the closing of the Platonic Academy by Emperor Justinian in 529 AD when the pagan traditions were ousted web 8 It is a product of Hellenistic syncretism which developed due to the crossover between Greek thought and the Jewish scriptures and also gave birth to Gnosticism web 7 Proclus of Athens 412 485 C E played a crucial role in the transmission of Platonic philosophy from antiquity to the Middle Ages serving as head or successor diadochos sc of Plato of the Platonic Academy for over 50 years 23 His student Pseudo Dionysius had a far stretching Neo Platonic influence on Christianity and Christian mysticism web 7 Plotinus edit nbsp Plotinus 204 5 270 AD Plotinus 204 5 270 AD was the founder of Neo Platonism 24 In the Neo Platonic philosophy of Plotinus and Proclus the first principle became even more elevated as a radical unity which was presented as an unknowable Absolute 21 For Plotinus the One is the first principle from which everything else emanates 24 He took it from Plato s writings identifying the Good of the Republic as the cause of the other Forms with the One of the first hypothesis of the second part of the Parmenides 24 For Plotinus the One precedes the Forms 24 and is beyond Mind and indeed beyond Being 21 From the One comes the Intellect which contains all the Forms 24 The One is the principle of Being while the Forms are the principle of the essence of beings and the intelligibility which can recognize them as such 24 Plotinus s third principle is Soul the desire for objects external to itself The highest satisfaction of desire is the contemplation of the One 24 which unites all existents as a single all pervasive reality web 8 The One is radically simple and does not even have self knowledge since self knowledge would imply multiplicity 21 Nevertheless Plotinus does urge for a search for the Absolute turning inward and becoming aware of the presence of the intellect in the human soul note 6 initiating an ascent of the soul by abstraction or taking away culminating in a sudden appearance of the One 25 In the Enneads Plotinus writes Our thought cannot grasp the One as long as any other image remains active in the soul To this end you must set free your soul from all outward things and turn wholly within yourself with no more leaning to what lies outside and lay your mind bare of ideal forms as before of the objects of sense and forget even yourself and so come within sight of that One Carabine notes that Plotinus apophasis is not just a mental exercise an acknowledgement of the unknowability of the One but a means to ecstasis and an ascent to the unapproachable light that is God web 10 Pao Shen Ho investigating what are Plotinus methods for reaching henosis note 7 concludes that Plotinus mystical teaching is made up of two practices only namely philosophy and negative theology 28 According to Moore Plotinus appeals to the non discursive intuitive faculty of the soul by calling for a sort of prayer an invocation of the deity that will permit the soul to lift itself up to the unmediated direct and intimate contemplation of that which exceeds it V 1 6 web 8 Pao Shen Ho further notes that for Plotinus mystical experience is irreducible to philosophical arguments 28 The argumentation about henosis is preceded by the actual experience of it and can only be understood when henosis has been attained 28 Ho further notes that Plotinus s writings have a didactic flavour aiming to bring his own soul and the souls of others by way of Intellect to union with the One 28 As such the Enneads as a spiritual or ascetic teaching device akin to The Cloud of Unknowing 29 demonstrating the methods of philosophical and apophatic inquiry 30 Ultimately this leads to silence and the abandonment of all intellectual inquiry leaving contemplation and unity 31 Proclus edit Proclus 412 485 introduced the terminology used in apophatic and cataphatic theology 32 He did this in the second book of his Platonic Theology arguing that Plato states that the One can be revealed through analogy and that through negations dia ton apophaseon its transcendence over everything can be shown 32 For Proclus apophatic and cataphatic theology form a contemplatory pair with the apophatic approach corresponding to the manifestation of the world from the One and cataphatic theology corresponding to the return to the One 33 The analogies are affirmations which direct us toward the One while the negations underlie the confirmations being closer to the One 33 According to Luz Proclus also attracted students from other faiths including the Samaritan Marinus Luz notes that Marinus Samaritan origins with its Abrahamic notion of a single ineffable Name of God יהוה should also have been in many ways compatible with the school s ineffable and apophatic divine principle 34 Christianity editSee also Credo quia absurdum and Sola fide nbsp Engraving of Otto van Veen 1660 who negatively describes God as Quod oculus non vidit nec auris audivit Vulgate What no eye has seen nor ear heard 1 Corinthians 2 9 Apostolic Age edit The Book of Revelation 8 1 mentions the silence of the perpetual choir in heaven According to Dan Merkur The silence of the perpetual choir in heaven had mystical connotations because silence attends the disappearance of plurality during experiences of mystical oneness The term silence also alludes to the still small voice 1 Kings 19 12 whose revelation to Elijah on Mount Horeb rejected visionary imagery by affirming a negative theology 35 note 8 Early Church Fathers edit The Early Church Fathers were influenced by Philo 4 c 25 BC c 50 AD who saw Moses as the model of human virtue and Sinai as the archetype of man s ascent into the luminous darkness of God 36 His interpretation of Moses was followed by Clement of Alexandria Origen the Cappadocian Fathers Pseudo Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor 37 38 5 39 God s appearance to Moses in the burning bush was often elaborated on by the Early Church Fathers 37 especially Gregory of Nyssa c 335 c 395 38 5 39 realizing the fundamental unknowability of God 37 40 an exegesis which continued in the medieval mystical tradition 41 Their response is that although God is unknowable Jesus as person can be followed since following Christ is the human way of seeing God 42 Clement of Alexandria c 150 c 215 was an early proponent of apophatic theology 43 5 Clement holds that God is unknowable although God s unknowability concerns only his essence not his energies or powers 43 According to R A Baker in Clement s writings the term theoria develops further from a mere intellectual seeing toward a spiritual form of contemplation 44 Clement s apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the mystic vision of the soul 44 For Clement God is transcendent and immanent 45 According to