[lit-ideas] Kataphatic, Negative and Apophatic Theology

  • From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 00:13:35 -0400

Chris Bruce wrote:

"there is 'negative theology' (about which I would appreciate someone
posting a few words).

Below is something about negative theology, though unfortunately not a
few words.

In theology, three ways of 'knowing' God are distinguished.  The first
is kataphatic, which affirms the ability to make positive statements
about God.  The second is via negativa, which affirms that only negative
statements can be made about God.  This is often confused with apophatic
theology.  Apophatic theology asserts that not even negative statements
can be said of God.  At first glance there may not seem to be much of a
difference between via negativa and apophatic theology, which would
explain why they are often used confused with each other, but there is.
One might say that via negativa belongs to the Aristotelian tradition
that comes to dominate Christian theology after Duns Scotus while
apophatic theology belongs to the Platonic tradition, which finds its
fullest expression in Aquinas.

Plato, in the Timaeus, makes it clear that any talk of the divine must
be analogical.  First of all, the divine cannot be an object of
understanding: "But the father and maker of all this universe is past
finding out; and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would
be impossible."  Second, language is inadequate for the job of talking
directly about the divine: "And in speaking of the copy and the original
we may assume that words are akin to the matter which they describe;
when they relate to the lasting and permanent and intelligible, they
ought to be lasting and unalterable, and, as far as their nature allows,
irrefutable and immovable-nothing less. But when they express only the
copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves, they need only
be likely and analogous to the real words."  Finally, we as mortals are
limited and therefore must be satisfied with what is probable: "for we
must remember that I who am the speaker, and you who are the judges, are
only mortal men, and we ought to accept the tale which is probable and
enquire no further".  Surely this is a warning against thinking that our
talk of God somehow gets us to God's essence without resorting to the
figurative.

Plotinus makes it clear in the Fifth Ennead that the divine is not a
thing, has no being, but is, rather, the generator of being: "The One is
all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all
things; all things are its possession- running back, so to speak, to it-
or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be".  And every kind of
understanding of the divine is a representation of the divine and
therefore a downward movement, or a movement away from the divine.  In
other words, all understanding, even the purest kind, is only a mirror
or reflection, and therefore must be taken analogically.

It seems to me that the significance of the Christological controversies
of the first few centuries of the Christian Church lies in their ruling
out ways of talking about God that give positive content to God's
nature.  Which leads to the apophaticism of the Cappadocians such as
Gregory of Nazianzus who writes:

"God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God
always Is. For Was and Will be are fragments of our time, and of
changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He
gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in
Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in
the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless
and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature, only
adumbrated by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily ... not by His
Essentials, but by His Environment; one image being got from one source
and another from another, and combined into some sort of presentation of
the truth, which escapes us before we have caught it, and takes to
flight before we have conceived it, blazing forth upon our Master-part,
even when that is cleansed, as the lightning flash which will not stay
its course, does upon our sight ..." (Oration 38)

In other words, our talk of God is always analogical, distanced from God
like a flash of light in a mirror.

In "On Christian Doctrine" Augustine writes:

"Have I spoken of God, or uttered His praise, in any worthy way?  Nay, I
feel that I have done nothing more than desire to speak; and if I have
said anything, it is not what I desired to say. How do I know this,
except from the fact that God is unspeakable? But what I have said, if
it had been unspeakable, could not have been spoken.  And so God is not
even to be called "unspeakable," because to say even this is to speak of
Him. Thus there arises a curious contradiction of words, because if the
unspeakable is what cannot be spoken of, it is not unspeakable if it can
be called unspeakable.  And this opposition of words is rather to be
avoided by silence than to be explained away by speech. And yet God,
although nothing worthy of His greatness can be said of Him, has
condescended to accept the worship of men's mouths, and has desired us
through the medium of our own words to rejoice in His praise. For on
this principle it is that He is called Dues (God). For the sound of
those two syllables in itself conveys no true knowledge of His nature;
but yet all who know the Latin tongue are led, when that sound reaches
their ears, to think of a nature supreme in excellence and eternal in
existence."

Which brings us to probably the best example of an apophatic theologian,
Pseudo-Dionysius.

"There is neither logos, name, or knowledge of it.  It is not dark nor
light, not error, and not truth.  There is universally neither position
nor denial of it.  While there are produced positions and denials of
those after it, we neither position nor deny it." (_Divine Names_)

No words can express God's nature including the words "No words can
express God's nature".  This contradiction must be left aside in favour
of the further understanding that God encourages us to talk about God.
So, we are encouraged to talk about God but always with the mental
reservation that this talk of God is analogical, agnostic when it comes
to the manner in which our words map onto God.

It is with Aquinas that, in my opinion, we have the best balance of
kataphatic, negative and apophatic theology.

"Thus all names applied metaphorically to God, are applied to creatures
primarily rather than to God, because when said of God they mean only
similitudes to such creatures. For as 'smiling' applied to a field means
only that the field in the beauty of its flowering is like the beauty of
the human smile by proportionate likeness, so the name of 'lion' applied
to God means only that God manifests strength in His works, as a lion in
his. Thus it is clear that applied to God the signification of names can
be defined only from what is said of creatures. But to other names not
applied to God in a metaphorical sense, the same rule would apply if
they were spoken of God as the cause only, as some have supposed. For
when it is said, 'God is good,' it would then only mean 'God is the
cause of the creature's goodness'; thus the term good applied to God
would included in its meaning the creature's goodness. Hence 'good'
would apply primarily to creatures rather than to God. But as was shown
above (2), these names are applied to God not as the cause only, but
also essentially. For the words, 'God is good,' or 'wise,' signify not
only that He is the cause of wisdom or goodness, but that these exist in
Him in a more excellent way. Hence as regards what the name signifies,
these names are applied primarily to God rather than to creatures,
because these perfections flow from God to creatures; but as regards the
imposition of the names, they are primarily applied by us to creatures
which we know first. Hence they have a mode of signification which
belongs to creatures, as said above..(ST I,13, a.6)

God can be referred to only figuratively, and that is through either
metaphor or analogy.  In both cases, signification is possible through
the participation of the divine in all of creation.  This is the
Platonic element in Aquinas.  When theology uses metaphor, it draws on
the similarity between cause and effect where the world is the effect of
God's creative activity.  So, God can be likened to a lion or any other
part of creation.  When theology uses analogy, it draws on the intuition
that some parts of creation require a perfection.  So, God can be called
Good or Wise because we recognize gradations of goodness and wisdom.  In
both its metaphorical and analogical form, theology signifies God but
the signification always remains firmly fixed in the created order.

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