The Mystical Theology

OF THE HOLY DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY TO TIMOTHY

CAPUT I. What is the divine darkness.

SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER.

§ I. ^A O Trinity, supernatural, and more than divine, and more than good, thou guide of the Christians in theosophy, direct us to that which is beyond knowledge, and beyond light, and the highest summit of the mystic oracles, where the simple, and absolute, and immutable mysteries of theology are revealed in the darkness of the silent, hidden initiation, which is beyond light; ^B where, in most darkened darkness, that which shines most brightly in the highest degree over-shines, and in that which is completely intangible and invisible, it fills the eyeless minds with beauties beyond nature.

These, then, are my prayers. But thou, O dear Timothy, in the intensive exercise ^C of mystical contemplations, both abandon the senses, and the intellectual operations, and all things sensible and intelligible, and all things that are not and that are; and, in so far as it is possible, be raised up in unknown unity to Him who is above all essence and knowledge. For, by the unconstrained and absolute ^D

^A and pure turning away of yourself from all things, and by being released from all and liberated from all, you will be raised up to the superessential ray of the divine darkness, in naked simplicity.

§ II. But see to it that none of the uninitiated hear these things; I mean those who cling to things that are, and imagine that there is nothing beyond the things that are, above essence, but who believe that they know through their own knowledge Him who has made darkness His hiding place. If the divine mysteries are beyond these, what would one say of those who are still more uninitiated, who characterize the super-eminent Cause of all from the things that are at the extreme of the nature of things, and say that it in no way surpasses the ungodly and manifold imaginative forms which they themselves fashion, whereas they ought to establish and affirm concerning it—as the Cause of all—all the affirmations of beings; and, on the other hand, to deny all these things more properly, as It is superessentially above all, and not to think that negations are contrary to affirmations, but rather that It is far prior to and above privations, being above every stripping away and position. ^B

§ III. It is in this sense, surely, that the divine Bartholomew says that theology is both great and very small, and that the Gospel is wide and great, and again concise. It seems to me that he has understood this—that the good Cause of all is both multiloquent and brief-spoken, and at the same time without speech, as It has neither speech nor intelligence, because It superessentially surpasses all things ^C, and is revealed without veil and in truth only to those who pass beyond all things both impure and pure, and who transcend every ascent of all holy heights, and leave behind all divine lights, and sounds, and heavenly discourses, and are absorbed into the darkness where He truly is, as the Scripture says, who is beyond all. For not without reason is the divine Moses ordered to be purified first himself, and then to be separated from those who are not like him, and after all purification he hears the many-voiced trumpets, and sees many lights, ^D pure and shedding forth manifold rays; then he is separated from the multitude, and with the chosen priests he reaches the summit of the divine ascents. And even in this, he does not meet with God himself, but contemplates—for He is invisible—not Him, but the place where He is. This I think signifies that the most divine and highest of things seen and understood are but certain hypothetical accounts of those things that are subordinate to Him who is above all.

^A His presence, which transcends all the conceptions of the mind, is declared to those whose intellect reaches out to the most holy heights of His places; and then, being loosened from both those things which are seen and those which see, it enters into the really mystical darkness of unknowing, in which it excludes all scientific apprehensions, and abides in that which is in every way untouchable and invisible, being wholly of Him who is above all things; and belonging neither to itself nor to another, nor to any other, but being united in the better part to Him who is utterly unknown, by the cessation of all knowledge, and knowing beyond the mind by knowing nothing.

ADNOTATIONS OF CORDERIUS.

Since mystical theology (as we show in chapter 11 of the Isagoge) is of a supernatural order, and transcends entirely the natural capacity, St. Dionysius rightly and as is fitting approaches it through prayer and the invocation of the most holy Trinity; for that most holy man knew that the discipline of this theology is by no means acquired by one’s own effort or striving, much less can it be handed down; but that it is to be referred to the supreme and singular benefit of the Highest Divinity, and is to be treated by His own instinct and inspiration, and ought to be communicated only to those capable of so great a gift. Therefore, he does not simply ask for some light whereby he may be illumined, as is wont to be done in other parts of theology; but he asks for that very grace of mystical theology itself, and its most distinguished prerogative, by which he may be led to its supreme peak. For this difference exists between this and other theological disciplines: that in the others the experience or possession itself of those things which are treated is by no means necessary, but only some light by which the intellect may in its own way recognize and examine the nature and properties of the object; but mystical theology embraces its object intimately within itself, namely God, and subsists and is completed in an intimate union with God, which is obtained by a pure and ardent conversion to God, which only divine grace can provide. This conjunction with God, therefore, he prays for himself at the very threshold of this book, and at the same time prefatorily commends to it this work by his prayer. Where it should be observed that this supplicatory preface comprises the epitome of this whole little book, and is obscure, as becomes the sum of an obscure matter. Moreover, what he indicates here obscurely and briefly, he expounds more fully and particularly throughout the rest of the book.

Pachymeres correctly observes that this precatory preface, as is the custom in mystical instruction, is composed in a mystical manner and with mystical terms, namely from words compounded with *hyper*, which exist as a kind of proper formula of mystical theology. Whence, immediately in the exordium, invoking the Holy Trinity, he declares not what It is, but what It is not, or rather what is above things, saying:

542 §. The supernatural Trinity, etc. Note that the Trinity is not called supernatural as if It were above the nature of God, since it is essential and most natural to Him to be fruitful, and to exist as one and the same in three distinct persons; but It is called supernatural with respect to us and the angels, and every created substance, because It can in no way be reached by any powers of nature, nor be known by any notion naturally, without the revelation of God, as St. Thomas teaches in Part 1, question 32, article 1, et seq. Similarly, It is said to be more than divine, more than good, that is, above divinity and above goodness as conceivable by any created intellect. The Holy Trinity is said to be the president of the theosophy of Christians, because only Christians acknowledge the mystery of the Trinity and of the individual unity through faith, and venerate it through religion, which is altogether divine wisdom, and eternal life, concerning which Christ Himself says: "And this is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." Now, indeed, Christians attain this in faith, as in seed, but afterwards in glory, as in fruit, by which the blessed are fully satisfied. Gregory the Theologian beautifully speaks to this purpose in his Oration *On the Establishment of Bishops*: "If," he says, "I could attain to having a perfect knowledge of all things here, what would be left for me? What would I hope for? The kingdom of heaven, you would say. But I think there is nothing other than this than to attain what is most pure and most perfect. The most perfect of all things that are, is the knowledge of God. But let us hold this in part, and let us go on to comprehend it while we are on earth; in part let us reserve it for the future, that from there we may have this fruit of our labor, the splendor, namely, of the whole holy Trinity, whatever it is, and of what kind, and how great, if it is permissible to say." Invoking this holy Trinity, therefore, he says: "Guide us to the more than undemonstrable, and more than shining, and highest peak of the mystical oracles." He rightly asks for divine direction, since mystical theology is of an order transcending nature, being that to which one arrives not by human industry, but by divine condescension alone. Therefore, it is "not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." And so very learnedly he calls its peak "more than undemonstrable, and more than shining"; since by no reasoning or demonstration (which, according to the philosopher, produces scientific knowledge) does one arrive at its notion, but only by the supernatural light of faith, or by peculiar revelation. Wherefore he significantly calls the holy Trinity (which is the highest peak of mystical theology) in Greek *hyperagnoston* [more than unknown], because what It is, is not only thus undemonstrable and unknown, as we can understand something to be unknown among creatures, but it is more than undemonstrable, and more than unknown; because we cannot naturally see God, nor can we draw from any creatures any knowledge, which...

declares to us the mystery of the most holy Trinity, while on the contrary, all knowledge which we have from creatures seems rather to show that this mystery is impossible. Wherefore, although this mystery is not against reason (as some have falsely said; for whatever is contrary to truth should not be called reason, but error), yet it is ^A above all natural reason, so that, setting aside revelation, it could never come into our minds as positively probable that this mystery is possible, because there is nothing from which we can conceive such knowledge, as theologians everywhere teach in Part I, Question 32.

At the same time, however, it is rightly said that this mystery is "more than shining," because where the light of reason is blinded and fails, there the light of faith shines more acutely in believing than any logical or mathematical reasoning does in demonstrating, since it is a supernatural and infallible light, which can neither be deceived nor deceive; whence, although it produces no evidence, it nevertheless has a certainty greater than any evidence. These things may also be accepted regarding that revelation which has clarity from the revealer, where simple and absolute things—that is, those which are naked as they are, without symbolic coverings, and without parables, and without words that require explanation—are understood and seen, God opening the mysteries, which, being thus shown and revealed, cannot afterwards be expressed in speech. Just as St. Paul, the instructor of Dionysius, wrote in that rapture of his concerning such a vision and revelation of mysteries, simple and absolute—that is, naked and open, with symbols and words requiring explanation removed—saying: "Which it is not lawful for a man to speak" (II Cor. XII, 4); for to this, it seems, Dionysius referred when he said here, "in the darkness that is more than shining of the silent, hidden mysteries." He called it darkness, which Paul called *arrheta*, that is, hidden things; for Paul saw and knew these most obscure things, which cannot be explained (just as neither darkness can be seen, nor those things which are covered by darkness), in the light of a most clear revelation without any symbols.

It should also be observed (lest anyone rashly criticize the interpretation, because we translate "are opened in the darkness") that it is wrongly read in the copies hitherto published as *egkalyptetai*, that is, "they are covered," whereas our Turrianus better found in the copy which Cyparissiotus had, *exkalyptetai*, that is, "they are uncovered." The manuscript Caesarean copy also supports this reading. It may also be not incongruously understood through "darkness" as faith, which is the substance of things to be hoped for, the argument of things not appearing (Heb. XI, 1). Indeed, in it, because of its obscurity—as if in darkness—but because of the supernatural certainty which it shares from divine testimony, it is "more than shining," above all natural demonstration; a silence is found of a certain hidden or mystical doctrine, which is not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and virtue, so that our faith might not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God (I Cor. II, 4). Which, in the most gloomy obscurity, because of the non-evidence of the things to be believed, shines more than clearly because of the evidence of credibility, which the marks of faith provide; it shines above all scientific demonstration because of the divine revelation upon which the assent of faith immediately rests, and from which it derives a certainty (as being supernatural) more infallible than any natural science.

And in the total intangibility and invisibility of the mysteries, escaping every touch and sight, it captures the mind's eyes with the most beautiful divine splendors, that is, according to the Apostle, reducing every intellect into captivity to the obedience of Christ (I Cor. X, 5). It super-fills with all joy and peace in believing (Rom. XV, 13), that they may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, and sublimity, and depth, and to know also the supereminent clarity of the knowledge of Christ, that they may be filled unto all the fulness of God (Eph. III, 18). These, he says, are my prayers, this is what I wish, what I desire. Next, informing Timothy unto mystical contemplation, he says: "But you, dear Timothy, in the mystical contemplations of divine and celestial things, you must cultivate yourself by diligent and intent exercise, not sluggish and remiss; and therefore leave behind the senses, which, as being animal, do not grasp those things which are of the spirit (I Cor. II, 14); and intellectual operations, to wit, those which the agent intellect naturally forms in the patient intellect from forms abstracted from sensible things; and the sensible objects of all the senses, and all the intellectual principles of natural sciences and reasonings, and those 'that are,' that is, the essences of things, which, because they are invariable, are properly said by philosophers to be; and those 'that are not' throughout, that is, all temporal things, which on account of their continuous mutation were said by philosophers not to be. So that you may rise unto the union, which is made through charity and the grace of Him who is above essence, as the author of essence, higher than any essence conceivable by us, and existing above every notion of a notion-designating essence, as much as is permitted by grace, through faith, undemonstrably without any natural notion, supernaturally. For faith, which no demonstration or natural notion supports, is the first step by which we ascend to charity, by which we are joined and united with God. Indeed, through the free—that is, voluntary—and absolute—that is, adhering to no creature—and pure—that is, sincere—departure of yourself, that is, of the soul and the affections of the body, from all things created, whether sensible or intelligible, in Greek *ekstasis*, that is, through a certain excess of love, and abstraction of the mind, and the negation of all things, you will be carried upwards to that supernatural one, at which all natural intuition stands amazed, the ray of the divine darkness, where God is apprehended through faith and enjoyed through the love of the soul, all things being withdrawn, as much the entanglements of the senses as of the reasonings, and, freed from all obstacles, you will be lifted up and anagogically sublimated.

Note here how he says *agnostos*, that is, undemonstrably, that one must rise to divine union without natural notion. For one should not curiously inquire, nor can it be demonstrated, how this mystical knowledge of theology is made through copulation with God, all other knowledge of things being left behind; that which the Apostle Paul signified when he spoke of that his copulation with God, in which he saw those hidden mysteries: "Whether in the body, or out of the body, I know not; God knows" (II Cor. XII, 3). "I know not," he says, that is, I do not curiously inquire, nor can I demonstrate; it is enough for me to have seen and heard those hidden words, etc. Lessius, in the Preface to the book *On Divine Perfections*, says that Dionysius here treats of that mode of contemplating, in which, the divine perfections having been accurately considered, insofar as they are offered as limited to a certain species and distinct among themselves, the mind rises to something more sublime and unlimited, infinitely more excellent than all those, and joins itself to it in an unknown manner by contemplation and love. Heisenius, on this passage, understands by "darkness" God under the aspect of uncreated and inaccessible light, having descended into the essence of the soul, which overflows and absorbs it with that inaccessible light; or certainly that supreme conjunction, by which the soul, above all sensitive and intellectual powers, above all senses or operations of the mind, immediately adheres to God through an intimate transfusion (if I may so speak) of the essence of God, which is infinite light, into the essence of the soul; through which the soul is constituted in a wonderful and special way as the seat of God, or also God is said to be the soul's. He calls it darkness for a twofold reason: First, because Scripture declares that God inhabits darkness. "Clouds and darkness are round about him" (Ps. XCVI, 2); and elsewhere:

"He made darkness his hiding-place" (Ps. XVII, 12). Furthermore, to the students of the mystical theology of the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Pythagoreans, God is also a darkness and is held to be such—not that He admits any darkness into Himself (for "God is light, and there is no darkness in Him" [1 John I, 5]), but rather because, by His own nature, He is infinite and inaccessible light. Our Cresollus, in his *Mystagogus*, lib. I, cap. 9, observes that the wise men of all ages, sacred and profane, have seen this, having confessed with a most clear testimony how extremely difficult it is to find God—as Lactantius sets forth from Plato in *Institutiones*, lib. I, cap. 8—and that He cannot in any way be declared to the common people or explained. Wishing to signify this, the Hebrews say that the name of God is *aphonton*, *anexpheuneton*, inexplicable, and that He cannot be spoken or named. From them, I believe, the Egyptians derived the name for their chief God, *Amun*, whom the Greeks and Latins call *Ammon*; which name, says Manetho, signifies "occult" or "occultation." Hence the Saitae, celebrated among them for the name of wisdom, placed on the propylaeum of the temple of Minerva that noble inscription: "No mortal has ever unveiled my peplum." Justin Martyr, in his *Adhortation ad Gentes*, says that the philosopher Ammon for this reason called God *panchryphon*, "wholly occult." Whence it has come to pass that all the holy Fathers, along with St. John Damascene in *De fide*, lib. I, cap. 15, by the common consent of minds, call God *akatalepton*, "incomprehensible."

The second reason is that the union of this kind of cognition or intellection (which for Dionysius is light) is in itself wanting, inasmuch as it exists above all affirmation and negation; it does not hinder all cognition, whether in sense or in intellect, for the time that it exists, as he teaches at the end of this chapter. Yet he calls it *hyperphane*, "more-than-shining," lest anyone think it is mere obscurity, but in truth rather a maximum light and "supersplendid"—that is, a light which fills the soul with a splendor greater than can be conceived; which light, however, because of the excess of its own splendor, blunts and obscures the sharpness and light of the mind, not otherwise than as the splendor of the sun takes away light and vision from weaker pupils, and to the eyes of an owl it is actually night and darkness. For when God, since He is the most perfect light, expands and opens Himself more fully and effectively to our mind, He dazzles and stupifies it the more with His overwhelming splendor, so that it sees nothing else, according to that saying: "Thy knowledge is become wonderful from me; it is strengthened, and I cannot attain unto it" (Ps. CXXXVIII, 6).

