The Mystical Theology

Five short chapters on Moses entering the darkness on Sinai, and on knowing God by denying every name until even the denials fall away.

by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite7 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Περὶ μυστικῆς θεολογίας
First published: 500(aged 25)
Original language: Greek

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Overview

Moses, in the book of Exodus, climbs Sinai and goes into the dark cloud where God is. In this treatise Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite makes that climb the pattern for knowing God: the mind leaves behind everything that can be seen or said and enters a darkness where it knows by not knowing. His word for it, agnosia, means unknowing. The work opens as a prayer to the Trinity, then turns to instruct Timothy, Paul's companion, to whom it is addressed. Its author writes as Paul's Athenian convert; historians place the writing around 500. Dionysius sets out two ways of speaking about God. The first affirms, starting from the highest names and coming down to the lowest. The second denies, starting from the lowest things scripture says of God, that he is angry, or that he carouses, and climbing until nothing is left to deny. The last chapter runs that chain to its end: God is not soul or mind, not number or order, not even one or good in any sense we know, and lies beyond both affirmation and denial. Among its author's earlier works the treatise lists The Divine Names and two others that have never been found. Thomas Gallus, a canon of Saint-Victor who became an abbot at Vercelli, commented on it in the early 1240s, as part of his commentary on the whole corpus. In fourteenth-century England the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing made a free English version, Deonise Hid Divinite, which survives in two manuscripts.

Key concepts

What does agnosia, or unknowing, mean here?

A knowing of God that comes only when ordinary knowing stops. Agnosia is the Greek word, and Dionysius does not mean ignorance or giving up. The mind lays down everything it can grasp, images, concepts and even its own activity, and is united with what it cannot grasp. Moses on Sinai is the example: he enters the dark cloud and knows most truly where he sees nothing.

What is the difference between affirming and denying God?

Two directions of speech. Affirmation, sometimes called kataphatic theology, says what God is, starting from the highest names such as Goodness and Life and working down to the lowest. Denial, apophatic theology, says what God is not, starting from the lowest images and climbing. Both are needed: the affirmations praise God as cause of everything, the denials stop any one of them being mistaken for God.

Why is the divine darkness called 'super-luminous'?

Because it is dark from excess of light, not lack of it. The opening prayer speaks of a gloom brighter than any light, in which hidden truths are revealed in silence. A person staring at the sun sees nothing, not because nothing is there but because there is too much. The darkness names what happens to the mind at the limit of what it can bear, not a hiding place.

Why is this theology called 'mystical'?

Because it concerns what is hidden and taught only to the prepared. In Greek the word belongs with the mysteries, rites into which people were initiated in silence. The treatise asks Timothy to keep its teaching from the uninitiated, meaning those who think nothing exists beyond what they can know. Mystical here means hidden and inward, not emotional or strange.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Moses in the darkness of unknowing

What is left to a mind that has gone past everything it can see or say about God? Dionysius answers with Moses on Sinai: a darkness in which one knows by not knowing.

Moses is purified, hears the many-voiced trumpets, sees the many lights, and then leaves the crowd behind and enters the dark cloud alone. Even there, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite notes, he does not see God but only the place where God is. The darkness is not ignorance but a light too bright for the mind, and the union it offers lies beyond knowledge altogether. Against those who imagine they know God by their own knowledge, the treatise sets this climb, and opens it as a prayer rather than a lecture.

unknowing
mystical union
apophatic theology
divine transcendence
epistemology
sensory perception
mystical theology

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Climbing by taking words away

If every word about God falls short, should we stop speaking, or speak and then take it back? Dionysius lays out both roads and then insists God lies beyond the second as well.

Affirmation, he explains, starts from the highest names and comes down, so its words multiply. Denial runs the other way: it begins with the lowest things scripture says of God, that he is angry or carousing, and climbs, so the words grow fewer until the climber falls silent. His model is the sculptor who frees a statue by cutting away whatever hides it. The last chapter runs the list to its end, denying even that God is one or good in any sense we know, and then places God beyond denial too.

negative theology
religious language
divine names
divine attributes
religious symbolism
theology
metaphysics

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Within this work

passages held: 7
distinct concepts: 14
by passages held, corpus-wide: #830

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “apophatic theology” and “divine transcendence”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 2 concepts, joined by 1 pairing. 9 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
apophatic theology	divine transcendence	5

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

500 The Celestial Hierarchy (Περὶ τῆς οὐρανίας ἱεραρχίας)
The heavenly half of a pair: the order of the angels, which The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy then follows down into the church. In the manuscripts it stands first among the treatises; Hugh of Saint-Victor, the Paris theologian, wrote a commentary on it in the twelfth century.
EN
500 The Divine Names (Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων)
By the corpus's own cross-references it is the first of the surviving theological treatises: The Mystical Theology names it among the works written before it. It is also the longest work in the corpus, written around 500 under the name of Paul's Athenian convert.
EN
500 The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (Περὶ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱεραρχίας)
A walk through six rites of the church, written as the earthly sequel to The Celestial Hierarchy; after The Divine Names it is the longest treatise in the corpus. It is read here in John Parker's Victorian English.
EN
500 The Letters (Ἐπιστολαί)
The corpus ends on ten letters, from a few lines to many pages, addressed in that persona to Gaius, Dorotheus, Sopatros, Polycarp, Demophilus, Titus and John. Here the apostolic-age fiction is carried furthest.
EN
500 The Mystical Theology (Περὶ μυστικῆς θεολογίας) you are here EN

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