By David Kowalski
Recently I was asked about my thoughts on the difference between cataphatic and apophatic theology, and answered as follows:
Cataphatic theology (theology through positive assertion about who God is — sometimes spelled kataphatic) is the easiest of the two to address, being theology that says things about who God is. I believe the New Testament is essentially cataphatic without falling into dry “scholasticism” (for lack of a better word with which to label dead, intellectual orthodoxy). What we can say about God is not something we should seek to relegate to intellectual propositions unrelated to the God we know by experience. As long as this knowledge is part of an overall relationship that is in the true sense “mystical,” cataphatic theology is biblical and is essential to real, theological discussion.
Apophatic theology (theology through negation which asserts only what God is not) is a bigger concept. I would liken it to the Mississippi River delta, which has many streams as well as swampland all around. I will speak of the whole “delta” of apophatic theology but others will doubtless say I am not fair to their particular stream or part of the swamp.
Apophatic theology developed in the church in an effort to speak to or accommodate Platonism, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Platonism. In these developments of Platonism, “God” seems to become increasingly abstract and less personal. Roger OIson traces Christian, apophatic beginnings to Athenagoras of Athens in the second century. Olson says, “Apparently Athenagoras and later apophatic thinkers assumed that God’s perfection means being unlike anything created…The result, of course, was a gradual diminishing of the biblical God’s personal nature” (The Story of Christian Theology, p. 63).
I think Olson is spot on. What describes who God is as a person is His attributes which must be spoken of in positive terms. Apophatics saw God as transcending the kinds of attributes posited of Him in Scripture, and thus preferred to speak only of what God is not — leading to an increasing depersonalization of God (that was more or less qualified or corrected in some later streams). Apophatic theology traveled through the heart of the early Alexandrian church which absorbed it from Neo-Platonism, and it found its classic expression in the mystical theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in the early sixth century.
Fourteenth century apophatic classic
In The Divine Names and in the Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius said God was “beyond being,” “beyond divinity,” and “beyond goodness.” Thus, in place of the biblical description of God as a divine being who is good, we have nothing but an abstraction that cannot be spoken of intelligibly. In place of intelligent thought Pseudo-Dionysius taught mindless, contemplative prayer:
“And you dear Timothy, in the earnest exercise of mystical contemplation, abandon all sensation and all intellectual activities, all that is sensed and intelligible, all non-beings and all beings, thus you will unknowingly be elevated, as far as possible, to the unity of that beyond being and knowledge…Now, however, that we are to enter the darkness beyond intellect, you will not find a brief discourse but a complete absence of discourse and intelligibility.” 1
I took seminary courses in church history from a very reserved (and highly respected) scholar who was quite slow to attribute bad sounding labels to any figure without thorough justification. He agreed with my assessment, though, that what we find in Pseudo-Dionysius is essentially indistinguishable from Buddhist religion. God is a mystical experience only. The only way to “think” of God is to silence the mind altogether and be lost in the ecstasis (ecstasy). Pseudo-Dionysius does speak to us but he does so out of silence by way of negation.
This way of “unknowing” has persisted in various manifestations such as the Hesychasm of Eastern Orthodoxy. It shows itself in many of the medieval mystics. In the fourteenth century, for example, Meister Eckhart declared that we should not “chatter” about God (speak of who God is or what attributes He possesses). One interesting development among the mystics was a strong tendency to replace sound theology with the Eastern idea of divinization (or theosis, which the Eastern Orthodox have modified in recent times), a pantheistic or at least panentheistic view of the deity, and a “union” with God that is often more akin to the idea of nirvana in which one is absorbed into God.
The heritage of apophatic theology can be seen in Karl Barth and the Neo-Orthodoxy he helped birth. Barth’s “wholly other” God is so wholly other nothing certain can be spoken of him in propositions (it took Barth millions of propositions to say that). It is little wonder that the undefined God of Neo-Orthodoxy soon degenerated to Bultmann’s humanistic concept of God as the experiences in life through which we gain self-insight. Postmoderns such as Derrida are sometimes called apophatic in their approach to the subject of deity or differance, and many postmodern theologians such as John Caputo owe much to apophatic theology.
There has been a resurgence of interest in mysticism and contemplative prayer in the 20th and 21st centuries — most of which has roots in apophatic theology. Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Morton Kelsey are just three names among many in this stream. All of them take an unorthodox approach to the theology of God and prayer. Merton was seriously contemplating conversion to Buddhism at the time of his death.
