Apophatic Theology and Christian Spirituality Today

Abstract

Abstract Apophatic theology is relevant to Christian spirituality today as a form of Christological ascetico-mysticism. This chapter demonstrates the spiritual pertinence of Dionysius the Areopagite’s apophatic theology through its connections to Scriptural Christologies and its opposition to specific formations of the self in the context of neoliberal capitalism. Studies of Second Temple apocalypticism and early Jewish mysticisms facilitate bringing New Testament Christologies and the Areopagite’s theology into surprising focus. They show that certain New Testament Christologies are forms of apophatic mysticism, and the Areopagite’s apophatic theology is a Christological mysticism. For both, the crucified Christ is the incomprehensible and anthropomorphic theophany revealed in the heavenly and ecclesial liturgies and the incorporating body of deification. Apophatic theology, therefore, is ascetical life in which Divine-Humanity is attained not only through the negation of concepts but also through the denial of the self. This asceticism contrasts with the entrepreneurial relationship to the self fostered by the cultural dominance of neoliberalism. The chapter concludes that the self-as-entrepreneurial-project is the source of anxieties and despair characteristic of the present time but that the Christological unselfing of apophatic theology may serve as a healing therapy for these same miseries.

In the evidence

This study is part of the evidence base for a synthesis in the library. Here is how each one recorded it.

• State of the evidence: Mysticism ?Unclear

  Argues that apophatic theology is a Christological ascetico-mysticism whose self-denial contrasts with the entrepreneurial self of neoliberalism and may serve as a healing therapy for present-day anxieties.

  Synthesized October 25, 2026

Comparable studies

Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.