Philosophy Matters — The Incomprehensible God Who Isn’t There
Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite by Eric D. Perl
Strap in. This is going to be a bumpy ride.
There is initially the matter of this guy, Dionysius the Areopagite, aka Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Who is this guy? On the one hand, he turns out to be a seminal theological foundation for Thomas Aquinas’s Scholasticism. We always hear about Aristotle as a foundation for Aquinas, but I would estimate that fully half of the ideas in Aquinas’s thinking about God qua God are from this guy.
On the other hand, this guy, Dionysius the Areopagite, is a total mystery, except we know he wasn’t Dionysius the Areopagite. The real Dionysius the Areopagite was a person living in the first century Athens, and a judge on the court at “Mar’s Hill,” hence “Areopagite,” who was converted by St. Paul, and gets a mention in Acts 17:34:
32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
33 So Paul departed from among them.
34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
This Dionysius was not that Dionysius. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy tells us this about Pseudo-Dionysius:
But it has only become generally accepted in modern times that instead of being the disciple of St. Paul, Dionysius must have lived in the time of Proclus, most probably being a pupil of Proclus, perhaps of Syrian origin, who knew enough of Platonism and the Christian tradition to transform them both. Since Proclus died in 485 CE, and since the first clear citation of Dionysius’ works is by Severus of Antioch between 518 and 528, then we can place Dionysius’ authorship between 485 and 518–28 CE. These dates are confirmed by what we find in the Dionysian corpus: a knowledge of Athenian Neoplatonism of the time, an appeal to doctrinal formulas and parts of the Christian liturgy (e.g., the Creed) current in the late fifth century, and an adaptation of late fifth-century Neoplatonic religious rites, particularly theurgy, as we shall see below.
The imposture of the obscure Dionysius paid dividends as scholars in the Middle Ages accepted Pseudo-Dionysius as a near apostolic authority.[1]
Pseudo-Dionysius (hereinafter for the sake of my typing “Dionysius”) was a well-informed Neoplatonist with all that entailed. Author Eric D. Perl situates Dionysius firmly within the Neoplatonic tradition — from Plontinus to Proclus to Dionysius — showing how different points would develop until they were transplanted almost directly from paganism to Christianity.
This is not an easy read. However, since I’ve been reading Aquinas for over two decades, much of it resonated with my sense of Thomism. I was repeatedly surprised that some point or other made by Dionysius was central to the Thomistic project. I will try to point those out as I go along.
The book is organized into the following chapters, which I will adopt for this and the following reviews I do of this book:
Chapter 1 Beyond Being and Intelligibility
Chapter 2 Being as Theophany
Chapter 3 Goodness, Beauty, and Love
Chapter 4 The Problem of Evil
Chapter 5 The Hierarchy of Being
Chapter 6 The Continuum of Cognition
Chapter 7 Symbolism
Chapter 1 Beyond Being and Intelligibility
The core concept in this chapter is being — existence — is convertible with intelligibility. If something exists, it is capable of being understood: “The foundational principle of Neoplatonic thought is the doctrine that to be is to be intelligible.” (Theophany, p. 78.)
This conclusion follows from the principle that things exist because they have “forms” (aka “natures.”) “Forms” are those things that the mind extracts from its sense experience (and which are therefore above and common to different things with the same form but different matter.)[2]
Being (existence) and intelligibility are both grounded in “the Good.” Perl explains that Socrates responded to Anaxagoras claim that the intellect is the orderer and cause of all things by responding that the “intellect by nature demands to see goodness in its object in order to understand, to make sense of it.” (p. 120.) Why is this the case? The answer is that “any thing, event, action, or process can be intellectually understood only in terms of the good which is the ultimate “why” for it. And whatever can be so understood, whatever is intelligible is so only because and insofar as it is ordered on the basis of goodness.” (Id.)
So, we might want to ask, what is this “goodness”?
In Aristotle and Aquinas, good is that which all desire. Goodness is that aspect of existence that moves the will to desire the thing. The desired thing becomes the desired end for the will. Thus, if the intellect is going to understand something, it is going to understand it only through understanding its causes—including its formal and final causes—which are the “why” of something. The “why” of something is its form or nature, which is its goodness.
