## 1. Dionysius: Persona



Though Pseudo-Dionysius lived in the late fifth and early sixth
century C.E., his works were written as if they were composed by St.
Dionysius the Areopagite, who was a member of the Athenian judicial
council (known as 'the Areopagus') in the 1st century C.E.
and who was converted by St. Paul. Thus, these works might be regarded
as a successful 'forgery', providing Pseudo-Dionysius with
impeccable Christian credentials that conveniently antedated Plotinus
by close to 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)? [For a different view of Dionysius as crypto-pagan, see
Lankila, 2011, 14-40.] 


## 2. Reading Dionysius' Works



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* and *EH*. 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:



> 
> 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).
> 



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. 


## 3. Outline and Content of the Works


### 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 Representations* devote 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.


### 3.3 Symbolic Theology



Other names directly refer to visible things, whose multiplicity and
accessibility to sensation make them easy for us to understand. The
difficulty with these names, referred to by Dionysius and the
Neoplatonic tradition generally as "symbols," is that they
have no inherent relation to the godhead at all. Their literal
signification is restricted to the realm of the sensuous, and so they
must be turned into metaphors if they are to become useful for
theology. This is the task of Dionysius' *Symbolic
Theology*. Though the work itself is not extant, we find him
undertaking the same project in each of his extant works.



One of Dionysius' favorite sources of symbols is a verse from
the 78th psalm: "the Lord awoke, like a strong man,
powerful but reeling with wine." Taken literally, the verse
indicates that God sleeps and gets drunk on wine, two activities that
properly apply only to embodied, visible beings. Only an embodied
being can manifest the activities to which the names
"sleep" and "drunkenness" literally refer. If
we are to apply such terms to God, they must be attached to a foreign,
intelligible content that will be able to lead the interpreter of the
symbolic name to the contemplation of an intelligible name. In
"sleep," for example, Dionysius finds a meaning common to
both intelligible and visible things: withdrawal from the world. He
concludes that God's sleep is his "removal from and lack
of communication with the objects of his providence." In
drunkenness, Dionysius sees a kind of over-filling, and so he explains
that God's drunkenness is "the overloaded measurelessness
of all goods in the one who is their cause." From the easily
comprehended literal meaning of the term, the reader rises to the more
difficult intelligible terrain of imparticipability and
measurelessness.



Drunkenness and sleep are what Dionysius calls "dissimilar
similarities." They strike us as exceptionally unworthy of God,
and so are "dissimilar," yet they reveal an intelligible
truth capable of leading us to him, and so are "similar."
Dionysius privileges such names over more appropriate names like
"golden" and "luminous." The more that the
name seems appropriate, the more we are likely to be lulled into
thinking that we have adequately comprehended the godhead in our use
of the name. The very materiality and ignobility of the dissimilar
similarities cry out that the names do not literally describe the
godhead, and compel the reader to seek the intelligible truth behind
the name.



We may wonder whether the symbolic names are a necessary part of
theology at all, since their content belongs to the intelligible
theology and not to a "symbolic" theology. Dionysius
repeatedly affirms their necessity, not because of the character of
their content, but because of the nature of the human soul. The soul
may be divided into two parts: one passionate and the other
passionless. Passionate here means set in motion by things exterior to
the soul. The senses, for example, are passionate because they can
only function when an outside object gives them something to sense.
Dionysius follows a longstanding Neoplatonic tradition when he says
that most of us are unable to engage our passionless part directly.
Instead, our passionless part comes into play only indirectly, through
the activity of the passionate part. By sensing the world around us,
we are led to contemplate its intelligible structures through the
sensations we receive. Even those few human beings who can engage
their passionless part directly find it helpful to shore up their
contemplation with examples drawn from the senses. Dionysius may
understand the causality of God directly, and yet still find it
helpful to compare God's causality to the emanation of light
from the sun.



Such examples do not require the presence of a revealed scripture.
Skilled teachers in any subject are characterized by their ability to
come up with helpful examples drawn from ordinary experience when
explaining a difficult intelligible truth. Dionysius himself
frequently resorts to examples "at our level" in order to
explain something intelligible. The scriptural symbol goes further,
attempting to reveal the God who is before and beyond even the
intelligible truth. The highest human intellect has little ability to
attain this truth directly, and so we cannot rely on intellectual
teachers as guides to that truth. We require the gift of symbols,
which tie our ordinary comprehension to the godhead beyond being. And
so Dionysius does not describe the symbolic names as pedagogical tools
developed by theologians. The names appear instead in the ecstatic
visions of the prophets. Though Dionysius explicitly asserts our
dependence on the Hebrew and Christian scriptures as the source of
these symbols, he has no qualms about embellishing the list of names
with symbols drawn from other traditions. For instance, he discusses
at length the name of "mixing bowl," which has no real
source in the Christian or Hebrew scriptures, but occurs centrally in
the Platonic philosophy deriving from Plato's
*Timaeus*.


