Apophaticism and its relation to spirituality

[T. Wells]

Hey All,

I'm an agnostic with some questions and was hoping some of you might be able to help. The basic definitions that I have read of apophaticism or negative theology state that it's a form of theology that says what God is not rather than we he is (cataphatic). As I understand the Eastern tradition theology is not separated from spirituality or mysticism as it tends to be the West. So my question is how does the apophatic approach to spirituality manifest in practice? Is it a centering of attentive awareness on the present moment? Is the apophatic the substance that the cataphatic points towards? When I say "centering of attentive awareness", I don't mean to sound reductionist I'm just trying to get past a lot of the theological language that is typically used and trying to see existentially what it is pointing toward.

Thanks for any help!

Thom

[Herman Blaydoe]

Hey All,

I'm an agnostic with some questions and was hoping some of you might be able to help. The basic definitions that I have read of apophaticism or negative theology state that it's a form of theology that says what God is not rather than we he is (cataphatic). As I understand the Eastern tradition theology is not separated from spirituality or mysticism as it tends to be the West. So my question is how does the apophatic approach to spirituality manifest in practice? Is it a centering of attentive awareness on the present moment? Is the apophatic the substance that the cataphatic points towards? When I say "centering of attentive awareness", I don't mean to sound reductionist I'm just trying to get past a lot of the theological language that is typically used and trying to see existentially what it is pointing toward.

Thanks for any help!

Thom

I look forward to correction by better minds than mine if I get it too wrong, but here are some thoughts from one who also considered himself an agnostic once upon a time.

In one sense, I think you are on the right track. Orthodoxy, through apophatic theology, is saying that there are some things about God that we cannot figure out and may never really know or completely comprehend, even as the agnostics do. However, in saying that God cannot be figured out, we are saying that God can be experienced and KNOWN in a way that makes having to "figure Him out" unnecessary. He can be experienced.

I can know about someone, but that is not the same thing as knowing someone. I can read a book about someone, or many books. I can do research and have unique insights about a person, but that is not the same thing as having met, or actually known or had some sort of meaningful relationship with, that person. As a Protestant, I felt like I was learning about someone. As an Orthodox Christian, I have MET someone. I have experienced God, not as a character in a book, but as a Presence. We try to describe this as best we can, but as limited human beings, there is only so much we can express. Therefore we have to explain the boundaries of what we know, so that we can try to grasp that God goes beyond those boundaries. This is the realization that God cannot be described, He must be experienced.

As an agnostic, you realize that there is more to God than has been explained to you. But God is NOT unknowable. Orthodoxy is, in fact, the next step, in realizing that God can be experienced in a real and visceral way, and can be known, even if He defies our ability to "explain" Him down to the nth detail. And in getting to "know" God and in having a relationship with God, "figuring Him out" doesn't seem all that important any more.

At least that is how it seems to work for this bear of little brain.

Herman the Pooh, looking forward to correction

[Herman Blaydoe]

One of our regular posters in this forum, in another thread, has posted something that I think bears on the original question of this thread, at least it seems at first glance to be in concord with what I posted previously. From the "Creation and evolutionary theory, II (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=64757&postcount=260)" thread:


Modern science claims to be observational and empirical. The problem is that one cannot find an objective point from which to observe nature. And there is also much more to observe than just natural processes. The Fathers are the true empiricists -- they are radical empiricists, as Christ was. "I speak only of the things that I have seen and heard." Our task is to allow our senses to be transformed so that we see things that God has made through God's eyes. That is Orthodoxy in a nutshell.

Part of how we try to explain this is through the apophatic approach.

[Rick H.]

Amazon.com: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church: Vladimir Lossky: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311)


This is a grey area for me to be honest. Before coming to Orthodoxy I read contemporary writing theologians over patristic sources at a ratio of about 7 to 1. And, since coming to Orthodoxy I have found that some of what I have read from the contemporary writers is challenged as not representing the mind of the Church. So with that said I would like to share that it is my understanding, based on my reading before coming to Orthodoxy that a true apohaticism has in mind the goal of transcending all affirmations and negations. It was probably either Lossky or Zizioulas that expressed this most clearly. But, as we move to the objective here of transcending in this way, I think the language used in the first post of 'centering' and 'attentive awareness' comes into play.

So in this sense to say "cataphatic" represents a positive approach to theology which results in propositions and a systematic theology and to say "apophatic" represents a negative approach and an unsystematic theology is not correct I think. For that matter if one builds a list of what God is not then there is clearly a method which can result in a systematic result even in this.

But, beyond this, another reason why I say this is a grey area is because on the one hand, as Herman has indicated, we Orthodox do not claim a theological agnosticism in all of this; however, on the other hand when we appeal to experience/encounter and presence what have we said that could not be said by some agnostics, or most new agers, or most from other world faith traditions and denominations?

Those who follow the various forms of Indian Philosophy,for example, use an almost identical form of apophaticism that leads to communion, experience/encounter, with the divine presence.

