Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Dionysius, or Pseudo-Dionysius, as he has come to be known in the contemporary world, was a Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in the late fifth or early sixth century CE and who transposed in a thoroughly original way the whole of Pagan Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Proclus, but especially that of Proclus and the Platonic Academy in Athens, into a distinctively new Christian context.

[size=30]1. Dionysius: Persona

Since Pseudo-Dionysius represented himself as St. Dionysius the Areopagite, an Athenian member of the judicial council, the Areopagus, who was converted instantly by St. Paul, his work, strictly speaking, might be regarded as a successful “forgery”, providing him with impeccable Christian credentials that conveniently antedated Plotinus by over two hundred years. So successful was this stratagem that Dionysius acquired almost apostolic authority, giving his writings enormous influence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, though his views on the Trinity and Christ (e.g., his emphasis upon the single theandric activity of Christ (see Letter 4) as opposed to the later orthodox view of two activities) were not always accepted as orthodox since they required repeated defenses, for example, by John of Scythopolis and by Maximus Confessor. Dionysius' fictitious identity, doubted already in the sixth century by Hypatius of Ephesus and later by Nicholas of Cusa, was first seriously called into question by Lorenzo Valla in 1457 and John Grocyn in 1501, a critical viewpoint later accepted and publicized by Erasmus from 1504 onward. But it has only become generally accepted in modern times that instead of being the disciple of St. Paul, Dionysius must have lived in the time of Proclus, most probably being a pupil of Proclus, perhaps of Syrian origin, who knew enough of Platonism and the Christian tradition to transform them both. Since Proclus died in 485 CE, and since the first clear citation of Dionysius' works is by Severus of Antioch between 518 and 528, then we can place Dionysius' authorship between 485 and 518–28 CE. These dates are confirmed by what we find in the Dionysian corpus: a knowledge of Athenian Neoplatonism of the time, an appeal to doctrinal formulas and parts of the Christian liturgy (e.g., the Creed) current in the late fifth century, and an adaptation of late fifth-century Neoplatonic religious rites, particularly theurgy, as we shall see below.
It must also be recognized that “forgery” is a modern notion. Like Plotinus and the Cappadocians before him, Dionysius does not claim to be an innovator, but rather a communicator of a tradition. Adopting the persona of an ancient figure was a long established rhetorical device (known as declamatio), and others in Dionysius' circle also adopted pseudonymous names from the New Testament. Dionysius' works, therefore, are much less a forgery in the modern sense than an acknowledgement of reception and transmission, namely, a kind of coded recognition that the resonances of any sacred undertaking are intertextual, bringing the diachronic structures of time and space together in a synchronic way, and that this theological teaching, at least, is dialectically received from another. Dionysius represents his own teaching as coming from a certain Hierotheus and as being addressed to a certain Timotheus. He seems to conceive of himself, therefore, as an in-between figure, very like a Dionysius the Areopagite, in fact. Finally, if Iamblichus and Proclus can point to a primordial, pre-Platonic wisdom, namely, that of Pythagoras, and if Plotinus himself can claim not to be an originator of a tradition (after all, the term Neoplatonism is just a convenient modern tag), then why cannot Dionysius point to a distinctly Christian theological and philosophical resonance in an earlier pre-Plotinian wisdom that instantaneously bridged the gap between Judaeo-Christianity (St. Paul) and Athenian paganism (the Areopagite)?

[size=30]2. Reading Dionysius' Works[/size]

