#apophatic

Within the heptasyllabic is a bridge, connecting the apophatic with the cataphatic.

Apophatic derives from the Greek for “other than” (apo-) and “to speak” (phanai). It has been employed widely in theology to describe a thing only in terms of what may not be said about it. Applied often to discuss conceptions of God, the term describes a verbal strategy that helps us to make sense of the ineffable, unapproachable, or unknowable. While I’ve not yet begun to reconcile this vocabulary with my own Catholic upbringing (that’s for the next book), it has been incredibly clarifying to embrace this new terminology, to come to understand my writing and, indeed, myself in a different way. It now feels empowering to admit that there will be aspects of my own heritage and parentage that I will not be able to express. That these great gaps in knowledge and the lingering questions of my experience are not deficits but new pathways rich with potential. In naming the apophatic I’ve found another way in, a new means for building on the foundation laid by my ancestors, that Guaraní and Spanish and English might intermingle and generate something new. It remains to be seen exactly what comes next, what these languages can bring into being. But they can, and they will, continue to combine in new ways unique to this poetics of not knowing.

“If we fail to recognize that the term “God” always falls short of that towards which the word is supposed to point, we will end up bowing down before our own conceptual creations forged from the raw materials of our self-image, rather than bowing before the one who stands over and above that creation. Hence Meister Eckhart famously prays, “God, rid me of God”, a prayer that acknowledges how the God we are in relationship with is bigger, better and different than our understanding of that God”.

Fundamentalists must start outside Scripture to authenticate it. That is, they begin with a definition of truth that they then apply to the biblical text. If the Bible lives up to their definition of truth, it is true; if not, it is false. Now, their definition of truth is apophatic; that is, it is a definition from negation. In order to be true the Bible must not have two things: it must not contain errors and it must not contain falsehoods; that is, it must be in-errant and in-fallible, where the Latin prefix “in” means “not.” Of course, any such definition always results in setting a standard that is humanly impossible to meet, so immediately the fundamentalist builds on some obvious caveats: individual copies of the Bible contain scribal errors; there can always be errors in transmission and interpretation. However, when it comes to questions of content, the Bible contains neither errors nor falsehoods, where the measure for both errors and falsehoods arises from human definitions brought in to judge Scripture.

The apophatic is a clearing of the unreal. The cataphatic is an ornamentation with the good, the true, and the beautiful.