This paper deals with the issue of how the images of heaven and hell are presented in Byzantine and in Japanese Buddhist art. Given the differences and similarities between the languages of art, canons and civilizational codes, we will primarily consider form, style and thematic-motific connection – but only to the extent to which such comparisons can be considered as possible and methodologically correct: as the most attractive sign of the feeling of life, which dramatically warns, invokes, redeems or conceives the tragedy of historical experience, but also as a sign of the state of mind and consciousness of different social communities.

The aim of this paper is to analyse certain aspects of the Christian tradition, namely, the doctrines of apophasis (also known as negative theology) and theosis (deification). These are surveyed together because they often complement one another in Christian thought. Although the later Byzantine fathers, of the hesychast tradition, solved the theological questions of apophaticism and deification, the problematic was already articulated in early Christianity through conceptualising the vision of God. The contention of this paper is that although the Alexandrine and Antochene traditions appropriated two diverse ways of understandings of the doctrine of vision of God, the two theological methods were in fact interrelated. In short, whereas for the Alexandrians the vision and knowledge of God stressed the ascent of the human being to God (apophasis), and the Antiochenes were more interested in the divine condescension (kataphasis), both traditions had the same practical goal, union by grace with God or theosis. Both paradigms, too, reveal the paradoxical or antinomical nature of Christian God-transcendent and immanent at the same time. After exploring some of the general characteristics of the Alexandrian and Antiochene though, this paper will address the particularities of the two interpretive strands.