Reading Dionysius can be a difficult business for many reasons: partly because his frequent hyperbolic theological language is foreign to our own English-speaking practices; partly because almost every word he employs resonates with the whole history of ancient thought, from the Christian Platonism of the Fathers, particularly, Gregory of Nyssa and the Cappadocians, to the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus, while his theology focuses predominantly upon the Jewish and Christian scriptures (which Dionysius calls “divine oracles”); partly, again, because the order in which we are to read his works is unclear and because Dionysius mentions at least seven works that have been lost. So we are unsure how to read him since so much seems doubtful or potentially fictitious. This picture is further complicated by the titles subdividing portions of his works, which appear, because of terminology peculiar to them, to have been inserted by a later hand or hands.
The surviving writings are four treatises and ten letters. The four treatises are: 1) On the divine names (DN) (Peri theion onomaton, in Greek; De Divinis Nominibus, in Latin), the longest work of thirteen chapters that deals with affirmative or kataphatic theology, namely, the names attributed to God the creator in scripture and also in pagan texts, but also exploring the limits of language and therefore also involving negative or apophatic theology. 2) On the celestial hierarchy (CH) (Peri tes ouranias hierarchias, in Greek; De coelesti hierarchia, in Latin), a work that examines how the nine choirs of angels (in scripture) are to be understood in lifting us up to God. 3) On the ecclesiastical hierarchy (EH) (Peri tes ekklestiastikes hierarchias, in Greek; De ecclesiastica hierarchia, in Latin) that examines the various orders and liturgy of the church as relating us to God through a divinely appointed but human hierarchy. And 4) On Mystical theology (MT) (Peri mustikes theologias, in Greek; De mystica theologia, in Latin), a brief but powerful work that deals with negative or apophatic theology and in which theology becomes explicitly “mystical” for the first time in history (By mystical here we do not mean an extraordinary or private experience of transcending one's self in the modern sense of the term, but simply “hidden”. On this see Bouyer, 1949; Vanneste, 1959; McGinn 1994). There follow ten letters that provide helpful comments upon topics in the above four treatises, especially letter 9 on what Dionysius calls symbolic theology of which works 2) and 3) above (CH; EH) form a substantial part. The ten letters appear to be arranged in a roughly hierarchical order, letters 1–4 being addressed to a monk (a certain Gaius, also the name of one or more of St. Paul's companions), letter 5 to a deacon, letter 6 to a priest, and letters 7 and 9 to hierarchs or bishops. Letter 8 disrupts this order since it is addressed to a monk charged with disrupting the hierarchical order itself!
What order of the works are we to adopt? In the French translation of M. de Gandillac and the English translation of C. Luibheid and P. Rorem (see bibliography), the order is DN, MT, CH andEH. In the manuscripts of the Areopagitic corpus, the order is CH, EH, DN, MT, followed by the Letters. Dionysius himself provides an explanatory outline that favors the order of Luibheid and Rorem, and that gives a systematic organization to his body of work, including both the treatises we presently possess and also the treatises which either no longer exist or, more likely, were never written. His outline is especially valuable for two of these latter treatises—the Theological Representations and the Symbolic Theology—since the order in which he claims to have written them reveals both the relative worth of their contents and the sequence in which the reader should proceed. It thus helps the reader to divine the nature of their content, and to put them in their proper place with the remaining two works written by Dionysius on the forms of theology. The first three—the Theological Representations, On the Divine Names, and the Symbolic Theology—discuss ever more divided and sensuous forms of theology. The fourth theological work, the Mystical Theology, reverses the sequence and restores the reader to the divine unity:
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اقتباس :: In the earlier books my argument traveled downward from the most exalted to the humblest categories, taking in on this downward path an ever-increasing number of ideas which multiplied with every stage of the descent. But my argument now rises from what is below up to the transcendent, and the more it climbs, the more language falters, and when it has passed up and beyond the ascent, it will turn silent completely, since it will finally be at one with him who is undescribable (MT 1033 C).

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In this article we shall adopt a variant of this last order both because Dionysius himself seems to have favored it and because it clarifies the systematic structure of the theological works.

[size=30]3. Outline and Content of the Works[/size]

3.1 Theological Representations

Although the Theological Representations is not extant, we are able to glean its content from Dionysius' ample descriptions of it in his other works. It seems to have devoted itself to names for the three persons within the godhead and their attributes. These names are the representations mentioned in the work's title. They describe two forms of differentiation within the godhead: the distinction into persons, and into attributes of the persons. Names for the persons include “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit.” Names for the attributes include “source,” “offshoot,” “flower,” and “light.” Dionysius does not explain why he uses the term “representation” (hypotuposis) for these names, but his fondness for puns may have led him to adopt it because of its similarity to “person” (hypostasis).
Some of these names describe more than a person within the godhead. The name “father,” for instance, may also be used of animals, in which case it means the male parent. We seem to apply such names literally to animals and only metaphorically to persons within the godhead. But Dionysius uncovers a passage from Paul's letter to the Ephesians which leads him to claim otherwise. Paul says that God the Father is the one “from whom all fatherhood in the heavens and on earth is named.” On the basis of this scriptural authority, Dionysius explains that we are able to use the terms “father” and “son” of animals only because the godhead has already undergone the same relation. In other words, the internal causality exercised within the godhead is the source of all other causality. This includes not only the causation of one animal by another, but of one angel by another, since angels, too, receive the names of “father” and “son.”

