St. Dionysius the Areopagite

PETER C. BOUTENEFF

Acts 17.34 mentions one Dionysius the Are- opagite among St. Paul’s converts. Eusebius (Church History 3.4) identifies this figure as the first bishop of Athens. Later on the name came to be identified with St. Denys, first bishop of Paris. Yet the most enduring legacy associated with Dionysius the

Areopagite is a corpus of four larger works and ten letters, these latter also constituting something like a self-contained treatise. These writings, appearing for the first time in the 6th century under this authorship, place themselves (pseudepigraphically) in the apostolic context: they are addressed to personalities such as John the Evangelist and speak of witnessing the darkening of the sun at Christ’s crucifixion. Their prove­nance went virtually unquestioned until the late Middle Ages. Owing both to their con­tent and their alleged sub-apostolic origins, they were deeply influential on subsequent Christian authors, notably Maximos the Confessor, John Scotus Eriugena, John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, Gregory Palamas, and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, the very title of which is taken from Dionysius’ Mystical Theology. Anachronisms in liturgical practice and in theologico-philosophical terminology have since conspired to make it impossible to date this corpus before the end of the 5th century or later. Certain liturgical details have suggested a Syrian monastic identity to an otherwise unidentified author. Ortho­dox theologians have tended to react ambivalently to the increasingly evident impossibility of identifying the 1st-century bishop with the written corpus, almost as if they ignore its significance. The Diony­sian writings lose none of their credibility owing to the “problem” of authorship; they rise or fall in Orthodox esteem on the basis of their content alone. The feast day of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, October 3, officially commemorates one sole person, and the hymnography conflates the marty­red bishop with the author-mystic.

Other controversies surround the con­tent of the corpus itself: its message is expressed in the language of Middle-Plato­nism, and Jesus Christ is scarcely men­tioned by name. A sympathetic appraisal, arguably regnant in contemporary

Orthodox scholarship (Golitzin 1994; Louth 2002), avers that the treatises were written as a missionary outreach to edu­cated Platonists. The pseudonym itself, it is argued, was chosen to identify the works as the product of the “conversion” of Greek philosophy to the gospel of Christ. Others (Meyendorff 1975) have contested that the corpus effectively amounts to a Platonic treatise with merely a Christian veneer.

By the 20th century Dionysius’ main influence on Orthodox theologians lay in his apophaticism. Vladimir Lossky, the title of whose flagship monograph The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church testifies to his commitment to the Dionysian heritage, constructed his entire theological outlook on the basis of apophaticism as construed by Dionysius (and Eckhart), contrary to what he saw as a Thomist “essentialism.” Christos Yannaras also steeped himself in Dionysius as a part of his broader engage­ment with Martin Heidegger, similarly tak­ing God’s radical and essential non- knowability as the starting point of any contemporary Orthodox theological reflec­tion. Yannaras further explored implica­tions of the apophatic semiotics of Dionysius’ The Divine Names, which had also been taken up by Jean-Luc Marion and Jacques Derrida.

SEE ALSO: Angels; Apophaticism; St. Greg­ory Palamas (1296–1359); St. Maximos the Confessor (580–662)

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Golitzin, A. (1994) “Et Introibo ad altare dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita,” Analecta Vlatadon 59. Thessaloniki: George Dedousis. Lossky, V. (1976). The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Louth, A. (2002) Denys the Areopagite. London: Continuum.

Meyendorff, J. (1975) “Pseudo-Dionysius,” in Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, pp. 91–111. Yannaras, C. (2007) On the Absence and Unknow- ability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite. London: T&T Clark.