Eros and Pseudo-Dionysius

I am moved when I read the great Christian theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius.  For him God is the transcendent and overflowing Good which surpasses all intelligibility and form--even surpassing Being-itself.  The Good is the source of all things, gives light to all, and sets all things in motion with erotic (yes, erotic!) yearning for the Good.  I find the lure of Pseudo-Dionysius in this:  rather than seeing the universe as simply ordered by static forms, or as governed by cold rationality and mechanic movement, or as a threatening chaos that has to be mastered (for example, consider the modernity), Pseudo-Dionysius sees the entire universe as fundamentally erotic--propelled and drawn by superabundant desire that overflows to beings and non-beings alike.

Pseudo-Dionysius is adamant that all things in the universe (celestial, human, inanimate and otherwise) are moved by God to desire and all things desire God.  Then, bucking against his Neoplatonic inclinations, the theologian affirms that, in God's excess, God erotically yearns for all things.  Then, he takes yet another step to assert that God is not only the foundation and the object of our desire, but God is desire itself in motion.  We don't have to accept all the Neoplatonic trappings to benefit from this joyous and erotic theology.

"And we may be so bold as to claim also that the Cause of all things loves all things in the superabundance of his goodness, that because of this goodness he makes all things, brings all things to perfection, holds all things together, returns all things.  The divine longing is Good seeking good for the sake of the Good.  That yearning (eros) which creates all the goodness of the world preexisted superabundantly within the Good and did not allow it to remain without issue."

-Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, Ch. 4.10

"This divine yearning (eros) brings ecstasy so that the lover belongs not to self but to the beloved... And, in truth, it must be said too that the very cause of the universe in the beautiful, good superabundance of his benign yearning for all is also carried outside of himself in the loving care he has for everything.  He is, as it were, beguiled by goodness, by love, and by yearning and is enticed away from his transcendent dwelling place and comes to abide within all things, and he does so by virtue of his supernatural and ecstatic capacity to remain, nevertheless, within himself... In short, both the yearning and the object of that yearning belong to the Beautiful and the Good."

-Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, Ch. 4.13

"He is yearning on the move, simple, self-moved, self-acting, preexistent in the Good, flowing out from the Good onto all that is and returning once again to the Good."

-Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, Ch. 4.14