What is apophatic theology?

Now I cannot conceive an infinite "I," because I am a finite "I"; that is, I can have no positive knowledge of it; but its absoluteness as consciousness in me makes me understand the possibility of the existence of another absolute consciousness which may not be finite. As I learn the finiteness of my conscious "I," and can in certain respects understand it, so I learn the certain existence of an "I" which must be conscious (that is, not as a stone), and that it cannot be, as I am, finite, which is absolute in its "I," but relative if it pleases, because I know it has pleased. But the how or what of its consciousness or relations (that is, creation, sonship, redemption) I do not and cannot know that, because I negative the finiteness of that which is my knowledge. But I do not think a negative is the same as an affirmative, or is nothing in mind, though it be nothing positive. To say so is to say that all must be clear in my mind or that it does not exist, which is false. I have a thinking, feeling, perceiving, judging, and, if right, adoring, if wrong, God-hating, inward existence. What it is I have not in the smallest degree a clear idea of. So I have of God, to whom I clearly deny necessary relationship, finiteness or material infiniteness, whom I do not limit in will so as to deny relationship, yet in finite knowledge I cannot say what He is, but existence of whom (I can say what He is not) is not nothing in my mind, though I cannot say what it is, because I do know by consciousness what it is to exist, and I deny the conditions in which I exist.

39 I cannot quite accept the denial of capacity to abstract in the human mind (that is, the estimate of a quality without a being it is attached to). It is apt to run into personification in order to get a clear idea. To say I must think of some one good to think of goodness is not true. It is merely saying that, if I think of good acts, I must think of some one. But attributes, though for us a necessary conception, are a very inadequate one of God; if pushed to consequences, even false. We may speak attributively (practically), but not predicate anything of God; because then I separate the quality and get it in itself. I must make it infinite, and so exclusive in my mind; and other attributes are reasoned against. Thus if I say God is good, and therefore cannot do this or that, I have made Him only this, and all is false.

But all this talk about 'bounded' or 'unbounded space' is a mistake. I know what 'bounded space' is very well indeed - a field is a bounded space because I know what a bound is, being bounded. That I can negative, but I never conceive any negative proposition. I cannot conceive 'not,' for there is nothing to conceive. I can deny a bound when a bound is supposed, but it is no idea of the opposite at all. I cannot conceive all space as a known whole. My only conception of it is that it is not within the limits of my finite conception. But that is what 'infinite' means. But it is no positive idea, for then it is finite - has bounds. If it be said that 'we cannot conceive God,' I answer 'certainly not by an idea.' If I did it must be adequate, and He would not be God. But I do know He is not within the range and capacity of my idea. And that is something very material in our knowledge. When it is said 'He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love,' that is another thing. It is not an idea, but a moral nature morally apprehended, and space, and time, and measures have no place in it at all. It is another order of things. Affections, even human, are not ideas. Past time without a commencement is not possible thought, because when I say 'past,' I have already commenced with the 'now.' I do not see why infinite division cannot be thought of, because the parts are bounded. I remember a teacher of mathematics sought to show by a tangent, an indivisible angle, but he had only to make a circle with a longer radius and division was made. The only idea I have of time is bounded by events which are not 'now.' But as far as without, then I seek to know it. I have no idea of time but the principle of eternity, only contradicted by experience. 'I am' - that is not time as having duration, but in a point, but with a notion excluding bounded time, and so leading up to God who is necessarily 'I AM,' which is the nearest approach to conceiving eternity, which in itself I cannot at all. But I conceive God existing, and never doing anything but existing.

There are also many other things equally incomprehensible to us in the Godhead, but which faith accepts because they are subjects of revelation. It is evident when these things are in view, how limited is our present knowledge; how little human language is adapted to the things of God. Our ideas of all these things are after all but negative.

This character of the epistle is very remarkable. Nowhere else is the inaccessible majesty of God, as God, thus presented. His character is often the subject of instruction and manifestation. Here He alone has essential immortality. He dwells in inaccessible light. He is ever invisible to the eyes of men. He alone has power. He has dominion over all who reign. It is God in the abstraction of His essence, in the proper immutability of His being, in the rights of His majesty, veiled to all men.

He says, "The Godhead as such is incomprehensible by creatures; dwelling in light unapproachable, Whom no man hath seen nor is able to see" (1 Tim. 6:16), to which He adds) … "The essence or being of God is not a subject of revelation, and I think we may say with all reverence it could not be."

Perfectly declared in Christ as far as creatures could know Him. We could not know Him in His essential Being. He is the invisible God. In Christ His nature has come to light. It is clear we could not know God in the perfect way in which He knows Himself. It is our unspeakable privilege to know Him in the way in which He has drawn near to us.

