Meanings
plural theopathies
- uncountableusuallyThe capacity of a person to worship, or to experience a religious belief
Here language itself reflects the feeling that the divine pathos, the passion of the "pathetic God" who "yearned" to be known, presupposes as its correlate a theopathy in the human being whose God He is.
1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC1 more example
A new characteristic can be added to the description of prayer: the manifestation of self to other through speech, an agonistic speech struggling for its truth, is an ordeal, an undergoing of God, a suffering of God, a theopathy.
2004, Andrew Brown (tr.), The Ark of Speech, Routledge, translation of L'arche de la parole by Jean-Louis Chrétien
Origin
Cite this entry
theopathy. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/theopathy
“theopathy.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/theopathy. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “theopathy,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/theopathy.
Source: theopathy on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.