To Know Nothing: Apophatic Theology in the Dionysian Corpus

Pseudo-Dionysius argues that God, as the Supreme Cause and Being itself, is ultimately incomprehensible and ineffable, beyond human language and cognitive abilities. Knowledge of God is limited to experiencing his manifestations in the world through theophanies. Apophatic theology, which denies any positive attributes of God, is inseparable from cataphatic theology, which affirms them. Negation does not simply eliminate possibilities but can lead to affirmations of super-abundance or the recognition that nothing can be affirmed or denied of God. The negative approach moves beyond knowledge about God toward union with God, though it risks inconsistency if one must know something to negate it.

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Abstract

The article briefly shows the major points of apophaticism in Pseudo-Dionysius, focusing on his stances of the incomprehensibility of God (the One, the Supreme Cause of everything, Being itself) and the limitations to men’s abilities of attaining any proper knowledge about his immeasurable greatness and infinite power. In an attempt at a brief overview of some of the aspects of his apophatic theology, chosen passages from the treatises The Divine Names, The Celestial Hierarchy and the Mystical Theology (as well as from two of his Letters) show his insistence on the ineffability and the incomprehensibility of God, the knowledge of him as limited to an experience of his manifestation in the world, and the non-knowledge achieved through denial of everything of this world including oneself, and the understanding that nothing can be affirmed or denied of God. Negation relates one expression to another with a meaning that is (in some way) opposed.1 There is a certain openness to negation: if it is not contained and specified, non-x can be anything that is not x. The starting point of apophaticism may suffer from inner inconsistency: to negate x, or certain aspects of it, there has to be a minimum knowledge of what x is, so it can be denied that it is, in fact, it (or like that).2 When one does not know God, because of God’s ontological superiority, his being way beyond the profane realm of man’s cognitive capabilities, how much of God does (not) one know? The negation of knowledge about –––––––– 1 Aristotle defines negation (apophasis) as a statement of something away from another (affirmation, kataphasis, being a statement affirming one thing or another, On Interpretation 17a25). Aristotle also attributes less value to negative propositions: the affirmative proposition is prior to and better known than the negative (affirmation explains denial just as being is prior to not-being, Metaphysics 996b14–16). 2 The negative approach is not merely a way into the positive through elimination, in the sense that one denies everything that can plausibly be denied, and what remains must be affirmed, but is an approach on its own, significant because of its characteristics and implications. Sometimes through the negative way affirmations are reached, and sometimes sublations; vice-versa, affirmations may lead to negations, if their informative, epistemological and ontological value is deemed insufficient. Negation can be utilised in order to affirm the impossibility to affirm. Certain forms of negation serve to lead to affirmations of super-abundance (of a quality, characteristic, being), in which case not x is not in the sense of too much x. 70 M. Todorovska, To know nothing: apophatic theology... ŽAnt 66 (2016) 69–88 God (or First Principle, Supreme Cause of Everything, the One, Being itself) can be due to the acknowledgement of God’s overwhelming and incomprehensible essence, his veiled nature, and the fact that we know him only through his manifestation in our world, through the theophanies we experience, the energies exteriorised in our reality. The lack of knowledge is at times achieved through attempts at affirmations, in which the impossibility to fully and suitably grasp the immeasurable greatness of God’s attributes is understood. In concepts in which God’s being is ineffable, it can be explained as such due to our ineptitude to comprehend and express anything beyond the limitations of our language and the sphere of ordinary experiences. The extraordinary nature of the experience of God leaves us at a loss of what to utter, how to express, what names to properly use. Moreover, if consistently brought forward, this ineffability leads to not-even-ineffability (if God is ineffable, we do not really know to what extent we are ignorant and speechless, therefore we might as well resign to a not-even-ineffable God/Being/First Principle/Supreme Cause). The negative (apophatic) approach in theology is inseparable from the affirmative (cataphatic); they both apply to God (the One), and represent the direction of the intellect’s understanding of God. God’s revelation to man may lead to affirmations of him; while negations about what is manifest of God, by transcending what is revealed of him, represent a move beyond knowledge about God, and toward God itself. The universe in its origin, constituents and structure is simultaneously monadic and triadic in the system of Pseudo-Dionysius (the Areopagite).3 The Dionysian corpus, propounding his conception of theology as a