3.2 On the Divine Names

Strictly speaking, all of the theological works except for the Theological Representationsdevote themselves to divine names or names for the godhead. But Dionysius devotes his second theological treatise, entitled On the Divine Names only to a particular kind of divine name. This kind of name describes a third distinction within the godhead (in addition to the distinction of persons and of personal attributes): the distinction into the multiple attributes of the godhead as a whole. Though the names apply to the godhead as a whole, and so refer to it as a unity, each name is different and so, taken together, they differentiate the godhead. The implicit distinction between the unity of the godhead and the multiplicity of the names is reflected in the very structure of the names themselves. Each name includes the same prefix: “over-”, or hyper- in Greek, which indicates the unity of the godhead to whom the names are applied. But each name is different, indicating the self-multiplication of the godhead. The result is a set of names like “over-good,” “over-being,” and “over-life.” Occasionally, Dionysius also makes use of a second, equivalent prefix: “pre-” or pro- in Greek. God is “pre-good,” and “pre-being,” meaning that he has the attributes of creatures in a way that transcends both creature and attribute. The “over-” and “pre-” prefixes must be applied strictly to the names when they are used of God in himself. On the other hand, when the names are used only of God as cause, the prefixes may be left off, since the causality of God is already a procession into the differentiation properly signified by each of the different names.
Some of Dionysius' later medieval interpreters suggest that God possesses the attributes of creatures in their most proper and ideal form, but Dionysius himself does not suggest this. Instead, the most proper object of the names is the highest creature. The exemplary instances of “goodness,” “being,” and “life,” for example, are the highest of the angels or intelligible minds, as Dionysius also calls them. For this reason, Dionysius frequently refers to this type of name as an “intelligible name.” He incorporates into the number of intelligible names the traditional Neoplatonic intelligible categories: being, identity, difference, rest, and motion, as well as the Neoplatonic triad of being, life, and intellect. The fact that God transcends the proper meaning of these names does not mean that he ought to be called “non-being,” “non-life,” or “non-intellect.” Dionysius prefers simply to say that God is “over being,” “over life,” and “over intellect.”
The intelligible names could form the ground of a theology independent of any specific religious tradition or sacred text. Many of them are central to Platonic sources outside the context of Christianity, and appear only incidentally and obscurely in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. They also describe the intelligible structure of the cosmos, a structure that is accessible to all human inquiry, whether assisted by scriptural texts or not. But Dionysius explicitly denies that the names may be acquired from any source other than the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Even if the names could be derived from contemplation of the world's intelligible structure, we apply them in theology to the cause of that structure and not to the structure itself. Since the cause of that structure is beyond the grasp of human inquiry, we cannot rely on our own powers for our description. We depend instead on the revelation of the scriptures as our source for the intelligible names.
Few human beings have the ability to contemplate the intelligible names in their purity. Most of us require the names to be incarnated in visible things before we can understand them. Unable to see “being,” “life,” and “wisdom” in themselves, we need a visible being who is living and wise. Such a person can then become the means by which we contemplate the intelligible. Dionysius' possibly fictional teacher Hierotheus is one such visible incarnation of the names. But Hierotheus may do more than incarnate the names. He can also unfold them in speech, taking the unitary name of “being” and describing it at length, as Dionysius does in the fifth chapter of On the Divine Names. As he describes it, the name unfolds itself into a form that is more multiple, because of the many words used in his description. It thus approaches the multiple character of our ordinary human way of knowing, and becomes more easily understood[/size]

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

[size=30]1. Dionysius: Persona

[size=30]2. Reading Dionysius' Works[/size]

[size=30]3. Outline and Content of the Works[/size]

3.1 Theological Representations

3.2 On the Divine Names

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Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite