The words of theology: apophaticism
Reflections by André Gounelle* published on the website of the monthly Protestant Évangile et Liberté (France) on May 16, 2018, freely translated by Giacomo Tessaro
Apophaticism. This word belongs to the specialist jargon of ancient and medieval theology. It comes from a Greek verb that means deny. A theology apofotic (or negative) denies that we can know and say something of God, which may appear contradictory: theology, in fact, is a learned speech (a logos) on God (theos). When they believed that he cannot speak of God, nor do you know him, one comes out of theology to enter the signs.
But the paradox is not as profound as one might believe, because in fact apophatic theology does not silence is silent, it does not remain silent: of God speaks to establish that it escapes our words and our concepts. God is never what we think and say of him: it is ineffable (or unspeakable) and inconceivable. "God is neither this nor that" meister Eckhart writes (1260-1328). Our words and ideas are always false slopes, which never come to describe it, to outline it.
To be more precise, from the apophatic point of view we have a knowledge of God, but a negative knowledge: we know what God is not, but we ignore what it is. So, when it is described as "eternal", we mean that it is not subject to time; when you define it "transcendent", we want to indicate that it does not belong to our world. It is right to declare that God is not a temporal and ordinary being, but we have no idea what eternity and transcendence are.
Apophaticism has its part of truth, as it constitutes a healthy reaction against the dogmatic claim of a perfect and complete knowledge of God. Our theologies always have deficiencies, of shortcomings. If apophaticism is an essential component of faith in a God who transcends us, he still has his weaknesses, his limits: the evangelical message states that God is love and that we can perceive something of him through Jesus Christ, which is decidedly positive.
* André Gounelle, Pastore, honorary professor at the Protestant Institute of Theology of Montpellier, is the author of numerous books and collaborator of Évangile et Liberté for 50 years.
