Editing Divinity (section)

== Mystical and medieval views ==
[[File:Hildegard von Bingen.jpg|thumb|[[Hildegard von Bingen]] receives a divine inspiration and passes it on to her scribe]]
In both Christian and non-Christian traditions, divinity has often been understood not only as a theological proposition but as a reality encountered through [[mysticism]], vision, or ecstatic experience. These encounters are frequently described as ''praeternatural''—beyond ordinary nature but not necessarily supernatural in a transcendent or theistic sense.{{sfnmp|1a1=Zaehner|1y=1957|2a1=Otto|2y=1958}}

In [[Christian mysticism]], figures such as [[Hildegard of Bingen]], [[Mechthild of Magdeburg]], [[Meister Eckhart]], and [[Julian of Norwich]] described divine presence in terms that transcend rational theology: as an ineffable union, a luminous darkness, a radiant harmony,{{sfnp|King-Lenzmeier|2001}} or what Eckhart called the ''[[Ground of the Soul]]''—a silent depth where divinity and the self are one.{{sfnp|Otto|1958}} Hildegard articulated her visionary theology through music and illuminations, describing the divine as "Living Light" and the world as shot through with divine vitality.{{sfnp|Flanagan|1989}}

[[File:The Cloud of Unknowing (Harley 2373 ).jpg|thumb|left|The first page of Cloud of Unknowing in the 15th century manuscript Harley MS 2373]]

Another voice was that of the ''[[Book of the 24 Philosophers]]'', a 12th-century anonymous text offering cryptic, metaphysical definitions of divinity such as "God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."{{sfnp|Eco|1988}} These definitions were meditated upon throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, influencing [[Hermeticists]] and [[Christian humanists]] alike.

These currents of mystical theology culminate in texts like the 14th-century ''[[The Cloud of Unknowing]]'', which urges the contemplative to abandon all concepts and dwell in a "cloud" of forgetting and unknowing, through which love alone may reach God.{{sfnp|Gallacher|1997}} Such writings reflect a broader medieval tradition of [[apophatic theology]], or the {{lang|la|via negativa}}, where the divine is approached not through assertions but through negation, paradox, and silence.{{sfnmp|1a1=Turner|1y=1995|2a1=Hart|2y=2013}}

Meanwhile, more systematic theological reflections were offered by scholastic thinkers such as [[Thomas Aquinas]], who defined God as {{lang|la|[[ipsum esse subsistens]]}}—the very act of being itself. For Aquinas, God is both radically transcendent and immanently present, knowable through natural reason yet exceeding all conceptual grasp. Aquinas's synthesis of Aristotelian metaphysics and Christian doctrine represented a high point of medieval intellectual theology.{{sfnmp|1a1=Eco|1y=1988|2a1=Grant|2y=2001}}

[[Umberto Eco]] observed that medieval thought did not regard God as merely the conclusion of a logical system, but as the principle of harmony, proportion, and illumination that permeated all levels of reality—from grammar and rhetoric to cosmology.{{sfnp|Eco|2002}} For medieval thinkers, the divine was not just a theological abstraction but the very pattern by which the world was ordered and intelligible.
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