Baker Clement s apophaticism is mainly driven not by Biblical texts but by the Platonic tradition 46 His conception of an ineffable God is a synthesis of Plato and Philo as seen from a Biblical perspective 47 According to Osborne it is a synthesis in a Biblical framework according to Baker while the Platonic tradition accounts for the negative approach the Biblical tradition accounts for the positive approach 48 Theoria and abstraction is the means to conceive of this ineffable God it is preceded by dispassion 49 According to Tertullian c 155 c 240 t hat which is infinite is known only to itself This it is which gives some notion of God while yet beyond all our conceptions our very incapacity of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is He is presented to our minds in His transcendent greatness as at once known and unknown 50 Saint Cyril of Jerusalem 313 386 in his Catechetical Homilies states For we explain not what God is but candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning Him For in what concerns God to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge 51 nbsp Filippo Lippi Vision of St Augustine c 1465 tempera Hermitage Museum Saint Petersburg Augustine of Hippo 354 430 defined God aliud aliud valde meaning other completely other in Confessions 7 10 16 52 wrote Si enim comprehendis non est Deus 53 meaning if you understand something it is not God in Sermo 117 3 5 54 PL 38 663 55 56 and a famous legend tells that while walking along the Mediterranean shoreline meditating on the mystery of the Trinity he met a child who with a seashell or a little pail was trying to pour the whole sea into a small hole dug in the sand Augustine told him that it was impossible to enclose the immensity of the sea in such a small opening and the child replied that it was equally impossible to try to understand the infinity of God within the limited confines of the human mind 57 58 59 The Chalcedonian Christological dogma edit See also Kenosis and eternal super kenosis The Christological dogma formulated by the Fourth Ecumenical Council held in Chalcedon in 451 is based on dyophysitism and hypostatic union concepts used to describe the union of humanity and divinity in a single hypostasis or individual existence that of Jesus Christ This remains transcendent to our rational categories a mystery which has to be guarded by apophatic language as it is a personal union of a singularly unique kind 60 Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite edit Apophatic theology found its most influential expression in the works of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite late 5th to early 6th century a student of Proclus 412 485 who combined a Christian worldview with Neo Platonic ideas 61 He is a constant factor in the contemplative tradition of the eastern Orthodox Churches and from the 9th century onwards his writings also had a strong impact on western mysticism 62 Dionysius the Areopagite was a pseudonym taken from Acts of the Apostles chapter 17 in which Paul gives a missionary speech to the court of the Areopagus in Athens 63 In verse 23 Paul makes a reference to an altar inscription dedicated to the Unknown God a safety measure honoring foreign gods still unknown to the Hellenistic world 63 For Paul Jesus Christ is this unknown God and as a result of Paul s speech Dionysius the Areopagite converts to Christianity 64 Yet according to Stang for Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite Athens is also the place of Neo Platonic wisdom and the term unknown God is a reversal of Paul s preaching toward an integration of Christianity with Neo Platonism and the union with the unknown God 64 According to Corrigan and Harrington Dionysius central concern is how a triune God who is utterly unknowable unrestricted being beyond individual substances beyond even goodness can become manifest to in and through the whole of creation in order to bring back all things to the hidden darkness of their source 65 Drawing on Neo Platonism Pseudo Dionysius described human ascent to divinity as a process of purgation illumination and union 62 Another Neo Platonic influence was his description of the cosmos as a series of hierarchies which overcome the distance between God and humans 62 Eastern Orthodox Christianity edit Main article Eastern Orthodox Church In Orthodox Christianity apophatic theology is taught as superior to cataphatic theology The fourth century Cappadocian Fathers note 9 stated a belief in the existence of God but an existence unlike that of everything else everything else that exists was created but the Creator transcends this existence is uncreated The essence of God is completely unknowable mankind can acquire an incomplete knowledge of God in His attributes propria positive and negative by reflecting upon and participating in His self revelatory operations energeiai 67 Gregory of Nyssa c 335 c 395 John Chrysostom c 349 407 and Basil the Great 329 379 emphasized the importance of negative theology to an orthodox understanding of God John of Damascus c 675 676 749 employed negative theology when he wrote that positive statements about God reveal not the nature but the things around the nature Maximus the Confessor 580 622 took over Pseudo Dionysius ideas and had a strong influence on the theology and contemplative practices of the Eastern Orthodox Churches 61 Gregory Palamas 1296 1359 formulated the definite theology of Hesychasm the Eastern Orthodox practices of contemplative prayer and theosis deification Influential 20th century Orthodox theologians include the Neo Palamist writers Vladimir Lossky John Meyendorff John S Romanides and Georges Florovsky Lossky argues based on his reading of Dionysius and Maximus Confessor that positive theology is always inferior to negative theology which is a step along the way to the superior knowledge attained by negation 68 This is expressed in the idea that mysticism is the expression of dogmatic theology par excellence 69 According to Lossky outside of directly revealed knowledge through Scripture and Sacred Tradition such as the Trinitarian nature of God God in His essence is beyond the limits of what human beings or even angels can understand He is transcendent in essence ousia Further knowledge must be sought in a direct experience of God or His indestructible energies through theoria vision of God 70 71 According to Aristotle Papanikolaou in Eastern Christianity God is immanent in his hypostasis or existences 72 Western Christianity edit nbsp In The Creation of Adam painted by Michelangelo c 1508 1512 the two index fingers are separated by a small gap 3 4 inch 1 9 cm 73 some scholars think that it represents the unattainability of divine perfection by man 74 Negative theology has a place in the Western Christian tradition