Dionysius Areopagites

One of the more interesting things I read in college in my spare free time would have to be On the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology by Dionysius Areopagites, a pious fraud of the middle of the 1st millennium of the Christian Era. As a pious fraud, Dionysius problematizes himself as a contemporary of Paul, a man who heard the great Areopagitcal address and was converted to Christ by a vision of the synthesis of the Kingdom of God with the investigations of the Stoa. Before (or really after) Tertullian said, "Quid ergo Athenas et Ierusalem? Quid ergo Academia et Ecclesia" (I'm quoting from memory), Dionysius answered, "Everything." Like physicists working with a cloud chamber, the Platonists, the Peripatetics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and who knows what others had probed to theos with the light and particles of their modes of reasoning. But like the silly women of which Paul speaks, the philosophers were always thinking and like their Jewish parallels and contemporaries of the Wisdom literature, were little closer to the truth. Paul changed that, proclaiming to theos or theos agnostos (for indeed the sense of those words is not very different) to be God the Father, the source of all being. Presumably, Paul also proclaimed the other Persons. Paul gave the hidden electron cloud a name. To continue our analogy, Paul proclaimed the Schrodinger Equation.

Now, the funny thing about the Schrodinger Equation is that it has no analytical solution beyond the hydrogen atom and no numerical solution beyond the helium atom. And thus, I suspect, Dionysius realized that God proclaimed in the gospel which Paul taught was comprehended to the extent of the hydrogen and helium atom. Thus, Dionysius came up with an epistemology of theological humility, a way of seeking the heavier elements of God not in sensible proclamations but through a form of deeply humble engagement with the intelligible. As pious fraud, Dionysius writes to Timothy, presumably the companion of Paul, and his fellow presbyter in Hellas. In history, Dionysius likely was an ethnic Greek perhaps writing in the generation after Chalcedon. To return to our analogy, this was a time for humility. The conclusions of the first Ecumenical Councils were much like the Hartree model of the atom, which simplified the Schrodinger Equation so it could be solved for heavier elements with less trouble. But the Hartree model is an approximation with substantial errors for some elements. In a time when Christendom still felt the wounds of doctrinal winners and losers, Areopagites stood and said, "No one really wins about God."

*Christopher recently cited this anecdote about ++ St. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1942-1944.

A reporter once asked ++Archbishop William Temple: "Your Grace, the Roman Catholics have Augustine and Aquinas; the Presbyterians have Calvin; the Lutherans have Luther; the Methodists have Wesley; whom does the Church of England have?" Temple relied "Plato." (Gray Temple, Gay Unions)

It's funny that the source for this is a book by Gray Temple. Temple was keynote speaker for the Province V Retreat my sophomore year in college, when I was reading Dionysius.

But St. William Temple, I think, had it wrong (or perhaps he thought the reporter wouldn't know who Dionysius was). Our theologian is not Plato but Dionysius Areopagites. For as Augustine says in City of God , the philosophers did not actually derive the Trinity. Otherwise, they would have predicted and recognized Christ by reason. The self-revelation of God in Christ gave a name, a nature, and a mission to the God of the philosophers. Compare the Mystical Theology and the Enneads of Plotinus. One is simply easier to think through, because we understand the referents in the first, both in the sense of purely Christian referents and the referents that arise from the knowledge of Christ Himself. Paul on the Areopagus preached the fullness of God. Dionysius Areopagites, I think, made the synthesis. I can think of two important examples of Dionysius' impact on the Ecclesia Anglicana. First, Dionysius' great Latin translator was Duns Scotus. Second, Dionysius was the key source for an anonymous tract called "The Cloud of Unknowing," a rich work of early English vernacular.

So if you haven't read any Dionysius for a while, he's available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library in a few older English translations. See if you see his influence in Anglican theology. I'll wager that the epistemological humility that suffuses Anglicanism and our odd hermeneutical techniques come not from Hooker but from the Areopagite.

I want to say something further before I close. Last week, my rector told an anecdote about the great Reformation-era mystic, St. John of the Cross. St. John was having an ecstatic vision of the Theotokos when he sensed that a beggar was knocking at his door. John pulled himself away, went to the door, and gave the beggar something to eat. He then returned and immediately comprehended the Theotokos, who said that at the moment John heard the beggar knock, his soul lay in the balance. If he had not helped the beggar, he would never see her again.

It is very important to remember that the via negativa is a business very much in the sensible world but not of the world. In Platonism, one tends to talk about participation. But participation is not merely some form of interaction with the intelligibles in whatever way they are posed for you. Plato in the Republic creates an analogy between a city and a human soul. Although some present commentators believe Plato's ideal city was more a discourse on the soul rather than politics, I see it more as an imperfect vision of the gradual communication of the fullness of being present in the intelligibles into the sensible world. The philosopher-kings help the craftsmen make crafts that are closer and closer to the crafts that God makes. Platonism Christianized thus is founded on Christ as the fullness of the intelligibles communicated into the world in human flesh. And it is to that way we are called. Thus, there is no "real" division between the active and the contemplative, the body and the soul, only our fallen and imperfect nature interrupting the seamless unity between the word and the deed, the body and the soul, and the sensible and the intelligible. As Paul says, "I believe that nothing...can separate us from the love of God."

But we fallen folks are broken and we break what should be one. We limit the potential fullness of being that the Kingdom of God offers. This is not just about theology becoming incarnate, though this is a good question to ask a contemplative like me. This is also about theology also being mystical and spiritual rather than mired in the carnal. You do not proclaim the corruptible and claim it is from the incorruptible, for by this act, you attempt pollution of what is incorruptible. You proclaim the incorruptible in the midst of the corruptible that the corruptible may be incorruptible someday. And what is the end of all of this thinking and doing? Well, I've been hearing a good stab at the answer in a variety of places, it's this bon mot by Irenaeus of Lyons,

For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God.

( Adversus Haereses , IV.20).

Sounds good to me.

Until next time, the Holy Brothers pray that you may live in the Grace of the super-unknowable and ineffable God who became a human being and dwelled with us, humbling Himself to death, even death on a cross, so that we might know what it means to be fully alive.