| THE MYSTICAL THEOLOGY
CHAPTER I
What is the Divine Darkness?
Supernal Triad, Deity above all essence, knowledge and goodness;
Guide of Christians to Divine Wisdom; direct our path to the
ultimate summit of your mystical knowledge, most incomprehensible,
most luminous and most exalted, where the pure, absolute and
immutable mysteries of theology are veiled in the dazzling obscurity
of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity
of their Darkness, and surcharging our blinded intellects with the
utterly impalpable and invisible fairness of glories surpassing all
beauty.
Let this be my prayer; but do, dear Timothy, in the diligent
exercise of mystical contemplation, leave behind the senses and the
operations of the intellect, and all things sensible and
intellectual, and all things in the world of being and nonbeing,
that you may arise by unknowing towards the union, as far as is
attainable, with it that transcends all being and all knowledge.1
For by the unceasing and absolute renunciation of yourself and of
all things you may be borne on high, through pure and entire
self-abnegation, into the superessential Radiance of the Divine
Darkness.2
But these things are not to be disclosed to the uninitiated, by
whom I mean those attached to the objects of human thought, and
who believe there is no
superessential Reality beyond, and who imagine that by their own
understanding they know Him who has made Darkness His secret place.
And if the principles of the divine Mysteries are beyond the
understanding of these, what is to be said of others still more
incapable thereof, who describe the transcendental First Cause of
all by characteristics drawn from the lowest order of beings, while
they deny that He is in any way above the images which they fashion
after various designs; whereas they should affirm that, while He
possesses all the positive attributes of the universe (being the
Universal Cause) yet, in a more strict sense, He does not possess
them, since He transcends them all; wherefore there is no
contradiction between the affirmations and the negations, inasmuch
as He infinitely precedes all conceptions of deprivation, being
beyond all positive and negative distinctions.
Thus the blessed Bartholomew asserts that the divine science is
both vast and minute, and that the Gospel is great and broad, yet
concise and short; signifying by this, that the beneficent Cause of
all is most eloquent, yet utters few words, or rather is altogether
silent, as having neither (human) speech nor (human) understanding,
because He is super-essentially exalted above created things, and
reveals Himself in His naked Truth to those alone who pass beyond all
that is pure or impure, and ascend above the topmost altitudes of
holy things, and who, leaving behind them all divine light and sound
and heavenly utterances, plunge into the Darkness where truly
dwells, as the oracles declare, that ONE who is beyond all.3
It was not without reason that the blessed Moses was commanded
first to purify himself and them to separate himself from those who
had not undergone purifcation; and after the entire purification
heard many trumpets and saw many
lights streaming forth with pure and manifold rays; and that he was
thereafter separated from the multitude, with the elect priests, and
pressed forward to the summit of the divine ascent4. Nevertheless, he
did not attain to the Presence of God Himself; he saw not Him (for He
cannot be looked upon) but the Place where He dwells. And this I
take to signify that the divinest and highest things seen by the
eyes or contemplated by the mind are but the symbolical expressions
of those that are immediately beneath Him who is above all. Through
these, His incomprehensible Presence is manifested upon those
heights of His Holy Places; that then He breaks forth, even from
that which is seen and that which sees, and plunges the mystic into
the Darkness of Unknowing, whence all perfection of understanding is
excluded, and he is enwrapped in that which is altogether
intangible, wholly absorbed in Him that is beyond all, and in none
else (whether himself or another); and through the inactivity of all
his reasoning powers is united by his highest faculty to Him who is
wholly unknowable; thus by knowing nothing he knows That which is
beyond his knowledge.5
CHAPTER II
The necessity of being united with and of rendering praise to
Him
who is the Cause of all and above all.
