Introduction

The divine ideas tradition is introduced, not primarily in terms of its philosophical characteristics, but as a theological concept widely employed for most of the history of Christian thought as a way of understanding the communion among creatures and between creatures and God. Contemporary denials and distortions of truth are contrasted with the reverence for truth at the heart of the divine ideas tradition, especially with the tradition’s acknowledgment of the sovereign majesty of beauty, goodness, and truth as created expressions of the divine meaning. The material claims of the divine ideas teaching are explored in terms of the polarity of stances among divine ideas exponents, both with regard to the metaphysical and noetic significance of the ideas. As well, the divine ideas tradition is shown to provide a mode of contemplative understanding that opens doctrine to the mystery to which doctrine directs believers.

The Divine Ideas Tradition in Christianity

We can understand the multiple roles that the divine ideas tradition played in the history of Christian thought by beginning with an analogy: as a great author draws upon her own consciousness and self-understanding to give life to all the realities within the world of her novels, in an analogous way, the divine ideas teaching holds, God’s eternal and infinite knowing and loving of Godself is the creative exemplar or archetype for the existence of every creature in time, and also the intelligible form or idea by which the truth of every creature may be known. Intensifying the transformation of Plato’s forms by the Middle Platonists, Augustine grounds the divine ideas firmly within Trinitarian theology. We can trace the role of the divine ideas across the full range of Christian doctrines as well as in its influence upon the mystical or contemplative dimension of Christian theology.

The Saving Word of All Things

The presence of the divine ideas in the eternal Word permits mystical theologians to consider the cosmic implications of the Incarnation, and also provides a unique mode of understanding the soteriological significance of Christ’s death and resurrection—in which the world’s false construction of creatures is undone and the divine truth of every creature is vindicated. Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas, and Catherine of Siena emphasize the Trinitarian matrix of the divine ideas, bringing to light the divine love and delight in all creatures as the motivation for salvation. Maximus and Hadewijch point to the saving encounter between a person’s earthly self, suffering the distortions of sin, and their true identity in God, made possible in Christ. Eriugena, Aquinas, and Bonaventure all employ the divine ideas teaching in order to reflect upon the power of the Word incarnate to re-create the creatures according to God’s eternal knowing and loving of them.

Beatitude and the Goodness of Truth

By exploring four analogical acts of knowledge, we can discern the significant role of the divine ideas in the journey of creation into a beatific participation in God’s own knowing of Godself. The primordial ground for all acts of knowing truth lies within the Trinitarian knowing of Godself, and Aquinas among others already interprets this infinite knowing of truth as God’s own beatitude. Exponents of the divine ideas tradition highlight aspects of the human act of knowing truth as already participating in a limited way in the beatific knowing of God. Within our world, the death and resurrection of Christ re-establishes the possibility of the human encounter with divine knowing and loving that is at the ground of all truth. The beatific vision draws rational creatures into God’s knowing of Godself and therein to a vision of all creatures in God.

The Intelligible Beauty of Creation

The divine ideas tradition offers powerful conceptual tools by which Christian theologians and mystics recognized and revered the intelligible beauty of creation, and the hidden presence of the divine in all beings. For thinkers like Origen, Augustine, Maximus, and Eckhart, the eternal Word in which God knows Godself perfectly thereby includes God’s knowing of all possible finite beings, and the intimate presence of the Word at the heart of every creature calls it towards its truest reality. This perspective reaches an apex in the symbolic understanding of the universe prominent in medieval thinkers, and the waning of this tradition (in part as a result of Nominalist thought) is explored by various narratives of disenchantment. The Trinitarian and Christological grounding of the divine ideas becomes obscured by the time of the later Renaissance, and the divine ideas are deployed within discourses such as alchemy, guaranteeing their apparent obsolescence.

The Resurrection of Christ and the True Life of All Creatures

In light of the deep involvement of the divine ideas in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, it becomes possible to conceive of a new cultural imaginary in which the divine ideas permit mystical theology to hear the embodied reality of all creatures as a communication event. C. S. Lewis’ investigation of the mythopoetic imagination affords us an analogy for the rediscovered use of the divine ideas tradition in the contemplative calling of humankind. Recognizing the creation as, in and of itself, also a means of communion among creatures and between creatures and God, angels and human beings have a particular role in advancing the intelligible meaning of all creatures through the development of a contemplative consciousness. In encountering the crucified yet risen Christ, Christians believe their consciousness of reality is transfigured as they are drawn into the vindicated truth of all creatures in Christ.