What is “apophatic” theology?
Apophatic or negative theology, also known as the Via Negativa (latin for the “Negative Way”) and Apophatic theology, is a theology that attempts to describe God through negative attributes, through discussing what God is not. In this theology, one should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; nor can we safely say is that God is not nonexistent. We can only say that God neither exists nor does not exist. Adherents of negative theology hold that God, by definition, is that which is utterly beyond this universe and outside the bounds of what humans can understand. Rather than producing straightforward, positive assertions about the nature of God, it speaks by way of negation. In contrast, making positive statements about the nature of God, which occurs in most other forms of Christian theology, is sometimes called ‘cataphatic theology’.