### 3.4 Mystical Theology



When Dionysius praises "dissimilar similarities" over
seemingly more appropriate symbolic names for God, he explains that at
least some dissimilar names are negations, and negations are more
proper to God than affirmations. The *Mystical Theology* has
this last, most arcane form of theology as its subject. Negations are
properly applied not only to the names of the symbolic theology. Any
and all of the divine names must be negated, beginning with those of
the symbolic theology, continuing with the intelligible names and
concluding with the theological representations. The godhead is no
more "spirit," "sonship," and
"fatherhood" than it is "intellect" or
"asleep." These negations must be distinguished from
privations. A privation is simply the absence of a given predicate
that could just as easily be present. The absence of the predicate is
opposed to its presence: "lifeless" is opposed to
"living." But when we say that the godhead is not
"living," we do not mean that it is
"lifeless." The godhead is beyond the lifeless as well as
beyond the living. For this reason, Dionysius says that our
affirmations of the godhead are not opposed to our negations, but that
both must be transcended: even the negations must be negated.



The most controversial and arcane passages of the *Mystical
Theology* revolve around the mystical as taken in itself and not
as the act of negating the other forms of theology. Dionysius says
that after all speaking, reading, and comprehending of the names
ceases, there follows a divine silence, darkness, and unknowing. All
three of these characteristics seem privative, as though they were
simply being the absence of speech, sight, and knowledge respectively.
But Dionysius does not treat them as privative. Instead, he uses
temporal and spatial language to mark off a special place and time for
them. Using as his example the account of Moses' ascent up Mount
Sinai in the Hebrew scriptures, Dionysius says that after Moses
ascends through the sensible and intelligible contemplation of God, he
then enters the darkness above the mountain's peak. The darkness
is located above the mountain, and Moses enters it after his
contemplation of God in the various forms of theology. Dionysius
leaves the relation between Moses and the darkness highly obscure.
Some commentators reduce it to a form of knowing, albeit an
extraordinary form of knowing. Others reduce it to a form of affective
experience, in which Moses feels something that he can never know or
explain in words. Dionysius himself does not give decisive evidence in
favor of either interpretive move. He speaks only of Moses'
"union" with the ineffable, invisible, unknowable
godhead.


### 3.5 On the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies



Perhaps even more vexing than the nature of union in Dionysius is the
question of how the theological treatises relate to Dionysius'
two treatises on hierarchy. The *Mystical Theology* suggests an
ascent from the lower sensuous realm of reality through the
intelligible intermediate realm to the darkness of the godhead itself,
all accomplished by a single person. The hierarchic treatises, on the
other hand, suggest that the sensible and intelligible realms are not
places reached by a single being, but different kinds of beings, and
that the vision of God is handed from being to being downward through
the levels of the hierarchy. *On the Celestial Hierarchy*
describes the intelligible realm as divided into nine ranks of beings:
the seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, powers, authorities,
principalities, archangels, and angels. *On the Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy* describes the human beings within the church as divided
into eight ranks: the hierarchs or bishops, priests, deacons, monks,
laity, catechumens, penitents, and the demon-possessed. Dionysius does
not address human life outside the church, except for a few scattered
references to the angels presiding over other religious traditions and
the earlier "legal hierarchy" of the Jewish rite, which
precedes the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Christian rite.



The hierarchs, highest within the human hierarchy, contemplate the
intelligible realm directly, though presumably they contemplate only
its lowest level: the angels. The visible result of the
hierarchs' contemplation of the angels is the series of rites
belonging to the Christian church. Since the hierarchs are able to
contemplate the intelligible directly, they do not perform the rites
for their own sake, but for the sake of the monks and laity, who have
no capacity for direct intelligible contemplation. The monks and laity
are able to engage the passionless part of their souls only through
the passionate part, and so they require a visible trigger--the
symbol--to stimulate their intelligible contemplation. The ranks
of hierarch, priest, and deacon are in charge of administering the
rites, with a specific set of initiates in their care and a specific
action to perform. The deacons purify the catechumens, penitents, and
possessed, primarily by giving them ethical instruction. The priests
illuminate the laity, who are able to receive the intelligible truth.
The hierarchs perfect, a task whose initiate seems ideally to be the
monk, since Dionysius identifies the monks as leading the more perfect
life of those who are not explicitly consecrated as clergy.



The very structure of the church reflects the different roles of the
clergy and the laity. The hierarch stands still at the altar, facing
away from the multiplicity of the church's interior. He enters
the nave of the church only to bring sacred objects like incense,
bread and wine, and holy oil into the realm of multiplicity, the
spatially extended nave. When he brings the censer into the nave, for
example, its fragrance is distributed to the laity there, just as the
bread and wine are later distributed in the eucharistic rite. The
hierarch then returns to the altar, and takes up again his own proper
object of contemplation, the intelligible source of the rites. The
laity, on the other hand, remain within the spatially extended nave,
but orient themselves toward the altar, where the sacred objects are
raised for their contemplation. Before this contemplation can occur,
the catechumens, penitents, and the demon-possessed must be removed
from the church. Their orientation toward the material prevents them
from adequately contemplating the intelligible truth through its
visible manifestation in the sacred objects.



