Pseudo Dionysius: The Mystical Theology

Chapter 2: How one should be united, and attribute praises, to the Cause of all things who is beyond all things.

"I pray we could come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would really be to see and to know: to praise the Trancendent One in a trancending way, namely through the denial of all beings. We would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by this act of clearing aside (denial) they show up the beauty that is hidden.

Now it seems to me that we should praise the denials quite differently than we do the assertions. When we made assertions we began with the first things, moved down through intermediate terms until we reached the last things. But now as we climb from the last things up to the most primary we deny all things so that we may unhiddenly know that unknowing which itself is hidden from all those possessed of knowing amid all beings, so that we may see above being that darkness concealed from all the light among beings."

Pseudo Dionysius, the Complete Works © 1987, Paulist Press