There is also the issue of “truth.” Truth is a quality of mind that conforms the intellect to the actual form of the thing. How does all this conforming occur? Apparently, through the Good:
This argumentation underlies Plato’s representation of the Good in the Republic under the image of the sun. Just as the sun, by providing light, makes it possible for sensible things to be seen and for the eye to see them, so the Good provides that which makes the forms able to be known and the intellect able to know them (Republic 508b12-c2). The Good, in other words, is the enabling source of intelligibility and intellection. (Locations 124–127.)
And:
The truth of the forms is their unconcealedness, their availability or accessibility to the mind-in short, their intelligibility. And this, Plato says, is provided by the Good. For in the absence of goodness, consciousness, attempting to understand reality, is like the eye in the absence of light: it is at a loss, it flounders, it cannot “see” its objects; it “does not have intellect.” Just as there can be neither visibility nor vision without light, so there can be neither intelligibility nor intellection without goodness. Consequently, as Plato goes on to say, “That which provides truth to the things known and gives power [i.e. the ability to know] to the knower is the form [iBEav] of the Good” (Republic 508e1–3). In other words, any and all beings, i.e. the forms, are intelligible only in virtue of the “look of goodness” that they have and display.’ (Locations 130–134.)
You can see this in Question 10 of the Summa Theologica, where Aquinas explains that we will not see the essence of God without the “light of Glory.” Moreover, it seems that we cannot even see natural truths without some kind of divine light:
Objection 3. Further, that wherein we know all other things, and whereby we judge of other things, is known in itself to us. But even now we know all things in God; for Augustine says (Confess. viii): “If we both see that what you say is true, and we both see that what I say is true; where, I ask, do we see this? neither I in thee, nor thou in me; but both of us in the very incommutable truth itself above our minds.” He also says (De Vera Relig. xxx) that, “We judge of all things according to the divine truth”; and (De Trin. xii) that, “it is the duty of reason to judge of these corporeal things according to the incorporeal and eternal ideas; which unless they were above the mind could not be incommutable.” Therefore even in this life we see God Himself.
Reply to Objection 3. All things are said to be seen in God and all things are judged in Him, because by the participation of His light, we know and judge all things; for the light of natural reason itself is a participation of the divine light; as likewise we are said to see and judge of sensible things in the sun, i.e., by the sun’s light. Hence Augustine says (Soliloq. i, 8), “The lessons of instruction can only be seen as it were by their own sun,” namely God. As therefore in order to see a sensible object, it is not necessary to see the substance of the sun, so in like manner to see any intelligible object, it is not necessary to see the essence of God.
It is an amazing fact that I see “2+2=4” and you see that “2+2=4.” How is it that we both “see” the same thing if there is not something outside of us and common to us both that we share? The answer would appear to be that we both see in the same light.
The light in the Neoplatonic tradition is Goodness, which seems to be before existence.[3] Goodness informs and forms existence.
The Good is the One in Plotinus. For Plotinus, Goodness is the first principle, not Existence, as it is in Aquinas. Perl explains that the conundrum is that Being means “a being,” and any being is unitary and finite. If something exists, we should be able to point it out somehow. The fact that there is an “it” to point at implies a limited, finite thing, no matter how big and important. Such a limitation seems inconsistent with God, who is, by definition, not limited, not finite.
The Summa shares this intuition in defining God as outside of any genera. In ST, Q.3, A 5, Aquinas explains:
Secondly, since the existence of God is His essence, if God were in any genus, He would be the genus “being”, because, since genus is predicated as an essential it refers to the essence of a thing. But the Philosopher has shown (Metaph. iii) that being cannot be a genus, for every genus has differences distinct from its generic essence. Now no difference can exist distinct from being; for non-being cannot be a difference. It follows then that God is not in a genus.
