Apophatic Theology: Description Through Negation
In Western religion, which is largely dominated by Catholic and Protestant Christianity, there is often an intense need to define the terms of faith. The Catholic Catechism - the book detailing the official stances of the church - is hundreds of pages long and delves into all manner of specifics in great detail. There are dogmas which one must assent to to be considered in “good standing” church. Even in many Protestant traditions there are often lengthy confessions and creeds and typically a desire to explain exactly what one means when they bring up a specific term or concept. Going back to my post on losing religion to find God, this is us obscuring the divine behind all manner of signs and stumbling blocks.
However, in the East, religious traditions including Orthodox Christianity tend to take a different approach. While there are still doctrines and dogmas, Eastern thinkers tend to be much more comfortable with mystery, not feeling the need to explain exactly how or why something occurs. For example between East and West, let’s look at how the Catholic and Orthodox churches differ in their understanding of the eucharist. Both churches believe in what is known as the “real presence”, the idea that Christ is truly present in the eucharist after consecration. However, the Catholic Church chooses to adopt Aristotelian explanations for how and when this change occurs, delving into difference between the “essence” and “accidents” of an object. They have a whole theology around this one thing, and not adhering to it can put you at odds with the magisterium, and has even been a core cause of multiple schisms in Protestantism. In Orthodoxy, however, there is no specific explanation for this change. Some Orthodox Christians accept transubstantiation (the Catholic position) while others do not. The church leadership as a whole chooses to embrace the mystery of the Eucharist rather than breaking it down with reason.
Another big difference between these traditions is their differing emphases on cataphatic and apophatic theology. Cataphatic theology is theology that uses “positive” terms to define God by what They are believed to be - i.e. God is good. Apophatic theology instead uses negation to describe what God is not, choosing to leave positive statements in the realm of mystery - i.e. God is not evil. The Catholic Church is more fond of cataphatic theology, whereas the Orthodox tend to prefer apophatic. Personally, I go back and forth with whether I think cataphatic or apophatic theology offer the best approach, typically deciding which one to use depending on the circumstance. However, I try to remember that at the end of the day, we are again discussing a mystery. We have thrown the blanket named “God” over the Ultimate Reality so we can have a shape to grasp, but, as St. Augustine once wrote, “if you can grasp [God], it isn’t God.” Or, in the words of Lao Tzu, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.”
Ultimately, I love apophatic theology, but I am still a western-born man, and so I find myself using cataphatic theology without realizing it most of the time. This is not inherently a problem, but I do think that cataphatic theology only gets us so far, and can actually bog us down in “signs” - we begin to worship something we have defined into existence rather than the mystery that actually exists. In that regard, apophatic theology has a serious advantage in that it allows us to maintain the mystery while still engaging in theological thought.
But why does this really matter? How does it impact the way we engage with our faiths? Let us imagine two prayers, one cataphatic and one apophatic. In the cataphatic prayer, you say “Our Father.” However, in the apophatic prayer you allow God to transcend gendered terms like mother or father, “God who watches over us all, keeping watch over us as your children”. These two prayers are simple differences on the surface, but they pretty fundamentally alter the signs we associate with “God”. Someone shaped by apophatic prayer may not imagine God as a man or with the specific social hang-ups that come with “fatherhood” and masculinity. Instead, they may have a much more fluid and open vision of God. Surely that will change how they interact with the world, no? And what of ritual practice? A cataphatic practice would be the recitation of a creed whereas an apophatic practice would be silent prayer, meditation, or contemplation. One of these creates ground for division and argumentation where the other creates a greater closeness with God.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Theology is deeply important. The way we understand God and divinity fundamentally shapes the way we interact with the world and one another. But this is not to say that I am an advocate for rejecting any cataphatic practices or statements. Rather, I want to remind us that all concepts about the divine are provisional. Cataphatic theology risks turning our ideas into idols while Apophatic theology allows frees us to worship the mystery behind it all. It frees us to worship not the God we can define, but the one we cannot. It allows mystery to remain mystery and allows our faith to rest now on certainty, but in awe.
