from the writings of
“Dionysius the Areopagite”
(pseudo-Dionysius)

This page:
the Divine Names
the Mystical Theology
the Celestial Hierarchy
the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy
the Letters

Categories:

Christianity

mystics

index pages:
authors
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The author of these Greek writings adopted the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, named as one of Paul’s converts in Acts 17:34. That same Dionysius is traditionally identified with the second-century St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris. Internal evidence (language matching decisions of the Council of Chalcedon) suggests the writings date from the late fifth or early sixth century.

The writer supported his fictional identity by addressing his works to Timothy and citing Paul as his teacher, and by addressing other New Testament characters in some of the letters. Some scholars suggest Letters Six through Ten may have been added by a different writer. (Letter Ten in particular pushes the impersonation; it’s addressed to the apostle John, in exile on Patmos.)

the Divine Names

from Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works
translated by Colm Luibheid

Copyright © 1987 by Colm Luibheid

Chapter One1 Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this supra-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is. Cause of all existence, and therefore itself transcending existence, it alone could give an authoritative account of what it really is.
Chapter Two7 For the truth is that everything divine and even everything revealed to us is known only by way of whatever share of them is granted. Their actual nature, what they are ultimately in their own source and ground, is beyond all intellect and all being and all knowledge.
Chapter Three1

Or picture ourselves aboard a boat. There are hawsers joining it to some rock. We take hold of them and pull on them, and it is as if we were dragging the rock to us when in fact we are hauling ourselves and our boat toward that rock. And, from another point of view, when someone on the boat pushes away the rock which is on the shore he will have no effect on the rock, which stands immovable, but will make a space between it and himself, and the more he pushes the greater will be the space.

That is why we must begin with a prayer before everything we do, but especially when we are about to talk of God. We will not pull down to ourselves that power which is both everywhere and yet nowhere, but by divine reminders and invocations we may commend ourselves to it and be joined to it.

Topics:

Prayer

Gods

Chapter Four11 In my opinion, it would be unreasonable and silly to look at words rather than at the power of the meanings.
Chapter Seven4 The man in union with truth knows clearly that all is well with him, even if everyone else thinks that he has gone out of his mind. What they fail to see, naturally, is that he has gone out of the path of error and has in his real faith arrived at truth. He knows that far from being mad, as they imagine him to be, he has been rescued from the instability and the constant changes which bore him along the variety of error and that he has been set free by simple and immutable stable truth.

Topic:

Truth

text checked (see note) Feb 2005

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the Mystical Theology

from Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works
translated by Colm Luibheid

Copyright © 1987 by Colm Luibheid

Chapter One2 What has actually to be said about the Cause of everything is this. Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and, more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since it surpasses all being. Now we should not conclude that the negations are simply the opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privations, beyond every denial, beyond every assertion.
Chapter Three The fact is that the more we take flight upward, the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.

text checked (see note) Feb 2005

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the Celestial Hierarchy

from Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works
translated by Colm Luibheid

Copyright © 1987 by Colm Luibheid

Chapter Four1

One truth must be affirmed above all else. It is that the transcendent Deity has out of goodness established the existence of everything and brought it into being. It is characteristic of the universal Cause, of this goodness beyond all, to summon everything to communion with him to the exent that this is possible. Hence everything in some way partakes of the providence flowing out of this transcendent Deity which is the originator of all that is. Indeed nothing could exist without some share in the being and source of everything.

Topic:

Providence

text checked (see note) Feb 2005

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the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy

from Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works
translated by Colm Luibheid

Copyright © 1987 by Colm Luibheid

Chapter One 1 Let your respect for the things of the hidden God be shown in knowledge that comes from the intellect and is unseen. Keep these things of God unshared and undefiled by the uninitiated.
3

Talk of “hierarch” and one is referring to a holy and inspired man, someone who understands all sacred knowledge, someone in whom an entire hierarchy is completely perfected and known.

The source of this hierarchy is the font of life, the being of goodness, the one cause of everything, namely, the Trinity which in goodness bestows being and well-being on everything. Now this blessed Deity which transcends everything and which is one and also triune has resolved, for reasons unclear to us but obvious to itself, to ensure the salvation of rational beings, both ourselves and those beings who are our superiors. This can only happen with the divinization of the saved. And divinization consists of being as much as possible like and in union with God.

The common goal of every hierarchy consists of the continuous love of God and of things divine, a love which is sacredly worked out in an inspired and unique way, and, before this, the complete and unswerving avoidance of everything contrary to it. It consists of a knowledge of beings as they really are.

Chapter TwoIII Contemplation3

We say, then, that the goodness of the divine blessedness, while forever remaining similar to and like itself, nevertheless generously grants the beneficent rays of its own light to whoever views it with the eyes of the intelligence. But it can happen that intelligent beings, because of their free will, can fall away from the light of the mind and can so desire what is evil that they close off that vision, with its natural capacity for illumination. They remove themselves from this light which is ceaselessly proferred to them and which, far from abandoning them, shines on their unseeing eyes. With typical goodness that light hastens to follow them even when they turn away from it.

It can happen too that these beings push beyond the reasonable limits set to their vision and that they have the gall to imagine that they can actually gaze upon those beams which transcend their power of sight. Here, light will not go against its own nature as light. Rather, the soul, imperfectly offering itself to abolute Perfection, will not only fail to arrive at those realities foreign to it but in its evil arrogance will even be deprived of what is available to it. Still, as I have already said, the divine Light, out of generosity, never ceases to offer itself to the eyes of the mind, eyes which should seize upon it for it is always there, always divinely ready with the gift of itself.

Topic:

Free will

text checked (see note) Feb 2005

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the Letters

from Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works
translated by Colm Luibheid

Copyright © 1987 by Colm Luibheid

Letter One
To the monk Gaius.
[...] His transcendent darkness remains hidden from all light and concealed from all knowledge. Someone beholding God and understanding what he saw has not actually seen God himself but rather something of his which has being and which is knowable. For he himself solidly transcends mind and being. He is completely unknown and nonexistent. He exists beyond being and he is known beyond the mind. And this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.
Letter Four
To the same monk Gaius.
As one considers it all in a divine manner, one will recognize in a transcending way that every affirmation regarding Jesus’ love for humanity has the force of a negation pointing toward transcendence. For, if I may put the matter briefly, he was neither human nor nonhuman; although humanly born he was far superior to man, and being above men he yet truly did become man. Furthermore, it was not by virtue of being God that he did divine things, not by virtue of being a man that he did what was human, but rather, by the fact of being God-made-man he accomplished something new in our midst—the activity of the God-man.

Topic:

Christ

Note (Hal’s):
The quotes below are taken from the set of letters (Six through Ten) with challenged authorship.

— end note

Letter Six
To the priest Sosipater.

Do not count it a triumph, reverend Sosipater, that you are denouncing a cult or a point of view which does not seem to be good. And do not imagine that, having thoroughly refuted it, all is therefore well with Sosipater. For it could happen that the one hidden truth could escape both you and others in the midst of falsehoods and appearances. What is not red does not have to be white.

Letter Eight
To the monk Demophilus. Concerning one’s proper work, and kindness.
5 Those who do not know must be taught, not punished. We do not hit the blind. We lead them by the hand.

Topic:

Education

text checked (see note) Feb 2005

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Background graphic copyright © 2003 by Hal Keen