Recently, due to the pioneer work of Anthony Pavoni and Evangelos Nikitopoulos, the scales have decisively shifted in favor of the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus. In this article I greatly condense the evidence they have put forward (with a couple additional items to consider added in) demonstrating that imputing pseudonymity to these books and letters ascribed to Saint Dionysius the Areopogite is increasingly tenuous. Accepting as a matter of greater historical probability that the Dionysian corpus is authentic, I then reflect upon what ramifications this would have upon Protestants accepting Dionysius as part of Apostolic Christian tradition. There will be future, peer-reviewed work on this question which will be much more detailed.
Evidence in favor of the Dionysian authenticity. The following are the main proofs that the Dionysian corpus is authentic:
1. Early works explicitly cite or paraphrase Dionysius with explicit linguistic parallels.
- Saint Jerome speaks of “[a] certain Greek, highly learned in the Scriptures” who “explained the Seraphim there have certain virtues in the heavens, who praise him before the tribunal of God, and are sent to various ministries, especially to those who need purification.” (Epistle 18 To Pope Damasus) This description matches no other work attributed to any time preceding Jerome other than Dionysius’ Celestial Hierarchy.
- Saint Gregory Nazianzus cites from memory “the holy oracles and the God bearing men” who he recalls wrote “some things said of the Son or the God Spirit” calling the Holy Trinity “the root without beginning” and “three lights” where “one nature [has] been established” in reference to the Holy Trinity (PG 37, col, 412A-413a). He is obviously remembering the words of Dionysius who speaks of “how the Divine and good Nature is spoken of as one, how as Threefold…how from the immaterial and indivisible Good the Lights dwelling in the heart of Goodness sprang forth and remained, in their branching forth.” (Mystical Theology 3.1, John Parker trans.) Gregory uses the exact language and asimilar metaphor (that of plants) when explaining the same subject.
From the preceding, to presume pseudonymity one must 1) presume Jerome is citing a similar, now lost work; and 2) presume Gregory Nazianzus borrowed the technical terminology from other unknown God bearing men. While none of these things are impossible, someone impartially weighing the historical evidence must conclude going by Occam’s razor favors that the preceding saints all are citing the Dionysian corpus.
2. Proclus shows dependence on Dionysius, not the other way around.
Pavoni and Nikitopoulos torturously cover all the suspect passages where traditionally scholarship has argued a dependence of the Dionysian corpus upon the philosopher Proclus–this being the basis for dating the corpus to the late 5th or early 6th centuries. They point out that the passages originate from a few chapters on evil within a singular book of Dionysius (Divine Names), but find themselves throughout Proclus’ own corpus. Proclus sometimes disrupts internal parallels found within the Dionysian passages. Further, arguments that Dionysius borrowed concepts from Proclus is contradicted by all the same being found in early Christian writers like Clement of Alexandria and Origen. While it is possible to infer that “Pseudo” Dionysius made a point of mimicking Proclus in writing only one book (and mostly from one chapter) and that “Pseudo” Dionysius went out of his way to find the broken parallels within a passage and correct them, the simpler explanation is that Proclus had procured only a singular book and he only broke parallels when the conclusion of what he was plagiarizing had put into dispute his philosophy.
Most convincingly, Proclus quotes an authority which he does not name when speaking of the gods as “flowers and subersubstantial lights.” (On the Existence of Evils, 209/66, trans. Jan Opsomer and Carlos Steel) The exact name words are used in Dionysius (Divine Names 2.7). Hence, in order to sustain the thesis that “Pseudo” Dionysius copied Proclus, it is necessary to infer that Proclus quoted someone else who is unknown and seeing the opportunity to attribute the words to himself, “Pseudo” copied them. While this is not impossible, Occam’s razor demands the simpler inference, that Proclus simply quoted a known work (Dionysius’) without attribution–a work he manifestly was indebted to throughout his writings.