as well The 9th century theologian John Scotus Erigena wrote We do not know what God is God Himself does not know what He is because He is not anything i e not any created thing Literally God is not because He transcends being 75 When he says He is not anything and God is not Scotus does not mean that there is no God but that God cannot be said to exist in the way that creation exists i e that God is uncreated He is using apophatic language to emphasise that God is other 76 Theologians like Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross San Juan de la Cruz exemplify some aspects of or tendencies towards the apophatic tradition in the West The medieval work The Cloud of Unknowing and Saint John s Dark Night of the Soul are particularly well known In 1215 apophatism became the official position of the Catholic Church which on the basis of Scripture and church tradition during the Fourth Lateran Council formulated the following dogma Between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude 77 note 10 The via eminentiae edit See also Credo ut intelligam and Fides et ratio Thomas Aquinas was born ten years later 1225 1274 and although in his Summa Theologiae he quotes Pseudo Dionysius 1 760 times 80 stating that Now because we cannot know what God is but rather what He is not we have no means for considering how God is but rather how He is not 81 82 and leaving the work unfinished because it was like straw compared to what had been revealed to him 83 his reading in a neo Aristotelian key 84 of the conciliar declaration overthrew its meaning inaugurating the analogical way as tertium between via negativa and via positiva the via eminentiae see also analogia entis In this way the believers see what attributes are common between them and God as well as the unique not human properly divine and not understandable way in respect of which God possesses that attributes 85 According to Adrian Langdon The distinction between univocal equivocal and analogous language and relations corresponds to the distinction between the via positiva via negativa and via eminentiae In Thomas Aquinas for example the via positiva undergirds the discussion of univocity the via negativa the equivocal and the via eminentiae the final defense of analogy 86 According to Catholic Encyclopedia the Doctor Angelicus and the scholastici declare that God is not absolutely unknowable and yet it is true that we cannot define Him adequately But we can conceive and name Him in an analogical way The perfections manifested by creatures are in God not merely nominally equivoce but really and positively since He is their source Yet they are not in Him as they are in the creature with a mere difference of degree nor even with a mere specific or generic difference univoce for there is no common concept including the finite and the Infinite They are really in Him in a supereminent manner eminenter which is wholly incommensurable with their mode of being in creatures We can conceive and express these perfections only by an analogy not by an analogy of proportion for this analogy rests on a participation in a common concept and as already said there is no element common to the finite and the Infinite but by an analogy of proportionality 87 Since then Thomism has played a decisive role in resizing the negative or apophatic tradition of the magisterium 88 89 20th century edit nbsp Herman Dooyeweerd Apophatic statements are still crucial to many modern theologians restarting in the 1800s by Soren Kierkegaard see his concept of the infinite qualitative distinction 90 91 up to Rudolf Otto Karl Barth see their idea of Wholly Other i e ganz Andere or totaliter aliter 92 93 94 the Ludwig Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and Martin Heidegger after his Kehre 95 96 C S Lewis in his book Miracles 1947 advocates the use of negative theology when first thinking about God in order to cleanse our minds of misconceptions He goes on to advocate refilling the mind with the truth about God untainted by mythology bad analogies or false mind pictures 97 The mid 20th century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd who is often associated with a neo Calvinistic tradition provides a philosophical foundation for understanding the impossibility of absolutely knowing God and yet the possibility of truly knowing something of God 98 Dooyeweerd made a sharp distinction between theoretical and pre theoretical attitudes of thought He argues that most of the discussion of knowledge of God presupposes theoretical knowledge which involves reflection and attempts to define and discuss Theoretical knowing for Dooyeweerd is never absolute always depends on religious presuppositions and cannot grasp either God or the law side Pre theoretical knowing on the other hand is intimate engagement exhibits a diverse range of aspects and can grasp at least the law side According to Dooyeweerd knowledge of God as God wishes to reveal it is pre theoretical immediate and intuitive never theoretical in nature 99 100 The philosopher Leo Strauss considered that the Bible for example should be treated as pre theoretical everyday rather than theoretical in what it contains 101 Ivan Illich 1926 2002 the historian and social critic can be read as an apophatic theologian according to a longtime collaborator Lee Hoinacki in a paper presented in memory of Illich called Why Philia 102 21st century edit Karen Armstrong in her book The Case for God 2009 notices a recovery of apophatic theology in postmodern theology 103 Philosopher and literary scholar William Franke particularly in his 2007 two volume collection On What Cannot Be Said and his 2014 monograph A Philosophy of the Unsayable puts forth that negative theology s exploration and performance of language s limitations is not simply one current among many in religious thought but is a kind of perennial counter philosophy to the philosophy of Logos that persistently challenges central tenets of Western thought throughout its history For Franke literature demonstrates the infinitely open nature of language which negative theology and related forms of philosophical thought seek to draw attention to Franke therefore argues that literature philosophy and theology begin to bleed into one another as they approach what he frames as the apophatic side of Western thought 104 Islam editVarious traditions and schools in Islam see Islamic schools and branches draw on sundry theologies in approaching God in Islam Allah Arabic الله or the ultimate reality Negative theology involves the use of ت ع ط يل ta til defined as setting aside canceling out negation or nullification 105 The followers of the Mu tazili school of Kalam the spread of which is often attributed to Wasil ibn Ata are often called the Mu aṭṭilah cancelers or negators