The Complete Works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite

...would have even better served our elevation, nor would it have forced celestial explanations into such ill-fitting dissimilarities original: "dissimilitudines." A key concept in Dionysius's theology: the idea that describing God through things He is not (like a wild animal) is more accurate than describing Him through things He seems to be (like a king), because it reminds us that God is beyond all human concepts.. For this literal interpretation both degrades the divine powers in a sacrilegious way and causes our own intellect to wander into error by clinging to these "impure" compositions. Indeed, one might perhaps think that the heavenly realms are filled with herds of lions and horses, or with songs of praise echoing like the lowing of oxen, or with flocks of birds and other such animals and even lowlier materials. These descriptions, by provoking us toward absurdity, impurity, and passion, describe things that are in every way unlike the spiritual truths they are meant to illuminate.

However, as I see it, an investigation into the truth shows that the most sacred wisdom of the Scriptures, in its fashioning of the celestial intelligences original: "intelligentiarum," referring to the Angels as pure minds., has clearly provided for two things: first, that the divine powers are not (if one may say so) insultingly diminished; and second, that we ourselves are not too firmly attached to the lowliness of these images while crawling on the ground.

Why Scripture represents celestial things even through base things.

Furthermore, one might rightly say that figures and shapes were assigned to things that have no figure or form not only because of our own weakness—which is unable to gaze directly upon spiritual contemplations and requires familiar and natural aids or anagogies original: "anagogiis." From the Greek meaning "to lead upward." It refers to a method of interpretation that lifts the soul from physical objects to spiritual truths. to hold out before us the shapes we can perceive as a path to formless and supernatural visions—but also because it is most appropriate for the mystical Oracles original: "Oraculis." Dionysius frequently refers to the Holy Scriptures as "Oracles" to emphasize their role as direct divine communications. to conceal the truth through ineffable and sacred riddles, and to establish that the sacred and secret truth of the super-worldly original: "supermundanarum." Literally "above the world," referring to the spiritual realm that exists beyond physical space and time. minds remains inaccessible to the common crowd. For not everyone is holy, nor does knowledge belong to all, as the Oracles...