《ᴅɪᴏɴʏꜱɪᴜꜱ ᴏɴ ᴅɪꜰꜰᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴏᴘʜᴀɴʏ, ᴀ ᴛʜʀᴇᴀᴅ》

Imagine all the contents of reality as the many different points on a circle's circumference. Picture all points moving toward the centre, each along its own radius & see the circle gradually shrink.

When all the points meet at the centre, the circle will "blink out" altogether. It is analogously that God: not any "thing", but the undifferentiated containment of all things.

All things in all things, according to their nature.

Conversely, then, all things are nothing but the unfolding/explicatio of God, its presentation in
differentiated multiplicity. What constitutes beings as not God but as all things, as being, is their differentiation from one another.

They are beings in that they are distinct from each other and therefore determinate and intelligible. What distinguishes each being from the others is also what distinguishes each being from God.

Each being is not God, precisely in that He is differentiated from other beings, is determinate, is intelligible, or, in short, in that it is a being. All things are other than God, but God is not other than all things.

If God is the complicatio/enfolding of all things, all things without distinction, the differentiation of beings from one another is what makes being as a whole, the totality of the things that are, distinct from God.

It is this differentiation that constitutes all things as all things, as being, as that which is, rather than God. But if being is being, or is, in virtue of differentiation, then God himself is this very differentiation.

Thus Dionysius says that God is named "the Different, since God becomes providentially present to all things and all things in all things for the preservation of all." (DN IX.5, 912D).

"In explicating these differing forms and figures, we must not fall into the error of confusing the bodiless divine names with those which include perceptible symbols... difference in God must not be supposed to indicate any variation of his totally unchanging sameness.

What is meant is his unity amid many forms and the uniform processions of his fecundity to all." (DN IX.5, 913B).

The of God as the productive differentiation by which beings are distinct, are themselves, and so are beings, recalls Plotinus’ description of the One’s indistinct production as “overflow,” that the One is not merely simple but “beyond any simplicity whatsoever” (V.3.16.15).

God is not unified but unity. Not a unity but unity itself. This is not a predicative ascription.

Also relevant; Proclus’ account of production as the cause’s self-multiplication where there is no distinction between the cause and its productive generations, so that the cause is the very differentiation whereby it is differently present in, and so constitutes, its effects.

God is not a simple monad that's devoid of difference and multiplicity yet possessing simplicity & unity. As the very differentiation whereby beings are beings; neither simple nor differentiated but beyond both & constitutes the unity of being and the differences within it:

“From this [God as the Good] are all the substantial existences of beings, the unions, the distinctions, the identities, the differences, the likenesses, the unlikenesses, the communions of opposite things, the unminglings of united things” (DN IV.7, 704B).

"From God derives the existence of everything as beings, what they have in common and what differentiates them, their identicalness and differences, their similarities and dissimilarities,...

...their sharing of opposites, the way in which their ingredients maintain identity, the providence of the higher ranks of beings, the interrelationship of those of the same rank,...

...the return upward by those of lower status, the protecting and unchanged remaining and foundations of all things amid themselves. Hence, the interrelationship of all things in accordance with capacity.

Hence, the harmony and the love which are formed between them but which do not obliterate identity. Hence, the innate togetherness of everything. Hence, too, the intermingling of everything, the persistence of things, the unceasing emergence of things." (DN IV.7, 704C).

The centre of the circle, the undifferentiated containment of all things, is not “first” a simple monad which “then” in addition to being itself also produces or undergoes differentiation.

Rather, the containment is itself the unfolding, the overflow, multiplication, or differentiation, by which beings are distinct and so are beings. For Dionysius, then, the whole of reality, all that is, is theophany, the manifestation or appearance of God.

Dionysius then manages to go beyond pantheism - because no thing, as delimited, is God--and beyond monsim - as beings are real whatnesses and not just illusions as intelligibles are beings.

Move obviously, Dionysius goes beyond dualism - God were another being besides his products, he would be included as a member of a more inclusive totality, subordinated to a more embracing universal term, and distinct from the other members and therefore finite.

If God were merely other than the world, he would be another thing and so not truly transcendent, but contained in the world. All things are other than God, but God is not other than all things.

Since all things are not God, Dionysius is not a monist; but since God is not something else besides all things, neither is he a dualist.

So, God is enfolding/difference itself, is not just an object which gives off light akin to the Sun, but more akin to the ambient light itself whereby things are visible.

The perfection of the Godhead extends from its closest and most venerable substances to the furthest, always bestowing adequate illumination as measure and Law. Permeating all things without being such a member. One only can think of Hölderlin;

"Not to be encompassed by the greatest, but to let oneself be encompassed by the smallest—that is divine".

“God is altogether not uncommunicated to any of beings, but shines forth the ray beyond being, established remaining in itself, by illuminations analogous to each of beings.” Dionysius, DN I.2, 588CD

《fin》