1	Towards a Theology of Ascent Lecture and Discussion Three.
2	“Up” and “Higher” Natural metaphors for the God who is beyond our grasp. The person seeking to ascent realizes that the metaphor involves something that is superior to what is present. Above is, thus, a symbol of transcendence and of higher value.
3	The Idea of Hierarchy One of the most important metaphors in mystical theology is hierarchy. Basically, hierarchy is a ranking.
4	Humanity: Two Hierarchies
5	Ideal Life The philosophers believed that the ideal life was one ruled by Reason. The word, contemplation, had its origin in the dispassionate contemplation of the truth by the mind. Christian mystics, especially Augustine and St. Bernard, insisted however that love, an emotional or willful category was what ought to drive reason.
6	Monastic Life In many ways, the various stages of self-mastery required by the mysticism of ascent are all related to this understanding of humanity. The Active Life masters the soul for virtue Purgation frees the mind from the distractions of the body and of guilt Contemplation raises the soul to God.
7	The Philosopher’s Universe Parallels the Human Being The Source The Nous or Logos The Oversoul or Spirit The Source generates the Logos, the Logos or the world of ideas, gives birth to all that is The Oversoul animates the universe.
8	Out and Back Being always, thus, moved from the Source to the world of life. Likewise the world of life always moved back towards the Source. The great mystic ascent was participation in this return.
9	The Human Rises to God The world of sense The World of Ideas The World of Spirit Body and the flesh Mind Spirit
10	Beyond Reason The very fact that one passes beyond the forms means that one has moved into the cloud of unknowing. Since what is comes from the Source, being must reflect its Origin (symbol), but it cannot be the Source.
11	Augustine’s Three Heavens It seems that we are right,then, in understanding the first heaven in general as this whole corporeal heaven, namely, all that is above the waters and the earth, and the second heaven as the objects seen in bodily likenesses. . ., and the third heaven as the objects seen by mind after it has been so separated and removed and completely carried out of the senses and purified that it is able through the love of the Holy Spirit in a mysterious way to see and hear the objects in that heaven, even the essence of God and the Divine Word through whom all things were made—Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis
12	The Apophatic and the Cataphatic God is fully known through God’s Word Nature Points to God. What is, is a reflection of its Source I Know Nothing. Sergeant Schultz No phrase, even the phrase “God Is” can be used of God.
13	The Nature of the Source The Nature of the Source means that both the via negativa and the via affirmativa are true. To know the Source is to know the Word and to Experience Life. But to know the Source is to know that one is beyond the Word and beyond Life.
14	Illustrations of the Two Fold Path “If anyone saw God and understood what he saw, then it was not God that he saw. St. Dionysius “How wondrous to be within and without, to grasp and to be embraced, to see and to be seen, to hold and to be held. . . Eckhart
15	Paradoxes Mystic theology, thus, tends to paradoxes. Unknowing and Knowing All Things Presence--absence Leaving behind the world –embracing God’s Holy Play in the World “he devours us and he feeds us”—Jan of Ruysbroeck
16	The Divine Spark The Way of Ascent relies on the identity of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm. What is without is within. When we reverse the process of ascent and plunge within, we end up at the Source within out own souls.