The *via negativa* (the "negative way" of approaching God by denying predicates) is among the oldest theistic responses to the structural pressure [§3.5](<3.5 What the Convergence Shows.md>) makes general. Pseudo-Dionysian unknowing (*Mystical Theology* 1; *Divine Names* 1), Maimonidean predicate-denial (*Guide of the Perplexed* I.50–60) (Kenneth Seeskin, 2000); (Josef Stern, 2013), and the later apophatic tradition (Eckhart, *Sermons*) (Jean-Luc Marion, 1991); (Denys Turner, 1995); (Davies, Oliver, and Denys Turner (eds.), 2008) all approach God by stripping predicates away until what remains is supposed to exceed every structural category. Contemporary reconstructions (Michael A. Sells, 1994); (Denys Turner, 1995) argue that apophatic discourse does not merely deny predicates but performs a linguistic self-subversion that transcends the predicate/denial framework altogether.

The general point has already been pressed at [§3.5](<3.5 What the Convergence Shows.md>): the act of negating the structural conditions instantiates them in the very performance of the negation. The apophatic application brings the abstract pressure to ground. An apophatic move that subtracts time from divine being uses time to make the move, distinguishes what is subtracted from what remains, and persists as a negating act. The successive negation of T, S, Φ (Pseudo-Dionysius's ladder of unknowing, Maimonides's series of attribute-denials, Eckhart's *abyss beyond God*) does not reach a standpoint outside structure; it traces structure's contour from the inside, marking each condition by the act that tries to remove it.

The contemporary self-subversion reading marks a necessary distinction. Sells's *Mystical Languages of Unsaying* (Michael A. Sells, 1994) and Turner's *Darkness of God* (Denys Turner, 1995) argue that the apophatic move is not a simple negative proposition but a recursive undoing of its own enunciation. Granted in full: the practice of self-subversion is an activity unfolding through succession, distinction, and a continuing practitioner. That establishes an act-side structural fact. It does not by itself establish that the intended referent of apophatic discourse is structured, because the apophatic theorist may deny that the discourse represents a determinate object at all.

*A parallel front: the immutable-thinker dilemma.* The apophatic discipline pressures classical theism from one direction: every act of negation instantiates what it negates. A parallel pressure runs along the divine attribute of immutability itself. The classical-theistic God is, on the standard view (Aquinas, *ST* I.9; Anselm, *Proslogion* 18–22), immutable, atemporal, and omniscient.

The three attributes pull against one another when the question is whether God thinks. Either divine knowledge involves successive cognitive episodes, or it is one timeless act. The first option conflicts with strict immutability. The second is the classical answer and cannot be dismissed merely by assuming that every instance of thought must be episodic.

The classical responses to this horn, Boethian eternity (*Consolation of Philosophy* V.6); the Stump and Kretzmann ET-simultaneity reconstruction (a relation of co-presence between eternity and time without temporal succession on the divine side) (Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzmann, 1981); Leftow's *Time and Eternity* (Leftow, Brian, 1991); Helm's *Eternal God* (Paul Helm, 1988), all attempt to dissolve the succession by relocating divine cognition outside time. The relocations preserve immutability by separating the mode of divine knowing from creaturely succession. They face a burden of explaining how one timeless act bears differentiated, tensed, and contingent content, but the proposal is not closed simply by redescribing that mode as non-successive.

If God has no cognitive state or relation at all, omniscience is lost. But dispositional and non-occurrent models of knowledge show that knowing need not consist in a stream of episodes. The live issue is what positive cognitive relation remains and whether it can distinguish its contents.

The Thomistic *actus purus* names fully actual actuality without potency rather than activity-as-transition; on that strongest reading ([§4.2.1](<4.2.1 The Changeless Ground.md>) develops the eternal-present and actuality-potentiality discipline; [§5.2.1](<5.2.1 Divine Simplicity.md>) the classical divine simplicity case), the conditions [§3.5](<3.5 What the Convergence Shows.md>) establishes are instantiated not in the *mode* of divine cognition (which is unitary act, not succession) but in the *content* divine cognition cognizes. 'Eternal knowledge' (Aquinas, *ST* I.14) is content-bearing: omniscience predicates determinate content over articulated objects (S-distinguishability); divine knowing of what-is-the-case inherits the temporal articulation of what-is-the-case (T at the level of what is known); the unity of the eternal act sustains its content (Φ as the structural carrying of the act, not the duration of a process).

Nor does recasting divine omniscience as second-personal knowledge (acquaintance with persons rather than grasp of propositions) lift the result clear of the conditions: the persons known are themselves distinct from one another and from their knower (S) and articulated across the times of their lives (T), so personal knowing bears determinate content no less than propositional knowing, and the content it bears carries the structure the relocation of mode was meant to escape. The Aristotelian and Thomistic frameworks (*Metaphysics* Λ 1072b14–30; *ST* I.3) shift where T, S, and Φ are instantiated; they do not extract divine cognition from the structural conditions any cognition's content requires. The classical-theistic account therefore faces a mode–content tension rather than a deductively closed dilemma: succession in the divine mode threatens immutability, while a timeless unitary mode owes an account of differentiated and temporally articulated content.

Feser's *Aquinas* (Feser, Edward, 2009) and *Five Proofs* (Feser, Edward, 2017) develop the most sophisticated contemporary integration of the apophatic and analogical modes: apophasis disciplines the excess of positive predication, and the analogy of being (*analogia entis*) supplies the positive content that apophasis alone cannot provide. On Feser's reading, "God is not composite" (apophasis) pairs with "God is subsistent being itself" (analogy), the two modes functioning as complementary faces of a single theological discipline.

The structural reply tracks both poles. The apophatic pole has been addressed above: every act of negation instantiates T, S, and Φ in the performance. The analogical pole is addressed in the engagement with the analogia entis at [§5.2.1](<5.2.1 Divine Simplicity.md>): analogical predication requires a real proportion grounded in something real about the divine subject: the predicates must track a real divine correlate that stands in the appropriate proportion to its creaturely counterpart, and such a correlate must at least support determinate difference, direction, and stable bearing. Whether those roles warrant the stronger labels Space, Time, and Substance is a further step rather than a consequence of analogy alone.

The complementarity places structural conditions on the act side and a determinate-content burden on the object side. It does not by itself prove that the apophatic referent instantiates the same structure as the discourse used to approach it.

*What converges.* The chapter's stance on the *via negativa* is disciplined rather than eliminative. The apophatic tradition tracks the inadequacy of univocal projection from creaturely concepts to divine being. Its enacted negations are structurally conditioned, but that act-side fact does not settle whether apophatic discourse succeeds in referring beyond determinate predication. The remaining issue is therefore not refuted by retorsion; it is a burden of apophatic semantics and theology. The general structural result sets the terms of that burden, while the religious and existential significance of the apophatic remainder is carried forward to [§6.8.3](<6.8.3 Describability.md>).


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← [5.2.1 Divine Simplicity](<5.2.1 Divine Simplicity.md>) | [5.3 Non-Classical Ultimates](<5.3 Non-Classical Ultimates.md>) →
