What is Via Positiva?
Via Positiva, within Christianity, describes a method of understanding God through positive affirmations. It emphasizes God’s attributes like beauty, love, wisdom, and goodness. Also known as cataphatic theology or the “affirmative way,” the via positiva (cataphatic way) argues that positive statements can be made about God.
The term functions in two overlapping contexts: as a theological method for speaking about the divine, and as a spiritual practice centered on awe, wonder, and celebration of existence. In both uses, it stands as the counterpoint to the via negativa (apophatic way), which approaches the divine through negation—by stating what God is not.
Origins & Lineage
Proclus (412–485) introduced the terminology used in apophatic and cataphatic theology. For Proclus, apophatic and cataphatic theology form a contemplatory pair, with the apophatic approach corresponding to the manifestation of the world from the One, and cataphatic theology corresponding to the return to the One.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) was an early proponent of apophatic theology. While Clement developed apophatic approaches, early Christian theologians simultaneously explored cataphatic affirmations. The tension between the two methods shaped medieval scholasticism.
In Thomas Aquinas, for example, the via positiva undergirds the discussion of univocity, the via negativa the equivocal, and the via eminentiae the final defense of analogy. In the Latin West a heavily Cataphatic theology, or via positiva, developed, which remains today in most forms of Western Christianity. This type of Cataphatic theology is based on using human reason to make positive statements about the nature of God. It slowly developed from the 5th to the 11th century, emerging as Scholasticism in the Medieval Period (11th-17th centuries). Anselm and John Duns Scotus both defended the univocal use of religious language on these grounds, arguing that words refer to concepts which depend on God to define them through His creation.
In the late 20th century, Dominican theologian Matthew Fox reframed the via positiva as the first of four paths in Creation Spirituality. Among the issues Ratzinger objected to were his feminist theology; calling God “Mother”; preferring the concept of Original Blessing over Original Sin; not condemning homosexual behavior; and teaching the four paths of creation spirituality – the Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa — instead of the church’s classical three paths of purgation, illumination, and union. In 1993, Fox’s conflicts with Catholic authorities climaxed with his expulsion from the Dominican Order for “disobedience”, effectively ending his professional relationship with the Church and his teaching at its universities.
In the late 1960s he had studied in Paris with Father Marie Dominic Chenu, who had identified a “creation-centered spirituality” tradition in Christianity and Judaism. This tradition honors the sacredness of creation, esteems women and feminine values, embraces the arts, prizes love, wisdom, prophesy, mysticism, and seeks to bring about gender, social and ecological justice.
How It’s Practiced
In theological contexts, via positiva operates through affirmative language about the divine. The Cataphatic Way is sometimes called the Via Positiva; it uses language confidently and positively to describe God, as a painter might use paints confidently and positively to represent what is in front of them. Practitioners make statements like “God is good,” “God is love,” or “God is wise,” drawing analogies from creation to gesture toward the Creator.
As a spiritual practice within Creation Spirituality, our first spiritual moments are moments of awe and wonder, and delight. The mystics call this the Via Positiva. When we allow these gifts to penetrate our souls the organic response includes: gratitude, reverence, and joy. The first path, the Via Positiva, is encountering divinity through experiences of awe and delight in the cosmos.
Creation-centered mystics always begin with awe and wonder, the Via Positiva. Rooted in the theology of original blessing and the experience of creation’s “very goodness,” the first path is more about noticing than doing. Practitioners cultivate attentiveness to beauty, engage with art and music, spend time in nature, and practice gratitude as a form of prayer. Meister Eckhart says “If the only prayer you say in your whole life is ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.”
Via Positiva Today
Contemporary practitioners encounter via positiva through multiple channels. The theological approach remains foundational in Western Christian seminaries and philosophy departments, where debates about religious language continue between cataphatic, apophatic, and analogical frameworks.
Matthew Fox’s Creation Spirituality movement has popularized the via positiva as a spiritual practice among progressive Christians, interfaith seekers, and those interested in ecological spirituality. Fox has devoted 50 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship. His more than 40 books, translated into 78 languages, are inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and have awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West.
Retreats, online courses, and contemplative practices grounded in via positiva appear at centers like the Omega Institute and in interfaith spiritual communities. The practice has found resonance with environmental movements, as it emphasizes the sacredness of the natural world and original blessing rather than original sin.
In mystical Christianity and contemplative prayer traditions, practitioners often balance via positiva with via negativa—using affirmative prayer, sacred imagination, and lectio divina alongside silent meditation and the Cloud of Unknowing’s apophatic approach.
Common Misconceptions
Via positiva is not positive thinking or prosperity gospel. It does not claim that focusing on good thoughts will manifest material abundance or that suffering should be denied. Westerners find the via positiva more difficult to get than, for example, the via negativa. We love to wallow in our woe, in our sinfulness, and anything that depresses us. We don’t take time for the via positiva.
It is not anti-intellectual or opposed to critique. Via positiva does not reject via negativa; historically, most theologians employed both methods. Most thinkers used elements of both, seeing the cataphatic way as an initial step and the apophatic way as a deeper stage of understanding God’s transcendent nature.
It is not pantheism. While Creation Spirituality emphasizes the sacredness of creation, Fox’s theological positions have been categorized as a type of monism, specifically panentheism. Some have claimed this approach is integral to Fox’s creation spirituality. Panentheism holds that the divine pervades creation while also transcending it—distinct from pantheism, which equates God with the natural world.
Via positiva is not a rejection of tradition. While Fox’s articulation challenged certain institutional structures, he roots the practice in medieval mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, and Thomas Aquinas, as well as Jewish and indigenous wisdom traditions.
How to Begin
For theological study, begin with Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (particularly Question 13 on naming God) or contemporary introductions to philosophy of religion that explore religious language. William P. Alston’s Divine Nature and Human Language offers rigorous philosophical treatment.
For spiritual practice, Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality (1983) remains the definitive text. Fox lays out the ancient but often neglected (and sometimes condemned) creation spiritual tradition in Original Blessing. The sacredness of creation and of our role in it is a starting point—what the mystical tradition calls the Via Positiva, the path of joy and delight, awe and gratitude.
Practical entry points include: keeping a gratitude journal focused on wonder rather than transaction; spending time in nature with attention to beauty; engaging with creation through art, music, or dance; reading the Psalms or nature poetry (Mary Oliver, Gerard Manley Hopkins) as contemplative practice; or simply pausing each day to notice what evokes awe.
For those in Christian contemplative traditions, explore resources from the Center for Action and Contemplation (Richard Rohr) or Contemplative Outreach, which integrate cataphatic and apophatic prayer methods.