The Epistemological Hope Aquinas Versus

The Epistemological Hope: Aquinas versus other
receptions of Pseudo-Dionysius on the Beatific

Vision
Alan P. Darley, University of Nottingham, edited April, 2017
And I, who now was drawing ever nigher

Towards the end of yearning, as was due,
Quenched in my soul the burning of desire.
(Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, line 46)1
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I
know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
(1 Corinthians 13:12)
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in September 2014, the

celebrated cosmologist Stephen Hawking confidently reaffirmed his outspoken
atheism: There is no God. I am an atheist. 2 Nevertheless he could declare
optimistically In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality outside of the reach of the
human mind.3 In making this astonishing claim Hawking shares a common faith
assumption with both Platonism and Christianity regarding the intelligibility of reality.
He implies that existence is coterminous with the rational. To be is to be intelligible.
The Real is the rational as Hegel would put it. But is this epistemological optimism
justified on atheism? For Hawking, the Mind of God, spoken of in his early popular
work A Brief History of Time and needed for grasping A theory of everything has
now been shrunk to the size of the mind of man. He claims this is all he ever meant
by the celebrated phrase, mind of God, which may be true, but then surely only a
wild leap of faith could make the connection between everything and the human
mind. Why should such a connection exist at all? The everything which is
supposed to be intelligible preceded the particular minds thrown up without purpose
by evolution. The atheist, but anti-reductionist, Thomas Nagel observes:
1
Dante, Paradiso, tr. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds (Penguin, 1973), Canto XXXIII, line 46.
2
El Mundo, Sept 24th, 2014 tr. A. Darley
3
El Mundo, Sept 24th, 2014 tr. A. Darley
1
Even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of
nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow
gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at
home in the universe than is secularly comfortable.4
From the perspective of the phenomenological reduction, it seems that meaning

can never truly arrive, since there is no thought which encompasses all thought.
For Derrida this results in an endless semantic deferral which he famously labelled
Diffrance. 5 The horizon is always before us. Thus a Theory of Everything sought
by Hawking is a priori impossible. Timeless truths have been deconstructed. Nothing
is left but the play (jeu) of signifiers with no signified on the eve and aftermath of
philosophy.6 Derridas nihilistic vision (nihilistic in that it denies the ultimate
intelligibility of being and therefore reduces it to nothing 7) has in turn given birth to
Radical Theology for whom hope is at best a temporary placeholder (John D.
Caputo) with no determinate content.8 Religion is reduced to the passionate search
for the things we care about, the restlessness of our heart in the midst of a
mysterious world.9 But for Caputo there is no telos to this search, 10 which is likely to
result in the opposite outcome of despair rather than passion.
This paper argues, in contrast, for an epistemological terminus that is

simultaneously mysterious yet replete with content. A return to the Patristic teaching
on the beatific vision as developed by Thomas Aquinas, compared with other, more
4
Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 130.
5
Derrida, Jacques, How to avoid speaking: Denials in Kamuf and Rottenberg (ed.) Psyche:Inventions of the
Other, Vol 2 (Stanford University Press, 2008), and Meaning must await being said or written in order to
inhabit itself, and in order to become, by differing from itself, what it is: meaning It is because writing is
inaugural, in the fresh sense of the word, that it is dangerous and anguishing. It does not know where it is going,
no knowledge can keep it from the essential precipitation toward the meaning that it constitutes and that is ,
primarily, its future. Writing and Difference (Routledge, 1967, 2002), p.11.
6
Jacques Derrida, Differance in Kearney and Rainwater (ed.), The Continental Philosophy Reader, (Routledge,
2003), p.455. This move can be traced back to Saussure for whom language is self-referential. By contrast the
church father Gregory of Nyssa can say We do not say that the nature of things was of human invention but
only their names. Contra Eunomium ii. 283, cited in Frances M. Young, Biblical exegesis and the formation of
Christian culture (Cambridge, 1977), p.141. Hence Young comments: the names revealed in scripture have
sufficient grounding in reality, pr perhaps we should say refer sufficiently meaningfully, to form a basis for
theological argument. (p.142).
7
Eric D. Perl, writes that the hallmark of modern nihilism, may be said to consist most fundamentally in the
denial of the intelligibility of being. Theophany: the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Dionysius the Aeropagite
(SUNY Press, 2007), p.112
8
John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: a theology of the event (Indiana University Press, 2006), p 297.
9
John D. Caputo, Truth, philosophy in transit (Penguin, 2013), p.59.
10
See John D. Caputo, Truth, philosophy in transit (Penguin, 2013), pp.13-15.
2
agnostic interpreters of Pseudo-Dionysius, past and present, offers a more promising
basis for epistemology than that offered either by postmodern philosophy or by
Radical Theology.
What may be known of God in patria?
What is the extent and mode of our knowledge of God in Heaven according to
Thomas Aquinas? To follow this enquiry in a dialectical style similar to Thomas
Summa we could begin with the thesis that it seems we can know nothing of God in
patria, because Thomas says in his famous introduction to the Summa:
We cannot know what God is, but only what He is not. 11
This agnostic conclusion agrees with Eastern Orthodox theologian Christos

Yannaras who denies that natural theology can lead us to any objective certainty; at
best, he says, it offers a choice or direction of which we are capable. 12
Even more strongly, French theologian and phenomenologist, Jean-Luc Marion in his
2001 work In Excess insists that theology does not refer to God at all, it does not tell
us anything about God13, but is constituted entirely by its liturgical use, as an anti-
realist discourse merely addressed to God.14 Marion argues that theologians should
replace what he calls a metaphysics of presence with a pragmatic theology of
absence.15
11
ST, 1a, q. 3 introduction. See also SCG Bk 1, ch 14; In Boethius de Trinitate, 1.2; De Pot. 7.5 ad 14. c.f.
Plotinus, Enneads, V.3.14.
12
Christos Yannaras, On the absence and unknowability of God (T & T Clark International, 2005), p. 64.
13
Heidegger took the same position before him. Martin Heidegger, Forward to the German Edition of
Phenomenology and Theology tr. James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo (eds..), The Piety of Thinking: Essays by
Martin Heidegger (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London, 1976), pp.12, 15. Theology is not a
science of God but of faith or of the mode of existence of the believer (p.14).
14
Similarly John D. Caputo regards God-talk as performative and not constative. It might even be the case that
the name of God used in a constative, as when I say There is a God, is not as important as its use in a prayer
or in a sentence like God be with you. So, the question Augustine would have us consider is whether the name
of God is the name of a being to which the word God refers, like the tree outside my window, or whether it is, as
Kierkegaard says, the name of a deed. John D. Caputo, Truth, philosophy in transit (Penguin, 2013), p.71.
15
Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess, Studies of Saturated Phenomena, tr. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud,
Perspectives in Continental Philosophy (Fordham University Press, New York, 2002), pp. 156-158.
3
But, sed contra (!), in Thomas opening section of the Prima Pars of the Summa, he
explicitly answers the question Whether God is the subject of divine science in the
affirmative.
Respondeo dicendum quod Deus est subiectum huius scientiae. 16
In seeking to escape Heideggers charge of ontotheology, Marion and Yannaros

have overlooked the fact that although God may not be an object in the
Heideggerian sense of something that can be represented, 17 God may still be
legitimately named an individual analogically by virtue of his incommunicability, in
order to avoid the danger of monism or of any confusion between creature and
Creator18, as Thomas explains in greater depth in his Commentary on the Book of
Causes.19 Similarly He may be named substance (or as Dionysius would prefer
by virtue of his self subsistence and Person20 by virtue of the
incommunicable existence of the divine nature. Even though we may not know his
definition, still Gods effects of nature and grace can function as a working substitute
for a definition in the sacra divina of which God is the Subject.21
16
Respondeo dicendum quod Deus est subiectum huius scientiae. ST 1a, 1, 7 resp. Strangely this appears to be
contradicted by Thomas statement in De Spiritualibus Creaturis, in which he argues, following Boethius (De
Trinitate, II, Patrologia Latina, 64 (1250D)), that since a simple form cannot be a subject, If there is any form
which is exclusively an act, such as the divine essence, it cannot in any sense be a subject. Aquinas, On
Spiritual Substances: De Spiritualibus Creaturis, a.1 ad 1 tr. Mary C. FitzPatrick and John J. Wellmuth
(Marquetter University Press, 1949), p.24. But this seems to be talking about God being pure Form and not
subject to accidents. Boethius, De Trinitate, II, lines 85-95, tr. Eric. C. Kenyon,
http://www.pvspade.com/Logic/docs/BoethiusDeTrin.pdf accessed 19/04/17.
17
Martin Heidegger, The Theological Discussion of the Problem of a Non-Objectifying Thinking and Speaking
in Todays Theology Some Pointers to Its Major Aspects, in James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo (eds.), The
Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin Heidegger (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and London, 1976),
pp. 26-27.
18
SCG Bk 1, ch 26, esp par 3. See also ST 1, q. 29, a. 3, ad 4.
19
But the first cause is something individual, distinct from all others (aliquid individualiter ens ab aliis
distinctum). Otherwise it would not have any activity. For it does not belong to universals either to act or to be
acted upon. Therefore, it seems that it is necessary to say that the first cause has yliatum, i.e. something that
receives being. But to this he responds that the infinity of divine being, inasmuch as it is not limited throough
some recipient, takes in the first cause the place of the yliatum that is in other things. This is so because, just as
in other things the individuation of a commonly received thing comes about through what the recipient is, so
divine goodness, as well as being, is individuated by its very purity through the fact that it is not received in
anything. Due to the fact that it is thus individuated by its own purity, it has the ability to infuse the intelligence
and other things with goodness. Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, tr. Vincent A. Guagliardo, OP;
Charles R.Hess, OP; and Richard C. Taylor (Catholic University of America Press, 1996), Proposition 9;64 p.72.
20
ST 1, q. 29, a. 3, ad. 4. Interestingly Dionysius nowhere uses the word person in the Greek form of
of the distinctions in the Godhead, unlike his Cappodocean predecessors and unlike Aquinas use of
the Latin translation, persona. See Sarah Klitenic Wear and John Dillon, Dionysius the Areopagite and the
Neoplatonist tradition: Despoiling the Hellenes (Ashgate, 2007), p. 44.
21
ST 1a, 29, 3, ad. 4
4
The limits of Thomas negative theology
Truly for Aquinas, We cannot know what God is, but only what He is not. yet it is
important to recognise that the predicate what God is carries for him a specific,
technical meaning. Following the Aristotelian taxonomy of science, what God is
references the quiddity of the subject under investigation.22 Within this Aristotelian
framework, the knowledge that a subject is differs from what a subject is.23 Thomas
is speaking of the latter without denying the positive truth of the former. Furthermore,
the negative aspect of Thomas theology, (what He is not,) 24 is not intended to
exclude negative knowledge. In other words this statement is affirming that we can
know what God is not! It is not a statement of agnosticism. If we were to have any
doubt about this, Summa Contra Gentiles Book 1.2 clarifies the point: Yet we are
able to have some knowledge of it by knowing what it is not.25 And later in Summa
Contra Gentiles Book 3, chapter 39 Aquinas explains how knowledge via negations
is useful for revealing the difference of the subject of knowledge from other things. A
human being, for example, can be described as not inanimate in distinction from
rocks or be described as not irrational in distinction from plants etc.. Applying this
principle theologically, true statements may also be predicated of the Divine by
means of such negative terms as infinite, immutable, incorporeal etc.. 26 Dionysius
is thus subtly rescued from endorsing a radically agnostic reading and is interpreted
by Aquinas (in harmony with the Catholic faith) to be speaking specifically of the
limits of knowledge we have of God in this life. 27 Thus in In Summa Contra
Gentiles28 (completed around 1263) 29 Thomas cites Denys Mystical Theology
chapter 1: We are united with God as the Unknown, but omits an important
22
ST 1a, q. 1, a. 7 cf Commentary on Aristotles Metaphysics,tr. John P.Rowan (Dumb Ox Books, 1995), 1.12;
6.1. par 1156; Commentary on Aristotles Posterior Analytics, 1.33; 2.2;2.7; 7..3-5; Rudi Te Velde, Aquinas on
God: The Divine Science of the Summa Theologiae (Ashgate, 2006), pp.72-73.
23
See also Albert Magnus:, De Resurrectione, Tr IV, q. 1, sec 1:However one must distinguish between seeing
that God is and seeing what God is, just as it is one thing to see that something is and another thing to see what
something is. For to see of something that it is is to see the being of that thing or its essence. To see what
something is is to see the proper definition including all the attributes of that thing. See Jeffrey P. Hergen, St.
Albert the Greats Theory of the Beatific Vision (Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2002), p.37.
24
SCG Bk 3, ch 49, par 9, Bourke (University of Notre Dame, 2001), p.170.
25
SCG Bk 1, ch 14.2.
26
SCG Bk 3, ch 39, par 1, Bourke (University of Notre Dame, 2001), p. 127.
27
28
29
Vernon J. Bourke, Summa Contra Gentiles Book 3 (University of Notre Dame, 2001), Introduction p.17.
5
qualifying adjective contained in the original source i.e. We are united with God as
the completely unknown, an adjective reinforced by the context of an inactivity of all
knowledge, which knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing. 30 On the other
hand, by 1272, when Aquinas comes to write Commentary on the Book of Causes,
the correct citation does appear in full. The commentary on Proposition 6 thus reads:
Hence Dionysius says in Chapter 1 of Mystical Theology that man according to the
best of his knowledge is united to God as altogether unknown, because he knows
nothing about Him, knowing Him to be above every mind. 31 He goes on to explain
that the First Cause could be properly named entirely unknown, but only in the
sense that things which are lower in the chain of being do not grasp that which is
above them. In the case of God, there is nothing above it that could know it. It is
therefore, using Procline language amethectum,32 known only indirectly through
participated effects.
This agrees with his reading of the famous unknowing () 33 of Pseudo-

