Negative theology or apophasis—the idea that God is best identified in terms of what we cannot know about him, in terms of "absence", "otherness", "difference"—has been influentiual in modern Christian thought, resonating as it does with secular notions of absence, otherness and difference developed in recent continental philosophy. Leading Christian thinkers now offer a range of important new perspectives on this tradition, both historical and contemporary, to show how a dimension of negativity has characterized not only traditional mysticism but most forms of Christian thought over the years.