Marsilius Ficinus brings forward another reason: that it is called darkness insofar as the soul has arrived at this point through certain negations, namely by denying that God is this or that or another thing; but it is called light because we obtain clear truth about God in no other way than by such denial. And for this purpose he not inappropriately accommodates the place from the same Psalm: "As his darkness, so also his light, and the night shall be illuminated as the day" (Ibid., 12).

From all these things (says Hersentius in the same place), it appears how aptly St. Dionysius has joined darkness with the highest light. For he ought not to have spoken only of darkness or obscurity, nor only of maximum light, because by one of these he would not have sufficiently expressed the property of this divine degree; wherefore he had to join both. But presently, when he establishes God as having in this mystic way slipped into the soul, or the soul's union with God, who is an inaccessible light, he calls it the "supreme darkness," because it so obscures and darkens the faculties given for cognition that they could conceive nothing and utter nothing. He calls the same *siges gnophon*, "the darkness of silence," because it effects a kind of silence in the faculties of the soul. Moreover, it could be called the "darkness of silence" in respect to itself; because this union, just as it is free from all cognition, speech, and motion, so it holds within itself the highest peace and profound silence. Finally, it is called silence because it transcends every affirmation and negation by a great and wide distance. But that this silence might not be seen to be idle or empty, and that by obscuring light it might be thought to be something that receives or bears light, he calls it *kryphiomysten*, "the mystic of arcana," a composite word most effective, which can be taken in both an active and a passive sense. For he is called a *mystes* who is initiated into the sacred rites and receives and guards the sacred arcana, and also he who hands down, speaks, and reveals them, as a *mystagogos*. In either way you take it, it yields an excellent sense. For if you take it passively, he says that this silence is a "mystic of arcana," insofar as the soul, reduced to that silence, receives into itself the divine arcanum itself by itself (by which reason Proclus, in his commentaries on Plato's *Theology*, illustrates contemplation by the comparison of the initiates who are initiated into religious arcana or sacred rites). But if you take it actively—a sense which has pleased all the interpreters—it signifies that this silence is, as it were, the teacher, initiator, and pedagogue of mystical things. For in another kind of theology, a man divinely inspired exists as the initiator of sacred rites; but in this mystic one, the teacher and director of divine oracles is the divine silence, or God Himself joined to the soul with the highest peace and silence. Then, in other theological institutions, the teacher is one thing and that which is taught is another; but here God Himself both teaches and is taught: He teaches, I say, insofar as He reveals and joins Himself to the soul; and He is taught and recognized through the very union or conjunction of the soul with the Divine Essence, of which the royal Psalmist says: "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet" (Ps. XXXIII, 9). He did not say, "See and taste," which would have had to be said in another kind of contemplation, in which the taste or spiritual affect arises from cognition; but "Taste and see," because mystical contemplation arises from the very taste and experiment of God as He is in Himself. Furthermore, note with the same Hersentius (from whom I have brought these things) that St. Dionysius, in order to show that this silence of arcane speech or interior doctrine—of which God Himself alone is the author—is by no means empty, has significantly called it *kryphiomysten*, that is, "teaching the arcana." Whoever wishes for more on the contemplation of God in darkness, let him see John de Jesu Maria in his little book *De mystica theologia*, and Thomas de Jesu, lib. I of *Divina orationis*, cap. 2 and 3, and the *theodidacton* Ruysbroeck, who, as the Spirit suggested, miraculously explains it in his Works.

But it is a wonder what St. Dionysius subjoins here about that darkness, that in the most tenebrous obscurity it shines more than most clearly, and in the all-encompassing intangibility and invisibility, it super-fills the minds captivated by the eyes with most beautiful splendors. This, beautifully, like the rest, is explained by Hersentius: that *to skotototato*, "most tenebrous," is the opposite of *to hyperphane*, "more-than-bright"; and to *aoratos*, "invisibility," *hyperkaleis aglaiai*, "most beautiful splendors," correspond. He interprets these splendors as the Divine Essence itself and its properties, which fall into the soul under the aspect of light and illuminate it; or as the cognition of the Divine Essence itself, or the Divine Persons in themselves, as far as they can be known, namely, their perfect union. He invites the splendors by the name of beauty for the reason that the Platonists (whose primacy our Dionysius deservedly claims for himself, as not only a most accurate follower of Plato but also a most Christian corrector) understand by the name of "the beautiful" both splendor and manifestation. Most aptly, therefore, does Dionysius in this place attribute the name of beauty to the divine splendors, which are the very properties of the Divine Essence; for in them, or in their transfusion into the soul and union, God Himself, who is the Supreme Good, is known in the most excellent way. And "most beautiful" [is used...]

because nothing more beautiful or more lovely than divine things can be conceived. Here it should be noted that he said not "splendor," but "splendors," because God does not fill the souls joined to Him with one kind of beauty and splendor, but with many and various kinds, as He is the source, abyss, and fullness of all beauty. Hence in the Psalms, it says: "The beauty of the field is with me" [Ps. XLIX, 11], meaning that which is various and manifold. In a word, a soul thus united to God is joined to the infinite beauties and splendors that are in Him, and is illuminated, adorned, and filled by them, so that it becomes godlike and casts itself into the rays of the inaccessible light, as he teaches in chapter 2 of *The Divine Names*. He does not say, however, "super-illuminates," but "super-fills": for divine illuminations, or the diffusions of divine lights into the mind, indeed illuminate, adorn, and increase it, but outside of this state and degree, they do not fill it; for it belongs to God alone to fill a soul capable of Himself. Whence it may not rashly be inferred that this apex of the mind, or mystical summit, approaches most nearly to the state of the blessed, in which God will be the fullness of the saints in such a way that, as the Apostle testifies, He will be all in all [1 Cor. XV, 28].

Moreover, that one may be thus filled by God, it is necessary first of all to empty oneself; since through a free and absolute (as St. Dionysius says) and pure withdrawal of oneself from all things, one is raised up to that supernatural ray of the divine darkness, having cast aside all things, and is lifted above all. For thus (as Rusbrochius says beautifully in the *Speculum Aeternae Salutis*, ch. 8), the supreme portion of our soul will never be unprepared for the reception of God, provided that it is altogether naked and void of forms or images, always looking into and tending toward its own principle, as it were the eternal and vivid mirror of God, whose essence and properties it perpetually represents in itself. Our soul’s substance has hence three certain properties, which are, however, one by nature. The first property is its essential and imageless nakedness, by which we are similar and united to the Father, and to His divine nature. The second property can be called the superior reason of the soul, which is the mirror of clarity in which we receive the Son of God, the eternal truth; and in clarity, we are similar to Him, but in receiving Him, we are one with Him. He calls the third property the spark of the soul, which is a certain natural inward propensity of the soul toward its origin, in which we receive the Holy Spirit, the love of God; and in propensity, we are similar to the Holy Spirit, but in receiving Him, we are made one spirit and one love with God. These three properties, in the one and undivided substance of the soul, are the vital flame and the origin of our supreme powers. Now this similarity and these properties exist by nature in all of us; but in sinners, they lie hidden in the depth of their own being because of the thickness of their vices. Wherefore, if we wish to feel and experience the kingdom of God lurking within us, we must be endowed with a virtuous and well-ordered life both outwardly and inwardly, and we must follow Christ in true charity in all ways, so that grace, charity, and virtues may be able to draw and elevate us to our supreme part, in which God lives and reigns. For that beatitude which is God, we cannot contemplate or feel by any art, nor by subtlety or sharpness, by means of natural light without the grace of God. And for this reason, God Almighty created the supreme powers of the soul to be capable of Himself (that is, of His grace and His gifts), by which we are lifted and renewed above nature, and by which we are made similar to Him through charity and virtues. Furthermore, through this supernatural similarity to God, which we acquire through grace and virtues, our memory is raised to a nakedness void of images, our intellect to simple truth, and our will to divine liberty; and so, finally, we become similar to God through grace and virtues, and beyond similarity, we are most happily united to Him.

^B Those who are not yet initiated into the mysteries of theology are not to be addressed. I mean those who cling to natural things, being deeply immersed in material things, and who imagine that there is nothing supernatural beyond natural things, the knowledge of which is arrived at through sensible objects, as they lack the light of faith, without which things that transcend the order of nature cannot be grasped. Indeed, since they abound in their own sense, they think they know Him by their own cognition, which they derive from creatures—namely God, who "made darkness His secret place" [Ps. XVII, 12]—because His nature can in no way be known by any created medium, especially insofar as He is triune in persons and one in substance. But if the institutions of divine mysteries, which are grasped through faith alone from things revealed by God and received from Holy Scripture and apostolic traditions, are above the grasp of these philosophers—who were considered wise among the Gentiles—what shall one say of those profane men who are even more rude, such as idolaters and the common rabble, who designate and describe the supreme cause of all things, namely God the creator of the universe, from things that are the extremes in the nature of things, for example, from material and sensible objects, and who attribute divinity to these base things? They say that it in no way excels the impious images of many forms, which they themselves fashion, each according to his own fantasy, depicting God in diverse ways. ^C When, in that divinity, as the cause of all things, which contains the perfections of all caused things eminently and super-eminently, as being transcendentally exempt, it was our duty to place and affirm, in that very manner which is fitting for God, by declaring concerning Him all the affirmations of beings—by saying, for example, "God is life," "God is goodness," etc.—rather than to deny all of them concerning Him more properly, by saying, for example, "God is not life," "God is not wisdom," etc.; such as what we conceive in the mind or imagine, as [He is] super-existent above all things that exist, or as they can fall into the created intellect. Nor should one think that negations are contrary to affirmations, because the same things are not affirmed and denied in the same way; but [that He is] far prior to and superior to privations. Because since God is pure act, existing essentially, and containing all simple perfections essentially, and is of Himself the cause of all things, in whatever manner they are conceivable; no privation of Him can truly be conceived, and the privations of all things whatsoever that are even possible, precisely that they may be truly conceived, cannot be conceived as anything but posterior to Him. For He is above every ablation—that is, negation—and position—that is, affirmation—as He anticipates and pre-possesses in Himself every conceivable perfection that can be affirmed or denied of anything, and that in a manner infinitely more perfect than can be devised, let alone explained, by any creature.

Notandum here first with Hersentius, that it was the primary concern of the ancient Christians that they should reveal nothing of the mysteries of our religion to those not yet baptized, and that, as Christ Himself commands, they should not "cast pearls before swine, nor give that which is holy unto the dogs" [Matt. VII, 6]. This they observed so sacrosanctly that they could not be brought, even by the most exquisite tortures, to disclose anything of the mysteries of the faith to the judges of the Gentiles, lest, of course, things not yet initiated should be profaned and become cheapened, or exposed to mockery. Wherefore it should not seem in the least strange if St. Dionysius, in these secret things of mystical theology, which are as the apex of the Christian religion, indicates a silence more than Harpocratic or Pythagorean, when even in other [books] of theology...

his own books he earnestly commends this, as in *Ecclesiastical Hierarchy*, ch. 1 and 2; *Divine Names*, ch. 1, and throughout elsewhere. This is because he had derived it not only from the discipline of the Christians, but had also received it from the institution of the Platonists, among whom it was held to be a form of impiety for secret theology to be divulged to the profane, as Plato inculcates twice in his Epistles. To this also refers that symbol of Pythagoras in Iamblichus: "Do not easily cast your right hand to just anyone," which is to say (as Iamblichus explains in the *Symbols*) do not entrust mysteries to the unproved and the uninitiated. For, as Maximus Tyrius rightly observes, such is the imprudence of the human mind that it venerates less those things which are open and accessible, but receives with admiration those which are abstruse. Hence, some do not improbably conjecture the reason why these writings of St. Dionysius were little known to the ancients: namely, because he himself wished them to be hidden, and to be communicated only to the prelates of the Church, as he insinuates at the end of ch. 1 of the *Ecclesiastical Hierarchy*, and elsewhere, commending them to Timothy.

Second, it must be noted with Maximus what "position" is and what "removals" (ablatio) are. He says that for God to be all things is "position," and for nothing of these to be [God] as He is above substance, is "negation." Both are properly stated in the amplitude of God; as, "God is life, God is goodness" is position and affirmation; "God is not life, [God] is not goodness" is a true negation, because He is above these things which we understand through life and goodness. That negations are to be preferred to affirmations in God, Dionysius taught above in ch. 2 of the *Celestial Hierarchy*, where see also our Annotations. And for the confirmation of the things said there, it helps to understand what St. Maximus feels about this matter in *Century 2 of Theology*, ch. 59. He who philosophizes about God affirmatively, he says, makes the Word flesh, since he cannot from elsewhere than from those things which we see and touch, know God as a cause; but he who philosophizes negatively, by taking away, makes the Word spirit, in that He who was in the beginning, and was with God, is the One who is beyond all cognition, knowing correctly from absolutely none of those things which can be known. Hence it is clear that it is more proper to philosophize about God through negations than through affirmations, insofar as the one makes the Word spirit, the other makes the Word flesh. And affirming theology has the power of comparing, and figuring, and conjecturing; and it proves only this, namely that God is, from those things which were made by Him. Truly, denying theology demonstrates that God is above all things, and attains the truth most fully, for he who says that God is not anything of those things which are, but that He is super-substantial, and above all things. Moreover, as Dionysius taught above, negations in God are not contrary to affirmations, for indeed what affirmation affirms, this same thing negation does not deny. Furthermore, just as affirmation does not posit what God is, so neither does negation take away what God is. For what it does not posit, how could it take away? Finally, since neither affirmation nor negation attains the substance of God, they differ only in this, that he who says "God is not what we think or conceive" comes closer to the truth, since He is infinitely more perfect, and that in an order supernatural and transcendent, than can be conceived or thought by any intellect.

§ III. For this very reason D. Bartholomew (whence it is gathered that St. Bartholomew also wrote some theological works, as it is likely that other apostles, being questioned on divine matters and questions by letter as the occasion arose, at least replied to the same in writing, and handed down the most sublime oracles which they had derived from God Himself, which for some time, as letters are wont to be, were kept and communicated to the Catholics; but afterward perished through the injuries of time) says that there is a copious theology, that is to say, spread out—partly, for instance, from creatures as effects, as *a posteriori*, as philosophers say, one arrives at the knowledge of the Creator and first cause, which is a certain part of demonstrative theology, or at least that part which is symbolic, which, as Dionysius witnesses in the following chapter, has proven to be very long—and a minimal [theology], that is to say, the most brief, the part which is, to be sure, mystical, as Dionysius explains in the same place; or indeed because God *a priori* is indemonstrable, as that which is lacking [in comparison]. And the Gospel is ample and great, namely because of the amplitude and greatness of the things it contains, and yet again concise or contracted, that is to say (as I indeed interpret it) small in bulk, but in sense and perfection, maximum. Whence the Apostle P calls the Word "abbreviated," as it contains the most brief precept of faith and love, which succeeded to all the sinuous ceremonies of the law. Thus Anselm and Ecumenius. Or because it contains the Word incarnate, abbreviated and emptied even to the human nature, which saved the remnant of Israel. This, as it seems to me, is excellently understood, that the kind cause of all is also "multiloquent," insofar as, by creating all things, He manifests Himself in many ways. For all things say in their own way: "For it is He who made us, and not we ourselves." And in this way creatures are like a certain voice of God, whereby all beautiful things testify to Him who is most beautiful, sweet things to the most sweet, sublime things to the most high, pure things to the most pure, strong things to the most strong, and so of others: and "breviloquent" at the same time, insofar as He says all things in one Word. For "He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created." And of no speech, by which indeed it can be understood by us what He is, since neither is there a word by which that "what it is" can be expressed, nor is there an intellect by which it can be comprehended; because He stands above all created things, not by simple reason, but superessentially, that is, supernaturally; so that however much the intellect of a creature may be perfected in its own kind, it is never to arrive at a quidditative knowledge of God, nor at any notion of the most holy Trinity from which He can be known, without the light of the supernatural order, whether of grace or of glory. And without "coverings," that is, without symbols, concerning which ch. 1 of *Celestial Hierarchy* and elsewhere, the discourse is frequent. And it is clearly shown, not indeed intuitively or face to face, which belongs to the homeland alone, but through some intelligible abstraction, to those only who pass through all things that are impure—namely, material things—and those that are pure—namely, spiritual and intellectual things—not lingering in them, and transcending the whole ascent of all saints and summits. He understands those mountain-tops of the supreme spirits, which in ch. 1 of *Celestial Hierarchy* § ult.; and elsewhere, he calls vertices, in Greek ἀκρότητας. And all divine lights, namely such as that to Moses in the bush, in the 548 pillar of fire to the people of Israel, to Moses on Mount Sinai; to Elijah in the chariot of fire, and such as shone around the shepherds at Christ's nativity, and led the magi in Bethlehem, and the like. And "sounds," such as they were when Moses was with the Lord on Mount Sinai, also such as Ezekiel describes in 1, 24: "I heard," he says, "the sound of many waters, as the sound of the sublime God, when they walked, as the sound of a multitude, as the sound of camps," and the like. And celestial "discourses" that they leave behind, such as, for example, the Lord's were to Noah and to other fathers of the Old Testament, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, etc., also to Moses, especially on Mount Sinai; and to the prophets like Samuel, and the rest. And they are absorbed into the "darkness," namely that mystical one, of which [I spoke] above, § 1, and in the following chapter, the figure of which

