Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson

Источник

APOPHATIC THEOLOGY

APOPHATIC THEOLOGY. From apophasis (apo phemi, literally “to say away,” or as a noun, “negation”), it is the opposite of kataphasis (affirmation). Applied to God (q.v.), the term means to say what God is not. Evidence of apophatic sensibilities expressed in Scripture (q.v.) may be found in the revelation of the name of God in Ex, the ascent of Moses on the mountain, Paul’s description of his ecstatic spiritual experience, et al. Later in Platonism, and especially the late Platonism of the Church Fathers (qq.v.), it was commonplace to refuse to ascribe to God (or the One) any predicate derived from the phenomenal world. The One precisely as “One,” unity, precludes any intellectual construct: all constructions and all ideas belong to the multiple. Taken up by Christian writers as early as Irenaeus (q.v.), and achieving its definitive expression in Dionysius the Areopagite (q.v.), apophatic theology became a given of Orthodox thought. At the hands of these Fathers, however, it referred to God’s transcendence as Creator and hence to the infinite chasm between the Maker and all that is made. Thus, the ousia, or essence of God, is everlastingly unknowable and unattainable.


Источник: The A to Z of the Orthodox Church / Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, Michael D. Peterson - Scarecrow Press, 2010. - 462 p. ISBN 1461664039

Комментарии для сайта Cackle