Negative & Analogical

• Apophatic way

  Via Negativa
• Cataphatic Way

  Via Positiva
• Apophatic Way

  • Speaking of God using only negatives, emphasising the difference between God & humanity.
  • It is better to accept mysteries of God than to pin him down with flawed concepts.
  • We end up belittling God & imagining our reason is capable of understanding divine mysteries.
• Why should we not describe God using positive terms?

  • Positive attributes of God (God is a King) are misleading.
  • Positive terms suggest God has attributes that we recognise from the physical world.
  • we end up belittling God & imagining our reason is capable of understanding divine mysteries.
• What do agnostic thinkers say about God

  • We can neither know or speak about God.
  • God is not available to reason, not accessible to experiment & testing.
  • human vocabulary cannot communicate anything about God = no point in discussing about God.
• Some atheists claim that talk of God or of anything supernatural is plain nonsense.
• 1 issue of philosophers of religion is whether religious language can communicate ideas effectively, even when these go beyond our normal experiences.

  Language of human, finite world is inadequate for conveying ideas about a divine being.
• Apophatic - love

  • 'God is love'
  • we start making people think of human love with all of its flaws & jealousies & limitations.
• Pseudo-Dionysius - Apophatic Way

  • Christian mystic
  • Said that God is beyond all understanding & imagination (Epistemic distance) = via negativa is the only way to speak truthfully about God.
  • wrote about the need for the soul to become unified with God by going beyond the realms of sense perception & rationality, entering a 'cloud of unknowing' from which God can be approached.
  • follower of Plato - believed in soul's search for God can be held back by demands of body.
• Pseudo Dionysius influence on Apophatic Way

  • It is counter-productive to speak of God as though God can be perceived by the senses or as though we can reach God through reason.
  • It is only through recognition of limits of humanity that spiritual progress can be made.
  • Genuinely seeking God = put away the need to have answers to everything; stop using logic & argument.
  • Instead, allow God to speak to them in stillness, accepting God will remain a mystery.
  • otherwise they may miss the point & end up with the idea of a God that is too small.
• Moses Maimonides (Apophatic)

  • Jewish thinker
  • By understanding what God is not, people can move closer to an understanding of what God is, without limiting God in their thoughts.
  • used the example of a ship to demonstrate this.
• 'I do not merely declare that he who affirms attributes of God has not sufficient knowledge concerning the Creator... but I say that he unconsciously loses his belief in God. - Maimonides
• How does Buddhist texts use via negativa ?

  • Although they don't believe in God, they use via negativa to convey the essence of ultimate reality, which cannot be described except as the negation of things we know from physical world.
• Brian Davies


  • criticises Maimonides & 'ship' example.
  • saying what God is not means we cannot understand what Him at all.
  • unreasonable to assume a person arrives at the notion of a 'ship' when they could be thinking of a coffin or wardrobe.
  • Maimonides method is unlikely to lead people in right direction.
  • assuming someone will gain understanding via elimination, because we need to know beforehand, what possibilities are.
  • Via Negativa might not work for someone who begins by not knowing anything about God.
• Via Negativa helps us to talk about God

  • Respectful way of talking about God - recognises God is far beyond human understanding.
  • By saying what God is not, we preserve the transcendence & majesty of God.
  • to say what God is not = implies the positive to an extent. (God is not limited by time tells us about god, however limited it may be).
  • Avoids anthropomorphising God - doesn't bring God down to human level by using human terms.
• Via Negativa does not help us to talk about God

  • Religious believers seek positive knowledge of God & speak of God in positive rather than negative.
  • leaves us with limited understanding of God because there is so little that it communicates about God.
  • Leaves us in a place of 'darkness' - Gregory of Nyssa
• Gregory of Nyssa - Apophatic

  • 4th Century AD mystic
  • described spiritual life as a 'mysticism of darkness'.
  • no words to describe understanding of God; completely beyond words & images.
• Cataphatic Way (Via Positiva)

  • term used to describe approaches to religious language that use positive terms in order to convey meaning.
• why is Aquinas against Cataphatic way?

  • we cannot say anything positive that is literally true of God.
  • Use of ordinary language automatically limits God.
• Via Eminentiae (Way of Eminence)

  • used by Aquinas
  • What we say & know of God, is only partial.
  • Eg. love of God is 'eminent'. - our own love that we receive is partial & flawed, but God's love is the prime example of love.
• Did Aquinas completely deny Via Positiva

  • Summa Theologica - there could be a way of making positive claims about God, as long as we realise the words we use have an analogical application & not literal.
• Distinction of analogical language

  • Univocal - uses words in same way - meaning is same.
  • Equivocal - same words used in different meaning.
• "Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home." - Freud
• Freud suggests analogies are a comforting idea, helping you understand & dissasociate from relaity.
• Aquinas believed analogy was a middle ground between univocal & equivocal language.
• Analogy of attribution

  • causal relationship between 2 things.
  • A jumper is described as 'warm' & 'cosy' because of the effect it has on a person.
  • Aquinas uses example of bull's urine - it is healthy because it is caused by & can be attributed to health of bull.
  • Likewise, we can attribute goodness to God because we see something like 'goodness' in his creations.
• Analogy of attribution to describe God

  • causal relationship
  • God as living = God creates and sustains all life.
  • God as wise = all knowledge & wisdom comes from God.
  • Aquinas made distinction between God being good, wise & loving in his essence, whereas everything else is good, wise & loving because it participates in the essence of God.
• Analogy of proportionality

  • Words relate to objects which are different in proportion.
  • Eg. Fast cat & fast car - words are used in proportion to the object it relates to.
  • Aquinas thought we can describe God with terms such as 'loving' & 'faithful' but must recognise that God is these on an infinitely vaster scale than our own.
• By using analogy of attribution & analogy of proportion, Aquinas hopes to avoid pitfalls of univocal & equivocal language & counter the apophatic way.
• Ramsey - models & qualifiers

  • we use 'models' when we speak of God - righteous/loving.
  • We understand these because we have a reference point in our own human experience.
  • To not limit God & to recognise his attributes are unlike our own, we need to use qualifiers.
  • Qualifiers = adjectives & adverbs - everlasting or perfectly = we can anchor our ideas about God within our experience & we can show God is different to us proportionally.
• Analogy is not effective way to talk about God

  • attributing similar ideas to God = may still limit God. - How do we know anything about God if He is beyond our understanding?
  • problem with analogy of proportion - no point of reference to judge appropriateness of analogy.
  • J.Don Scotus - argues analogy is too vague & leaves us unable to understand God or his actions.
  • Analogy assumes similarity between God & humans. If God is completely different to humans, there is nothing to compare him to.
• Analogy is an effective way to talk about God

  • Analogy of attribution - avoids problems of equivocal language because there is some similarity between God's love & love seen in families.
  • Avoids anthropomorphism.
• Hick in support of analogy

  • it enables us to make some statements about God but preserves a degree of mystery.
  • Incarnation & stories of Jesus shows God's character, so some statements about God are possible.
• Vincent Brummer (criticism-analogy)

  • when we use analogy of proportion, we make assumptions - we lack the necessary knowledge to speak with authority.
• Karl Barth (criticism-analogy)

  • we cannot approach understanding of God from experience - we need revelation.