This second path is most clearly represented by the Areopagitics. For them, the Divinity is both nameless and multifaceted [1332]. None of the names of God found in the Holy Scriptures. Scripture; as "I am This," Life, Light, God, Truth, Eternal, Ancient of Days, King of Kings, etc., does not express the essence; God is beyond it all. His name is wondrous (Judges XIII:18), for He is above every name. Nothing from the world of the senses can help in finding even an approximate definition of God. God is "the cause of all things and above all. He is neither essence, nor life, nor mind, nor mind, nor body, nor image, nor species, nor quality, nor quantity. He is not anything of sensible things, nor does He have anything of this kind in Himself" (1333). "God is not this, but he is not that; not in one place, but not somewhere else. Everything in Him is affirmed at the same time, and again He is Nothing of all" (1334). God is not being, not because He is lower than being, but because He is outside of being, not included in the causal series inherent in being. He is "true Nothing", as withdrawn from everything that exists" [1335]. He is neither number, nor order, nor majesty, nor smallness, nor equality, nor inequality, nor likeness, nor dislikeness, nor motion, nor rest, nor age, nor time, etc." [1336]. God transcends all essence and is therefore excluded from all knowledge" [1337]. He is beyond everything, unattainable and incomprehensible. It is understandable, therefore, that the author of the book "Divine Names" calls "to honor the ineffable with chaste silence" [1338].

But this call to silence is not a rejection of theology. This is only a different path in the knowledge of God, the path of mystical penetration into oneself through the ontological catharsis of one's soul, the path of human eros, ecstatically coming out to meet the Divine Eros, the path of all mystics of all ages: the path of Moses, the path of Plotinus' "spudeus", the path of the "Gnostic" Clement of Alexandria. The favorite image of the Areopagitics and St. Gregory of Nyssa, and after them of St. Maximus the Confessor, and the later hesychasts, is the image of Moses, who enters the darkness in order to know "through ignorance," to be illumined by the ineffable light shining out of this darkness. Church experience knows that "the God-written law, slowly tongued with darkness, is covered with the Divine, for it has shaken the eyes of the intelligent, sees the Eternal, and learns the spirit of reason" [1339]. Therefore, the mystical "darkness of ignorance" is not the obscurantism of ignorance and the apophatics of pseudo-Dionysius is not a prohibition of dialectical theology. His apophatics does not exclude positive theology. "It is not to be supposed," he says, "that negation contradicts assertions, but that the First Cause Itself is primordial and far above any negation or affirmation" (1340). For "God is known in everything and without everything; is known both in knowledge and in ignorance; of Him there is a concept, a word, cognition, a touch, a feeling, an opinion, an idea, a name, and all the rest, and at the same time He is not known, He is ineffable and unnameable" [1341]. Palamas would repeat the same thing later. In this way, the mystical experience of the Areopagitics harmoniously combines the intensity of inquisition with the grace-filled illumination of Revelation from the Primary Source of Light. The "interventions" of God (πρθοδοι) await the counter daring of the human spirit.

Following pseudo-Dionysius, the same position in the history of Christian thought is taken by his commentator and follower, St. Maximus the Confessor. His apophatic theology is the result of the same mystical insights. Knowledge of God is by no means conceptual, but by means of mystical intuition is accomplished, as for the author of The Heavenly Hierarchy, in accordance with the inner maturation and by the steps of spiritual growth. For this, first of all, purification of the heart is necessary, and then reverent boldness [1342]. Then, from the lowest level of the believer, and then the disciple, the Christian can rise to the level of the apostle. This is the path of active overcoming of perishable passions, the path of gradual ascent, and then entry into the divine darkness, into the "formless and meaningless place of knowledge," like Moses [1343]. With such an approach to the Source of Light, God appears, and in fact is, the Super-Essential and Incomprehensible Mind. Therefore, for Maximus, "God is known not by His essence, but by the splendor of His creations and His providence for them. In them, as in a mirror, we see His boundless goodness, wisdom and power" [1344]. "God is inconceivable," but from the conceivable, the knowable, it is believed that He exists" [1345]. "God is not an essence in the sense in which we usually speak of essence"; He is neither force nor energy [1346]. In his apophatic method, St. Maximus goes so far as to say:

"Both propositions that God is and that He is not can be admitted in contemplations of God, and together neither can be accepted in the strict sense. the other, as a proposition that denies in God, because of His superiority as the cause of existence, everything that belongs to being. And again, none of these propositions can be accepted in the strict sense: for none of them affirms positively, in their very essence and in nature, whether this or that of which we are trying is in reality so. With God, nothing, whether existing or non-existing, is united by the force of natural necessity. From Him is truly far everything that is and what we say, as well as everything that does not exist and what is not said. He has a simple being, which transcends all affirmation and negation" [1347].

Therefore, "the Godhead and the divine are in some respects knowable, and in others unknowable. It is known by contemplation of what is around Him; Unknowable in that It is in Itself" [1348]. The same apophatic approach is found in St. John of Damascus [1349] and in other writers of the Church. It is probably superfluous to say that the desire to theologize and to search for some formulas for the divine is characteristic not only of the mystical path of the Areopagitics and St. Maximus. The same aspiration and the same combination of apophatics and cataphatics are found in the above-mentioned Fathers of the Church. This is especially well expressed by St. Basil:

"There is not a single name which, embracing the whole nature of God, would be sufficient to express Him. But many and varied names, taken in their proper meaning, constitute a concept, although obscure and very poor in comparison with the whole, but sufficient for us. Some of the names used about God show what is in God, while others, on the contrary, show what is not in Him. Thus, in these two ways, i.e., the denial of what is not and the recognition of what is, a kind of imprint of God is formed in us" [1350].

