Apophatic Theology

Speaking of God by saying what He is not, because anything a human mind can grasp is less than God. Moses entered the thick darkness where God was, and St Gregory of Nyssa reads that darkness as the place where knowing stops and meeting begins. The Mystical Theology of the Areopagite climbs by denials until it denies even the denials. This is not agnosticism or silence for its own sake: it keeps the mind from making an idol out of its own concepts, and it is the way to union rather than a wall. The Liturgy prays it: Thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible. Positive, cataphatic theology is not abolished by it - God is truly good and truly Father - but it is always said knowing that the reality is more than the word.