Dionysius spoken of in the Divine Names, which Aquinas translates per ignorantiam
(ignorance) and is applied by him to our post mortem state. Paradoxically this
ignorance is still a way by which we know God (cognoscimus Deum), albeit non-
discursively by a certain union to the divine above the nature of mind, when our
mind, receding from all others and afterwards even leaving itself, is united to the
supersplendent rays of deity, namely in so far as it knows God to be not only above
all things which are below it, but also above itself and above all things which can be
comprehended by it.34 In other words there is a different mode of knowledge post
mortem which is so different from discursive knowledge in via, that it could be
described as unknowing.
30
MT 1, 1001A.
31
Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, trans Vincent A. Guagliardo, OP; Charles R.Hess, OP; and
Richard C. Taylor (Catholic University of America Press, 1996), p.46.
32
Prop. 6.44 of Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, tr. Vincent A. Guagliardo, OP; Charles R.Hess,
OP; and Richard C. Taylor (Catholic University of America Press, 1996), p.48.
33
DN 1.1, 588A and later taken up by other authors such as Nicholas de Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia and the
unknown 14th century author of The Cloud of Unknowing. Or Meister Ekhart, who calls it nescience in Sermon
1 in Sermons and Treatises, Volume 1, trans and ed M.O.C. Walshe, (Element Books, 1979), p. 11.
34
Cognoscimus Deum per ignorantiam, per quamdam unitionem ad divina supra naturam mentis, quando scilicet
mens nostra recedens ab omnibus aliis et postea etiam dimittens seipsam unitur supersplendentibus radiis
deitatis, inquantum scilicet cognoscit Deum esse non solum super omnia quae sunt infra ipsam, sed etiam supra
ipsam et supra omnia quae ab ipsa comprehendi possunt. In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio
Book V11 4, tr. Harry C. Marsh Jr. in Cosmic Structure and the Knowledge of God: Thomas Aquinas In
librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio Phd Dissertation (Vanderbilt University, May 1994),
Nashville Tennessee, p.469.
6
So Aquinas does not exclude negative knowledge of God, nor does Thomas
distinctive and Catholic form of the apophatic exclude positive knowledge that God
exists35 and that we can truly ascribe true judgments about God analogically.36 On
the contrary, for Aquinas, following St Paul (Romans 1:20) as mediated through
Dionysius (Divine Names 7), the very order of the universe furnishes knowledge of
its Creator through abundant images and exemplars, albeit imperfect ones of divine
things.37 Aquinas reading of Dionysius seems to be a reasonable one since
Dionysius himself is answering the question asked of his negative theology, how DO
we know him?38 Dionysius answers that we do not know Gods nature but we do
know him from the arrangement of everythingprojected out of him which
possesses certain images and semblances of divine paradigms. 39 This is the
concept later described as the analogia entis or sacramental ontology. Only God
knows creatures through his own nature, yet humans can know God remotely
through creatures; the effects demonstrate their Cause. This is Thomas basis for no
final conflict between reason and revelation. 40
In summary, what is excluded by Thomas apophatic axiom, we cannot know what

God is but only what he is not, is not knowledge about God, but specifically the
quiddity or whatness of God in the present life, in other words the essence or
definition of God.41 This is in one sense obvious once one realises that God is not in
a genus,42 and is incircumscribable, without beginning and end. 43 It belongs only to
35
SCG Bk 1, ch 30, 4, tr. Pegis (University of Notre Dame, 2001), p.141; ST 1a, q. 2, a. 2 ad 1; SCG Bk 3, ch
49, d 9, tr. Bourke (University of Notre Dame, 2001), p.170.
36
Eg ST 1a, q. 13, a. 12.
37
In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio Bk V11 4, tr. Harry C. Marsh Jr. in Cosmic
Structure and the Knowledge of God: Thomas Aquinas In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio
Phd Dissertation (Vanderbilt University, May 1994), Nashville Tennessee, Appendix p. 467. On the knowledge
of God through divine exemplars see Mystical Theology 1.3 (1000D) and the comments of Fran ORourke,
Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp.7-9
38
DN 7 (869C) tr. Luibheid.
39
DN 7 (869C-D) tr. Luibheid.
40
SCG, Bk 1, ch 8, par 1.
41
For the identification of quiddity with definition see SCG Bk 3, ch 49, par 7, p.169 (Bourke) and In De
Anima, Bk 3, lect 8 cited Rocca, Gregory P., Speaking the Incomprehensible God (Catholic University of
America Press, 2004), p.30.
42
ST 1a, q.3, a.5 sed contra.; SCG Bk 3, ch 49, par 6-7 tr. Bourke, p.169.
43
For we, believing the Divine nature to be unlimited and incomprehensible, conceive no comprehension of it,
but declare that the nature is to be conceived in all respects as infinite: and that which is absolutely infinite is not
limited in one respect while it is left unlimited in another, but infinity is free from limitation altogether. That
therefore which is without limit is surely not limited even by name. In order then to mark the constancy of our
conception of infinity in the case of the Divine nature, we say that the Deity is above every name:
and Godhead is a name. Now it cannot be that the same thing should at once be a name and be accounted as
7
God that his nature is to be. He is his own existence (esse) and this is why Gods
essence cannot be seen by creatures for whom essence and existence are
separate. 44
Aquinas versus Eriugenas reading of Pseudo-Dionysius
Wouldnt these arguments regarding the lack of definition for a God without genus
or limit suggest that Gods essence could never be known by human beings, even in
patria? Such indeed was the conclusion drawn by John Scotus Eriugena. Eriugena
(815-877) under the patronage of Charles the Bald, was responsible for translating
Pseudo- Dionysius from Greek into Latin and in the process became his most
devoted commentator, transmitting Denys ideas to a new Western audience during
the Middle Ages. Using the Platonic literary technique of an imagined conversation
between a Master (the Nutritor) and his student (Alumnus) , Eriugena asks the
question in Periphyseon Book 2 586D:
NUTRITOR: So when we ask of this or that, What is it?, does it not appear to you
that we are seeking for nothing else but a substance which either has been defined
or is capable of being defined?
The student agrees:
ALUMNUS: Nothing else (but that). For this word, What, when it is interrogative,
seeks nothing else but that the substance which it seeks be somehow defined. 45
But since the Divine Substance cannot be defined and is not one amongst the things
which exist it follows that there is no quiddity or whatness to be known.46
above every name. Gregory of Nyssa, On Not three Gods, To Ablabius.

