apophatic

comparative more apophatic · superlative most apophatic

1. lifestylePertaining to knowledge of God obtained through negation rather than positive assertions.

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

   2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin, published 2010, page 488

   1 more example

   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.

   2009, Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, Vintage, published 2010, page 123

2. broadlyThat passively defines a thing by describing what is not characteristic of it.

   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—[…]

   2022, China Miéville, chapter 6, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, →OCLC