Mystical Theology II: “Hymning”

Continuation of commentary on Dionysius

Before this, you may want to read parts I.i, I.ii, and I.iii.

“We pray that we might approach this super-luminous darkness, and that through unseeing we may see that which is beyond vision, and through unknowing know that which is beyond knowing, by the very act of not seeing and not knowing respectively — for this is actual seeing and knowing — and that we may hymn in a way beyond being that which is Beyond Being, through the abstraction (aphaeresis) of all beings, just as those who make animated statues carve away everything that has been put in the way of pure sight of the hidden, and only by abstraction reveal the beauty hidden within it. So I think one has to hymn these abstractions (aphaereseis) in the opposite way to the affirmations (theseis). That is, we have put the affirmations in order beginning from the highest instances, through the middle, and descending to the last. Conversely, we abstract everything by making ascents from the the last to the absolutely primary. That way, we can know unveiled the Unknowing (agnōsia) that is shrouded beneath all the objects of knowledge among all beings, and can see that darkness beyond being which is hidden beneath all the light among beings.” (My translation)

The first verb of this section should remind us what the Areopagite is about here: his aim is not to make dry philosophical statements about God, but to pray. He prefaced the Mystical Theology with a prayer to the Holy Trinity and, easy though it is to lose sight of it amid all the detail, this prayerful approach frames the whole treatise. Here, we find out why, as Dionysius introduces a new term: the verb hymnein, “to hymn.”

Dionysius is adamant that we can not properly speak of God, but only to God. This is what “hymning” conveys. He is absolutely not aiming to “define” God. In case this is not already clear enough, here he relates the end of the Christian spiritual life: not to define God, but to see and so know Him in a way which transcends what we consider knowledge or vision, and so is better compared to entering darkness than light. We can imagine light all too easily. The divine light exceeds our imagination to such a degree that it is equally valid to describe it as a kind of darkness.

To clarify this point Dionysius employs Plotinus’ motif of a sculptor. When we praise God in positive terms, we start with the highest we can imagine, particularly God’s Oneness, Goodness, Wisdom and so on, working our way down through similes and metaphors that are derivative from these highest affirmations. One might draw the parallel, though Dionysius does not here, with a pictorial artist, or even with the inspired writers of Holy Scripture, who begin with a blank page, as it were, and fill it with pictorial or verbal images. The sculptor, however, does exactly the opposite. He takes a block of marble or wood, and rather than adding to or imposing anything on it, he “abstracts,” that is, cuts away to reveal the image within.

This is the way of privation or abstraction (aphaeresis), and Dionysius sees it as a necessary complement to the way of affirmation. Dionysius is often spoken of as a progenitor or “negative theology.” This is only half of the truth. For him, the negative and positive are equally necessary. We must both affirm all the images of God revealed in Scripture and, at the same time, deny them, recognising our inability to comprehend God through mundane reason. But again, I must stress, this is not merely a game to be played in the head. This is an act of prayer, and essential to how we address God in praise, most literally in music.

As I have written before elsewhere, Dionysius’ sculptor motif reminds me of those Buddhist sculptors who take a piece of wood and seek to work with the knots and grain within to bring out its internal “Buddha nature,” rather than imposing a predefined pattern on their work. This is not an idle allusion. Dionysius, more shockingly than is immediately apparent, seems to be drawing a parallel with the pagan practices in the ancient world of making “animated statues.” This was a porto-theurgical practice aimed at making, in a word, idols infused with the spirit of their deities. Mindful of Dionysius “origin story,” with Paul in the Areopagus pointing out, among the various statues of Greek gods, the empty plinth to the “Unknown God,” one might wonder whether Dionysius’ sculpted image of God leaves anything at all: is everything carved away? Are we left with a vacuum of kenotic emptiness?

This all sounds rather Zen, but I am tempted to think not, in the end. For Dionysius, grace does not destroy nature (a motif which S Thomas Aquinas would famously borrow). It is “in,” “beneath” and “among” things, not despite them or without them, that we come to see the invisible light and know the unknowable. Things are not merely “fingers pointing at the moon.” All things in this world are expressive to some degree of God, and indeed God makes use of images of things in this world to express Himself in Scripture. Nor is it a coincidence that Jesus Himself was a carpenter, who fashioned things from wood. Every time we employ our God-given imaginations, we share in His image-making work. This was one of St John of Damascus’ defences against the iconoclasts.

Yet the images lead us beyond image, and so it seems entirely apt to me that Dionysius should employ a musical term, “hymning,” to describe our approach to God. Music, after all, is capable of expressing what words and pictures cannot. Poetry, including that of so much of the Old Testament, is the closest verbal form of communication to that of music, as Nietzsche noted in his Birth of Tragedy. Although poetry is incapable of music’s immediacy of expression, the gaps between the words, or their dissonance and apparent meaninglessness in formal logical terms can express what reason alone cannot. It can use images to lift us beyond images and express the inexpressible. This is like St Paul’s experience of the Holy Spirit praying through us by its wordless groans when our words are not enough. Dionysius, going further, says that our words are never enough: but they are necessary nonetheless.

The expressive “space between words” in poetry is something like what the Japanese would call ma 間, the space and distance between things necessary for harmonious proportion. Ma is observed, for example, in the blank space on calligraphic composition, or an ink painting, or the space between the flowers in an ikebana arrangement, as well as in Japanese music — and even in martial arts, where it incorporates timing and well as the vital space and angle of attack between opponents. It also forms the second character of the word for “person,” 人間 ningen, though it is read differently as gen in this compound. That is, there is something about humans that is fundamentally relational, grounded in the space between us. I wonder whether this notion of persons defined by interrelationship may have some bearing on Trinitarian theology, to which Dionysius will allude in the next section of the MT.

Anyway, to recap this section: through the prayer of hymning, we dare not define but instead address God, using the words of praise and images that He has given us in creation and in Scripture, yet all the while growing in our awareness that none of them can encompass Him. So we are oriented in worship towards God and ultimately will come to know Him in a way that exceeds words and see Him in a way that exceeds vision. This unknowing knowledge and unseeing vision constitutes the aim of the Christian life, which is union with God.

A final caution, which I cannot state often enough: this is not a game of mental gymnastics, nor is it a “spiritual exercise” to be undertaken alone. As will become clear, Dionysius regards “hymning” as part of the worship of the entire Church on earth and in heaven, the Body of Christ into which God yearns to incorporate the entire cosmos, “that all things may be all in Christ.” Hymning is the most proper “theology,” or verbal approach to God, but it is ultimately consummated in theurgy (EH 3.14), the work of God, effected historically in Christ’s Incarnation and now through the Sacraments of the Church, in communal celebration.