a description sometimes employed derogatorily deriving from the school s descriptions of the Islamic God 106 Rajab ʿAli Tabrizi an Iranian and Shi ite philosopher and mystic of the 17th century is credited with instilling an apophatic theology in a generation of philosophers and theologians whose influence extended into the Qajar period 107 Mulla Rajab affirmed the completely unknowable unqualifiable and attributeless nature of God and upheld a general view concerning God s attributes which can only be negatively affirmed that is by affirmingly negating all that is not God about God 107 Shia Islam largely adopts negative theology note 11 108 In the words of the Persian Ismaili missionary Abu Yaqub al Sijistani There does not exist a tanzih transcendence more brilliant and more splendid than that by which we establish the absolute transcendence of our Originator through the use of these phrases in which a negative and a negative of a negative apply to the thing denied 109 Literalists completely reject and condemn any negation that would clash with the wording of the Islamic Scriptures or with the narratives ascribed to the Islamic Prophet They therefore hold that descriptors and qualifiers that occur in the Qur an and in the canonized religious traditions even if seeming or sounding humanlike such as hand finger or foot are to be wholly affirmed as attributes of God not limbs 110 Many Sunnites like the Ash aris and Maturidis adhere to some middle path or synthesis between negation and anthropomorphism though the kind of each combination of negation and affirmation varies greatly 110 Judaism editSee also Tzimtzum Inherent paradox Divine simplicity Jewish thought and Free will in theology The paradox of free will nbsp Maimonides 1138 1204 AD Maimonides 1135 1138 1204 was the most influential medieval Jewish exponent of the via negativa 3 Maimonides along with Samuel ibn Tibbon draws on Bahya ibn Paquda citation needed who shows that our inability to describe God is related to the fact of His absolute unity God as the entity which is truly One האחד האמת must be free of properties and is thus unlike anything else and indescribable citation needed In The Guide for the Perplexed Maimonides states God s existence is absolute and it includes no composition and we comprehend only the fact that He exists not His essence Consequently it is a false assumption to hold that He has any positive attribute still less has He accidents מקרה which could be described by an attribute Hence it is clear that He has no positive attribute however the negative attributes are necessary to direct the mind to the truths which we must believe When we say of this being that it exists we mean that its non existence is impossible it is living it is not dead it is the first its existence is not due to any cause it has power wisdom and will it is not feeble or ignorant He is One there are not more Gods than one Every attribute predicated of God denotes either the quality of an action or when the attribute is intended to convey some idea of the Divine Being itself and not of His actions the negation of the opposite 111 According to Rabbi Yosef Wineberg Maimonides stated that God is knowledge and saw His Essence Being and knowledge as completely one a perfect unity and not a composite at all 112 Wineberg quotes Maimonides as stating This form of unity wherein G d s knowledge and so on is one with G d Himself is beyond the capacity of the mouth to express beyond the capacity of the ear to hear and beyond the capacity of the heart of man to apprehend clearly 112 According to Fagenblat it is only in the modern period that negative theology really gains importance in Jewish thought 3 Yeshayahu Leibowitz 1903 1994 was a prominent modern exponent of Jewish negative theology 113 According to Leibowitz a person s faith is his commitment to obey God meaning God s commandments and this has nothing to do with a person s image of God This must be so because Leibowitz thought that God cannot be described that God s understanding is not man s understanding and thus all the questions asked of God are out of place 114 Jacques Derrida edit The work of Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida and in particular his critical method called deconstruction has frequently been compared to negative theology and led to renewed interest in apophaticism in the late 20th century even among continental philosophers and literary scholars who may not have otherwise have been particularly invested in theological issues 115 Conversely the perception that deconstruction resembled or essentially was a form of secular negative theology also according to Derrida himself took the form of an accusation from his critics implicitly positing both negative theology and deconstruction as being elaborate ways of saying nothing of any substance or importance However Derrida strongly repudiated this comparison for much of his career arguing that any resemblance between his thought and apophaticism is purely superficial Derrida argued that the aims of negative theology to demonstrate the ultimate incomprehensible transcendent reality of God are a form of ontotheology which runs fundamentally counter to deconstruction s aim of purging Western thought of its pervasive metaphysics of presence 116 Later in his career such in as his essay Sauf le nom Derrida comes to see apophatic theology as potentially but not necessarily a means through which the intractable inadequacies of language and the ontological difficulties which proceed from them can brought to our attention and explored 117 There is one apophasis that can in effect respond to correspond to correspond with the most insatiable desire of God according to the history and the event of its manifestation or the secret of its non manifestation The other apophasis the other voice can remain readily foreign to all desire in any case to every anthropotheomorphic form of desire 118 Scholars such as Stephen Shakespeare have noted that despite Derrida s pervasive concern with many aspects of Jewish theology and identity his writing on negative theology draws almost exclusively on Christian writing and couches the topic in the language of Christianity generally Derrida s thought in general but in particular his later writing on negative theology was highly influential in the development of the Weak Theology movement and of postmodern theology as a whole 119 David Wood and Robert Bernasconi have highlighted how Derrida explains what deconstruction is in an overwhelmingly negative apophatic fashion 120 Indian parallels edit nbsp Adi Shankara 788 820 AD Early Indian philosophical works which have apophatic themes include the Principal Upanishads 800 BC to the start of common era and the Brahma Sutras from 450 BC and 200 AD An expression