We pray that we may come unto this Darkness which is beyond
light, and, without seeing and without knowing, to see and to know
that which is above vision and knowledge through the realization
that by not-seeing and by unknowing we attain to true vision and
knowledge; and thus praise, superessentially, Him who is
superessential, by the transcendence of all things; even as those who, carving a statue out
of marble, abstract or remove all the surrounding material that
hinders the vision which the marble conceals and, by that
abstraction, bring to light the hidden beauty.6
It is necessary to distinguish this negative method of
abstraction from the positive method of affirmation, in which we
deal with the Divine Attributes. For with these latter we begin with
the universal and primary, and pass through the intermediate and
secondary to the particular and ultimate attributes; but now we
ascend from the particular to the universal conceptions, abstracting
all attributes in order that, without veil, we may know that
Unknowing which is enshrouded under all that is known and all that
can be known, and that we may begin to contemplate the
superessential Darkness which is hidden by all the light that is in
existing things.7
CHAPTER III
What are the affirmations and the negations concerning
God?
In the Theological Outlines 8 we have set forth the principal
affirmative expressions concerning God, and have shown in what sense
God's Holy Nature is One, and in what sense Three; what is within It
which is called Father, what Sonship, and what is signified by
the name Spirit; how from the uncreated and indivisible Good, the
blessed and perfect Rays of its Goodness proceed, and yet abide
immutably one both within their Origin and within themselves and
each other, co-eternal with the act by which they
spring from it; how the
superessential Jesus enters in essential state in which the truths
of human nature meet; and other matters made known by the oracles
are expounded in the same place.
Again, in the treatise on Divine Names, we have considered the
meaning, as concerning God, of the titles of Good, of Being, of
Life, of Wisdom, of Power, and of such other names as are applied to
Him; further, in Symbolical Theology we have considered what are the
metaphorical titles drawn from the world of sense and applied to the
nature of God; what is meant by the material and intellectual images
we form of Him, or the functions and instruments of activity
attributed to Him; what are the places where He dwells and the
raiment in which He is adorned; what is meant by God's anger, grief
and indignation, or the divine inebriation; what is meant by God's
oaths and threats, by His slumber and waking; and all sacred and
symbolical representations.9 And it will be observed how far more
copious and diffused are the last terms than the first, for the
theological doctrine and the exposition of the Divine Names are
necessarily more brief than the Symbolical Theology.
For the higher we soar in contemplation the more limited become
our expressions of that which is purely intelligible; even as now,
when plunging into the Darkness that is above the intellect, we pass
not merely into brevity of speech, but even into absolute silence of
thoughts and of words. Thus, in the former discourse, our
contemplations descended from the highest to the lowest, embracing
an ever-widening number of conceptions, which increased at each
stage of the descent; but in the present discourse we mount upwards
from below to that which is the highest, and, according to the
degree of transcendence, so our speech is restrained until, the
entire ascent being accomplished, we become wholly voiceless,
inasmuch as we are absorbed in Him who is totally ineffable. “But
why,” you will ask,
“does the affirmative method
begin from the highest attributions, and the negative method with
the lowest abstractions?” The reason is because, when affirming the
subsistence of That which transcends all affirmation, we necessarily
start from the attributes most closely related to It and upon which
the remaining affirmations depend; but when pursuing the negative
method to reach That which is beyond all abstraction, we must begin
by applying our negations to things which are most remote from It.
For is it not more true to affirm that God is Life and Goodness
than that God is air or stone; and must we not deny to God more
emphatically the attributes of inebriation and wrath than the
applications of human speech and thought?
CHAPTER IV
That He who is the pre-eminent Cause of all things sensibly
perceived
is not Himself any of those things.
We therefore maintain that the universal and transcendent Cause
of all things is neither without being nor without life, nor without
reason or intelligence; nor is He a body, nor has He form or shape,
quality, quantity or weight; nor has He any localized, visible or
tangible existence; He is not sensible or perceptible; nor is He
subject to any disorder or inordination nor influenced by any
earthly passion; neither is He rendered impotent through the effects
of material causes and events; He needs no light; He suffers no
change, corruption, division, privation or flux; none of these
things can either be identified with or attributed unto Him.
CHAPTER V
That He who is the pre-eminent Cause of all things
intelligibly perceived
is not Himself any of those things.