It is philosophically essential that God not be in a genus. As Aquinas explains in ST Q. 4, A 2:
First, because whatever perfection exists in an effect must be found in the effective cause: either in the same formality, if it is a univocal agent — as when man reproduces man; or in a more eminent degree, if it is an equivocal agent — thus in the sun is the likeness of whatever is generated by the sun’s power. Now it is plain that the effect pre-exists virtually in the efficient cause: and although to pre-exist in the potentiality of a material cause is to pre-exist in a more imperfect way, since matter as such is imperfect, and an agent as such is perfect; still to pre-exist virtually in the efficient cause is to pre-exist not in a more imperfect, but in a more perfect way. Since therefore God is the first effective cause of things, the perfections of all things must pre-exist in God in a more eminent way. Dionysius implies the same line of argument by saying of God (Div. Nom. v): “It is not that He is this and not that, but that He is all, as the cause of all.”
Saying that God has all perfections, does not put him into a different genus than everything else — sort of like Superman fits into a genus of Superman because Superman has superpowers.
Instead, it puts God above genus itself, and, also, above the genus of existence into which everything fits.
But what about calling the One “one”? According to Plotinus, this terminology did not mean a limitation but was instead “a denial of multiplicity.”
This “apophatic approach” leads to some of the more difficult aspects of Dionysius’s philosophy.[4] Dionysius takes the position that any description of God is wrong because it is limiting:
Dionysius adopts his doctrine of God as “nameless,” “unknowable,” and “beyond being” from the Neoplatonic tradition established by Plotinus, and his thought can be understood only in that context.2° His “negative theology” is not fundamentally a theory of theological language but a philosophical cal position taken over directly from Neoplatonism, although, as in Plotinus, it has implications for language in that words are discursive expressions of intellection and hence cannot apply to God. Dionysius expressly adopts the Parmenidean and Platonic account of being and thought as coterminous, and therefore locates God beyond both together: “For if all knowledges are of beings and have their limit in beings, that which is beyond all being also transcends all knowledge” (DN 1.4, 593A). Dionysius’ God, like the One of Plotinus, is transcendent, not in a vague, unspecified sense, but in the very precise metaphysical sense that he is not at all included within the whole of reality, of things that are, as any member of it. If he has no “name,” this is because he is not anything at all. God is not merely beyond “human thought” or “finite thought,” as if there were some “other” sort of thought that could reach him, or as if his incomprehensibility were simply due to a limitation on our part, but is beyond thought as such, because thought is always directed rected to beings, and hence to that which is finite and derivative.” When we hear that God is beyond being, we inevitably imagine some thing, a “superessentiality,” lying above or outside of being. But this fails to realize the meaning of “beyond being,” because it still thinks of God as something, some being.22 (Locations 211–220).
So, to be is to be intelligible.
But God is not intelligible.
God is beyond our ability to make any sense of Him because by making sense of Him, we limit God, and, by definition, it is not God that we comprehend.
So, God does not exist?
That’s disturbing.[5]
According to Perl:
If our thought cannot attain to God, this is not because of our weakness but because there is no “there” there, no being, no thing that is God. Understanding Dionysius within the Neoplatonic tradition to which he belongs, we must take him at his word and not seek to mitigate the force of his negations by interpreting his thought in the light of later theories which attempt to allow for “infinite being” and thus break with the fundamental Neoplatonic principle that to be is to be intelligible and therefore to be finite. (Locations 221–224).
Some people like this kind of thing. I am not one of those people.
Nonetheless, it seems to check out, at least philosophically. Is God a “being”? Should we describe God as “a divine being”? Probably not. Those words imply that God is one kind of being out of many kinds of beings. We get comfortable with that. We lose sight of the fact that God is not “a being” or even “the divine being,” but, rather, that He is Being Itself, that which communicates existence to the forms that make up the reality of matter formed by nature that we live in. God is sui generis in a way that we can’t comprehend.
Theologically, I have my questions about this Dionysian conclusion insofar as we have a theological account of immanence as well as transcendence. This God who is not “there” assumed a human nature in a personal union with one of His divine persons. Likewise, this non-being with “no there there” had a relationship with an obscure Middle Eastern tribe. It seems like even the definitions of “non-being” and “no there there” may be overly limiting.
