5. Pseudo-Dionysius (2 of 2)

Relevant links:
John Meyendorff's Christ in Eastern Christian Thought.
5. Pseudo-Dionysius (1 of 2)

Two dangers became evident in Dionysian thought that stemmed from the notions of unions and distinctions in God:

1. Pantheism
2. Platonic Emanationism
   

These dangers are indigenous to any form of Platonism. Pseudo-Dionysius (PD) avoided the problem of emanationism, in which each emanation of the divine implied a fragmentation of God having lost its fullness of the divine being as it emanated. He did avoids this writing:

It is common, synthetic, and unique for the whole Diety to be participated in fully and entirely by all the participants, and never by any of them in a partial way, as the central point of a circle is participated in by all the radii ... without being in any way fragmented. As for the unpartakableness of the Diety, universal cause, it also transcends [these participations], for there is with it no sort of contact, no sort of community, nor any synthesis between it and its participants. (p 97)

In other places PD distinctly divorces himself from neo-Platonism and articulates a Christian knowledge of God that accommodates neo-Platonist categories. Nevertheless, PD "cleverly avoids" explicit reference to the personalist concept of hypostasis. In a well-known passage from On the Divine Names, PD speaks of God being at once Trinity and Monad.

Two Great Dionysian Victories
In trying to use "against the Greeks the Greeks' own goods", PD accomplishes two great victories in essential areas. First, he successfully demonstrates that the knowledge of God is not discursive or identifiable with any natural process. Rather, it transcends our natural faculties and represents a mode of knowledge sui generis. Second, PD goes beyond Origen emanationism and pantheism in showing that the divine manifestations (i.e., "names") in the world do not interfere with his essential transcendence. (p 99)

It would seem almost certain that PD's intent was to protect (advance?) the Christian tradition in the context of the neo-Platonic intellectual culture in which he participated. Specifically, he was seeking a method which would allow for a deductive rediscovery of the proper order of things in the world, incorporating Christian religious forms into the intelligible structures of late neo-Platonism.

Philosophically Christian
PD remains fundamentally Christian. He maintains that God is still "above" the "Platonic One", not belonging to the lower hierarchical orders. Further, he demonstrates that the hierarchical procession is not a diminution of the divine being but God's presence was fully in each being. Dionysius is the source of the classical classification of the angels into nine orders, subdivided into three triads, which has no foundation in Scripture. (p 102) He remains trapped in the sense-mind dichotomy and lacked the philosophical means to express the realities linked with the incarnation.

His ecclesiastical hierarchy sought to follow as much as possible that of the angels or celestial hierarchy. The ecclesiastical hierarchy, being essentially arbitrary, seems to have twisted the perspective followed by the ecclesiology of the Church of the first few centuries. The Dionysian hierarch, designating not only bishops but great figures like Melchizedek, is essentially a Gnostic who transmits esoteric knowledge to those below him in the hierarchy. This notion reduces the idea of a sacrament down to a transmission of personal illumination. For example, the Eucharist is for PD only an ethical lesson for the "imperfect" and not a participation in the body and blood of Christ.

Theologically Christian
In terms of theologia PD was in the tradition of the Cappadocians, overcoming the antinomy between God's immanence and his transcendence. The different interpretation that the West has given On the Divine Names, has caused many misunderstandings between East and West on the "real sense" of Dionysian thought. (p 107)

Contributions to Christian Spirituality
Some lesser known areas of Dionysian influence are seen in ecclesiology and liturgical piety, essential elements of Christian spirituality. PD's cosmic hierarchy sought to relate that all beings were created in view of their union with God and the universal tendency to draw closer to God (imitation). This was a view that had been central to patristic anthropology since St. Irenaeus and later developed by St. Maximus. Strangely, PD asserts this in "complete separation" from the mystery of the Incarnation. (p 108)

For PD there are two distinct modes of union with God. On the one hand, there is theologia referring to the mystical, individual and direct; on the other hand, theurgy, describing the intermediary activity of the hierarchy. Dionysian theologia belongs to the realm of piety; however, theurgia is not so simply classified. Theurgia rests on the same neo-Platonic ontology as theologia; however, its aim was to transmit gnosis (knowledge), and the sacraments themselves are reduced to initiating symbols.

Christian liturgy, in trying to satisfy the needs of the masses, underwent a transformation. Preaching insisted on the sanctity of the sacramental action. The idea of esoteric initiation borrowed from Corpus Hermeticum, was used to communicate to the faithful the sense of the sacred and to remind them of how difficult it is to approach it. In the absence of such initiation, one possesses only indirect knowledge through hierarchical intermediaries and symbols. To penetrate these mysteries requires that one initiated.