Again, ascending yet higher, we maintain that He is neither soul
nor intellect; nor has He imagination, opinion reason or
understanding; nor can He be expressed or conceived, since He is
neither number nor order; nor greatness nor smallness; nor equality
nor inequality; nor similarity nor dissimilarity; neither is He
standing, nor moving, nor at rest; neither has He power nor is
power, nor is light; neither does He live nor is He life; neither is
He essence, nor eternity nor time; nor is He subject to intelligible
contact; nor is He science nor truth, nor kingship nor wisdom;
neither one nor oneness, nor godhead nor goodness; nor is it Spirit
according to our understanding, nor Sonship, nor Fatherhood; nor
anything else known to us or to any other beings of the things that
are or the things that are not; neither does anything that is know
Him as He is; nor does He know existing things according to existing
knowledge; neither can the reason attain to Him, nor name Him, nor
know Him; neither is He darkness nor light, nor the false nor the
true; nor can any affirmation or negation be applied to Him, for
although we may affirm or deny the things below Him, we can neither
affirm nor deny Him, inasmuch as the all-perfect and unique Cause of
all things transcends all affirmation, and the simple pre-eminence
of His absolute nature is outside of every negation- free from every
limitation and beyond them all.
NOTES
(1) Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance
as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite
knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore it is
only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is
beyond and above knowledge. There are two main kinds of darkness:
the subdarkness and the super-darkness, between which lies, as it
were, an octave of light. But the nether-darkness and the Divine
Darkness are not the same darkness, for the former is absence of
light, while the latter is excess of light. The one symbolizes mere
ignorance, and the other a transcendent unknowing - a superknowledge
not obtained by means of the discursive reason.
(2) 'Of the First Principle,' says Damascius, 'the ancient
Egyptians said nothing, but celebrated it as a Darkness beyond all
intellectual or spiritual perception - a Thrice-unknown Darkness.'
This is for ever about the Pavilions of that great Light
Unapproachable. It is caused by the superabundance of Light and not
by the absence of lumination: it is 'a deep but dazzling Darkness'
(Henry Vaughan). 'The light shineth in the darkness' (St. John, 1,
5). 'In Thy light we shall see light' (Psalm 36, 9).
(3) St. John of the Cross, for instance, wrote of other kinds of
darkness; for example, the darkness of the night of purgation, and
the dark night of the soul, but the Divine Darkness is in a
different category from these.
(4) The Triple Mystic Path is outlined here: - the Purgative, the
Illuminative and the Unitive, which have a parallel in the Karma Marga,
Jnana Marga and Bhakti Marga of oriental mysticism.
(5) Particularly important here is the concept of beyond-being,
the recognition that what is known in the unknowing is beyond the
realm of being and cannot be adequately described, although negation
comes closer than affirmation.
- (6) Compare the well-known analogy of Plotinus:
- 'Withdraw into yourself and look; and if you do not find yourself
beautiful as yet, do as does the sculptor of a statue ... cut away
all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light
to all that is shadowed ... do not cease until there shall shine out
on you the Godlike Splendour of Beauty; until you see temperance
surely established in the stainless shrine-(Ennead, 1, 6,
9).
(7) These are the two modes of Divine Contemplation - Via Affirmativa
and Via Negativa - which mark the equilibrating pulse of true mystical life.
In the former case, beginning from on high, there is an out-flowing and a
down-flowing of the consciousness, which passes from universals to
particulars and sees God in all things, in the lowest as well as the highest.
But in the latter case, there is an up-drawing and in-drawing of the
consciousness, passing from particulars to universals, which sees that
God is not any of the things contemplated, and therefore, by abstraction,
it arrives at the superessential Darkness, which out-shines and obliterates
the light of all sensible things. Or, in other words, an approach is made
to the unapproachable Light.
(8) Dionysius refers to several of his treatises, but besides the
Mystical Theology the other extant works of his are Divine
Names, The Celestial Hierarchies, Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy, and various epistles. See The Complete Works,
Colm Luibheid, trs., (Paulist Press: 1987), now, unfortunately, out
of print.
(9) Although anthropomorphic and other figurative expressions applied
to God are not true in the absolute sense, nevertheless they have a proper
and almost indispensable place in the worship and reverence which one
endeavours to pay to the Supreme through the media of finite faculties and symbols.
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Compiled by Prof. Robert Bowman
