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Topic: Negative theology

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	Negative theology - Biocrawler
		Adherents of negative theology hold that God, by definition, is that which is utterly beyond this universe and outside the bounds of what humans can understand.
		Apophatic theology is critical of this approach, presupposing that it is doomed to result in false, idolatrous conclusions, when applied to the discovery of the being of God.
		Negative theology is present in the Upanishads of Hinduism, when Hindu Vedantic theologians speak of the nature of Brahman.
	www.biocrawler.com /encyclopedia/Apophatic_theology (1069 words)

	Derrida and Nonsense Theology
		Differance, like negative theology, refuses to equate God and existence, but goes one step further by refusing also any further mode of being that is somehow "more real" than the real.
		Negative theology, with which this sort of paradoxical speech may be joined, simply puts off the question of presence and logocentrism.
		Second, though, it may be a statement of negative theology, which is interesting but which will fail the Derridian test because it postpones, but continues to insist, on some likeness between God and the order of the world: Perfect Mind is still "speech," even if she may not be grasped.
	www.metatronics.net /lit/derrida.html (5230 words)

	A.Kelly: Blessed Negativities: The Contribution of Deconstruction to Theology
		Not only must theology be alive to the risk and darkness inherent in the life of faith itself – in line with the aporia of faith,[4] but also must recognize the historical context in which it operates.
		Negative theology, with its deep moods of silence, darkness, surrender, should suffuse all theology, rather than be added as a mystical extra at the end; or to assert itself, as Caputo has suggested, only when Aquinas had some form of breakdown was he a true theologian.
		Theology must cultivate a patience, under the sign of the cross, with the utter otherness of the divine, and not pretend to any familiarity with the mystery other than what adoration, praise and unreserved self-surrender allow.
	dlibrary.acu.edu.au /research/theology/ejournal/aejt_2/Tony_Kelly.htm (8957 words)

	Spartanburg SC \| GoUpstate.com \| Spartanburg Herald-Journal
		Negative theology - also known as the Via Negativa (Latin for "Negative Way") and Apophatic theology - is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation, to speak of God only in terms of what may not be said about God.
		Negative theology played an important role early in the history of Christianity, for example, in the works of Clement of Alexandria.
		Negative theology has a place in the Western Christian tradition as well, although it is definitely much more of a counter-current to the prevailing positive or kataphatic traditions central to Western Christianity.
	www.goupstate.com /apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=NEWS&template=wiki&text=negative_theology (2310 words)

	negative theology@Everything2.com
		Negative theology, as I understand it, is mostly an issue of semantics.
		Sometimes referred to as the "via negativa", or "apophatic theology", it exists both as a companion to, and critique of affirmative theology, which attempts to describe the nature of "God".
		Negative theology refuses to speak of God, and in this way affirms that there is something of which it is not speaking.
	everything2.com /index.pl?node_id=1014015 (767 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Affirmative or cataphatic theology, admitting that we must use words to speak of God, praises him while acknowledging any name is inappropriate and that it cannot express what he is in himself, only an approximation by which humanity may invoke him.
		Negative theology entails a questioning of all the certainties, all the predications, which the Church has invested with such authority, and in which it has trusted.
		Derrida claims that negative theology, however far it goes in refusing to allow closure, relies on an ultimate affirmation (that God is) which nullifies all its previous dynamic of negation, whereas deconstruction goes beyond the dialectic of essence and presence, demonstrating the endless generation of names and concepts which are only ever nominal effects.
	www.op.org /eckhart/Essay.html (4957 words)

	Negative theology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Negative theology - also known as the Via Negativa (Latin for "Negative Way") and Apophatic theology - is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation, to speak of God only in terms of what may not be said about God.
		The apophatic tradition is often allied with or expressed in tandem with the approach of mysticism, which focuses on a spontaneous or cultivated individual experience of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception, an experience often unmediated by the structures of traditional organized religion.
		The most famous expression of Negative theology in Upanishads is found in the chant, neti neti, meaning "not this, not this", or "neither this, nor that".
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Negative_theology (2451 words)

	A Few Thoughts on the Church Fathers (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Negative theology in the early Christian era is adequately represented by individuals, particularly Augustine.
		Negative theology has impacted the Western church, and, in fact, the Western world in ways too numerous to mention.
		The negative qualities of the Western church, including predestination, a belief in the natural evil of man, and a well-developed belief in hell all have their roots in the early Christian era.
	www.suite101.com /article.cfm/church_history/23232/1 (440 words)

	CTSA MEDIEVAL ABSTRACTS 2003 (Site not responding. Last check: )
		This is intriguing, because Anselm himself never used the word “theology” in any of his writings and was born a generation before the word began to be used in Europe.
		This explains that sense of negative theology in Abelard’s writings that fits ill with his reputation as a rationalist.
		Theology was adopted by the schools and by the universities that grew out of them in opposition to the faithful lectio of the monasteries.
	faculty.cua.edu /gorman/ctsa03ab.htm (1083 words)

	The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective [Book Review] (Site not responding. Last check: )
		In this extended discussion of the different twentieth—century figures in biblical theology, Barr demonstrates his encyclopedic command of the field and his quick, logical mind, and in some of his discussions gems of insight are readily to be found.
		Apparently, Barr is so committed to the view that the relationship between biblical theology and the history of religion is exclusively one of "overlap and mutual enrichment" that he cannot brook someone’s drawing attention to a point of serious tension between them.
		In his telling, the keynote of Brown’s theology is openness to God’s truth wherever it is found—in Enlightenment rationalism, in Judaism, in Islam, in ancient Greek religion and culture, in the Apocrypha and the Septuagint.
	www.firstthings.com /ftissues/ft0002/reviews/levenson.html (1967 words)

	The Impact of Orthodox Theology
		Theology is a loving word of praise to the God who first speaks his Word to us in Christ and by the Spirit draws us into the church.
		This vision of doxological theology is at odds with the standard fourfold division of seminary education in the West, which keeps "Bible," "church history," "theology" and "practical ministry" cordoned off from one another, For the Orthodox, theology is simply commentary upon the saints’ commentary on scripture for the sake of the church’s worship.
		Indeed, a reliance on negative theology, an insistence on the human inability to know the God who is mystery, has remained central to Orthodox thought and practice.
	www.religion-online.org /showarticle.asp?title=3186 (1616 words)

	Theology definition and kinds of Theology (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Theology is a Greek word, theos, "God", + logos, "rational discourse", "knowledge", "study", "science", so, literally, Theology is the science of God, as Biology is the science of life.
		dialectical theology, A form of neo-orthodox theology emphasizing the infinite tensions, paradoxes, and basic ambiguities inherent in Christian existence, and holding, against rationalism, that God is unknowable to humans except through divine grace and revelation.
		Holocaust theology (In response to the horrors of the Holocaust, many theologians (especially Jewish theologians) were prompted to take a harder look in terms of issues around theodicy; the theological works that were created as a response to the Holocaust have been termed Holocaust theology.).
	biblia.com /theology/theology.htm (1478 words)

	Apophatic theology - OrthodoxWiki
		Apophatic theology—also known as negative theology—is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation, to speak of God only in absolutely certain terms and to avoid what may not be said.
		In Orthodox Christianity, apophatic theology is based on the assumption that God's essence is unknowable or ineffable and on the recognition of the inadequacy of human language to describe God.
		One of the first to articulate the theology in Christianity was the Apostle Paul, whose reference to the Unknown God in the book of Acts (Acts 17:23) is the foundation of works such as that of Pseudo Dionysius.
	orthodoxwiki.org /Apophatic_theology (507 words)

	Andy and Helene's Website
		Negative theology has always maintained the paucity of our understanding, so that we may renounce the truth of our concepts.
		Negative theology as work on doctrine is only significant insofar as doctrine has a role to play in domination.
		So a strict form of negative theology will not only require a consistent form of the strict scope of “not”, but it will also involve the kind of investigation of presuppositions that result from this stringent rule of language.
	home.online.no /~bohe-th/godalone.cfm (3380 words)

	Brian Hamilton » Negative Theology
		Caputo does negative theology the highest honor when he means to criticize it.
		His point is to expose negative theology’s “safety,” always tied to a prayer which ties it to a particular God which it names, when it should be rather be wandering in the desert—in order, I presume, to keep it open to what is completely new.
		Theology only follows the path of all things that come from God, down to the smallest stone, then back up—since these things are clearly not themselves God—to the Cause of all who is beyond all.
	bdhamilton.com /tag/negative-theology (874 words)

	Negative theology - Theopedia
		Negative theology, also known as Apophatic theology, is a theological approach that describes God by negation, speaking of God only in terms of what He is not (apophasis) rather than presuming to describe what God is.
		In this sense, negative theology is not a denial.
		Colin Gunton, Act and Being (Eerdmans, 2003) - Gunton critiques the use of negative theology in the construction of the attributes of God.
	www.theopedia.com /Apophatic_theology (254 words)

	Definition of Negative theology
		In this theology, one should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; nor can we safely say is that God is not nonexistent.
		God is described negatively as not a creation (uncreated), not definable in terms of space (infinite), invisible, beyond the reach of understanding (incomprehensible), whose being is not conceptually confinable to assumptions based on time.
		Negative theology is crucial to understanding many parts of Jewish philosophy, especially the philosophy of medieval Jewish rationalists such as Maimonides and Joseph Ibn Tibbon.
	www.wordiq.com /definition/Negative_theology (697 words)

	Spartanburg SC \| GoUpstate.com \| Spartanburg Herald-Journal
		Derrida saw the God of negative theology as a crude precursor to deconstruction's central concept of diffÃ©rance.
		However, the God of negative theology is qualitatively different than the idea of diffÃ©rance because the God of negative theology functions as an ultimate, higher reality where diffÃ©rance does not.
		However, negative theology and diffÃ©rance are kindred spirits insofar as they both desire what is absent, impossible, and incalculable.
	www.goupstate.com /apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=NEWS&template=wiki&text=Weak_theology (1786 words)

	Process Theology Questions and Answers: Religion in Today's World
		Most organized religion is not based on a process approach to theology, but on a theology that is much as it was thousands of years ago.
		It is as wrong for those who embrace a "process theology" to pressure fundamentalists toward dishonesty in what they believe as it is for them to pressure those who believe different from them, to embrace their beliefs.
		The evolution of theology within the church therefore became primarily a matter of interpreting scripture in relation to life events rather than nudging the evolution of theology to harmonize with human experience and a developing world view.
	www.process-theology.org /qa.asp (20909 words)

	lecpr1 (Site not responding. Last check: )
		Negative theology, taken as an epistemological doctrine would thus seem to be involved in the activity off cutting of the branch it is sitting on, so to speak.
		You may gather from all this that I am not very sympathetic with Negative Theology taken as an epistemological doctrine, and in gathering this you would be correct.
		We have been studying two species of Negative Theology taken as an ontological doctrine, one propounded by the 6th century Christian Thinker Maximus the Confessor (580-662), and the other propounded by the 10th century Hindu thinker Sankara.
	personal.stthomas.edu /jdkronen/lecpr1.html (7261 words)

	Dionysius the Areopagite: On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology. \| Christian Classics Ethereal Library
		It is an attempt to reconcile Theology with Philosophy After the Master has insisted on the ineffable and incomprehensible nature of the Divine essence, the Disciple inquires how this proposition is to be reconciled with the teaching of the 204Theologians on the Unity and Trinity of God.
		And the Trinity is the unbegotten, the begotten, and the proceeding.
		He is not made less perplexing by the variety of estimates formed upon his theology by men of different schools and of marked ability.
	www.ccel.org /ccel/rolt/dionysius.vi.html (4352 words)

	Philosophy of Religion—Lecture 3: Method in Philosophical Theology
		The aim of philosophical theology is to employ the best of philosophical methods and techniques for the purpose of gaining as much clarity as possible concerning the content of the major concepts, presuppositions, and tenets of theological commitment, as well as the many connections that exist among them.
		Negative Theology: This way of proceeding in thinking about the concept of God holds that the correct way to think about what God is like is to determine what God is not.
		Perfect-Being Theology: Among theists, this approach to doing philosophical theology goes at least as far back as Augustine of Hippo, but it was most clearly articulated by Anselm of Canterbury.
	www.angelfire.com /ab3/freewill/POR3.htm (1115 words)

	Negative Theology and Theological Hermeneutics
		As a matter of fact, this radical hermeneutics results — at least in Caputo’s reception — in a kind of (philosophical) negative theology that expresses, beyond concrete discourse and particularity, a ‘religiously being related to’ that which lies at the origin of every particular religious discourse, but is betrayed in every attempt to name it.
		At least this is the challenge put forward by these apophatical trends to theology itself, as it were, for internal use, but perhaps such a reflection may also give some broader hints for a cultural and philosophical coping with the particularity of religious truth claims.
		In this perspective, negative theology assumes a role very different from the one demonstrated in the aforementioned thinkers: its aim is no longer to take leave from the narrativity of religious discourse, but rather to raise one’s awareness of this narrativity to the utmost.
	www.philosophyandscripture.org /Issue3-2/Boeve/Boeve2.html (7204 words)

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