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The Thomist 62 (1998): 519-31 APOPHATIC THEOLOGY'S CATAPHATIC DEPENDENCIES MARK JOHNSON Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin DARING TO SPEAK of the God "who dwells in light unapproachable" (1Tim6:16),1 systematic theologians in the Western tradition regularly employ the twofold methodology of apophatic and cataphatic theology regarding knowledge and discourse of God. The former mode oftheological discourse emphasizes that in knowing God we know more 'what-God-is-not,' rather than 'what-God-is.' And in the latter mode we associate with God terms about which we have solid understanding in our this-worldly experience, terms we apply first to this-worldly things, but whose signifying core we attribute to God as well. But even to this cataphatic mode of discourseanalogical naming of God-we are compelled to add a rectifying dose of apophasis, since in attributing to God a particular property by means of a name we also claim not to know the mode of that property's existence in God, even as we are sure that such-and-such a property is in God. Thus even analogy when used of God must genuflect before God's hiddenness, God's incomprehensibility,2 and it is fair to say that apophatic theology 1 "

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