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MIKLÓS VASSÁNYI
of desire. Ihe Beautiful is hence not only the One but also the Good as the
kalon-kai-agathon. Denys here carries out a fusion of leading Platonic ideas
which was never made by Plato himself in any written text but which is
implied in many passages of Plotinus and Proclus.
Further, this many-faceted One is represented here as a universal
generative principle which is also a universal formal cause: It is a source
not only of existence but also of essence." This aspect probably accounts
for the often-repeated Dionysian thesis that God is hyperousios—that He
is above the essences of things in an eminent sense, as their continuously
creative cause. Therefore, the attribute of supra-essentiality actually
emphasizes divine creativity again: God as the Beautiful-and-Good-and¬
One is a source of essence and existence, unity, universal order and harmony
alike. His productive super-eminence is, like that of the Leibnizian ens
extramundanum, beyond the concatenation of all finite things (which is the
world). Since, in this manner, God maintains the universe because of an over¬
abundance and overflow of Goodness, He, in fact, must have decided to rise
above His own transcendence and to cross over into a generative excess or
overflow, yevytik?) drrepßoAn (De divinis nominibus 4, 10, ad fin.).
4. CREATIVE CONTRADICTION INSIDE THE ONE
This internal tendency towards self-revelation and self-transcending is best
expressed by the complex idea of divine Love, which appears to be the point
of culmination of Denys’ treatise on God conceived as the Good. The little
treatise-within-the-treatise on divine Love (agapé as well as eros: 4, 11-17)
is apparently the paramount, as well as the most paradoxical, description of
divine nature the Areopagite has to offer in Part 4.
Beauty and Love, he argues for a start, are closely linked because Beauty
induces Love. From a divine perspective, in turn, the outbound motion, the
outreach, of the Good is also Love. On the one hand, this surge of Love from
within the Good is not surprising, if the essence of goodness lies in a self¬
transcending outreach—bonum est diffusivum sui. But the outpouring of
Love from God conceived as the essentially extramundane Good implies
a rebuttal of divine transcendence. By virtue of Love, the Good, which is also
the One and the Beautiful at the same time, transcends its own transcendence,
renouncing its own original splendid isolation, even though so far the Good
4 Kai yap «é& adtot Kai 6 avtod» Kal odola Kai Cwi) Méoa Kal... TO MOLOV, TO TOGSV, TO TNAiKoV,
TO dmetpov, ai ovyKpioeic, ai Siaxpioeic, Nioa danetpia, Mav Mépac, oi Spot Mavtec, ai taketc,
ai únepoxai, Tü oTolxeia, Tü előn, Tűca ovola, Nioa Sbvautc, Mdoa évepyeta, Taoa gic, Maca
alodnoıs, näg Adyog, näca vonors, näca Enapn, näca &mortnun, näca Evworc. (De divinis
nominibus 4, 10 = Suchla [ed.], Corpus Dionysiacum I, 154 = PG 3, 705 C 4-D 2)
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