ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY
 - to Timothy

ΠΕΡΙ ΜΥΣΤΙΚΗΣ ΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΑΣ
ΠΡΟΣ ΤΙΜΟΘΕΟΝ

TRINITY!! Higher than any being, any divinity, any goodness!

<1> Τριὰς ὑπερούσιε καὶ ὑπέρθεε καὶ ὑπεράγαθε,

Guide of Christians in the wisdom of heaven!
lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture,

τῆς Χριστιανῶν ἔφορε θεοσοφίας
ἴθυνον ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τὴν τῶν μυστικῶν λογίων ὑπεράγνωστον καὶ ὑπερφαῆ καὶ ἀκροτάτην κορυφήν·

where the mysteries of God's Word lie simple, absolute and unchangeable in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.

ἔνθα τὰ ἁπλᾶ καὶ ἀπόλυτα καὶ ^[142] ἄτρεπτα τῆς θεολογίας μυστήρια κατὰ τὸν ὑπέρφωτον ἐγκεκάλυπται τῆς κρυφιομύστου σιγῆς γνόφον,

Amid the deepest shadow [darkness] they pour overwhelming light on what is most manifest.

ἐν τῷ σκοτεινοτάτῳ τὸ ὑπερφανέστατον ὑπερλάμποντα

Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen they completely fill our sightless minds with treasures beyond all beauty

καὶ ἐν τῷ πάμπαν ἀναφεῖ καὶ ἀοράτῳ τῶν ὑπερκάλων ἀγλαϊῶν ὑπερπληροῦντα τοὺς ἀνομμάτους νόας.

 CHAPTER ONE

[the divine darkness]

FOR this I pray; and, Timothy, my friend, my advice to you as you look for a sight of the mysterious things, is to leave behind you everything perceived and understood, everything perceptible and understandable, all that is not and all that is,  

Εμοὶ μὲν οὖν ταῦτα ηὔχθω· σὺ δέ, ὦ φίλε Τιμόθεε, τῇ περὶ τὰ μυστικὰ θεάματα συντόνῳ διατριβῇ καὶ τὰς αἰσθήσεις ἀπόλειπε καὶ τὰς νοερὰς ἐνεργείας καὶ πάντα αἰσθητὰ καὶ νοητὰ καὶ πάντα οὐκ ὄντα καὶ ὄντα¨

By an undivided and Absolute abandonment of yourself and everything, shedding all and freed from all freed from all, you will be uplifted to the ray of the divine shadow [darkness] which is above everything that is.

τῇ γὰρ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ πάντων ἀσχέτῳ καὶ ἀπολύτῳ καθαρῶς ἐκστάσει πρὸς τὸν ὑπερούσιον τοῦ θείου σκότους ἀκτῖνα, πάντα ἀφελὼν καὶ ἐκ πάντων ἀπολυθείς, ἀναχθήσῃ.

2. BUT see to it that none of this comes to the hearing of the uninformed,  that is to say, to those caught up with the things of the world, who imagine that there is nothing beyond instances of individual being and who think that by their own intellectual resources they can have a direct knowledge of him who has made the shadows [darkness] his hiding place.

And if initiation into the divine is beyond such people, what is to be said of those others, still more uninformed, who describe the transcendent Cause of all things in terms derived from the lowest orders of being, and who claim that it is in no way superior to the godless, multiformed shapes they themselves have made?

What has actually to be said about the Cause of everything is this. Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and, more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since it surpasses all being.

NOW we should not conclude that the negations (apophaseis) are simply the opposites of the affirmations, (kataphaseis)

beyond privations,

beyond every denial,

beyond every assertion.

 ὑπὲρ τὰς στερήσεις εἶναι

 τὴν ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν καὶ ἀφαίρεσιν

καὶ θέσιν.

3. THIS , at least, is what was taught by the blessed Bartholomew. He says that the Word of God is vast and minuscule, that the Gospel is wide-ranging and yet restricted. To me it seems that in this he is extraordinarily shrewd, for he has grasped that the good cause of all is both eloquent and taciturn, indeed wordless.

[Allegorical exegesis of Deut. 24:1-11
God in light on sapphire pavement]

It has neither word nor act of understanding, since it is on a plane above all this, and it is made manifest only to those who travel through foul and fair,

who leave behind them every divine light,

every voice,

every word from heaven,

ὑπερβαίνουσι καὶ πάντα τὰ θεῖα φῶτα

καὶ ἤχους

καὶ λόγους οὐρανίους ἀπολιμπάνουσι

and who plunge into the darkness where, as scripture proclaims, there dwells the One who is beyond all things.

It is not for nothing that the blessed Moses is commanded to submit first to purification and then to depart from those who have not undergone this. When every purification is complete, he hears the many-voiced trumpets. He sees the many lights, pure and with rays streaming abundantly.

    Then, standing apart from the crowds and accompanied by chosen priests, he pushes ahead to the summit of the divine ascents. And yet he does not meet God himself, but contemplates, not him who is invisible, but rather [the place] where he stands.

    This means, I presume, that the holiest and highest of the things perceived with the eye of the body or the mind are but the logoi (inner meanings or purposes) of all that lies below the Transcendent One. 

Through them, however, his unimaginable presence is shown, walking the heights of those holy places to which the mind at least can rise.

[Allegorical exegesis of Deut. 24:12-18
Moses goes alone into the cloud on Sinai]

But then he [Moses] breaks free of them, away from what sees and is seen, and he plunges into the truly mysterious darkness of unknowing.