of negative theology is found in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad where Brahman is described as neti neti or neither this nor that 121 Further use of apophatic theology is found in the Brahma Sutras which state Whenever we deny something unreal it is in reference to something real 122 Buddhist philosophy has also strongly advocated the way of negation beginning with the Buddha s own theory of anatta not atman not self which denies any truly existent and unchanging essence of a person Madhyamaka is a Buddhist philosophical school founded by Nagarjuna 2nd 3rd century AD which is based on a fourfold negation of all assertions and concepts and promotes the theory of emptiness shunyata Apophatic assertions are also an important feature of Mahayana sutras especially the prajnaparamita genre These currents of negative theology are visible in all forms of Buddhism Apophatic movements in medieval Hindu philosophy are visible in the works of Shankara 8th century a philosopher of Advaita Vedanta non dualism and Bhartṛhari 5th century a grammarian While Shankara holds that the transcendent noumenon Brahman is realized by the means of negation of every phenomenon including language Bhartṛhari theorizes that language has both phenomenal and noumenal dimensions the latter of which manifests Brahman 123 In Advaita Brahman is defined as being Nirguna or without qualities Anything imaginable or conceivable is not deemed to be the ultimate reality 124 The Taittiriya hymn speaks of Brahman as one where the mind does not reach Yet the Hindu scriptures often speak of Brahman s positive aspect For instance Brahman is often equated with bliss These contradictory descriptions of Brahman are used to show that the attributes of Brahman are similar to ones experienced by mortals but not the same Negative theology also figures in the Buddhist and Hindu polemics The arguments go something like this Is Brahman an object of experience If so how do you convey this experience to others who have not had a similar experience The only way possible is to relate this unique experience to common experiences while explicitly negating their sameness Baha i Faith editBaha i s believe that God is an ultimately unknowable being see God in the Bahaʼi Faith and Baha i writings state that there can be no tie of direct intercourse to bind the one true God with His creation and no resemblance whatever can exist between the transient and the Eternal the contingent and the Absolute According to the Baha i Faith the only way to grow nearer to God is to gain knowledge of the Manifestation of God who is a reflection of God s reality in a similar way to how a mirror reflects an image of the sun Stephen Lambden has written a paper entitled The Background and Centrality of Apophatic Theology in Babi and Baha i Scripture 125 and Ian Kluge has also looked into the Apophatic Theology and the Baha i faith in the second part of his paper Neoplatonism and the Baha i Writings 126 Apophatic theology and atheism editEven though the via negativa essentially rejects theological understanding in and of itself as a path to God some have sought to make it into an intellectual exercise by describing God only in terms of what God is not One problem noted with this approach is that there seems to be no fixed basis on deciding what God is not unless the Divine is understood as an abstract experience of full aliveness unique to each individual consciousness and universally the perfect goodness applicable to the whole field of reality 127 Apophatic theology is often accused of being a version of atheism or agnosticism since it cannot say truly that God exists 128 The comparison is crude however for conventional atheism treats the existence of God as a predicate that can be denied God is nonexistent whereas negative theology denies that God has predicates 129 God or the Divine is without being able to attribute qualities about what He is would be the prerequisite of positive theology in negative theology that distinguishes theism from atheism Negative theology is a complement to not the enemy of positive theology 130 Since religious experience or consciousness of the holy or sacred is not reducible to other kinds of human experience an abstract understanding of religious experience cannot be used as evidence or proof that religious discourse or praxis can have no meaning or value 131 In apophatic theology the negation of theisms in the via negativa also requires the negation of their correlative atheisms if the dialectical method it employs is to maintain integrity 132 See also editBuddhism Anatta Dharmadhatu Dharmakaya Sunyata Tathata Vipassana Christianity Christian contemplation Christian meditation Conceptions of God Existence of God Monastic silence Tabor Light Hinduism Neti neti Self enquiry Islam Fana Sufism Ta tili Judaism Tzimtzum Free will in theology Judaism Taoism Taoism Theology Philosophy Nihilism Existence of God Fideism Limit experience Rational fideismNotes edit Hesiod s Theogony was highly referred in the time of Plato 428 427 or 424 423 348 347 BCE and Plato s Timaeus shows a profound familiarity with Hesiod s Theogony 9 See also Timaeus e39 e41 web 4 Richard G Geldard M ore than any other pre Socratic thinker Heraclitus embodies the apophatic method He unsaid the myths of the Archaic tradition on his way to transforming the ideas of divinity through the divine Logos It was a transformation affirmed by Plotinus 800 years later 11 Identified by various commentators with the Form of Unity further explanation needed citation needed See The Republic 508d e 511b 516b As opposed to mere rationality Compare Korean Chon Zen master Jinuls tracing back the radiance Question What is the mind of void and calm numinous awareness Chinul What has just asked me this question is precisely your mind of void and calm numinous awareness Why not trace back its radiance rather than search for it outside For your benefit I will now point straight to your original mind so that you can awaken to it Clear your minds and listen to my words web 9 See also Buswell Robert E 1991 Tracing Back the Radiance Chinul s Korean Way of Zen University of Hawaii Press The Neoplatonic concept of henosis has precedents in the Greek mystery religions 26 as well as parallels in Eastern philosophy 27 According to Michel Masson Elijah s theophany is an apophatic revelation a mystical experience which is akin to nirvana and Bohme s Ungrund Michel Masson 2001 Rois et prophetes dans le cycle d Elie In Lemaire Andre 2001 Prophetes et rois Bible et Proche Orient Paris Editions du Cerf pp 119 131 ISBN 978 2 204 06622 8 Quoted by Lasine Stuart 2012 Weighing Hearts Character Judgment and the Ethics of Reading the Bible London Bloomsbury Publishing p 121 ISBN 978 0 567 42674 1 Basil the Great 