These two paths of apophatic theology that we have examined, despite their apparent differences, are in essence only two images of patristic thought about God, inwardly much more akin than different. They are united by one and the same perception of God as a completely Super-Existent, outside of this being and absolutely beyond it. But there can also be another, as Fr. S. N. Bulgakov has shown, apophatic theology. It contrasts the following two negative approaches:

"1: the ineffability and indefinability of that which is extinguished by negation, and coincides in this sense with the Greek "α privativum", άπειρον, άοριστον, άμορφον; and 2. Uncertainty as a state of potentiality, inclusion, and not as fundamental indefinability, corresponding to the Greek μή, which in this case should be rendered as "not yet" or "not yet". In the first case, there is no logical transition from an unconditional, non-negative theology to any positive teaching about God and the world; here the opposition is not dialectical, but antinomic; There is no bridge over the abyss here, and one can only bow down before incomprehensibility in the feat of faith. In the second case, "the meonal nothing-something does not conceal any antinomy; it is denied in rational-mystical gnosis, and antinomy is replaced here by dialectical contradiction. In this case, nothing is a kind of divine primordial matter, in which and from which everything arises in a lawful and dialectical way, including divinity, the world, and man" (1351).

It is important that with the first approach, antinomic theology is born. In the second case, "nothing forms the initial moment of the dialectic of being"; in other words: "nothing is." There is no unconditional antinomic transcendence from the absolute to the relative, from the Creator to the creature, these are only dialectical self-positions of one and the same principle taking place within it, a transcensus of its modalities." That is why Fr. S. Bulgakov unites all the Church mystics and Holy Fathers into one antinomic trend: Clement, Origen, the Cappadocians, the Areopagitics, Maximus, Damascene, Palamas and even Nicholas of Cusa, while he considers Eriugena, Eckhart, and Boehme to be representatives of dialectical apophaticism. If in our analysis we made a distinction between the apophatics of the Cappadocians and theologians in general, on the one hand, and the Areopagiticians and other mystics, on the other, this does not in the least contradict the opinion of the Russian learned theologian. The difference we allow relates more to the method of theology or, more precisely, to the path of theological knowledge, whether rational and discursive or primarily secret mystical. But for Origen, the Cappadocians, and Damascene on the one hand, as well as for the mystics on the other, God is absolutely outside this world; there is no dialectical dependence between Him and the world, and there cannot be. That is why the theology of all the Holy Fathers was and remains antinomic. This is also taught by our entire liturgical experience, which will be discussed below.

And St. Gregory Palamas in his works develops an ecclesiastical mystically grounded apophatic theology. In his methods and expressions, he largely repeats the experience of the Areopagitics. And for him, the essence of God is first of all "completely unnameable and completely incomprehensible to the mind" [1352]. And this is because "God is greater than all that exists, and He is above all nature" (1353). His nature is "pre-substantial" [1354], "pre-divine" [1355]. And His essence is "pre-substantial" [1356]. Palamas says: "divine superessence" [1357]. He calls the same Dionysius as his witnesses; Chapter 87 directly refers to De divin nomin., V [1358].

The extent to which this approach to apophatics is indisputable for Palamas, and how much he does not agree to call God by the biblical "This", although, as indicated above, this is allowed by some Fathers as the only acceptable name, is evident from the following passage:

"Every nature is extremely remote and completely alien to the divine nature. For if God is nature, then everything else is not nature; and vice versa, if everything else is nature, then God is not nature. And God is not a being if everything else is. And if He is, then everything else is not being. This applies to wisdom and goodness, and in general to everything that surrounds God or that is said about God, if one theologizes correctly and in accordance with the Holy Fathers. But God is and is called the nature of all beings, because all partake of Him and are held together by this communion; communion, of course, not of the nature of God — away from such a thought! — but by sharing His energy. Thus God is the essence of beings, and in images He is an image, because He is the prototype; and the wisdom of those who are wise, and in general He is all in all. But He is not nature, because He is above all nature. And He is not the Being, because He is above all that exists. And God is not an image and has no image, since He is above the image" [1359].

In another place (Chapter 106) Palamas explains the same idea in a slightly different way:

"The super-substantial, super-living, supernatural, super-good Nature, inasmuch as It is super-good, super-divine, etc., It is unnameable and unknowable, and indeed not contemplated at all, because, standing out from everything, It transcends knowledge; and affirmed by an incomprehensible power above the heavenly minds, it is incomprehensible and ineffable to no one, ever and in no way. His name is not in the present prisoner, and in the future He is unnameable; there is no word for Him, composed in the soul or spoken with the tongue; there is no sensuous or intelligible perception or communion for Him, and indeed no imagination at all. That is why theologians propose to define His unconditional incomprehensibility in their sayings, for He is completely excluded from everything that is or is called in any way. For this reason, it is not permissible to give a proper name to the essence of God or to nature, since here definitions are given to the Truth, which surpasses all truth" [1360].