methodological science of God, consists of the four extant treatises: On the divine names, On Mystical theology, On the celestial hierarchy, On the ecclesiastical hierarchy4 and ten Epistles. If God is conceived as all things in all things, he can be spoken about, but if he, by way of his super-worldliness and overwhelming being is not conceived as a thing among things, then, he cannot be spoken about. In his essence (ousia) or unity (henosis), God is unknowable – from here the distinction between the two approaches begins to function.5 Apophatic theology –––––––– 3 The issue of authorship will not be addressed here, nor will the questions of his adherence to Neo-Platonism, or the confluences and divergences between Neo-Platonic ontology and his Christian theology, which, while pertinent to the apophatic approaches, would lead to multiple vaguely co-related philosophical digressions. 4 Further abbreviated as DN, MT, EH, CH, respectively. Chronologically, the DN might have been an introduction to the whole opus, which places the MT after it, while the EH might have followed the CH. The DN also contains references to and resumés of two lost (less likely fictitious) treatises, The Theological Representations and The Symbolic Theology (in the first chapter of DN; the former is mentioned also in MT III), which means that they would have preceded it. 5 God is above all that is something, so nothing can be said about him; God is beyond words. It should be noted that the names Pseudo-Dionysius gives in his affirmative approach are for the most part about God’s manifestations, not God itself, so they should be conceived as symbolic titles for God for us. The positive and negative M. Todorovska, To know nothing: apophatic theology... ŽAnt 66 (2016) 69–88 71 is presented in the treatises MT, CH (II, 3), and, although mainly taken as a stellar example of affirmative theology, DN (I, 4, 5, 6; VII, 1, 3, and XIII, 3), as well as in Letters One and Five.6 Theology is the word of –––––––– approaches are part of Pseudo-Dionysius’ three different theologies: affirmative (cataphatic), symbolic, and mystical (where the apophatic theology belongs). Apart from the commonly considered two approaches, some authors suggest a wider interpretation of the two theologies which broadens into four: affirmative, symbolic, negative and mystical, although Dionysius himself does not make this distinction formally, see Deirdre Carabine, The Unknown God (Louvain: Peeters Press, 1995), 287. Sheldon-Williams interprets affirmative theology as the science of God as efficient cause (cause can be named from effect), symbolic theology as the science of God as final cause (epistrophê), and mystical (negative) theology as the science of God as monê I. P. SheldonWilliams, “The Greek Christian Platonist Tradition from the Cappadocians to Maximus and Eriugena”, in A. H. Armstrong, Ed. The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 460. He succinctly explains that the entire Dionysian corpus falls into three parts, corresponding to the three aspects of the Thearchy – a term employed presumably because it combines the notions of plurality and singularity, and also because God itself is merely one of the Names of God: the cataphatic, symbolic, and mystical theologies. See also Jan Vanneste, Le mystère de Dieu – Essai sur la structure rationelle de la doctrine mystique du Pseudo-Denys l’Aréopagite (Desclée de Brouwer: Brussels, 1959), 24. The cataphatic theology, subject of the DN, is the science of God as proodos or Efficient Cause of the Forms, and also because the Forms are the attributes which are affirmed of God. The symbolic theology, covered in a lost treatise of this name, and the two Hierarchies and Letter Nine, is the science of God as epistrophê or Final Cause, to Whom it ascends through sensible and intelligible symbols. The mystical theology, subject of the eponymous treatise and Letter Five (and Letter One) is the science of God as monê, immutably inaccessible to sense and intellect. Each theology falls into three sections, further explains Sheldon-Williams: the cataphatic deals with the Good, the Intelligible Triad; the symbolic with the legal, ecclesiastical and celestial hierarchies; the mystical proceeds by the apophatic method, denying that the affirmations applied to God in the cataphatic method are relevant to God as transcendent, through agnosia, the unknowing of the Unknowable, to henosis, the super-intelligible union with God. The symbolic and mystical theologies are anagogic, through catharsis, illumination, and unification, I. P. Sheldon-Williams, “The Greek Christian Platonist Tradition from the Cappadocians to Maximus and Eriugena”, 460. Although aware that Thomas Aquinas does not formally delineate three different kinds of theological negation, Rocca proposes three types of negation detectable in his opus, which he calls qualitative (total denial of any characteristic or property of God), objective modal (denies the creaturely objective mode of a perfection to God), and subjective modal negation (denies the usual ways humans use to think of and determine divine characteristics, due to the manner humans use propositions), Gregory P. Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 58. It is curious whether Pseudo-Dionysius’ different negations could be fitted into these