Paraphrasis in Dionysium Areopagitam

to the many, and of divine science. For they are coverings and types of deeper thoughts and underlying meanings. He says that the Word signifies these as "science," implying that there is some science higher than these, which he who contemplates spiritually—and compares spiritual things with spiritual—knows, not by demonstrative words, but by spiritual ones. They were written down in sacred script in this way for the sake of the unworthy, so that they might not appear contemptible; and so that they might be revealed only to those who are perfect, who cast off every unbecoming fantasy regarding them, and are able to pass over to the truth, while looking past the variety of the symbols and grasping the unitary [meaning], not in demonstration and intellectual science, but in simple applications of the mind.

Otherwise, he says, the tradition of the theologians is twofold: the one, through symbols; the other, through the contemplation of creation, by means of understanding the Creator from it. And having spoken of the ineffable and mystical [theology], he explains it further, calling it symbolic, inasmuch as it is delivered through symbolic oracles. But it is also telestikē ritual-perfecting, as it delivers the rites of the mysteries in symbols through priestly tradition. He says that this ineffable—or symbolic—[theology] has the ineffable, that is, the mystical, woven together with the literal—that is, with the symbol ordered to be spoken. For the truth is shaded within the symbol and is not made public, just as in the legal [tradition] the true Passover—as it has been said, "Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us." The second part of theology is manifest and known. He called this theology "philosophical" and "demonstrative," as it consists in the understanding of created things, of certain divine dispensations, and of the contemplative interpretation of the things said about God in the divine Scriptures. And this...