Doubtless, someone will say something like, “But all I mean by apophatic theology is that we must experience God after we speak of who He is.” If that is all they mean, that is fine. Unfortunately, that is largely not what people mean by the term, and apophatic methodology has spawned much unorthodox theology. I believe it is largely responsible for the blooming movement of interfaith spirituality that sees Christianity as just one mythology that tries to relay the common, inexpressible, mystical experience supposedly underlying all religions. This view has become popular in the emerging church movement and is surprisingly common in Roman Catholicism today.
© Copyright 2013, David Kowalski. All rights reserved. Links to this post are encouraged. Do not repost or republish without permission.
The problem with your view is that cataphatic theology without an apophatic foundation is straightforwardly idolatrous, substituting our mental representations of God for God himself.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my old article on this topic. As I examine your response it seems to me that you and I do not really differ in substance so much as we have experienced a confusion based on semantics — specifically as to how one defines the terms “cataphatic” and “apophatic.”
I use the terms as they have been traditionally used. With this understanding, apophatic theology cannot serve as a foundation for cataphatic theology since it excludes it from consideration. I state in the article that apophatic theology is “theology through negation which asserts only what God is not.” I also observe that in apophatic theology “the only way to ‘think’ of God is to silence the mind altogether and be lost in the ecstasis (ecstasy).”
On the other hand, I note that cataphatic theology does not exclude mystical or ecstatic experience with God:
“I believe the New Testament is essentially cataphatic without falling into dry ‘scholasticism’ (for lack of a better word with which to label dead, intellectual orthodoxy). What we can say about God is not something we should seek to relegate to intellectual propositions unrelated to the God we know by experience. As long as this knowledge is part of an overall relationship that is in the true sense ‘mystical,’ cataphatic theology is biblical and is essential to real, theological discussion.”
I believe I address your comment in the last paragraph of the article when I say “Doubtless, someone will say something like, ‘But all I mean by apophatic theology is that we must experience God after we speak of who He is.’ If that is all they mean, that is fine. Unfortunately, that is largely not what people mean by the term, and apophatic methodology has spawned much unorthodox theology.”
It seems to me that you would be described in the first part of this statement and I describe the sentiment involved as “fine.”This is why I say I believe we do not disagree in substance but are simply using the two main terms in the article in different ways. I wholeheartedly agree that a purely mental faith is idolatrous and that mystical experience is essential to true, Christian faith. In my article “How Certain is Faith — Absolutely Certain” I explain that faith must be more than an intellectual persuasion. Biblical and vital faith is one in which believers have a supernatural impartation from the Holy Spirit. It is this combination of mystical experience and objective content that provides us with the foundation for all of our theology. Any approach to theology, however, that insists faith must be a mindless experience completely divorced from objective content is an aberrant one.
From what I garner from your comment I believe you would agree with me on these points and that any supposed difference between us is not a genuine one but one in appearance only, based on a differing usage of the terms “cataphatic” and “apophatic.”
I am a Buddhist Monk (30 years) but neither a exemplary meditator or even a mediocre scholar and have recently been fascinated by the teachings of Cynthia Bourgeault, Richard Rohr and Martin Laird – particularly related to prayer/meditation but also Cynthia Bourgeault’s notion of “Nondual Christianity.” I tend to assume that the notion of nonduality would be inconsistent with the “cataphatic” view since if God had characteristics that could be defined He (?) would be separate from the observer and thereby dualistic? I’d appreciate a response. Thank you
Thank you for reading my article and taking the time to respond with this question. Rohr, Laird, and Bourgeault are all part of a stream of spirituality within Christendom that is much closer to Buddhism than it is to orthodox Christianity. These authors to whom you refer all identify with the apophatic theology of which I speak in the article above.
Thus, I think it would be accurate to say that Bourgeault’s “Nondual Christianity” is more consistent with apophatic theology since she does advocate a transcending of the mind through centering prayer, and since she does refer by name to traditional, apophatic theologians.
The question of whether or not all monism, panentheism, and pantheism are at odds with intellectual assertions about God is, I think, only a bit more complex. All teachers who hold to these views make intellectual assertions about the divine but ultimately say that to find one’s unity with the divine one must transcend the “limitations” of the mind. Thus, though God or the divine may be initially spoken of with propositions, they say that propositions about God must ultimately be transcended — a decidedly apophatic position.
Biblically and historically orthodox Christianity has always maintained a distinction between God and His creation. We can know God but never become Him or become part of Him. Jesus was the God/Man, fully God yet fully man when He became incarnate. As such He was able to atone as only God can for the sin for which man must pay.
Through faith in His sacrifice on the cross, we can be restored to fellowship with God but we never become God/Men ourselves. We simply become men and women who know God. This saving relationship with God through Christ is not found by looking within since the God we seek is distinct from us and in essence, above us. We prayerfully look to the person of Christ for salvation and when we seek Him we will find Him. “…Seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).