3. Theological terms like “hypostasis” used in the particular sense, “parhypostasis” in reference to evil having an absence of existence, and “without confusion” are not anachronsitic and do not originate in the fourth or fifth centuries.
Typically, the strongest argument made against the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus is that it allegedly contains theological terminology which post-dates the Councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, as well as allegedly borrowing a technical term from Proclus. However, this claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
- Heb 1:3, Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 2:18), and Origen (Commentary on John 2.6) all use “hypostasis” in the particular sense, in reference to an individual Person of the Holy Trinity—this is before the supposed “invention” of this meaning by the Cappadocean fathers in the fourth century.
- Saint Gregory of Nyssa uses the term “parhypostasis” in the fourth century before Proclus ever does in the fifth century. (PG 44, col. 681) This implies the term is Christian in origin and not imported from Proclus’ philosophy.
- Hippolytus uses the term “without confusion” (ἀσυγχύτως) pertaining Christ’s divine and human essence in the early third century. (PG 10, col. 628) This is before Basil of Isauria, Dioscorus, and the Constantinopolitan senate (“glorious officials”) used the term in Chalcedon, which then incorporated in into its decree during the mid-fifth century to maintain that there is not a Eutychian conflation of Christ’s divine and human essences during the incarnation.
In short, all of the assertions that technical terminology in the Dionysian corpus is anachronistic and sources from Miaphysites and Proclus is demonstrably false. There are in fact Attic Greek words employed that fit a 1st century setting.
Briefly Revewing Other Evidences
There are more reasons and proofs of authenticity.
- Dionysius’ corpus had universal reception from Christendom’s top thinkers spanning multiple denominations until the Renaissance.
- It exhibits an advanced angeology which is Scriptural (Acts 7:53, Gal 3:19; cf Col 2:18), found in an Apostolic Father (Ignatius, Epistle to the Trallians, Chap 5), and conceptually paralleled even by sources outside the Church such as the 1st-2nd century work Ascension of Isaiah.
- Nicolo Sassi’s linguistic research in two articles (2017 and 2018) has exposed that the internal vocabulary of Dionyius is 1) consistent and 2) almost 60 percent original (typical of an author’s own voice and originality), about 30 percent Platonic (as opposed to Neo-Platonic, vocabulary fitting of someone that Acts 17:34 reputes to have already been known for philosophical expertise as the Areopagite), with the remaining language being explicitly Biblical or Christian. In other words, the capacity of a forgery to so consistently maintain an authentic vocabulary to the period and a consistent one at that is unlikely.
- Gleaning from uncited, but strict lexical parraels between the texts (i.e. they are quoting and paraphrasing Dionysius), there is a consistent thread of dependence of Alexandrian works and authors from Saint Pantaenus, to Clement of Alexandria, to Origen, to Plotinus (who possibly studied under the same Ammonius who presumably belonged to the same Christian school of theology in Alexandria), to Saint Jerome (who studied in Alexandria), to Gregory Nazianzus (who likewise studied in Alexandria), to Saint Cyril of Alexandria, to Proclus (who likewise studied in Alexandria). While it is possible that a forgerer from Alexandria borrowed pearls from all of the preceding in creating the Dionysian corpus, this is a tenuous position considering Jerome writing in Latin and the diversity of the sources. The simpler explanation is that a single source inspired many as compared to many inspired an elaborate hoax.
- Dionysius concerns himself with the heresies of Judaizing, the proto-Gnosticism of Simon Magnus (matching obscure details in Hippolytus’ Refutation of All Heresies), an issue with the 18th Clementine Homily (attributing it to “Clemens the Philosopher” instead of Saint Clement, something which accords with modern text criticism pertaining to the 1st or 2nd century origin of the original core of the text and extremely perceptive for a late forger who would have accept the latter Clement’s authorship from the fourth century version of the text), and a non-simple view of God (an early Jewish idea that God took up some sort of space). A forgery generally concerns itself with heresies from its own time period, not subtle, unappreciated ones from far in the past.