was that cloud, which, as the Lord spoke with Moses, covered Mount Sinai. Where it is truly, as Scripture says, Ps. xcii, 6: *Clouds and darkness are round about him*; and Exod. xx, 21: *Moses drew near into the darkness where God was*, who is above all things, that is, created things. For it is not without reason that the divine Moses is first commanded to be purified himself, and then to be separated from the unpurified. For in Exod. xix it is read, in what manner God, who was about to descend in the darkness, commanded the people to be sanctified and washed: in which it is easy to understand that he, before the others, having been washed and purified, had approached the mountain. And after all purification, he hears many-voiced trumpets, and sees many lights, throwing forth pure and manifold rays. See Exod. xix and xx, where these are more fully described. Afterwards, he is separated from the multitude and with the chosen priests, one or several; for it is read that he ascended with Aaron. He reaches the highest peak of divine ascents, after he had indeed set boundaries for the people on the mountain, beyond which he could not go without danger, because he was not capable of such purity, nor could he sustain the rays of divine light from near by. But as yet, he is not dwelling with God himself. For these were still symbolic, and were preparing for the encounter with God. Nor does he see Him—that is, as He is in Himself (for He is invisible), that is, to every created intellect, the light of glory not yet having been raised up. For God, says Gregory the Theologian (51), is the highest and inaccessible light, which can neither be comprehended by the mind nor expressed by speech. But the place where he stood, that is, something created in which God might shine forth, [he does see]. For just as in the heavenly homeland God is as a mirror in which creatures shine, so in the path [of life], conversely, creatures are a mirror in which the Creator is seen; whence the Apostle says: *We see now through a mirror, and in a riddle* [1 Cor. xiii, 12]. The Same says: *The invisible things of God, from the things that are made, are understood, being seen* [Rom. i, 20] h.

I think this signifies that the most divine and highest of those things which are seen and understood are certain reasons [logoi] which subject to the mind those things which are subject to Him who excels all things; by which His presence, which overcomes every thought of the mind, is declared, appearing as if in the highest intelligible traces of His most holy places. This insinuates the anagogical sense of the preceding words (as Hersent rightly notes). Namely, those things which are wonderful, sublime, and unusual that God works, whether they fall into the senses or into the intellect—for example, signs, miracles, or miraculous appearances, revelations, etc.—are certain congruous reasons or arguments accommodated to signify that God has a certain presence there, where these things happen; for as He demonstrates Himself to be present in some place in a particular way, He works certain wondrous things there beyond custom. Thus, in the present proposal, that God might demonstrate to the Israelites that He dwelt on the mountain, and that the people might understand that they were receiving the commands of the law from God Himself, He sent forth clouds and lightnings and smoke, and willed that deep-sounding trumpets be heard; nay more, under a certain appearance and figure, He made Himself manifest to chosen men. Therefore, by all these things brought forward as an example, the holy Dionysius insinuates that God transcends all cognition entirely, and therefore [must] be sought above all cognition, both sensible and intellectual, by those who contend for the summit of mystical theology; so that if He has done anything holy and unusual in the lower grades of contemplation, such as His own appearances or revelations, they should understand that the particular presence and advent of God is denoted, yet know that God Himself as He is in Himself is by no means seen, since He exceeds all these things by much. Therefore, those who see prodigies effected by God, or who behold Him appearing to themselves under certain forms, whether intellectual or sensible, do not see Him properly, but only the place where He dwells in a certain manner. To this way, therefore, says Gregory the Theologian (52), if you were to philosophize about God, though you be Moses, and the God of Pharaoh; though you reach the third heaven, as did Paul k, and hear secret words; though you ascend above them to some state and order of angels or archangels. For although every heavenly thing and something supercelestial is of a much more excellent nature than we are, and is nearer to God, and is as it were His place; yet it is more distant from God and from His perfect intelligence than it excels this composite, humble, and downward-inclining nature of ours. Whence he adds: But then from those things which are seen, that is, mirrors and riddles, and from those things which are viewed, that is, minds and intelligences, through the abstraction of the mind, absolved and unencumbered, without a concept, he enters into the truly mystical darkness of unknowability 549 in which he excludes all scientific apprehensions, through the negation of all cognizable things, without a proper concept (since this cannot be had), by understanding and confessing only this: that God is infinitely more perfect than can be conceived by any creature, and can be fully known by no man or angel (that is, naturally, as He is in Himself, and by a proper concept). And thus he clings to the in every way untouchable and invisible, through love which transfers the lover into the beloved, existing wholly of Him who is above all things—that is, of God—through the full abnegation of self, and abstraction from all things, neither of any, nor his own, nor another’s. But with Him he is entirely unknowable, through the vocation of all cognition, coupled according to the better part, and by the very fact that he knows nothing, knowing above the mind, that is, through ecstatic love wholly absorbed into God, where he is perfected above mind, and speech, and reason. And this conjunction with God above the mind (says Cyparissiotus dec. 2, cap. 10) is to enter through perfect ignorance into that infinite, incomprehended, and immense sea of the divine nature, where all nature stands fatigued and dares not proceed further, and is transferred from a certain divine odor, and a certain distraction from body and from creatures, into a laudable and blessed state, more wonderful not only than can be said, but than can be understood by those who have never experienced this state.

From the aforesaid, gather first, from the citation of Saint Bartholomew, a sufficiently suitable argument for vindicating this holy book for Dionysius the Areopagite, as he here clearly, as also elsewhere, in *Divine Names* ch. 2, 3, and 11, testifies and professes that he drew many sentences from the mouth and oracle of the apostles. Nor should it delay us (says Hersent) that some men of most profound learning in our age make the author of these books much later than the time of the apostles, and dare—oh grief!—to defame the writer of such great works, of all others (if you except the canonical ones) the most truthful, most modest, and most holy, as his very writings abundantly testify, with the mark of a most shameful lie, as if he wished to reconcile praise and commendation to his books by fraud and imposture; who, however, by their own weight and excellence cannot but obtain praise and commendation among everyone. But we are so affected that we more readily believe Dionysius, who clearly professes himself to have seen and heard the apostles, than all others clamoring to the contrary. Gather second, from the same sentence of Saint Bartholomew, as Marsilius Ficinus explains it, that the mind undergoes three grades concerning God: First indeed it uses many words, second few, third none. And indeed it uses many words where, whatever things occur, it affirms and denies about God, indeed with equal words,

but in a diverse manner. Yet it deals with few words when it speaks of God under that aspect by which he is related to creatures, and creatures to him, as is done in the book *On the Divine Names*. Finally, it uses no words at all when it no longer refers created things to God, nor conversely God to them, but as God transcends all created things and all relations to created things, he affirms and denies nothing about God in himself, but worships God in religious silence, as is fitting. Then at last, Saint Dionysius says that the mind, by transcending the ascent to all holy summits, is absorbed into the darkness, where Marsilius Ficinus, through "summits" or "peaks," understands natures reduced to unity, but contemplated universally, which he says are three: namely, the corporeal, the animal, and the intellectual, whose thought and affection the soul must greatly surpass, in order to find the Good in itself. Hersent, however, more mystically, says that by "holy summits" are understood the higher degrees of divine contemplation and the spiritual life, to which the name of holiness is appropriate, in that they effect or at least increase this. And for this reason he says that Saint Dionysius named it an "ascent to holy summits," because indeed one must ascend as if by steps in the things of grace and divine contemplation, and indeed always ascend, according to that word: "Blessed is the man whose help is from thee, who has disposed ascents in his heart" [Ps. LXXXIII, 6]. And, "The path of the just, as a shining light, goeth forwards, and increaseth even to perfect day" [Prov. IV, 18]. Moreover, the contemplative soul must transcend these degrees of divine contemplation and all the acts and perfections of the interior life, that it may arrive at a mystical and perfect communion with God. So that the sense is: whatever knowledge of divine things the soul may have attained, whatever state of interior perfection it may have reached, it must nevertheless be lifted far and wide above these, that it may be conjoined to God intimately and above the mind.

In those things, moreover, which Saint Dionysius subjoins concerning Moses entering into the cloud, Hersent rightly notes that this history is not brought forward as an example of the things aforementioned (for Scripture does not narrate that Moses had entered into that mystical darkness of which there is discourse in this book, or that — which is the same thing — he had been superessentially conjoined to God; but only that he had entered the cloud which had covered the mountain, in which God is said to have dwelt), but is recounted as a most beautiful and fitting allegory to illustrate the things being treated. And first indeed, through that purgation of Moses 550, he designates that the soul which tends toward the apex of the interior life must first die to sin, conquer the perverse motions of the flesh, and be purged of all these as much as is in its power. This degree, moreover, which is the first of the spiritual life, and in which one must chiefly lay oneself open to mortification, spiritual men call the purgative life or way; which the Pythagoreans established as the first and almost principal part of their philosophy. Through "lights" and "sounds," however, the illuminative way is understood, in which spiritual souls are exercised in the contemplations of God and divine things, and are increased by many lights and sounds of revelations and illustrations received from God, and proceed in the way of God with many intellectual words sent forth to God, and conversely many sent in from God, and gradually they are segregated from many things, while they are separated and depart not only from the intelligence of created things, but much more from the affection for them. ^A That Moses, however, ascends the mountain with select priests and enters the darkness alone, insinuates that it is for the few to ascend to the mystical summits, since indeed all from the people were indeed purged, and all heard the sound of the trumpet and saw the lightnings, yet it was granted to few to ascend the mountain and to see God. So also many live in the purgative way, fewer indeed in the illuminative, but very few arrive at the unitive. For Moses alone (as is had in Exodus ch. xx) approached the darkness in which God was, which history Saint Dionysius accommodates to the mystic theologian, who, with intellectual cognition set aside and left, as it were, behind him, is received into the bosom of mystical union, where there is the perfect darkness of ignorance, which in itself admits no intellectual light or cognition, and truly is mystical, because it is intimate and hidden, so that no mind is able to comprehend its reason.

PARAPHRASE OF PACHYMERES (53)

The holy Dionysius, before the discourse *On the Divine Names*, put the *On the Theological Representations*, as a fore-contemplation of those things said sporadically in Scripture about God; but he subjoined the *On Symbolic Theology*, in which he taught what the translations from the sensible to the divine were, and the things following, more wordy than the *On Theological Representations* and *Divine Names*, for a reason which he states in the third chapter of *On the Mystical Theology*. After this one, therefore, he began that one. Let no one, then, think that the *On Symbolic Theology*, which he says he will pass to after the *On the Divine Names*, is the *On the Mystical Theology*, but know that it was composed by the holy Father after that one. But since the former is not currently found, the *On the Mystical Theology* is set here.

§ 1. Since he is about to discourse on *On the Mystical Theology* — that which is absolute, I say, from every symbol and name, and through the abstraction of all intelligible things, and the ceasing of all thoughts, is gathered, which in others also from in- ^B

he called the "inactivity" of the intellectual motion. For this reason, before his words, he uses prayer and makes his entreaty to the holy Trinity, saying: "Trinity, both above being, and above divinity, and above goodness—having that which is above goodness; the first, indeed, conveys the notion of production, namely 'being'; the second, that of efficacy, namely 'divinity'; the third, that of state, namely 'goodness'; and these do not in any way declare the nature of God." From this it is possible to learn that while he proposes to speak of mystical theology and prays to be enlightened for this, he composes this very prayer mystically. For he did not say what the Trinity is, but those things to which it is superior. For this is mystical theology: it is not sensation, nor reason, nor motion of the mind, nor operation, nor state, nor anything else of our own that can explain it. Rather, in the perfect cessation of the mind concerning it, we who are enlightened will know that it is above all things which the mind understands; and since it contains something mystical and ineffable, according to this alone will the discourses concerning it be, and it shall be called theology, because this is said about God, that He is above all things. Therefore, O holy Trinity, presiding over divine wisdom among Christians, guiding the mind so that it may think appropriately upon divine things and not seek wisdom in things superfluous, guide us to the supreme vertex, higher than which it is impossible to conceive or think, to the super-unknown and super-radiant, ^B which is above all negation of knowledge and all affirmation of light. For although such a height is unknown, it is not as if it is in no way existent, but as being indeed, yet surpassing equally every light; that is to say, every knowledge and every ignorance. For this is what is "super-radiant," and once again, "super-unknown." In that vertex, indeed, things simple and uniform and absolute—namely, those which are without symbols and as they are in themselves—are not, however, parabolically veiled as mysteries according to the super-luminous gloom of the secret and mystical silence. In this most dark gloom, by reason of the mystical and ineffable, there shine forth the most super-luminous things, by reason of the infinity of the gifts and providences and benefits of God, from which there shines forth that most secret thing of God, which, by its super-beautiful rays and splendors that escape those who would see it, fills minds lacking eyes, ^C which in another way he calls of many eyes—namely, the angelic and divine powers. For they are not full of sensible eyes, but their essence is a certain living mind, that is, a most sharp-sighted eye, which are even considered to be eyeless on account of that inaccessible gloom of the divine silence. Inasmuch, therefore, as God is invisible, in such measure are these minds also lacking eyes. For just as He, existing invisible, at once exceeds all beauty and desire, and is not on that account despised because He is not seen, but insofar as He is desired, He fills them with beauties; so also the minds, being eyeless with respect to that splendor, ^D and being full of eyes in another way, as possessing much knowledge of those things according to their own power, nevertheless yearn for the divine radiance; and they do not, because they do not attain it, disdain it altogether, but because they yearn for it, they are filled with beauties.

^A Since it is intangible, that is, unknown and invisible, it does not stop the desire of those who reach up, but rather rekindles it, and thus it fills them with beauties. But you, O good Timothy, be intense toward the mystical sights, so that ^B even thus you may penetrate the divine things as far as is possible for the intangible. For as with some rope, let us say, the one pulling a certain weight must be intense and must not slacken anything in between in his pulling power (for if he slackens, there is need again from the beginning for the gathering of the power and again for the intense tension; and if he slackens again, he will come back to the start and will accomplish nothing, since even a small slackening destroys everything); so also take it for the divine gazing, even if he says "contemplation." For the present, however, leave behind the senses, because it is above sense, and the intellectualities, because it is above intellect; and all sensible and intelligible symbols, both those that are not and those that are, equally the same. For they used to call sensible things not being, since they always partake of every change and are not always in the same way; but they called intelligible things being, as remaining in identity and ^C toward that union, that unified and indivisible and divine in some way intellection. For this is the union, according to which the mind is united and is brought together to understand something. Be extended unknowingly; however, do not let anyone suppose, because I say "unknowingly," that you, as not attaining perhaps to divine things, have ignorance, while someone else will know; but divine things are above every essence and knowledge and are absolutely unknown to all. He calls "unconstrained ecstasy" the withdrawal from every relationship. Having, therefore, no relationship, neither towards yourself, nor towards any of the creatures, and having yourself stripped away everything from yourself, and being absolved from all things, so that you neither hold anything of the lower symbols and sensible things, and on that account think yourself to be established, nor are yourself held by any of such things from being occupied with such matters, thus you will be led up to the ray of the divine incomprehensibility. 553 He calls "free excess" the withdrawal from every affection. Having, therefore, no affection, not even toward yourself, nor another towards any creature, and abstracting yourself from all things and being absolute from all, so that you do not retain anything of the lower and sensible symbols from which you might be confirmed; nor yet be retained by any of those things ^D by turning yourself toward such, so at last you will be brought to the ray of the divine incomprehensibility.

