The neoplatonic pursuit of God in the Middle Ages

This paper studies the differing approaches to pursuing God during the Middle Ages to show the latent Neoplatonism inherent to four prominent thinkers from the Early to High Middle Ages. Beginning with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, God’s darkness is equated with an ineffable light. Pseudo-Dionysius used darkness to describe God exceeding the bounds of the intellect; a metaphor also used to illustrate the non-objectifying imperative for union with God. In union, Pseudo-Dionysius outlines an apophatic process concurrently with a ladder of ascent. Eriugena appropriates Pseudo-Dionysius’ darkness, albeit dialectically. In accepting the limitations of the intellect, Eriugena maps the boundaries of the intellect using binary oppositions between being and non-being and the created and uncreated. Eriugena concludes we can achieve union only by meditating upon God’s theophanies. By distinguishing reason from faith, we observe the turn to reason in Anselm. In signifying the start of the High Middle Ages, Anselm makes the unprecedented claim that God is proveable through reason alone, although such proof requires arduous contemplative work. Anselm nevertheless understood prayer and faith as prerequisites for pursuing God. Anselm’s view of the limitations of the intellect later becomes the backbone of his Ontological Argument, which Aquinas takes up and revises by focusing on Anselm’s definition of contemplation. For Aquinas, the non-objective vision of God, which he calls a beatific vision, is the ground for union with God. The very limitations of the intellect for Aquinas prove the need for beatific vision as the prerequisite for bridging the infinite gap between God and intellect. Throughout this investigation, we uncover the intrinsic Neoplatonism in the Middle Ages philosophers exhibited in their pursuit of God.