apophatic theology
A method of describing God by saying what he is not. Also called via negationis.1
This approach is sometimes referred to as the via negativa or via negationis, the way of negation, because it is asserting something true about God by denying something false about him. So when we want to say that God is not mutable or that he does not change, we simply say he is immutable. Essentially, we are identifying all that is creaturely and therefore cannot be in God.2
- From The Christian Faith by Michael Horton:
[T]he incommunicable attributes are especially identified by the way of negation (via negationis), by stating some of the respects in which God is not like us. Characteristically, these attributes are recognized by the alpha privative in Greek (the initial a of words such as apatheia (non-suffering) or a similarly negating prefix in Latin, which is taken over into English (for example, immortal, invisible, immutable).3
[I]t is these attributes of the way of negation that are most frequently challenged as a supposedly later corruption of biblical theology by pagan (Greek) metaphysics. However, it is not only later theologians but the apostle Paul as well who use the alpha-privative prefix, referring to God, for example, as immortal (aphthartos) and invisible (aoratos) (1 Ti 1:17; cf. 6:15-16).4
Learn more:
- Got Questions: What is apophatic theology?
- Theopedia: Negative Theology
Related terms:
Filed under God’s Nature and His Work
1From None Greater, page 248.
2 From None Greater, page 37.
3 From The Christian Faith, page 225.
4 From The Christian Faith, page 226.
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