§ II. Note that he calls "uninitiated" those who are not otherwise without a share in the mysteries, but are still wrapped up in sensible things and imagine that the Divine is nothing beyond existing things—those, clearly, who believe indeed in the name of Christ, but have not come to a more perfect knowledge; but he calls those who are altogether without a share in any mysteries "idolaters." He says therefore: "See that none of these hear these mysteries; for if those who are not instructed have nothing higher to imagine, but think God to be such as they themselves can conceive, who according to the Scripture has set darkness as His hiding-place," clearly the One who is in the extreme ignorance

^A hidden. What, then, would one say about those who are even more uninitiated, and are idolaters? But when he says that the divine mystagogies are "above them," he does not mean that the divine things are perchance above these men, but are not above others; for what would be strange in this, seeing that they, being dull, did not grasp them? For he did not say, "Above the knowledge of these," but "Above them," as if to say, they did not even grasp this, that God is above what they are able to conceive; but even this had gone above them, and they think that by their own knowledge they know the Divine, suffering from a double ignorance: namely, the ignorance according to the disposition, both in that they are ignorant of divine things, and in that they do not know that they are ignorant. What, then, shall we say about the uninitiated, who characterize God from things lowest to them, that is to say, from inanimate materials and forms? ^B One ought, indeed, to attribute to Him every position of existing things, as we said in *The Divine Names*, because the Divine Numen is named from all things, as the Cause from effects; and all things are to be attributed to Him, as existing above all. For the axiom of contradiction does not have place there, as it does here; for here, in every matter, there is either affirmation or negation, and if the affirmation is true, the negation is false, or vice-versa; but there, both affirmation and negation are true according to the senses mentioned. But since the Divine is above every ablation and position, and above that which is not and above that which is, and above knowledge and above ignorance, it is much more above privations than it is above positions. ^C For he who takes away a position removes something defined, and perhaps the mind will slide over to something else, thinking that, when that was not, this or something else was; and even if one takes away everything, he will arrive at that which is "not in any way in any way." But he who removes a privation in these matters, regarding which the mind is not able to conceive any state, definitely gives one to understand that there is something incomprehensible which I mean. Behold a position: I speak of "light" regarding God; someone denies it, because God is not light: I suspect it is something other than light; he denies that too, and I slip to something else; if he denies everything, I shall think nothing at all. Come, look also at the privation. Behold, he speaks of a privation, that the highest peak is "unknown"; someone denies "the unknown," the intellect cannot be confirmed that it is "known" (for this is agreed upon by common notions); thus it is left over, ^D that there is something not only above knowledge, but even "above-unknown," and from these points the incomprehensibility is united to God. For this reason, the Father also sets it as more excellent that the Divine should be, and be called, "above privations" or "above positions."

III. Regarding the unwritten tradition of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle

§ III. After these things, he sets forth the tradition handed down unwritten by the holy apostle Bartholomew, who says that theology is both great and very small, and the Gospel is broad and great. And again, I think that what was lacking here was passed over in silence; for he ought to have said, and again, "narrow and small," and I think this was passed over in silence, either by the holy Bartholomew himself when he was uttering this sentiment, or recently by the Father, because of the...

incongruity of the thing. For how is that which has ensnared the whole inhabited world "narrow"? And how is it "small"—that which ^A contains the great mystery of godliness? This surely happened, as I think, out of reverence. But in some places it is found to be even more abbreviated. The saint, explaining the former clause, says that, as it seems to me, the divine Apostle spoke these things while having that in mind: that the Cause of all needs many words, and yet is spoken of in no word and a brief word; for it possesses no word or conception capable of manifesting its own nature. ^B Now, *polylogos* with the stress on the antepenultimate syllable—for *polylogos* is one who says many things, but *polylogos* (with the stress on the penultimate) is one who has need of many words; just as *prototokos* with the stress on the antepenultimate is the first-born, but *prototokos* with the stress on the penultimate is the woman who first gives birth, as even Homer indicates:

*Cinyra’s first-born son, not knowing birth before.*

Having said, therefore, that he possesses neither word nor conception, he explains it by saying: not because it is in no way whatsoever, but because it extends beyond all things superessentially, and appears only to those who pass beyond both the defiled and the pure, and who transcend every summit, and leave behind all lights, that is to say, all knowledge, and all sounds and words, that is to say, those things spoken about God in the Scriptures. He calls these "heavenly," as being spoken and delivered not according to human and earthly conception, but according to divine inspiration, and as being enshrouded in that divine darkness of unknowing, wherein He who is above all things exists. ^C Observe, too, how he said: "to those who pass beyond both the defiled and the pure," since even those things among us which are pure, when compared to that divine purity, are reckoned as defiled, according to what is said: "All the righteousness of man is as a menstruous cloth" (Isai. lxiv, 6), when compared to that divine righteousness, which has no number. Observe also that phrase: "who transcend every summit," both of sensible and intelligible things, not only, as it were, the things themselves, but also their summits. For the ancients used to call "summits" the purest part of each essence, from which the essence itself hangs directly, that is to say, continuously. Thus, the summit of the soul is the mind, and the burning desire of those who have ascended, and for our hierarchy that which brings it ^D near to immateriality. As again in sensible things, the most luminous part of fire, and the vaporous part of water, and the rest accordingly. The discourse therefore exhorts us to transcend even the summits of the saints themselves, and thus to apprehend the place in which God is, which is what also happened in the case of Moses. Note the order of the things that befell Moses before he was deemed worthy to enter into the darkness. For first he was purified, and thus was separated from the others. For after he had heard the trumpets along with the others, and had seen the divine lights, he is separated, and stands with the priests; and having entered into the divine darkness he does not see God (for "no one has ever seen God"), but he [sees] the place in which He stood, from which is indicated, [as to] the things of the mind...

and the things of the visible world, that these summit-points are certain hypothetical reasons for the things that are in God. He calls "hypothetical" these descriptive reasons, which is to say, those contemplative [reasonings] about existing things, which he said were placed under God, essentially signifying that they are known to be present in Him; for from these we are taught that He is present to all things, not by moving through them, but by way of providence. He calls the heavenly and intellectual essences that are around God "spiritual vertices," which he also termed "most holy places," beyond which He towers and from which He is absolute, being assimilated to them in no way at all.

Having pondered, therefore, the place in which God stood, and having then been released from the things that are seen—that is, from all sensible things—and from those who see—that is, from all rational things, I mean the intellectual and intelligent essences, and along with these, even released from our own souls—Moses thereafter entered into the darkness, that is, into the ignorance of God, where, having shut out all faculties of cognition, he became in the invisible, the one beyond the intellect, the one invisible to all cognitive faculties, even the God who is above all, and by such a manner he was united to ignorance and to cessation. I do not mean the cessation of one's own mind regarding Him, nor again the cessation of another's mind—in the sense of perceiving neither Himself nor anything else (for this is absolute stupidity and a paralysis of the intellect)—but that one has been united according to the higher state to the altogether Unknown, in the act of maintaining a cessation of all knowledge, by clearly and voluntarily and firmly leaving behind every external notion as something that confuses and hinders rather than helps, since He knows all things without any notion.

Indeed, does something similar not happen here plainly, when we wish to ponder something in our mind, but are often interrupted by someone who ostensibly wishes to contribute to that thought, and we become annoyed with them for having caused a disturbance, as they have destroyed that dim thought we had already impressed upon our minds? For what else does the mind desire then, except that, by the cessation of other things, it might be free to attend to the matter proposed?

Concerning the "darkness," note that the Hebrew has *araphel*, which Aquila and Theodotion rendered as "darkness," agreeing with the Septuagint; Symmachus, however, [rendered it as] "mist." The Hebrew says that the name *araphel* is that of a firmament into which Moses arrived; for they speak of seven firmaments, which they also call heavens, and they repeat their names one by one. But the saint understood by "darkness" ignorance, or the vacuity of notion. ^{B C D}

CHAPTER II. How one must also be united to, and offer praises to, the Author of all things, who is above all things.

^A We pray that we might enter into this super-luminous darkness, and, by means of blindness and ignorance, see and know that which is beyond vision and knowledge—this very inability to see or know. For this truly is to see and know, and to praise the Supersubstantial in a supersubstantial manner through the removing of all things that exist, just as those who, making a naturally complete statue, remove all the obstacles that hinder the clear vision of the latent form, and by this removal alone reveal the hidden beauty itself.

It is necessary, I think, to praise these removals in a way contrary to the affirmations; for we made those by beginning from the first principles and descending through the middle to the last; but here, by making our ascents from the last things to the most primordial, we remove all things, so that we may know clearly that ignorance which is hidden from all those who know, among all things that exist, and that we may see that supersubstantial darkness which is hidden by all the light that is in all things that exist.

CORDERIUS' ANNOTATIONS.

^B "We pray that we might enter into this super-luminous darkness." Nowhere more, says St. Maximus, does Dionysius declare what it is to know God through nescience than in this second chapter of the *Mystical Theology*, and in the fifth Epistle to Dorotheus, where you may see what we have annotated, as in the Epistle to Gaius, which is of the same argument.

Observe here only that to enter under the divine darkness is, by not seeing and not knowing, to see and to know; which is above vision and knowledge—to see, I say, and to know this very thing: that we do not see nor know. Thus, in the Epistle to Dorotheus, Dionysius interprets mystically that darkness into which Moses entered upon the mount in Exodus, to be that nescience by which he says God is known, in such a way that he who is deemed worthy is in that darkness, so that he truly sees and knows God by this very fact, that he does not see nor know, recognizing this very thing: that He is above all things intelligible and sensible. Divine darkness, therefore, says Dionysius, is that inaccessible light in which God is said to dwell—invisible indeed, because of superabundant brightness; inaccessible, because of an excessive and supernatural illumination. In this mystical darkness, that is, in this illumination, he is interpreted, as I said a little before, to be one who, by not seeing and not knowing, truly sees and knows God.

To understand what has been said—how, for instance, darkness may be light, and nescience may be knowledge—take, says St. Maximus, the example of the bodily eye. For what is caused by the absence of light, namely the vacating of the sense of the eyes, is also caused by fixing the focus of the eyes intently against the rays of the sun at midday; since, just as in darkness, so too in excessive light the eyes are dazzled, as happened to Peter and the other apostles on Mount Tabor in that famous transfiguration of Christ, where that light, when it appeared on the face of Christ and overcame the faculty of human sense, prefigured to the apostles the manner of mystical theology according to negation, as when we say God is infinite, incomprehensible, or super-good, or hyper-wise (that is, in a supereminent way), which are declared by negation; in which manner of theology the Divinity is according to substance ineffable, and more than unknown, leaving absolutely no trace behind itself, nor allowing in any way any notion of what He is. Because what is uncreated cannot be comprehended by a creature, nor can what is infinite be understood by finite things. From symbols of this kind, which are above sense (says St. Maximus in his speculation [on the matter] [cont.]

we believe only that God, who is beyond reason and intellect, exists; but what He is, and how He is, and of what quality, and where, and when, we do not dare to speculate, nor can we understand, nor do we attempt to conceive. ^A The mode of affirmative theology, which praises God from created things, as when we call God good, wise, just, signifying His operations and providences, signified white garments symbolically. For these were symbols of creatures, which were made according to divine ideas, and symbols of the words of Holy Scripture, by which divine things signified were, as it were, clothed, which were then made lucid, open, and clear to the holy apostles, and understood without any tortuous enigma and symbolic shadowing; and they revealed the Word of God hidden within them, when they had received perfect knowledge of God, and were freed from the affection of the world and the flesh, and had become in truth mystical theologians. ^B This mystical knowledge, however, is closest to the visible vision of God, which in Greek is called [Gk: θεοφάνεια] *theophaneia*, and is reserved for the future, when we shall see the divinity with the eyes of the mind, seen through the glorious body of Christ by glorified eyes: for then we shall see Him as He is, as the blessed John says (I John III, 2), where he does not signify that the essence of God is to be seen in the future with corporeal eyes, but as Theodoretus says in his *Commentaries* on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter IV, the divine nature, which does not fall under sight, nor can be discerned, will then be discerned—as much as is permitted—through the humanity of Christ, encompassed by divine light and shining, and casting forth rays, namely, with the eye of the mind. This is what Paul seems to have signified when he says: "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus" (II Cor. IV, 6). ^C That is, He who once made the nature of light by His word alone, saying, "Let there be light" (Gen. I, 3), He also illuminated our minds with His own light, so that we might clearly see the glory of God through Christ. Of this kind is the vision for which St. Thomas (p. 1, quaest. 12, art. 3, ad 1) says that from the perspicacity of the intellect and the refulgence of divine light in glorified bodies, the divine presence is immediately known. ^D No differently than one who carves a native statue. When he has said that God is to be celebrated and known through the ablation of all things, he illustrates the matter with an apt comparison, and explains this negative theology most clearly with the example of a sculptor. For, he says, just as a sculptor or statuary elicits a genuine image only by the ablation of the surrounding and redundant matter; so mystical theology, by removing and denying all created things which are, as it were, positioned around God, in a certain way exhibits Him to us, naked in Himself. Maximos of Tyre, a philosopher of the Platonic sect, used a similar example in his *Sermon I on God*: "How does one hint at Him? Consider for me neither magnitude, nor color, nor figure, nor any other affection of matter; but just as if a beautiful body were hidden from view by many and varied garments, a lover would strip them off so that he might know it clearly, so now too strip off and take away by reason this covering, and the distraction of the eyes, and see what remains: that very thing itself which you desire." How, he says, can one explain Him? For do not think of magnitude, or color, or figure, or any other affection of matter; but as a lover, if some beautiful body existed, whose aspect many and varied garments took away, would strip it of them so that he could look upon it clearly, so even now strip off this clothing, and by thought take away whatever hinders the eyes, and what remains, you will see it just as you desire. ^A To this also the dogma of the Hebrews in the Kabbalah seems to consent, where Paulus Riccius, in book IV *De coelesti agricultura*, says thus: "The tetragrammaton God never presents Himself to the nations unless covered in a royal robe or a warlike cloak, no differently than a king is accustomed to stand by and be present to his leaders and ministers among mortals: but to the assembly of Israel, as among his own countrymen and intimates, he is offered and appears wearing only inner garments, having put aside his official robe and royal cloak, yet not entirely naked and bare; but to the holy men and monarchs of Israel, he stands naked, having rejected every cognomen (as if clinging to the embraces of a spouse), and rests, which that saying hints at: 'And I will betroth thee unto me for ever' (Ose. II, 19); and he declares that: 'I have taken off my coat; how shall I put it on?' (Cant. V, 3) etc. Which privilege is more singular to mystical theologians than to others, that God exhibits Himself to them more intimately and as if naked." ^B It is necessary, however, as I believe, for ablations to be different in a contrary way, etc. He delivers the difference of the proceeding of mystical theology from other theological sciences, because these, while they deliver and affirm various things about God, e.g., goodness, truth, wisdom, power, and other attributes, seem to decorate and clothe God, and consequently to hide and veil Him; on the contrary, however, mystical theology, by denying and taking away all these things from God (namely, according to our imperfect mode of conceiving and speaking), is to be considered as exhibiting God to us much more truly and clearly in Himself. Whence, just as he compared mystical theologians to sculptors, who carve their statues by the ablation of matter; so also, other theologians, who theologize by affirming various things about God, could not unjustly be likened to painters and modelers, who form their images by the addition of colors or plaster.

