Cataphatic and Apophatic Christian Spirituality
Two important dimensions of understanding and approaching the faith experience
Dear reader,
In understanding and moving through the mountains and valleys in my pilgrimage of faith, there are two words/concepts that have become important to me over the last 12 years. As I’ve explained them to others, it has sometimes been a lightbulb moment for them also, especially if they are facing low times in their journey.
It’s highly likely that I will refer to them from time to time here at Along the Way, so let’s get them in early in our journey together.
Cataphatic Christian Spirituality
Cataphatic theology is about what we can say of God – what we know of him. In language it finds ways of expressing our knowledge of God through what he is. The ultimate cataphatic expression is Jesus – God revealed and known in human form. Most of western Christianity focuses on the cataphatic.
In terms of spirituality, cataphatic expressions look for the presence of God. We seek a knowing of God through finding what God is and where he is present.
Most of our songs in Christian tradition are cataphatic. They state affirmations about God, the activity of God, and our place in that. To seek God is to trust a cataphatic pursuit. To seek is to affirm that something can be found. Statements like ‘God is good’, and ‘God is love’ are cataphatic statements. To say things like ‘God said…’ and ‘I believe God wants…’ - these are cataphatic expressions of our experience.
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Cataphatic theology is the positive way - not positive as in ‘good’, but positive as in the affirmation of the presence of a thing rather than absence.
Much of Christianity is highly cataphatic as we affirm the God who is self revealing and thus enables us to search and find. It is because of this that we can make positive and affirming statements about what we believe. When we are assured of our faith in a cataphatic way, to say ‘I believe’ is easy enough as a cognitive agreement/assent to a story and set of ideas.
To sense God, to feel guided by God, to feel loved by God, to hear whispers we attribute to the Spirit - these are cataphatic modes of our spirituality.
It feels solid and sure. The ground is stable and firm. We can see the way forward.
But the cataphatic way is only one part of the faith equation, and for some it is found wanting when we hit the valleys. When we know faith only in a cataphatic way, the lows can throw our whole pilgrimage into disarray. That’s where understanding the flipside of the faith coin becomes important, and I would argue, leads to a much deeper and more resilient faith.
Apophatic Christian Spirituality
Apophatic theology is the opposite.
Apophatic theology is about negation - the negative way. Again, just as with the meaning of cataphatic, we do not mean negative as in ‘bad’ but negative as in the absence of a thing.
In theology and the language of how we talk about God it is about recognizing that God is beyond human comprehension. In language it approaches God through describing what he is not, as we understand that the language we use to describe Him ultimately falls short, and is muddied by our constructions around words. Language is metaphor and metaphors can never truly contain and describe God.
So for instance, apophatic theology recognises that to say ‘God is love’ has significant limitations due to our understandings and experiences of words like ‘God’, ‘is’, and ‘love’.
Think of your definitions of each of those words and then think, do they adequately describe the one we call ‘God’? My guess is they really don’t. They’re not wrong, bad, or useless (they’re right there in the scriptures) but language will always fall short. So apophatic theology would instead choose to say ‘God is not hate’, thus stating the absence of a thing in order to try and convey something of reality.
To explain apophatic theology further, I like these words from another blog:
God is so big that we can’t get our heads round the divine nature because there’s more of God than we can fit in our heads. God is so other than none of the words we have can be used to describe the thing that God is because they all come from the names for things that God is not. All of our language is creaturely, and God is not a creature. All of our language is finite, and God is not finite. And so, language fails: hence, apophatic theology, which is really about arriving at the point of theological silence. And the paradox here is that it’s only then, when we’re standing in the ruins of all our beautiful words, that we really see God, in what Dionysius the Areopagite calls ‘the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.’
Now, you would be forgiven for wondering how apophatic theology relates to the valleys of life.
In spirituality I see three main ways we get to a place where the words and affirmations of faith no longer seem adequate… three ways to end up in an apophatic spirituality where we are moved into the unknowability of God. There may be others, but these are my experience.
Through a conscious decision to practice negation and absence - apophatic practices (the mystical tradition of via negativa). Silence, solitude, fasting, minimalism. Ironically, building the muscle of these practices sets us up well for responding in various ways if/when either of the next two happen.
Through being awestruck - where words feel inadequate because we have come face to face with the awe of a thing and it has made us speechless.
Through suffering, grief, pain - where the rug has been pulled out from under us for whatever reason and the things we once held to be true no longer feel adequate… or more than that, they feel abhorrent. The valley.
I want to focus on that third one because that’s where a faith that has only been cataphatic most struggles. I’ve experienced it.
Think about apophatic words like absence and negation. We are brought to them when we struggle, doubt, question; when, for whatever reason, we wonder if God is even there… when absence isn’t just an idea but a feeling. It’s when things feel uncertain; like there’s sand beneath our feet that the water pushes out from under us and we struggle to get a solid footing.