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2905.htm. See also John Damascene, De Fide Orth, Bk. 1, ch 13.
44
SCG Bk 3, ch 49, par 8, p.170, tr. Bourke (University of Notre Dame, 2001). See also Aquinas, Commentary
on the Book of Causes, tr. Vincent A. Guagliardo, OP; Charles R.Hess, OP; and Richard C. Taylor (Catholic
University of America Press, 1996), Prop. 6.47; p.52.
45
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 2, ed .I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968, 586D, p. 137.
46
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 2, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968, 587C, p. 138.
8
Furthermore, according to this logic, since God is not a thing. He cannot be defined
even by himself 47and therefore cannot even be known by Himself.48
Although this is contrary to orthodoxy49, Eriugena does indeed pursue this bold line:
How, therefore, can the Divine Nature understand of itself what it is, seeing that it is
nothing? For it surpasses everything that is, since it is not even being but all being
derives from it, and by virtue of its eminence it is supereminent over all essence and
every substance. Or how can the infinite be defined by itself in anything or be
understood in anything when it knows itself (to be) above every finite (thing) and
every infinite (thing) and beyond finitude and infinity? So God does not know of
himself what He is because He is not a what, being in everything incomprehensible
both to Himself and to every intellect.No one of the men of pious learning or of the
adepts in the Divine Mysteries, hearing of God that He cannot understand of Himself
what He is, ought to think anything else that that God Himself, Who is not a what ,
does not know at all in Himself that which He Himself is not.. 50
This seems to seriously compromise the doctrine of omniscience, but for Eriugena
this just needs a reinterpretation: what is called Divine Knowledge should really be
understood as Divine Ignorance.51 Eriugena defends his new interpretation on the
basis that God is not a what and therefore not a thing to know, but a more orthodox
line would interpret this as a different mode of knowledge rather than a mode of
ignorance.
Since there is no what to be known in this world or the next, Eriugena explains in
what sense the Divine may still be revealed. In Periphyseon Book 1, 447A uses
Dionysius term theophany (borrowed from The Divine Names ch 1.452 and Celestial
47
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968, 587C, p. 139.
48
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968, 596D, p. 161.
49
In order to avoid this conclusion Origen concluded that the power of God must be finite. For if the power of
God were infinite, he would necessarily not even know himself, for the infinite is by nature incomprehensible.
First Principles 2.9.1.
50
Eriugena, John Scotus, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 2, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 589B
51
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 598a, p. 163.
52
See further discussion on this passage below p. 31.
9
Hierarchy ch 4.3) to describe the mode by which it is possible for the righteous to
see God. Theophany is God as revealed in and to the creature and is distinct from
God in Himself.53 It is identical to the mode in which the angels now see Him and in
which the righteous may see him in the world to come or even now see through an
ecstatic vision such as in Isaiah 6. (Dionysius for example likens the beatific vision
with the disciples vision of Christ on the Mount of transfiguration). Eriugena
interprets him to be saying that in all three cases this mode of knowledge is not of
Gods essence itself (which is unknowable) but only of a created likeness. It involves
God joining himself to an intellectual creature in order to manifest himself 54 and
therefore falls short of quidditative knowledge:
ALUMNUS: we shall not see God Himself in Himself, for not even the angels do
so for this is impossible for every creature. For He alone, as the Apostle says,
possesses immortality and dwells in inaccessible light, but we shall contemplate
certain theophanies which are made in us by Him. 55
The Nutritor (teacher) goes on to add that this involves receiving a form relative to
ones sanctity and wisdom.56 There is significant textual evidence to support
Eriugenas reading of Dionysius. For example in Divine Names 7.3 Dionysius tells
us: It might be more accurate to say that we cannot know God in his nature, since
this is unknowable and is beyond the reach of mind or reason. Aquinas limits this to
being unknowable in this life, but no such qualification is found in the text itself.
Instead we know him only indirectly or paradigmatically57 from those creatures which
are in a sense projected out of himself. 58 Yannaras, comments: ..this passage
excludes unequivocally the possibility of any human knowledge of God according to
his nature or essence. He points out, following John of Scythopolis (whose scholia
he wrongly attributes to Maximus the Confessor), that even the term essence must
53
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, 447A, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), pp. 46-47; 448C, p
50-51.
54
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, 450B, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), pp. 54-55.
55
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, 448C, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the
56
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, 448C, ed. I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the
57
See also DN 5.8. 821C.
58
DN 7.3. 896C ff., tr. Luibheid, Christos Yannaras, On the absence and unknowability of God (T & T Clark
International, 2005), p. 62f..
10
be denied, except through Gods participation in human nature in the incarnation.
God transcends every essence, being none of the things that are, but beyond every
being and the source of all the beings. 59
Another important text which supports Eriugenas reading comes from Celestial
Hierarchy ch 4.3 in which Dionysius contradicts those who claim that God has
appeared himself and without intermediaries to some of the saints. In fact he
explicitly asserts that scripture has clearly shown that no one ever has seen or
ever will see the being of God in all its hiddenness.60 Thus, for Eriugena theophany
has a technical meaning of a mode of knowledge mediated by some image or
likeness. This is in keeping with Dionysius usage in Celestial Hierarchy 4.3:
This kind of vision, that is to say, where the formless God is represented in forms, is
rightly described by theological discourse as a theophany. 61
The mansions which Christ speaks of in John 14 in this light are, for Eriugena,
likely to refer to such theophanies, that is to say, they are created forms by which
each of the elect receives knowledge of God. 62 Therefore there is no unmediated
knowledge of God, even in Heaven. 63 This reading is further harmonised with the
teachings of Maximus (560-662), the first great commentator of Dionysius and
Gregory as part of their account of theosis or deification.64 The divine essence is
per se incomprehensibilem esse but becomes manifest when joined to an
intellectual creature (creatura intellectuali uidelicet).65 Eriugena also cites Augustine
59
John of Scythopolis, cited in Christos Yannaras, On the absence and unknowability of God (T & T Clark
International, 2005), p. 63.
60
CH 4.3, 180C.
61
CH 4.3, 180C
62
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 448D, pp.52-53.
63
Hence Luthers criticism of the Areopagite on this point appears wide of the mark: they (the Platonists)
taught that humans can converse and deal with the inscrutable, eternal majesty of God in this mortal, corrupt
flesh without mediation. This is their doctrine which is regarded as highest divine wisdom; I also was in that
camp for some time, not without great harm to myself. I admonish you to shun like the plague that Mystical
Theology of Dionysius and similar books which contain such idle talk. Cited in Karlfried Froehlich, Pseudo-
Dionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Colm Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius, the Complete
Works (Paulist Press, 1987), p.44.
64
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 449B, pp.52-53.
65
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 450B, pp.54-55.
11
in support. City of God Book 2266 speaks of contemplating God through bodies in
bodies, not through Himselffrom which John the Scot concludes: it is through
intellect in intellects, through reason in reason, not through itself, that the Divine
Essence shall appear.67 In even bolder language, Eriugena argues that in this way
the Creator becomes the created. It follows that we ought not to understand God
and the creature as two things distinct from one another, but as one and the same. 68
Nothing apart from itself exists as an essence and therefore the essence of God is
the essence of all things.69 A problem arises here, however, for if, as Eriugena
argued earlier, the essence of God is unknowable and also the essence of all things
is the essence of God, then it follows that God can know neither himself nor creation
essentially.
Denys the Carthusian cites a wry comment from Anastasius the Librarian, that it
could only have been a miracle that an Irish barbarian was able to understand the
profound writings of Dionysius!70 But it seems that this was one miracle at least of
which Aquinas was sceptical! Aquinas significantly departs from Erugena on a
number of points, indicating he considered the Irishman to have been mistaken.
Firstly, Aquinas rejects Eriugenas notion that the essence of all things is the essence
of God In the first place; secondly he rejected the position that it is impossible for
God to be known essentially without mediation and thirdly he rejected and thirdly he
rejected the view that God can know neither himself nor creation essentially.
Let us unpack these difference in turn. Firstly, Aquinas rejects the Eriugenas notion
that the essence of all things is the essence of God by making it clear that God can
only be called all things causally and not essentially.71 In this respect Aquinas is a
66
Presumably ch 29 the last section.
67
collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 450D, pp.56-57.
68
Proinde non duo a se ipsis distantia debemus intelligere deum et creaturam sed unam et id ipsum. Eriugena,
John Scotus, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 3, ed. Sheldon-Williamswith the collaboration of
Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 678C, p.160
69
Creatur autem quia nihil essentialiter est praeter ipsam, est enim omnium essential. Eriugena, John Scotus,
Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, ed I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler
(Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 454A, p.65.
70
Kent Emery, Jr., A Complete Reception of the Latin Corpus Dionysiacum: The Commentaries of Denys the
Carthusian.in Boiadjiev, Kapriev, Speer, Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter: Societe Internationale pour
lEtude de la Philosophie Medievale, Recontres de Philosophie Medieval, 9, Turnhout, Belgium: (Brepols,
2000), p.209 citing In Celestial Hierarchy c. 1 a. 5.
71
Rursus Deus est omnia in omnibus causaliter, cum tamen nihil sit eorum quae sunt in rebus essentialiter: God
is all in all causally, though God is nevertheless none of those things which are in things essentially.. In librum
12
more faithful interpreter of Dionysius who also insists that there is no exact likeness
between caused and cause..72 As Deirdre Carambine observes:
Causality, as the principle of divine economy, establishes both the relationship and
the distance between the created and the uncreated. 73
For Aquinas this would also have been a vital point in defending the orthodoxy of the
Fourth Lateran Council (1215) regarding the real distinction between God and the
world:
God, being one sole, absolutely simple and immutable spiritual substance, is to be
declared as really and essentially distinct from the world. 74
The distinction between God and the world is not merely a distinction in the mind of
those who have not yet achieved enlightenment, as on the eastern view, but a real
distinction.75 Eriugena falls foul of the condemnation of the Council which goes on to
decree:
If anyone shall say that the substance and essence of God and of all things is one
and the same; let him be anathema.76
beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio Book V11 4, 34-47, tr. Harry C. Marsh Jr. in Cosmic Structure
and the Knowledge of God: Thomas Aquinas In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio Phd
Dissertation (Vanderbilt University, May 1994, Nashville Tennessee), Appendix p. 468. Fabro commenting on
the difference between the two streams writes, Through his notion of intensive esse and the consequent
distinction between esse and essence in creatures, Thomas not only emphasises the difference between esse and
being, but he also succeeds in making Gods presence in creatures more active and meaningful than in the
panentheistic theories of Dionysius, Avicenna, Eckhart, Cusanus, Spionoza and Hegel. Whereas in these latter
theories God as being is the Act as the Essence of essences, in Thomas view God as Esse per essentiam is the
principle and actuating cause of esse per participationem, which is the proper, actuating act of every real
essence. See C. Fabro, The Intensive Hermenutics of Thomistic Philosophy tr. B.M. Bonansea in The
Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 27, no. 3 (Philosophy Education Society, 1974), p.484.
72
DN 2.8.645C.
73
Deirdre Carambine, The Unknown God, Negative theology in the Platonic Tradition: Plato to Eriugena
(WIPF and Stock, 2015), p.283.
74
Deus, qui cum sit una singularis, simplex omnino et incommutabilis substantia spiritualis, praedicandus est re
et essential a mundo distinctus. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, God, His existence and His nature, Vol. 1 (B.Herder
Book Co., 1939), p.5.
75
In creation He is present everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all,
containing all, yet is He Himself the Uncontained. Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi dei, cap 17, tr. a religious
of C.S.M.V. as St Athanasius on the Incarnation (Mowbray, London and Oxford, 1982), p.45.
76
Cited in R. Garrigou-Lagrange, God, His existence and His nature, Vol. 1 (B.Herder Book Co., 1939), p.6.
13
Indeed Eriugena is officially condemned at the later Council of Sens (1225). 77
Moreover, God cannot be the formal being of all things for a number of reasons, not
least the reduction to absurdity this would entail that all things would have to be
absolutely one.78 In this way Thomas (and, Dionysius) distances himself from any
suggestion of monism or pantheism. Indeed there is an obvious contradiction in
Eriugenas position because from the standpoint of monism we already are God and
need no mediation!
But, secondly, Aquinas rejected the position that it is impossible for God to be
known essentially without mediation, agreeing instead with Eudes, the chancellor of
79
the University of Paris, and the Masters of Theology 1240-41 who had condemned
the position ostensibly held by Eriugena as heretical. Thomas own master, Albert the
Great, may also have fallen under this condemnation 80, in some, though not all, of
his writings,81 though even he seeks to accommodate Eriugenas position (which he
conflates simply with that of Dionysius without naming the Scot), by interpreting his
idea of theophany not as a created species (which for Albert referred to a
77
Brendan Thomas Sammon, The God Who is Beauty: Beauty as a divine name in Thomas Aquinas and
Dionysius the Areopagite (Princeton Theological Monograph Series, WIPF and Stock, 2013); p.226 citing
Dermot Moran, Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: a study of idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp.85-91.
78
SCG Bk 1, ch 26, par. 3.
79
These are articles disapproved as against theological truth and at Paris, A.D. 1240, the second Sunday after
the octave of the Nativity. First, that the divine essence in itself will be seen neither by man nor by angel. This
error we condemn, and we excommunicate those asserting and defending it, by authority of William bishop [of
Paris]. Moreover, we firmly believe and assert that God in his essence or substance will be seen by angels and
all saints and is seen by souls in glory. http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120B/Errors.html. For a full discussion see
Jeffrey P. Hergen, St. Albert the Greats Theory of the Beatific Vision, (Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2002),
chapter 1
80
C.Trottmann, La vision beatifique des disputes scolastiques a sa definition par Benoit XII, (Bibliotheque des
Ecoles Francais dAthenes et de Rome, Rome, 1995), pp 115-185 though Jeffrey P. Hergen, in a careful
examination of the texts absolves Albert of this charge in St. Albert the Greats Theory of the Beatific Vision,
(Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2002).
81
Albert at times speaks of the blessed seeing God face to face in patria for example in his commentary on
Mystical Theology and contrasts this with Moses on the mount who only saw God via theophanies. Kent Emery,
Jr., A Complete Reception of the Latin Corpus Dionysiacum: The Commentaries of Denys the Carthusian.in
Boiadjiev, Kapriev, Speer, Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter: Societe Internationale pour lEtude de la
Philosophie Medievale, Recontres de Philosophie Medieval, 9, Turnhout, Belgium: (Brepols, 2000) p.219. The
two could be reconciled on the reading that he denies comprehensive knowledge but admits unmediated
knowledge. For a full treatment of the ambiguous key texts see Jeffrey P. Hergen, St. Albert the Greats Theory
of the Beatific Vision, (Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2002).
14
representation distinct from both the observer and the Observed) 82, but solely as a
strengthening Divine power for the act of observing. 83
Furthermore the position that Gods essence cannot be seen by the created
intellect is presented as a foil to Thomas view in his discussion of the quaestio in
Summa Theologiae and is attributed to Pseudo-Dionysius, citing Divine Names 1:
"Neither is there sense, nor image, nor opinion, nor reason, nor knowledge of
Him."84
We should be cautious in concluding too hastily that Aquinas believed that this was
Dionysius actual position since he always shows the greatest of deference to the
Areopagite. It is more probable that Thomas is correcting what he believes to be a
misinterpretation of the Dionysian text on this matter by followers such as Eriugena.
In reply Thomas does not again refer to Dionysius by name, but rather generically to
the opinion attributed to him. Therefore some who considered this, held that no
created intellect can see the essence of God. This opinion, however, is not tenable.85
The passage from the Divine Names is taken to be a denial of comprehensive
knowledge of God but not a denial of essential knowledge. Both of these authorities
speak of the vision of comprehension. Hence Dionysius premises immediately
before the words cited, "He is universally to all incomprehensible." 86 He certainly
gives Dionysius the most generous interpretation consonant with the Parisian
declaration of 1241 which beats out a path for the later reception of Dionysius by the
likes of Denys the Carthusian who likewise assimilates Dionysius in line with the
Parisian Masters.87
82
Jeffrey P. Hergen, St. Albert the Greats Theory of the Beatific Vision (Peter Lang Publishing, New York,
2002), p. 23, footnote 23 in contrast to Aquinas for whom a species brings about the formal identity of the
knower and the known which occurs in the knower through a single actuation of both knower and known, since
the thing known is the act of the cognitive powers.
83
2002), p. 20 Sed ipsa divina essential determinabit sui ipsius cognitionem. Et tale lumen vocat Dionysius
theophaniam, quae est medium in vision patriae non sicut species emanens in intellectu a deo, in qua ut objecto
accipiatur eius cognition, sed sicut medium confortans videntum. Non enim exigitur aliqua lux extrinsica, cum
ipsum visibile sit summa et vera lux, quae illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum. (Quaestio
de Visione Dei in Patria, Opera Omnia, Cologne ed Vol XXV, pt. 2)
84
ST 1a, q.12, a.1.
85
ST 1a, q. 12, a.1, sed contra.
86
ST 1a, q. 12, a.1, ad 1.
87
Denys the Carthusian, a later interpreter of Dionysius goes on to make use of Aquinas argument to counter
Alberts position. He also clears Dionysius of heresy because he teaches, an even more immediate cognition in
15
Aquinas can also agree with Dionysius that certainly in the present life our intellect
cannot see Him (God) as He is in Himself, 88 from a consideration of Gods
simplicity. Since God is simple, human beings can only know Him through a
composite mode of understanding, even though for human beings, existence and
essence will never be identical as they are in God who is His own Existence. 89
Nevertheless, Aquinas rejects the idea that God is essentially unknowable, because
then it would seem to him to follow that God could not be known even to Himself
which is clearly false.
This then brings us to the third point of departure from Eriugena, Aquinas rejected
the view that God cannot know himself nor creation. In his mature work, De
Substantiis Separatis, Aquinas replies to the sceptics who (on the basis of
Aristotelian arguments) doubt that God knows singular things in creation.
Now we must, of necessity, hold firmly this point, namely, that God has a most
certain knowledge of all things that are knowable at any time or by any knower
whatsoever.90
This is because the knowledge of any knowable is included under the universal
nature of knowing. Therefore God cannot be lacking in the knowledge of any
knowable.91 And since Gods mode of being is one, simple and eternal substance, it
follows therefore that by one simple glance, God has an eternal and fixed knowledge
of all things.92
the beatific vision above every created intelligible species,in Denys view. Kent Emery, Jr., A Complete
Reception of the Latin Corpus Dionysiacum: The Commentaries of Denys the Carthusian.in Boiadjiev, Kapriev,
Speer, Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter: Societe Internationale pour lEtude de la Philosophie
Medievale, Recontres de Philosophie Medieval, 9, Turnhout, Belgium: (Brepols, 2000).
88
ST 1a, q.13, art 1; Also In Boeth de Trinitate, tr Armand Maurer, Faith, Reason and Theology: Questions 1-4
of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1987),1.2.ad.1.
89
ST 1a, q.12, a.4, resp; c.f. SCG Bk 3, ch 49, par 8, p.169 (OBourke).
90
Aquinas, St. Thomas. Treatise on Separate Substances: De Substantiis Separatis, c 14.70 tr. Francis J. Lescoe,
ed. Joseph Kenny O.P. (Kindle edition, West Hartford CN: Saint Joseph College, 1959), Kindle edition (Kindle
Locations 857-858)
91
Locations 860)
92
Locations 860)
16
Furthermore, Aquinas argues that God knows his own essence on the grounds that
since esse is the fullness of Being per se, it is also (following the NeoPlatonic
tradition and definition of being) the fullness of intelligibility per se.93 Gods self-
knowledge which is the basis for the intelligibility of all things, the basis for
epistemological hope.
The quiddity of God is not in a genus independent of God, rather God is his own
quiddity. In this way Aquinas circumvents the problem of Gods definition. God is
esse itself, the very act of existence94 in which the saints in patria participate. In
parallel passages from Summa Contra Gentiles95, De Veritate and Summa
Theologiae, Aquinas marshalls a battery of scriptural proofs96 to support this
reasoning that believers will share in this essential, quidditative knowledge of God
post mortem. We shall see him as he is, is a common refrain, repeating words from
the apostle John97 and at the climax of Book 3 of Summa Contra Gentiles in
anticipation98 of his final book , On Salvation (Book 4), Aquinas writes:
This immediate vision of God is promised us in Scripture: We see now through a

glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. (1 Cor 13:12).99
What does it mean to see God face to face?
Thomas, in line with Augustine,100 is clear that the beatific vision is not a bodily face
to face (facie ad faciem), since God is incorporeal101. Nor does it involve the physical
93
ST 1a, q. 12, a.1, sed contra. See also Aquinas, St. Thomas. Treatise on Separate Substances: De Substantiis
Separatis, c 14.72 tr. Francis J. Lescoe, ed. Joseph Kenny O.P. (Kindle edition, West Hartford CN: Saint Joseph
College, 1959), Kindle edition (Kindle Locations 877)
94
Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, tr. Vincent A. Guagliardo, OP; Charles R.Hess, OP; and
Richard C. Taylor (Catholic University of America Press, 1996), Proposition 6.47; p.52.
95
For parallel passages see ST 1a, q. 12, a.1, resp; DV q. 13. a.3, ad 7.
96
Many of these find parallels in Augustines treatment in the City of God which is likely one of Thomas
sources: Augustine, The City of God, Book 22, ch 29 cites 1 Cor 13:9, 12; Matthew 18:10; 1 John 3:2; Job
19:26; 42:5-6; Matthew 5:8.
97
ST 1a, q. 12, a.1, sed contra.
98
See OBourkes introduction to Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk 3, Part 1. (University of Notre Dame Press,
1975), p.15.
99
SCG Book 3, Part 1, ch 51, par 5.
100
Augustine, The City of God, Book 22, ch 29. But we must understand by the face of God, His
manifestation, and not any such member as we have in the body and do call by that name.
101
But see a different, incarnational interpretation below on page 31.
17
face of the believer which can only see corporeal objects. Face refers to the heart
or mind of the believer102 and the face of God refers to an unmediated vision of his
essence,103 with an analogical parallel perhaps in 2 John 12, where face to face
means directly and is contrasted with mediation through letters or third parties. A
Pauline text from 1 Corinthians is deployed as part of a section related to knowing
God even as also I am known,104 which Augustine had earlier identified with an
intuition through which believers would see all our knowledge in one simultaneous
glance.105 Here we see the unspoken influence of the theoria alluded to in Platos
Republic where the former prisoner of the cave ascends to various levels of sight
before finally witnessing, first the reflection of the sun, then the stars and moon and
finally the direct vision of the sun (theoria) representing Goodness itself.106 The
identification of seeing (theoria) with knowing (episteme) is a Platonic and Neo-
Platonic theme,107 but is also consistent with certain Scriptural texts deployed by
Thomas in his argument, such as John 17:3, Matthew 11:27; 1 John 3:2 and
Matthew 5:8.108 A modern reader might feel that these texts underdetermine the
conclusion of quidditative knowledge, however it is important to note that Aquinas
acknowledges that he is not talking about the comprehensive and infinite knowledge
such as God has of Himself.109 Book Five of Aquinas Commentary on the Divine
Names helpfully explains this excess:
Nor can the divine essence be perfectly manifested to any created intellect
whatsoever so that it should comprehend it, but it exceeds the union itself of the
intellects of the blessed, who see the essence of God through union of their intellect
to the essence of God itself; for although they see that which God is, nevertheless
102
Et intelligitur per faciem, cor, seu mens, quia sicut per faciem videt quis corporaliter, ita per mentem
spiritualiter. (Super II Epistolam ad Corinthios lectura ch 3, 113)
103
SCG Book 3, Part 1, ch 51, par 5.
104
1 Cor 13:12
105
Augustine, De Trinitate, tr. Edmund Hill (New City Press 2005), Book XV ch 4 par 26. p.418.
106
Plato, The Republic, tr. Desmond Lee (Penguin, 2003), Book 7, 514A-521B, p.241-248.
107
R. Roques, LUnivers Dionysien: Structure hierarchique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys (Aubier, Editions
Montaigne, 1954), p. 95.
108
Rocca, Gregory P., Speaking the Incomprehensible God (Catholic University of America Press, 2004),
pp.34-41.
109
SCG Book 3, Part 1, ch 53, par 9; 55 par 2;
18
there is not such perfection of vision as there is perfection of the divine esse itself
and as there is perfection of vision by which God sees Godself. 110
Aquinas insists that it is precisely because no created substance would be adequate

to see God essentially that the beatific vision must be unmediated, but this raise the
question of how it would be possible for a creature to see God without mediation.
How is an unmediated vision possible? A) The Monistic option
Thomas Beatific Vision non-identically repeats the theme of Beauty There, in the
Plotinian Enneads, a development of the ascent to Absolute Beauty in Platos
Symposium,111 also identified with the Fatherland112 and described as the final
object of all seeing, the entire beauty upon all things. 113 Amongst scholars of Plotinus
(204-270AD) there is debate about the question of whether this refers to a
metaphysical realm or a state of consciousness114, or indeed both. Certainly, Plotinus
himself claims to have experienced this Beauty in an altered state of consciousness
on several occasions during his life.115 He speaks of the object of this vision as no
mere spectacle to be observed with detachment, but one that must affect an
irresistible transformation in the spectator:
those drunken with this wine, filled with the nectar, all their soul penetrated with this
beauty, cannot remain mere gazers: no longer is there a spectator outside gazing on
an inside spectacle; the clear eyed hold the vision within themselves.. one must
bring the vision within and see no longer in that mode of separation but as we know
ourselves.116
110
In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus exposition Book V 1 tr. Harry C. Marsh Jr. in Cosmic
Phd Dissertation (Vanderbilt University, May 1994, Nashville Tennessee), Appendix p. 431
111
Plato, Symposium, pp.211-212.
112
The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come, and There is The Father.
Enneads Book 1.6.8; tr. Stephen MacKenna, (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p.63.
113
Enneads Book 5.8.10; tr. Stephen MacKenna, (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p.431.
114
R.T.Wallis, NeoPlatonism, (Gerald Duckworth and Co, 1972, 2nd edition 1995), p. 5.
115
Enneads Book 4.8.1; tr. Stephen MacKenna (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p.357. C.E.Rolt claims rather too
boldly that Pseudo-Dionysius is unquestionably speaking of a psychological state to which he himself has been
occasionally led. C.E.Rolt, Dionysius the Aeropagite, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (SPCK,
1972), p.33.
116
Enneads Book 5.8.10; tr. Stephen MacKenna (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p.431.
19
The spectacle becomes assimilated to the spectator, affecting an overcoming of the
distance between subject and object.117 Plotinus describes his own ecstatic
experience as one of acquiring identity with the divine. 118 So one possibility for how
God could be seen without mediation would be mystical monism: if the recipient of
the vision could become one with God through return to and an absorption into the
Source. This is the meaning of the in Neoplatonism: all things return to
God who becomes all in all119. Following this logic John Scotus Eriugena explains
that whatever the intellect shall have been able to comprehend, that it itself
becomes. Therefore, to the extent that the mind comprehends virtue, to that extent it
becomes virtue itself.120 Hence it follows of those that contemplate God that the
whole of their nature shall be changed into Very God. 121 Those who experience the
beatific vision participate in eternity and infinity and are no longer bound by space
nor time.122 The English translator of Dionysius, C.E.Rolt similarly interprets the
Aeropagite in monistic Plotinian terms. 123 Of course, strictly speaking from the point
of view of monism the creature does not become one with the Creator but becomes
aware that such a distinction was illusory all along. Plotinus explains in a passage
from the Enneads:
At first no doubt all will not be seen as one whole, but when we find no stop at which
to declare a limit to our being we cease to rule ourselves out from the total of reality;
we reach to the All as a unity and this not by any stepping forward but by the fact of
being and abiding there where the All has its being. 124
117
Eric D. Perl, Theophany: The NeoPlatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Aeropagite (SUNY Press, 2007), p.
85.
118
119
E.g. DN 4. 713A.
120
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, 450A, ed. and tr. I.P. Sheldon-Williams
with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), pp. 54-55.
121
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, 451A, ed. and tr. I.P. Sheldon-Williams
with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), pp. 56-57.
122
John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon (De Divisione Naturae), Book 1, 482D-483A, ed. and tr. I.P. Sheldon-
Williams with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968),
pp. 128-129.
123
C.E.Rolt, Dionysius the Aeropagite, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theolog, (SPCK, 1972), pp.26-31
though he also acknowledges the paradox of all things being fused and yet distinct, including the individual
soul. (p.28).
124
20
In his conclusion to the section on the Omnipresence of Authentic Existence,
Plotinus addresses the question of how the All could ever have become separated
into parts and here he invokes the addition of non-being as the explanation.
In that you have entered into the All, no longer content with the part; you cease to
think of yourself as under limit but, laying all such determination aside, you become
an All. No doubt you were always that, but there has been an addition and by that
addition you are diminished; for the addition was not from the realm of Being. 125
Particular beings, including the human subject, are in reality nothing since nothing
can be added to the One if it is to remain One. Thus it is only by stripping oneself of
the alien element of non-Being that the return to the One can be effected. This
background certainly sheds light on Thomas discussion of the beatific vision in the
Summa.
How is an unmediated vision possible? B) Thomas solution: The lumen