And, I guess that's enough for this morning, but after re-reading the initial post, after re-reading the way the questions are phrased (viz. 'theology' and 'mysticism') it occurs to me that there is one book that might be very helpful in this as it was to me in the past. This book is by Vladimir Lossky: "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church":


Amazon.com: The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church: Vladimir Lossky: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Theology-Eastern-Church/dp/0913836311)

I see it is selling for only $12.06 now! This book is invaluable for what is contained only in the introduction . . . but this book DIRECTLY ADDRESSES the questions asked in the initial post and I hope you can get your hands on a copy. I detect a high level of sincerity in these questions for which I hope you do get this book and have your high-lighters and pens and pencils ready when you go through this book, if you do. It is interesting to read what Lossky says in particular as one works his way through the book, and then go back and see what is said as a whole on a second trip through. This book does accomplish what cannot be accomplished most of the time on internet discussions--there is so much fruit in this book I am not sure there is room enough in the world for it all.


In Christ,
Rick

[Jonathan Companik]

Hey All,

I'm an agnostic with some questions and was hoping some of you might be able to help. The basic definitions that I have read of apophaticism or negative theology state that it's a form of theology that says what God is not rather than we he is (cataphatic). As I understand the Eastern tradition theology is not separated from spirituality or mysticism as it tends to be the West. So my question is how does the apophatic approach to spirituality manifest in practice? Is it a centering of attentive awareness on the present moment? Is the apophatic the substance that the cataphatic points towards? When I say "centering of attentive awareness", I don't mean to sound reductionist I'm just trying to get past a lot of the theological language that is typically used and trying to see existentially what it is pointing toward.

Thanks for any help!

Thom

If I may, I will leave you with a few salient quotations from St. Gregory Palamas, a 14th century Orthodox saint, which directly bears on this issue. These passages from The Triads of Palamas deal directly with the positive (cataphatic) experience of God in Orthodoxy that yet transcends both knowing and unknowing, since God's inner essence is ultimately ineffable and unknowable.

In Orthodoxy, what the spiritual mystic sees/experiences is the immaterial light of God's glory, not the hidden, unknowable aspect of God which is His essence. The glory of God is not sensible or created. It is uncreated and inseparable from the essence while yet being distinct from the essence. The Light, Glory, or Grace of God as it comes to the mystic is simply God "projecting" His Being beyond Himself towards creatures. Also called His uncreated "energies", this Light/Grace/Glory is not an impersonal medium between God and created or sensible/intellectual existence, but rather God Himself communicated to man in a manner that enables man to one day participate in uncreatedness without being confused with the eternal essence of the Divine.

With that said, here is Palamas:

The human mind also, and not only the angelic, transcends itself, and by victory over the passions acquires an angelic form. It, too, will attain that light and will become worthy of a supernatural vision of God, not seeing the divine essence, but seeing God by a revelation appropriate and analogous to Him. One sees, not in a negative way--for one does see something--but in a manner superior to negation. For God is not only beyond knowledge, but also beyond unknowing; His revelation itself is also truly a mystery of a most divine and an extraordinary kind, since the divine manifestations, even if symbolic, remain unknowable by reason of their transcendence. They appear, in fact, according to a law which is not appropriate to either human or divine nature--being, as it were, for us yet beyond us--so that no name can properly describe them. (St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads, pg.32)

It [divinization] is not the product of a cause or a relationship, for these are dependent upon the activity of the intellect, but it comes to be by abstraction, without itself being that abstraction. If it were simply abstraction, it would depend on us....Contemplation, then, is not simply abstraction and negation; it is a union and a divinization which occurs mystically and ineffably by the grace of God, after the stripping away of everything from here below which imprints itself on the mind, or rather after the cessation of all intellectual activity; it is something which goes beyond abstraction (which is only the outward mark of the cessation)....(Ibid, pgs.34-35).

For if all their intellectual activity has stopped, how could the angels and angelic men see God except by the power of the Spirit? This is why their vision is not a sensation, since they do not receive it through the senses; nor is it intellection, since they do not find it through thought or the knowledge that comes thereby, but after the cessation of all mental activity....On the other hand the mind does not acquire it simply by elevating itself through negation. For, according to the teaching of the Fathers, every divine command and every sacred law has as its final limit purity of heart; every mode and aspect of prayer reaches its term in pure prayer; and every concept which strives from below to towards the One Who transcends all and is separated from all comes to a halt once detached from all created beings. (Ibid, pg. 35)

The ascent by negation is in fact only an apprehension of how all things are distinct from God; it conveys only an image of the formless contemplation and of the fulfillment of the mind in contemplation, not being itself that fulfillment....(Ibid, pg.36)

But those who, in the manner of angels, have been united to that light celebrate it by using the image of this total abstraction. The mystical union with the light teaches them that this light is superessentially transcendent to all things. Moreover, those judged worthy to receive the mystery with a faithful and prudent ear can also celebrate the divine and inconceivable light by means of an abstraction from all things. But they can only unite themselves to it and see if they have purified themselves by fulfillment of the commandments, and by consecrating their mind to pure and immaterial prayer, so as to receive the supernatural power of contemplation (Ibid, pgs.36-37)

The mind then transcends prayer, and this state should not properly be called prayer, but a fruit of the pure prayer sent by the Holy Spirit. The mind does not pray a definite prayer, but finds itself in ecstasy in the midst of incomprehensible realities. It is indeed an ignorance superior to knowledge. (Ibid, pg. 38)