Perl explains:
We may be inclined to ask whether such a radical treatment of divine transcendence means that God simply disappears from view altogether, in such a way that, as has been remarked, “the truth of negative theology is atheism.” But Dionysius’ Neoplatonic negative theology transcends atheism no less than it does theism. To be sure, Dionysius is not a theist, since theism, as ordinarily understood, involves the claim that God exists (whatever ever qualifications may then be added concerning the “mode” of his existence); and many misunderstandings have arisen from attempts to interpret Dionysius and other Neoplatonists theistically and thus not to take with full seriousness their insistence that the One or God is beyond being and is not anything at all, that no common term whatever can embrace both God and his products. But neither is Dionysius an atheist, for on his principles it is no more correct to say “God is not” than to say “God is” (i.e. is a being). Simply to deny that God exists, to say “God is not” or “There is no God” is still to consider God as some (putative) being, and then to deny that there is such a being, as when we say “There is no tenth planet” or “There are no unicorns.” This still treats God as some distinct conceptual object and so fails truly to intend God at all. Neoplatonic and Dionysian negative theology, on the other hand, refuses to consider God as anything at all, whether to affirm or to deny the existence of such a thing. (Locations 249–257).
Perl previously gave Dionysius a Wittgenstein spin:[6]
Ultimately, then, for Dionysius as for Plotinus, negative theology consists sists not in any words or thoughts whatsoever, however negative or superlative, but in the absolute silence of the mind. We must “honor the hidden of the divinity, beyond intellect and reality, with unsearchable and sacred reverence of mind, and ineffable things with a sober silence” (DN 1.4, 592D). (Locations 238–240).
Aquinas disagreed. Aquinas taught the Analogia Entis whereby God is not so alien that He is entirely incomprehensible. We can comprehend God in our human mode by understanding that creaturely perfections are reflections of God’s perfections insofar as God is the cause of those perfections. Therefore, we do not have to pass over everything in silence. We can have a limited and finite understanding of God — not an understanding of God that is wrong per se, just limited and finite.
And we can talk about that.
This approach is called the “analogia entis” (“Analogy of Being.) The method of aalogia entis is an “affirmative theology” that makes affirmative statements about God by way of analogizing from the created world to the creator of that world.[7] For example, we see order in the created world and conclude that order would not be found in the created world unless there was order in God.
So, the big concepts thus far are (a) to be is to be intelligible, and (b) God is not intelligible (according to Dionysius).
More to come.
Post-script:
[1] I would love to learn how this Neoplatonic student of Proclus picked out the incredibly obscure Areopagite as his beard. The real Dionysius gets barely a passing mention in Acts. He’s probably better remembered because of Pseudo-Dionysius than because of Acts. He’s hardly an obvious choice.
[2] In contrast, “matter” is entirely unknowable because matter as matter lacks any form. Presumably, matter that was simply matter without a form might be perceived by our senses but it would be alien to our mind. (Reading this book, I developed a greater appreciation for what H.P. Lovecraft might have been driving at with his alien Elder Gods and the indescribable horror of the “Color out of Space.”)
[3] In Aquinas, nothing is prior to Existence, which is God, with Truth being an aspect of Existence, as is the Good.
[4] Apophatic — “involving the practice of describing something by stating which characteristics it does not have.”
[5] Aquinas seems to punt on this issue by explaining that we will not understand God in this lifetime, but once we are in the Beatific Vision we will understand some part of God through the Light of Glory and God’s grace.
[6] “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.
[7] I chanced on this discussion of Edith Stein’s writing while searching for “analogia entis.”
“One of Stein’s posthumous publications was a scholarly essay, “Ways to Know God”, (in Stein 1993) on the Christian mystic, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. For Stein, Dionysius’ mystical theology is not a scientific discipline but a way to speak about God. Just as perception always points beyond itself, similarly our experience of the world points beyond itself to its divine source (1993: 27[99]). This world is the basis for natural theology. God is the “primary theologian” (Ur-Theologe; 1993: 27[100]) and the whole of creation is his symbolic theology. Affirmative theology is based on the analogia entis; negative theology is based on the dissimilarity between creatures and God. For Stein, negative theology “climbs the scale of creatures” to discover that at each level God is not found there: “We draw near to God by denying what he is not” (1993: 19[88]).
Edith Stein was a Jewish student of Edmund Husserl. She was a well-known philosopher in her day. She converted to Catholicism, became a nun, and was murdered by the Nazis. She was canonized as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