PARAPHRASE OF PACHYMERES (54)

^A For does not this happen in some obscure way even here in our own vision, when we are preoccupied by some desire, and longing to see the object of our desire, when the desired object suddenly appears, our vision is gathered toward it, acting not partially but totally, and in this regard becoming motionless? Often, indeed, some even shade their eyes with their own hand, as it were to excite the faculty of sight. Whence come ecstasies and amaze- ^B ments, if not from the mind, sympathizing with external things, turning itself totally inward, and, having laid aside partial intelligences, remains totally motionless, becoming wholly one with the object? And for this reason, the human being appears to be beside himself. For it must be known that the mind bears within itself an image of the universe. The universe, indeed, moves in its parts in the process of becoming—perhaps this part happens to be in the west, which before was in the east, and another elsewhere; and so it is with all the parts, according to which even the heaven is said to move, yet according to the whole, it remains motionless in itself, as if turning in its own place. For this reason we also say that the mind, by putting aside partial intelligences, remains totally motionless. If, then, this is so in our own affairs, what might one say—what might one say or think—about that divine beauty? ^C Read also on this matter the holy man’s epistle to Dorotheus, so that it may be clarified to you to some extent what and of what kind this "knowledge in ignorance" is. For this is indeed to see—to not see; and to know—to not know, and thus to praise the Super-Essential in a manner appropriate to His Super-Essentiality. How? Through the removal of all things. For since we are unable to speak of Him positively as He deserves, because we can conceive of nothing among all things that is akin to Him, we praise Him through the removal of all things, and we do what those who carve a

natural statue

Andromeda

that there is a certain opposition in them when, celebrating Him through them, we declare God. For when we were pronouncing the positions in the book *On the Divine Names*, we began from the most primary things, and passing through the middle things, we set them down by descending to the final things. We first discoursed concerning the Being, and then after that concerning the Good, and afterward concerning Life, and following that we arrived through the other intermediate things to the final things, speaking of Him as Lord and King, and of the Ancient of Days, and speaking of such things. But with removals the opposite happens: ^B by making our ascent from the final things to the most principal, we remove what is posterior, and then even the most primary itself, saying: He is not inebriated, He is not described, He is not understood; and again: He is not a body, he is not an element, he is not a soul, he is not an angel, he is not life, he is not being, but God is above all these things. And thus, having arrived in an uncovered manner at complete ignorance, we know in some way that knowledge which is in ignorance: for he calls this the ignorance which is hidden by all things that are known in all beings, and that is a darkness hidden from all light in all beings. This, indeed, is because the knowledges of beings, and the positions concerning the Divine, do not uncover and bring into manifestation that which is unknown regarding God, but rather they cover it, since the mind has not there its base to dwell in, nor can it grasp anything intelligible from there, but rather falls into notions that are not appropriate, if it is not firm, and it immediately flies past the sensible things. ^C But the light in beings is not to be thought of as anything other than that by which beings are known insofar as they are beings, just as we also find in what follows. This light, therefore, which is in beings, and such knowledge of beings, rather obscures the Divine: for the natural science of things will not profit theology as much as it will harm it, while it brings that which is above nature down to those things that are proper to itself, and according to nature. But how we set the positions from the primary to the final, and the removals from the final to the primary, the Father himself will teach in the following chapter.

CHAPTER III. Quae sint affirmantes de Deo locutiones, quae negantes.

SYNOPSIS CAPITIS. He says that in the *Theological Outlines* he had explained those things which pertain to the triune and one God; in the *Divine Names* he had treated of the attributes by which God is named in Scripture; finally, in the *Symbolic Theology* he had explained those sensible images which are metaphorically pronounced concerning God: and at the same time he renders the reason why he had been more prolix in those books than in the *Mystical Theology*. At the end, he transmits the manner of forming positions and removals concerning God.

In the *Theological Outlines*, indeed, we celebrated those things which are ^D most proper to positive theology;

we have celebrated; how the divine and good nature is called one, and how it is three-fold; what is meant by the paternity and filiation attributed to it; what the theology of the Spirit signifies; how from the immaterial and indivisible good those lights of goodness, ^A proceeding from the heart, have sprung forth, and in it, and in themselves, and in one another, by an eternal propagation, have remained in [their] abiding state, never departing; how the super-essential Jesus has been embodied with the truths of human nature; and whatever else has been set forth by the oracles and celebrated in the theological outlines. ^B In the book *On the Divine Names*, how he is called good, how being, how life and wisdom and power, and whatever else pertains to the intelligible naming of God; in the *Symbolic Theology*, what are the transfers of names from sensible things to divine things; what are the divine forms, what the divine shapes, and parts, and organs; what are the divine places, and worlds, what are the wraths, what the sorrows and the rages, what the drunkennesses and the hangovers, what the oaths, and what the curses, what the slumbers, and what the wakenings, and how many other sacredly fashioned formations and configurations of the symbolic theology of God there are. And I think you have perceived ^C how the final things are more prolix than the first; for the theological outlines, and the exposition of the divine names, ought to have been more concise than the *Symbolic Theology*. For the more we ascend toward the heights, the more our words are contracted by the visions of intelligible things; just as even now, while we are entering the darkness that surpasses the intellect, we shall find not merely brevity of speech, but a total lack of speech and of intellect. And there, indeed, the discourse, descending from the highest to the lowest, was extended to a proportional breadth ^D according to the measure of the descent; but now, ascending from the lowest to that which surpasses all, it is contracted according to the measure of the ascent, and after the whole ascent, it will be entirely voiceless and will be wholly united to the Ineffable. But you will ask, why, when we establish divine positions from the Most First, do we begin the divine removal from the final things? Because, of course, when we establish [that] which is above every position, we had to lay the foundation of affirmation from that which is more akin to it; but when we remove [that] which is above every removal, we ought also to remove it from those things which are most distant; for is not God more life and goodness than air or stone? And is he not more not-drunk and not-angry than not-said or not-understood?

divine nature with all its essential attributes, and whatever the scholastics discuss at such great length in their most voluminous commentaries concerning God one and trine, the divine processions, the oppositions of the persons among themselves, their distinctions, and their ^A circuminsession within one another—to these, if one were to add the book of the Heavenly Hierarchy concerning which he had written about angelic properties, you would recognize that the first part of the divine Thomas had been most brilliantly described by Dionysius beforehand. Indeed, the first part of the second part, where it treats primarily of human acts, their goodness and malice, and of vices and sins, had a great foundation in the fourth chapter of *On the Divine Names*, where Dionysius discusses the nature of goodness and malice most extensively. Without a doubt, he would have brought greater resources to that part of theology had the books *On the Soul* and *On Intellectual and Sensible Things* not been lost to the injuries of time. As for the treatise on laws, there is no doubt that his book *On Legal Hierarchy* would have contributed a great deal, which likewise is not found. The second part of the second part, where right and justice are discussed, also has at least some foundation in the eighth chapter of *On the Divine Names*, where he treats of justice; it would certainly have received greater assistance from Dionysius’s book *On Just and Divine Judgment*, had it not likewise perished to the great detriment of the Church. Moreover, the treatise on grace and the theological virtues receives great light from various places in Dionysius, scattered here and there. Finally, the third part, where he treats of the Incarnation of the divine Word, in its entirety, just as Dionysius testifies in this place, was accurately treated by him in the book of *Divine Institutions*, in which he says that he wrote how Jesus, who was above substance, took on the truth and substance of human nature. The treatise on the sacraments appears to be explained as accurately and distinctly as possible in the *Ecclesiastical Hierarchy*. Nor did he neglect that part of theology which is concerned with interpreting the Scriptures; for he says that he composed the *Symbolic Theology*, and that he wrote it more extensively than the others—the whole of which seems to have been concerned with interpreting the Scriptures: to such an extent that even this part of theology, which is devoted to explaining the Scriptures, was handed down most copiously by this holy man. And indeed, if those Works of Dionysius which were lost to the great detriment of theologians had existed, no author other than him would have been read in the schools, as a purer theology would have flowed forth from him, as from its very source.

As to the affirmative theology: See the annotations to the previous chapter and the general observations 8 and 9, where we have explained the nature and distinction of affirmative and negative theology. For an understanding of those things which he here briefly touches upon concerning the unity of the divine nature, the distinction of the persons, and their circuminsession, consult the second chapter of *On the Divine Names* and our annotations there, where the divine processions and the mutual circuminsession of the persons in one another are explained, as well as those things that are proper and substantial to Jesus. As for the *Symbolic Theology*, consult letter IX below, which is to Titus, and our annotations there, where those things which pertain to the symbolic theology are expounded. ^B For the more we strive toward higher things, etc. He provides the reason why, in proportion to our ascent to God, our knowledge is contracted. For, of course, the more we approach God himself, the more we also approach the unity of his being; whence it follows that our knowledge is also contracted and simplified, not unlike lines which, the more they approach the center from the circumference, are all the more contracted, until, meeting at the very point, they lose all extension and become one indivisible thing within themselves and with the point; just as conversely, the further they depart from the center, the more they expand and are distinguished from one another. Hence it happens that mystical theology, by deserting and transcending the knowledge of all individual things, whether sensible or intelligible, strives toward and arrives at its own center, which is God, and finally falls into an all-encompassing *aglosson* (inexpressibility) and *agnosian* (unknowing), through the failure of every word and natural intelligence, intimately joined to God himself in the mystical darkness.

Here it must be noted that position, just like ablation, is sometimes simple, sometimes hypothetical. A simple position is when we say, for example, God is life, goodness, and the rest. But a hypothetical one is when we add a comparison to the affirmation, as Dionysius does at the end of this chapter, saying: God is more life than a stone, and more goodness than fire. Simple ablation, or negation, is for example: God is not a stone, he is not angry, and the like. Hypothetical is, for example: God is more not-drunk than he is not explained by speech. Above both types of position and ablation is God. In hypothetical positions which are more appropriate to God, they take on that "more," as: God is more life than air. But conversely, in ablations which are more remote from God, they receive the "more," as: God is more not-angry than he is not-understood.

PARAPHRASE OF PACHYMERES (55)

and as being, and life, and wisdom, and virtue. And again, in the *Symbolic Theology*, what the translations from sensible things are, and what the forms are which the prophets conveniently attribute to the Divinity; and what the shapes, and the parts of the body—certainly what faces, and ears, and hands, and feet—and what the instruments, and the rest, so that we do not have to recount each one, which all ought to be said of God by way of negation. ^A You have, therefore, to know how things that are furthest from God, which he indeed calls the ultimate things, are more wordy. For by how much they are alien to God and not becoming, by so much do they require more words to be represented, as to how they are to be understood in God. For this reason, the *Theological Outlines* according to the *On Divine Names* are shorter than the *Symbolic Theology*, because in those we speak affirmatively. In the *Theological Outlines*, concerning God, that he is a Monad, that he is a Trinity, that he is Father, and Son, and Spirit; in the *On Divine Names*, that he is Being, that he is Life, that he is Wisdom, that he is Virtue. ^B But in the *Symbolic Theology*, since it speaks of symbols, shapes, parts, instruments, drunken revels, impulses, sleep, and watchings, all of which ought to be spoken of by way of negation, as alien and remote from God, it is natural that such things have resulted in being more wordy. For as we say things that are more proper to God, and draw back, and approach toward him, by so much are our discourses contracted to the views of the intelligible things. ^C He called the "views of the intelligible things" the contemplations which are becoming to their immaterial simplicity. He has used *peristellontai* [are constrained] for *systellontai* [are contracted]. That which he says will certainly happen even now in the *Mystical Theology*. For when we have completely entered into the darkness that is above mind and proper to God, we shall not only be brief in speech, but we shall find a complete lack of speech and of mind. He says "lack of speech" as the inability to represent by speech the things that are above speech, and "lack of mind" as that which is unintelligible, and which no one can understand, as it is above mind. ^D And there, that is, in the *On Divine Names*, the discourse increased from the highest toward a proportionate multitude: for "Being," since it is proper to God, had brevity; but "Ancient of Days," or some other thing more remote, naturally required many words. But now, ascending from the lower and many compositions and symbols toward the singular and supreme, it will naturally be contracted according to the measure of the ascent; and to such a degree, that after the ascent, it will be made silent and will be wholly united to the ineffable God, honoring him with reverent silence, who "made darkness his secret place" [Ps. XVII, 12]. But why, you ask, do we begin to make affirmations from the prime things, and negations from the ultimate things? We say that in the case of positions we use the hypothetical, that is, the suggestory, and as it were, a declarative affirmation, that God [is], that he is Life, that he is Goodness, or air, or stone, or fire, or spirit, or such things. The prior things are thus more proper and more kindred to God; therefore, he is more Life than air, and more God than stone, and more Goodness than fire, and more...

wisdom or spirit. ^A This, then, is to begin with the primary things, in the case of affirmations, because the primary things are better understood in God than the ultimate ones. In the case of negations, however, the reverse is true; thus: God is not drunken, is not angry, is not spoken of, is not conceived. "Not drunken" is an ultimate thing, for it belongs also to men. "Not conceived," on the other hand, is proper and primary. Thus, that God should not be expressed by discourse and not be conceived by the mind is more proper to God than not being drunken, nor being angered; for these are also proper to men, and are therefore ultimate. And yet we begin with the ultimate things of negation, for example: God is ^B more not-drunken than not-spoken-of, and more not-angry than not-conceived. As, therefore, in the case of affirmations, those which were proper held the "more," and we said "more God" than "air," and "more good" than "spirit," so here, too, the ultimate things have the "more," because we speak by negation, for example: more "not drunken" than "not conceived," and the rest. Now, *crapula* (intoxication) is a copious and most vehement drunkenness, as if it were a *karapale*, that is, one shaking the *kara*, or head, and violently agitating it; while *menis* (wrath) is not just any anger, but that which is persistent. But where was "air" spoken of, and where "stone"? "Stone" indeed by David, ^C just as also the Lord explains regarding himself, saying: Have you never read in the Scriptures: "The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner"? And again by the Apostle: "And the rock was Christ." But "air," according to what is said in the books of Kings: "And behold a delicate air, and there is the Lord."

CAPUT IV.

That he who is the author of every sensible thing according to excellence is none of the sensible things.

We say, therefore, that the Cause of all things, and which is above all things, is not devoid of essence, nor of life, nor of reason, ^D nor of mind; nor does it exist as a body, nor does it have figure, nor quality, or quantity, or mass; nor is it in a place, nor is it seen, nor does it have sensible touch, nor does it feel, nor does it fall under the senses, nor does it admit disorder or perturbation excited by material passions, nor is it feeble and obnoxious to sensible accidents; nor does it exist in need of light, nor does it have mutation or corruption, or flux, nor is it, nor does it have, any of the things that are sensible.

568 We say, therefore, that He is the cause of all. Since He is about to deny all things of God, lest anyone should be led into error by such negations, thinking that God is nothing, or that He exists as some imaginary figment, he prudently premised that He is the cause of all, not indeed formally containing His effects, but eminently and transcendentally. Hence, when he denies all things of God formally and according to our mode of conceiving, he intends it to be understood that God possesses all these things eminently, and above our grasp, not dividedly or partially, but unitedly and universally in the most simple manner, comprehending the perfections and reasons of all things conceivable, above every perfection and reason that is conceivable. Therefore, beginning the negative theology, lest anyone should imagine God to be empty, dead, irrational, or mindless because of the negations to be set forth below, he says that He is the cause of all, and above all, and that He is not devoid of essence, nor life, nor reason, nor mind; whereas by denying that God lacks essence, life, reason, and mind, he affirms these very things of Him more than excellently and super-essentially.

Note that, although none of the things that fall under sense-perception befit the divine nature, as it is most simple and most pure, nor manifest that hidden thing of God, it is not badly done that the highest theologians philosophize about God from sensible things and creatures, that is to say, *a posteriori*. For the creatures themselves are the "after-effects" of God, and their reasons, according to that saying: "For by the greatness of the beauty and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known" (Wis. XIII, 5). Gregory the Theologian confirms this in his second oration on theology: "I ran," he says, "as if to comprehend God by knowledge, and so I ascended into the mount and divided the cloud, having entered into it." And after a few words, he says: "When I had looked out a little, I did not see the first and eternal nature, which is known to itself, that is, to the Trinity, and how much resides within the first veil and is covered by the cherubim, but that which is the furthest, and which reaches to us, which is (as far as I understand) the amplitude of those things, or, as David says, the 'magnificence,' which is seen in creatures and those things which are brought into being and governed by Him. For these are the 'after-effects' of God, which are behind Him, the traces of Him; just as are shadows and images of the sun in the waters, which show the sun to weak eyes in some manner; since it is impossible to look straight at the sun, which blinds the sharpness of the eyes with its rays."

And the great Athanasius, as if inquiring, says in his *Questions to Antiochus the Prince*: "Since God is incorporeal, and lacks figure, whose 'after-effects' did Moses finally see?" Then, solving the question, he says: "We believe that before the ages and before all creatures, God exists, totally alone, uncreated. From which it follows that the 'after-effects' of God are the creatures and their reasons, which, when he had seen them, he expounded, saying: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' (Gen. I, 1)."

