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

[tonyrey]

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.

When I was a student in France I heard my pupils using the word “vaches” to refer to women and I used it in front of a teacher who was really shocked. She told me it is French slang for prostitutes!

 

[John21652]

I think the Tradition is against you on this one.

My apologies for not responding sooner, but non-CAF work often beckons! Thank you for your very thoughtful response. We can now get into the nitty gritty of this topic!
Let’s have a look at each of the examples you have given us.

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

Now, firstly, St. John of the Cross has always been considered as being a “mystic”. Let’s define mysticism.

From here -

mys·ti·cism (mst-szm)
n.
1.
a. Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God.
b. The experience of such communion as described by mystics.
2. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.
3. Vague, groundless speculation.

The Oxford dictionaries definition is here.

Notice two things; firstly, that mysticism relies upon subjective interpretations of the mystical experience. It is that reliance upon the subjective that I take issue with. In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned Buddhism. Buddhist trancendentalism is purely a subjective experience and Buddhism relies on it. The catholic Church doesn’t rely on subjective experiences, but places great emphasis on objective knowledge. Hence its Natural Law foundations.

Note at the Oxford link that it is mentioned that “St Theresa’s writings were part of the tradition of Christian mysticism”. It should also be noted that St. John of the Cross’s works were condemned and put to the Inquisition as subjective interpretations. The only thing that saved him was a defense mounted by a Fr. Basilio De Leon, who, wait for it, made a name for himself by eulogising the works of St. Teresa!! St. John of the Cross was himself a great fan of St. Teresa. St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa were both saved from denunciation because, apart from their mysticism, they were, to all intents and purposes, orthodox Catholics. However, their mysticism is nothing more than subjective experience. Maybe they were on a pot like substance?! Who can tell?

“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)

Now here I should mention that the defender of St. John of the Cross to the Inquisition, mentioned above, was himself a member of the Augustinian order! This is now starting to sound like a little club of select members who share a belief in this subjective experience we call mystical catholicism! For me, it sounds warning bells. Below here you quote Aquinas. Aquinas himself denied that the subjective illumination was possible. The quote you have given us, however, perfectly illustrates my point. If you think you comprehend, it is not God. If you almost comprehend, then your own thoughts deceive you. The converse is also true. If the mystics thoughts lead them, in error as Augustine tells us, to believe that they can know God, then the thought that what God is not is also equally in error.

cont.d

 

[John21652]

cont.d

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

This is not the same as saying what God is not. Attempting to say what God is not is espousing a certain knowledge of God and therefore “God as unknown” is rendered false.

“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)

Inscrutable means impossible to understand or interpret. That is not quite the same as not knowing. For example, I see a thing growing and cannot see the cell divisions taking place, therefore I cannot understand or interpret how a thing grows. I do, however, know that it grows and that the thing is a growing thing. I cannot know or understand the thing because of what I percieve it to not be! I understand the thing because of what I do know of that thing.

“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

You have chosen a poor example to defend your position. John of Damascus wrote that we should use only the Law, Divine revelation and the prophets to attempt an understanding of God. We are entreated by him to not rely on subjective mysticism. John of Damascus wrote a thesis called An Exact Exposition of the Christian Faith. There, you can read this by John Of Damascus -

God, however, did not leave us in absolute ignorance. For the knowledge of God’s existence has been implanted by Him in all by nature. This creation, too, and its maintenance, and its government, proclaim the majesty of the Divine nature(4). Moreover, by the Law and the Prophets(5) in former times and afterwards by His Only-begotten Son, our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, He disclosed to us the knowledge of Himself as that was possible for us…For God, being good, is the cause of all good, subject neither to envy nor to any passion(7). For envy is far removed from the Divine nature, which is both passionless and only good. As knowing all things, therefore, and providing for what is profitable for each, He revealed that which it was to our profit to know; but what we were unable(8) to bear He kept secret.

. In other words, we do have sources for knowing what God is and we should be faithful to those sources, as I outlined earlier.

Your next example, is an interesting one -

“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)

It is interesting because that same council, in Canon 1, stated that God is

eternal and immense, omnipotent, unchangeable, incomprehensible, and ineffable,

Again, that Canon is telling us what God is! If you read on to Canon 2 you will read a denunciation of one man’s subjective interpretation of what God is! In Canon 3 the vanity of those who think they know what is truth is vigorously condemned.

cont.d

 

[John21652]

cont.d

“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.

Perhaps true, but Aquinas is the one who allowed us to see, clearly, what the true nature of God is by defining and articulating the Natural Law, as being devinely written on the hearts of men!

