Mystical Theology 1

ON MYSTICAL THEOLOGY, TO TIMOTHY. Chapter I. Trinity beyond being, beyond divinity, beyond goodness, guardian of the Christians' divine wisdom, direct us toward the supremely unknown, supremely radiant, and loftiest summit of the mystical scriptures.

There, in the supremely luminous darkness of the silence that initiates into hidden mysteries, the simple, absolute, and unchangeable mysteries of theology lie veiled; there, in what is most dark, that which is supremely manifest shines beyond all radiance, and in what is utterly intangible and invisible it superabundantly fills with the splendours of beauty beyond beauty the minds that have no eyes.

But you, dear Timothy, in your earnest exercise concerning the mystical contemplations, leave behind the senses and the intellectual activities, and all things sensible and intelligible, and all that is not and that is, and strain upward unknowingly, so far as is possible, toward union with him who is above all being and knowledge.

For by the unrestrained and absolute ecstasy of yourself, pure and free from all, you shall be drawn upward toward the supersubstantial ray of the divine darkness, when you have put away all things and been released from all.

But see to it that none of the uninitiated overhear these things.

By these I mean those who are entangled in the things that are, and who imagine that nothing exists supersubstantially beyond the things that are, but suppose that by their own knowledge they know him who has made darkness his hiding-place.

And if the divine initiations are beyond such men, what is one to say of those even more uninitiated, who characterize the cause that is set above all things by the lowest of the things that are, and who deny that it surpasses in any way the godless and manifold forms they fashion?

Thus indeed the divine Bartholomew says that theology is both copious and very small, and that the Gospel is broad and great, and yet concise. To my mind he grasped this with surpassing insight: that the good cause of all is both rich in words and brief in speech, and at the same time wordless, as having neither speech nor thought, because it transcends all things supersubstantially, and is truly and without veil revealed only to those who pass beyond all that is defiled and all that is pure, who ascend above every ascent of all holy summits, who leave behind all the divine lights and sounds and heavenly words, and enter into the darkness where, as the scriptures say, he truly is who is beyond all.

For not without reason is the divine Moses first commanded to purify himself, and then to be set apart from those who are not so purified; and after all this purification he hears the many-voiced trumpets, and sees many lights flashing forth pure and far-streaming rays.

Then he is set apart from the multitude, and together with the chosen priests he attains to the summit of the divine ascents.

And yet even there he does not come into the presence of God himself, nor does he behold him (for he is invisible), but only the place where he stood.

(This signifies, I think, the meanings of the things that are subordinate to him who transcends all, through which his presence, which is above every conception, is shown forth, walking upon the intelligible heights of his most holy places.)

And then he is released even from the things seen and from those who see, and enters into the darkness of unknowing that is truly mystical, in which he shuts off all apprehensions belonging to knowledge, and comes to be in what is wholly intangible and invisible, belonging entirely to him who is beyond all things and to nothing at all, neither to himself nor to another; and by the cessation of all knowledge he is united, according to the better part, with him who is altogether unknown, and by knowing nothing he knows in a manner above the mind.

It is according to this that we pray to come to be in the supremely luminous darkness, and through unseeing and unknowing to see and to know him who is beyond seeing and knowing—by this very not-seeing and not-knowing—for this is truly to see and to know; and to praise him who is beyond being in a manner beyond being, through the negation of all the things that are, just as those who fashion a statue out of the natural block remove all the obstructions that hinder the pure vision of what is hidden, and by that removal alone bring to light the hidden beauty in and of itself.

It is necessary, as I think, to praise the negations in a manner opposite to the affirmations.

For those affirmations we set down beginning from the first things, and descending through the intermediate to the last.

But here, ascending from the last things up to the most primary, we strip away all things, that we may know without veil that unknowing which is veiled by all that is knowable in all the things that are, and that we may see that supersubstantial darkness which is hidden by all the light in the things that are.

Now in the Theological Outlines we praised the chief points of affirmative theology: how the divine and good nature is called one, and how triune;

what is the fatherhood and sonship spoken of in respect to it;

what the theology of the Spirit means to declare;

how from the immaterial and indivisible Good the lights that are at the heart of goodness sprang forth, and how in their sprouting they have remained without departing from the abiding that is coeternal in him, in themselves, and in one another.

How the supersubstantial Jesus is given substantial being in the truths of human nature, and all the other things made manifest by the scriptures that have been praised in the Theological Outlines.

And in the work On the Divine Names: how he is named good, how being, how life and wisdom and power, and all the other things belonging to the intelligible divine naming.

And in the Symbolic Theology: what are the metonymies transferred from sensible things to divine things; what are the divine forms; what are the divine figures and parts and instruments; what are the divine places and worlds; what the angers; what the griefs and the wraths; what the drunkennesses and revelries; what the oaths and what the curses; what the sleeps and what the wakings; and all the other sacredly fashioned shapings that belong to the symbolic representation of God.

And I suppose you have observed how the last things are more copious in words than the first.

For it was fitting that the Theological Outlines and the unfolding of the Divine Names should be more concise than the Symbolic Theology.

Since the more we ascend toward the heights, the more our words are contracted by the comprehensive overviews of intelligible things.

And now, entering into the darkness that is beyond mind, we shall find not brevity of speech, but complete wordlessness and unthinkability.

And there, while the discourse descended from above to the last things, it was broadened in proportion to the measure of its descent, toward a corresponding multitude.

But now, ascending from the things below toward that which is set above, the discourse is contracted according to the measure of its ascent; and after all ascent it will be wholly without voice, and will be wholly united to him who is beyond utterance.

[Why, when setting down that which is above every affirmation, one ought to set down the hypothetical affirmation beginning from what is more akin to it,

but when negating that which is above every negation, one ought to negate beginning from the things more remote from it.]

Is it not the case that he is rather life and goodness than air or stone?

And rather that he does not carouse and is not enraged, than that he is not spoken of nor thought of?

We say, then, that the cause of all, being above all, is neither without being nor without life, neither without reason nor without mind;

nor is it a body, nor has it shape or form, nor quality or quantity or bulk;

nor is it in a place, nor is it seen, nor does it have any sensible contact;

nor does it perceive, nor is it perceptible;

nor does it have disorder and disturbance, troubled by material passions; nor is it powerless, being subject to sensible mishaps; nor is it in any want of light;

nor does it have alteration or corruption or division or privation or flux, nor anything else of the things sensible, nor is it any of these.

Again, ascending, we say that it is neither soul nor mind, nor does it possess imagination or opinion or reason or thought;

nor is it reason nor thought, nor is it spoken nor thought of;

nor is it number nor order, nor greatness nor smallness, nor equality nor inequality, nor likeness nor unlikeness;

nor does it stand still nor move nor keep at rest;

nor does it have power, nor is it power, nor light;

nor is it being, nor eternity, nor time;

nor is there any intelligible contact with it, nor knowledge, nor is it truth, nor kingship, nor wisdom; nor is it one, nor oneness, nor divinity, nor goodness;

nor is it Spirit, in the sense that we know, nor sonship, nor fatherhood, nor anything else known to us or to any other of the things that are;

nor is it any of the things that are not, nor any of the things that are; nor do the things that are know it as it is, nor does it know the things that are as they are;

nor is there speech of it, nor name, nor knowledge;

nor is it darkness nor light, nor error nor truth;

nor is there in general any affirmation or negation of it; but in making the affirmations and negations of the things that come after it, we neither affirm nor negate it, since the all-perfect and unific cause of all is above every affirmation, and the preeminence of him who is simply released from all and beyond the whole is above every negation.