Aron recently wrote a great post looking at some features of nothingness in the Zen and Christian traditions. People clearly got a little riled up, so I thought I’d stoke the flame a little by throwing Pseudo-Dionysius into the mix.
As far as “nothingness” goes, most would probably expect a chunk from the Mystical Theology, but I prefer to pull from The Divine Names for the more systematic questions. In ch 1, Denys lays out the theurgical nature of his project: all of this, he says, ultimately comes down to the incarnational call of the Trinity to us, that we “rise up to it.” So, all the ontology, the hermeneutics, the trinitarian theory, etc… is for the greater end of theosis. Sometimes I wonder if Denys thinks that the best thing to do is become a monk. Anyway, the theurgic end of all theology is important to keep in mind when trying to understand what Denys does next with the Trinity.
The short term goal of the Divine Names is to lay out the way in which our names for God actually do or do not refer (or cohere – whichever anachronistic hermeneutic you want to sock him with) to God. The problem is, we’re not actually referring to “some-thing”. There is no X that marks God’s spot, at least, not in any way that could be grasped by finite beings. And here is the great similarity to the discussion about Aron’s post. I’ll end with these quotes.
We leave behind us all notions of the divine. We call a halt to the activities of our minds and, to the extent that is proper, we approach the ray which transcends being. Here, in a manner no words can describe, preexisted all the goals of all knowledge and it is of a kind that neither intelligence nor speech can lay hold of it nor can it at all be contemplated since it surpasses everything and is wholly beyond our capacity to know it… And if all knowledge is of that which is and is limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcendsbeing must also transcend knowledge.
How then can we speak of the divine names? How can we do this is the Transcendent surpasses all discourse and all knowledge, if it abides beyond the read of mind and of being…? How can we enter upon this undertaking if the Godhead is superior to being and is unspeakable and unnameable?….
…Since the union of divinized minds with the Light beyond all deity occurs in the cessation of all intelligent activity, [then] the godlike unified minds who imitate these angels as far as possible praise it most appropriately through the denial of all beings.1
Like- from The Divine Names, Ch 1, PG 592D-593C, trans. Colm Luibheid (Paulist Press, 1987) ↩
What does it mean to deny all beings? I feel like it means a kind of exploratory going-past. That is, God’s names must be uttered, esp. in a liturgical context, precisely because this leads us beyond the being of our theurgical activities into the non-being of the Divine. Only through words do we move beyond words
Yes, words… AND material things. I think it’s especially important to note that for Denys it takes theurgic rituals that incorporate material stuff.
As far as ‘moving beyond’ goes, there’s a sense in which because the incarnate Christ, as incarnate, is completely coterminous with God, we can never really move beyond matter. but here’s where Denys is really paradoxical, and not dialectical. There’s no third that we dialectically arrive at, yet we must negate. It’s part of the theurgic process. I’m not sure what that really means, or if he’s even being consistent. but it’s what he says anyways.
Howdy. Long time no talky. Does Denys use “theurgy” or is that your gloss? I know the neo-Platonist philosophers commonly used this term . . .
mat,
dan and I have been working on this angle for a while….so I am going to speak for him!
Gregory Shaw noted in his article on Deny and Theurgy that theourgia shows up nearly fifty times in the Dionysian works. Unfortunately the Christian translators (in the Classics of Western Spirituality) never reveal that in their translation.
Josh
Thanks Josh. Parker, in his very literal trans uses deification or some variant on that.. sometimes even three or four times in one sentence. I think that in the 1890’s, the term theurgy just wasn’t available to him. There’s no excuse for Rorem and Luibheid.
So could one of you take a stab at a more precise definition of the term. I mean, at first blush, I thought the neo-platonic usage tended towards divine invocation or evocation, but in a process focused more or less on human engagement. In theosis, at least as the notion is discussed by Nyssa and Maximos (the concept is clearly in Nyssa, though he doesn’t use the term), it is clear that the economy is Divine, that while humans must freely engage in giving their hearts to God, it is always God “who provides the increase,” and this not ever as a “reward” or payment (i.e., in economic exchange for a rite or etc.), but at God’s discretion, pedagogically, and based on God’s assessment of whether or not the heart has moved toward God (since “God alone searches the heart. . . “). So I took theurgy to imply a largely human economy, whereas theosis primarily focuses on a divine economy. Help me out here. I haven’t read Pseudo-D.
I’ll bite! I think you have a good schema going. Traditionally, theurgy has been described just as you lay it out, that is the kind of human effort to climb back up through the cosmological hierarchy.
I do think though that Iamblichus in “On the Mysteries” is a little more “religious” in his understanding of the rites. First, the language of the rites (the invocation and evocation as you named it) is divinely given. This means two things: first the human is the recipient of a divine favor/action even in the theurgical rites; and two, this language has to be preserved since it is divinely spoken. Though the first might sound more like Nyssa and Augustine, and thus Christian, the latter is what I think separates theurgy from theosis, or more precisely liturgy.
The piece I think is fascinating is that Iamblichus is clear that theurgical formation is not really about human effort. He wouldn’t use the language of grace, but the initial action is always from the divine side. The question for me is more about the nature of liturgy and worship than about theosis. I am still trying to unpack a kind of comparison between theurgy and Christian liturgy. Suffice it to say, I think its no coincidence that Julian “The Apostate” returned to the Neo-Platonic theurgists to replace the role of Christian worship in the late Roman Empire.
Interesting. Thanks, that helps a lot. Theurgy then sounds at least remotely consonant with some Hindu guru rites, wherein the “inner state” of the trainee doesn’t really matter at all–what matters is that she just *do* all of the rites in correct sequence and number. And when she does, her enlightenment, or the particular gift accompanying the rites, inevitably follows.
Along those lines, I agree that the Orthodox Christian conception is distinct: Nyssa, for instance, says numerous times, “it is not the standing for long hours in prayer, or the making of many prostrations, which brings one to God, but the giving of the heart to God.” He goes on to say that if one’s ascetic efforts bear no fruit–the fruits of the Spirit–they were utterly useless. Worse, they make the ascetic out to have been a fool. The trick is that, on account of this understanding of ascesis as wholly secondary (training for a race is good, but is not to be confused with running the race), he nonetheless is quite clear about it’s importance, too!
I realize I switched to ascesis when you were talking about liturgy. The two don’t completely overlap, but I think that some of the logic applies in both cases. I mean, current Eastern Orthodox understanding of the liturgy is such that its effectiveness is not “automatic.” The priest may not celebrate without the people, and the people are not adjuncts: if they are not praying truly (from the heart, where God alone judges the heart), nothing occurs! So St Theophan the Recluse will say that true prayer is prayer from the heart (i.e., basically, with the whole being–in rapt attention); when that exceeds one’s capacity, praying with the mind alone (i.e., consciously concentrating on the words and their meaning, is a partial form of prayer that God also honors–in part on account of the effort). But inattentive prayer, he says, is no prayer at all! B/c the whole point is the communion of the heart with God. Which, again, is a totally different economy than in Hindu guru rites, and possibly than in theurgical rites.
All of which returns me to my initial question: so what is Pseudo-D doing w/ the term “theurgy”? How does he use it?