 Dionysius is the formative influence on Eriugena; it is through him that he first drinks from the “sacred nectar of the Greeks”. The discovery of Dionysius had a profound effect on Eriugena’s thinking. He enthusiastically adopted the Areopagite’s main ideas (many of which appear to be drawn from Proclus’ Commentary on the Parmenides), e.g., the distinction between affirmative (kataphatic) and negative theology (apophatic), according to which denials concerning God (e.g., “God is not good [in the way we know goodness]”) are “more true”, (verior) “better”, “more apt”, than affirmations (“God is good”), as well as the analysis of the divine names as applying only metaphorically (metaphorice, transferre, per metaphoram) and not literally (proprie) to God, who is “beyond all that is”. For Pseudo-Dionysius, we do not know God directly but know Him only through his theophaniai, or divine appearances (Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 7, PG 3: 869c–d). We could, through affirmative theology, ascribe attributes to God, because He is the “cause of all” (aitia panton, Mystical Theology, ch. 2, PG 3: 1000b), but in fact God in His nature is transcendent and “unknowable”, he is the “more-than-divine divinity”, which Eriugena renders as superdeus deitas in his translation (PL 122: 1121c). Pseudo-Dionysius claims that God is the affirmation of all things, the negation of all things, and beyond all affirmation and denial (in Eriugena’s translation: God is omnium positio, omnium ablatio, super omnem positionem et ablationem inter se invicem, PL 122: 1121c-d).