What are the strengths and weaknesses of via negativa (negative theology/apophatic theology)?

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The obvious strength of the via negativa is that it avoids the presumption that our limited insight and understanding can penetrate the greatest mystery of all - that of the Creator - and the folly of scientists who believe they can establish a theory of everything… Every statement we make about God must have some proviso because our words are based on what we know about ourselves and physical reality. That knowledge is obviously inadequate to describe the Ultimate Being. This realization helps us to be overcome with awe at the thought that we are always in the presence of the Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.

The weakness of the via negativa is that it tempts us to believe we are incapable of knowing anything whatsoever about God. If we have to qualify every statement we make what is the point of making any statements? Yet the Church teaches that even without Revelation our power of reason is sufficient to establish the existence of the Creator.
 
I must take issue with John21652’s response as it might be read and considered reliable. Apophatic theology has a rich presence in Christianity and it’s history, especially–but not limited to–in the contemplative traditions. It hurts no Christian to seek to transcend, with proper support and guidance, our limited “temporal” views of God.
 
John21652 said:
It has no place in Christianity.
It is for those religions where revelation has not occured.
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This is just not true. The via negative, or apophatic theology, has always been a part of Christian thinking. Boethius, for example, stated that we could not know God except through knowing what God is not. And St Thomas teaches that everything we say of God is, in effect, in someway a negation of what he is. For this reason, we call God ‘infintie’ which means ‘not finite’. And this is the only way we come to know God:

“And although in God there is no privation, still, according to the mode of our apprehension, He is known to us by way only of privation and remotion. Thus there is no reason why a certain kind of privation should not be predicated of God; for instance, that He is incorporeal and infinite; and in the same way it is said of God that He is one.” (ST I.11.3.ad2)
 
logos1204 said:
I must take issue with John21652’s response as it might be read and considered reliable. Apophatic theology has a rich presence in Christianity and it’s history, especially–but not limited to–in the contemplative traditions. It hurts no Christian to seek to transcend, with proper support and guidance, our limited “temporal” views of God.
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I never said that apophatic theology doesn not have a presence in Christianity. Just the fact that it is a debatable subject demonstrates that fact. However, I stand by my original claim and re-state, after seven months, that it has no place in Christianity!! That’s not to say it doesn’t take place. I’m saying it should not have a place. As far as “contemplative traditions” are concerned, I place it right up there with weed smoking!!

How presumptuous of man, to think that he can somehow come to a greater understanding of God by deciding how much about God he doesn’t know!!

Pass me a joint…:rolleyes:

As for your comment about *"…our limited “temporal” views of God" *, my first question to you is why did you deem it necessary to place the word “temporal” inside inverted commas? You qualified your own statement, did you not? Now let me hazard a guess as to why you did that…Is it because you know that our “temporal” views of God just happen to include revelatory experiences experienced/enjoyed by others? Thus, our “temporal” views of God are not strictly temporal, are they?!

Here I’d better make some attempt at defining the meaning of 'temporal", lest we all go rushing in to argue over things that were not meant. I use temporal in a fairly wide sense to mean all that we know and experience and in that experience I include history. It is all that is currently available to us as knowledge. Included in our temporal knowledge are the traditions handed down through the Church and these include revelatory experiences. Divine inspiration, if you like. We also have the temporal world in which we live. From it we deduce certain things about the Creator. Gee whiz, from it we even deduce a Natural Law, a morality that is there for us to discern and apply to how we live and we ascribe it to a Creator. And let’s not forget, either, that God sent his one and only Son to Earth to cop a hiding on behalf of all of us! So, from these things, these things God has given us, we know what God is. That does not mean, as tonyrey has suggested, that we know all about God. That is not possible. Even if we died and went to heaven, it may not be possible to know what God is in His totality.

However, for those who think they can arrive at a greater understanding and greater knowledge of God by thinking they can tell us what God is not, I say “bollocks”. We have revelation and the world we live in to help us to know what God *is, *but to then infer from those things what God is not is presumptuous and perhaps quite illogical. It all depends upon suppositions from negatives. That means the conclusions could be anywhere from nearly true, to absolutely rediculous.

Apophatic theology is a pessimists tool and Christianity is not a pessimistic religion. The two go together like chalk and cheese.

So, when I say it has no place in Christianity, that’s akin to telling the kids that swearing has no place in the playground. However, I know the kids will still swear…😉
 
John21652 said:
“How presumptuous of man, to think that he can somehow come to a greater understanding of God by deciding how much about God he doesn’t know!!”?