330 379 who was bishop of Caesarea Basil s younger brother Gregory of Nyssa c 332 395 who was bishop of Nyssa and a close friend Gregory of Nazianzus 329 389 who became Patriarch of Constantinople 66 Latin Inter Creatorem et creaturam non potest similitudo notari quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo 78 79 Encyclopaedia Iranica God Himself comprises two ontological levels first of the Essence ḏat This is said to be forever inconceivable unimaginable above all thought beyond all knowledge It can only be described by God through revelations and can only be apprehended by a negative apophatic theology This recalls the Deus absconditus the unknowable that forms the hidden esoteric level of God the level of the absolute abscondity of God References edit a b McCombs 2013 p 84 Belzen amp Geels 2003 p 84 87 a b c Fagenblat 2017 p 4 a b c d e Carabine 2015 p 1 a b c d Meredith 2002 p 545 Berthold 1985 p 9 a b c d e f Platt 2011 p 52 Platt 2011 p 51 Boys Stones amp Haubold 2009 p xiviii Platt 2011 p 53 Geldard 2000 p 23 Cook 2013 p 109 111 Cook 2013 p 111 112 Cook 2013 p 109 a b Cook 2013 p 112 a b c d e f Cook 2013 p 113 Kahn 1998 p 61 a b c Phillips 2008 p 234 Carabine 2015 p 21 Carabine 2015 p 21 22 a b c d Mooney 2009 p 7 a b Allert 2002 p 89 Zalta Edward N Proclus Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Metaphysics Research Lab Retrieved 29 October 2023 a b c d e f g Gerson 2012 Mooney 2009 p 8 Angus 1975 p 52 Gregorios 2002 a b c d Ho 2015 p 20 Ho 2015 p 20 21 Ho 2015 p 26 Ho 2015 p 25 27 a b Louth 2012 p 139 a b Louth 2012 p 140 Luz 2017 p 149 Merkur 2014 p 331 Buxhoeveden amp Woloschak 2011 p 152 a b c Louth 2003 p 220 a b Lane 2007 p 67 a b Boersma 2013 p 243 Mayes 2016 p 117 Glasscoe 1992 p 57 Louth 2003 p 221 a b Hagg 2006 a b Baker 2000 p 88 Baker 2000 p 89 Baker 2000 p 92 92 Baker 2000 p 92 Baker 2000 p 92 93 Baker 2000 p 98 103 Tertullian Apologeticus 17 Cyril Archbishop of Jerusalem c 335 Catechetical Homilies VI 2 in Schaff Philip ed Nicene and Ante Nicene Fathers 2nd Series vol VII Peabody Mass Hendrickson Publishers Inc published 1994 p 33 retrieved 2008 02 01 Vessey Mark ed 2012 A Companion to Augustine With the assistance of Shelley Reid Hoboken New Jersey John Wiley amp Sons p 107 ISBN 978 1 405 15946 3 Latin text Fitzgerald Allan D ed 1999 Augustine Through the Ages An Encyclopedia Grand Rapids Michigan Wm B Eerdmans Publishing p 389 ISBN 978 0 802 83843 8 Bretzke James T 1998 Consecrated Phrases A Latin Theological Dictionary Latin Expressions Commonly Found in Theological Writings Saint John s Abbey Collegeville Liturgical Press p 131 ISBN 978 0 814 65880 2 Migne Jacques Paul ed 1841 Patrologia Latina Vol 38 Wm B Eerdmans p 663 ISBN 978 0 802 83843 8 Augustine 2010 Introduction p XIII Selections from Confessions and Other Essential Writings Annotated and Explained Contributor Joseph T Kelley Woodstock Vermont SkyLight Paths Publishing ISBN 978 1 594 73282 9 Myers Rawley 1996 St Augustine The Saints Show Us Christ Daily Readings on the Spiritual Life San Francisco Ignatius Press ISBN 978 1 681 49547 7 Alister McGrath 2002 Knowing Christ New York City Crown Publishing Group p 29 ISBN 978 0 385 50721 9 Gergis Emmanuel 2015 Chapter 12 T F Torrance and the Christological Realism of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria pp 267 285 In Baker Matthew Speidell Todd eds T F Torrance and Eastern Orthodoxy Theology in Reconciliation Eugene Oregon Wipf and Stock Publishers p 279 ISBN 978 1 498 20814 7 a b Berthold 1985 p 9 a b c MacCulloch 2010 p 439 a b Stang 2011 p 12 a b Stang 2011 p 13 Corrigan amp Harrington 2014 Commentary on Song of Songs Letter on the Soul Letter on Ascesis and the Monastic Life World Digital Library Retrieved 6 March 2013 McGinn Bernard 2014 4 Hidden God and Hidden Self pp 85ff In DeConick April D Adamson Grant eds Histories of the Hidden God Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic Esoteric and Mystical Traditions Abingdon on Thames Routledge ISBN 978 1 844 65687 5 Lossky Vladimir 1976 The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church Crestwood Yonkers SVS Press p 26 ISBN 978 0 913 83631 6 Lossky Vladimir 1976 p 9 Lossky Vladimir 1976 p 81 Lossky Vladimir 1964 The Vision of God Leighton Buzzard Faith Press p 26 Papanikolaou Aristotle 2006 Being With God Trinity Apophaticism and Divine Human Communion 1st Edition Notre Dame Indiana University of Notre Dame Press p 2 ISBN 978 0 268 03830 4 Lubbock Tom January 5 2007 Buonarroti Michelangelo The Creation of Adam 1510 The Independent Northcliffe House Kensington Retrieved April 26 2023 Tallis Raymond 2010 Michelangelo s Finger An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence Ormond House in Bloomsbury London Borough of Camden Atlantic Books pp v vi ISBN 978 1 848 87552 4 Quote on Google Books Indick William 2015 The Digital God How Technology Will Reshape Spirituality Jefferson North Carolina McFarland p 179 ISBN 978 0 786 49892 5 CCC 43 in Latin DS 806 in Latin CCC 43 Ware Kallistos 1963 The Orthodox Church London Penguin Group p 73 ISBN 0 14 020592 6 ST 1a q 3 prologue Benziger Bros edition 1947 Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province White Roger M 2010 Talking about God The Concept of Analogy and the Problem of Religious Language Farnham Ashgate Publishing p 189 ISBN 978 1 409 40036 3 Murray Paul 2013 10 The collapse the silence Aquinas at Prayer The Bible Mysticism and Poetry London A amp C Black ISBN 978 1 441 10755 8 Przywara 2014 p 38 Thomas Aquinas stands out as Aristotle s most important medieval commentator both for having clarified received notions of analogy and for assessing its theological uses Thomas Aquinas Quaestiones disputatae de potentia q 7 a 5 ad 2 Cited in International Theological Commission 2012 La teologia oggi prospettive principi e criteri Theology Today Perspectives Principia and Criteria Holy See in Italian and English at n 97 Langdon 2014 p 189a 189b nbsp One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain Sauvage George 1913 Analogy In Herbermann Charles ed Catholic Encyclopedia New York Robert Appleton Company Payton James R Jr 2007 POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE THEOLOGY pp 72 78 Light from the Christian East An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition Downers Grove Illinois IVP Academic ISBN 978 0 830 82594 3 See for example the Regensburg lecture delivered on 12 September 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language Kierkegaard Soren 1941 Training in Christianity and the Edifying discourse which accompanied it Transl by Walter Lowrie Oxford University Press p 139 the infinite qualitative difference between God and man Law David R 1993 1989 Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian illustrated reprint ed