The purpose of mysticism is to cast aside the prepossessed notions one may hold about the Divine and to have an experience with what is left.

What is left is the mystery of God, the indescribable aspect of the divine nature of God that reveals itself in a multitude of ways throughout the lives of humanity that most of humanity is completely unaware of.

Most Christians will claim to support this, but in actuality continually counter this idea. While Protestant evangelicalism as a whole has consciously stood opposed, individuals unconsciously oppose it in their speech.

The best way to explain how is through discussing cataphatic (or kataphatic) and apophatic approaches in describing the divine.

The cataphatic approach is concerned with describing the divine in “positive” terms

I put positive in quotes because it is not positive affirmation words like good, great, excellent, etc. By “positive” it means saying the divine IS something.
Examples: “God IS love”, “God IS great” etc.

Taking the cataphatic approach to its extent also encourages us make claims about the divine. Example: “God wants ___ for us”, “God likes ____”, or even “God hates ____”.

The apophatic approach is the reverse of the cataphatic. Instead of speaking in “positive” terms, the apophatic speaks about the divine in “negative” terms.

Just like the cataphatic, the “negative” of the apophatic approach doesn’t mean describing the divine as bad, evil, or wicked, but is a refusal to claim the divine IS something.

Example: “God IS NOT _____”

The purpose of the apophatic isn’t to be difficult just for difficulty’s sake, but is rooted in the idea that all human language completely fails at describing the divine in any adequate terms.

So one that uses the apophatic approach, “God IS NOT love” because to them the human understanding of the word “love” is not adequate enough to describe the divine. No word in any language is.

The purpose of the apophatic approach is to come to the understanding that the divine is greater than any human distinction or understanding, something I actually subscribe to. https://twitter.com/storytellershaw/status/1294681881951326208

Unfortunately, even saying that the divine is greater is describing the divine in a positive (cataphatic) way and is not truly apophatic.

To take the apophatic approach to its extent is to refuse describe the divine at all, knowing that any and every description falls infinitely short.

The apophatic approach is firmly rooted in the mystical tradition. By scraping away thousands of years of dogmas, traditions, orthodoxies, and theological positions, all of which claimed to know what God IS, all that is truly left is to describe the divine by what it IS NOT.

This is where evangelicalism (and all Western forms of Christianity) consciously stands opposed to mysticism. By making the claim that God is, wants, likes, or hates, and having others subscribe to it under penalty of damnation, mysticism and the apophatic approach are banned.

But for me, this is where I firmly find my belief. As someone that devotes much of their time to dismantling this the OT narratives and pointing out the inaccuracies of the stories to find the actual history, I get a lot of questions about my faith.

Particularly, how do I have faith when I’m constantly providing evidence that the stories that were written are false? To answer simply, my faith in the divine isn’t grounded in those stories, because those stories infinitely fail at describing the divine.

This is because almost all the OT writers spoke about the divine in cataphatic terms. There isn’t anything wrong with that, most mystics and all apophatics (myself included) cannot rely on that description as the basis for our faith.

It’s only after all the prepossessed ideas about the divine are stripped away that I place my faith in what is left. It’s a deeply personally and indescribable experience. It’s truly mystical.