In addition to Arabic philosophers like Avicenna, Latin thinkers working in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries gained better access to Greek Christian authors like Pseudo-Dionysius and John of Damascus. The works of these authors laid a much stronger emphasis on the mystery and unknowability of God than can be found in the Western tradition dominated by Augustine, who argued along with other Latin Fathers like Hilary of Poitiers and Gregory the Great that God is present to the soul in a way that anticipates a direct vision of him in the life to come.1 In their eagerness to master new sources, Western scholars in the late twelfth century incorporated references to the inadequacy of human knowledge to God without always parsing their meaning sufficiently in terms of what can be positively known about God, whether now or in the life to come.2