gloriae
While Thomas can agree with Plotinus that vision or intellect is a higher mode of
non-discursive or intuitive knowledge, he falls short of following Plotinus into monism
(as we have already seen in our discussion of Eriugena) and is careful to preserve
the creature/Creator distinction.
Two things are required both for sensible and for intellectual vision--viz. power of
sight, and union of the thing seen with the sight. For vision is made actual only when
the thing seen is in a certain way in the seer. Now in corporeal things it is clear that
the thing seen cannot be by its essence in the seer, but only by its likeness; as the
similitude of a stone is in the eye, whereby the vision is made actual; whereas the
substance of the stone is not there. But if the principle of the visual power and the
thing seen were one and the same thing, it would necessarily follow that the seer
would receive both the visual power and the form whereby it sees, from that one
same thing. (Summa Theologiae, 1a, q. 12, a 2, sed contra)
125
21
Notable here is that Aquinas will only allow a likeness and not an identity of the
thing seen in the knower in his epistemology. If the Self were identical to the object
of sight this would lead to Self-worship which is idolatrous. 126 Instead there is a
perfect love relationship with God: The last and most complete participation of his
(divine) goodness consists in the vision of his essence, by which we live together
socially as friends (convivimus socialiter amici).127 St Paul in his second letter to the
Corinthians speaks of believers being changed into the same image from glory to
glory through beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord. It is a transformative
vision but again it results in an image and not identity with the Spirit who is the agent
of transformation. 128 When he appears we shall be like him for we shall see Him as
He is (my emphasis).129 For Aquinas, as with Paul, the creature can never attain
omniscience,130 the creatures knowledge will never be infinite, precisely because the
creature can never become the Creator (a logical contradiction). 131 Whatever
deification means for Thomas, it does not mean identity of creature and Creator. On
this point Aquinas and Dionysius agree. 132 Although Thomas finds common ground
with Plotinus in equating the sight of the soul with intellectual knowledge, 133 (as in
Aristotles De Anima),134 as perfected by Divine power, the creature is never
absorbed into an appearance of the One, 135 nor acquires identity with the divine as
Plotinus described beatification.136 Conseqently the voyage to the Fatherland cannot
126
Rolt seems unable to avoid this trap: And this Infinite Self seen from afar, is and must be the Object of all
worship until at last worship shall be swallowed up in the completeness of Unknowing. C.E.Rolt, Dionysius the
Aeropagite, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (SPCK, 1972), p.31.
127
In III Sent., d.19, q. 1, a. 5, sol. 1, tr. C. Fabro and B.M. Bonansea, The Intensive Hermenutics of Thomistic
Philosophy in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 27, no. 3 (Philosophy Education Society, 1974), p.480.
128
2 Cor. 3:18
129
1 John 3:2
130
SCG Book 3, part 1, ch 55 par 2; ch 56.
131
SCG, Bk 2, ch 25, (17-18): And from this it is clear that God cannot make God. For it is of the essence of a
thing that its own being depends on another cause, and this is contrary to the nature of the being we call God
For the same reason God cannot make a thing equal to Himself; for a thing whose being does not depend on
another is superior in being, and in other perfections, to that which depends on something else, such dependence
pertaining to the nature of that which is made.
132
ST 1a, q.12, a.1, ad. 1; and the recurring refrain in Dionyius as far as possible in reference to union with
God eg. CH 3.164D; CH 3. 165B; CH 9.2. 257C; EH 5. 501A.
133
Hic loquiter de visione, quae est cognitio Dei.(Super I Epistolam B. Pauli ad Corinthios capite XIII lectio
4.) tr. Roberto Busa SJ (Textum Taurini 1953).
134
Aristotle, De Anima, Bk 3, ch 5, 430A 15, tr. D.W.Hamlyn (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977).
135
Enneads Book 5.3.4; tr. Stephen MacKenna (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p. 405.
136
Enneads Book 4.8.1; tr. Stephen MacKenna, (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p.357
22
be reached in this life, merely by gazing inward, as in Plotinus. 137 Aquinas provides
then an important resource against the monistic version of the beatific vision.
For Aquinas, human beings do not in the present life possess that intellectual mode
of knowledge proper to angelic intelligences whereby things without motion can be
known and immediately apprehended, 138 but this mode of knowledge is promised for
our post mortem state. Thomas deploys the image of the lumen gloriae to refer to the
Divine assistance received by the saint in order to know God in his essence. This
image probably finds it source in Dionysius who speaks of radiant beams of glory
accompanying the contemplation of Christ in our immortal state. 139 Thomas
specifically comments on this passage in his own Commentary on the Divine Names
in which he describes not only the beatification of our souls but also our bodies being
assimilated to the likeness of Christs glorified body and thus freed from the
constraints of fallen flesh. This enables the mind to participate the divine light in an
impassible way.140
.through this participation of light we will also be participating the unity which is
above mind, namely God, who is above mind; and this will be through the unknown
and blessed immissions of the superbright rays, i.e. of divine illuminations, which are
now hidden to us as unexperienced, by which the then holy minds will be
beatified.141
In thy light we shall see the light (Psalm 36:9), is one of Thomas favourite texts,
which, he says, refers to the light of the Divine substance. 142 The beatific vision is
thus unmediated but not unaided. God is both the end of the perfection of the
137
This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or
ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must close the eyes and
call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birthright of all, which few turn
to use. Plotinus, Enneads, Book 1.6.8; tr. Stephen MacKenna, (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p. 63.
138
Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, tr. Vincent A. Guagliardo, OP; Charles R.Hess, OP; and
Richard C. Taylor (Catholic University of America Press, 1996), Proposition 9;63 p.70.
139
DN 1.4 tr. C.E.Rolt, Dionysius the Aeropagite, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (SPCK, 1972).
140
In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio Book 1, line 214 tr. by Harry C. Marsh Jr. in Cosmic
Phd Dissertation ( Vanderbilt University, May 1994, Nashville Tennessee), p.287.
141
In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio Book 1 lines 214-225, tr. by Harry C. Marsh Jr. in
Cosmic Structure and the Knowledge of God: Thomas Aquinas In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus
expositio Phd Dissertation, (Vanderbilt University, May 1994, Nashville Tennessee)
142
SCG Book 3, ch 53, par. 7.
23
intellect and also the means to this end. He himself is that Light which elevates the
intellect and makes the vision possible, just as the sun can only be seen through its
own light and not through another lesser one. In the poetry of Dante this is
expressed thus:
But as my sight by seeing learned to see,

The transformation which in me took place
Transformed the single changeless form for me. 143
Essential but not comprehensive knowledge.
In this way Thomas can hold to the paradoxical position that in patria God is known
essentially but not comprehensively.144 This paradox follows from a consideration of
Gods simplicity. Since God is not composed of parts he cannot be known essentially
in parts. Therefore he must be known in tota even though not totaliter.145 The whole
God is known but not known wholly. Or as Gregory P. Rocca, expresses it succinctly
in Speaking the Incomprehensible God, Infinity as such will be seen, but not
infinitely.146 This means that the Beatific Vision from Thomas account attains an
unmediated, yet still finite knowledge or vision of God. We can trace this line of
thought though Thomass own Master, Albert Magnus to the Cappodoceans. Magnus
comments:
Thus we say concerning God that we intellectually attain an initial awareness of the
being of Him without a medium, but in no way do we comprehend him. (De
Resurrectione, Tr IV, q. 1, sec 1, solution).147
143
Dante, Paradiso, tr. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds (Penguin, 1973), Canto XXXIII, line 122.
144
In librum beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus exposition, C1, 1, 34 ed. C.Pera (Marietti, Taurini, 1950);
Gregory P. Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God, (Catholic University of America Press, 2004),p.40.
145
Super evangelium S. Ioannis lectura, cap 1, lect. 11, par 213; ST 1a, q. 12, a. 7, ad 3; De Veritate, q. 8, a. 2,
146
Gregory P. Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God, (Catholic University of America Press, 2004). p.45
following ST 1a, q. 12, a. 7, resp..
147
Cited and translated by Jeffrey P. Hergen, St. Albert the Greats Theory of the Beatific Vision (Peter Lang
Publishing, New York, 2002), p.37.
24
For the Cappodoceans, notably Gregory of Nyssa with his doctrine of
beatitude is progress without limit, the eternal journey of the soul towards God. 148
Danielou explains:
How could there be an end, a limit, where the wisdom of God is concerned? The
nearer a man comes to that wisdom, the deeper he finds it to be, and the more he
probes into its depths, the more he sees that he will never be able to understand it or
express it in words.149
A rational defence of Thomas view from Aristotle
Significantly, Aquinas appeals not only to Scripture for this position but also to
Aristotles teaching on final causation for its rational defence. If all things in nature
are imbued with telos then a forteriori this must include man himself as a rational
animal. But if mans reason is to achieve its final goal, on Aristotelian terms, it must
be able to see God, otherwise, its present desire would be inane and the ultimate
beatific state would consist in a fulfilment independent of God himself, which, says
Thomas, would be contrary to orthodoxy.150
For as the ultimate beatitude of man consists in the use of his highest function,
which is the operation of his intellect; if we suppose that the created intellect could
never see God, it would either never attain to beatitude, or its beatitude would
consist in something else beside God; which is opposed to faith. For the ultimate
perfection of the rational creature is to be found in that which is the principle of its
being; since a thing is perfect so far as it attains to its principle (Summa
Theologiae, 1a, q. 12, a. 1, sed contra)
Not only this, but as John Milbank comments (following the logic of Henri de Lubac
before him), this would result in the perverse situation of mankind being less fulfilled
148
The Greek term is originally found in Philippians 3:13 meaning stretching forward toward.. See Rowan
Williams, Via negative and the foundations of theology, in Wrestling with angels: Conversations in modern
theology, ed Mike Higton, (SCM Press, 2007), p.10; Gregory of Nyssa, De Vita Moysis PG 44, 300D; Jean
Danielou, Origen, tr. Walter Mitchell (Sheed and Ward, London and New York, 1955), The essence of the
spiritual life is that non-proprietary attitude towards things which makes the soul refuse to rest in what she has
already acquired and keeps her in a state of readiness to receive further gifts. p. 304.
149
Jean Danielou, Origen, tr. Walter Mitchell (Sheed and Ward, London and New York, 1955), p. 303.
150
SCG Book 3, ch 48, par 16; ch 51.1; ch. 54 par 7; ST 1a, q. 12, a.1, resp..
25
than even inanimate nature which is able to achieve its final purpose! 151 - a powerful
reductio ad absurdum in support of Thomas position.
This suggests that in one sense the beatific vision is natural to mankind, in that it is
not a replacement of earthly knowledge with an alien mystical knowledge. In the
Divine Names, Pseudo-Dionysius speaks of a continuum of knowledge, in which the
angelic intelligences are at one with the workings and the objects of their
intelligences and earthly souls on a lower level of cognition can still bring together
their various powers of reasoning and.. concentrate them in one act of pure
intelligence.152 Commenting specifically on this text, Thomas summises: an
abundance of reason of this kind is reduced to unity of intellectual purity, or
simplicity; for the investigation of reason would have no fruit unless it led to
intelligible truth.153 There is no place then here for the dualism of reason in
opposition to mystical intuition found in later mystical writings. Intellectual vision in
patria is the fulfilment of natural reason in via. This is entirely harmonious with
Thomas assimilation of Pseudo-Dionysius maxim that grace does not destroy
nature but perfects it. 154 Yet, paradoxically, Aquinas also insists, that the act of
seeing Gods essence can only happen with Divine assistance, 155an operation of
grace which he calls elevation,156 by which the created intellect is transformed, 157
151
Milbank cites an explicit statement regarding this point taken from the correspondence of De Lubac:
Moreover this concept of a pure nature runs into great difficulties, the principal one of which seems to me to
be the following: how can a conscious spirit be anything other than an absolute desire for God? John Milbank,
The Suspended Middle : Henri de Lubac and the debate concerning the Supernatural (Eerdmans, 2005), p. viii.
An intriguing modern day parallel to the Aristotelian teleological argument is Frank Tiplers hypothesis of an
Omega Point. If evolution is not simply something that happens based on the survival of the fittest, but is
purposive or convergent in the emergence of consciousness then it is plausible that evolution could continue to
a point of developing maximal consciousness and intelligence. Discussed in Keith Ward, God, Chance and
Necessity (One World, Oxford, 1996), pp. 162-163.
152
DN 11.1.949C tr. Colm Luibheid.
153
In de divinus nominibus X1.2, translated by Harry C. Marsh Jr. in Cosmic Structure and the Knowledge of
God: Thomas Aquinas In librum beati dionysii de divinis nominibus expositio Phd Dissertation (Vanderbilt
University, May 1994, Nashville Tennessee), p.519.
154
ST 1a, q.1, a. 8, ad. 2 ; DN 4.33 Providence does not destroy nature. Indeed its character as Providence is
shown by the fact that it saves the nature of each individual, so that the free may freely act as individual or as
groups, insofar as the nature of those provided for receives the benefactions of this providing power appropriate
to each one. Tr. Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius : The Complete Works (Paulist Press, 1987, p. 95. See the
commentary on this principle in Henri De Lubac, Surnaturel: Etudes Historiques (Paris, 1946). John Milbank
cites Aquinas application of Aristotles illustration: For what we do by means of our friends, is done in a sense
by ourselves. ST 1a 2ae, q. 13, a. 4, ad1, John Milbank, The Suspended Middle : Henri de Lubac and the
debate concerning the Supernatural (Eerdmans, 2005), p. viii.
155
Romans 6:23 cited in SCG Book 3, ch 52, par 7; Compendium of Theology, tr. Cyrill Volert, S.J. (Herder
Book Co, 1948), Part 2, ch 9, p.336 (in the context of an exposition of the Lords prayer).
156
SCG Book 3, ch 57, par 1
157
26
through the light of glory (lumen gloriae).158 This lumen gloriae then replaces the light
of faith seen in the mediating mirror of creatures and Scripture, an insight which
Thomas received from his Master Albert.159 The divine essence itself must be joined
as an intelligible form (species) to the intellect, 160 Thomas writes, in order to achieve
full participation in the Divine likeness:161
A proleptic foretaste of future glory. How is this possible?
Already, according to Scripture, this has happened proleptically in the special

cases of Moses and St Paul who Aquinas regards as witnesses of the Beatific
vision. Both of these Biblical characters, one representing the Old Covenant and the
other the New, are discussed at length in Aquinas De Veritate as they appear to
have seen the essence of God in this life, since in Numbers 12:8 God spoke to
Moses not only mouth to mouth but also face to face. Aquinas takes them to mean
that Moses had an unmediated vision of God by which he was lifted up to see the
very essence of God.162 Denys the Carthusian, also in the Thomist tradition, cites
Benedict X11, Benedictus Deus (1336) which declares that the saints in heaven
have seen, see and will see the divine essence by an intuitive and facial vision
immediately, nakedly and clearly. 163 Eckhart too agrees that Paul was caught up to
see God unveiled in his own nature.(Sermon 9)164 But once again this view
appears to conflict with Dionysius account of Moses who explicitly in Mystical
Theology, does not meet God himself, in the dark rays on the mount, but instead
encounters first, the place where God dwells, and secondly a union with the
completely unknown, by an inactivity of all knowledge. 165 Later within the 14th
158
159
2002), pp. 19, 22, 29-32.
160
SCG Book 3, ch 52, par 4; This aspect of his teaching is similar to Eriugenas except that for Eriugena it does
not result in unmediated knowledge as it does in Aquinas. Eriugena, John Scotus, Periphyseon (De Divisione
Naturae), Book 1, ed I.P. Sheldon-Williams with the collaboration of Ludwig Bieler, (Dublin: The Dublin
Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), 449B-449C, pp.53-55.
161
SCG Book 3, ch 53, par. 2.
162
DV q.12, a.14.
163
Kent Emery, Jr.A Complete Reception of the Latin Corpus Dionysiacum: The Commentaries of Denys the
Carthusian. in Boiadjiev, Kapriev, Speer., Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter. Societe Internationale pour
lEtude de la Philosophie Medievale, Recontres de Philosophie Medieval, 9, Turnhout, Belgium: (Brepols,
2000), p.218. Denys also quotes Aquinas In IV sent. D.49 q.2 in corp,
164
Meister Eckhart, Sermon 9 in Sermons and Treatises, Volume 1, tr. M.O.C. Walshe, ed., (Element Books,
1979), p. 84.
165
MT 5.3.100D-1001A.
27
century reception of Dionysius, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing writes in his
brief work Dionise Hid Diviniate: Yet in all this he was not with God, in terms of the
perfection of deity. He was contemplating an object: not God himself, who cannot be
seen by human eyes. But what he saw was the place where God was. And that
place symbolises mans highest contemplation of God.. 166Moreover, it also appears
to contradict Thomas own conclusion which we discussed earlier that in this life we
cannot know what God is but only what he is not. This is a particularly acute problem
for Aquinas because of his Aristotelian epistemology that all human knowledge
derives by abstraction from phantasms.167 Aquinas, aware of this discrepancy, raises
it as an objection to the view that there is any graced knowledge of God available in
this life beyond that obtainable by human reason. 168 Why then does Aquinas qualify
his own position and depart from the absolute apophaticism of Dionysius? The
answer seems to be his instinct to defer to the authoritative statement of
Augustine,169in this case concerning Moses and Paul. For Augustine, in his De
genesis ad litteram. what Moses saw was:
..his very substance as God, without any bodily creature being assumed which
could be presented to the sense of mortal flesh, and not either in spirit in figurative
bodily likeness, but clearly in his very self, insofar as a rational and intellectual
creature can grasp that, withdrawn from every sense of the body, from every coded
symbol of the spirit.170
How could such an experience be possible before death? Augustine continues:

166
Dionise Hid Divinitate, tr. Clifton Wolters in The Cloud of Unknowing and other works (Penguin, 1978),
p.211.
167
Denys the Carthusian regarded Aquinas in the highest esteem yet criticised his epistemology that the mind
needs phantasms in order to know which affects his doctrine of divine predication. Kent Emery, Jr.A Complete
Reception of the Latin Corpus Dionysiacum: The Commentaries of Denys the Carthusian. in Boiadjiev,
Kapriev, Speer., Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter. Societe Internationale pour lEtude de la Philosophie
Medievale, Recontres de Philosophie Medieval, 9, Turnhout, Belgium: (Brepols, 2000) pp.197-247.
168
ST 1a, q.12, a.13 obj 1.
169
DV, q.13, a.3, resp. Compare the contemporary Augustinian Robert Grosseteste: If you would ask what
moves me to grant that God is form, I say that it is the prememinent authority of the great Augustine. (cited in
John Wyclif On the Truth of Holy Scripture, tr Ian Christopher Levy, Medieval Institute Publications, Western
Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2001, 1.2.38, p.62.
Contra Balthasar who wants to rehabilitate Dionysius as equal to Augustine in authority. Kent Emery, Jr.A
Complete Reception of the Latin Corpus Dionysiacum: The Commentaries of Denys the Carthusian. in
Boiadjiev, Kapriev, Speer., Die Dionysius-Rezeption im Mittelalter. Societe Internationale pour lEtude de la
Philosophie Medievale, Recontres de Philosophie Medieval, 9, Turnhout, Belgium: (Brepols, 2000) p. 208.
Commenting on DN 1.4 (592BC), Balthasar writes: The greater assimilation to the knowledge of the angels
likewise need not point to immediacy. See Hans Urs Van Balthasar The Glory of the Lord, Vol 2, p.207, n.206.
170
Augustine, On Genesis, tr. Edmund Hill, O.P. (New City Press, 2002), Bk 12. 27. p.495.
28
No man who sees God, as He is in Himself, lives the mortal life which we live in the
bodily senses. But unless one in some way dies to this life, either leaving the body
completely, or so turning away and cutting himself off from bodily sense that with
good reason he does not know whether he is in the body or outside of it 171
This raises a further problem however in regard to the difference between the state
of the departed soul pre-resurrection and post resurrection. If the body is a hindrance
to the beatific vision, what is the point of the bodily resurrection which is the Christian
hope? Aquinas addresses this difficulty specifically in De Veritate q. 13. Article 3 and
replies that the hindrance of bodily senses is only a problem in regard to their fallen,
corruptible state and not in their future glorified state which is wholly under the
control of the redeemed spirit:
in the resurrection, the body will be entirely subject to the spirit to such an extent
that the properties of glory will overflow from the spirit into the body. Hence they will
be called spiritual bodies.172
This is similar to the situation of Christ in his earthly life who had full power over all
the parts of his soul and body, except that he did not require any overflow from one
part of his life to another, since he permitted each power to do that which was proper
as far as it was fitted to our redemption. 173
Thus Aquinas views the exceptional cases of Moses and Paul as witnesses to the
hope of glory made possible only by a suspension of the fallen natural faculties, so
that in a sense both Moses and Paul had already entered a Heavenly state in order
to receive this experience.174
Once a place for the body is again recognised in the experience of the beatific vision
then, as Williams notes175 (following Lossky) the meaning of facie ad faciem could
171
DV, q.13, a.3, sed contra 1.
172
DV, q. 13, a. 3, ad 1,2
173
DV q. 13, a. 3, ad 3.
174
DV, q.10, a. 11; q.13 a 1-5..
175
Rowan Williams, Via negativa and the foundations of theology, in Wrestling with angels: Conversations in
modern theology, ed. Mike Higton (SCM Press, 2007), p.8.
29
again admit a real corporeal vision through the body of Jesus Christ. Lossky discerns
(though also overplays 176) a hint of this direction in Pseudo-Dionysius who in Divine
Names speaks of the beatific vision through the paradigm of the experience of the
disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration177, an experience of the Divine which was
mediated through the glorified body of Jesus. We will return to this point in our
conclusion.
Did Aquinas experience a proleptic foretaste of the beatific vision?
There is a fascinating possibility that Aquinas himself experienced such a

rapturous foretaste of divine glory according to some early biographies. On the feast
of St. Nicholas, 6th December 1273, according to one such source, 178 Thomas
experienced a vision of God so profound, that compared to what had been revealed
to him, he could only declare: all I have written seems to me so much straw. The
experience so affected his bodily faculties that when his co friar, Reginald, later
pressed him to resume writing, Thomas confessed I cannot (non possum).
This famous legend is often seized upon by post-modern writers as a decisive

