Greco-Christian stream·Dionysius the Areopagite·Letters·Letters — Letter V — To Dorotheus, Leitourgos
V. To Dorotheus — Moses entering the cloud
Short letter to Dorotheus the leitourgos (deacon). On Moses entering the cloud at Sinai and seeing what he did not see — the apophatic vision in which the seer's not-seeing is itself the highest mode of beholding.
Source context
- Theme
- apophatic encounter with the superessential divine darkness beyond knowledge and being
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Proclus)Cross-tradition congruence appears in the Neoplatonic doctrine of the One as beyond intellect and being, structurally parallel to Dionysius's claim that the divine darkness exceeds all affirmation and negation.
- Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah, Ein Sof)Cross-tradition congruence appears in the Kabbalistic concept of Ein Sof as the boundless, unknowable divine ground that precedes all emanation, structurally parallel to Dionysius's superessential darkness addressed to the liturgist Dorotheus.
- Christian mystical theology (Gregory of Nyssa, apophatic tradition)Cross-tradition congruence appears in Gregory of Nyssa's epektasis and his account of Moses entering the divine darkness on Sinai, a direct structural antecedent to the Dionysian apophatic theology expressed in this letter.
Letters — Letter V — To Dorotheus, Leitourgos
LETTER V. ** To Dorotheus, Leitourgos.
The Divine gloom is the unapproachable light in which God is said to dwell 66 . And in this gloom, invisible 67 indeed, on account of the surpassing brightness, and unapproachable on account of the excess of the superessential stream of light, enters every one deemed worthy to know and to see God, by the very fact of neither seeing nor knowing, really entering in Him, Who is above vision and knowledge, knowing this very thing, that He is after all the object of sensible and intelligent perception, and saying in the words of the Prophet, "Thy knowledge was regarded as wonderful by me; It was confirmed; I can by no means attain unto it 68 ;" even as the Divine Paul is said to have known Almighty God, by having known Him as being above all conception and knowledge. Wherefore also, he says, "His ways are past finding out 69 and His Judgements inscrutable," and His gifts "indescribable 70 ," and that His peace surpasses every mind 71 , as having found Him Who is above all, and having known this which is above conception, that, by being Cause of all, He is beyond all.
Footnotes
144:66 1Timothy 6:6.
144:67 1Timothy 1:17.
144:68 Ps. cxxxix. 6.
144:69 Rom. xi. 33.
144:70 2Corinthians 9:15.
144:71 Phil. iv. 7.
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