About Mystical Theology

In the treatise “On Sacramental Theology” (5 chapters) sschmch. Dionysius the Areopagite talks about the ineffability and unknown of the being of God. The essay is addressed to the Apostle Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus (the addressee of the Apostle Paul). Chapter 1 speaks of the Divine darkness surrounding the Holy Trinity. According to Sschmch. Dionysius the Areopagite, God lives in the hidden and mysterious darkness of silence, to which a person can ascend through liberation from verbal and mental images, purification of the mind and renunciation of everything sensory. The symbol of such a mystical ascent to God is Moses. Union with God in the darkness of silence is called ecstasy. Chapters 2-3 deal with negative (apophatic) and positive (cataphatic) methods of theology. The path of negations, along which the ascent to God is accomplished, is preferable to the path of affirmations, corresponding to the descent of the mind to the latter, i.e., the sensory. Apophatism consists of the consistent rejection of all positive characteristics and names of God. Chapters 4-5 say that God, as the Cause of sensory and mental existence, is not something sensory-perceptible and intelligible. The cause of everything (God) is neither life nor essence, has no image, no quality, no magnitude, is not limited by place, is not perceived by the senses, is not subject to corruption or anything else of the senses. She is above all affirmation and negation and surpasses all Her names and properties, “detached from everything and transcendental to everything.” Although the holy fathers never doubted the authorship of this work, however, according to modern patrolologists, it was written by an unknown author in the 5th-6th centuries. To Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus Contents Chapter 1. What is Divine Darkness Chapter 2. How is unity with the Cause of all things possible and how it is necessary to glorify Her, who surpasses all things Chapter 3. What is the essence of cataphatic and apophatic methods in theology Chapter 4. That, due to His transcendence, God as the Cause of sensory-perceptible existence is not something sensually perceived Chapter 5. That, due to His transcendence, God as the Cause of intelligible existence is not something intelligible Chapter 1 What is Divine Darkness 1.1. “O all-essential, all-divine and all-blessed Trinity, teacher of Christian wisdom! Ascend us to the unknown, most luminous and highest peak of knowledge of the Sacred and Mysterious Scripture, where the perfect, unchangeable and genuine sacraments of Theology are revealed in the most luminous Darkness of arcane silence, in which, in the complete absence of light, in the complete absence of sensations and visibility, our mind, impervious to (spiritual) enlightenment, is illuminated with the brightest light, filled with the most pure radiance! May these always be my prayers! And if you, my beloved Timothy, zealously strive to join in the contemplation of mystical visions, then withdraw from your activities and feelings, and reason, and from everything sensory-perceptible, and from everything intelligible, and from everything that exists, and from everything that does not exist, in order, to the best of your ability, to strive for supernatural unity with the One who surpasses any essence and any knowledge, since only by being free and independent from everything, only by completely renouncing both yourself and everything that exists, that is, by removing everything and freeing yourself from everything, you will be able to soar to the supernatural radiance of the Divine Darkness. 1.2. But be careful that this does not become known to any of the uninitiated, by which I mean those who are so attached to the earthly world that they imagine that there is no supernatural existence other than the natural, naively believing that thanks to their knowledge they can understand the One who “made darkness His covering” (Ps. 17.12). And if those initiated into the Divine mysteries are superior to those like them, then what can be said about those complete madmen who bring God, that is, the transcendental Cause of all things, from the world above to the world below, believing that He is no different from the many ungodly statues they have created? But they would need to know that all the laws of existence were approved by Him, since He is the Cause of all that exists, although at the same time He is completely not involved in the existing, since it surpasses all that exists and the superexistent; but let them not think that negative and positive judgments about Him - the highest Cause, surpassing even the absence of being - are mutually exclusive, since He surpasses any negation and any affirmation. 1.3. So the divine Bartholomew claims that Theology is polysemantic and unthinkable, and the Gospel is majestic, eloquent and at the same time laconic, but, it seems to me, in reality with these words he wanted to say that God, as the good Cause of all things, is eloquent and at the same time laconic and even wordless, since He is beyond all that exists and exists outside of words and thinking; He clearly and truly reveals himself only to those who, having turned away from everything, both pure and impure, and having gone through all the stages of divine perfections, leave all divine sounds, insights, heavenly words and enter into the Darkness, where, as the Scripture says, He who is beyond all things truly resides. So, for example, the divine Moses first of all receives the command not only to purify himself, but also to distance himself from the unclean, and only after all the purifications does he hear the thunderous sounds of trumpets and see many lights shining with a clear and radiant radiance; then leaving both his people and even the chosen priests, he reaches the highest peak of divine ascent. But even after this, he does not communicate personally with God and does not contemplate Him Himself, since He is invisible, but only the place where He resides. In my opinion, this means that everything that is most sublime and divine that we contemplate and think about is a kind of proof of the existence of the One who surpasses all things, that is, a proof through which the truth is revealed about the presence of the One who surpasses all understanding and dwells on the intelligible heights of His most divine villages. And so, having withdrawn from everyone who saw him and having renounced everything visible, Moses enters the depths of the mystical Darkness of Ignorance, in which all cognitive activity ceases for him, all sensory and visual perception completely disappears, and he no longer belongs to himself and not to anything existing, but to the One who is beyond all that exists, and thus, only after he had abolished all knowledge, Moses