Tag Archives: apophatic

God is not Odin, God is not Zeus, God is not Marduk

Posted on 3 August 2020 by Fr Aidan Kimel

God is not Odin All-Father. God does not wield thunderbolts like Zeus. God does not make the world by slaying Tiamat and dividing her carcass to form heaven and earth. God is not god. We Christians, of course, did not … Continue reading →

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God, Analogy, and the Metaphysics of Participation

Posted on 17 February 2019 by Fr Aidan Kimel

by Robert Fortuin There’s an interesting post over at Tom Belt’s Open Orthodoxy blog—“Lost in Translation” (part 1 and part 2)—which developed into a conversation about a conversation. The post and the subsequent comments concern a topic of great importance. … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: Beyond the Beyond … and then Beyond

Posted on 3 June 2018 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“Dionysius adopts the doctrine of God as ‘nameless,’ ‘unknowable,’ and ‘beyond being’ from the Neoplatonic tradition established by Plotinus,” writes Eric Perl, “and his thought can be understood only in that context” (Theophany, p. 13). We will need to revisit … Continue reading →

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Dionysian Ponderings: Transcendence and the Plotinian One

Posted on 30 May 2018 by Fr Aidan Kimel

I come to my reading of the Corpus Areopagaticum with a specific understanding of divine transcendence, an understanding which I will be testing along the way. We might put it this way: God infinitely surpasses all creaturely distinctions and dualities—transcendence … Continue reading →

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Trinity, Logic, and the Transcendence of Transcendence

Posted on 24 August 2017 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Philosopher Dale Tuggy believes he has a decisive proof against the coherency of the catholic doctrine of the Trinity. It goes like this: God is a personal being, i.e., a self. By “self” is understood a being who is conscious, … Continue reading →

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Analytic Theology and the One God: Where is the Mystery?

Posted on 21 August 2017 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Once the transcendence of Transcendence has been properly grasped, many of the objections advanced against the catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity lose their persuasive power. Perhaps they have some purchase among analytic philosophers attached to the univocity of being; … Continue reading →

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Creatio ex Nihilo: The Grammar of Transcendence

Posted on 15 April 2015 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“The Rule of Truth that we hold is this: There is one God Almighty, who created all things through His Word. He both prepared and made all things out of nothing, just as Scripture says: For by the word of … Continue reading →

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Dumitru Staniloae: The Knowledge of Faith

Posted on 25 September 2014 by Fr Aidan Kimel

Dumitru Staniloae begins his chapter on the knowledge of God by distinguishing between rational knowledge and apophatic knowledge; and over the course of the chapter he unpacks, contrasts, and synthesizes these two forms of knowledge. I was surprised, therefore, when … Continue reading →

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