Apophatic Theology

 What is apophatic theology? One can begin by offering a preliminary definition. Apophatic theology is the theology done post the acknowledgment of the total failure of language. It is in fact the aftermath of the failure of the failure of the very phenomenon of language with respect to the notion and the experience of the idea of language. Alhough it sounds quite extreme at the level of the initial ideation, it is, however, hereby hoped that this statement about the failure of language in the face of the transcendent reality of God will be borne out by the thesis proposed here. It grapples with this transcendent reality and seeks to overcome and seeks to overcome all manifest reality which emanates from it and finally mergesand is sublated into it. There is an adequate number of philosophical reasons manifested historically that makes one wonder and oftentimes accept  this statement regarding the collapse and inadequacy of language in the face of the apophatic idea of God. This statement, in turn, is borne out only by experiential data and is not an object of logic. The collapse of language is here of fundamental pertinence to the discourse. This causes further problems to arise which penetrate to the very heart Theology is basically understood as speech or talk about God. However, this simple and obvious becomes problematrized and subverted when one faces it with the question: 'What is it that theology acomplishes or does when it purports to speak about God in respect of whom all language ceases and fails?' 

One must first clear the ground of all misapprehensions before one embarks on this project. These misapprehensions are rather pervasive. Apophaciticism in theology and literature is a variegated and pervasive phenomenon. One is inundated with countless suggestions and associations all overwhelmingly state that apophatic thgeology is theology done by way or method of negation.  The embhasis, that is to say, in apophatic or negative theological method is on didcovering what God is not rather than trying to define what God is. Apophatic theology is contrasted with cataphatic/kataphatic theology which is known as the medod of theology that seeks to understand God by making affirmative statements about him. It is theology by way of affirmation rather than negation. It uses an affirmative (and not negative) language with respect to God. It would not be amiss to aver that the apophatic and cataphatic approaches work though a kind of pairing or coupling. Dennis Turner in his 'Darkness of God' is trying to nudge us beyond all simplistic and caricatured notion of apophatic theology. Apophatic theology grows to its own kind of fulness by transcending its basic nothingness or emptiness. Dennis Turner, in sketching this fulness of apophasis, draws particularly heavily on Pseudo-Dionysius. The seminal figure of Pseudo-Dionysius will be separately examined later on. Pseudo-Dionysius suggests that the apophatic element is brought out by this close examination of all language (especially in its discursive aspect) with respect to God. In other words, not merely affirmations but negations also fail in this enterprise of discursivity with respect to God. They fail because they are as much a part of the creaturely, finite, and limited speech with respect to God. For instance when we try to describe God as NOT evil or not physical/bodily, we are still trying to draw God within the structures of our creaturely and finite linguistic apparatus inhabiting its locus of a limited world.

Given the transcendent  'nature' of God, these finitely contained and conditioned representations fail. Any authentic grappling with the idea of God (say, for example, existential) inevitably fails in the face of the this transcendent reality of God that trancends ALL. The negations and affirmations fail, in this context, equally. God is good (an affirmative statement) and God is immaterial (a negative statement) are equally futile and insufficient when one seeks to understand the full reality of God. This is what makes for the apophatic element of God-talk.This in turn is contrasted with the cataphatic language. It is often times more apt to describe this relationship between the apophatic and cataphatic elements as paired or coupled rather than contrasted. As theology is precisely done through speech or language, one must pass through the preliminary and necessary phase of speech or language.

The apophatic is not a prior to speech, that is, it is not simply a silence prior to speech. It is, rather, a silence beyond speech. So one can, in a manner of speaking, break through to it by first passing it through speech/language. One then works it out fully to the logical conclusion of the apophatic method which lies in its ultimately falling silent and iws finally lit up from within by a divine (new) light of fulness as against the emptiness or nothingness one comes across/encounters in the process. Therefore, the failure of language transpires in the realm beyond language rather than before language. The great apophatic neoplatonic theologian talks about God ad 'dazzling darkness.' It comes across as an apparent oxymoron where two opposite qualities are juxtaposed. The two cannot be simultaneously present as true. Bright and dark (that is, dazzling and darkness) tend to contract each other in the creaturely 'world.' (With God all things are possible.)  Therefore, the purpose of juxtaposing the two by thus putting them together (dazzling darkness) in the context of our transcendent God is two show that God transcends all contradistinctiopn between creatures/objects and forms the only true subject. Hence, two words are brought together in a way that they exist together in a tension of contrariness and form together an oxymoron which holds true even as it evqtes all attempts at meaning making which seek to fix it into a speific denotation. God is, in a manner, represented by it and, yet, completely eludes it. Oxymorons are thus a typical manifestation of this problematic of language and its relationship to God. Language and discursive logic (its structure) are pushed over the brink of collapse. All attempts at any imprisonment or entrapment into meaning is not only resisted, but in the final analysis, are completely done away with. To understand how this comes about, one must need resort to the originary moment of the (explicit) conception of apophaticism in philosophico-theological traditions of both the east and west. It can refer to more than one tradition of thought. At the same time, it has also been received as an approach to theology in general. In the present work, we would seek to confine the focus to the latter. The thrust would be more on uncovering or revealing some of the logic that apophatic/negative theologians have sought to implement in thinking about God apophatically.

One can here, for example, bein with an orientatipon point (an image) and its concomitant idea that is prevalent in both the eastern and the western traditions. Specially during the patristic period, this particular method of theologizing was present in greater force.