Light, Darkness, Fire

In both the Allegory [of Plato] and in Exodus, there is an ascent towards the brilliant light, a light so excessive as to cause pain, distress and darkness: a darkness of knowledge deeper than any which is the darkness of ignorance. The price of the pure contemplation of the light is therefore darkness, even, as in Exodus, death, but not the darkness of the absence of light, rather of its excess—therefore a 'luminous darkness'. In both, descent from the darkness of excessive light is return to an opposed darkness of ignorance, the half-light of the cave, where there is only incredulity and ridicule to be had from those who cannot credit the witness to anything more real. Light is darkness, knowing is unknowing, a cloud, and the pain of contemplating it, is the pain of contemplating more reality than can be borne: '[humankind] may not see me and live'.

Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1995), 17-18.



On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, as well as a thick cloud on the mountain, and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled. . . . Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently. . . . Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was (Exod. 19:16, 8. 20:21).




Lead us up beyond knowing and light,
up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture
where the mysteries of God's Word
lie simple, absolute, unchangeable
in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.

Pseudo-Dionysius, "Mystical Theology," trans Colm Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius, the Complete Works (New Jersey: Paulist, 1987) 997A-B.




In chapter two of Mystical Theology, we are told of the necessity to deny all things of the 'primary' [God] 'so that we may unhiddenly know that unknowing which is itself hidden . . . so that we may see above being that darkness concealed from the light'. But yet, in the last chapter of the same work, Denys says of God, the 'Cause of all': 'Darkness and light . . . it is none of these. So, it is both darkness and light; it is a luminous darkness and a dark brilliance; it is neither darkness nor light. What are we to make of this?

Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), 21-22.

Sinai
down from your peak
Moses bore the opened sky
on his forehead
cooling step by step
until they who waited in the shadow
were able to bear, trembling,
what shone beneath the veil—

Nelly Sachs, "Sinai," trans. Ruth and Matthew Mead, The Seeker and Other Poems (New York: Farrar, 1970) 95.

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. . . . When Moses had finished speaking with them he put a veil on his face . . . (Exod. 34:29-30, 33).



Some theologians of the apophatic tradition of negative theology

Pseudo Dionysius-the-Areopagite- Mystical Theology- end C5th.
Augustine
Bonaventure 1217-1274
Meister Eckhart 1260-1329
Author of Cloud of Unknowing England C14th
Denys the Carthusian
John of the Cross 1542-1591
John the Scot Eriugena