^ This anthropomorphic phrase is not inconsistent with the concep- tions D. has been expounding ; because he regards the hmits of indi- vidual human capacities, etc., as timelessly existent in the Super-Essence. By a natural, though inadequate, metaphor, the limits of the resulting activities are spoken of as due to God's Will.
The Mystical Theology
Chapter I
What is the Divine Gloom.
Trinity, which exceedeth all Being, Deity, and
Goodness ! ^ Thou that instructeth Christians in Thy
heavenly wisdom ! Guide us to that topmost height
of mystic lore ^ which exceedeth light and more than
exceedeth knowledge, where the simple, absolute, and
unchangeable-mysteries of heavenly Truth lie hidden
in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, out-
shining all brilliance with the intensity of their dark-
ness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the
utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories
which exceed all beauty ! Such be my prayer ; and
thee, dear Timothy, I counsel that, in the earnest
exercise of mystic contemplation, thou leave the senses
and the activities of the intellect and all things that
the senses or the intellect can perceive, and all things
in this world of nothingness, or in that world of being,
and that, thine understanding being laid to rest,^ thou
strain (so far as thou mayest) towards an union with
Him whom neither being nor understanding can con-
tain. For, by the unceasing and absolute renunciation
^ Lit. " Super- Essential, Supra-Divine, Super-Excellent."
^ Lit. "Oracles" ; /. e. to the most exalted and mystical teaching of
Holy Scripture.
^ Gk. ayvwffTws here refers to a transcendent or spiritual Unknowing
(as dis inguished from mere ignorance).
of thyself and all things, thou shalt in pureness cast
all things aside, and be released from all, and so shalt
be led upwards to the Ray of that divine Darkness
which exceedeth all existence.^
These things thou must not disclose to any of the
uninitiated, by whom I mean those who cling to the
objects of human thought, and imagine there is no
super-essential reality beyond, and fancy that they
know by human understanding Him that has made
Darkness His secret place.^ And, if the Divine
Initiation is beyond such men as these, what can be
said of others yet more incapable thereof, who describe
the Transcendent Cause of all things by qualities
drawn from the lowest order of being, while they deny
that it is in any way superior to the various ungodly
delusions which they fondly invent in ignorance of
this truth ? ^ That while it possesses all the positive
attributes of the universe (being the universal Cause),
yet in a stricter sense It does not possess them, since
1 "The Super-Essential Ray of Divine Darkness."
2 /. e. Philosophers and unmystical theologians.
3 i.e. Those who accept "popular theology." The first stage of theistic Religion is anthropomorpliic, and God is thought of (like Jehovah) as a magnified man of changing moods. Popular religion seldom rises above this level, and even gifted theologians often sink to it. But it is, D. tells us, the lowest stage. Then comes a meta- physical stage. God is now thought of as a timeless Being and therefore changeless, but the conception of a magnified man has been refined rather than abolished. The ultimate truth about God and our relation to Him is held to be that He is a " Person" and that He has *' made " the world. (This attitude is seen at its worst in Unitarian theology. Bradley's criticisms on Lotze show how this fails on the intellectual side. The Doctrine of the Trinity, by insisting on an unsolved Mystery in God, prevents Orthodox theology from resting permanently in this morass, though it often has one foot there.) And non-Christian thinkers, in opposition to this conception, regard the ultimate Reality as impersonal, which is a worse error still. We must get beyond our partial conceptions of "personality," "impersonality," etc. They are useful and necessary up to a point, but the Tiuth lies beyond them and is to be apprehended in a supernatural manner by what later writers call " infused " contemplation. The sum of the whole matter is that (iod is i)icoinpyehensiblc.
The Mystical Theology 193
It transcends them all, wherefore there is no con-
tradiction between affirming and denying that It has
them inasmuch as It precedes and surpasses all
deprivation, being beyond all positive and negative
distinctions ? ^
Such at least is the teaching of the blessed Bartho-
lomew.- For he says that the subject-matter of the
Divine Science is vast and yet minute, and that the
Gospel combines in itself both width and straitness.
Methinks he has show^n by these his words how
marvellously he has understood that the Good Cause
of all things is eloquent yet speaks few words, or rather
none ; possessing neither speech nor understanding
because it excecdeth all things in a super-essential
manner, and is revealed in Its naked truth to those
alone who pass right through the opposition of fair
and foul,^ and pass beyond the topmost altitudes of
the holy ascent and leave behind them all divine
enh'ghtenment and voices and heavenly utterances and
plunge into the Darkness where truly dwells, as saith
the Scripture, that One Which is beyond all things.
For not without reason* is the blessed Moses bidden^
first to undergo purification him.self and then to
separate himself from those who have not undergone
it ; and after all purification hears the many-voiced
trumpets and sees many lights flash forth with pure
and diverse-streaming rays, and then stands separate
from the multitudes and with the chosen priests
presses forward to the topmost pinnacle of the Divine
Ascent. Nevertheless he meets not with God Himself
^ On Via Affi,r7nativa and Via Ncgaiiva, vide Intr. , p. 26 f.
^ No writings of St. Bartliolomew are extant. Possibly D. s inventing, though not necessarily.
^ Vide Intr., p. 21. "Beyond Good and Evil'"' (thor.gh not in Nietzsche's sense). When evil disappears Good ceases to be an opposition to it, and so Good attains a new condiiion.
* In the following passage we get ihe three stages tabulated by later Mystical Theology: (i) Purgation, (2) Illumination, (3) Union.