When I turn to treat of the divine nature, I am at once confronted with the poverty of human speech as a vehicle for the communication of thought on such a subject. The very term nature is in itself inapplicable, in its accurate sense, to the self-existent, and eternal One; and the same is true, more or less, of all the terms I must employ.

In God, as in man, I have: 1st. Being; and this being has a nature (in the sense to be hereafter defined), a nature inherent in His being, predicated of it, and therefore (though inseparable from it as a fact) capable of being viewed and treated apart. 2nd. The word condition, which I have found useful when treating of man, I hesitate to carry up to the present subject; but mode, which I have employed along with it, seems a sufficiently admissible expression for that in reference to the divine being, which corresponds, so far as correspondence is possible, to what I have termed the conditions or modes of being in man. I shall therefore say that I find, in connection with the divine being, certain modes of that being, inseparable from it, though neither to be considered as parts of the being itself, nor of the nature which inheres in it. It is one of the modes of the divine being to have neither beginning nor end, or, as commonly expressed, to be eternal. It is another of the modes of the divine being to be subject to no mutation, or, to be unchangeable. These modes of the divine existence, though inseparable from it, do not constitute parts of the divine being or of His nature, but are expressive of the manner or degree in which that Being enjoys His nature. 3rd. In the being of God certain qualities inhere, inseparable from that being, but characteristic of it; which qualities have characterized that being so long as it has existed; i.e. from eternity. These qualities, being attributed to Him, I call attributes, and the sum of these inherent attributes I call His nature, as the best term at my disposal to express that which corresponds to nature in man, as nearly as correspondence is possible in the case.

Again, on another important point, speaking of the Athanasian Creed and the Trinity, the author says, "It came distinctly home to me, that, whatever the depth of the mystery, if we lay down anything about it at all, we ought to understand our own words." (Phases, p. 13.) Now this seems very plausible; but bring in God, or anything connected with Him, and if it be meant that we ought to be able to define the human words employed, it is necessarily and wholly false, because God is in another order of being from that to which our words belong. Words express man's thoughts in the way of definition — can do nothing else; but man's thoughts are finite, and God is infinite; and therefore it is impossible in the nature of things, that human language can be an adequate (or properly speaking, a just) expression of what God is. Yet almost all Mr. N.'s growing infidelity sprung from this evident fallacy: any real faith in God or knowledge of Him became impossible the moment he laid down this absurd and really illogical rule — illogical, if we admit there is a God. Take Mr. N. himself as witness. He says, in another work, "Concerning the divine nature, we know that our metaphorical language must be inaccurate; but it is the best we have got. To refuse to speak of God as loving and planning, as grieving and sympathizing, without the protest of a quasi, will not tend to clearer intellectual views, [for what can be darker?] but will muddy the springs of affection. Metaphorical language on this whole subject is that which the soul dictates, and therefore must surely express our nearest approximation to truth, if the soul be the eye by which alone we see God. Jealousy to resist metaphor does not testify to depth of insight." (Soul, p. 39.)

43 Now, it is true, he speaks here of metaphor alone; but why is metaphor used? Because of the incompetence of the human mind to use, as to God, the language of exact definition. It flows from the fact that man is man, and not God, and his language the expression of his nature, be it in its affections or its intellect. Hence it must speak as man speaks (i.e., use the expressions suited to the measure of man's nature, because man can do nothing else). If these are used as definitions of God's nature, they are necessarily inaccurate; if as means of communicating particular thoughts about Him, they are true, though inadequate. But if it be insisted that a man should know what he meant, that is, define his ideas, he cannot. Our language as to God, not merely our metaphorical language, must be inaccurate. It is, as Mr. N. professes it to be, our nearest approximation to the truth. It will be said here, "I do not ask you to define God, but the words you use about Him." But the definition of the words, by Mr. N.'s admission, makes them inaccurate, for they are to express something about God. But in exactitude of meaning they must be inaccurate. To this exactitude Mr. N. seeks to reduce them. Nor let the reader be alarmed at this impossibility of definition: it is the case with all the ideas he is most certain of, or most delights in. Let him try to define a straight line, a right angle, beauty, love, one's country, home. Yet these words convey either most accurate or exceedingly powerful ideas.*

,Not yet are we able to open the eyes of the mind and to behold the beauty, the imperishable, inconceivable beauty, of the Good. For you will see it when you cannot say anything about it. For the knowledge of it is divine silence and annihilation of all senses.... Irradiating the whole mind, it shines upon the soul and draws it up from the body. and changes it all into divine essence' (cited in Expositor's Bible Commentary).

Mansel at the end of Lecture III happily contradicts himself. He is not exact. Thus, when he says we can conceive such attributes at the utmost only indefinitely … but we cannot conceive them as infinite, how can he make the distinction if he cannot tell what infinite is? That one word proves the fallacy of his whole statement. But infinite, I have already said, does not mean material in infinitude; and attributes (that is, predicates) spoken of God are always false when taken as the truth.