- The degree of personal details which do not seem to serve any real purpose is atypical of a forgery. For example, the language of Dionysius is typically convoluted other than his letter to the elderly Apostle John, implying deference. In his letter to Titus, he calls Timothy (who at that point is referred to as deceased) “deaf” to his theology (meaning when hearing the letters read, which was customary for books due to people not reading silently during this era, the obvious implication being that Timothy did not understand their idiom). This personal detail shows a human side to a saint and a critical evaluation at that. It makes sense with a contemporary (the Apostles and saints are often critical of one other during their own lives), but not to later writers who customarily gloss over such frictions.
- Dionysius’ theology of divine names evidences concerns which match first century Judaism (particualrly the ideas of Philo) and precede those of Rabbinic Judaism in the mid-second century and Origen, who borrowed from Rabbinc Judaism on this point.
- Dioysius’ view of monasticism clearly has conceptual and etymological parallels to the first and second centuries, noted by recent scholarship.
When the preceding is taken into account, there is no historical, linguistic, textual, or conceptual reason to deny the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus. One can reasonably posit that it was simply an early forgery (like Ascension of Isaiah, the Shepherd of Hermas, 2 Esdras). It is never reputed as such (though perhaps Jerome in not naming the author and the other uncited parralels imply some sort of suspicion). On the other hand, early Christian forgeries tended to be prophetic so as to lend themselves authority. Dionysius does not lay a significant claim to this (though he does prophesy to Saint John he would leave exile in Patmos). When the corpus makes more significant claims about the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the angels, it appeals to the Scriptures–not to prophetic insight. If a forgery, it is atypically subtle and would stand alone as its own peculiar genre. Therefore, the possibility of the writings being a very early forgery is existent, but less probable than authenticity.
How should this affect intellectually-vigorous Protestantism? For the sake of argument, let one accept that Protestantism is a viable alternative to Orthodoxy both spiritually and intellectually. Even doing this, one must reflect that when Protestantism formed within Christendom, 1 Clement (and its emphasis on Apostolic Succession) and the Didache (with its emphasis on the sacrament of confession) were not yet “discovered” in the West. The Ignatian corpus (with its ecclesiastical and eucharistic teachings) was near-universally considered fake so it rarely weighed in on debates.
If these first and second century witnesses were acknowledged and known during the Protestant Reformation, one cannot help but honestly speculate that things may have developed quite differently. The ecclesiastical developments away from the episcopacy from the Calvinists may have not occurred and the treatment of confession and the Eucharist would at least had more care. Now that Protestants are aware of these sources’ existence, they either incorporate or harmonize them with their traditions or (more commonly in the more low church traditions, such as the Reformed Baptists) ignore them or simply impute these documents as showing error at a very early time.
What does an intellectually-vigorous Protestant now do with Dionysius, accepting the weighty evidence of his corpus being an authentic witness of someone who was a personal confidante of several Apostles and their successors who are in fact named in his text? This is a serious question. Because unlike some attempts at reinterpreting the ecclesiology of 1 Clement as being more akin to Presbyterian than episcopal or simply ignoring the Didache’s teaching of confession because the source is allegedly pseudonymous, this is not possible with Dionysius who is a known commodity. For example, he explicitly lays out how hierarchy within the Church works and is yet another witness to the sacrament of confession (along with James 5:16 and Acts 19:18-19). This then forces one to accept that two legitimate Apostolic fathers saw episcopal governance as established by God, one of them (Clement) explicitly writing that breaking with such governance was a damnable sin. (1 Clem 41) Now that the Ignatian corpus is universally received as authentic, the seriousness of this ecclesiastical teaching is only further emphasized in the earliest sources.
Mindful Protestants also must confront Dionysius’ whole approach to theology, his method of exegeting the Scriptures (interestingly metaphorical as Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s were, see Acts 2:16-21, Gal 4:21-31) and his understanding of grace (which expounds the energy-essence distinction and Theosis). Dionysius’ sacramentology presumes upon the seven sacraments (which are likewise found in the Scriptures). His soteriology incorporates asceticism (interestingly using the same Greek word to describe monastics [Therapeutae] as a near contemporary, Philo of Alexandria in his The Contemplative Life–the term not found elsewhere). The corpus makes reference to infant baptism (sorry Reformed Baptists and others, such as Everett Ferguson). Dionysius’ speaks of praying for those after death, something consistent with 2 Tim 1:16-18 and some Protestant traditions (such as the Methodists). It is also worth mentioning that Dionysius was a witness to the Dormition of the Theotokos (thereby solidifying this tradition as historical fact).
A Protestant cannot simply say Dionysius was wrong, because when he was writing these things saints Timothy (though “deaf” to what he heard), Titus, and John (the Apostle) were all alive. They are part of Dionysius’ correspondence and are in communion with him. We cannot even say his speculations were obscure and private, because even the heretics were aware of them or had stolen from the same Christian tradition that Dionysius was privy to (as the theological parallel with the angelic hierarchy in the Ascension of Isaiah* and the reference from Ignatius in Trallians would demonstrate). Dionysius speaks of his ecclesiology, sacramentology, and orthopraxy as if it were ubiquitous to the Church he was writing to. Hence, in order to disregard DIonysius’ teachings one would have to pose the “Great Apostasy” theory while the Apostles were still alive. This not only calls into question literally the entirety of all Christian tradition, rendering it useless, it calls into question the Scriptures themselves (not only anything written by John and the letters written to Titus and Timothy, but the collation of all the writings of the Apostles themselves on Jesus Christ as the Canon would have formed under the same people’s direction).
*The early dating expounded here is due to it sharing certain similarities with the ecclesiastical situation 1 Clem and Ascension of Isaiah 3:22-24 and a reference to not bowing to angels in Rev 22:8 and Ascension of Isaiah 7:21. The situation described in 3 John also seems to match that of Ascension of Isaiah 3:27, 29, indicating there were at this point deep rifts already within the Church and the prophetic element seen to be almost entirely absent, but in recent memory. A late first century date is most plausible.
And so, how does one now incorporate Dionysius into the Protestant traditions? One would have to dispense with all traditions without an episcopacy which has actual succession. Furthermore, one would have to incorporate asceticism and the sacraments. Perhaps only the Anglicans and very conservative Lutherans (though their episcopacy lacks succession in those quarters) can make this pivot without forfeiting their tradition categorically.
Now, presuming semper reformanda, let the Anglicans reform—as everyone should by the motto. Would the incorporation of asceticism, the necessary practice of the seven sacraments, and the theological constructs such as Energy-Essence Distinction effectively force the Anglicans to become Orthodox in all but name? Literally, the only real bone of contention would become whether iconodulia can be squared with the Apostolic Fathers and with this the acceptance of the seventh council. The seventh council and Confession of Dositheus were the main impediments to Anglicans in refusing union with the Orthodox in the 1700s. Does the archaeological and textual evidence in favor of pre-Nicene iconodulia now sound so unreasonable? How about Dionysius’ own endorsement of material forms being necessary for worship? If Protestants such as Henry Percival can conclude the veration of the saints was ubiquitous and we have 18 (!) plausbily pre-Nicene examples, is this gap unbridgeable either?
Concluding thoughts. I pose the preceding so that others may interact and improve upon my thoughts. I see with the honest acceptance of the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus an authentic and workable path to union with Protestants who actually care about Sacred Tradition. I honestly don’t see what strong objections can be posed in justification of maintaining the distinctives that separate Protestants from Orthodox. To be frank, this is because accepting Dionysius entails forfeiting nearly every Protestant innovation that separates our communions. Indeed, there is room for more soul searching (as Rome, Oriental Orthodoxy, and even the tiny Assyrian communion are possibilities of a sort). But at least, this is a move in the correct direction. I think honest, informed Protestants would have to agree.
Orthodoxy… is inevitable
Photian is no more OrthoDoxy than EuTychianism or Nestorianism. OrthoDoxy is Catholicity without Copticism, Byzantinism, Muscovitism, or Romanism.
Wow where can I read Dionysius’s letter?
It’s a whole body of writings: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/areopagite_02_preface.htm
Very difficult reading by the way.
It’s interesting this PseudoDionySius’ letter is on a website named after the Hellenizing apostate TerTillianus
You mean PseudoDionySius’ letter
“They point out that the passages originate from a few chapters on evil within a singular book of Dionysius (Divine Names), but find themselves throughout Proclus’ own corpus.”
Think about this, even for a moment, and you will see that it does not hold up. You are saying it is *less likely* that Pseudo-Dionysius is dependent on Proclus because parallels from various parts of Proclus are found mostly in one chapter of one book of Pseudo-Dionysius. But that is precisely what one would expect, if Pseudo- is drawing from the whole Proclus to assist with his chapter. Why would Proclus cite from only a single book of Dionysius throughout his own corpus.
The ante-Proclus ‘citations’ are mere parallels which do not name Dionysius as the author, and no reason why this associate of Paul would not have been named is provided. It is far more likely that the author of the Corpus is drawing upon church tradition previous to him, as well as making use of Proclus for one of his chapters. This is not far-fetched and provides a much more parsimonious explanation.
In any case, the textual relationship, in the absence of any direct citation whatsoever of the Corpus previous to Proclus, is enough to create a balance of probability in favour of inauthenticity.
Finally, given that the orthodox liturgy, the testimony of saints, alleged promises of indefectibility of the church and so on all prevent Dionysius from having the prefix “pseudo-” would you admit that its inauthenticity (if proved by some kind of debate between scholars) would be a problem for Eastern Orthodox claims? Would it be a falsification event?
Thank you for the thoughtful rejoinder. Let me give you some homework in this response, be sure to look up the citations.
“Why would Proclus cite from only a single book of Dionysius throughout his own corpus.”
This is easy to explain–because he mainly did not care for Dionysius’ philosophy, but he found his theodicy compelling. Hence, one can expect him tapping the well for the one thing he likes instead of Dionysius tapping all over the place in Proclus to talk about the same thing. Of course alone this is not decisive, but it is one suggestive evidence of many.
“The ante-Proclus ‘citations’ are mere parallels which do not name Dionysius as the author, and no reason why this associate of Paul would not have been named is provided.”
They are not “mere parallels.” They contain specific Greek words used in a sense not found elsewhere. Not in this blog, but if you read St Dionysius of Alexandria’s Letter to Sixtus II, he literally parses *the same* Greek words in *the same* sense as St Maximus recalls in speaking of the commentary. In that letter, Dionysius is defending from memory another work where he is accused of misusing these words–the same sort of linguistic scrupolosity explained by Maximus. So, if we are being impartial historians, does it make more sense to presume Maximus is simply making things up and recalling something that makes sense only in a third century context *and* literally matches linguistically a debate St Dionysius of Alexandria really had by pure coincidence? And then, these parallels repeat themselves in two other authors?
In the published-article version which is being drafted, we have a quotation from Against Jovinian 2:28 which states: “*Why do we read* that in the kingdom of heaven there are Archangels, Angels, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Cherubim and Seraphim, and every name which is named, not only in this present world, but also that which is to come?” St Jerome is not merely saying something similar to Dionysius. He is literally citing that we *read* something which matches the angelic orders somewhere–this is written evidence in his day. There is no written document today that is reputed to precede Jerome that contains these angelic orders other than Dionysius the Areopogite. In fact, he even lists *all nine* angelic orders in his apology Against Rufinus 2:12–“when the fullness of forgiveness will have been reached, Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Archangels and Angels, the devil, the demons and the souls of men…” It’s not good enough to turn Dionysius into a superman who ripped off Jerome because we already know from Jerome he is quoting something else that is written. Occam’s razor is that he is quoting a source we know exists, Dionysius.