Item, Gregory of Nyssa in the book *On the Life of Moses*: "The uncreated glory," he says, "that is, the divine nature, is altogether ineffable in itself, and such that it cannot be comprehended, nor seen. For nothing that is itself this nakedly by itself can be lucidly comprehended by the intelligence, nor seen by the eyes of the body in any way; for it is uncreated; and that which is uncreated, no one can see with the eyes of the body, even if it be Moses, even if it be Paul, who ascended into the third heaven, even if it be an angel who sees God." From which it is clearly known that even the most powerful theologians do not progress beyond the creature in those things by which they see God; but rather, they consider the creature itself, and what is contained in its nature. But if, 569 says Cyparissiotus, they discourse about God in this manner and by this way and reason, it necessarily follows that the theology which is occupied in negation is far more excellent, and more suitable for contemplation, than the theology which is seen in affirmation. Whence Dionysius in this and the following chapter denies all things of God.

"Nor does He exist as a body." For it is said in John IV that God is Spirit, from which Christ infers that He must be worshiped spiritually, and does not require corporeal temples; from which it is clear that He assumes 'spirit' there properly, and how it is distinguished from a body. Hence St. Thomas, in part I, ad 1, teaches that God is not a body; because since a body is more imperfect than spirit, God, who is the most perfect being, cannot be a body, but is spirit. The Manichaeans of old and certain other heretics, called Vadians or Audians, said that God was corporeal and in human form, on account of certain passages of Scripture in which God is said to have an arm, fingers, feet, etc., and that saying: "Let us make man in our image and likeness" (Gen. I, 26), which they understood of the body. But these reasons are of no moment; for that passage is clearly understood of the soul, and other passages of Scripture are to be understood metaphorically.

"Nor does He have figure nor form, etc." From which (says Cyparissiotus dec. 10, cap. 9) it becomes manifest that in the unity of the Trinity there is found neither beginning, nor middle, nor end. If, however, anyone seeks any of these, many things will be found, and not unity. For the beginning, middle, and end are clearly of those things which can be divided, but unity is indivisible. Similarly, that which has a beginning, middle, and end is some whole compounded of these; but that which is a whole in this way is also a whole from parts; but the parts are many, therefore the whole is from many things. But unity is devoid of parts, and is not a whole from many, or from parts. Furthermore, that which has neither beginning, nor end, nor limits on either side: and therefore unity is infinite. For twofold, he says, when we contemplate the infinite, namely according to the beginning and the end, what is not from these, and is above these, is called infinite. But the divine unity has neither form, nor figure, nor species, nor color. For so says the Great Basil in book four of his *Contra Eunomium*: "If," he says, "the Son is truly the image of the Father, and every image is an image of either substance, or form, or figure, or species, or color, and God is in none of these, but in substance alone. Therefore the Son, since He is the image of the substance, it follows that He is ómooúcios (consubstantial), that is, of the same substance as the Father; and it remains that He is a unity devoid of form, and figure, and species, and color." It is therefore devoid of form, because the form and substance of God are the same. For this is conceded by all theologians. If, therefore, God is in substance alone, He is not therefore in a form around the substance; for this form is not the substance alone. It is also without figure, because it has been demonstrated that it does not have a middle; if, however, it does not have a middle, it is neither a participant in roundness nor in rectitude; because where there is no middle, the limits will not be equally distant from the middle, which indeed happens in round things; nor again does a line proceed equally from limit to limit, which is found in straight things. If, however, neither this nor that, the divine unity therefore lacks figure. It is, furthermore, devoid of species, because species are contained in genera; but the divine unity is neither in another nor in itself. In another, indeed, if it were, it would happen to it just as if it were contained in the middle, which happens in the center of a circle; but it has been demonstrated that it has no parts, nor figure; it is not, therefore, in another, nor even in itself; otherwise the same thing that happens to a circle would happen to it, if it were to encompass and contain itself. For not

only is the divine unity not this, but it also does not possess universality or a universe, such that it might receive parts; otherwise, it would fall into one or the other of ^A those things which we have said. For every discourse is either expressed universally in universals, or not universally in universals, but particularly, as Dionysius says in chapter 11 of *The Divine Names*.

Neither is it in a place. For this is a property of bodies and circumscribed things; but God is incorporeal and is not circumscribed by any boundary; wherefore, neither is He Himself in a place, nor are those things which are in Him in a place as if in a location; but He holds them as He holds Himself, and existing in them—with all things indeed existing simultaneously, and existing in Him in an impartible manner, but yet existing distinctly and impartibly within the impartible.

Neither is He to be seen, etc. The divine Diadochus, master of silence, in his little book *On Spiritual Perfection*, says: "Let no one, when he perceives the sense of the mind, hope to see with his eyes the glory of God. For we say that we perceive it by a certain sense of divine consolation, when one has purified the soul, but not that any of those things that fall under visual aspect appears to him; for we walk now by faith and not by sight, as the Apostle ^B says." If, therefore, to any of those who are struggling there appears either a light, or some figure, or anything in the likeness of fire, let us not embrace such a vision; for it is a manifest deception of the enemy. Which thing has indeed deceived many who, through ignorance, have turned away badly from the path of truth.

The blessed Chrysostom in his oration *On the Incomprehensible*: "That which is incomprehensible in God, we do not know as those powers know it, which are so much the more knowledgeable, the purer, wiser, and more perspicacious they are than human nature. For an accretion of wisdom creates an accretion of reverence, just as that which cannot be borne by the aspect from the rays of the sun. The blind man does not see as he who sees; in the same way, we do not know what is incomprehensible in God as they do. For as much as there is a difference between a blind man and one who sees, so much is there between us and them." And again, the same author says in the same place: "These angels therefore read the aspect, but those men, however, strive to intently fix their eyes impudently upon the inexplicable glory. Who ^C would not weep for them? Who would not mourn this insanity and extreme madness?" And again, the same author, when explaining the saying: *We have seen his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father* (John I, 14): "No," he says, "we would not have seen it, unless it had appeared to us through a body accustomed to us, and created with us." And further in his 15th homily on John: "If *no one has seen God at any time* (John I, 18), what then, he says, shall we answer the grandiloquent Isaiah, when he says: *I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up* (Isa. VI, 1), and John, who bears witness to him, when he says: *These things he said when he saw his glory* (John XII, 41)? What of Ezekiel? since he himself also saw Him sitting upon the cherubim (Ezech. I, 1). What of Daniel? when he says: *The Ancient of days sat* (Dan. VII, 9). What of Moses? Who said: *Show me thy face, that I may know thee* (Exod. XXXIII, 15). But Jacob herein received his name, called Israel, that is, *Seeing God* (Gen. XXXII, 28). What then does John say: *No one has seen God at any time*? It is clear that all those things pertained to condescension. For because it was to be that the Son of God would appear in true flesh, God was accustoming them from the beginning to the seeing of the glory of God, as much as it could be seen by them." ^D For what God is, not only the prophets, but not even the angels or the archangels have seen; only the Son and the Holy Spirit see Him. For how, indeed, can every created nature see the Uncreated? For if we cannot grasp the clear vision of an incorporeal power, however created (and this has been demonstrated many times concerning the angels), much less can we grasp that of an uncreated substance. Therefore Paul says: *Whom no man has seen, nor can see* (1 Tim. VI, 16). And of the Son he says that He is not visible, not only to men, but also to the supernal powers (1 Tim. III, 16). For after Paul said shortly thereafter, *He was manifested in the flesh*; he added: *He appeared to angels*. Therefore, He was then seen by the angels when He put on flesh. But how does He say now: *Do not despise one of these little ones. For I say to you, that their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven* (Matth. XVIII, 10)? What then? Does God have a face, and is He circumscribed in heaven? What then is it that is said; as when it says: *Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God* (Matth. V, 8)? He speaks of the aspect of the mind, which we shall be able to have, and of the notion concerning God; so also it is to be interpreted in the angels, on account of their pure and vigilant nature, that they think of nothing else than God always.

Where note, when the Fathers say that no creature can see God, they are to be understood as speaking of a natural or a comprehensive vision, and what that is. But although even before the incarnation God was seen by the angels, and appeared to them, yet because when He appeared in the world through the flesh, then He appeared to those very angels more excellently, and was seen; for that reason Scripture said then, *ὤφθη*, that is, He appeared, and was seen by the angels when He put on flesh. For then they knew more perfectly and divinely those things which are proper to God: goodness, justice, mercy, wisdom, power, and the other things which shone forth most brightly in the mystery of the Incarnation and human restoration.

PARAPHRASE OF PACHYMERES

the non-existent ^A has a grosser disproportion, while the mindless ^B has a more subtle one; and therefore they will more easily admit the negation of the latter than of the former. But the Father necessarily fortified the listener with these things, so that in the following negations, when He says: "It is neither body, nor this, nor that," they might not conclude that the Divine does not exist at all. For in these He posited its existence: since when He said "not without essence," He indicated essence; and "not without life," He declared life; and "not without reason," He demonstrated reason; and "not mindless," He manifested mind. Thus, having posited its existence in these, in what follows, when He speaks of the body and the rest, He insinuated that It exists according to none of the things that are, but is above essence; for that which is not, is devoid of essence. And again, that which is not body, but exists above every other essence, both is, and is above essence. When, however, He says, "It is not body," He also removes those things which pertain to the body; for It lacks figure and form, quantity, quality, and mass. But neither is It in a place; for everything that is circumscribed is in a place, since place is the limit of that which contains. But the Divine, being present everywhere and filling all things, is contained by nothing; nor is It seen, nor does It have contact, because It is not even sensible (for the senses are concerned with objects of sense), nor is It perceived; for It is not a sensible thing, nor does It possess senses. Nor is It troubled by passions, nor is It subject to sensible passions from weakness. Nor does It need light, nor is it altered, nor is It corrupted; for It is immutable and immortal. Nor does It undergo division when the three life-giving ^C hypostases are and are understood to be self-subsistent. Nor is there privation; for the good things that are in God are both superabundantly full and natural. Nor does It suffer flux, since the Only-Begotten Word is generated from the Father without flux, and that Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father without passion. Nor is It, nor does It possess, any other of the sensible things. "It is," He says, because of things that subsist in themselves, such as spirit, air, stone; "it possesses," because of the aforementioned corporeal qualities.

CHAPTER V.

SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER. He teaches that God is none of the things that we know; but that He is above all those things, whatever they may be, that can in any way be conceived by us or grasped by the intellect.

Rursus autem ascendentes dicimus, quod nec anima sit, neque mens, nec imaginationem, vel opinionem, vel rationem, vel intelligentiam habeat; neque sermo est, neque intelligentia; neque dici-

dicitur, vel intelligitur, quippe innominabilis et inintelligibilis, ^A nor is there any smallness or equality, or inequality, or similarity or dissimilarity; nor does it stand, nor is it moved, nor does it keep at rest; nor does it possess power, nor is it power, nor light; nor does it live, nor is it life; nor is it substance, nor eternity, nor time; nor is there any intelligible contact with it; nor is it science, nor truth; nor is it kingdom, nor wisdom; nor is it one, nor unity, nor divinity, or goodness; nor is it a spirit as we know it; nor is it sonship, or fatherhood, nor any other thing known to us or to any other of the things that are. Nor is it any of the things that are not, nor any of the things that are; nor do the things that are know it as it is; nor does it know the things that are as they are. Neither is there any reason of it, nor name, nor knowledge; nor is it darkness, nor light; nor error, nor truth; nor is there on the whole any position, or abstraction of it; but when we make positions and abstractions of the things that are after it, we neither posit nor remove it: because the perfect and unified cause of all things is beyond all position, and the surpassing of all that is simply freed and beyond the whole is beyond all abstraction.

ANNOTATIONS OF CORDERIUS

Nor is it soul, nor mind. By "soul" he designates man, as the principal part of man; by "mind," however, he understands the angel, which is defined as *nous zōn*, that is, a living mind, namely because of its excellence in understanding above other creatures. Hence, among philosophers, angels are called intelligences by way of eminence. He therefore wishes to say that God is neither man nor angel, and hence that He has neither imagination, nor opinion, nor reason, nor intelligence, which are the four degrees of cognition. Among them, the lowest is indeed imagination, which is the sensible and internal representation of things subject to the senses. Following this, and having its foundation in it, is opinion, which is the weak assent of the rational soul, leaning indeed on probability, but not entirely devoid of fear. The third place is held by reason, that is, science, which arises from reasoning or demonstration. Finally, the fourth and supreme degree is occupied by the mind or intelligence, which is the pure and simple contemplation of things; such as is proper to the angels, and is found sometimes in certain spiritual men and mystical theologians, through the special grace of God. Therefore, he removes all these modes of knowing from God here, for He understands whatever He understands in an entirely different way—namely, by Himself, without any intervening act distinct from Himself—to speak in a word, incomprehensibly. Hence, there is no discourse, by which humans speak, nor intelligence, such as angels use; nor is He called, nor is He understood, since He is unnameable and unintelligible, as has been said often.

Beautifully, Synesius in the fourth hymn ^B regarding the triune and one God, invoking God the Father, says: "Father unlearned by mind, ineffable Word"; and Arnobius in the first book, "Of whom," he says, "nothing can be said or expressed by the meaning of human words; so that you may be understood, one must be silent; and that suspicion, wandering, might pursue you as if through a shadow, there is nothing absolutely to be feared." It is no wonder if You are unknown; it is of greater admiration if You are known. Indeed, and pointedly, Augustine in the first book of *On Christian Doctrine*, chapters five and six, says: "Have we said anything, and have we sounded anything worthy of God? But I truly feel that I have wished to say nothing other than that. If, however, I have spoken, it is not that which I wished to say. From whence do I know this, except because God is ineffable? But if that which was said by me were ineffable, then God would not even be called ineffable, because even when this is said, something is said; and there arises a certain battle of words; since if that is ineffable which cannot be said, that is not ineffable which can even be called ineffable; which battle of words is to be avoided by silence rather than prepared by speech."

"Nor is there number." Because He is unity through Himself, and alone the true unity, from which is every number, since He is above number. "Nor order," since this is among diverse things, but God is most perfectly one and the same God, so that there is no order of dignity in the divine persons, but only of origin and procession. "Nor magnitude, nor parvity, nor equality, nor similarity, nor does He stand, nor is He moved, nor does He keep at rest." Concerning each of these, consult chapter nine of *On the Divine Names*, and our annotations there. "Nor does He have power, nor is He power." See concerning these things which have been said in chapters eight and ten of *On the Divine Names*. "Nor is there light, nor life," see chapter six there. "Nor is He substance," see chapter five there. "Nor is He eternity, nor time," see chapter ten there. "Nor is there intelligible contact with Him, nor is there science, nor is there truth," see chapter seven there. "Nor kingdom," see chapter twelve there. "Nor wisdom," see chapter six there. "Neither one, nor unity," see chapter thirteen there. "Neither divinity, nor goodness." Concerning these, see chapters twelve and four of *On the Divine Names*. "Note," says Saint Maximus, "that even divinity is not the substance of God" (namely, as conceived by us).

- tur, as neither one of the things mentioned, nor as their opposites; hence it is none of them. For these are not substance, but a glory around Him. He did not say the glory in Him, which is uncreated—that is, the essence itself—but those things are around Him which are created by Him, by which He is glorified and praised by us. Thus also Gregory the Theologian in the third discourse of his Theology said that neither divinity, nor the unbegotten, nor paternity signify the substance of God, at least in the way we know divinity. For we know the created divinity in those who are called gods by participation, whether they be angels or men. ^B However, this created divinity neither is nor signifies the divinity of God, which is His essence or substance; but rather divinity, goodness, wisdom, and the rest, as we know these things, are glory around God, by which, from these things created by Him, He is glorified and celebrated.

Observe furthermore that He is not spirit, as we know spirit; nor is He filiation or paternity, as we know the Father and the Son. For accept that in every negation of higher things, as we know them. He declares, however, that what is said is accustomed to our cognition. ^C Neither (says Cyparissiotus) let this chapter move you, so that you think this divine author says anything blasphemous. For the purpose is to demonstrate that God is none of the things that exist, but is above all things. For if He Himself produced all things, how can He be any of the things that exist? But he said that not even those things that exist know God, the cause of all; yet not to know God is clearly destruction. But he immediately explained what he had said, when he added: "Insofar as He is"; which is the same as if one said: "Nothing of those things which exist knows God adequately or comprehensively"; for it has been said: "No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son."

