The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite (Divine Names, Celestial Hierarchy, Mystical Theology)

indicate an original thinker molding the Greek language to a newly acquired faith. There are two terms, "Agnosia" unknowing or transcendental ignorance and "Divine Gloom," which illustrate a principle running through these writings—that the negative of abstraction denotes the superlative positive. "Divine Gloom" is the darkness resulting from excessive light; "Agnosia" is neither ignorance nor knowledge intensified, but a supra-knowledge of Him Who is above all things known. It is "the most Divine knowledge of Almighty God, within the union beyond the mind, when the mind, having stood apart from all existing things, and then having dismissed itself, has been united to the superluminous rays—thence and there, being illuminated by the unsearchable wisdom."

In the Mystic Theology, Dionysius exhorts Timothy thus: "But thou, O dear Timothy, leave behind both sensible perception and intellectual efforts, and all objects of sense and intelligence; and all things being and not being, and be raised aloft as far as attainable, original: ἀγνώστως (agnostōs - unknowingly).—unknowingly—to the union with Him above every essence and knowledge. For by the resistless and absolute ecstasy from thyself, in all purity, thou wilt be carried high to the super-essential ray of the Divine darkness, when thou hast cast away all, and become liberated from all." Thus, we must pass beyond all things known and all things being, and lie passive under the illuminating ray of God, if we would attain the highest conception of Him,