Abstract

There is a tension in the Dionysian corpus between the resolute negativity of the Mystical Theology and Divine Names, on the one hand, and the affirmative confidence of the hierarchical treatises. Where the former works insist that God is entirely beyond created symbols, the latter speaks of "mediation" of the divine (CH XIII.4) and "a correlation between visible signs and invisible reality" (CH XV.5). Whereas the debate surrounding the Corpus tends to exaggerate one of these poles at the expense of the other, I argue that the tension between them is best understood by way of a distinctively eschatological reading. Although scholars including Paul Rorem claim that the Corpus Dionysiacum contains no eschatology, I argue that the Divine Names describes a gap that is unmistakably temporal between what we "now grasp" and the plenitude of knowledge that remains for the "time to come" (DN (I.4). Because Dionysius claims that union with God remains a matter for expectation and is thus reserved for eschatological fulfillment, the present practice of the church that he describes necessarily takes the form of a tentative attempt to speak and act without certain knowledge. The church may continue to hope that its visible signs are taken up into the divine life, but Dionysius is clear that this affirmation is necessarily uncertain. Yet, far from undermining the present practice of faithful life, Dionysius suggests that the temporal play of presence and absence describes the condition of sacrament itself.