Again the great Dionysius adds, and says: "No one knows the Son insofar as He is, nor does God Himself know those things that are insofar as they are," that is (as Cyparissiotus explains), He does not know how to direct the mind according to sense toward those things which are sensible; nor toward substances insofar as they are substances. For this does not befit God, who does not know other things insofar as they are in themselves, but in Himself, that is, in His own essence, in which all species of things are comprised, and much more excellently in Him than they are in themselves. ^D For we, who are human, understand what things perceived by sense are, either by sight, or by taste, or by touch; but those things which fall under the Intellect, we know either through discipline, when we learn from a master, or through teaching, when we are taught without a master by our own study and industry; or through illumination, when God reveals. But God by no means knows those things that exist from these sources, but rather has the cognition of all things from Himself. For Scripture insinuates this when it says: "Who knows all things before they come to be." Which indeed declares that God does not know them in the manner of their production, according to sense or intelligence; but rather above all sense and intelligence, looking only into Himself.

Likewise, Gregory the Theologian in the place cited above: "Those things which are," he says, "that is, creatures, cannot be borne above their own nature by understanding." It is consistent, therefore, that when they look into themselves, they are ignorant of the divine nature according to that which it itself is. Thus, therefore, the divine nature looking into itself does not know creatures to be in itself according to the nature of their substance, because the divine essence itself is the proper account of the substance of every creature, infinitely more perfect than the proper account of substance in the creature itself. For he signified this when he said: "Insofar as they are," since He is above all things that are, and has being itself above substance; for otherwise, no one would say that God is ignorant of His creatures.

From which it becomes manifest that the unity above substance is abstracted from all things and is above all things. For by immense measures—and those which cannot be compared—the causes are placed and removed above the effects, and are absent from them, as has often been said. For how can creatures and things made, and whatever are signified by the word of "beings," be compared with a nature that is beyond all things? Whence, fittingly, the cause of all things is not one of those things which are—I do not say whatever one might enumerate, but if anyone were to imagine in thought, and would flee toward those things which are beyond the ages, opinions are in vain here for us, proceeding toward the things which are beyond all things; but it is as far distant from the reality as a likeness from the truth, and a house from the one who built it, and a shadow from those things which are and exist of themselves. For it cannot happen that those things which are finite should pass through that which is infinite; although the mind finds many infinities and considers them with itself, it nevertheless falls short of the true infinity, and is convicted of struggling with a shadow, reaching out; just as those who are wrapped in the thickest darkness and fall into them. For this reason, it has been demonstrated that the theology according to negation is in many ways more powerful than the theology of affirmation; not indeed that theology from negations more follows and attains to God (for both equally err from a conjecture about God), but because the negative theology professes more not to know, and is for this very reason truer. For this alone, says Saint Maximus, does God have as true cognition: not to be known. From these things it is clear that God is above all affirmation and negation; and that we know Him and philosophize about Him only by being perfectly ignorant and by not seeing.

From all, therefore, that has been said up to now, it is clear that mystical theology pertains to the ignorance of God, who perfectly here on the path can neither be known nor seen; and thus it is not so much a part of theology as it is above theology, since it is perfected above mind and word and reason. This cognition above mind, therefore, all those illustrious and divine men call by this name, who, as it seems to me, out of the fact that they experienced it, gave it that name. For conjunction with God above the mind is to enter through perfect ignorance into that which is infinite, and that which cannot be comprehended, and into the immense sea of His nature, where all nature stands exhausted and dares not proceed further; which, by a certain divine odor, and a certain withdrawal from the body and from creatures, restores one at some time to a laudable and blessed state, not only more admirably than can be told, but more than can be understood. This conjunction, therefore, with God above the mind, and such a divine ecstasy, since it is above the species of theology, is rightly named by Saint Dionysius "mystical or arcane theology." Dionysius the Carthusian, who edited commentaries on Saint Dionysius that are at once most learned and most pious, raises a beautiful question in the place of an epilogue, which seemed worthy to be added here from the same for the completion of the whole work, since it seems to be able to bring some illustration to those things which have been explained up to now.

MYSTICAL QUESTION. Whether the human mind in the vision and contemplation of mystical theology sees or understands God Himself truly and objectively. And if so, whether it sees Him intuitively or abstractively: and furthermore, whether it has a concept of God that is distinct and proper, or quidditative, or only confused and general. Which, in the contemplation of both affirmative theology, or theology properly so called (about which Saint Dio... [trans. breaks])

- non can be truly and objectively understood, as Dionysius says in his book *On the Divine Names*, as well as by way of negative or mystical theology (which has already been treated in this book, *On Mystical Theology*), it seems it can be proven in this way.

First, because in every actual, real, and true act of understanding, there is some true and real object; but both these kinds of knowledge of God are a true, real, and actual understanding of God; therefore, it has a true and real object upon which it is turned, and to which it is fixed and aimed; otherwise, it would be a vain, fantastic, and frivolous apprehension. This real object, therefore, is either created or uncreated. If it is uncreated, it has a proposition; but if it is created, all those cognitions or contemplations are false, since no created being can be properly spoken of, predicated, or verified of the most blessed God of infinite excellence.

Furthermore, when, for example, I say, "God is a being perfect in all ways," or "infinitely perfect," "God is pure act," "God is the creator of all things," these and similar propositions are true, catholic, and properly spoken; they are not metaphorical, symbolic, or figurative. Yet in all these, I apprehend an eternal and uncreated object of which alone they are verified, and I understand and acknowledge it in some way; therefore, I also contemplate it, since to understand this is to contemplate it mentally. Whence I also apprehend, form, and possess a distinct and proper concept of this object, which is verified of nothing else and pertains to the essential attributes of God, in whom there is no accident.

Similarly, in the propositions of mystical theology, when I say, "God is not a being, nor existence, nor essence, nor living, nor life"; likewise, "God is not one nor unity, nor three nor trinity, nor wise nor wisdom, nor virtue nor omnipotent, nor true nor truth," etc., in such negative propositions, a certain position and affirmation is left behind and supposed or presupposed, and a positive sense—for instance, that God is most supremely glorious and most super-essential, that God is being and existence and essence, that God is Deity, one and unity, three and Trinity, living and life, wise and Wisdom, just as He is infinitely more sublime, more perfect, and more glorious than we can grasp; such that we do not understand, conceive, or contemplate any of these according to the nature and mode that they possess in God and are fitting to Him, and are what He Himself is; because we do not understand any of these quidditatively or as to what He is, either *a priori* or in Himself, but only from His effects, and in those effects, and as to the fact that He exists, that is, *a posteriori*. Nevertheless, the uncreated being itself is the object of such apprehensions and contemplations.

But an argument is raised to the contrary: First, if in the aforementioned cognitions God is the immediate and proximate object, we shall immediately behold and know Him quidditatively, and we shall look upon His essence as it is in itself—which St. Dionysius expressly teaches cannot happen in his *Letter to Gaius*, saying: "If anyone seeing God understood what he saw, he did not see Him, but some of the things that are around Him, that is, some of the divine effects." This same thing he also affirms in this book, *Mystical Theology*. But also St. John of Damascus, in book one, chapter 4, asserts: "Whatever we say about God affirmatively does not show His nature, but the things that are around His nature." And again: "It is necessary, he says, that each of those things which are said about God should signify not what He is according to substance, but what He is not; or some relationship, or some of those things from which He is separated and distinguished, or some of those things which follow His nature or operation."

Furthermore (as has been frequently shown above, and specifically at the end of the first chapter of *Mystical Theology*), the most perfect contemplation of God, according to St. Dionysius, is that in this present life by which we are joined to Him as to one completely unknown; therefore, we do not know Him objectively.

Yet certain words of other holy Fathers seem again to contradict these, such as St. Gregory, who says in his book of *Dialogues*: "To the soul that sees the Creator, every creature is small. For however little it may have glimpsed of the light of the Creator, all that is created becomes small to it; because the very bosom of the mind is enlarged by the light of interior vision, and it is expanded so much in God that it stands superior to the world." St. Jerome likewise in his *Rule* confesses that he was often caught up for weeks and beheld the uncreated light, that is, the most blessed Trinity itself. And many of the saints have often been caught up in this life into the riches of the glory of God and absorbed into the abyss of immense light. Whence also the glorious Father Bernard wrote in his *Letter to the brothers of Monte Dei* according to his sublime experience: "Whatever is imparted to the faithful in this way concerning the vision and knowledge of God is a mirror and an enigma, as far distant from future vision and knowledge as faith is from truth, shadow from light, time from eternity; unless at some time that which is read about God in the book of Job happens: 'Who hides the light in His hands, and commands it to rise again, and announces concerning it to His beloved that it is his possession, and that he can ascend to it.' For to the elect and beloved of God, a certain light of the face of God is sometimes shown, like a light enclosed in hands, which is open and hidden at the will of the one holding it, so that by that which is permitted to be seen as if in a glimpse or a point, the soul may be inflamed toward the possession of eternal light and the glorious inheritance of the beatific vision. So that it may be known to him to some extent, that which he lacks sometimes touches the sense of the lover like grace passing through, and snatches him to Itself, and raps him into the day that is without tumult to the joys of silence, and for its own measure, for a moment, for a point, showing him that very thing to be seen as it is. Meanwhile, it also makes him into that same thing, so that he himself may be for his measure as that thing is."

Furthermore, John Gerson touches upon this difficulty in his treatise *On Mystical Theology*: "If," he says, "it pleases us to consider the divine Dionysius, taught by Paul who was conscious of the heavenly secrets, where he discoursed upon mystical theology with his expositors, we find him holding to the method of turning away from corporeal phantasms, so that, with all things that can be sensed or imagined or even understood being denied, the spirit carries itself through love into the divine darkness, where God is known ineffably and supermentally. He gives the example of the sculptural sculptor, who, by scraping away from wood or stone, forms a most beautiful *agalma*, that is, a likeness, by the very act of removal. Conformably, the spirit, removing by negation all things which it can know here, which indeed carry with them their own imperfection, whether of potentiality, dependence, privation, or mutability, finds, these all being removed, at length the most beautiful *agalma* of God—that is, the knowledge of a thing most actual without potentiality, supreme without dependence, perfect and pure without privation, necessary without mutation."

But whether that knowledge is only experimental in the supreme affection united to the Deity by love, or whether it can also be called intellectual—not indeed intuitive, but abstractive, and not only connotative but absolute—is most worthy of consideration and inquiry. Both sides have their most elevated defenders. For there are those who, interpreting St. Dionysius, hold the former; there are likewise others who, beyond the aforesaid experimental or experiential knowledge of God...

tis, say that it is even possible to possess an intellectual understanding of the divine through a proper absolute concept, albeit a non-intuitive one, if imperfection is removed from it and abstracted away. They say the same regarding life, goodness, wisdom, power, and similar predicamental perfections.

^A Saint Augustine appears to lean toward this latter part in many places, especially in his book *De Trinitate*, teaching that in this mode we are carried toward the absolute good. Saint Bonaventure also insinuates the same in the sixth chapter of his *Itinerarium*. From this it seems that, once existence, all potentiality, dependence, privation, 577 and every other imperfection and finitude are abstracted from Him, an absolute and proper concept of God results.

It must be noted, however, that (as he says in his writing on the Fourth Book) this abstraction can happen in as many ways as there is dissimilitude. For dissimilitude occurs, first, when a form is participated in according to the same specific definition, but not according to the same mode or degree of perfection—as in two things of which one is whiter than the other. Second, when a form is participated in according to the same generic definition, but not the specific one, as between two colored things, where one is white and the other black. Third, the similarity is even less when things do not agree in genus, but only in analogy, as is the similarity of color to man, in that both are beings; and thus every similarity of the creature to God is deficient.

Furthermore, certain people (such as Rabbi Moses and Avicenna) have said that the perfections of creatures do not belong to God except in two ways: negatively and causally. Negatively, first, to remove the privation or the opposite defect, as when we call God wise to indicate that the evil of folly is not in Him. Second, insofar as something is left or follows from the negation; as from the fact that someone is called immaterial, it follows that he is intelligent; and thus, according to them, such names are attributed to God more to deny than to posit anything in Him. But they belong to God causally, or by way of causality: first, insofar as He causes perfections in creatures, so that He is called good and wise because He infuses wisdom and goodness into things; second, because He conducts Himself in the manner of a creature, so that He is called willing and pious, since in causing, He acts in the likeness of a willing and pious being. We likewise say He is angry. According to this position, all things that are said of God and creatures are said of them purely equivocally, and there is no similarity of the creature to the Creator from the fact that the creature is called wise, just, pious, etc., which Avicenna also expressly asserts.

^B Against these it is objected that, in a similar way, God could be called a stone or wood, because He is the cause of these things; and thus we would not be led from the knowledge of creatures to the true knowledge of God; nor would what the Lord said appear true: *Let us make man in our image and likeness.* Which is also found in Ezekiel: *You are the cherub, the seal of the likeness of God.* Every effect is also said to be a participated likeness of its cause.

Nevertheless, what Albert writes on *Mystical Theology* seems to agree with this opinion, saying: "God does not have anything common that resides in Him and in creatures, neither as species, nor as genus, nor as a principle of analogy; but there is only a community of imitation, by which created things imitate the Creator as they are able; and this is not a true community. For which reason, there is no true predication among us that is true of God." Which words seem to sound absurd, unless perhaps he takes "true predication" to mean predication "properly so called."

There is also another position: that the perfections of creatures are in God pre-eminently, and this regarding three things. First, regarding universality, because all perfections are gathered in God. Second, regarding plenitude, because they are in God with infinite perfection. Third, regarding simplicity and unity, for what are diverse and manifold in creatures are one in God. This is the doctrine of the saints Dionysius and Anselm, and many others whom the principal doctors—Saint Thomas, Alexander, Saint Bonaventure, Richard, Peter Aegidius, and many others—follow, and it also appears more reasonable.

^C Nevertheless, Scotus, in his writing *Super primum sententiarum*, holds that the concept of being is univocal and common to God and creatures, and thus being is predicated of them univocally; yet he denies that God is in any predicament (category). Some, however, say that He does exist in a predicament, such as Francis of Meyronnes and those who are called Nominalists. Finally, William of Paris in his *Divinali de Trinitate*, and the Autissiodorensis in his *Summa*, and also Henry of Ghent in his *Summa* and in his *Quodlibeta*, maintain that God is not in a predicament, nor is anything said of Him and creatures univocally, but only analogically. ^D This position is not only truer, but is also more congruent with the infinitely super-incomparable and super-essential divine majesty, and more conformable to the teachings of the most blessed Dionysius, who so frequently in his books names God supersubstantial, superessential, super-great, super-wise, and altogether ineffable, unknowable, indefinable, and illimitable. If, however, He were in a predicament, He would have a genus and a difference, by which He could be known, described, or defined and signified.

The force of the reasons of Saint Thomas is founded on this: namely, that knowledge occurs through a form or species and a likeness of what is known, and this in two ways. First, through a proper form or species, according to that of the philosopher: *The stone is not in the soul, but its species.* Second, through the form of another similar to it, as a cause through the likeness of its effect, and man through the form of his image. Furthermore, 579 through a proper form, something is seen in two ways: first, through the form which is the thing itself, just as God knows Himself through His essence, and similarly an angel knows himself through his proper essence; second, through a form which is from the thing itself, whether it be abstracted from the thing itself—as when the form or intelligible species is more immaterial than the thing itself, as the species of a stone abstracted from the stone—or whether it be impressed upon the knower by the thing known—as when the thing known is simpler than its species, just as, according to Avicenna, the human intellect knows separate substances through an impression of them upon it.

