ON THE NAMES OF GODdevices are, obviously, much more sophisticated—they rely on the redemptive nature of
language, according to which ‘‘words come from the Word.’’ But in any case it is a distor-
tion of the normal use of language that is at stake. What is involved in such a distortion?
Let us concentrate for a moment on the series of negations through which Dionysius
attempts to approach the (non)essence of the divinity. In the first place, all the contents
that are negated are part of an enumeration that has no internal hierarchy or structure.
They are in a purely paratactic relation with each other. In the second place, the enumera-
tion is an open one: many more contents—actually, all representational content—could
have been part of the same enumeration. Now this enumerative operation is crucial to
produce the effect of meaning that Dionysius is looking for. If he had just said, for in-
stance, that God is not ‘‘imagination,’’ the possibility would always have existed that He
is something else, endowed with a positive content. It is only the location of ‘‘imagina-
tion’’ in an enumerative chain with ‘‘opinion,’’ ‘‘logos,’’ ‘‘number,’’ ‘‘intellection,’’ and so
on, as well as the open character of the enumeration, that guarantees that God can be
identified with the ‘‘ineffable.’’ But in that case, the enumeration is not just an enumera-
tion, in which each of its terms would express the fullness of its own isolated meaning (as
when we say, for instance, that the U.S.A. was visited last year by many British, French,
and Italian people). In the case of Dionysius’ text, each of the terms in the enumeration
is part of a chain which,only when it is taken as a totality, expresses the nonessence of
that Who is the Cause of All Things. That is, that we are dealing with a peculiar type of
enumeration, one whose terms do not simply coexist one beside the other but instead can
replace each other, because they all, within the enumerative arrangement, express the
same. This is the type of relation that I callequivalence.
It could perhaps be objected that this possibility of an equivalential substitution is
simply the result of the negative character of each of the terms of Dionysius’ enumeration.
But I do not think that this is the case. If the only thing that we had in the succession of
negative terms was the negation of which they are bearers, the possibility of expressing
the ineffable would be lost. If all we are saying is that God is notA, notB, and notC, this
by itself does not exclude the possibility that He isD,E,orF. That is, if we focus exclu-
sively on thenotof the negation, there is no way of meaningfully constructing the open-
ended dimension of the enumeration (on which the possibility of expressing the ‘‘ineffable’’
depends). We are apparently dealing with two contradictory requirements: we want to
maintain the ineffable character of the experience of the divinity, and we want at the
same time to show through language such an ineffable presence. As we said, no pure
concentration on thenotwill help us to meet these two requirements. The enumeration
of Dionysius has another dimension, however, for what he is saying is not that God is
‘‘not imagination’’—paragraph—‘‘not logos’’—paragraph, and so on. What he is actually
saying is, first, that God is something that goesbeyondthe specific meaning of terms such
asimagination,logos,intellection, and so on, and, secondly, that this transcendence, this
goingbeyondthe specific meanings of these terms, is shown through the equivalence that
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