Categories: orthodox-life
Date: 02 November 2004 01:01:37
At Xanthikos there is a wonderful blog about, among other things, apophatic theology. I commend that to you.
The strong use of apophatic theology (describing God by what he is not) in Orthodoxy has been a great blessing to me. It has reaffirmed the transcendency of God. It is, to me, important that we balance positive statements with negative statements. There are things we can say about God, but we must be careful not to limit these words to only our experience of them. God is Good -- but far more Good than we can imagine; God exists -- but His Existence is not ours; and so on.
The use of negatives [e.g. God is uncreated, infinite, ineffable] safeguards the trancendency and the essence of God, which we cannot know. As John of Damascus said:
That there is a God is clear; but what He is by essence and nature, this is altogether beyond our comprehension and knowledge.