That doesn’t rule out the possibility that this is all just ideological obfuscation, of course. And the fact that Dionysius offers literally no philosophical defense the principle might lend some credence to that interpretation. (The defense he does offer is scriptural: showing that Ezekiel, Moses, even Jesus only received the divine will through angelic intermediaries.) I’m inclined, though, to think Dionysius is being genuine here, especially since he’s creating this whole concept of hierarchy more or less ex nihilo, and affording himself a relatively low status. But then I’m just left baffled. Why insist on this principle at all? Even if there’s good reason to say that no one has gazed upon divinity directly, that there’s some necessary mediation there, what could possibly be the point of insisting that all communication from God be stepwise? And that not only knowledge of God is so mediated, but that the knowledge of the higher angels is as well?

All that is good is inscribed in the circle whose source and goal is God, which is why God’s first and most fitting name is the Good. We need not fear that ‘negative theology’ will make us lose our trust in the words of sacred scripture or in the ways God has already revealed himself to us. Our prayer (“O Trinity!”) guides us through the desert.

[Such overcomplicated prose! It's a mistake, I think, to try to speak of Dionysius (already so foreign to us) after reading Caputo (already so obscure).]

I’ll note another helpful section, immediately following the few sentences on transdescendence in the same book, Existence humain et transcendance (1944). Part of the paper I’ve been trying to write for Hart has been insisting on the circular character of theology for Denys the Areopagite, as opposed to Marion’s three ways, such that negation spills over into affirmation and affirmation is itself the catalyst of negation–with transcendence emerging as the inadequacy of both. But what I’m trying to show theologically, as an interpretation of Denys, Wahl shows philosophically. The book hasn’t been translated, so I’ll attempt a rough translation of the relevant section here.

bq.. The transcendence towards immanence

There is a movement of transcendence directed towards immanence; when transcendence transcends itself.

Perhaps the greatest transcendence is that which consists of transcending transcendence, which is to say falls back into immanence.

There would be, then, a second immanence after the transcendence which has been destroyed.

The idea of transcendence, one could conceive it as necessary to destroy the belief in a thought that knows nothing but itself, to make us grasp the feeling of our immergence in an immanence other than thought.

But this destructive idea–if it should be destroyed in turn–is never completely itself, is never completed transcended, and rests in the background of the spirit, like the idea of a paradise lost, from whose presence (hoped for, regretted) and loss flows the value of our attachment to what is here below.

—Jean Wahl, Human Existence and Transcendence, p. 38.

p. Transcendence comes not in an accomplished moment of any discourse or of any existence, but always with the character of a journey or of growth. Transcendence, like desire unto perfection, “has no stopping place but stretches out with the limitless” (Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, P.7). And rather than growing linearly, leaving behind what it has known of immanence, transcendence returns endlessly to immanence and endlessly transcends it again, transforming both movements in their relationship to distance. Rather than a simple exiting of immanence or a return to immanence, we get emergence and immergence. “L’immergence est l’immanence de l’immanence dans la transcendance. L’émergence…est la transcendance de l’immanence par rapport à l’immanence.”*

In the same way, for Denys, the denial of all things as God (apophasis) brings us to God as the Cause of all things–which results in praise of God as all things (émergence). The praise of God as all things (cataphasis) is simultaneously the praise of God as the source of all things (immergence). One does not emerge from affirmation and negation into a third way, but rather recognizes returns to them having left them, and finds them transformed.

Marion had earlier (and better) characterized the movement of transcendence as the endless traverse of distance, foregoing the hope of accomplishing the term of transcendence and rather admitting distance, in both senses of recognizing it and allowing it to enter. It is the “in-draft of distance,” as Marion calls it in The Idol and Distance, that transforms our speech into something worthy of itself. But this transcendence does not leave behind distance, nor does this new discourse leave behind affirmation and negation. Rather, distance gives itself to us: affirmation and negation themselves become displays of transcendence.

p(small). ==*== “Immergence is the immanence of immanence within transcendence. Emergence… is the transcendence of immanence in connection with immanence” (p. 37).

Endlessly traversed, however, according to a certain theological rigor–not destroyed but indeed ensured by the passage into distance. For only the logia delivered through distance are logia that come as gifts, immediately mediating the Logos, rather than words of our own devising. Thus the Scriptures are “the sole foundation that might validate a discourse on the Logos, because they issue from it” (181). Marion thus foreshadows the eucharistic hermeneutic he will outline in Dieu sans l’être, where he will add to the point that the Logos can be only spoken by the (Scriptural) logia that the (Scriptural) logia can be only be interpreted from the point of view of the Logos: the hierarchical circle of immediate mediation. (The possibility of a ‘hierarchical circle’ shows Marion’s consistency here–he does not forgo his insistence that Denys’s hierarchy is not to be imagined according to the ‘vulgar’ and ‘political’ model currently understood in the term.)

So the beginning of the discourse of praise does not mean the end of theological rigor or the possibility of error, because even the infinite names are multiplied according to the word handed down. Denys: “We are raised up to the enlightening beams of the sacred scriptures, and with these to illuminate us, with our beings shaped to songs of praise, we behold the divine light, in a manner befitting us, and our praise resounds for that generous Source of all holy enlightenment, a Source which has told us about itself in the holy words of scripture” (DN 1.3.589B). Our praise, though forever multipliable, is by no means arbitrary; rather, we are “shaped to songs of praise” by repeating and demonstrating the wisdom of Scripture which leads us to a union with God far superior to anything we could otherwise accomplish. “This is why we must not dare to restore to words or conceptions concerning that hidden divinity which transcends being, apart from what the sacred scriptures have divinely revealed” (DN 1.1.588A). But that is a big ‘apart from,’ which sustains the practice of theology and without which union with the divine would be impossible. Apophasis thus does not render doctrine impossible, but provides the conditions for it: repetition and demonstration of the biblical praise of God. These are the divine names themselves given by the divinity–thus they forever elude us (by excess), and thus they forever continue shaping us into beings capable of orthodoxy, beings capable of the right praise of God.

— Denys the Areopagite, The Divine Names V.4.817D

bq. Now there is no need to tell of the loving-kindness of Christ, bathed as it is in peace. But we must learn from it to cease from strife within ourselves, against each other and against the angels. We must work together and with the angels to do the things of God, and we must do so in accordance with the Providence of Jesus “who works all things in all” [1 Cor. 12:6], making that Peace which is ineffable and was foreordained from eternity, reconciling us to himself and in himself to the Father.

Pseudo-Dionysius’s peace is a peace fundamentally about rest and unity: peace is the reconciliation of difference, the “undivided communion” of a multiplicity of forms. “The divine Peace is indivisible,” utterly one, yet always spilling out into all things and bringing them back into itself. But unity does not imply the elimination of difference; on the contrary, peace is the coming to rest of all things in the uniqueness proper to each. “Perfect Peace is there as a gift, guarding without confusing the individuality of each, providentially ensuring that all things are quiet and free of confusion within themselves and from without, that all things are unshakably what they are and that they have peace and rest.”

Politically? “Every civil war is changed into a unified household.” The end of strife between ourselves issues from being overtaken by the divine Peace that transposes our differences into majestic harmonies. But it is not merely passive: from a glimpse of the perfect peace of Christ we must learn the form of peace and participate in it. “With reverent hymns of peace we should now sing the praises of God’s peace [Eph. 2:14], for it is this which brings all things together.”

—Pseudo-Dionysius, Complete Works: The Divine Names, p. 54.