ABSTRACT
If God is love, then the demonic is beyond loving, because it is categorically beyond the love of God, banished into the outer darkness of negativity, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. But this also is complicated. For if the demonic is negatively related to being, God – at least according to one way of thinking – can Himself be conceptualised in such a way; this, as we saw at the beginning of the book, is how Pseudo-Dionysius thinks of him. 1 Another way of making the same point is to say that both God and the demonic are transcendent. And surely God is not unlovable? He is love! So, if God is beyond being, then being beyond being does not seem to preclude love after all. Indeed, it may be that human love itself tends, in its most fully experienced and extreme forms, to go beyond being. Thus, although Tristan’s love for Isolde embraces her finitude, it equally cherishes and desires the infinite in her, which is inexhaustible and incompatible with worldly happiness and accommodations and so leads irresistibly into death.
