DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE

DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE (c. 500 ce), Christian mystical theologian, also known as Pseudo-Dionysius. In the early sixth century, a set of treatises and letters appeared under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, whom Paul had converted in Athens (Acts 17:34). At a synod in Constantinople in 533, the writings were used to support the monophysite position, but their authenticity was challenged. Nevertheless, the works soon came to be accepted as both apostolic and orthodox, and assumed nearly canonical status and authority in Eastern and Western Christendom.

Hilduin first translated the works into Latin (c. 832), and mistakenly identified Dionysius the Areopagite with Denis, the first bishop of Paris and patron saint of France. Though Abelard challenged this last identification, not until the Renaissance did Lorenzo Valla and Erasmus again question the authenticity of the writings' apostolic claims. These claims were decisively overturned in 1895, when two scholars, Joseph Stiglmayr and Hugo Koch, documented the dependence of the Dionysian corpus on Proclus, the fifth-century Neoplatonic philosopher. The works were thus composed in the late fifth or early sixth century. Despite many scholarly attempts to identify their author, he remains hidden behind his influential pseudonym. Dionysius's treatises are Divine Names, Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and Mystical Theology. The titles indicate Dionysius's principal concerns: religious language, hierarchy, and spirituality.

Divine Names poses the problems of religious knowledge and language by contrasting divine transcendence and theophany. In itself the divine nature is beyond being (huperousios ), yet God becomes manifest in all being as its cause. God is both utterly transcendent and present in all things. This paradox underlies Dionysius's affirmative and negative theology. Affirmative theology focuses on divine causality and knows God through God's self-manifestations. It traces the causal procession from God's unity, through the divine ideas, or forms, to celestial hierarchy and thence to the sensible world; as it follows this descent, affirmative theology discovers an increasing variety of divine names, from "good" and "one" to "ancient of days," "sun," and "rock." Conversely, negative theology retraces the procession of beings in a return that moves from the sensible world, through the intelligences and forms, and to divine unity. Thus Dionysius emphasizes the dissimilarities in sensible symbols and the limits of all intelligible divine names. His work Mystical Theology negates all language about God because divinity cannot be known in its transcendence. For Dionysius, therefore, God is both nameless and praised in all names.

In Celestial Hierarchy Dionysius defines hierarchy as "a sacred order, activity and knowledge" that seeks "as far as possible [an] assimilation and union with God" (3.1–2). Its order is defined by each rank's capacity for assimilation to God, and its activity is purification, illumination, and perfection as it receives and communicates divine knowledge.

The celestial hierarchy consists of nine ranks of angelic intelligences, arranged in groups of three: (1) seraphim, cherubim, thrones; (2) dominations, virtues, powers; and (3) principalities, archangels, angels. The first triad is immediately united to God, whose light and knowledge it communicates to the lower ranks. In its turn the third triad presides over the human hierarchies. The ecclesiastical hierarchy stands between the celestial hierarchy and the hierarchy of the Mosaic law, which it supersedes (Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 5.2). Within the church there are six ranks in two triads: (1) bishops, priests, and ministers or deacons; and (2) monks, the "holy people of God," and those being purified (e.g., penitents and those awaiting baptism). Dionysius again stresses the activities of perfecting, illuminating, and purifying, but his focus here is symbolic and sacramental. Baptism is the sacrament of initiation and illumination, and the eucharistic liturgy exemplifies both the christological mystery and the perfecting "communion and union with the One" (Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 3.1). Contemplation (theoria ) of the sacraments' hidden meanings purifies and illumines the understanding, and produces an intellectual insight akin to that of the celestial hierarchy.

The brief treatise Mystical Theology both completes and transcends the schemes of the divine names and of the hierarchies. It emphasizes the divine nature's radical transcendence, and it envisions mystical union in terms of unknowing (agnōsia ). The concluding chapters present negative theology's ascending motion by stripping away the sensible and intelligible names of God. Dionysius then denies that God can be named adequately even in negative terms, because God is prior to all affirmation and negation. In itself the divine nature remains beyond all the contrasts that arise in its causal self-disclosure—and thus beyond all knowledge and speech. For Dionysius, mystical theology is an austere, intellectual ascent to union with God, and because divinity is essentially unknowable, this union occurs in the cloud and darkness of unknowing. This assimilation to God also completes the task of hierarchy. It is the perfection that the intellect seeks in symbols, sacraments, and intelligible divine names. Yet mystical theology accomplishes this ecstatically, by going out from intellect and hierarchy to their hidden source in the divine nature itself. In this way mystical theology completes the return to the God "beyond being."

The Dionysian writings are the product of a thoroughly hellenized Christian mind. Their reliance on Proclus and Damascius continues and even exaggerates the Greek patristic use of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought to interpret Christian faith. Dionysius was drawn into the mainstream of Byzantine theology by Maximos the Confessor, John of Scythopolis, and John of Damascus. Dionysius's major impact, however, came in the medieval West, where he was an immensely authoritative but alien figure. As the only Greek father to be fully and widely welcomed in the West, Dionysius influenced the whole range of Latin theology and spirituality. His account of the angelic hierarchy became standard, and his treatment of liturgy and the sacraments enriched the symbolic thinking of the Middle Ages. The Dionysian corpus became a major source for speculative thinkers, including John Scottus Eriugena, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Nicholas of Cusa. Perhaps most important was the influence of Dionysius on mystical theology, evident in the Victorines, the Rhineland and English mystics, and in John of the Cross. Even while these Western thinkers were transforming his doctrine in their schools and monasteries, they consistently revered him as the "divine Dionysius." Although Dionysius's influence waned with the increasing suspicion concerning his identity, he still speaks powerfully on the issues of religious knowledge, language, and symbolism and their inherent limits.

Bibliography

The standard edition of the extant works of Dionysius remains that of Balthasar Cordier (Antwerp, 1634), published in volume 3 of J.-P. Migne's Patrologia Graeca (1857; reprint, Turnhout, 1977). Gunther Heil has prepared a new edition of La hiérarchie céleste with a French translation by Maurice de Gandillac and an introduction by René Roques (Paris, 1970). The Dionysian corpus is available in English translations: John D. Jones's Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite: The Divine Names and Mystical Theology (Milwaukee, 1980); Mystical Theology and the Celestial Hierarchies, 2d ed. (Fintry, U.K., 1965); Thomas L. Campbell's The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (Lanham, Md., 1981; from a Ph.D. diss., 1955); and Ronald F. Hathaway's translation of Dionysius's letters in his study Hierarchy and Order in the Letters of Pseudo-Dionysius (The Hague, 1969). An excellent survey of Dionysius and his influence is the series of articles by René Roques and others under "Denys l'Aréopagite," in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité, vol. 3 (Paris, 1957), edited by Charles Baumgartner. Other studies include Denys Rutledge's Cosmic Theology: The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy of Pseudo-Denys (Staten Island, N.Y., 1965); Bernhard Brons's Gott und die Seienden (Göttingen, 1976); and Jan Vanneste's "Is the Mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius Genuine?," International Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1963): 286–306.

Donald F. Duclow (1987)