As I cover in the article, the question of why they don’t name Dionysius is interesting. My opinion is that the work was disputed–similar to 2 Peter or the Epistle of James. The content was accepted, but due to it not having a wide circulation (it appears to only be in Alexandria), typical in these days was to doubt any document without said circulation. However, as this blog points out, what 2nd century forgery matches the Dionysian corpus in its historical details? None. They all claim to be prophecies or they are hagiographies (like Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Protoevangelicum of James). Dionysius jumps out as an exception. And being an exception that does not match the genre of any known pseudigraphia in the first 2 centuries, on what basis do we assert it is a genre onto its own instead of simply accepting traditional ascription (like Athenagora, Aristedes, 1 CLement, Didache, etc.)?
“Finally, given that the orthodox liturgy, the testimony of saints, alleged promises of indefectibility of the church and so on all prevent Dionysius from having the prefix “pseudo-” would you admit that its inauthenticity (if proved by some kind of debate between scholars) would be a problem for Eastern Orthodox claims?”
I see, this is a polemical question for you, not that of evidence. No wonder you oppose the weight of evidence. The Dionysian corpus is manifestly a 2nd century document–whether from the early second century or mid second century is something I think future scholarship will have to debate. But due to the evidence, I think that we have no basis for rejecting traditional ascription other than “I feel like it,” which is not really compelling.
If the Dionysian corpus were to be inauthentic, it would really not change anything as it would be a 2nd century witness to the Dormition, to the energy-essence distinction, to Orthodox Theodicy–it would merely show that the ideas were all there very early on. But this demands the question: who would be smart enough this early on to pull off this stunt and *not* want to take the credit for it? If the person falsely used the name Dionysius, it would seem to be out of humility. But being that St DIonysius according to the Scripture was THE Areopogite it seems we have a prime candidate for an early Christian with significant philosophical training to pull it off.
There will be more on this topic. This is the appetizer.
All the best
Craig
It doesn’t matter why the neoPlatonic inFidel ProClus and the neoPlatonic apostate PseudoDionySius the PseudoAeroPagite constantly appealed to each other. It only matters neither of them were Christians.
Hi Craig,
How do you respond to the charge that the Dionysian Corpus is not mentioned in the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius or Jerome’s On Illustrious Men?
The book addresses this, but in short we have other writers who works we accept as authentic who are not mentioned, I forget which (Athenagoras, Aristedes, the Epistle to Diognetus, etcetera). So, this poses no real historical issue. The bigger question, I feel, is why St Jerome never mentions it when he appears privy to the corpus’ existence. I suspect he was not convinced of authenticity for whatever reasons, probably due to lack of wide circulation. He otherwise presumes upon the conclusions in Celestial Hierarhcy so his issues are not with what the corpus taught. But taken into account that more ancient works such as the Clementine Homilies, Apostolic Constitutions, and even the Ignatian Epistles were being expanded with forgeries in his own day. He may have felt that something similar occurred here, though I feel we have no real reason to expect this due to the consistent linguistic nature of the corpus and the sheer difficulty of anyone maintaining the author’s voice in expanding it. But in short, Jerome may have found it too suspect and didn’t think that hard over the textual critical question, as honestly that was not his strong suit (look at his creation of the Vulgate, he sort of just trusted the Jews had it more right with the proto-Masoretic text).
God bless
Craig
None of that matters. AthenaGoras, EuSebius of Cæsarea, and Hieronymus being Hellenizers were never even Christians which why they were never even AntiSaints before the 10th century. Both the Hunnish Greco-Russian unorthodox AntiChurch (founded in ConStantinoPolis in 877) and the Frankish Latin uncatholic AntiChurch (founded in Rome in 896) are the pagan Roman-Byzantine “EmPire” revived. Rome is Mystery Babylon. Istanbul, Alexandria, AntiOch, JeruSalem, and all protestant 501(c)3s are all her harlot daughters no matter what that claim to teach from wherever they claim to teach it.
