Who really KNOWS God?
Two classic Platonic Christian works which address this question are both attributed to the man who was converted by St Paul at the Areopagus, a council in Athens.
And this happened shortly after Paul had identified the Greek statue of the Unknown God as the same God he had come to preach: `A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus.' (Acts 18:34). Eusebius tells us that this same Dionysius became the Bishop of Athens.1
But modern scholarship dates the references in he writings to the 5th or 6th century, and in the same way that the Apostles Creed is not believed to have been actually written by the Apostles, but is an attempt to express their belief, the works of Dionysius express the truth held by Christians influenced by Plato. They regarded the true world as One pure and eternal world which is only imitated by this changeable physical world of the senses which we now inhabit.
The Mystical Theology begins like this:
` O Trinity
beyond being
beyond divinity
beyond goodness
and guide of Christians in divine wisdom
direct us to the mystical summits
more than unknown and beyond light... '.
What could these terms: `beyond being', `beyond goodness', and `more than unknown' mean? To me, they express the Trinitarian Christian God as the creator and the source of our being, but also as a source so beyond our being that he himself does not depend on us being at all. He is not just the top story of our own universe when we work backwards from our physical to intellectual selves and beyond.
He is not dependent on anything so he does not need the creation in order to exist. In the same way, he is `beyond divinity' and `beyond goodness' because they too are of the creation - human ideas and expressions which he does not depend upon. In this way he is indeed the unknown God which St Paul identified him with. But, and this is important in The Mystical Theology, to be `more than unknown' to a human is not necessarily to become known - because God himself cannot logically be contained within a human mind he has created.
It is for this reason that Dionysius moves onto advising his reader ( presented in the Mystical Theology as Timothy) to:
` ...abandon all sensation and all intellectual activities, all that is sensed and intelligible, all non-beings and all beings,
thus you will unknowingly be elevated, as far as possible, to the unity of that beyond being and knowledge.'
We have the identification of the Trinity of Father Son and Holy Spirit with the One God, but also, the assertion that God does not depend upon these or any other mental constructs or upon anything else at all. And we then have the assertion that this is a state that we too might participate in: `by the irrepressible and absolving ecstastis of yourself and of all, and going away from all'.
What this means we cannot say, but the suggestion is that it feeds us and is to be experienced directly, without interpretation or description, once we drop created attempts at it - because it is not created itself. Dionysius warns Timothy that this is not for the `uninitiated' who are 'entangled in beings' and who `imagine nothing to be beyond beingly beyond beings' - a phrase which is itself a little tangled!!
But, a phrase which points to a presence behind all things - rather than an absence. The warning is disconcerting as it seems to set the Mystical Theology apart for a select few, which is the mark of a cult - but it should be remembered that Jesus himself spoke of those who had `ears to hear' (Matthew 11.15) and Paul said: `God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear.' (Romans 11.8).
What Dionysyius is saying is that knowledge is of eternal truths, while belief is of ephemeral and contingent things. This is a Platonic statement, but The Mystical Theology sets it firmly in the Judeo Christian tradition:
`It is not to be taken lightly that the divine Moses was ordered first to purify himself, and again to be separated from those who were not pure ... yet ... he does not come to be with God himself; he does not see God -- for God is unseen -- but the place where God is ... and then Moses abandons those who see and what is seen and enters into the really mystical darkness of unknowing ... knowing beyond intellect by knowing nothing.'
What is it to `know nothing' - could it mean to know that God himself is no-thing - in that he is not a thing but the source of any and every-thing. The stress in all these works is that God is ineffable, and the divine name of God is a name. This going beyond of language about God to the source of our ability to create language about God is open to suspicion because its poetry is seen in other traditions.
When Dionysius talks of the cause of all as: `not greatness, not smallness, not equality, not inequality, not likeness, not unlikeness, not unmoved, not moved ... not something among what is not, not something among what is' one could be listening to the Upanishads.
And yet there is not only the message that All is One, but that all is from God, and the distinction that all that we can see and know is only a part of this God, and not the one God himself. Dionysius distinguishes between Platonism and Christianity by saying being is derived from God alone, and that divine names are names for the One God. All of this is echoed by continuing references to Christian scripture and to Jesus. These works are concerned with the reality behind the word, and this can be a deeply fulfilling view.
Existence exists in a very real way, but not here with our temporary existence and our contingent description. The Cappadocian Church Fathers themselves are said to have stated that they believed in God, but not that he exists!!2 But this is not a statement of atheism, rather an affirmation that God's existence is not ours -- and ours is the only existence human beings can positively describe.
The title of the last chapter affirms this in another way: `The cause of anything intelligible is not anything intelligible', and the first of the Letters which follows, to Gaius, picks up the theme: `If someone sees God and has understood what has been seen, he has not seen God but something of God among what is and what is known.'
The New Testament describes God as he who: `dwells in unapproachable light, and whom no human being has seen or can see' (Tim 6:16). So also the final Letter, 5, to Dorotheus: `divine darkness is the inaccessible light in which God is said to dwell invisibly'. It goes on: `into this darkness come all who are worthy to see and know God', and refers to David's statement that: `such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.' (Psalm 139:6).
The letters interpret Paul's statement that God's judgements are `unsearchable' (Rom 11:33) his gift `indescribable' (2 Cor 9:15) and his peace `transcends all understanding' (Phil 4:7) as demonstrating how Paul `discovered that beyond all and has known that beyond intellect-ion: it is beyond all, being cause of all.'
Dinosysius explains Jesus' miracles as: `overfull and always beyond being coming truly into being' and showing us: `a new divine-human activity.'
He firmly expresses Christian faith: `The sudden is what is brought forward, against hope ... I believe the theology has intimated this in reference to the love of man in Christ: the beyond being had proceeded from hiddenness into a manifested taking on of being in a human way. It is hidden after the manifestation, or, to speak more divinely, it is hidden in the manifestation. For this remains hidden about Jesus: the mystery in him is not brought forward by any logos or intellect. Rather, it remains ineffable in being spoken, and unknown in being thought.'
SO, ineffable in being spoken, and unknown in being thought. The task of all scripture may be to express the inexpressible, but these works express Christian doctrine in an ultimate way, impossible with our positive statements about `knowing God'. PROVIDED GOD IS REAL, IF ANYONE IS REALLY KNOWING, IT IS NOT US.
Footnotes -
1 Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, series two volume one. Eusebius' Church History (III.4.11) http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-01/Npnf2-01-08.htm#P1497_696002 visited on 23 Oct 06
2 Negative Theology in the Christian Tradition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology visited on 23 Oct 06
Bibliography -
Jones, John David., 'The Hidden and Manifest Divinity: A study and translation of the Divine Names and Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite'. (Boston: Boston College Graduate School, 1976)
- Louth, Andrew. 'Denys the Areopagite'. (USA. Morehouse Barlow 1989. ISBN 0 8192 1486 8)
