Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology
McCarthy is known for his use of minimal dialogue in his works: both characters talk about God, but only in vague terms. They are stripped of their humanity including their names, memories, and hope. Apophatic theology emphasizes the incomprehensibility of God, especially as the Man questions God in anger as to why the world has turned into such despair. Despite this, the Man attributes his Son to be God’s word on earth which he values more than his life, and through his beliefs, he develops cataphatic theology in an attempt to understand his faith.
According to Nihsly the Road is best read through an apophatic lens which displays hints and suggestions of the Devine rather than outright statements. "Apophatic theology proposes that the language we use about God is always limiting, so it may be more accurate to avoid positive statements about God... in favor of negative statements."
"The world is a wild place in McCarthy’s fiction, and its God a wild and often savage and mostly unknowable God, but a God whose presence constantly beckons" (Broncano)
"Yet to speak of hope, faith, or God may be to speak strangely indeed of a book in which so little evidence of any of these is found. McCarthy's cauterized earth is one on which hope for one's daily bread, much less one's delivery from evil, seems doomed to disappointment." (DeCoste)
Sometimes we have to be brought low, even to no-name nothing, before finding a true source of hope and faith to sustain the will to go on." (Simmons)
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“Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are ded in the ground.” (McCarthy, 196)
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“Then he knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the pailing day. Are you there? He whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God” (McCarthy, 11-12)
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He is the great pessimist of American literature, using his dervish sentences to illuminate a world in which almost everything (including punctuation) has already come to dust. He once argued that he could see no point at all in literature that did not dwell on death. (Adams)
Apophatic theology
Despite McCarthy’s work being a Christian allegory there is surprisingly little mentions of God. As Decoste notes notions of divinity exist in the novel in terms of their own negation. Stylistically, McCarthy employs a barren landscape of commas and punctuation matching the apocalyptic landscape of his work. Even the main characters lack a name. As J.B. Simmons states "The man and boy never find an occasion to state their names. They are the ultimate pilgrims in a lost land. Nameless. Humbled. Starving. Surviving." The Man talks of God in terms of what he is not doing for himself and the Boy, and as Pudney points out, although the Man rarely speaks of God directly, its clear he believes in a greater purpose than himself. In such a devastating world with little hope, The Man and Boy have "more questions about God than affirmations" (Nisly). Despite this he seeks to be Godly by being the opposite of the cannibalistic heathens who travel the Road. He strives to maintain moral goodness, and protect his charge (The Boy) as his ultimate mission his vision of ultimate godliness
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Cataphatic Theology
Skirshire ironically considers the paradoxical nature of God: he represents death to some, and an affirmation of life by others. Despite the despair of the apocalyptic setting of the novel , "it is attributed to the father that the reversal from negativity to positivity is borne" (DeCoste) As Nihsly notes, The Man is torn between the "evidence of the absence of God" displayed through the perils of the Road "and the hope of its existence". Ultimately the man chooses hope rather than becoming nihilistic. Despite God having seemingly abandoned the World, the Man takes solace by caring for the divinity and goodness which is in his Son. According to McCarthy “He [the Man] knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”, and believes he is protecting the boy due to his appointment by God. This is reiterated by Spurgeon who believes the limited setting in the novel emphasizes the importance of ethics, when they are seemingly rare demonstrated through the inherent goodness of the boy, and how he acts as a moral compass for the Man. This belief reverses his negative presumption about the nature of God, since he has given him The Son. As the Father tells his Son, "you have my whole heart", this belief can ultimately be transferred to God himself.
"McCarthy's father and son seem, for all this, anything but empty non-men, and that they retain their humanity has, I argue, everything to do with the fact that for them, and for The Road itself, the question of belief [see Myth], and of the virtues proper to the believer, is far from dead. They fail to serve, as Ely would have them do, as prophets of nullity, they escape being mere shells of men, precisely because they are far from creedless" (DeCoste)
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"In the father (Viggo Mortensen in the film) McCarthy's story finds its doubt but also its humanity" (Dansby)
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