194 Dionysius the Areopagite
yet he beholds — not Him indeed (for He is invisible)
— but the place wherein He dwells. And this I take
to signify that the divinest and the highest of the
things perceived by the eyes of the body or the mind
are but the symbolic language of things subordinate
to Him who Himself transcendeth them all. Through
these things His incomprehensible presence is shown
walking upon those heights of His holy places which
are perceived by the mind ; and then It breaks forth,
even from the things that are beheld and from those
that behold them, and plunges the true initiate unto
the Darkness of Unknowing wherein he renounces
all the apprehensions of his understanding and is
enwrapped in that which is wholly intangible and in-
visible, belonging wholly to Him that is beyond all
things and to none else (whether himself or another),
and being through the passive stillness of all his
reasoning powers united by his highest faculty to Him
that is wholly Unknowable, of whom thus by a rejec-
tion of all knowledge he possesses a knowledge that
exceeds his understanding.
CHAPTER n
How it is 7iecessary to be united with and render praise to Hini Who is the cause of all and above all.
Unto this Darkness which is beyond Light we pray
that we may come, and may attain unto vision
through the loss of sight and knowledge, and that in
ceasing thus to see or to know we may learn to know
that which is beyond all perception and understanding
(for this emptying of our faculties is true sight and
knowledge),^ and that we may offer Him that tran-
^ Sec Intr. , p. 27, on the ecstasy. D.'s teiniinoloijy is always exact though exuberanl — or rather exuberant because exact. y\nd, since if the mind, in thinking of any particular thing, gives itself to that thing
The Mystical Theology 195
scends all things the praiscsof atransccndcnt hymnody,
which we shall do by denying or removing all things
that are — like as men who, carving a statue out of
marble, remove all the impediments that hinder the
clear perceptive of the latent image and by this mere
removal display the hidden statue itself in its hidden
beauty.^ Now we must wholly distinguish this
negative method from that of positive statements.
For when we were making positive statements ^ we
began with the most universal statements, and then
through intermediate terms we came at last to
particular titles,^ but now ascending upwards from
and so belongs to it, in utterly ceasing to belong to itself it ceases to have any self-consciousness and possesses a God-consciousness instead. This would be a mere merging of the personality, but that the Godhead, according to D. , is of such a paradoxical nature as to coniain all the creatures fused and yet distinct (Intr , p. 28) so the self is merged on one side of its being and distinct on the other. If I lose myself in God, still it will always be " I" that shall lose myself There.
^ This simile shows that the Via Negativa is, in the truest sense, positive. Our "matter-moulded forms" of thought are the really negative things. (Cf. Bergson.) A sculptor would not accept a block vvc of ice in place of a block of marble (for ice will not carve into a statue) ; and yet the block of marble is not, as such, a statue. So, too, the Christian will not accept an impersonal God instead of a personal God (for an impersonal Being cannot be loved), and yet a "personal" God is not, as such, the Object of the Mystical quest. The conception of Personality enshrines, but is not, the Ultimate Reality. If D. were open to the charge of pure negativity so often brought against him, he would have wanted to destroy his block of marble instead of carving it.
^ Namely, in the Divine Names and in the Outlines ; see Chap. III.
^ In the Divine Names D. begins with the notion of Goodness (which he holds to be possessed by all things) and proceeds thence to Existence (which is not possessed by things that are either destroyed or yet unmade), and thence to Wisdom (which is not possessed either by unconscious or irrational forms of Life), and thence to qualities (such as Righieousness, Salvation, Omnipotence) or combinations of opposite qualities (such as Greatness and Smallness) which are not, in the full sense, applicable to any creature as such. Thus by adding qualitv to quality ("Existence" to "Goodness," "Life" to "Existence," "Wisdom" to "Life," "Salvation," etc., to "Wisdom") he reaches the conception of God. But he constantly reminds us in the Divine Names that these qualities apply adequately only to the manife-ted Godhead \\liich, in Its ultimate Nature, transcends them.
190 Dionysius the Areopagite
particular to universal conceptions we strip off all
qualities ^ in order that we may attain a naked
knowledge of that Unknowing which in all existent
things is enwrapped by all objects of knowledge,^ and
that we may begin to see that super-essential Darkness
which is hidden by all the light that is in existent
things.
Chapter Iii
What Lwe the afftrniativc expressions respectiiig Godj and luJiat
a?'e the negative.
Now I have in my Outlines of Divinity set forth
those conceptions which are most proper to the
affirmative method, and have shown in what sense
God's holy nature is called single and in what sense
trinal, what is the nature oi the Fatherhood and
Sonship which we attribute unto It ; what is meant
by the articles of faith concerning the Spirit; how
from the immaterial and indivisible Good the interior
rays of Its goodness have their being and remain
immovably in that state of rest which both within
their Origin and within themselves is co-eternal with
the act by which they spring from It ; ^ in what manner
^ The process from the universal to the particular is the process of actual development (existence before life, and life before rationality, etc.); the converse is the natural process of thought, which seeks to refer things to their universal laws of species, etc. {Divine Names, V. 3). But this latter process is not in itself the Via Negativa, but only the ground i)lan of it, differing from it as a ground plan of a mountain path differs from a journey up the actual path itself. The process of developing life complicates, but enriches, the world ; that of thought simplifies, but eviscerates it. Contemplation, being an act of the human spirit, is a process of developing life, and yet follows the direction of tliought. I fence it enriches and simpHfies at the same time.
2 Cf. p. 194, n. I.