“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)

True, to a point. It is because of the knowledge of what God is, as in, for example, knowing that God is good, that we can infer that God is not not good. It’s just simple logic using the tools and knowledge God has given us. Don’t forget, also, that Aquinas believed wholeheartedly in the use of man’s God given reason. This is anathema to the mystical experiences and subsequent doctrines of via negativa.

“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)

Aquinas, throughout his Summa Theologica, offers a way to say a great deal about God and his nature, based on the use of human reasoning powers that ultimately begins with sensible creatures and the physical world, about which we have some genuine metaphysical knowledge. Aquinas tells us we can come to a real philosophical and metaphysical knowlegde of God, such as that He exists, that He is one, that He is unique, good, intelligent, spirit, loving, etc. However, Aquinas does tell us that God’s true essence, in its totality, is above the knowledge of man.

I dealt with John of Damascus above. However, this quote you supplied -

“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)

relies on phrases such as …“pure possession of Him.” and “God’s being”. Again, John of Damascus is writing of the totality of God’s being and essence, which we cannot know. However, I would also add that this passage demonstrates that John of Damascus was not a Natural Law theologian.

“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)

Pure mystical speculation! He forgets that in His image He created man. It all dpends upon the interpretation of “Image” and “likeness”>

“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)

Again, subjective mystical interpretation. The question begged is, do all souls have the same desire for knowlwedge of God?

“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)

Gregory of Nyssa is indeed called by many the father of Church mysticism. However, it should be noted that gregy was very much grounded in orthodox Catholicism and relied heavily on the use of reason, logic and argument in his lifetime’s work. His theology was in now way, shape or form apophatic until the very last years of his life. Until then, his theology had been grounded in anthropolgy, christology and on the use of sacred scripture, which is devine revelation. being well grounded in these aspects of catholicism, gregory made prayer a great habit and opined that prayer joined man to God. However, to describe him as a mystical philosopher, or an apophatic theologian, is false.

cont.d

 

[John21652]

cont.d

“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)

Comparing knowledgable objects with their creator is described by Aquinas as impossible. However, it doesn’t take a great deal of extrapolation to understand that the objective knowledge of ‘other’ objects can lead us to an understanding of the creator, as Aquinas points out when he is dealing with the question of other minds. .

“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)

Wonderfull alliteration from Maximus! again, however, it is not apophatic theology, but instead, a recognition that, compared to the creator’s creation, we have only been allowed to know so much as is “…allowable to men.”

“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)

I also dispute that St. Bonaventure was an apophatic theologion. His theology was very much grounded in metaphysical reality. he wrote that God could be seen in the physical world and though the knowledge of God from this natural theology is only a start, Bonaface insisted that it was the correct start. To Bonaventure, the universe is like a book in which the true nature of God is revealed. His treatise, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, or, The Soul’s Journey Into God, is an attempt at demonstrating that we can only know God in so far as we can ascertain His being from observable phenomena. After that, it is speculative theology, yet even as speculative theology, it is grounded in cataphatic theology. These His exploration of how one can ‘come to God’ obviously transcends the cataphatic theologian’s position in that it is only through prayer and contemplation that a soul may ‘come to God’, but it is predicated on cataphatic theology and is not a way of knowing what God is, but of ;coming to God’.

Apophatic theology naturall descends into the subjective, as the writings and experiences of these saints and doctors demonstrate. They, of course, were saints and doctors of the Church because of the orthodoxy they espoused, not because of their speculative and mystical theology. Their faith was unbridled and based on a knowledge of Church doctrine that most of us can but hope to emulate. Unless we can do so, our path to God is uncertain and should not be based on our subjective experiences. Those are best left to men of grat education, knowledge and faith. Even then, the subjective is but speculation and open to criticism, as we see amply demonstrated by the case of St. John of the Cross and the Inquisition.

 

[Julia_Mae]

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.

Attempting a return to the actual topic which is the strengths and weaknesses of apophatic theology, your post put me in mind of the DECREE ON THE REFORM OF ECCLESIASTICAL STUDIES OF PHILOSOPHY recently issued by the Vatican and this quote from it:

…the Church follows … cultural changes at work, which influence both her and society as a whole. Among the changes of the predominant culture, some particularly profound ones regard the concept of truth. … **mistrust in the capacity of human intelligence to arrive at objective and universal truth **– a truth by which people can give direction to their lives.