Although the rites have intelligible contemplation as their goal, it
does not appear that non-ritual forms of contemplation, like reading,
can substitute for participation in the rites. Dionysian contemplation
is public, so that it may unite us to each other; it involves prayer,
so that it may unite us explicitly with the godhead; it also requires
bodies, since only the interaction of bodies allows the contemplative
act to include both components of our nature: body and soul. The names
used in Dionysius' theological treatises acquire their salvific
power in this liturgical context. Although the rites involve the
performance of bodily actions, they clothe themselves in words: the
Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and the oral tradition of the
liturgical prayers. Only the silence and unknowing of the *Mystical
Theology* finds no clear place within the liturgical rites of the
hierarchy, since it transcends both the visible rites of the laity and
the intelligible contemplation of the clergy. It may be that, just as
some points of the liturgy call for a literal silence, the
intelligible contemplation of the hierarch at the altar must engage in
its own form of silence, so as to allow the appearance of the godhead
beyond naming. On this question, however, Dionysius is as silent as
the mystical theology which crowns his vision of the human ascent to
God.


## 4. Sources, Ideas, Character of Writing, Terms: Christianity and Neoplatonism



Having examined the plan and content of these works let us now take a
brief look at some of the sources of Dionysius' ideas (and
associated problems), and at the character of Dionysius' writing
in order to determine what in practice he is actually doing and to see
if there is anything genuinely philosophical in his writing.


### 4.1 Sources, Ideas, and Terms



There is a major tension between Platonism and Christianity in
Dionysius' writing. Luther expressed the negative side of this
tension: "Dionysius is most pernicious; he platonizes more than
he Christianizes" (*Babylonian Captivity of the Church*
(*Weimarer Ausgabe* 6, 562)). Von Balthasar has been more
positive, seeing Dionysius' Christianization of Neoplatonism
"as a side-effect of his own properly theological
endeavor", namely, "the clear realized synthesis of truth
and beauty, of theology and aesthetics" (*The Glory of the
Lord*, vol. 2, 148-9). Perhaps one may suggest that neither
Christianity nor Platonism are side shows in Dionysius' thought;
They are rather mutually important whole perspectives that do not get
lost in the mix, no matter how subordinate Neoplatonism nonetheless
may be to Christianity for Dionysius himself. Dionysius' central
concern is how a triune God, that he calls--among other
things--the thearchy (god-rule; god-beginning), who is utterly
unknowable, unrestricted being, beyond individual substances, beyond
even goodness, can become manifest to, in, and through the whole of
creation in order to bring back all things to the hidden darkness of
their source. To this end Dionysius employs some major Neoplatonic
insights: (1) The abiding--procession--return or conversion
of all things as the creative and receptive expression of what it
means for anything created to be. In Proclus' terms in the
*Elements of Theology*, prop. 35: "Every effect remains
in its cause, proceeds from it, and converts to it". This is a
way of expressing the vertical connectedness of everything by
identity, difference, and the overcoming of difference by a return to
identity that constitutes the nature of anything that is caused. (2)
The hierarchical ordering of beings as an expression of both their
natural placements and their freedoms as well as the simultaneous
immediacy, without intermediary, of the unknown God's presence
(on hierarchy see *CH* 3). Each thing and order bears relation
to the whole or manifests the whole, but "according to its own
capacity", as the famous Neoplatonic saying puts it. A rock or a
worm, for instance, is a window upon the entire universe if you only
know how to look.



In the case of (1), the contrast between Dionysius and Neoplatonism
should not be taken to be a contrast between free divine creation, on
the one hand, and supposed emanation or illumination by necessity, on
the other, for divine/ human freedom and creation out of
"nothing" are conspicuous facets of Neoplatonic thought as
well. What we see in Dionysius is rather a new way of understanding
the abiding, outpouring, and return, not only concretely in relation
to the various hierarchies, and structurally in relation to the
various works (*DN* is more concerned with procession, for
instance, while *EH*, *CH*, and *MT* deal with
different levels of return), but also in relation to God's
providential love that, while remaining supereminently identical to
itself, and precontaining everything within itself, nonetheless is the
creative power overflowing into its effects (procession) in order to
bring them back into identity (return): "[The Cause of All] is
'all in all', as scripture affirms, and certainly he is to
be praised as being for all things the creator and originator, the One
who brings them to completion, their preserver, their protector, and
their home, the power which returns them to itself, and all this in
the one single, irrepressible, and supreme act" (*DN* 1,
7, 596c-597a).