Here, renouncing all that the mind may conceive, wrapped entirely in the intangible and the invisible, he belongs completely to him who is beyond everything.

Here, being neither oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united by a completely unknowing inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing. 

CHAPTER TWO

[Apophatic Theology as Praise:
The Analogy of the Sculptor]

   I PRAY we could come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge.

For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way, namely through the denial of all beings.

Michelangelo,
Slave
The Tomb of  Julius II
Florence, 1536

    WE would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by this act of clearing asid they show up the beauty which is hidden.

   NOW it seems to me that we should praise the denials quite differently than we do the assertions. When we made assertions we began with the first things, moved down through intermediate terms until we reached the last things. 

   BUT now as we climb from the last things up to the most primary we deny all things so that we may unhiddenly know that unknowing which itself is hidden from all those possessed of knowing amid all beings, so that we may see above being that darkness concealed from all the light among beings.

CHAPTER THREE

What are the Affirmative theologies and what are the negative?

In my Theological Outlines,(cf. Div.Nam. 1) I have praised the notions which are most appropriate to affirmative (kataphatic) theology. I have shown the sense in which the divine and good nature is said to be one and then triune, how Fatherhood and Sonship are predicated of it, the meaning of the theology of the Spirit,

how these core lights of goodness grew from the incorporeal and indivisible good, and how in this sprouting they have remained inseparable from their co-eternal foundation in it, in  themselves, and in each other.

I have spoken of how Jesus, who is above individual being, became a being with a true human nature. Other revelations of scripture were also praised in The Theological Outlines.

In The Divine Names I have shown the sense in which God is described as good, existent, life, wisdom, power, and whatever other things pertain to the conceptual names for God. In my Symbolic Theology" I have discussed analogies of God drawn from what we perceive.

I have spoken of the images we have of him, of the forms, figures, and instruments proper to him, of the places in which he lives and of the ornaments he wears. I have spoken of his anger, grief, and rage, of how he is said to be drunk and hungover,

of his oaths and curses, of his sleeping and waking, and indeed of all those images we have of him, images shaped by the workings of the symbolic representations of God.

And I feel sure that you have noticed how these latter come much more abundantly than what went before, since The Theological Representations and a discussion of the names appropriate to God are inevitably briefer than what can be said in The Symbolic Theology.

The fact is that the more we take flight upward, the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming;

so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.

        In the earlier books my argument traveled downward from the most exalted to the humblest categories, taking in on this downward path an ever-increasing number of ideas which multiplied with every stage of the descent.

But my argument now rises from what is below up to the transcendent, and the more it climbs, the more language falters, and when it has passed up and beyond the ascent, it will turn silent completely, since it will finally be at one with him who is indescribable.

Now you may wonder why it is that, after starting out from the highest category when our method involved assertions, we begin now from the lowest category when it involves a denial.

        The reason is this. When we assert what is beyond every assertion, we must then proceed from what is most akin to it, and as we do so we make the affirmation  on which everything else depends.

But when we deny that which is beyond every denial, we have to start by denying those qualities which differ most from the goal we hope to attain.

τὸ δὲ ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν ἀφαίρεσιν ἀφαιροῦντας ἀπὸ τῶν μᾶλλον αὐτοῦ διεστηκότων ἀφαιρεῖν.

Is it not closer to reality to say that God is life and goodness rather than that he is air or stone?

Is it not more accurate to deny that drunkenness and rage can be attributed to him than to deny that we can apply to him the terms of speech and thought?

CHAPTER FOUR
That the supreme Cause of every perceptible thing is not itself perceptible

< Ῑ .>
^[148]

        So this is what we say. The Cause of all is above all and is not inexistent, lifeless, speechless, mindless. It is not a material body, and hence has neither shape nor form, quality, quantity, or weight. It is not in any place and can neither be seen nor be touched.

It is neither perceived nor is it perceptible. It suffers neither disorder nor disturbance and is overwhelmed by no earthly passion. It is not powerless and subject to the disturbances caused by sense perception. It endures no deprivation of light.

It passes through no change, decay, division, loss, no ebb and flow, nothing of which the senses may be aware. None of all this can either be identified with it nor attributed to it.

CHAPTER FIVE
That the supreme Cause of every conceptual thing
is not itself conceptual

<¯. >
[149]

        Again, as we climb higher we say this. It is not soul or mind, nor does it possess imagination, conviction, speech, or understanding.

Nor is it speech per se, understanding per se. It cannot be spoken of and it cannot be grasped by understanding.

It is not number or order, greatness or smallness, equality or inequality, similarity or dissimilarity.

It is not immovable, moving, or at rest. It has no power, it is not power, nor is it light.

It does not live nor is it life. It is not a substance, nor is it eternity or time.

It cannot be grasped by the understanding since it is neither knowledge nor truth. It is not kingship. It is not wisdom.

It is neither one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness.

Nor is it a spirit, in the sense in which we understand that term. It is not sonship or fatherhood and it is nothing known to us or to any other being. It falls neither within the predicate of nonbeing nor of being. Existing beings do not know it as it actually is and it does not know them as they are.

There is no speaking of it, nor name nor knowledge of it.

Darkness and light, error and truth - it is none of these. It is beyond assertion and denial. We make assertions and denials of what is next to it, but never of it,

for it is both beyond every assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things, and, by virtue of its preeminently simple and absolute nature, free of every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every denial.