Hey Miguel, you sound like a nut. What you’re written is a garbled mess. I don’t even know why you mentioned the Huns! You need to do better with your punctuation too.
You clearly aren’t contributing to the discussion about the topic of the Dionysian Corpus.
Hey, Stefano, I missed the part where I was interested in what language you grew up speaking, your initial “evaluation” which is still worth 1,000,000x less than a fart in a blizzard, your interests, nor the fact you obviously didn’t know certain words which certain etymologies are compound word because that part never happened because I only care about the fact we’re both speaking English right now in this regard, the fact you made an unfounded claim to be able to make sense as a desperate attempt to hide your Biblical and otherwise historical illiteracy, and the fact post-422 JeruSalem, post-428 AntiOch, post-877 ConStantinoPolis, post-896 Rome, and Moscow all adhere to very antiBiblical practices such as those which I previously mentioned which you know you can’t account for which is why God Placed you, your Frankish Latin uncatholic bastard half-brothers and half-sisters, your Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox bastard half-brothers and half-sisters, and your (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox bastard half-brothers and half-sisters under the Wisdom 13:1–18; Osee 4:6; Amos 8:11–12; Romans 1:18–32; 2 Corinthians 4:3–4; 11:4,13–15; 2 Thessalonians 2:3–12; 1 TimoTheus 3:2–5; 4:1–4; 2 TimoTheus 3:2–5; 4:1–3; 2 Peter 3:15–16 curse for your own badwill and your rejection of God’s Wisdom for man’s pseudowisdom by which Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Virgil gave your “scholastic” forefathers and y’all such idiot savant brains y’all make the WestBoro Baptists look like the Apostles themselves. What part of “you shall not make to yourselves an idolatrous image” [ExOdus 20:4–6; Leviticus 26:1; DeuteroNomy 5:8–10; Jeremias 10:2–3] didn’t you get? when you installed jew-Masonic-Satanic, Egyptian-Greco-Latin, and secular images in your meetinghouse you call “churches”. What part of “invoke not their “gods” nor utter their names” [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:17] didn’t you get? when you started to call days and months by the pagans’ invalid “names” for them with capital letters and no quotation marks thus “validate” them. What part of “cut not the tree from the forest and decorate it in your house” [Jeremias 10:2–3] didn’t you get? when you put that tree and decorated it in your house last month. What part of “babble not like the pagans” [3 Kings 18:27; Matthew 6:6–8] didn’t you get? when you took up that rosary or that chotki babbled-on the Lords’s Prayer [Matthew 6:9–13; Lucas 11:2–4], the Angelic Salutation [Lucas 1:28,42] with stuff added to it, and or the Penitent’s Prayer [Lucas 18:13]. What part of when God HimSelf Said “you shall not get out until you pay the last farthing” [Matthew 5:26; 12:32] or when Apostle Saint Paul spoke of “trials by fire” didn’t you get? when you denied Purgatory? What part of “I Will give to you (the Popes of Rome, Alexandria, AntiOch, and JeruSalem in that HierArchal Order) the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven” [Matthew 16:17–19], “what (i.e. Dogmas) you (i.e. Bishops) bind on Earth will be Bound in Heaven and what (i.e. non-Dogmatic Old TestaMent Disciplines) you (i.e. Bishops) loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven” [Matthew 16:17–19; 18:15–18], “He (i.e. the Holy Ghost) Shall Lead you (i.e. Bishops) to all Truth” [John 14:16–17; 15:26; 16:12–14], and “from JeruSalem to Rome” [Acts 11:23] and Apostle Saint Paul said “the Church is the Pillar and FirmaMent of Truth” [1 TimoTheus 3:15] and “Christ Jesus Is the Same yesterday, today, and forever” [Hebrews 13:8] didn’t you get? when you denied the