John, where did you come up with the idea that apaphatic theology is about man deciding how much he doesn’t know about God? It’s actually the opposite–God decides how much he allows a man (or woman) to “not know” about God.

I think this is a case that just because you are not able to comprehend something doesn’t give you the privilige of deciding that it must be bogus–just because you can’t comprehend it.

Your statement was ill-informed and highly arrogant in it’s assumption of knowing all there is to know about such things.
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John21652 said:
How presumptuous of man, to think that he can somehow come to a greater understanding of God by deciding how much about God he doesn’t know!!

First of all, John, in the apophatic tradition, man doesn’t decide how much he doesn’t know. That alone shows you have a distorted view of this. God decides how much a man “unknows” who is open to it. You are using the mindset of the cataphatic way on the apophatic way. We just don’t sit around saying what God is not!!

In terms of your take on “temporal”, that also is a very limited view that you have. Temportal refers to this existance in time and space. I contrast it with the Eternal, which I won’t begin to try to describe here. However, the etermal can be present in the temporal–and was present most fully in the person of Jesus Christ. This is celebrated every day in the Eucharist–which has been described as “the intersection of Heaven and Earth.”
There is so much for to Christ’s revelation than you are willing to open yourself to. Your hostility to those who are open to it shows your significant limitations.

I suppose that you think anyone who is open to such things must be stoned. That’s a sad, even pathetic, view.

I hope you are happy in your cocoon. Just don’t insist that we join you there.

Peace, brother.
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logos1204 said:
John21652;8443480:
How presumptuous of man, to think that he can somehow come to a greater understanding of God by deciding how much about God he doesn’t know!!
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First of all, John, in the apophatic tradition, man doesn’t decide how much he doesn’t know. That alone shows you have a distorted view of this. God decides how much a man “unknows” who is open to it. You are using the mindset of the cataphatic way on the apophatic way. We just don’t sit around saying what God is not!!
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And how, exactly, does an individual using this apophatic tradition know it is God that is “unknowing” him? Oh my, that word sounds like some politically correct term dredged up by the thought police. If it is true that a man, with help from a higher authority “unknows”, then to me, he is entering dangerous territory. When all is done and dusted, we only have the subjective experience of the individual and we rely on his accuracy for its veracity. Meanwhile, all the objective knowledge God has given us access to is ignored.
In terms of your take on “temporal”, that also is a very limited view that you have. Temportal refers to this existance in time and space. I contrast it with the Eternal, which I won’t begin to try to describe here. However, the etermal can be present in the temporal–and was present most fully in the person of Jesus Christ. This is celebrated every day in the Eucharist–which has been described as “the intersection of Heaven and Earth.”
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Well, I did try and state what I meant by “temporal”, to try and head off a debate about time, space and eternity, or else we’d be here for eternity! And neither would I attempt to “describe the eternal”. I’ll settle for wondering about it, thanks.
There is so much for to Christ’s revelation than you are willing to open yourself to.
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I am always open to what ever revelations Christ has in store. However, isn’t that attitude of being willing and open* cataphatic?*. I beleive it was St. Ignatius who taught retreatants the cataphatic method of experiencing God’s forgiveness without going down the path of thinking he/she has to “unknow”. His teachings relied on what the subject does know. Reason is not suspended.
Your hostility to those who are open to it shows your significant limitations.
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I am not at all hostile to those who think they can meditate in the apophatic tradition. Buddhists rely on it and I am not hostile to them at all. However, I’ll remain very sceptical, for reasons I have outlined.
I suppose that you think anyone who is open to such things must be stoned. That’s a sad, even pathetic, view.
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No, I never said that. Read what I wrote and then perhaps you will understand that I was expressing scepticism. After all, quite a few of those who smoke weed recall all sorts of strange events and experiences.
I hope you are happy in your cocoon. Just don’t insist that we join you there.
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Peace, brother.
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Well, brother, my “cocoon” is indeed within the confines of a universe that God gave us. And you are already in it! It has mysteries beyond our comprehension, as we are forever discussing on various threads here on CAF. It includes all those attributes I mentioned in my earlier post and which you have seemingly ignored in your response. What we have been given tells us a great deal about the God behind it all and I, for one, will never presume that I, or anyone else, can be so special that an “unknowing” can ever give any ‘truth’ that God hasn’t already made available for us to discern. God gave us the Church. He didn’t give one to the Buddhists. See the contrast?
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John21652 said:
“Bollocks”!!

