What is the meaning of cataphasis?

Cataphasis is Greek for "affirmation" or "positive assertion": the word literally names a positive statement. The trouble is that two reference works in front of you can give two incompatible definitions. Dictionary.com says cataphasis is the use of affirmative statements; Silva Rhetoricae, the standard catalog of rhetorical figures, says it is a specific kind of paralipsis where a speaker explicitly affirms the negative qualities they claim to be passing over. Both are in print, and neither acknowledges the other. Which one you should use depends entirely on where you met the word.

Which definition of cataphasis should you use?

If you found the word in a rhetoric handbook or stylistics text, use the narrow definition. Silva Rhetoricae, the standard online reference for rhetorical figures, defines cataphasis as a kind of paralipsis (the figure of pretending to pass over something while actually mentioning it) in which the speaker explicitly affirms the negative qualities they claim to be skipping. The textbook example is the line "I will say nothing here of his fraudulent practices." The speaker says they will say nothing, and then says it.

If you found the word in a general dictionary, a theology text, or anywhere else, use the broad definition. Cataphasis there means any affirmative statement, the direct opposite of apophasis. Dictionary.com, Wiktionary, and theology sources all treat it this way.

The practical test: if the source is a rhetoric handbook or stylistics text, assume the paralipsis sense. Otherwise assume the broad sense.

Sense of cataphasis	Where you meet it
Paralipsis variant: explicitly affirming what you claim to pass over	Silva Rhetoricae, rhetoric handbooks, stylistics texts
Broad affirmation: any positive statement, opposite of apophasis	Dictionary.com, Wiktionary, theology and prayer literature

How is cataphasis different from affirmation (affirmatio)?

The two words are often treated as synonyms, since cataphasis is Greek for "affirmation" and affirmatio is Latin for the same thing. Casual reference works will tell you they are the same figure. The standard rhetorical catalog does not.

Silva Rhetoricae lists affirmatio and cataphasis as separate entries with different definitions. Affirmatio is a general figure of emphasis: stating something positively, as if it were in dispute. Cataphasis is the narrower paralipsis variant described above. The "cataphasis equals affirmatio" equation comes from the broad etymological sense of cataphasis ("affirmation"), not from the specialist usage where the two figures do different work.

For the figure that simply means "asserting positively," the answer to whether affirmation and cataphasis are the same figure is: in casual usage yes, in the specialist catalog no. The difference between affirmation and cataphasis comes down to scope. Affirmatio works across any assertion the speaker wants to mark as not-in-doubt; cataphasis (in the narrow sense) is the specific maneuver of affirming the negative thing you said you would skip.

How is cataphasis different from apophasis?

In the broad sense, the two are mirror opposites. Cataphasis is positive statement; apophasis is negative statement, or saying-by-not-saying. Affirm versus deny.

In the narrow Silva Rhetoricae sense, the comparison gets trickier. Apophasis itself is sometimes treated as a synonym of paralipsis: the figure of refusing to mention something while mentioning it ("I won't bring up his crimes against the republic..."). Silva's cataphasis is a specific subspecies of that move. The cataphasis variant is the one where the negative thing is named outright, not merely gestured at.

Mark Antony's funeral speech is the canonical instance:

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. / The evil that men do lives after them; / The good is oft interred with their bones.

(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3.2, 1599)

Antony announces what he will not do (praise Caesar), then proceeds to do exactly what an oration over a corpse does. The negative qualities of Caesar's killers get named through the move, not hidden by it. So there are two axes for comparing the figures: the broad opposition (affirm versus deny) and the narrow nesting (cataphasis as a particular flavor of apophasis or paralipsis).

What is cataphatic theology, and is it the same word?

Cataphatic theology (sometimes spelled kataphatic) is the practice of describing God through positive predicates: "God is good," "God is light," "God is life." It pairs against apophatic theology, which approaches God by negation, by saying what God is not.

Same Greek root, same broad sense of "positive statement." But it's a theological method, not a rhetorical figure. The rhetorical and theological uses share an etymology; they don't share a working definition. If you met the word in a rhetoric or stylistics text, treat it as Silva Rhetoricae's narrow paralipsis variant. If you met it in a dictionary, a theological work, or anywhere else, treat it as the broad Greek sense of affirmation. The word's etymology is one. Its working usages are three. Knowing which context you are reading in does the rest.