Apophatic theology

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 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 (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 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 was the last head of the Platonic Academy; his student Pseudo-Dionysius had a far-stretching Neo-Platonic influence on Christianity and Christian mysticism.[web 7]

Plotinus, 204/5–270 AD.

Plotinus (204/5–270 AD) was the founder of Neo-Platonism.[23] 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.[23] 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.[23] For Plotinus, the One precedes the Forms,[23] and "is beyond Mind and indeed beyond Being."[21] From the One comes the Intellect, which contains all the Forms.[23] 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.[23] Plotinus's third principle is Soul, the desire for objects external to itself. The highest satisfaction of desire is the contemplation of the One,[23] 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.[24] 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."[27] 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."[27] The argumentation about henosis is preceded by the actual experience of it, and can only be understood when henosis has been attained.[27] 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."[27] As such, the Enneads as a spiritual or ascetic teaching device, akin to The Cloud of Unknowing,[28] demonstrating the methods of philosophical and apophatic inquiry.[29] Ultimately, this leads to silence and the abandonment of all intellectual inquiry, leaving contemplation and unity.[30]

Proclus (412-485) introduced the terminology used in apophatic and cataphatic theology.[31] 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."[31] 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.[32] The analogies are affirmations which direct us toward the One, while the negations underlie the confirmations, being closer to the One.[32] 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."[33]

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.[34][note 8]

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."[35] His interpretation of Moses was followed by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus the Confessor.[36][37][5][38]

God's appearance to Moses in the burning bush was often elaborated on by the Early Church Fathers,[36] especially Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395),[37][5][38] realizing the fundamental unknowability of God;[36][39] an exegesis which continued in the medieval mystical tradition.[40] Their response is that, although God is unknowable, Jesus as person can be followed, since "following Christ is the human way of seeing God."[41]

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) was an early proponent of apophatic theology.[42][5] Clement holds that God is unknowable, although God's unknowability, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers.[42] 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.[43] Clement's apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the "mystic vision of the soul."[43] For Clement, God is transcendent and immanent.[44] According to Baker, Clement's apophaticism is mainly driven not by Biblical texts, but by the Platonic tradition.[45] His conception of an ineffable God is a synthesis of Plato and Philo, as seen from a Biblical perspective.[46] 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.[47] Theoria and abstraction is the means to conceive of this ineffable God; it is preceded by dispassion.[48]

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.[49]

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.[50]

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,[51] wrote Si [enim] comprehendis, non est Deus,[52] meaning "if you understand [something], it is not God", in Sermo 117.3.5[53] (PL 38, 663),[54][55] 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.[56][57][58]

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.[59]

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.[60] 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.[61]

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.[62] 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."[62] For Paul, Jesus Christ is this unknown God, and as a result of Paul's speech Dionysius the Areopagite converts to Christianity.[63] 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."[63]

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."[64] Drawing on Neo-Platonism, Pseudo-Dionysius described human ascent to divinity as a process of purgation, illumination and union.[61] Another Neo-Platonic influence was his description of the cosmos as a series of hierarchies, which overcome the distance between God and humans.[61]

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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).[66] 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.[60] 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.[67] This is expressed in the idea that mysticism is the expression of dogmatic theology par excellence.[68]

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).[69][70] According to Aristotle Papanikolaou, in Eastern Christianity, God is immanent in his hypostasis or existences.[71]

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)]:[72] some scholars think that it represents the unattainability of divine perfection by man.[73]

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.[74]

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".[75]

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.[76][note 10]

Thomas Aquinas was born ten years later (1225-1274) and, although in his Summa Theologiae he quotes Pseudo-Dionysius 1,760 times,[79] 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"[80][81] and leaving the work unfinished because it was like "straw" compared to what had been revealed to him,[82] his reading in a neo-Aristotelian key[83] 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.[84]

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.[85]

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.[86]

Since then Thomism has played a decisive role in resizing the negative or apophatic tradition of the magisterium.[87][88]

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)[89][90] up to Rudolf Otto, Karl Barth (see their idea of "Wholly Other", i.e. ganz Andere or totaliter aliter),[91][92][93] the Ludwig Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, and Martin Heidegger after his Kehre.[94][95]

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 say we must then refill our minds with the truth about God, untainted by mythology, bad analogies or false mind-pictures.[96]

The mid-20th century Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, who is often associated with a neo-Calvinistic tradition, provides a philosophical foundation for understanding why we can never absolutely know God, and yet, paradoxically, truly know something of God.[97] Dooyeweerd made a sharp distinction between theoretical and pre-theoretical attitudes of thought. Most of the discussion of knowledge of God presupposes theoretical knowledge, in which we reflect and try to define and discuss. Theoretical knowing, by its very nature, 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, and exhibits a diverse range of aspects. Pre-theoretical intuition, on the other hand, can grasp at least the law side. Knowledge of God, as God wishes to reveal it, is pre-theoretical, immediate and intuitive, never theoretical in nature.[98][99] The philosopher Leo Strauss considered that the Bible, for example, should be treated as pre-theoretical (everyday) rather than theoretical in what it contains.[100]

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?"[101]

Karen Armstrong, in her book The Case for God (2009), notices a recovery of apophatic theology in postmodern theology.[102]

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.[103]

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.[114] 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 either form of such comparisons for much of his career, arguing that any resemblance is purely superficial, and 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.[115]

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:[116]

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.[117]

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.[118]

David Wood and Robert Bernasconi have highlighted how Derrida explains what deconstruction is in an overwhelmingly negative, "apophatic" fashion.[119]