was the dominant part of his mind unites with Him Who is inaccessible to any knowledge, in complete ignorance he acquires supramental knowledge. Chapter 2 How is it possible to unite with the Cause of all things and how to glorify Her, who transcends all things How eager I am to reach this Darkness, so that through ignorance and non-seeing I can see and know the One who surpasses contemplation and knowledge even in non-vision and ignorance! After all, true knowledge, contemplation and supernatural glorification of the Supernatural is precisely ignorance and non-vision, achieved by (gradual) detachment from everything that exists, just as sculptors, cutting out a statue from a single stone and eliminating all unnecessary things that obscured the purity of its hidden face, thereby only reveal its beauty, hidden even from itself. And I believe that when glorifying the Supernatural, negative judgments are preferable to positive ones, since by affirming something about Him, we thereby gradually descend from His highest properties to the knowledge of the lowest, while by denying, we ascend from the lowest to the knowledge of the most primordial ones; Thus, we renounce all things for the sake of full knowledge of that ignorance which is hidden in all things from all who would like to know it, and for the sake of contemplation of that supernatural Darkness which is hidden in all things from those who would like to see it. Chapter 3 What is the essence of cataphatic and apophatic methods in theology So, in “Theological Essays,” using a predominantly cataphatic method of theology, I explained why the good essence of the Divinity is considered either one or threefold; what does fatherhood and sonship mean? how does theology explain (the procession) of the Holy Spirit; how, from the depths of the immaterial and indivisible Good, light-like (intelligent) beings emerged, who, by the creative power of the coeternal in Their unity (Divine Hypostases), remain unchanged both in relation to Goodness, and in relation to themselves and each other; how the prenatural Jesus became fully involved in human nature, and I explained many more truths spoken of in Scripture in my “Theological Essays.” In the essay “On Divine Names” I explained why in Scripture God is called Good, Existing, Life, Wisdom, Power and many other intelligible names. And in “Symbolic Theology” I explained why names of phenomena of sensory-perceptible reality are attached to God in Scripture, namely: what the sacred images of the Divine body, members and organs mean; what are Divine villages and heavens; what do Divine anger, sorrow and hatred, intoxication and hangover, oaths and curses, sleep, wakefulness and many more sacred images of the symbolic description of the Divine mean. And I suppose you noticed that in the last essay I am much more verbose than in the first; in fact, the “Theological Essays” and the study of the Divine Names should have been less extensive compared to the “Symbolic Theology”, since the higher I ascend in thought to the contemplation of the intelligible, the narrower the horizon of my (spiritual) vision becomes; similarly, now, plunging into the super-conceivable Darkness (Divine Silence), I not only laconicism, but complete wordlessness and thoughtlessness. In “Symbolic Theology,” as I descended from the world above to the world below, my speech, accordingly, became more and more verbose; now, as I ascend from the lower world to the transcendent heights, my speech becomes laconic, so that upon reaching the end of the path I will acquire complete wordlessness, completely dissolving in (Divine) silence. But why, finally, you ask, do we begin positive judgments about the Divine from the highest statement, while negative ones from the lowest? So, when affirming something about the One who surpasses any affirmation, in our judgments about Him we should proceed from what is most inherent in Him by nature, and in negative judgments about the One who surpasses any negation, we should begin with the denial of what is most different from Him by nature. Indeed, He is no less life or goodness than air or stone? And is He not more sober and good-natured than we can say or think about it? Chapter 4 That, due to His transcendence, God as the Cause of sensory-perceptible existence is not something sensory-perceivable So, I affirm that God, as the Cause of all things, is beyond all things; being neither immaterial, nor lifeless, nor dumb, nor unreasonable, He, nevertheless, is not anything corporeal, since He does not have form, image, quality, quantity and volume and He does not reside in any specific place; He lacks both sensory and visual perception, for He not only does not perceive anything, but is not anything perceptible; He is not subject to disease and is free from the confusion and disturbances that result from the excitement of sensual passions, but He is not powerless, does not lack light, and He is not characterized by inconstancy, change, distortion, division, impoverishment, and, in general, nothing of the senses is inherent in Him and He is not anything perceived by the senses. Chapter 5 That, due to His transcendence, God as the Cause of intelligible existence is not something intelligible Turning to the same topic, (I dare) to assert the following: God is not a soul and not a mind, and since He lacks consciousness, thought, imagination and idea, He is neither reason nor thinking, and it is impossible to understand or define Him; He is neither number nor measure, neither great nor small, neither equality nor inequality, neither likeness nor dissimilarity; He neither rests nor moves nor grants peace; has no power and is neither power nor light; does not have existence and is neither being, nor essence, nor eternity, nor time, and it is impossible to grasp Him with thought. He is neither knowledge, nor truth, nor the kingdom, nor wisdom, nor the one, nor unity, nor deity, nor goodness, nor spirit - in the sense as we imagine it, nor sonship, nor fatherhood, nor anything at all that can be known by us or other (intelligent) beings. He is neither something that does not exist, nor anything that exists, and neither the existing can know Him in His being, nor does He know the existing and the being of the existing, since for Him there are no words, no names, no knowledge; He is neither darkness nor light, nor error nor truth; in relation to Him, neither positive nor negative judgments are completely possible, and when we deny or affirm something about Him by analogy with what He created, we, in fact, do not refute or define anything, since the perfection of the only Cause of all things that exists exceeds any affirmation and any denial, and, to generalize: the superiority over the entire totality of things, the One Who is predetermined by all things, is infinite. You might be interested in: