Reading Scripture with Saint Dionysius

How does unknowing lead to union with God? What does it mean to know beyond all knowing? In Mystical Theology, Saint Dionysius (now known as Pseudo-Dionysius), a 5th-century Christian author, writes that by ceasing all senses and intellectual powers that one unites with He Who is beyond everything and by knowing nothing that one knows what is beyond all knowing (τῷ μηδὲν γινώσκειν ὑπὲρ νοῦν γινώσκων). Building on Eric Perl’s book, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite, I wish to clarify the meaning of an unknowing union with the Neoplatonic One as an encounter with a loving, personal God.

Eric Perl argues that the foundation of Neoplatonism is the Parmenidean doctrine that “to be is to be intelligible.” Thought is always the apprehension of some being, and if being, “that which is,” has any meaning at all, it must be available for thinking. In other words, “that which is” is “that which can be apprehended by intellection” and vice versa. But any being can only be intelligible only if “it is determinate, a distinct ‘this,’” and for anything to be a distinct “this” is for it to be differentiated from all else.[1] In other words, intelligibility rests on a definite ontological determination, which is, at the same time, a differentiation of being. Since to be is to be intelligible, being then rests on definition, determination, or differentiation. “Having discovered that being as such must be dependent,” Perl explains, Plotinus conceives of “the One” as “the ground or source on which being depends, that by which all beings are beings.” It provides the “unifying determination whereby each being is itself and so is.”[2] In other words, the One is the “definer” of all being. It is that which makes all being intelligible.

The knowledge of the One is fundamentally different from the knowledge of being. The One, as the being and thus intelligibility of all being, is not itself an intelligible being. The One is nothing, which is to say, not a thing. If it were, then it would necessarily not be the grounds of all being (and intelligibility) and therefore, not the One. The Dao that can be named is not the Dao. By the same stroke that it is immanently present to all, the One transcends all. The One is thus unintelligible. However, this unintelligibility is not a blind darkness, but a brilliant (“ὑπέρφωτον”) one: if we cannot see the One, it is because the One blinds us with its brightness as the intelligibility of all being.

However, in writing and talking about the One, we invariably treat it as a thing. We use the pronoun “it” to refer to the One and (effectively, no matter how unwillingly) define it when we explain it as the “determination” of all being. Thus, in truth, to even describe the knowledge of the One as a “brilliant darkness” may be to say too much. I think that Dionysius addresses this issue in Mystical Theology when he clarifies that even the brilliant darkness is only God’s “hiding place,” “the place where he stands (τὸν τόπον οὗ ἔστη),” and not God per se. Dionysius writes: “τὸ τὰ θειότατα καὶ ἀκρότατα τῶν ὁρωμένων καὶ νοουμένων ὑποθετικούς τινας εἶναι λόγους τῶν ὑποβεβλημένων τῷ πάντα ὑπερέχοντι.” In contemplation, our minds can never perceive God himself but only what lies below him, i.e. things about him, which naturally include, for example, the fact that God is not a beingand thus to know God is to know nothing. This means that to truly reach God, we must even surpass the idea that He is unknowable. To reach the One per se is to not reach anything at all. But equally true, it is not to not reach anything at all. And equally true, it is not to not to not reach anything at all. This is what Dionysius means when he says that the One is beyond every affirmation and every negation. The One is not anything, but we must also negate that negation, negate that negation, and so on and so forth. In fact, we must negate even the very statement that the One is beyond every affirmation and denial, and even that negation, and that negation, ad infinitum. This dialectical method, I think, is Dionysius’ greatest achievement. Plotinus also emphasizes the importance of negation in our understanding of the One, but Dionysius brings this Neoplatonic insight to its fulfillment by ridding us of any a priori conception of the One at all and shows that the knowledge of the One is necessarily experiential—and experiential in a personal way. Let me explain.

Christos Yannaras, a contemporary Orthodox theologian, characterizes Dionysius’ method as an “active abandonment of the consolidation of knowledge in conceptual categories,” and “the epistemological position that leads to the dynamics of the ontology of personhood.” What he means by “the dynamics of this personal ontology” is “a conferring of meaning on both the subject and the reality facing it”—i.e. a knowing—that is “independent of any kind of a priori necessity.”[3] In an encounter with another human person, to respect their nature, we must suspend any judgement, preconceived notions, and a prior concepts. This does not mean that we are in a state of unknowing; instead, this is the beginning of a relationship through which we are able to know more and truer. In the absence of another specific human person, Dionysius’ dialectical method, as the epistemological position that Yannaras describes, results in a loss of conceptual control that will bring anyone who successfully attempts it into a most immediate, unmitigated experience of reality that is not devoid of meaning but an overflow of it.[4] As such, it is still an experience of a person—a radical other that is unknowable in any objective, a priori way and must be experienced in order to be understood. More precisely, it is the experience of the ultimate Person, Who Neoplatonist philosophers call the One.

In Genesis, when Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they are reversing the Dionysian epistemological position. As God’s creation, the Tree of Knowledge is not inherently poisonous to mankind. But the act of taking and eating its fruits is an attempt to know particular beings in themselves—that is to say, to know particular beings without regard to the grounds of their intelligibility, the One. In other words, taking from the Tree is a violation of the proper epistemological order. Because to be is to be intelligible, taking from the Tree is also a violation of the ontological order, and therefore naturally incurs death: in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Consistent with our discussion so far, taking from the Tree also coincides with the betrayal of a personal God. The three major themes in the story of the Fall: knowledge, being (and death), and a personal relationship with God thus come together in a way that corroborates Neoplatonism. On this reading, Genesis does not deny knowledge but a treatment of knowledge that is both an epistemological and ontological error. In fact, in light of our discussion, Adam and Eve, by virtue of being in a personal relationship with God, the One, the intelligibility of all being, know everything already. The serpent’s lie is not essentially slandering God as not willing to share his divinity with Adam and Eve, but rather that Adam and Eve do not share in his divinity, that they are not like gods already…

In Mystical Theology, the experience of the One is ecstatic, outside of oneself. Union with God is a renouncement of all knowledge that coincides with the renouncement of the self[5]: “οὔτε ἑαυτοῦ οὔτε ἑτέρου, τῷ παντελῶς δὲ ἀγνώστῳ τῇ πάσης γνώσεως ἀνενεργησίᾳ κατὰ τὸ κρεῖττον ἑνούμενος.” Because the One is the being of all being, such an ecstatic experience does not diminish ourselves, but enriches us by bringing us into union with the grounds of our own existence. By the same stroke that we abandon ourselves, we receive more of ourselves.

This truth about our union with the One, like all things, derives from the One itself. As the being of all being, the One is the ontological providing of what is not itself (providence)—all material objects, all living beings—by virtue of being itself. In other words, the One is itself by being others. Exteriority and interiority perfectly collapse in the One. It is possessive in an ecstatic way, and ecstatic in a possessive way. In this lies the full meaning of love: sacrificial, possessive or desiring, and finally, literally life-creating. So, God provides for all creation without lacking anything and without needing anything in return, all the while the LORD thy God is a jealous God. While we may question why God loves us if he does not lack anything in himself, our discussion shows that it is precisely by virtue of not lacking anything—of being the being of all being—that God loves us, and not in a distant way, but jealously. Our nature, given by the One, is also ecstatic. Love for the other is thus not something additional to our nature; it is our nature. And, as our nature, love for the other is both from God and for God. Indeed, God, the being of all being, is both our constitutive principle (“ἀρχή”) and our ontological end (“τέλος”): I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

From our Neoplatonic perspective, there is no tension between self-actualization and sacrificial love; the two coincide in an ontological sense. Neither is there tension between our love for others and our love for God. In the Gospels, when the Pharisees ask Jesus to rank the commandments, he answers:

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Since all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments, it is important to see if Neoplatonism works as an interpretative lens. And that it does. The first and great commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. But this does not exclude love for other human beings. Instead, to love your neighbor as yourself is a commandment that is “like unto” the first. We often interpret this second commandment as to love your neighbor as you love yourself. However, based on our discussion, that is incorrect. Because our nature is an ecstatic providing that we call love, there is nobody to love but the other. To love yourself is thus but a contradiction in terms. The second commandment, I think, literally means to love your neighbor as yourself (“ὡς σεαυτόν”)— as if your neighbor is you. Indeed, the Greek word “ὡς” can take on many meanings, and I believe that it indicates an ontological oneness here. In this way, this commandment is not simply a divine decree from a good God but a statement about reality, about how we obey our own nature. And, as a statement about how to obey our own nature, it is a derivative of the fundamental ontological fact that we actualize ourselves through an ecstatic union with God. Ecstatic yearning for another human being does not subtract from our yearning for God; the former is possible only because of the latter. Human love is not against God’s love but a consequence of it. The second commandment does not contradict the first, but is “like unto it.”[6] Human nature is not contrary to divine nature. Jesus is fully human by virtue of being fully divine, not despite of. This also means that, as much as we may offer ourselves to one another, God offers Himself to us more. Like many other places in Scripture, Jesus uses a possessive genitive “σου” (“of you”) in his answer to describe God: “the Lord thy God (κύριοντὸν Θεόν σου).” The Neoplatonic One collapses the self and the other; the beloved belongs to the lover. We belong to God: I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine, and God belongs to us, and through a mutual offering of self, life begets life without end.

We can only love other human beings if we love God, which is to say, if God, the being of our being, loves us. Even the basest form of human love, insofar as it is love, embodies divine love. Instead of thinking about God in light of ourselves, we need to think about ourselves in light of God. Indeed, the Neoplatonic One is the being and intelligibility of all and thus the interpretative grounds for all, and Dionysius’ choice to use “ἒρως” in The Divine Names to describe God seems to me to build on this fundamental Neoplatonic insight, which also reverses the Scholastic understanding of the order of knowing as proceeding from creatures to God. In Neoplatonism, in order to know anything at all, we must know God first. In order to love anyone at all, we must love God first. In order to be anything at all, we must become like God first. Consistently, Dionysian divine darkness that engulfs us as we approach God must not be a blind darkness but a brilliant one, a knowing beyond knowing, and an ecstatic experience that is not like human love, but the true meaning of it. The Neoplatonic One, as the being and intelligibility of all being, is itself free from all objective, a priori predeterminations and thereby a loveable that bestows life; in other words, the Neoplatonic One is the ultimate Person Who is also the Truth, and the Life.

[1] Eric Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 10. [2] Ibid. [3] Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite (Trowbridge: The Cromwell Press, 2005), 72. [4] I am convinced that Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological epoché is the same as Dionysius’ dialectical method, but I will need to develop that idea somewhere else. [5] Conversely, after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve do not suddenly gain recondite information but realize that they are naked. In other words, they become self-conscious as an immediate result of turning away from the One. [6] The second commandment is “like unto the first” but not identical to the first. This is very important: the second commandment is still differentfrom the first. To me, this further suggests that in becoming one with God, one will always retain an integral and unique identity.