Apophatic theology

The apophatic tradition runs deep in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Jewish mysticism, and Sufism, and has roots in Neoplatonism. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th–6th century) gave the approach its most systematic early expression: because God transcends every category we can apply to creatures, any positive claim about God ("God is wise," "God is good") is at best analogical and at worst misleading. The only rigorous theology is a via negativa that strips away false images.

In practice, the apophatic tradition holds that God is not finite, not limited, not temporal, not composed of parts, not a being among beings. The goal is a kind of intellectual humility: acknowledging that any concept we form of God must fall short of the reality, because concepts are tools for dividing and comparing finite things, and God is, by hypothesis, not a finite thing.

Apophatic theology is often contrasted with cataphatic (positive) theology, which builds up an account of God from attributes like love, wisdom, and justice. Most theologians use both approaches — the apophatic to check the cataphatic against anthropomorphism, the cataphatic to give apophatic theology something to deny. But the balance between them has been a central dispute in Christian mysticism for fifteen centuries.

For a secular reader, apophatic theology is useful to know about because it blunts a common objection to religious belief. Many atheist critiques attack a strongly anthropomorphic God — a being with a beard, a mood, and a plan. Apophatic theologians explicitly disown that image and will often agree with the atheist that such a God does not exist.