Like two great rivers, two traditions of prayer flow through Christian spirituality. One is called “apophatic” and the other “kataphatic.” Apophatic, from the Greek word apophatikos, which means negative, is an approach to God that moves away from images, words, concepts, and symbols. It is more “content free.” The underlying theology is that God is beyond our comprehension, beyond any mental images we might have, unknowable; and so one seeks to find God by emptying oneself of preconceived notions of the divine.