In the case of (2) (hierarchy and divine presence), Dionysius
emphasizes, much more so than the impression often suggested by
Neoplatonism, the *directness* of creation. Every being, no
matter where it is placed in the scale of beings and no matter how
dependent it might be on beings ontologically higher than it (e.g.,
for human beings, angels) is directly and immediately dependent upon
God in and for its existence. Again, the contrasts often drawn between
Neoplatonism's "flight of the alone to the alone"
and Dionysius' community of hierarchy or between the supposed
Neoplatonic view that the One causes the existence of lower beings
only through the mediation of the higher, while Christianity sees
creation as immediate are simply false or too simplistic.
Plotinus' mysticism is not "solitary" in the sense
often supposed and, for Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus, the One
causes existence immediately and most profoundly, whatever other
influences enter into the complexity of existence. What we see in
Dionysius, by contrast, is a retention of one's place in
hierarchy and a very concrete return to identity--in the case of
human beings, for instance, through scripture, ritual, and practical
performance to a deeper union with God rather than a simple, spatially
conceived movement "up" the hierarchy. More broadly still,
we see in Dionysius' thought new possibilities for thinking
about divine love, a love that combines beyond beingness and
unrestricted being, transcendence and yet even a kind of
hyperessential vulnerability in rather startling ways, new ways
consequently of thinking about both divine and human *eros*,
about affectivity (cf. Dionysius' famous dictum about learning
from sacred writers, or discovering the truth oneself, or not only
learning but "experiencing the divine things" (*pathein
ta theia*) (*DN* 2, 9); and compare Aristotle, fr. 15
(Rose) and *Hebrews* 5:8), about the nature of signification
and the limits of language (see section 4 below), about the theory of
evil as privation and non-being, however dependent this is upon one of
Proclus' *opuscula* (cf. *DN* 4, 18-35),
about the aesthetic richness of this world in the light of theology
and the life of the Church, and even about the soul-body
relation, though anthropology is not a part of Dionysius'
primary concern (but see his comments at *EH* 404B, 433c,
437a-440a, 441b, 553a ff, 565b-c).



Two examples will have to suffice here: (a) Dionysius'
remarkable description of the ecstatic love of God and (b) his radical
transformation of the Neoplatonic intelligible and sensible
worlds.



(a) First, Dionysius evidently cannot accept in any single
straightforward sense the Neoplatonic notion of a One that excludes
the possibility of expressing trinity. He therefore links in a new way
God as unrestricted being with God as utterly beyond being or any
determinate predications. At the same time in the *DN* he
argues that the ecstasy of love, which moves as a unifying force
through creation without departing from itself, is the divine nature.
Dionysius admits, in a note from Plato's *Phaedrus*, that
it is characteristic of yearning not to allow "lovers to belong
to themselves but only to their loved ones" (*DN* 4, 13).
This is shown, he goes on to argue, by the providential care of the
greater for the lesser (a reference to Proclus' divine
providential love (*eros pronoetikos*) from the *Commentary
on the First Alcibiades*, #56), by the love of equals, and by that
of the lesser for those better than them (a reference both to
Aristotle's seminal treatment of friendship in the
*Nicomachean Ethics* and to Proclus' returning or
converting love (eros epistreptikos) in the same *Commentary*
above), as also in the case of St. Paul's famous dictum "I
live now, not I, but Christ lives in me" (*Gal* 2:20).
Might then such a belonging to one's beloved be characteristic
of God, if perhaps in a different sense?



Dionysius continues as follows:



> 
> We must dare to say even this on behalf of the truth that the cause of
> all things himself, by his beautiful and good love for all things,
> through an overflowing of loving goodness, becomes outside of himself
> (*exo heautou ginetai*) by his providential care for all beings
> and is as it were, *charmed* (*thelgetai*) by goodness,
> affection (*agapesis*), and love (*eros*), and is
> *led down* (*katagetai*) from his place above all and
> transcendent of all to dwell in all things in accordance with his
> ecstatic superessential power which does not depart from itself
> (*DN* 4, 13).
> 



The very notion is, of course, remarkable, the notion, that is, of a
kind of conjunction of opposites that strives to express the
inexpressible magnitude of divine love and even to suggest power and
vulnerability (or "almost" vulnerability: "as it
were, charmed (beguiled, enchanted)"), as well as the
possibility of a genuine two-way relation between Creator and
creatures more in tune with Biblical thought. Yet the expression
remains Greek, for the word *thelgetai* that Dionysius chooses
is one that echoes the conclusion of Agathon's speech in the
*Symposium* where Agathon praises a Love that everyone
"should hymn fairly, sharing in the song he sings that
enchants/charms/beguiles (*thelgon*) the thought
(*phronema*) of all gods and human beings" (197c).
Dionysius changes the context but does not really reverse the
polarity: it is God who still--like human beings--is
beguiled by love and affection for beings and "led down"
to dwell in them. Is this small detail and transposition merely
accidental? It may well be, but in this context, the use of such a
verb and thought is not accidental. Dionysius does not write as a
Christian walled off from pagan thought or as if he were a Neoplatonic
thinker in Christian disguise. Instead he provokes and delights in
intertextuality at every point.



(b) A second example is the precise nature of Dionysius'
transposition of Neoplatonic structure. Dionysius makes concrete and
accessible the whole world of Neoplatonism in the human, but
sacramental life of the Church, a world of ordinary people and things
whose significance can only be fully realized and perfected in the
celestial and supercelestial world.