Interestingly, even though we see this as one of the dangers of apophatic theology, the Church remedy for this is to increase the study of metaphysics. This is surely going to introduce more apophatic ideas earlier in order to fight the mistrust they see evidenced in modern culture.

This mistrust is evident in the argument of the atheist that as all the churches don’t agree precisely on Truth, there is none. It’s seen when the “fundamentalist” Catholic displays his mistrust openly when states his own judgement is not worthy, and so adopts without question whatever he reads or is told by authority and so becomes a functional atheist himself, as he places his faith in books or people instead of the God. In fact, he makes it clear that this mistrust extends to all humans, he defines anyone who begs to differ with his recognized authorities as incontrovertibly wrong.

This issue is of such concern to the Church, that not only does the Decree to Reform increase the the amount of time necessary to study philosophy with an emphasis on metaphysics for an Ecclesiastical program, but states: that:

An excessive mixing of philosophical and theological subjects … ends up giving the students a defective formation in the respective intellectual “habitus”… In order to avert the increased risk of fideism, and to avoid either a manipulation or fragmentation of philosophy, it is highly preferable that the philosophy courses be concentrated in the first two years of philosophical-theological formation.

My bold.

I love this Pope. I love that his emphasis on a return to certain Traditions is coupled with a return to the state of knowing God, of thinking about how to understand faith, before there is too much concrete that fossilizes young men’s minds.

I just thought that the contrast of fighting doubt with what we also think might invoke doubt, would be interesting here. I also think it’s interesting, that Catholics of contemplative and necessarily apophatic bent, are so often, in my experience, of unassailable faith.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I just saw you post.

We need some definitions to make headway. Traditionally, the following distinctions are made.

(1) In the realm of philosophical or theological knowledge a distinction is traditionally made between the via negativa (the way of negation : apophatic theology/philosophy) and the via affirmativa (the affirmative way : cataphatic theology/philosophy).

way of negation
statements that tell us what God is not like based on the differences between Him and things
Denial of an attribute or property in God
God is not material, changeable, limited, finite, corporeal, composite, temporal, evil

way of affirmation
statements that tell us something about God based on the way things of this world are more or less like Him because He is their cause

metaphor (metaphorical analogy) - compares God to something (e.g., God is light; God is a rock, a fortress, a shield, etc.) but does not apply to God’s substance, to what He is in Himself.

analogy (attributive analogy) - employing images and concepts derived from our experience of this world to help us know something about God’s nature, something of His substance.

they tell us something about God that is a real attribute. It is based on the meaning or content of the concept or image derived from our experience of creatures knowing God is their cause. e.g., God is wise, good, love, truth, life, beautiful, just, merciful

B U T, words (names) or concepts are predicated differently of . . .

God (as creator) versus things. This is because our limited mode of signification is based on experience of creatures. So God is wise, but not as we know wisdom. (= God is wise in a way that is beyond what we can possibly imagine or conceive His wisdom to be.)

We are unable to attain: comprehensive knowledge of God (to know God as fully as He is knowable) ever;
or essential (quidditative) knowledge of God (knowledge that would enable us define God or grasp His essential intelligibility as we would with the concept of “man” or “house”) in this life.

(2) Mysticism
The Way of Non-knowing: Apophatic Mysticism
Since God is wholly immaterial and beyond anything that we can know, see, intuit, or comprehend naturally in this life, He and union with Him are inaccessible to ordinary perception or cognition and cannot be directly and naturally experienced, or expressed easily (or sometimes at all) with the literal use of language.

#s (1) & (2) are spelled out or refered to in the quotes I gave you from authoritative witnesses in the Catholic tradition both East and West. Philosophical/theologial language is distinct from mystical language which is highly metaphorical and symbolic but nonetheles accepted as a witness to spiritual experience we are expected to aim for personally.

This is what apophatic philosophy/theology or mysticism means in RC terminology. This seems to differ significantly from the definition implicit in your concerns. Perhaps you could make it explicit. However, it would seem that some of your concerns are already answered by these tradition definitions.

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

So . . .

(1) The starting point for the subject of apophatic philosophy/theology and mysticism in RC tradition is suitability of the human intellect for naturally knowable objects.

(a) By its own natural light the human intellect can know truth about created being by abstraction from the data of sense experience with sufficient evidence to compel consent.

(b) Human love relationships are between persons who can be known in sense perception and understood with the natural light of the intellect.

(2) In apophatic philosophy/theology
(a)The via negativa is not agnosticism. It is the denial of certain attributes or property in God. It does teach us something about God by knowing what He is not.

