Sentences with word «apophatic»

Unless we are in effect to abandon all attempts to talk about God as such (a form of apophatic theology which Neville's position seems to favor), the «devious analogy» to which he refers is so devious that it is hard to distinguish it from equivocation or even fraudulent misrepresentation.

The first is the silent apophatic dimension, which transcends any human concepts, which he relates to the Father who expresses himself only through the Son.

If mysticism loses touch with sacramental symbols, with apophatic patience, and with the needs of the social world, it becomes a form of religious escapism.

Jesus» profound mystical and apophatic sense of divine love and the otherness of God's compassionate plan for the world give his teaching a critical dimension that unsettles all who invest too much in the way things are.

And if it is to be faithful to the silent or apophatic aspects of humanity's cumulative religious wisdom, it must appropriate aspects of suspicion as part of its method.

Dialogue with Buddhists has forced me to rethink theologically the more radically apophatic mystics of the tradition, especially Meister Eckhart.

What is called apophatic theology says that we can only say what God is not — «Neti, Neti», «not this, not that», as the famous Hindu text puts it God, as mystical theology insists, can not be spoken of, but must be experienced.

It is absolutely committed to the negative doctrine that there is no divine revelation that delivers genuine knowledge of God; it is absolutely committed to a radically apophatic conception of Christian theology, so that no human language or concept, no product of reason at all, can adequately express the mystery of the divine; and it is absolutely committed to using theology to articulate Christian doctrine given the needs and idiom of the day.

The first single we released is called «Deliverer,» and it has this whole approach of apophatic prayer, where you go at it from a negative perspective: [basically saying] «God is not this, God is not that.»

I prefer the mystical apophatic theology [knowing by unknowing] to the cataphatic theology of the more popular orthodoxy.

Its artistic abstraction hints at apophatic theology, and the saint's holiness yet also humanity unites joy and sadness.

Though it is a necessary corrective to en - sure the breadth of our hope, an exclusively apophatic religion or theology would fail to connect us to our future.

Religion, we shall see, requires silent or apophatic moments precisely as protection against our taking symbols too literally.

God speaks in and even as silence, to be sure, but prayer can not grow in a purely apophatic soil, if for no other reason than that in such a context no God personal enough to speak is to be found.

The Eastern Churches» apophatic understanding of the Mysteries of Faith: The Mysteries of Faith are like the sun, you can not gaze directly into them; but they illuminate all else.

That's why I prefer apophatic theology.

Can a man committed to the wordless apophatic way and a forgetting of self be preoccupied with recording — and publishing — every thought and act?

Lindbeck personally inclined more to the older, propositional approach, but he was epistemically apophatic about the truth - conditions of any individual proposition.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the method through which they look at theology is called «apophatic theology», which is contra the Western style of theology in that it speaks silence towards God, who is, they say, in many ways, unspeakable.

As our inquiries proceed analogically, they are both enriched and disciplined by an awareness of what Eastern Orthodoxy calls the «apophatic» and in Western thought is known as the via negativa.

In this apophatic Lutheranism, then, justification tends to become mere liberation from some bondage or other.

Panikkar suggests that the apophatic spirituality of the Father is similar to the Buddhist experience of Nirvana, whilst the personalistic approach relates to the Jewish and Muslim stress on the Word of God.

There is an apophatic, silent, or distancing impulse in these contemporary movements that, in spite of the nihilistic extremes to which they often tend, can be assimilated into the themes of hope and promise.

Apophatic theology is not without its usefulness, of course.

Michael Battle is clear about what a theological teacher in a divinity school is: one «whose work is to articulate God's presence on behalf of the Christian community... so that we may help equip pastors and teachers for ministry,» and he goes into «how to know God in our midst» through a communal practice of «apophatic... ceaseless prayer.»

Mysticism is an apophatic theological tradition — «knowing by unknowing.»

He demonstrates that an impatience born of compassion does not conflict with, but actually supports, the apophatic posture of patience and concern for breadth essential to all authentic religion and hope.

The apophatic instinct arises out of hope's concern for breadth, for a wider beauty and perfection than that encompassed by our current visions of utopia.

There is an apophatic strain in Hinduism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

But Jesus tempers such sacramentalism, in turn, with an apophatic posture of patience.

He and others who are sensitive to the apophatic side of religion see the role of silence in religious worship as an admission of the inadequacy of any of our religious images.

Some religious agreement may occur in reference to the mystical, apophatic, and active modes even where it is lacking in the sacramental.

For example, if sacramentalism is uninformed by the mystical tendency to relativize the things of the world, or by the apophatic suspicion of symbols, or by the activist need to change the social world, it will inevitably degenerate into idolatry and empty ritualism.

Buddhism, with its «way of renunciation,» is characteristically silent (scholars would say «apophatic» or «hesychast») with respect to the nature of mystery.

In his continually turning his will, his longings, and his future over to God we observe the apophatic tendency of his hope.

The Buddha's renunciation of selfish craving together with his silence about theological issues offers yet another, what we shall call the apophatic (or silent).

But there is also a danger hidden in the apophatic side of hope.

The apophatic return to silence, whereby we distance ourselves from the inevitable narrowness of particular symbols, allows mystery's breadth to become more prominent.

And even when their religion assumes mystical, apophatic, and active aspects it still has to remain connected to a sacramental base.

The religious motif of silence (the apophatic aspect of religions) has had the precise purpose of discouraging us from clinging to our religious symbols in so possessive a way that they no longer disclose the mystery of reality.

Apophatic or silent religion, exemplified by the Buddhist renunciation of clinging, and also by the hesychast strains of other religious traditions, is significant for its patient letting be of the world.

The apophatic strand present in all of these religions justifiably cautions us that our clinging to particular symbols can at times be an obstacle to deeper encounter with sacred mystery.

Hope also has an apophatic dimension.

It recalls the so - called «apophatic» tradition in Christian thinking that God, «The Cloud of Unknowing», is greater than any picture we have of the Divine.

Turner clearly knows his Marx, and he makes a compelling case that until Christian theology recovers the insights of the apophatic tradition, with its exacting strictures on the ways we too easily talk about God, it will be justly subject to critiques like Marx's.

Hope, as we have emphasized several times before, has an apophatic dimension that cleanses it of false optimism.