For Classical Neoplatonism, especially in its Plotinian form, the real
truths that undergird or form the origins, beginnings
(*archai*) of the world of ordinary experience are the three
hypostases or realities of soul, intellect, and the One. The
hypostases are necessary, above all, to account for our experience of
degrees of unity and organization. The life-world accessible to our
senses is an organized, animated world, and this needs a more
intensive degree of unity to account for it, namely, the principle of
life, that is, soul and all souls. But even the world of soul is a
"one and many", organized from within yet also requiring a
principle of unity and organization beyond itself. And the same is
true even to a higher degree of intellect. Intellect is a
"one-many", an organized world of intellects, in each of
which the whole of intellect is present. Each is a sort of holographic
reality. And because intellect is still a world despite its more
intensive unity than soul, it requires a unity beyond intellect and
beyond being to organize it and to form the groundless ground of its
own being from which it has emerged.



So (1) in Neoplatonism, there are 3 hypostases, on the one hand,
namely, soul, intellect, and the One, and four cosmic or hypercosmic
dimensions, on the other: (i) the sensible world as a world of things;
(ii) the sensible world linked by the soul to the intelligible world;
(iii) the intelligible world itself composed of all intellects; and
finally (iv) the One or the Good, from which everything has come. And
(2) while everything has its appropriate "place" in this
hypostatic hierarchy, the presence of the Good is so immediate and so
accessible, that the presence is closer to each thing even than
intellect or soul. This is equally true in both Plotinus and Proclus.
Furthermore, (3) in order to explicate the derivation of each entity
from what comes before it, it is not sufficient as some scholars have
supposed that Neoplatonism should just have multiplied intermediaries
and indulged in an absurd proclivity for triads, such as Life, Wisdom,
Mind; Neoplatonism should rather be seen as a form of thought that
attempts to meditate upon, read the signs in, and represent how, as
precisely as possible, all beings are derived from and relate to the
One, to examine and explicate their dependence, open-endedness, and
radical interconnectedness without losing sight of the
multidimensional ordering of the universe (sensible/intelligible) and
of the fact that even the simplicity of things that have no intellect
or life, but only bare existence, springs from the power of the
One.



What Dionysius manages to do is both to capture this spirit
profoundly, and, therefore, transform it, as well as to make it
concrete and accessible in the scriptural, sacramental, and ordinary
experiences of Christian practitioners. Instead of the 4 dimensions of
the Neoplatonic universe, Dionysius has the following: (1) the
sensible world or Legal hierarchy, i.e., the world considered under
the aspect either of objective "thinginess" or of law,
namely, in the case of law, a world in which we are dependent upon
prescriptions rather than upon any deeper understanding, a world in
which the "mysteries" or hidden things (such as Baptism
and the Eucharist) are mere mechanical ceremonies and the Scriptures
are given only a literal meaning. For Dionysius (as for Plato), law is
necessary, but still deficient. The law of Moses, for instance,
"gave only a veiled contemplation as to enlighten without harm
weak capacities for sight" (*EH* 501c). Then (2) there
follows the ecclesiastical hierarchy, namely, the sensible world as
the limbs of the mystical body of Christ led by soul into the
significance of the intelligible or celestial hierarchy, where the
symbols can begin to be read. Its mysteries, both sensible and
intelligible, are the Scriptures and the Sacraments, its initiators
the priests, and its initiated the ones who receive them. From this
perspective, Dionysius transforms Neoplatonism radically but at the
same time provokes entirely new possibilities in the structures he
transforms.


### 4.2 Character of Writing



What is the general character of Dionysius' writing and is there
anything philosophical in it? Dionysius presents us with complex
affirmative (*kataphatic*) and negative (*apophatic*)
forms of theology, exploring what we can say about God, what we mean
by our statements, discovering the necessity for us to talk too much
about God and to push language forms to their breaking points, and
then to see what we cannot say about God. Negation is important here
at both levels, in *kataphatic* theology as well as in
*apophatic* theology. This complex theory of signification and
its subversion is often referred to as negative theology: affirming
our affirmations, then negating them, and then negating the negations
to ensure that we do not make an idol out of a God about whom we know
nothing. But it is also much more than this.



Dionysius is *practising* forms of theological meditation in
the sense that the earlier Church Fathers had understood this, not as
a type of objectified, academic knowledge, but rather as a more
complex, intersubjective form of address, communion and contemplation.
Dionysius adopts the word theurgy, "god-work", together
with theology, "god-word", to describe the inmost reality
of this practice, adopting it from the later Neoplatonist
understanding of a hidden sympathy or interconnectedness between
material things and the sacred, divine significances resident in them
by virtue of divine power. Iamblichus, for instance, had denied that
pure thought or contemplation could bring about union with the divine.
What was crucial was the performance of certain ritual actions or
theurgy, "god-work", in the belief that one could attain
to the divine by the incarnation of divine forces in material objects,
statues, or human beings through the divine power mirrored everywhere
in the universe and in the natural sympathy of all parts, and not just
by talking about the gods (*theo-logy*) or by looking at them
(*theoria*). For some modern critics, Dionysius'
adaptation of pagan theurgy is analogous to calling the Christian
sacraments "magical", which also results in the
subsumption of everything (morality as well as contemplation) to a
form of magical correspondence. But Dionysius does not understand
theurgy in this way. For him, "theurgy is the consummation
(*sygkephalaiosis*) of theology" (*EH* 432B),
which is to say that God's activity within all the orders of
nature does not abolish nature, morality, contemplation, or science
but rather completes them and makes possible the divinization of human
nature.