vindication of mysticism over rationalistic thought, especially in theology.179 John
D.Caputo, for example, sees in this story the locus for a deconstruction of Thomas
which transcends his actual writings. Thomas metaphysics of concepts, judgments
and ratiocinations180 represent for Caputo only an alienated way of expressing the
unconcealed truth of mysticism,181 to be made explicit only later in Thomas
176
Rowan Williams, Via negative and the foundations of theology, in Wrestling with angels: Conversations in
modern theology, ed. Mike Higton (SCM Press, 2007), p.11.
177
DN 1.4
178
The Life of Saint Thomas: Biographical documents, tr. Kenelm Foster OP, ed. (Longmans, Green and Co,
Baltimore Helicon Press, 1959), The Life of Saint Thomas by Bernard of Gui, c27, p.46 and p. 73 note 63. The
testimony was from Bartholomew of Capua citing John of Giudice who claimed to have received this from
Thomas socius Reginald of Priverno on his deathbed. He is the source of the date for the alleged revelation
and the famous phrase all I have written seems to me so much straw. See also the biography by William of
Tocco c. 47.
179
Some monastic writers taught that union with God bypasses the intellect completely. (c.f. the debate between
Gregory de Palamas and Barlaam in Byzantium), p. 215.
180
Caputo, John, D., Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics (New York, Fordham
University Press, 1982), pp. 253-254.
181
University Press, 1982), These are among the last words which we know St. Thomas to have spoken, and they
provide us with an essential hermeneutic principle, a principle of retrieval. They tell us how to read the texts
which have been handed down to us. For what has been written must give way to - what has been
revealed and seen. In the light of the alethiogical, the texts appear as straw; that is to say, the texts need to be
deconstructed in the light of the experience of Being of esse subsistens to which they give way. ..St.
30
successor in Paris, Meister Eckhart.182 What in particular does Caputo find explicit in
Eckhart? On Caputos reading, it is the replacement of Platonic theoria with
Eastern detachment,183 that is exchanging Thomas intellectual contemplation of
God for a nothingness of the intellect, a mind divested of all thoughts, words and
images of the understanding in order to achieve a wholly God-receptive attitude. 184
Eckhart speaks of surrendering to the divine abyss or the divine Nothing. 185 In his
synthesis between Eckhart and Heidegger, Caputo prefers to speak of an opening
up to a contentless event.186 Such an interpretation would place Thomas
experience in the same category as those claimed by Plotinus, 187 with nothing
distinctively Christian about it. On the contrary what is distinctive about the monistic
turn is that it is devoid of distinction, the highest and the lowest experiences of man
are reduced to the same stuff or rather non-stuff i.e. nothing. Monism is nihilism. 188
In contrast to Caputos mystical deconstruction of Aquinas, my own positive reading

of Aquinas apophaticism is supported by Elisa Rubino conclusions from her
research into Meister Eckhart within the later Dominican tradition. She argues that
Eckharts reception of Dionysius was to a large extent mediated through Thomas and
Rubino concludes from citations of this passage in the Mystical Theology that even
Eckhart rejects a wholly agnostic reading of Denys in order to retain a Dominican
framework of knowledge (bekantnisse).189 This is because within Dominican
Thomas metaphysics is not the opposite of his mystical life, but a concealed, discursive, representational one
is tempted to say alienated way of expressing it. P. 9.
182
University Press, 1982), pp. 271-279.
183
University Press, 1982), p.277.
184
Meister Ekhart, Sermon 1 in Sermons and Treatises, Volume 1, tr. M.O.C. Walshe, ed. (Element Books,
1979), p. 2.
185
186
Eg John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: a theology of the event (Indiana University Press, 2006).
187
Enneads Book 4.8.1; tr. Stephen MacKenna (Faber and Faber 3rd edit), p.357. C.E.Rolt claims rather too
boldly that Pseudo-Dionysius is unquestionably speaking of a psychological state to which he himself has been
occasionally led. C.E.Rolt, Dionysius the Aeropagite, The Divine Names and the Mystical Theology (SPCK,
1972), p.33.
188
This point is well developed in Conor Cunningham, Geneology of nihilism (Routledge, London and New
York, 2002), ch. 1, pp.3-7.
189
She points out that Eckhart omits from his citation of Sarracen the words circa mysticas visiones Elisa
Rubino, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Eckhart in Jeremiah M. Hackett (ed), A Companion toMeister
Eckhart (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2013), p. 306.
31
thinking, in contrast to earlier neo-Platonism, God is not beyond being, but is Being
itself. (esse ipsum subsistens) which is intrinsically intelligible to itself. 190
It is interesting too that the sources for Thomas ecstatic vision appear in the
context of a canonisation enquiry.191 Caputo acknowledges the problems of taking
such accounts on face value, nevertheless he insists that the important point
remains that Thomas followers were not scandalised that this famous magister
thought his Summa to be like straw.192 A word of caution is sounded however by
Marjorie ORourke who points out that the function of this genre of story is merely to
reflect a judgment concerning Thomas humility (as a proof of saintliness). 193 It is
clearly not intended to reflect negatively upon the value of the Summa which has
continued to be highly revered and used not only within the Dominican order but
throughout the universal church. Other pericopes from Bernard Guis biography
confirm the high estimation of his followers for the extraordinary depths of Thomas
writings: His penetration, too, of the deep things contained in Scripture and in the
mysteries of our Faith was such that in all truth it may be said of Thomas that he
searched the depths of the rivers and brought hidden things to light 194 In fact, a
forerunner to Thomas final revelation is an account from the time of writing the final
part of the Summa Theologiae in which an audible voice told him: You have written
well of me, Thomas; what do you desire as a reward of your labours? The Angelic
Doctor responded: Lord, only yourself. 195 This is immediately followed by the
remarkable tale of Thomas prayerfully labouring over sheets of paper, striving to
explain the deep mystery of the sacrament. Jesus himself appears to him above the
190
I develop this further in Alan Philip Darley,, We know in part: How the positive apophaticism of Aquinas
transforms the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, Heythrop Journal, 2011.
191
University Press, 1982), p.254. See also Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle and Margaret O'Rourke Boyle, Chaff:
Thomas Aquinas's Repudiation of His Opera omnia in New Literary History, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring, 1997,
pp383-399 who argues that palea should be translated chaffy.
192
193
Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle and Margaret O'Rourke Boyle, Chaff: Thomas Aquinas's Repudiation of His
Opera omnia in New Literary History, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring, 1997, pp.383-399.
194
The Life of Saint Thomas: Biographical documents, tr. Kenelm Foster O.P.,ed. (Longmans, Green and Co,
Baltimore Helicon Press, 1959), The Life of Saint Thomas by Bernard of Gui, c.13, p.35.
195
The Life of Saint Thomas: Biographical documents, tr. Kenelm Foster O.P.ed. (Longmans, Green and Co,
Baltimore Helicon Press, 1959), The Life of Saint Thomas by Bernard of Gui, c.23, p.43.
32
sheets of paper and declares: You have written well, Thomas of the sacrament of
my body.196
These stories can only lead us to the conclusion that Thomas reported final
experience was not a repudiation of his former theological and philosophical work
but rather, if true, the teleological completion of it, not a discontinuity with his earlier
work, but a majestic climax to it.197 We have already seen198 that for Aquinas, as for
Dionysius before him mystical intuition or intellect is the apex of a continuum of
cognition, an an unshakeable bond, 199 which includes discursive reason at the level
of human souls in via. If Istvan Perczel is correct in locating the historical Dionysius
within an Origenist milieu then he would be part of a tradition in which the cognitive is
an indispensable aspect of his mysticism. For Origen himself this reached its zenith
in his Commentary on the Song of Songs, Chapter 1:2 cries out: Let him kiss me
with the kisses of his mouth, which for Origen signify deep insights into the meaning
of Scripture.200 According to one legend, Thomas too was composing a commentary
on this book of love shortly before his death. In the language of the De Veritate201,
Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae202, Thomas experienced a
rapture (raptus), comparable to that of Moses or of Paul, a gracious foretaste of the
Beatific Vision which Thomas had always maintained was the goal and fulfilment of
reason.203
The relationship of knowledge in patria to knowledge in via.
This understanding of the nature of the beatific vision which is the telos of human
knowledge also sheds light on knowledge in via. It appears, as Conor Cunningham
observes in his Geneology of Nihilism, that there is an inverse proportion between
196
The Life of Saint Thomas: Biographical documents, tr. Kenelm Foster O.P.ed. (Longmans, Green and Co,
Baltimore Helicon Press, 1959), The Life of Saint Thomas by Bernard of Gui, C24, p.44.
197
Caputo hiself concedes this in Caputo, John, D., Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming
Metaphysics (New York, Fordham University Press, 1982), p.256. He quotes the conclusion of Rousselots
groundbreaking work, The Intellectualism of St. Thomas, (1908), p.223: In the last days of his life, therefore,
he cannot be said to have abandoned his own theories, but rather to have made a practical application of them..
198
Page 12.
199
DN 11.1.949C tr. Colm Luibheid.
200
See Joseph W. Trigg, Origen (Routledge, 1998), p.49.
201
DV 9
202
ST, 2.2, q. 175, a. 5
203
Bernard of Gui also recounts other alleged raptures which Thomas experienced in his life in C 23-28, p 42-
47; cf. Paul Murray O.P., Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013), p.14 n. 43.
33
increasing knowledge and lack of comprehension. 204 Saint Athanasius had already
discovered this in his attempt to compose a work on the divinity of the Logos. He
confesses:
the more I desired to write and endeavoured to force myself to understand the
Divinity of the Word, so much the more did the knowledge thereof withdraw itself
from me; and in proportion as I thought that I had apprehended it, in so much I
perceived myself to fail of doing so. Moreover also, I was unable to express in writing
even what I seemed to myself to understand, and that which I wrote was unequal to
the imperfect shadow of the truth which existed in my conception. 205
Hence he considered it prudent to destroy his draft lest it confuse its readers into a
false confidence of comprehension. This Athanasian sensitivity can protect us from a
certain kind of fundamentalism which imagines that anything can be known
exhaustively. An instance of this is the psychological phenomenon called Dunning
Kruger Effect in which the subjects delusions of importance are in direct proportion
to his incompetence!206 By contrast, Paul Weller sings wisely from his experience of
growing older in The Changingman:
More I see, more I know

The more I know, the less I understand.207
There is of course an equivocation on the word comprehension which in modern

usage is synonymous with understanding but in medieval usage has the more
specific technical meaning of exhaustive knowledge, though this latter nuance is still
present in the English adverb comprehensively. From the perspective of the
discipline of phenomenology, nothing is known comprehensively, yet it can still be
known truly. In fact it is only because it is known partially that it can be known at all.
204
Conor Cunningham, Genealogy of Nihilism ( Routledge, 2001), ch 9, p.221.
205
Robertson, introduction to St Athanasius in The Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, cited in St Athanasius on
the incarnation: the treatise De incarnatione verbi dei, tr. and ed. a religious of C.S.M.V with an introduction by
C.S.Lewis, introductory section on the Life of St Athanasius (Mowbray, London and Oxford, 1982) p.21.
206
First tested in in 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, Dunning, David; Kerri
Johnson, Joyce Ehrlinger and Justin Kruger (2003). "Why people fail to recognize their own
incompetence" (PDF). Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 (3): pp. 8387. doi:10.1111/1467-
8721.01235.
207
Paul Weller, The Changingman, Published by
SONGS OF UNIVERSAL, INC. OBO NOTTING HILL MUSIC UK LTD
34
When Heidegger, for example, refers to truth as disclosedness he is saying that it
only makes sense from the background of previous concealment:
Logos is in itself and at the same time a revealing and a concealing. It is

aletheia. Unconcealment needs concealment, lethe, as a reservoir upon which
disclosure can, as it were, draw. 208
According to Heidegger (against Kant), the primary meaning of phenomena is not