It’s there if we’re standing in a church service, positive songs are being sung, and we can’t bring ourselves to sing them because they feel silly, contradictory, or wholly inadequate in the face of our reality. Apophatic.
The dark night of the soul, the anguish of absence, the inability to say ‘I believe’ without it feeling like a lie. Cloud, fog, unknowing. Apophatic.
Facing a void, a sense of nothingness, and uncertainty. Apophatic.
Examine the lives of many of those the Church has decided to call ‘saints’ and you’ll find stretches of this experience. In many it was an intrinsic part of what ultimately made their faith and its expression so deep and rich. It invites something of those who choose to keep going in the midst of it - trust.
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It’s here that the ancient Greek word we translate as ‘believe’ makes more sense. Our cognitively focused way of being (mind over matter… thanks to ‘I think therefore I am’), and the evangelical need to get people to sign up to a specific set of ideas has flattened it out.
When we say ‘I believe’ (such as at the beginning of the ancient creeds) we often mean something akin to ‘In my mind I hold it to be true’. That falls well short of what was originally being expressed, and it holds little relevance to someone in an apophatic space. If that’s all it means, to say ‘I believe’ often feels like an act of betrayal or a lie when in that space.
The ancient Greek word ‘pisteuó’ that gets translated as ‘believe’ in English does mean that we are persuaded of something, but it has more layers than that. It goes to something deeper and more intrinsic to how we live - trust.
Belief (in how we understand it) and trust often go together, but not always. We can believe something but not trust it. We can also choose to trust something without necessarily being certain of it.
I think about the things that make me really nervous. Heights - I’ve never been in a situation where I don’t believe (cognitively agree) the structure I’m on when I’m up high will hold me, but I don’t trust it, hence my fear of heights. It’s not reasonable in a rational, cognitive way, but it’s there. Belief isn’t the thing that will move me forward.
Being deep underground in a cave - I’ve never been in a situation where I don’t believe the ground around me will hold as it has for thousands of years - but I don’t fully trust it, hence I get nervous when in caves. My rational belief won’t move me forward.
In each instance, to continue forward requires a chosen act of trust. Trust can stem from confidence in a thing, or it can be a choice.
Take almost every instance in the New Testament of the Bible where the word ‘believe’ is used and replace it with ‘trust’. Take note of how it changes the sense of what we’re reading.
Think about the ancient creeds (Apostolic and Nicene) and replace the word ‘believe’ with ‘trust’. It shifts how we view what we’re saying.
As an aside, how does sharing our faith change if the main call of Christianity is to trust rather than getting people to ‘believe’ (cognitively agree with) certain things? It’s not that the latter is unimportant, but I’m not convinced it shapes how we live in the same way that trust does.
There are times I don’t ‘believe’ God loves me…. but I will trust it.
Apophatic spirituality that is caused by the pain of suffering, grief, and uncertainty calls us to trust. It’s messy, horrible, and hard when we’ve been sold a faith of certainty, victory, and the good life.
It’s Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. It’s a sense of absence and distance. It’s the one who says ‘I believe, help me in my unbelief’ (I trust, help me in my distrust - Mark 9:24). It’s where the Spirit intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words because we do not know how to pray what we ought (Romans 8:26-27).
Though it is hard, if the pilgrimage of faith is as I imagine then as we trust, this cycles around. This is not true of everyone, but in my experience it is true of myself and many others once we grasp the apophatic as another deep part of faith both in our theology and our sense of spirituality.
For various reasons we often cycle around and move through both cataphatic and apophatic faith. Both lead us to the other. I do not want to wrap the messiness of apophatic spirituality up in a nice neat bow so I will end this here.
Next Friday I will be publishing an article about my facing of the void. It is an apophatic experience. I think it is slowly emerging into a different cataphatic experience of God, but that does not make it easy or give clarity to the future.
A great book to dive into that fits well within this vibe is one recommended to me by a wise man - The Solace of Fierce Landscapes by Belden Lane. I recommend it.
If prayer is something in your life, please pray for me. If there is anything you would like me to be praying about for you, let me know.
Aroha nui,
Frank
I remember this one. I think I had only just subscribed to your Substack.
It’s interesting coming back and reading it now from a somewhat different perspective. Not that I’m not possibly in the same place with some of my wrestlings, but I think I’d only just started trying out the prayer thing, (abiet somewhat reluctantly!) and I think the daily practise of something like that has given me a… history? If that makes any sense. The daily showing up really does matter even if it seems like nothing happening.
I don’t think I’m articulating this very well. But “history” feels like the best word. I suppose trust comes easier when you have a history with someone