God's work in all things, therefore, turns the world into a
reservoir of possibilities: at its lowest and most fragmented, it is
apparently a world of only individual, discrete things without
significance, but in reality it is a world vested with signs, symbols,
and hidden meanings as the multidimensional creation of a Triadic God.
Even the lowest things cannot simply be despised, for even in their
dissimilarity from the divine, they bear the capacity to signify the
divine more appropriately than supposedly worthier images. If we say
God is good, we run the risk of thinking we know entirely what we mean
and consequently of closing off a thought that has to be radically
open-ended, if not altogether subverted. If we liken God to a
"worm", we subvert our own comfortable tendencies by being
shocked into filling the image with enquiry. So the Psalmist who uses
the worm image *hides* the sacred from those who would defile
it with a lack of understanding and yet *points* to the sacred
in a new way. This constant tension or dialectic between hiddenness
and openness pervades the whole of Dionysius' meditative
practice of theology; and from this perspective Dionysius'
practice of writing is a complex and necessarily deceptive or
subversive process of reading the encoded insight (or contemplation)
in created things in such a way that neither the perceptual beauty of
the material thing nor the deeper hidden beauty of the sign becomes a
trap, an idol, or a vanishing point but, instead, an activity that
opens up an irresistibly beautiful world in and to God.



There are several consequences of this. First, Dionysius'
writing is a response, a preparing of the organs of reception for the
love of God in praise and worship. In theology, we are learning how to
praise, to *hymn*--not to catalogue--God. Second,
such writing is dialogic and intersubjective to its core in three
ways: a) As "in between" teacher and pupil, dialogical
receptivity and transmission, open-ended in both directions,
characterize its essential *form*; b) Even in the
*content* of Dionysius' various works, replete as they
are with triads (which can so easily be relegated to a Neoplatonic
obscure penchant for providing intermediate links), this open-ended
in-betweenness, characteristic of conversation and cooperation, is
fundamental to the ranks of the various hierarchies. In the
*EH*, for instance, in the triad catechumen (the one undergoing
purification), sponsor or confirmed Christian (the one being
illumined), and hierarch (the one being perfected and enlightening)
(according to the traditional triadic form:
purification--illumination--perfection), the sponsor first
introduces the catechumen and both sponsor and catechumen are then
mediated by the work of the hierarch. For Dionysius at least (if not
in the actual operation of a "church"), hierarchy is here
not a question of domination, but rather of a genuine open-endedness,
testability through interlocutor and mediator, community and
responsibility. c) Finally, what completes both the form and the
content above all is *prayer*, since, for Dionysius (as for
Anselm much later), prayer is the primary form of reverential
philosophical thought and receptivity, "stretching ourselves
out", as in Gregory of Nyssa, so as to be "lifted
up" (cf. *DN* 3). The most famous example of such prayer
is the very beginning of the *MT*, where in the address/request
"Triad, above substance, above god, above good" to
"make our way straight to the topmost peak, beyond knowing and
light, of the mystical scriptures--there where the simple,
absolute and unchangeable, mysteries of God's speaking lie
wrapped in the darkness beyond light of secret--hidden
silence", Timotheus, the disciple is also included, together
with us the readers.


### 4.3 Philosophy?



All of this looks so alien to the spirit of modern philosophy that we
may well ask if there is anything really philosophical in
Dionysius' practice? The answer has to be affirmative, for there
is a perfectly reasonable pattern to the whole of Dionysius'
works. In addition, Dionysius regards his own task as a kind of
demonstration (*apodeixis*) or showing (*deixai*). In
the *Divine Names*, such demonstration is given a Pauline
resonance when Dionysius states that we should hold to the scriptural
revelation of divine names "not in the persuasive words of human
wisdom, but in demonstration of the power granted by the Spirit"
(*DN* 585b; cf. Paul 1 Cor 2-4). In other words,
Dionysius here sees scripture as providing the basis for a deeper
understanding of attribution or predication that will lead us beyond
our own merely human capacities. That such a demonstration involves
the unpacking of the symbolic, contemplative, and mystical
significances of ordinary things by the aid of scriptural testimony is
clear in the *Ecclesiastical Hierarchy*, which again starts
from Dionysius' purpose of demonstrating what the hierarchy
comprises; and that this includes arguments, reasons, the possibility
of debate and even improvement upon Dionysius' demonstrations by
his interlocutor becomes clear too at the end of the work, when the
literary humility that is characteristic of his writing (cf.
*EH* 568a ff.; *DN* 981c-984a; *CH* 340b)
shows itself to be philosophically justified by Dionysius'
ability to set out both sides of the case for and against infant
baptism in the understanding that he may not fully be in possession of
the most complete view of the situation and that his interlocutor
should "use" what he has said "as steps
(*epanabathmois*) to a higher ray of light" (*EH*
568d-569a). This is a thought couched in terms very reminiscent
of Socrates' wish in the *Republic* to subvert or destroy
hypotheses and use them as stepping stones to something better, and it
is also a thought not unworthy of Wittgenstein's similar view at
the end of the *Tractatus*. The words immediately following
make clear the connection between charity of interpretation,
open-endedness and demonstration: "Be generous with me then, my
dear friend,... and show (*deixon*) to my eyes that more
beautiful and unified beauty which you may be able to see".
Demonstration in this sense, then, includes much of what we might
consider to be properly philosophical, but at root it is also a form
of "divine reading" (*lectio divina*, or
meditative, prayerful reading) of nature and word, a receptive
recognition as a kind of method or making one's way "to
hear the sacred words as receptively as possible, to be open to the
divine workings of God, to clear an uplifting path
(*hodopoiesis*) toward that inheritance that awaits us in
heaven, and to accept our most divine and sacred regeneration"
(*EH* 392a).


## 5. Afterlife: Significance and Influence



In sum, Dionysius represents the instantaneous resonances, possible in
unusual circumstances, between forms of thought and practice that may
at first sight appear entirely divergent. He is therefore in some
respects a dangerous thinker, yet at the same time a forger of new
possibilities:


1. Partly because as a Christian he cannot accept at face value the
Neoplatonic view of the One as excluding trinity, Dionysius forges a
new way of thinking about God by linking beyond-beingness with
unrestricted being and by combining in God's transcendent love
both power and a kind of hyperessential, erotic vulnerability. In the
first instance, he provides a fruitful link between philosophies based
upon a transcendent principle beyond being (for example, the Good) and
philosophies of being, and in the second instance he suggests a loving
God whom, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it makes sense to address
in prayer. At the same time, however, this standpoint leaves room,
from a modern viewpoint particularly, for interreligious dialogue
since, while it is certainly a Christian view, it also remains
radically open-ended.
2. He also succeeds in transposing Pagan Neoplatonism into a complete
Christian theology, from the Trinity and the angelic world through the
incarnation and redemption to the sacramental life and orders of the
Church, and extending to the old Law, and provides not only a symbolic
and mystical explanation, but a profound reconsideration of the
importance of liturgical practice as a response to both the hidden and
the more manifest divine workings of grace in scripture, ritual,
morality, law and even material things.
3. Together with scripture, the Fathers, and the entire ancient
tradition, he provides a framework and a vocabulary for ordinary
spirituality as well as mystical practice, especially for describing
the approach of the soul through inactivity of all knowledge to a
state of unification with God "in the brilliant darkness of a
hidden silence" (*MT* 1); and his complex negative
theology transmits a theory of signification that in many ways is so
self-subversive and necessarily deceptive at each level (both
*kataphatic* and *apophatic*) that for future
generations after his own time it will hardly be possible to translate
his works without also writing commentaries upon them.
4. In addition, Dionysius' view of the visible created universe
was to have a marked influence for two reasons, first, because his
vivid sense of the aesthetic and imaginative beauty of the sensible
universe, pervaded from the perspective of divine beauty by
interrelatedness and harmony (see esp. *DN* 7), came to inspire
Abbot Suger's program for a new architecture, the Gothic
cathedral, and, second, because Dionysius also took account of
ugliness, defect, resistance, and evil by his theory of evil as
privation and non-being, a theory adopted from Plotinus (with
significant changes) and Proclus and destined to have further
influence upon Aquinas in medieval times and Ficino in the
Renaissance.



For the long commentary tradition, from John of Scythopolis to Aquinas
and Ficino, see bibliography 2 below. St. Gregory the Great refers to
Dionysius in his own commentary on the angels and probably had the
complete works at Rome. But the study of Dionysius did not take off in
the Latin West until the Byzantine emperor Michael the Stammerer sent
a copy of the Dionysian corpus as a gift to the Frankish king Louis
the Pious in 827. This copy served as the source of the first
translations of Dionysius into Latin. The first translation, made
around 838 by Hilduin, abbot of a monastery near Paris (who identified
Dionysius not only as St. Dionysius the Areopagite but also as the
first bishop of Paris), was so unintelligible that Charles II asked
the great Irish philosopher, John Scottus Eriugena, to make a new
translation that he completed in 862 and that was subsequently revised
with clarifications in 875. The influence of Dionysius is profound in
Eriugena's own thought as it would be later in the Franciscan
tradition (especially Grosseteste and Bonaventure) and also to a
lesser extent in the Dominican (both Albert and Aquinas wrote
commentaries). In fact, the abiding-procession-return triad may be
said to form the essential structure of Aquinas' unfinished
masterpiece, the *Summa Theologica*. The influence of
Dionysius' ideas pervades not only the Italian and English
Renaissance, but also the Rhineland mystical writers, such as Meister
Eckhart (d. 1327), Tauler (d. 1361), Ruysbroeck (d. 1381), Gerson (d.
1429), and later Denis the Carthusian (d. 1471) and Nicholas of Cusa
(d. 1464) (whose work *On Learned Ignorance* owes a debt to
Dionysius' *agnosia* or unknowingness, as does also the
anonymous author of the *Cloud of Unknowing*) and the great
Spanish mystics, for example, St. John of the Cross (d. 1591). In the
Greek East, Dionysius' *On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy*
inspired a series of liturgical commentaries, beginning with the
*Mystagogy* of Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) and continuing
with works by Germanus of Constantinople (d. 733) and Nicholas
Cabasilas (d. 1390). Dionysius played a major role in the Palamite
controversy of the 14th century, cited both by Gregory Palamas (d.
1359) and by his opponents. In the modern world, Dionysius has
received less attention, though he is of some importance for 19th
century German Idealist thought and also to a lesser extent for
English and American Romanticism. In the so-called
"postmodern" world, however, two thinkers who have written
about Dionysius with great insight are Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques
Derrida. Derrida, in particular, has been one of the few contemporary
philosophical thinkers, if not the only one, to realize the importance
of Dionysius in relation to deconstruction (a term he does not use
himself) and to explore the complex nature of prayer, address, and
denial in the context of the necessarily deceptive and open-ended
possibilities of negative theology.


