Mystic Theology
Translation: The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Vol. I · Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th–early 6th c.) · source: sacred-texts.com / chr/dio (mirror of James Parker & Co., London, 1897)
Five short caputs setting out the negative or apophatic way — God known by unknowing (ἀγνώστως), beyond every assertion and every negation. The seed text of the entire Christian apophatic tradition: the Cloud of Unknowing, Eckhart, the Rhineland mystics, John of the Cross. Greek title Περὶ μυστικῆς θεολογίας.
Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
- Stream
- Greco-Christian
- Cultural age
- Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
- Composed
- c. 500 CE
- 1Mystic Theology — Caput I — I. What is the divine darkness — Moses on Sinai
The treatise's opening — and the foundational chapter of the Western apophatic tradition. The doctrine of the divine darkness into which Moses entered on Sinai when he passed beyond the lights into the cloud of unknowing. Bonaventure, Eckhart, The Cloud of Unknowing all derive from this chapter.
704 words - 2Mystic Theology — Caput II — II. How one ought to be united and offer praise to the cause of all
On the praising of the cause of all that lies beyond all. The double movement: the kataphatic (affirming what God is) and the apophatic (denying what God is not). The proper order of negation — beginning from the lowest negations and ascending to the highest.
227 words - 3Mystic Theology — Caput III — III. What are the affirmative theologies; what are the negative
The taxonomy of theological method. The affirmative theology (kataphatic) — what may be said positively of God. The negative theology (apophatic) — what must be denied of God to reach the truth. The relation: affirmation begins from the highest, negation begins from the lowest.
499 words - 4Mystic Theology — Caput IV — IV. God is not any sensible thing — the negation of all material attributes
The first systematic negation: God is not any sensible thing. Not body, not magnitude, not shape, not number, not place, not motion, not time. The first ascent of the apophatic ladder — clearing away every sensible attribution.
127 words - 5Mystic Theology — Caput V — V. God is not any intelligible thing — the negation of all conceptual attributes
The treatise's closing chapter. God is not any intelligible thing either: not soul, not intellect, not knowledge, not truth, not goodness, not unity, not Godhead — God is beyond every affirmation and negation. The supreme apophatic ascent into the divine darkness.
263 words
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