#apophaticism

In order to prayerfully speak cataphatically, one must first pay one’s apophatic dues.

You will find, moreover, that the Word of God not only calls these Celestial Beings above us Gods, but also gives this name to saintly men amongst us, and to those men who, in the highest degree, are lovers of God; although the First and Unmanifest God superessentially transcends all things, being enthroned above all, and therefore none of the beings or things which are can truly be said to be wholly like Him, save in so far as those intellectual and rational beings who are wholly turned towards union with Him, as far as is in their power, and who, uplifting themselves perpetually, as far as possible, to the Divine Radiance, in the imitation of God (if it be lawful so to speak) with all their powers, are thought worthy of the same divine name.

"But we must begin to deal with the remaining part of our discourse, and must ask, in first explanation of the forms, why the Word of God prefers the sacred symbol of fire almost above all others. For you will find that it is used not only under the figure of fiery wheels, but also of living creatures of fire, and of men flashing like lightning who heap live coals of fire about the Heavenly Beings, and of irresistibly rushing rivers of flame. Also it says that the Thrones are of fire, and it shows from their name that the most exalted Seraphim themselves are burning with fire, assigning to them the qualities and forces of fire; and throughout, above and below, it gives the highest preference to the symbol of fire.

For being is for Gregory precisely not an idea. It is first and foremost the negative residue of all of God’s qualitative attributes. In the impossibility of knowing “what” God is (πῶς ἐστίν), it becomes clear “that” he is (ὅτι ἐστίν).“The fact of not being this or that is not, for all that, a circumscription of being.” But this negative residue is revealed as being eminently positive. From the incapacity to attribute “this” and “that”, which is to say, the nonbeing of things, to God, there arises Being itself. On the one hand, this Being manifests itself in a “feeling of Presence” (αἴσθησις παϱουσίας τινός). On the other hand, this feeling finds itself ceaselessly augmented by the failure of all attempts to grasp it conceptually. Thus the concept indirectly reveals being. “It indicates being, but not by confiding what indeed it is, since being is not graspable. It reveals it only indirectly [παϱαδηλοῦν].” … In every judgment about God, “being is understood”, and it is toward this mysterious “being” that thought ought to direct (πϱοαπαϱτίξει) its concepts, under pain of falling into the void (ϰατὰ ϰενοῦ τὴν πϱοσηγοϱίαν πίπτειν). In this way we learn that there is in all being a duality between existence and its manifestations, between actus and actio. Only the assigning of attributes remains “around being” (πεϱὶ τὸ ὄν). Existence itself stays in obscurity (ἐν ἀδήλῳ). Therefore we understand why Gregory does not need to go beyond being in order to affirm God. God is ὑπὲϱ πᾶσαν φύσιν ϰαλοῦ παντὸς ἐπέϰεινα. He is ὑπὲϱ τὸ ἀγαθόν. Since, for Gregory, “God” denotes the attribute of universal Providence (θεὸς, from the verb θεᾱσθαι),God is even “above God”. But to say that God is above Being would make no sense, since Being is that Great Beyond. It is he we touch by all that we posit and all our negations. He is the “underlying agent” (ὑποϰείμενον) who cannot be designated in any other way than by εἶναι.

Themes

The beauty of orthodox christianity is that it holds in tension apophatic/agnostic humility and Incarnation confidence.