## 6. Outline of the Works


### On the Divine Names




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Chs. 1-3: | methodological introduction: how the divine names do and do not
know God (ch. 1); how they are a result of differentiation and unity
in God (ch. 2); the necessity of prayer, and the degree of
differentiation in Dionysius' own treatise, compared with the
scriptures and the work of his predecessors (ch. 3) |
| Ch. 4: | the name of "good," with its allied names of
"light," "beauty," "love," and
"jealousy;" the nature of evil |
| Chs. 5-7: | the names of the Neoplatonic triad: "being" (ch. 5),
"life" (ch. 6), and "intellect" (ch. 7) with
its allied name of "word" |
| Ch. 8: | the name of "power" with its allied names of
"righteousness" and "salvation" |
| Ch. 9: | names derived from Neoplatonic categories of being:
"same" and "different," "rest" and
"motion," "similarity" and
"dissimilarity," and others |
| Ch. 10: | names referring to time, such as "ancient of days"
and "eternity" |
| Ch. 11: | the name of "peace;" whether the names exist in
themselves, and how they exist in God |
| Ch. 12: | names of governance, such as "king of kings" and
"lord of lords" |
| Ch. 13: | the names "perfect" and "one" |


### Mystical Theology




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Ch. 1: | introduction, and allegory of Moses' ascent up Mt.
Sinai |
| Ch. 2: | mystical theology compared to carving a statue |
| Ch. 3: | explanatory outline of Dionysius' theological works;
comparison of affirmative and negative theology |
| Chs. 4-5: | negative theology in action, negating first sensible things and
their characteristics (ch. 4), then divine names and theological
representations (ch. 5) |


### On the Celestial Hierarchy




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Chs.1-2: | methodological introduction: how we receive divine illumination
(ch. 1) and how we use names to describe God and the angels (ch.
2) |
| Ch. 3: | general definition of hierarchy |
| Ch. 4: | description of the celestial hierarchy |
| Ch. 5: | the meaning of "angel" |
| Ch. 6-10: | the nine ranks of angels identified (ch. 6), then explained one
by one (chs. 7-9), then summed up in terms of their common
mission (ch. 10) |
| Chs. 11-13: | apparent violations of the hierarchic principle: all the angels
are referred to as "heavenly powers" (ch. 11), human
hierarchs are sometimes called "angels" (ch. 12), and the
prophet Isaiah seems to have been purified directly by a seraphim, one
of the higher ranks (ch. 13) |


### On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| Ch. 1: | definition and explanation of hierarchy; how our hierarchy
differs from the celestial hierarchy; origin of the ecclesiastical
rites |
| Ch. 2: | contemplation of baptism |
| Ch. 3: | contemplation of communion; systematic description of
catechumens, penitents, and possessed |
| Ch. 4: | contemplation of the rite of the ointment |
| Ch. 5: | contemplation of the consecration of bishops, priests, and
deacons; description of legal hierarchy; triad of purification,
illumination, and perfection |
| Ch. 6: | contemplation of the consecration of a monk |
| Ch. 7: | contemplation of funeral rites; brief comments on intercessory
prayer, excommunication, and infant baptism |


### Letters




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| 1-2: | to Gaius, on negative theology: how God is beyond knowledge
(letter 1) and beyond "God" and "goodness"
(letter 2) |
| 3-4: | to Gaius, on the incarnation of Christ: its
"suddenness" (letter 3) and how it manifests a single
"theandric" activity of the divine and human natures
(letter 4) |
| 5: | to Dorotheus, on negative theology, with scriptural
references |
| 6: | to Sosipater, against polemics |
| 7: | to Polycarp, against polemics, and on miracles |
| 8: | to Demophilus, on obeying superiors in the hierarchy |
| 9: | to Titus, on symbolic theology |
| 10: | to John, on evil and suffering |