(b) The via affirmativa does tell us something about God even about His substance, but since it is based on natural knowledge of limited created realities this knowledge is realized in God altogether beyond the way we know and signify these attributes. To this extent even knowledge here has an apophatic character. We do not know God in the same way we know a naturally knowable object: we cannot know His essence in this life.

(3) (a) Apophatic mysticism in RC definitions is not a denial of any experiential knowledge of God: it is the recognition that our thoughts, concepts, images, and feelings regarding God are not Him. Union of our souls with Him (who is infinite and spiritual) does not take place through our natural perceptual and intellectual processes as the union in love would with a human person. Periods of darkness, dryness, desolation according to traditional mystical teaching are a process of God weaning us from such natural processes to find Him in a supernatural way adequate to His infinite nature. The RCC acknowledges the existence of this process and the legitimacy of this teaching, e.g., St. John of the Cross is a Doctor of the Church.

(b) No one ever said that all mysticism is not always apophatic. The true journey to God has both cataphatic and apophatic moments. But apophatic mysticism does mark a discernable process despite being described in various ways that often enough occurs to be acknowledged by numerous spiritual writers many of whom are fathers and doctors of the Church and whose teaching is recommended by the RCC.

It seems like this answers most of your concerns and affirms your legitimate insights. If not, bring up the ones that are not addressed.

 

[levinas12]

It seems like this answers most of your concerns and affirms your legitimate insights. If not, bring up the ones that are not addressed.

I hope you don’t mind an interloper here. But I have a question.

Where does Jesus fit into this discussion? There is an immediacy about the Incarnation and subsequent scriptural accounts of Jesus’ ministry. Would it be wrong to say that Jesus’ divinity is manifested in some way in his Humanity? That Jesus is the Visibility of God?

So how does this Visibility relate to negative theology?

What would the apostles and the early Church think of negative theology?

 

[Contarini]

It has no place in Christianity.
It is for those religions where revelation has not occured.

This is a mind-boggling statement.

Apophatic theology is the foundation of the entire Byzantine Christian tradition and plays a huge role in medieval Western thought and in the work of the Spanish mystics.

Cut it out, and you cut out a huge chunk of Christian thought–maybe the bulk (though that may just be my value judgment).

Revelation does not tell us everything there is to know about God. It does not confine God to the framework of our finite intellects.

Historic, orthodox Christian theology is characterized by a fruitful tension between apophaticism and the confidence that God has indeed made Himself known to us in revelation. Certainly if one has only apophaticism, one doesn’t have Christianity but something more like Buddhism. But if divine revelation is taken out of an apophatic context, I don’t think it’s divine revelation at all but simply information given us by a superhuman intelligence, much like the Mormon view of revelation.

Edwin

 

[Bookcat]

We can know truth. Via reason and revelation etc

at the same time …

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet)

and see 1 Cor 2:9

via negativa and via positivia go together…

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I hope you don’t mind an interloper here. But I have a question.

Where does Jesus fit into this discussion? There is an immediacy about the Incarnation and subsequent scriptural accounts of Jesus’ ministry. Would it be wrong to say that Jesus’ divinity is manifested in some way in his Humanity? That Jesus is the Visibility of God?

So how does this Visibility relate to negative theology?

What would the apostles and the early Church think of negative theology?

Not at all. Hope all is going well with you.

Let me start with some quotes.

“What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has He brought?
The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God.”
[Benedict XVI, *Jesus of Nazareth, vol I., p. 44.]

“Wherefore he that would now enquire of God, or seek any vision or revelation, would not only be acting foolishly, but would be committing an offence against God, by not setting his eyes altogether upon Christ, and seeking no new thing or aught beside. And God might answer him after this manner, saying: If I have spoken all things to thee in My Word, Which is My Son, and I have no other word, what answer can I now make to thee, or what can I reveal to thee which is greater than this? Set thine eyes on Him alone, for in Him I have spoken and revealed to thee all things, and in Him you shall find yet more than that which you ask and desire.”
[St. John of the Cross, *Ascent Of Mount Carmel, II, 22, 5]

All revealed knowledge of God is through Christ. And, as St. Theresa of Avila reminds us, we never outstrip our need for Him.

I think it is safe to say that all spiritual growth contains both cataphatic and apophatic moments. It is just that apophatic theology and mysticism does justice to the infinite gulf that separates God’s nature from created natures including our thoughts, concepts, feelings and experiences which are not God.

Check above for some quotes from fathers and doctors. I believe my responses to John216532 cover his concerns and correct observations.