Language means and meta-language codes in Christian mysticism of the Corpus Areopagiticum

Abstract

   The paper deals with the epistemological dilemma of the knowledge of God in the theolinguistic discourse. This dilemma is a paradox of the knowledge of God with His incomprehensibility. The resolution of this paradox is to be found in a constructive conflict of cataphatic and apophatic methods of theology, which are excellently implemented in the Christian mysticism writings of the 5th century – the treatises from the Corpus Areopagiticum. These pseudo-epigraphs, inscribed with the name of the Apostle Paul’s disciple Dionysius Areopagita, are a product of Christianized Neoplatonism in synthesis with the biblical tradition. We have analyzed the language reflection of the mentioned gnoseological dilemma, expressed in the linguistic innovation of Pseudo-Dionysius. The paper studies the lexical, word-forming, morphological and syntactic means used to resolve the specified conflict. The research is based on an inductive methodological approach – by selecting and describing specific linguistic facts to understand the essence of the phenomena behind them. Using concrete examples, we prove Pseudo-Dionysius’ choice of the apophatic method over the linguistic units of the text. The cataphatic method is built mostly on lexical and morphological linguistic means, and the apophasis – on syntactic and word-forming means. Furthermore, the meta-linguistic codes, used by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, serve the realization of an important task of mystical texts: They conceal the sacred information from uninitiated readers but reveal it to chosen ones.