n a symbolical or
mystical interpretation of them without anxiety. The author of the
_Theologica Mystica_ and the other works ascribed to the Areopagite
proceeds, therefore, to develop the doctrines of Proclus with very
little modification into a system of esoteric Christianity. God is the
nameless and supra-essential One, elevated above goodness itself. Hence
'negative theology,' which ascends from the creature to God by dropping
one after another every determinate predicate, leads us nearest to the
truth. The return to God is the consummation of all things and the goal
indicated by Christian teaching. The same doctrines were preached with
more of churchly fervour by Maximus the Confessor (580-622). Maximus
represents almost the last speculative activity of the Greek Church, but
the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysian writing was transmitted to the
West in the ninth century by Erigena, in whose speculative spirit both
the scholasticism and the mysticism of the Middle Ages have their rise.
Erigena translated Dionysius into Latin along with the commentaries of
Maximus, and his system is essentially based upon theirs. The negative
theology is adopted, and God is stated to be predicateless Being, above
all categories, and therefore not improperly called Nothing [_query_,
No-Thing]. Out of this Nothing or incomprehensible essence the world of
ideas or primordial causes is eternally created. This is the Word or Son
of God, in whom all things exist, so far as they have substantial
existence. All existence is a theophany, and as God is the beginning of
all things, so also is He the end. Erigena teaches the restitution of
all things under the form of the Dionysian _adunatio_ or _deificatio_.
These are the permanent outlines of what may be called the philosophy
of mysticism in Christian times, and it is remarkable with how little
variation they are repeated from age to age."[153]

In the eleventh century Bernard of Clairvaux (A.D. 1091-1153) and Hugo
of S. Victor carry on the mystic tradition, with Richard of S. Victor in
the following century, and S. Bonaventura the Seraphic Doctor, and the
great S. Thomas Aquinas (A.D. 1227-1274) in the thirteenth. Thomas
Aquinas dominates the Europe of the Middle Ages, by his force of
character no less than by his learning and piety. He asserts
"Revelation" as one source of knowledge, Scripture and tradition being
the two channels in which it runs, and the influence, seen in his
writings, of th