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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-andOne 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 overabundance 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 selftranscending 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) + 192 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 192 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:20
