The elements of "negative theology" in the thought of Saint Augustine

This article is the text of a paper presented by Vladimir Lossky at the International Augustinian Congress in Paris in 1954. It is a historical and doctrinal study examining the presence of elements of negative theology in the thought of Saint Augustine. Lossky investigates the function of Augustinian apophasis, carefully distinguishing it from that of Marius Victorinus and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: unlike the latter, Augustine does not place God beyond being, but identifies immutable Being with divine excellence. The "learned ignorance," later borrowed by Nicholas of Cusa, fulfills a critical and spiritual function here — rejecting everything that God is not — without leading to a mysticism of supra-intellectual unknowing. The contribution of the article lies in precisely situating Augustine's place within the Western apophatic tradition, upstream of the medieval syntheses that would bend his insights toward Dionysian mystical apophasis.