See above post. 😃
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I would agree with you insofar as that on its own apophatic theology is not sufficient and Christian theology goes well beyond this way of thinking. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is a useful tool, as the Church Fathers and especially the Greeks show. I don’t think it’s akin to swearing.
 
tonyrey said:
“1. Messages posted to this board must be polite and free of personal attacks, threats, and **crude **or sexually-explicit language.”
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I thouight it was a refutation easily understood by someone from the UK, where it originates from. No offense meant.
 
John21652 said:
I thought it was a refutation easily understood by someone from the UK, where it originates from. No offense meant.
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I may be old-fashioned but it’s definitely crude! What it is to be young… 🙂
 
tonyrey said:
I may be old-fashioned but it’s definitely crude! What it is to be young… 🙂
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We get many British immigrants here and many of them, of all ages, seem to take great delight in saying “bollocks”. I thought it must be something they like to ‘own’, just like we love to ‘own’ Fair Dinkum. It’s funny, because here we call mature steers ‘bullocks’ and I often feel like saying to any one who says ‘bollocks’, something like ‘your argument is bullocks’, as in castrated! 😃

I suppose I’d better not. 🤷
 
John21652 said:
It has no place in Christianity.
It is for those religions where revelation has not occured.
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I think the Tradition is against you on this one.

“God is a dark night to man in this life.” (St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, I, 2, 1)

“If you comprehend, it is not God. If you are able to comprehend, it is because you mistook something else for God. If you almost comprehend, it is again because you allowed your own thoughts to deceive you.”
(St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 52, 16; see also Sermon 117, 5)

“In the end, we know God as unknown.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, In Boetium de Trinitate, 1, 2, ad 1)

“Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this super-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is.” (Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, 1, 1)

“That there is a God is clear; but what He is by essence and nature, this is altogether beyond our comprehension and knowledge.”
(St. John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, I, 40

“It cannot be noted that between the Creator and the creature there is so great a likeness without of necessity noting a greater dissimilarity between them.” (Lateran Council IV 1215 AD, DS 806)

“The most we can know of God during our present life is that He transcends everything that we can conceive of Him.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, 2, 1 ad 9) He lived from 1225-1274.

“For, by its immensity, the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches. Thus we are unable to apprehend it by knowing what it is. Yet we are able to have some kind of knowledge of it by knowing what it is not.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 14, 2)

“We cannot grasp what God is, but only what He is not and how other things are related to Him.”
(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 30, 4)

“Because we are not capable of knowing what God is but only what He is not, we cannot contemplate how God is but only how He is not” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 3, Prologue)

“The reason why God has no name, or is said to be above being named, is because His essence is above all we understand about God and signify in word.” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, 13, 1 ad 1)

“This is the ultimate in human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know Him.”
(St. Thomas Aquinas, Questiones Disputatiae de Potentia Dei, 7, 5, ad 14)

“For God’s being cannot be grasped by the intellect, appetite, imagination, or any other sense, nor can it be known in this life. The most that can be felt and tasted of God in this life is infinitely distant from God and the pure possession of Him.” (St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, II, 4, 4)

“It is noteworthy that among all creatures both superior and inferior none bears a likeness to God’s being.” (St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, II, 8, 3)

“Nothing in heaven or on earth can give the soul the knowledge she desires of You.”
(St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, 6, 7)

“For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends but what the intelligence thinks it sees, it [the soul or mind] keeps on penetrating deeper until by the intelligence’s yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and incomprehensible, and there it sees God. This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness.”
(St. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, II, 163)

“It is said that all beings are objects of knowledge because they bear the demonstrable principles of their own knowledge. God, however, is called the unknown, and among all knowable things only His existence can be perceived. This is why no knowable object can compare in any way with Him.”
(St. Maximus the Confessor, Chapters on Knowledge, I, 8)

“The perfect mind is the one that through genuine faith supremely knows in supreme ignorance the supremely unknowable, and in gazing on the universe of his handiwork has received from God comprehensive knowledge of his Providence and judgment in it, as far as is allowable to men.”
(St. Maximus the Confessor, Four Hundred Chapters On Love, III, 99)

“But if you wish to know how these things [the ascent to God] come about, ask grace not instruction, desire not understanding, the groaning of prayer not diligent reading, the Spouse not the teacher, God not man, darkness not clarity, not light but the fire that totally inflames and carries us into God. . . .”
(St. Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey Into God, 7, 6)

“For biblical Revelation says that, while man’s ‘likeness’ to God is true, the ‘non-likeness’ which separates the whole of creation from the Creator is still more essentially true.”
(John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 1988, §8)
 
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