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teaches secretly, a flashing darkness which is neither body nor figure nor shape, which has no quantity, no quality, no weight, which is not in a place and does not see, has no sensitivity, is neither soul nor mind, has no imagination or opinion, is neither number nor order nor greatness, is not a substance, not eternity, not time, not obscurity, not error, not light, not truth . . . " (Theol. myst. passim).
How to speak of such nonentity and nonidentity if not by a language whose signs have no literal and univocal meaning but are "open" to contrasting interpretations? Dionysius speaks, for his negative theology, of symbols that are not translatable allegories. From a Neoplatonic perspective, we must say of the source of the cosmic emanation something which is true and false at the same timesince such a Source is beyond any rational knowledge and, from our point of view, appears as mere Nothingness. This contradictoriness of Neoplatonic symbols seems to share the ambiguity of the romantic symbol.
Nevertheless, the Neoplatonism of Dionysiusand, furthermore, that of his commentators such as Aquinasis not a "strong" one: medieval Neoplatonist philosophers tried to translate the pantheistic idea of emanation into one of "participation." It is true that the One is absolutely transcendent and infinitely far from us, that we are made of a different "fabric'' since we are the mere litter of His creative energy, but He is not contradictory in Himself. Contradictoriness belongs to our discourses about Him and arises from our imperfect knowledge of Him. But the knowledge He has of Himself is totally unambiguous. This is a very important point because, as we shall see, the Hermetic Platonism of the Renaissance maintains that the very core of every secret knowledge is the faith in the deep contradictoriness of reality. On the contrary, for medieval theology both contradictoriness and ambiguity are merely semiotic, not ontological.
Naturally, since we must speak of the Unspeakable, we name it Goodness, Truth, Beauty, Light, Jealousy, and so on, but these terms, says Dionysius, can be applied to Him only "supersubstantially." Moreover, since our divine names will always be inadequate, it is indispensable to choose them according to a criterion of dissimilarity. It is dangerous to name God Beauty or Light, because one can believe that such appellations convey some of His real qualities. We should rather call Him Lion, Panther, Bear, Monster. We should apply to Him the most provocative adjectives so that it be clear that the similarity we are looking for escapes us or can only be glimpsed at the cost of a disproportioned proportion (De coel. hier. 2).
Despite this, such a symbolic way of speaking has nothing to do with

 
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