Since, therefore, we do not know God in this life except through His effects, which fall infinitely short of a full representation of the divine essence and do not equal the power of the Creator (nay, they are distant and depart entirely into the immense from any state of being equal to and a perfect representation of His omnipotence), we cannot know God in this way clearly in Himself and immediately, or as to what He is, but only *a posteriori*, and *that* He is. Nevertheless, in this knowledge of God *that* He is, there is also a degree and order, such that one of those who knows God knows Him much more perfectly and clearly than another; for the cause is known from its effect all the more perfectly, the more fully the relation of the cause to its effect is apprehended. Furthermore, this relation, in an effect not reaching an equality with its cause, is reckoned according to three things: namely, regarding the progress of the effect from the cause, and according to this, that the effect gains more of the likeness of its cause, and according to that in which it falls short of a perfect attainment of it. And thus the human mind progresses in a threefold way in the knowledge of God from His effects. First, according to the way the efficacy of God to produce is more perfectly known; second, insofar as it is known that He is the cause of nobler effects (since when caused things have some

likeness to God, those that are more eminent, and to Him more like, commend His excellence the more); and third, insofar as He is known as being more detached and eminent from all created things, and from all that shines forth and exists in them. Whence, in *On the Divine Names*, Saint Dionysius says that God is known by the causality, excess, and removal of all things. In this progress of knowledge, the human mind is greatly aided when its natural light is strengthened by the supernatural light of faith, and by the gift of wisdom and understanding, and by a new heavenly illumination, which are acquired through purity of mind and an upright life; through all these, the mind is elevated in contemplation above itself, insofar as it acknowledges God to be above all that it grasps. Nevertheless, because it cannot reach a point where it sees His essence, it is said to be as it were reflected in itself by His superexcellent light, according to that text of Genesis: "I have seen God face to face" [b]; wherefore Saint Gregory writes: "The vision of the soul, while it is intent upon God, is struck back by the coruscation of His immensity."

From these things, it is held certain that in the knowledge of God through His own species and essence, the most preeminent God Himself is known by the blessed clearly and objectively, quidditatively and intuitively; yet not simply comprehensively—that is, not as clearly and fully as He is knowable by His own nature. For just as He is of infinite actuality, entity, and perfection, so too is He of infinite knowability; and thus He is comprehensible and known to Himself alone, from which comprehension all the blessed are infinitely distant; yet they are plenarily contented and quieted, because they see Him as He is, and their entire natural capacity is filled, and superfilled. Hence they are called "comprehenders."

But in the contemplation of God in the present life, through affirmative statements about Him properly—not metaphorically—spoken (of which the book *On the Divine Names* treats), God is known in the way mentioned above, as "that He is"; yet objectively and immediately, so that there is no medium through which He is known in the character of an object, though there is a medium through which He is known in the character of an intelligible species; because He is known through created forms and likenesses, and not clearly in Himself, so that His essence is both the "what" and the "by-which"—that is, both the object and the species by which it is known.

However, in the contemplation or mystical vision of theology, by which God is known through the removal and denial of all things, He is known and seen more clearly and sublimely than in the aforesaid contemplation by affirmations; therefore, it is also objective, yet not of "what He is," but "that He is," though by a great approach toward the knowledge of His quiddity. Furthermore, in this contemplation, the apex of the mind and the vertex of the intellect is said to be united to God as to the absolutely Unknown, and to abide in a total darkness, and to know nothing at all about Him—not because it is entirely devoid of the inspection of Him (especially since this is the highest, brightest, most perfect, and most profound contemplation, knowledge, and vision of the Godhead possible to this life, as the great Dionysius himself and his expositors attest), but because in this contemplative, most wise, and most fervent union with God, the mind most sharply and limpidly perceives how superincomprehensible, and supersplendid, and superluminous, and superbeautiful, and superlovable, and superjoyful the Lord God Himself, omnipotent and immense, is, and 579 how infinitely and ineffably He is distant from the fullness of His own knowledge and His beatific fruition and facial vision, immediately and clearly intuitive, and it falls back and sinks. Therefore, out of admiration and love, it faints and melts away from itself, and is also joyfully and sweetly absorbed, falls asleep, and rests in the most beloved God—Creator, Savior, and Merciful One, nay, its most super-gracious Spouse, the most super-pious source of all its beatitude, the most omnipotent and most liberal Cause.

Nor does it matter that Saint Thomas 58 in the determination of this question, as he often does elsewhere, affirms that our intellect cannot understand except by speculating upon phantasms. ("Our intellect," he says, "according to the state of this life, has a determined habit toward phantasms, since it is compared to them as sight is to colors; but phantasms are abstracted from exterior forms; therefore, it cannot know God in this state through His own essence, nor through any spiritual species that is a likeness of God, on account of the intellect’s connaturality to phantasms.") For the same holy doctor elsewhere more congruously affirms, and proves well in his *Summa contra gentiles*, that the rational soul, while still remaining in the body, in regard to its inorganic, immaterial, intellectual, and supreme powers, is elevated above the body and subsists by itself, nor is it, as to the whole of its being, comprehended by the body. For its powers are not more noble or elevated than its essence (as Proclus proves indissolubly); therefore, those higher powers, already actualized by a competent knowledge and an intelligible form, can act by their own nature without communion with and conversion to the corporeal phantasm, and without the aid of the sensitive powers, since the mode of acting follows the mode of being, and the property of action [follows] the nature of the agent.

Furthermore, if this be denied, the immortality of the soul (whose opposite Saint Thomas has often written) cannot be shown by natural reason. For even the philosopher 59 in his book *On the Soul* says: "If the rational soul in this life does not have any operation free, proper, and separated from the body, it cannot subsist outside the body; but if it has such an action, it can be separated from the body." But if you say that, when separated, it has another mode of being, and therefore of operating, you are already presupposing what remains to be proved. Add that in the knowledge of the thing itself, and in its intelligible species, the nature of the object shines forth sufficiently, even more purely and illimitably than if that species were turned back toward phantasms; therefore, it perceives more purely through that species, which is also taught by experience in those who are sometimes entirely abstracted from the body.

Nor do these things conflict with the fact that Saint Dionysius in chapter 1 of the *Celestial Hierarchy* says that it is impossible for that divinity-principal ray to shine upon us otherwise than shrouded in the variety of sacred veils, anagogically, and [that it is] also accommodated to us connaturalistically and properly by paternal providence; because this is to be understood in regard to the first information of the intellect, according to what the philosopher says: "It is necessary for the one who understands to speculate upon phantasms." But these things have no place in mystical contemplation, to which he institutes Timothy in this chapter of the book, saying: "You, however, O dear Timothy, in the intense exercise of mystical spectacles, abandon both senses and intellectual operations, and all sensible and intelligible things, and all things that are and that are not, so that you may rise, as far as is lawful, indemonstrably toward the union of Him who is above all essence and notion." Is not your own

^A unconstrained and absolute withdrawal, you are borne up to the supernatural ray of the divine darkness, abstracted and absolved from all things. What could be said by the holy doctor more clearly or more profoundly than this? Surely he who contemplates phantasms does not by any means purely and thoroughly abandon or transcend all sense and all sensible things. Yet in that mystical contemplation, it is not enough to leave behind sensible things, unless all intelligible things are also abandoned, and all created things, and their proper operations, and he who contemplates—so that he does not even look upon himself. For what could phantasms contribute to that contemplation, when the very apex of the mind, intent only upon the uncreated light and united intimately to it through theoretical illumination, through the ray of wisdom, and through deifying impressions?

Again, in the same chapter he says concerning the good Cause of all, that It superessentially transcends all things, and that It shines forth truly and without a veil only to those who pass beyond all impure and pure things, and transcend the whole ascent of all holy summits, and leave behind—as if at their backs—all divine lights, sounds, and celestial words, and are absorbed into the darkness. If, therefore, in this contemplation it is necessary to transcend even the most pure angelic minds, how much more so these vile and material phantasms?

Furthermore, if the human mind cannot know anything without a phantasm, how can what the saints have spoken and written concerning anagogical and purely mental contemplation, and upon heavenly illumination, be true? Why is the blessed David preferred to other prophets—who were granted imaginary visions—if not because he anagogically and purely, immaterially and without the veil of phantasms, foresaw divine mysteries and knew the sacred arcana? “The uncertain,” he says, “and hidden things of your wisdom you have made manifest to me.” Hear again what he says of himself: “The Spirit of,” he says, “the Lord spoke through me, and his word was upon my tongue. As the light of the morning when the sun rises, it shines in the morning without clouds, and as the grass from the earth by rain.”

If they should say that the human mind is not illuminated directly by an angelic mind with immaterial light, but that that light is united to a phantasm and perceived by the human mind as it shines therein: on the contrary, is not the human mind—simple, immaterial, and deiform—more capable of direct and immediate angelic light than a material phantasm?

As to that which was said above from Saint Dionysius and [John of] Damascus, namely, that the things predicated of God and creatures do not designate God Himself, but something of those things which are about Him, and what He is not, it should be understood as follows: that they do not signify God purely and fully as He is in Himself, but as He shines forth in His effects; or according to how He is known from them, not as though they signified some created thing in the direct sense, although they may denote such a thing in an oblique sense; and that it is more fitting that they be denied of God according to how we can conceive of them. Yet there is a great difference among divine names; and although some designate God according to a mode proper to Him, we do not understand such things according to what they signify, except as to the *that it is*, not as to the *what it is*. Once these things are rightly understood, the previous objections can be easily resolved.

Finally, if intuitive knowledge is defined as that by which a thing is known in itself and according to its quiddity, and is seen mentally, it must be said that we cannot know God intuitively in this life. But if "intuition" is taken more broadly for knowledge by which something is known in some way objectively regarding its essential properties, although not clearly and distinctly as it is in itself, it could also be said that in this life we know God even intuitively, namely, as to *that He is*, but not as to *what He is*, except very obscurely and imperfectly. Nevertheless, we have knowledge of God that is in some way distinct, so that we know many things about Him that belong to Him alone; for instance, that His being is uncreated, independent, pure, perfect, and so forth, even though we are ignorant of *what this is*. Hence, in his Commentaries on Boethius’s *De Trinitate*, Saint Thomas admits that it can be known of no thing whether it exists unless its "what it is" is known in some way, either perfectly or confusedly, according to the Philosopher at the beginning of the *Physics*.

From these things it also appears we must say that, beyond and besides the experimental, affective, and mystical knowledge of God, there can also be had some intellectual, mystical, abstractive, and absolute knowledge of God, according to the mode aforementioned, by abstracting His very being from every absolute imperfection, and by accepting it with every manner of excellence, nobility, perfection, and perfectional intimacy; just as Al-Farabi and Avicenna also said that our intellect, by knowing the quiddities of sensible and material substances, would know most abstractly the quiddity of a separate substance. However, their opinion was not entirely true, because from such a most abstract knowledge of sensible things, the proper and ultimate difference of any separate substance would not be known, just as from the aforementioned abstractive contemplation of the Deity, the quiddity of the Divine being would not be known.

Finally, it appears evident from what has been said how God is called innominable, ineffable, and indescribable: namely, because He cannot be expressed by any name by which it could be clearly and fully insinuated and understood what He is, and how He is a Being in Himself, etc. Nevertheless, there are innumerable names of His that designate Him in some way—indeed, in various ways—some more perfectly, others less perfectly. But what is asserted in the book *De Causis*, that the first Cause is not described except through secondary causes, should not be understood as though the names of secondary causes belong to the first Cause properly and univocally; but rather that, just as He is known through secondary causes, with all their imperfection finally excluded, so He is named through them, yet through infinite excellence.

PARAPHRASIS OF PACHYMERES (60)

it also demonstrates the intellectible things by saying: "Neither soul, nor ^A mind." But do not consider that, since it made mention there of reason and mind, saying "neither devoid of reason nor mind," it also demonstrates there the intellectibles. Rather, know that those things there are sensible; for it does not declare the reason to be absolute, or the mind to be separated from sensible things, but rather the lack of reason and mind, as in sensible animals that are deprived of reason and mind. But here it says that He is neither soul, nor any of those things that have the portions of it, and this in order: neither anything having mere irrational imagination and that weak form which even brute animals possess; nor opinion, that obscure and unreasoned knowledge which those that use reason possess; nor reason, that is, thought and science; nor even intellection, the operation of the mind, which is the most powerful part of the soul.

After this, it draws the discourse to the naked powers themselves, apart from those who possess them, and says: "Neither is there prolate speech," nor intellection, which is internal speech. And again, it still adduces a reason, and from these excludes God, saying: "Why do I mention these things? Neither reason nor intellection avails to conceive God." After all these things, it enumerates what in us appear to be incorporeal, and therefore intellectible, yet up to this point seen in subjects. Now, intellectible contact is the knowledge of the mind. For just as sensible contact is sensation—for we then have sensation when contact with sensible things is achieved by those who sense, or by the sense itself, for even when we sit far from a fire, provided we are warmed, a certain contact is said to exist. And in smell and the others the same thing happens; for bodily contact does not happen simply when bodies are joined, but when they excite sensation in the sensible. As, therefore, these things, I say, hold true in sensible contact, so also think regarding intellectible contact, that is, knowledge.

Neither is He truth, nor wisdom, even ^C though the Lord says: "I am the truth," and the divine apostle Paul: "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God"; for He is truth-in-itself and wisdom-in-itself, and above our truth and wisdom. And otherwise, because not even these signify the essence of God. But "the one" and "unity" differ from each other; for "the one" signifies the subject, but "unity" the quality itself; just as white and whiteness, good and goodness. Neither is divinity the essence of God, just as goodness is not; nor is He spirit, although in the divine Gospels we hear: "God is Spirit," and again: "The Spirit of truth." But as it says that those blessed and holy names of the persons of the most holy Trinity are as we can know them—for take this also here, and in every negation, as we understand, that is, according to our faculty of understanding. For the things already enumerated, such as goodness, divinity, and the rest, are not the essence of God, but are glory surrounding Him. Thus also the theologian Gregory in the third of his Theological Orations says that neither divinity, nor the unbegotten, nor fatherhood signifies the essence of God. And let not this trouble you: "Neither does God know beings as ^D

^A beings." For the Saint’s purpose is to show that God is none of the things that are, nor yet is he any of the things that are not. He has posited "none of the things that are not" in a superlative sense; for what are the things that are not? We might say that there is nothing among the things that are not, but neither is there anything among the things that are so, because, since He produced everything, how can He be found to be one of the things that are? Say, therefore, that not even the things that are know God, the cause of all; but he quickly clarified this, saying, "As He Himself is"—that is to say: No one of the things that are knows God as He is, in terms of His inconceivable and super-essential substance and existence. For it has been said: "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son" (Matt. xi, 27). And from the opposite, this Father adds and says: No one knows God as He is, nor does God Himself know the things that are as they are in themselves—that is to say, He does not know how to apply His mind ^B to sensible things in a sensible way, nor to substances as substances; for this is unbecoming to God. For we humans understand what sensible things are through sight, or touch, or taste, and we grasp intelligible things through instruction, or learning, or illumination. But God does not know the things that are through any such mode; rather, He has a knowledge proper to Himself. For this is alluded to by: "Who knows all things before they come to be" (Dan. xiii, 42); clearly, God does not know them in the manner of the generation of things, which is sensibly, but according to another mode of knowing. The angels, however, know them knowingly and immaterially, not sensibly as we do. Thus, therefore, God also knows the things that are in a way that is incomparable and transcendent, not, however, by comparing Himself to the substances. Consequently, the things that are do not know God as He is God, for they cannot be extended in their thoughts beyond their own nature. ^C Accordingly, looking to themselves, they are ignorant of the divine nature as it is in itself. Thus, therefore, the divine nature, looking into itself, does not know the things that are within itself according to the definition of their substance, since He is above all things that are and possesses being itself super-essentially. And again, above, he said: "Neither light, nor truth"; but now: "Neither darkness, nor light, nor error, nor truth." And it is possible to say that when he spoke of light the first time, he was speaking of light in the absolute sense, signifying the angelic substances, and of truth as that which is absolute; not of the truth that is opposite to falsehood, from which he denies the divine, because it is removed even above these. But here he says that it is not among things of relation, or rather, not among things ^D of privation and possession; as, for instance, that He did not change from darkness to light, as if from potential light to actual light; nor again did He change from being error—that is, potential truth—to truth in actuality. For all these things are secondary to Him, and both light and truth have appeared from Him providently. Neither is there any positing of Him at all, as if He were life or truth or any other of the things that are. Nor again is there a total removal, as if He were in no way and in no respect; but rather we perform the positing and removal of things after Him—that is, of creatures. Positings, for example: life, truth, being; removals, for example: not life, not truth, not being.

^A Therefore, while we posit and remove these things that are after Him, we do not posit God Himself—that is, we do not recognize His essence from them—nor do we remove Him in such a way that He is entirely incomprehensible (for that which is entirely incomprehensible is beyond hope and beyond attempt). Rather, by molding certain images from the things surrounding Him, we gather a dim phantom of the truth, since He is even beyond every position, as the cause separated from all things; and He is beyond every removal in the sense that the Divine is known by the removal of nothing that exists; for He is released from all things, and is beyond all things.