Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works

Author: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (anonymous, c. 500 CE) Translator: Luibheid, Colm Editor: Rorem, Paul Year: 1987 Publisher: Paulist Press (Classics of Western Spirituality)

Summary

This volume collects the four major treatises and ten letters of the anonymous 5th–6th century Christian author known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in the authoritative modern English translation by Colm Luibheid with introductions and notes by Paul Rorem. The texts are: The Divine Names, a philosophical analysis of how God may and may not be named; The Mystical Theology, a brief but enormously influential account of the soul's ascent beyond all concepts into the divine darkness of unknowing; The Celestial Hierarchy, a taxonomy of the nine orders of angels; The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, a corresponding analysis of the Christian liturgical and sacramental order; and ten Letters.

The Paulist Press edition in the Classics of Western Spirituality series includes Rorem's substantial introduction, which situates the texts in their historical context (the Neoplatonic tradition of Proclus), explains the "pious fraud" of the apostolic attribution, and guides the reader through the major philosophical and theological issues. This is the standard scholarly English translation of a corpus that had an immense formative influence on medieval Christian mysticism.

Relevance to Project

Pseudo-Dionysius is the primary channel through which Neoplatonic mystical philosophy entered medieval Christian theology (see TIM-0007). His Mystical Theology — a mere five chapters, the shortest treatise in the corpus — is among the most influential documents in the Western mystical tradition: its account of the soul's ascent through progressive negation of all divine predicates into the divine darkness beyond being and knowing defined the via negativa that runs from Eriugena through Eckhart through the Cloud of Unknowing and into the Christian contemplative tradition to the present day.

Key Arguments

• God transcends all categories, including both being and non-being (negative theology / apophasis)
• The celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies are graduated orders of divine illumination — each level both receives and transmits the divine light
• Liturgy (hierourgía) is theurgic: the sacraments do not merely symbolize divine reality but participate in it and effect what they symbolize
• The highest mystical state is one of unknowing (agnosia) in which the soul is united with God by transcending even the concept of union

Key Passages

"The simple, absolute, and immutable mysteries of divine Truth are hidden in the super-luminous darkness of that silence which revealeth in secret. For this darkness, though of deepest obscurity, is yet radiantly clear." — The Mystical Theology, Chapter 1

Agent Research Notes

The Luibheid translation is the standard scholarly English version and the one cited in virtually all modern academic work on Pseudo-Dionysius. The Classics of Western Spirituality series (Paulist Press) is uniformly excellent for primary sources in the mystical traditions; each volume includes contextual introductions by scholars in the field. Rorem's introduction is particularly helpful for readers coming from a philosophical rather than theological background.