appearance but a showing forth of the thing in itself. 209 Hence we really see the
thing-in-itself as it shows itself, not exhaustively, but nevertheless really. There
remains a transphenomenal which is coextensive with the phenomenal, yet
surpasses it. 210 There is always an excess of meaning.211 I cannot see the chair
exhaustively. I see it from different angles, below, above or in front and in different
light settings, but not all at the same time. My sight is partial. This is necessary in
order to know the chair at all. The fact that it is not the floor it is standing on, nor the
table it is next to (the background or horizon of the chair) also reveals the
something which it is. A student writing an essay must bring an angle to the subject
or risk the essay being an amorphous and unintelligible piece. Similarly, Merleau-
Ponty uses Gestalt theory to support the insight that perception can only take place
against such a background.212 For every presentation there is what Husserl calls an
appresentation213; there is always another side which is not directly revealed. This
is preeminently true of other minds who always transcend the ownness of my
primordial sphere.214 Caravaggios Supper at Emmaus captures the moment of
revelation when the previously unknown guest at the table is recognised as the
resurrected Christ, but there is an excess in all personal subjects, which is why there
208
Martin Heidegger, Logos and Aletheia in Early Greek Thinking, tr David Farrell Krell and Frank Capuzzi
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), cited in Raymond Tallis, The Enduring Significance of Parmenides
Unthinkable thought (Continuum 2007). p.56.
209
Heidegger, Being and Time (Blackwell 2008), pp.51-55.
210
Heidegger, Being and Time (Blackwell 2008), p.6.
211
Husserl, Edmund, Cartesian Meditations: an introduction to Phenomenology , tr. Dorion Cairns (Nijhoff/The
Hague 1977), p.46.
212
Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of perception p.4.
213
Hague 1977), p.122.
214
Hague 1977), p.124.
35
is always the possibility of such phenomenological surprises. This is the mysterious
Other in Levinas; the I-Thou encounter in Buber.
We can never have direct access to the subjective identity of another person,
otherwise we would be that person! ( this would be the monistic solution referred to
above). As Paul Davies writes in God and the New Physics,
(thoughts) seem to occupy a universe of their own which is moreover, a private

universe, inaccessible to others.215
How, then, can we cross the chasm of the There of her mind to the Here of my
own?216 (a question bizarrely explored in the film, Being John Malkovitch)!217 Husserl
responds that our knowledge of the Other is mediated through an analogising
apprehension. Interestingly, this is similar to the conclusion Aquinas reaches in
discussing the problem of how human beings can communicate about God in
language!218 For Husserl, what is there perceptually motivates belief in something
else being there too.219
This general truth which phenomenologists recognize then is that hiddenness
is the condition of knowledge for a contingent being. Aquinas agrees, we cannot
know the essence even of a fly! 220 All finite things are circumscribed by limits and
thereby arises the necessity of the via negativa as an epistemological method for
any knowledge and not only knowledge of the Ultimate. As Tallis puts it
a minimal degree of opacity is the price of visibilitytotal revelation

(is)..incompatible with substantial presence221
A fortiori theologians can conclude that for an infinite being to reveal Himself to a
finite creature he must limit himself, because pure infinity would completely dazzle a
215
Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (Littlehampton Book Services Ltd; 1983, p.73.
216
Hague 1977), p121.
217
Being John Malkovitch, directed by Spike Jonze, (Universal Studios, 2003).
218
Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Bk 1, Ch 29.
219
Hague 1977), pp. 109-110. This phrase is reminiscent of Augustine: it is on account of the known thing it loves
that it seeks the unknown. (De Trinitate, Bk X, ch 2, par 5.)
220
Aquinas, In symbolum Apostolorum, scilicet Credo in Deum exposition, prol par. 864.
221
Raymond Tallis, The Enduring Significance of Parmenides Unthinkable thought (Continuum, 2007). p.56.
36
creature and thereby communicate nothing. More than that, Infinite Power and Glory
would actually annihilate the creature. God is a consuming fire, 222 who lives in
unapproachable light.223 Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee penned the
hymn-writer of Immortal, Invisible. This is also a recurring theme of romantic
literature in which the beloved eludes all reduction and reveals the inadequacy of a
merely scientistic epistemology. As Plato writes in the Phaedrus: their (the lovers)
experience is beyond all comprehension because they cannot fully grasp what it is
that they are seeing.224 But a forteriori it is true of God Himself who is both the most
knowable in Himself (as the fullness of Being) and at the same time the least
comprehensible.
Yet this also has the positive corollary that revelation is necessarily
inexhaustible!225 The world is underdetermined226 by the sense experience which
mediates it to us because the object of knowledge always exceeds the sense
experience that reveals it. Tallis refers to sight as the supreme example of this, but
he also mentions touch. It is only the resistance in an object which makes it explicit.
There is a something that goes beyond the revealing. 227
Some concluding thoughts on a third way
In conclusion, our examination of Aquinas reception of Pseudo-Dionysius in

comparison with Eriugena and some postmodern readers has highlighted a
fundamental difference in respect of the nature of the knowledge of God in patria.
Aquinas insisted, following Augustines reading of Scripture, that Gods essence
can be seen in the next life, against Eriugenas reading that even in the next life, God
can only be known through the mediation of created likenesses. A possible scriptural
solution which neither Aquinas nor Eriugena seem to have explicitly explored is the
possibility that knowledge of God in Heaven is mediated through the creaturely flesh
of the incarnated Word, in other word the theophany of Christ himself. There is a
222
Hebrews 12:29.
223
1 Timothy 6:16.
224
Plato, Phaedrus, cited in Conor Cunningham, Genealogy of Nihilism (Routledge, 2001), ch 9, p.222.
225
Merleau-Ponty: I am open to the world, I have no doubt that I am in communication with it, but I do not
possess it; it is inexhaustible. Phenomenology of perception, p.xix.
226
Barry Stroud cited Raymond Tallis, The Enduring Significance of Parmenides Unthinkable thought
(Continuum 2007), p.165.
227
Raymond Tallis, The Enduring Significance of Parmenides Unthinkable thought (Continuum 2007), p.165.
37
tantalising hint of this solution in a passage from The Divine Names of Dionysius but
it is not explicitly worked out. We have touched earlier on this passage but now
revisit it.
But in time to come, when we are incorruptible and immortal [ a reference ot the
resurrection from 1 Cor 15: 53] , when we have come at last to the blessed
inheritance of being like Christ, then, as scripture says, we shall ever be with the
Lord [ again a reference to the resurrection at the second coming 1 Thess 4:17].
In most holy contemplation we shall ever be filled with the sight of God shining
gloriously around us as once it shone for the disciples at the divine transfiguration.
[Mt 17:1-8; Mk 9: 2-8]. And there we shall be, our minds away from passion and from
earth, and we shall have a conceptual gift of light from him and, somehow, in a way
we cannot know, we shall be united with him and, our understanding carried away,
blessedly happy, we shall be struck by his blazing light. Marvellously, our minds will
be like those in the heavens above. We shall be equal to angels and sons of God,
being sons of the resurrection. [Luke 20:36]. 228
This short section reflects a battery of New Testament passages 229 which strongly
suggest that knowledge of God will always be mediated through the Logos made
creaturely flesh who explains God (John 1:18 NASB). It would mean that seeing
God face to face could be corporeal in the face of Jesus Christ. The Scriptures he
cites point to this truth. Luke 22:29-30 speaks of eating at Christs table, which is the
table of Wisdom (Proverbs 9:5) and even the key text we shall see Him as He is is
clearly in context a reference to the exalted Christ at his second coming. (1 John
3:2).230 Thomas teacher Albert the Great certainly recognised that it is only because
the Word is God and is the divine essence that He can be the actuation (species) of
human intellects in the beatific vision. 231
Aquinas deals with this briefly, but more explicitly in the tertia pars of the Summa
Theologiae in which his conclusion is in line with the key passage in the Divine
228
DN 1.4. 592C tr. Colm Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, The Complete Works, (Paulist Press,
1987), p. 52-53
229
John 1:9; Matthew 11:27, Phil 2:6; Hebrews 1:3; John 14:6; 1 Tim 2:5; Colossians 1:27 etc.
230
SCG Bk 3, ch 51.6
231
2002), pp24,124.
38
Names. Here Aquinas teaches that man achieves his potentiality for the beatific
vision through the humanity of Christ, in whom this beatific knowledge inheres pre-
eminently, citing Hebrews 2:10 in support: "For it became Him, for Whom are all
things, and by Whom are all things, Who had brought many children unto glory, to
perfect the author of their salvation by His passion."232 This conception seems to
have inspired Thomas in worship as seen in his beautiful Eucharistic hymn Adoro te
devote:
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,

Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio:
Ut te revelata cernens facie,
Visu sim betus tu glori. Amen233
However, a salutary tale from the life of St Thomas told by Bernard Gui, might
prevent us from reaching too final a conclusion on this mystery. Bernard records that
once while Thomas was in prayer in Naples he received a vision of the recently
departed Romanus, a Master in Theology at Paris with whom he had earlier debated
the nature of the afterlife. After asking first about the state of his own soul before
God, Thomas proceeded to seize the opportunity to clear up some of his remaining
doubts about the mode of knowledge post mortem. Romanus replied I see God.
Ask me no more! but Thomas would not be deterred and pressed him further: Have
you any immediate sight of God, or only by means of some image? A specific
response could have completely resolved our present enquiry, but instead Thomas
received the disappointingly ambiguous reply: As we have heard, so we see, in the
city of the Lord of hosts.. after which his visitor vanished! 234
232
ST 3, q. 9, a. 2, resp..
233
Tr. (Jesus, whom now veiled, I by faith descry,
What my soul doth thirst for, do not, Lord, deny,
That thy face unveiled, I at last may see,
With the blissful vision blest, my God, of Thee. Amen Adoro te devote a Eucharistic hymn by Thomas
Aquinas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoro_te_devote
234
The Life of Saint Thomas by Bernard of Gui, c.19 in The Life of Saint Thomas: Biographical documents, tr.
Kenelm Foster OP, ed. (Longmans, Green and Co, Baltimore Helicon Press, 1959), pp.40-41 cited also in Paul
Murray OP, Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013), pp.12-13. It is
interesting that Eriugena too draws back from dogmatism concering the mode of knowledge in Heaven but
speaks instead of what is likely (verisimile uiditur) or what one can guess (conciicere possis breuiter
aperies).
39
40

The Epistemological Hope Aquinas Versus

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The Epistemological Hope: Aquinas versus other

receptions of Pseudo-Dionysius on the Beatific

Alan P. Darley, University of Nottingham, edited April, 2017

And I, who now was drawing ever nigher

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in September 2014, the

From the perspective of the phenomenological reduction, it seems that meaning

This paper argues, in contrast, for an epistemological terminus that is

What may be known of God in patria?

We cannot know what God is, but only what He is not. 11

This agnostic conclusion agrees with Eastern Orthodox theologian Christos

Respondeo dicendum quod Deus est subiectum huius scientiae. 16

In seeking to escape Heideggers charge of ontotheology, Marion and Yannaros

This agrees with his reading of the famous unknowing () 33 of Pseudo-

In summary, what is excluded by Thomas apophatic axiom, we cannot know what

Aquinas versus Eriugenas reading of Pseudo-Dionysius

The student agrees:

above every name. Gregory of Nyssa, On Not three Gods, To Ablabius.

This immediate vision of God is promised us in Scripture: We see now through a

What does it mean to see God face to face?

Aquinas insists that it is precisely because no created substance would be adequate

How is an unmediated vision possible? A) The Monistic option

How is an unmediated vision possible? B) Thomas solution: The lumen

But as my sight by seeing learned to see,

Essential but not comprehensive knowledge.

A rational defence of Thomas view from Aristotle

A proleptic foretaste of future glory. How is this possible?

Already, according to Scripture, this has happened proleptically in the special

How could such an experience be possible before death? Augustine continues:

Did Aquinas experience a proleptic foretaste of the beatific vision?

There is a fascinating possibility that Aquinas himself experienced such a

This famous legend is often seized upon by post-modern writers as a decisive

In contrast to Caputos mystical deconstruction of Aquinas, my own positive reading

The relationship of knowledge in patria to knowledge in via.

More I see, more I know

There is of course an equivocation on the word comprehension which in modern

Logos is in itself and at the same time a revealing and a concealing. It is

According to Heidegger (against Kant), the primary meaning of phenomena is not

(thoughts) seem to occupy a universe of their own which is moreover, a private

a minimal degree of opacity is the price of visibilitytotal revelation

Some concluding thoughts on a third way

In conclusion, our examination of Aquinas reception of Pseudo-Dionysius in

Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,

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