Oxford Clarendon Press ISBN 978 0 198 26336 4 Webb Stephen H 1991 Re figuring Theology The Rhetoric of Karl Barth Albany New York SUNY Press p 87 ISBN 978 1 438 42347 0 Elkins James 2011 Iconoclasm and the Sublime Two Implicit Religious Discourses in Art History pp 133 151 In Ellenbogen Josh Tugendhaft Aaron eds Idol Anxiety Redwood City California Stanford University Press p 147 ISBN 978 0 804 76043 0 Marina Jacqueline 2010 1997 26 Holiness pp 235 242 In Taliaferro Charles Draper Paul Quinn Philip L eds A Companion to Philosophy of Religion Hoboken New Jersey John Wiley amp Sons p 238 ISBN 978 1 444 32016 9 Noble Ivana 2002 Apophatic Elements in Derrida s Deconstruction pp 83 93 In Pokorny Petr Roskovec Jan eds Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Exegesis Tubingen Mohr Siebeck pp 89 90 ISBN 978 3 161 47894 9 Nesteruk Alexei 2008 The Universe as Communion Towards a Neo Patristic Synthesis of Theology and Science Bloomsbury Bloomsbury Publishing p 96 according to Heidegger after his Kehre the oblivion of Being was effected by this Being itself as its withdrawal and it is through this withdrawal Being manifested itself although in an characteristically apophatic way ISBN 978 0 567 18922 6 Brazier P H 2012 Transposition and Analogy pp 181 83 C S Lewis Revelation Conversion and Apologetics Eugene Oregon Wipf and Stock ISBN 978 1 610 97718 0 Friesen J Glenn The religious dialectic revisited PDF jgfriesen files Retrieved 5 May 2018 VanDrunen David 2009 Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought Grand Rapids MI Eerdmans pp 351 68 ISBN 978 0 802 86443 7 Skillen James W Philosophy of the Cosmonimic Idea Herman Dooyeweerd s Political and Legal Thought First Principles Intercollegiate Studies Institute Archived from the original on 5 May 2018 Retrieved 5 May 2018 Smith Gregory B 2008 Between Eternities On the Tradition of Political Philosophy Past Present and Future Lanham Maryland Lexington Books p 199 ISBN 978 0 739 12077 4 Hoinacki Lee Archived 2016 03 03 at the Wayback Machine Blackburn Simon 4 July 2009 All quiet on the God front The Guardian Guardian News and Media Retrieved 7 April 2017 Franke William 2014 Pre face A Philosophy of the Unsayable University of Notre Dame Press pp 1 19 ISBN 978 0 268 02894 7 Bosworth C E van Donzel E Heinrichs W P Lecomte G Bearman P J Bianquis T 2000 Encyclopaedia of Islam Vol X T U New ed Leiden Netherlands Brill p 342 ISBN 9004112111 Hughes Thomas Patrick 1994 A Dictionary of Islam Chicago Kazi Publications p 425 ISBN 978 0935782707 a b Faruque Muhammad U and Mohammed Rustom Rajab ʿAli Tabrizi s Refutation of Ṣadrian Metaphysics PDF mohammedrustom com Retrieved 3 May 2018 Amir Moezzi Mohammad Ali Shiʿite doctrine Encyclopaedia Iranica Columbia University Retrieved 3 May 2018 Walker Paul E 1993 Early Philosophical Shiism The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Aba Ya qab al Sijistani Cambridge Cambridge University Press p 78 ISBN 978 0521060820 a b Campo Juan Eduardo 2009 Encyclopedia of Islam New York City Infobase Publishing pp 45 46 ISBN 978 1 438 12696 8 The Guide for the Perplexed 1 58 a b Shaar Hayichud Vehaemunah Ch 8 Fagenblat 2017 p 2 Zev Golan God Man and Nietzsche A Startling Dialogue between Judaism and Modern Philosophers New York iUniverse 2008 p 43 Jacques Derrida 1992 Coward Harold ed Derrida and Negative Theology Albany N Y State University of New York Press p 128 Shakespeare Stephen 2009 Derrida and Theology London T amp T Clark pp 100 111 ISBN 9780567032409 Shakespeare Stephen 2009 Derrida and Theology London T amp T Clark pp 111 123 ISBN 9780567032409 Derrida Jacques 1995 On the Name Stanford Stanford UP p 36 ISBN 0804725551 Caputo John D 2006 The Weakness of God Bloomington Indiana UP ISBN 0 253 34704 1 Wood David and Bernasconi Robert 1988 Derrida and Differance Evanston Northwestern University Press Tharaud Barry Emerson for the Twenty First Century Global Perspectives on an American Icon Rosemont Publishing and Printing Corp 2010 p 453 ISBN 978 0 87413 091 1 Verse III 2 22 Brahma Sutra Translated by Swami Gambhirananda Coward Harold G and Foshay Toby Derrida and Negative Theology State University of New York 1992 p 21 ISBN 0 7914 0964 3 Renard John Responses to One Hundred One Questions on Hinduism Paulist Press 1999 p 75 ISBN 0 8091 3845 X Lambden Stephen The Background and Centrality of Apophatic Theology in Babi and Baha i Scripture Studies in the Babi and Baha i Religions Revisioning the Sacred New Perspectives on a Baha i Theology Studies in the Babi and Baha i Religions 8 37 78 Kluge Ian Neoplatonism and the Baha i Writings Part 2 Lights of Irfan 12 105 193 Ponde Luiz Felipe 2003 Critica e profecia A filosofia da religiao em Dostoievski Sao Paulo Editora 34 pp 74 92 ISBN 8573262842 Jacobs Jonathan D 2015 7 The Ineffable Inconceivable and Incomprehensible God Fundamentality and Apophatic Theology pp 158 176 In Kvanvig Jonathan ed Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Volume 6 Oxford University Press p 168 ISBN 978 0 198 72233 5 Fagenblat 2017 p 3 Bryson 2016 p 114 Lonergan Bernard 1972 Method in Theology New York N Y Seabury Press ISBN 0 8164 2204 4 Buckley Michael J 2004 Denying and Disclosing God The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism New Haven C T Yale University Press pp 120ff ISBN 0 30009384 5 Sources editPrinted sources edit Allert Craig D 2002 Revelation Truth Canon and Interpretation Studies in Justin Martyr s Dialogue with Trypho Leiden BRILL ISBN 978 9 004 12619 0 Angus Samuel 1975 1920 The Mystery Religions A Study in the Religious Background of Early Christianity Courier Dover Publications ISBN 0 486 23124 0 Baker R A 2000 Spiritual Contemplation in Clement of Aleandria s Stromateis Belzen Jacob A Geels Antoon 2003 Mysticism A Variety of Psychological Perspectives Rodopi ISBN 9 04201125 4 Berthold George C 1985 Introduction to Maximus the Confessor Selected Writings Mahwah NJ Paulist Press ISBN 978 0 809 12659 0 Boersma Hans 2013 Embodiment and Virtue in Gregory of Nyssa An Anagogical Approach Oxford University Press ISBN 9780191651328 Boys Stones G R Haubold J H 2009 Plato and Hesiod Oxford University Press Bryson Michael E 2016 The Atheist Milton Abingdon on Thames Routledge ISBN 978 1 317 04095 8 Carabine Deirdre 2015 The Unknown God Negative Theology in the Platonic Tradition Plato to Eriugena Eugene Oregon Wipf and Stock Publishers Cook Brendan 2013 Pursuing Eudaimonia Re appropriating the Greek Philosophical Foundations of the Christian Apophatic Tradition Cambridge Scholars Publishing Corrigan Kevin Harrington L Michael 2014 Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Fagenblat Michael ed 2017 Negative Theology as Jewish Modernity Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0 253 02504 3 Geldard Richard G 2000 Remembering Heraclitus