Religious languages

• Cataphatic way- via positiva = the way of the positive = what God is like
• Apothatic way = via negativa = the way of the negative - using language to describe what God is not in order to understand more about God
• Negation- to say what God is not = eliminate = gain knowledge of what it is
• Cognitive sentence is when it can be proved true or false - true claims
• non-cognitive sentence is when it is not possible to be proved true or false- instructions, preferences
• univocal- term means the same in different contexts
• the way of knowing God through negation is common in mysticism whether Eastern or Western- get around limiting God - God cannot come from deduction = knowledge of God came only from mystical experience
• Neo Platonist - God is beyond description and language
• Meister Eckhart - "the cloud of unknowing" and "the dark night of the soul"
• Moses Maimonides, 1135- 1204 AD- denying every attribute to God brings you one step closer to Good
• Dun Scotus 13th century- languages about God must be univocal or equivocal. "God is good"- must be the same way as humans or in a different way
• language becomes restricted as thoughts become complex
• language cannot be descriptive of God- it is evocative, instrumental and non-cognitive.
• An experience of union in the Divine Darkness with the ineffable, incomprehensible Divine Being who is Beyond Being and Beyond Thought.
• what can be known of God by way of experience and insight are affirmed of him and then denied in the via Negativa as not truly representing him as he is himself