First Thoughts

Overview

Apophatic and Cataphatic are two terms used in theology to describe different approaches to understanding God. The Eastern Orthodox and Latin West each use both types.  The issue comes down to one of emphasis and balance: The Orthodox East is overwhelmingly Apophatic in approach, while the Latin West is predominantly Cataphatic.

Definitions

Apophatic theology (from Greek: ἀπόφημι apophēmi, meaning “to deny”) uses “negative” terminology to indicate what it is believed the divine is not. It means emptying the mind of words and ideas and simply resting in the presence of God.   Apophatic prayer is prayer that occurs without words, images, or concepts. This approach to prayer regards silence, stillness, unknowing and even darkness as doorways, rather than obstacles, to communication with God.  Apophatic theology relies primarily on experience and revelation.

Cataphatic theology (from the Greek word κατάφασις kataphasis meaning “affirmation”) uses “positive” terminology to describe or refer to the divine, i.e. terminology that describes or refers to what the divine is believed to be. Cataphatic prayer is prayer that speaks thoroughly, intensively, or positively of God: prayer that uses words, images, ideas, concepts, and the imagination to relate to God.  Cataphatic theology relies heavily on logic and reason.

Background

Apophatic theology—also known as negative theology or via negativa—is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation. In Orthodox Christianity, Apophatic theology is based on the assumption that God’s essence is unknowable or ineffable and on the recognition of the inadequacy of human language to describe God. The Apophatic tradition in Orthodoxy is balanced with Cataphatic theology (positive theology) via belief in the Incarnation and the self-revealed energies of God, through which God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. However, Apophatic theology is the dominant traditional Eastern paradigm of an experiential, revealed theology, intimately linking doctrine with contemplation through purgation (catharsis), illumination (theoria), and union (theosis).

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – 215) was an early proponent of Apophatic theology with elements of Cataphatic. Clement holds that God is unknowable, although God’s unknowability, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers. According to Clement’s writings, the term theoria develops further from a mere intellectual “seeing” toward a spiritual form of contemplation. Clement’s Apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the “mystic vision of the soul.” For Clement, God is both transcendent in essence and immanent in self-revelation.

The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (4^th century)) were early exemplars of this Apophatic theology. They stated that mankind can acquire an incomplete knowledge of God in his attributes, positive and negative, by reflecting upon and participating in his self-revelatory operations (energeia). But, the essence of God is completely unknowable.

A century later Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th century) in his short work Mystical Theology, first introduced and explained what came to be known as Apophatic or negative theology.

Maximus the Confessor (7th century) maintained that the combination of Apophatic theology and hesychasm—the practice of silence and stillness—made theosis or union with God possible. 

John of Damascus (8th century) employed Apophatic theology when he wrote that positive (cataphatic) statements about God reveal “not the nature, but the things around the nature.”

All in all, Apophatic theology remains crucial to much of the theology in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.  The opposite tends to be true in Western Latin Christianity, with a few notable exceptions to this rule.

Cataphatic theology

In the Latin West a heavily Cataphatic theology, or via positiva, developed, which remains today in most forms of Western Christianity.  This type of Cataphatic theology is based on using human reason to make positive statements about the nature of God.  It slowly developed from the 5^th to the 11^th century, emerging as Scholasticism in the Medieval Period (11^th-17^th centuries). (see entries for Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, below)

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) significantly influenced scholasticism, emphasizing the integration of faith and reason. His ideas laid the groundwork for later Scholastic thinkers who sought to reconcile Christian theology with classical philosophy, particularly through dialectic reasoning.  Augustine’s doctrines of the filioque, original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination found little support outside of the Western Roman Church.  Within the Western Latin church, ‘Augustinianism’ dominated early theology.

Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 1109) is widely considered the father of Scholasticism, endeavoring to render Christian tenets of faith, traditionally taken as a revealed truth, as a rational system. Scholasticism prescribed that Aristotelian dialectic reason be used in the elucidation of spiritual truth and in defense of the dogmas of Faith.

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 – 7 March 1274) reflects the mature emergence of this new medieval Scholastic paradigm, which promoted the use of formal intellectual reason, putting it at odds with the predominantly Eastern revealed tradition of hesychastic contemplation. Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1265–1274), is considered to be the pinnacle of Medieval Scholastic Christian philosophy and theology. The resulting ‘Thomism’ remains the foundation of contemporary Western Latin theology.