apophatic

Definitions

1. Pertaining to knowledge of God obtained through negation rather than positive assertions.
2. That passively defines a thing by describing what is not characteristic of it.
   broadly

Equivalents

Examples

“For him, the assertions of Palamas ran counter to the apophatic insistence in Pseudo-Dionysius that God was unknowable in his essence.”

“Augustine had absorbed the underlying spirit of Greek apophatic theology, but the West did not develop⟳ a fully fledged spirituality of silence until the ninth century, when the writings of an unknown Greek author were translated into Latin and achieved near-canonical status in Europe.”

“Here is a sudden interruption of remorseless, detailed exposition with a triple-punch of one-sentence paragraphs of self-indentification (2.1–2.4), and of an apophatic, negative kind, statements of what communists are not, have⟳ not, do not—[…]”

CEFR level