Apophatic Theology and the incarnation

[RJ Spencer]

I recently learned about Apophatic theology and felt that it held some weight, until I thought about the incarnation. Even though God is so far beyond our comprehension, He still obviously seeks to make Himself known to us. After all, Jesus says that this is eternal life John 17:3. Does the incarnation alone disprove apophatic theology? What else may be used to disprove apophatic theology? Sola Scriptura?

It seems to me that to disprove this theology, would be to disprove Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole. I agree with the Forum of Christian Leaders that this mystical (eastern Orthodox) understanding of Apophatic theology leads to the same place as Arianism, Because if men cannot truly know God in any tangible way than it would be impossible for Jesus to truly be completely God and completely man at the same time.

 

[RamistThomist]

I recently learned about Apophatic theology and felt that it held some weight, until I thought about the incarnation. Even though God is so far beyond our comprehension, He still obviously seeks to make Himself known to us. After all, Jesus says that this is eternal life John 17:3. Does the incarnation alone disprove apophatic theology? What else may be used to disprove apophatic theology? Sola Scriptura?

It seems to me that to disprove this theology, would be to disprove Eastern Orthodoxy as a whole. I agree with the Forum of Christian Leaders that this mystical (eastern Orthodox) understanding of Apophatic theology leads to the same place as Arianism, Because if men cannot truly know God in any tangible way than it would be impossible for Jesus to truly be completely God and completely man at the same time.

Apophatic theology applies more to the Godhead than it does to the Incarnation. We know what God's essence is by denying finite properties to it. In Reformed circles we have the same thing: we call it archetypal theology.

All of the leading champions against Arianism (e.g., Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus) held strictly to apophatic theology.

 

[RJ Spencer]

Apophatic theology applies more to the Godhead than it does to the Incarnation. We know what God's essence is by denying finite properties to it. In Reformed circles we have the same thing: we call it archetypal theology.

All of the leading champions against Arianism (e.g., Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus) held strictly to apophatic theology.

I was referring more to the Eastern Orthodox understanding of Apophatic theology, sorry for not making that more clear.

 

[RamistThomist]

I was referring more to the Eastern Orthodox understanding of Apophatic theology, sorry for not making that more clear.

At its most basic level it means you can't define God by positive assertions of what he is. God is good, but not good like us, and so on.

In any case, all the Nicene fathers held to it.

 

[RamistThomist]

Although if you push apophatic theology too hard you get agnosticism. By itself it does have a place, though. It can safeguard against our reading our human notions into the godhead. The ESS false teaching did this by reading human notions of submission into the Trinity.

 

[bookslover]

Now, boys, can we get a definition so the rest of us can join in?

What is apophatic theology?

 

[bookslover]

I found a definition:

Involving the dominant idea in the Eastern church that we know God primarily through mystical contemplation rather than through positive propositions or intellectual activity. Indeed, we are to empty our minds of logical and intellectual categories and, in ignorance, engage in prayer.

From: Systematic Theology by Robert Letham (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), p. 939.

In other words, total subjectivity. Sounds like a seriously bad idea.

 

[RamistThomist]

I found a definition:

Involving the dominant idea in the Eastern church that we know God primarily through mystical contemplation rather than through positive propositions or intellectual activity. Indeed, we are to empty our minds of logical and intellectual categories and, in ignorance, engage in prayer.

From: Systematic Theology by Robert Letham (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), p. 939.

In other words, total subjectivity. Sounds like a seriously bad idea.

I
That's an extreme version of it. Not all.versions.are.like that

 

[earl40]

Now, boys, can we get a definition so the rest of us can join in?

What is apophatic theology?

Simply put it is where we humans describe God as what He is not in His divine essence.

I used to have conversation with the Eastern Orthodox over the manifestations of God, such as the burning bush. I would ask if that was that God and if so did Moses see God? They would say yes I would say no in that it was a "man"ifestation of God and that manifestation was not archetypal but ectypal.

 

[Regi Addictissimus]

Now, boys, can we get a definition so the rest of us can join in?

What is apophatic theology?

apophatic theology (Gk. ἀποφατικὴ θεολογία), or negative theology, a way of approaching God by denying that any of our concepts can properly be affirmed of Him. The term is first used by *Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite in contrast with cataphatic or affirmative theology and symbolic theology (Myst. 3). In apophatic theology the soul rejects all ideas or images of God and enters the ‘darkness that is beyond understanding’, where it is ‘wholly united with the Ineffable’ (ibid.). The roots of apophatic theology can be traced back a long way, to the ban on *images in parts of the OT, and to a similar rejection of *anthropomorphism by the Greek philosopher Xenophanes, developed by Parmenides and *Plato into a tradition which characterizes the Divine in largely negative terms. This tradition was taken up by the *Gnostics, philosophers such as *Philo and Numenius, by *Plotinus and other *Neoplatonists, and by the Christian Fathers, esp. St *Gregory of Nyssa. Apophatic theology can be seen as an assertion of the inadequacy of human understanding in matters Divine, and therefore a corrective within theology, forming part of the way of *analogy (q.v.), an approach perhaps more characteristic of the W. Church. In the E., on the other hand, apophatic theology is regarded as fundamental. Here it is seen as an affirmation that God cannot be an object of knowledge at all; this doctrine is given classic expression in the teaching of St *Gregory Palamas that God’s essence is unknowable, while He makes Himself known to us through His energies.
See also GOD.

E. Norden, Agnostos Theos: Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte religiöser Rede (1913); A.-J. Festugière, OP, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismègiste, 4: Le Dieu inconnu et la Gnose (1954). J. Hochstaffl, Negative Theologie: Ein Versuch zur Vermittlung des patristischen Begriffs (Munich, 1976), with bibl. D. Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, 1995) J P. Williams, Denying Divinity: Apophasis in the Paristic Christian Tradition and Soto Zen Buddhist Traditions (Oxford, 2000). V. *Lossky, Essai sur la Théologie mystique de l’Église d’Orient (1944; Eng. tr., 1957); P. Evdokimov, La Connaissance de Dieu selon la tradition orientale (Lyons, 1967). J. Pieper, Philosophia negativa: Zwei Versuche über Thomas von Aquin (Munich, 1953 Eng. tr., with other material, The Silence of St Thomas, 1957).


Cross, F. L., and Elizabeth A. Livingstone, eds. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church 2005 : 88–89. Print.

 

[RamistThomist]

You can take it in bizarre ways, like when Eastern fathers talk about transcending reason and non-reason. But no one has proven decisively that it must be like that.

Apophatic theology can protect us from dangerous fads, like not reading our notions of fatherhood into the divine essence (which is what we see with ESS).