Richard Geldard Gerson Lloyd 2012 Plotinus Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Glasscoe Door Marion ed 1992 The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England Exeter Symposium V Papers Read at the Devon Centre Dartington Hall July 1992 Woodbridge Suffolk Boydell amp Brewer ISBN 978 0 859 91346 1 Gregorios Paulos 2002 Neoplatonism and Indian Philosophy SUNY Press Hagg Henny Fiska 2006 Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 199 28808 3 Ho Pao Shen 2015 Plotinus Mystical Teaching of Henosis An Interpretation in the Light of the Metaphysics of the One Peter Lang GmbH Kahn Charles H 1998 Plato and the Socratic Dialogue The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form Cambridge University Press Lane Belden C 2007 The Solace of Fierce Landscapes Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199760428 Langdon Adrian 2014 God the Eternal Contemporary Trinity Eternity and Time in Karl Barth Eugene Oregon Wipf and Stock Publisher ISBN 978 1 610 97998 6 Louth Andrew 2003 Holiness and the Vision of God in the Eastern Fathers in Barton Stephen C ed Holiness Past and Present A amp C Black Louth Andrew 2007 The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition From Plato to Denys Oxford University Press Louth Andrew 2012 Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology in Hollywood Amy Beckman Patricia Z eds The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism Cambridge University Press Luz Menahem 2017 Marinus Abrahamic notions of the Soul and One pp 145ff in Layne Danielle Butorac David D eds Proclus and his Legacy Berlin Walter de Gruyter GmbH amp Co KG ISBN 978 3 110 47162 5 MacCulloch Diarmaid 2010 A History of Christianity Penguin ISBN 978 0 141 02189 8 Mayes Andrew D 2016 Learning the Language of the Soul A Spiritual Lexicon Collegeville Minnesota Liturgical Press ISBN 978 0 814 64751 6 McCombs Richard 2013 The Paradoxical Rationality of Soren Kierkegaard Bloomington Indiana Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0 253 00647 9 Meredith Anthony 2002 Patristic Spirituality in Byrne Peter Houlden Leslie eds Companion Encyclopedia of Theology Routledge ISBN 9781134922017 Merkur Dan 2014 From Seer to Saint Psychotherapeutic Change in the Book of Revelation pp 316ff in Ashton John ed Revealed Wisdom Studies in Apocalyptic in honour of Christopher Rowland Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity Leiden BRILL ISBN 978 9 004 27204 0 Mooney Hilary Anne Marie 2009 Theophany The Appearing of God According to the Writings of Johannes Scottus Eriugena Mohr Siebeck Phillips D C 2008 Theories of Teaching and Learning in Curren Randall ed A Companion to the Philosophy of Education John Wiley amp Sons Platt Verity Jane 2011 Facing the Gods Epiphany and Representation in Graeco Roman Art Literature and Religion Cambridge University Press Przywara Erich 2014 Analogia Entis Metaphysics Original Structure and Universal Rhythm Transl by John R Betz David Bentley Hart Grand Rapids Michigan Wm B Eerdmans Publishing ISBN 978 0 802 86859 6 Stang Charles M 2011 Dionysius Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym in Stang Paul M Coakley Sarah eds Re thinking Dionysius the Areopagite John Wiley amp Sons Buxhoeveden Daniel Woloschak Gayle eds 2011 Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church 1 ed Farnham Ashgate ISBN 9781409481614 Web sources edit Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy negative theology Blackwell Reference Online a b Living Without a Why An Interview with Deirdre Carabine Holos Forum for a New Worldview Vol 5 No 1 2009 Online Etymology Dictionary apophatic a b ellopsos net Plato s TIMAEUS Visible and created Gods Timaeus 39e 41d primary source a b c Encyclopedia of Plato Plato Archived 2017 04 12 at the Wayback Machine a b c Moore Edward Middle Platonism Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy a b c Moore Edward Neo Platonism Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy a b c Moore Edward Plotinus Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy zenmind org Tracing Back the Radiance Centre for sacred Sciences Living Without a Why An Interview with Deirdre Carabine Holos Forum for a New Worldview Vol 5 No 1 2009 Further reading editDavies Oliver Turner Denys eds 2002 Silence and the Word Negative Theology and Incarnation Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 139 43483 6 Franke William 2014 A Philosophy of the Unsayable Notre Dame Indiana University of Notre Dame Press ISBN 978 0 268 07977 2 Karahan Anne 2013 Allen Brent Markus Vinzent eds The Image of God in Byzantine Cappadocia and the Issue of Supreme Transcendence Studia Patristica LIX Papers presented at the Sixteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2011 7 Leuven Peeters Publishers 97 111 ISBN 978 9 042 92992 0 Karahan Anne 2010 Jane Baun Averil Cameron Mark Julian Edwards Markus Vinzent eds The Issue of perixwrhsis in Byzantine Holy Images Studia Patristica XLIV XLIX Papers presented at the Fifteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2007 Leuven Peeters Publishers 27 34 ISBN 978 9 042 92370 6 Keller Catherine 2014 Cloud of the Impossible Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement New York City Columbia University Press ISBN 978 0 2 315 3870 1 Wolfson Elliot R 2014 Giving Beyond the Gift Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania New York City Fordham University Press ISBN 978 0 823 25570 2 Yannaras Christos 1999 Apophatic Theology In Fahlbusch Erwin ed Encyclopedia of Christianity Vol 1 Grand Rapids Michigan Wm B Eerdmans pp 105 106 ISBN 0802824137 dead link External links edit nbsp Look up apophatic in Wiktionary the free dictionary nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Apophatic theology General God and Other Necessary Beings Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy At the Origins of Modern Atheism Michael J Buckley Yale University Press 1987 ISBN 0 300 03719 8 Christian material Negative Theology Archived 2011 07 19 at the Wayback Machine Austin Cline Apophatic theology The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions Saying Nothing about No Thing Apophatic Theology in the Classical World Jonah Winters Jewish material Paradoxes in The Aryeh Kaplan Reader Aryeh Kaplan Artscroll 1983 ISBN 0 89906 174 5 Understanding God Archived 2010 12 19 at the Wayback Machine Ch2 in The Handbook of Jewish Thought Aryeh Kaplan Moznaim 1979 ISBN 0 940118 49 1 Chovot ha Levavot 1 8 Bahya ibn Paquda Online class Yaakov Feldman Attributes jewishencyclopedia com Modern material Derrida and Negative Theology ed H G Coward SUNY 1992 ISBN 0 7914 0964 3 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Apophatic theology amp oldid 1221516710, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.