Ordinary Authoritative Indefectible Infallible Magisterium of all Bishops and the ExtraOrdinary Authoritative Indefectible Infallible Magisterium of the Popes of Rome, Alexandria, AntiOch, and JeruSalem in that HierArchal Order. What part of “be not deceived by “philosophy”” [Isaias 29:13; Matthew 15:5–9; Marcus 7:6–15; Colossians 2:8–15], “avoid what’s falsely called “science”” [1 TimoTheus 6:20], and “heed not jewish myths” [Titus 1:13–14; Apocalypse 2:9; 3:9] didn’t you get? when you venerated such AntiSaints as Hieronymus who idolized Cicero and maybe Thomas Aquinas who idolized Aristotle both of whom loved Egyptian-Greco-Latin mythology, believed we live on a spinning ball just because someone told you so and showed you cgi and greenscreen, and believed the jews were ever God’s Chosen People just because someone read you a vernacular comic book with the words “Holy” “Bible” on the front cover and accepted the “holocaust” hoax. What part of “call no man “Father”” [Matthew 23:5–6,9] didn’t you get? when you started to address mere men as “Father”, “Your Honor”, “Your HighNess”, “Your Majesty”, “Your ExCellency”, “Your Eminence”, and “Your HoliNess”. What part of ArchApostle Saint Peter referring to Rome as “Babylon” [1 Peter 5:13] and the Angel referring to the Latin uncatholic AntiChurch riding the pagan Roman “EmPire” as “Mystery Babylon” riding the beast of the sea and all the other sects who pretend to be Christians as “her harlot daughters” [Apocalypse 17:4–6] didn’t you get? when JeruSalem apostatized in 422, AntiOch apostatized in 428, Alexandria apostatized in 444, ConStantinoPolis apostatized in 484, again in 863, and forever in 877, and Rome apostatized in 896 then apostate AntiBishops started to wear magenta purple and apostate AntiPopes started to wear scarlet red. What part of when Apostle Saint Paul referred to all mortal sins not just schism, heresy, and apostasy when he said “if you do these things, you shall not inherit the Kingdom of God” [Josue 22:22; 2 ParaLipoMenon 33:(19)34; Isaias 30:1; Jeremias 2:19; 1 Maccabees 2:15; Matthew 9:16; Marcus 2:21; John 7:43; 9:16; 10:19; Acts 5:17; 15:5; 21:21; 24:5,14; 26:5; 28:22; 1 Corinthians 1:10; 5:1–13; 6:9–11; 11:18–19; 12:25; Galatians 5:16–24; Ephesians 5:3–7; Colossians 3:5–7; 2 Thessalonians 2:3–12; 1 TimoTheus 8:11; Titus 3:10–11; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 5:16–17; Apocalypse 9:20-21; 18:22–24; 21:8; 22:15] and EvAngelIst Apostle Saint John said “there is a sin not unto death” [1 John 5:16] and “there is a sin unto death” [1 John 5:17] didn’t you get? when you denied the difference between mortal sin and venial sin. What part of those very simple ComMandMents and Dogmas didn’t you Latins, Greeks, Russians, and Coptics get?
Your historically illiterate opinion is worth 1,000,000 less than a fart in a blizzard. Your pseudotheology is influenced by the Huns. Your bastard Western half-brothers’ pseudotheology is influenced by the Franks. Both are influenced by neoPlatonism and either epicureanism or stoicism. You’re also not the spelling or punctuation police. You’ll do well to act accordingly in my presence. You probably don’t even know the etymology of words let alone the fact English “borrows” heavily from French, German, Greek, and Latin to hide its (true) origins as Satan’s language backwards which is why backmasking works only in English. You’ll also do well to work on this little thing called not breaking the 9th ComMandMent, looking at the substance of what people say, and not trying to sound historically literate when you adhere to a 501(c)3 which extracts misteachings from such well-known forgeries as the PseudoApostolic PseudoCanons, the PseudoApostolic PseudoConStitutions, the PseudoDionySian Corpus, et cetera and such pagan practices as jewish myths [Titus 1:13–14; Apocalypse 2:9; 3:9], Egyptian-Greco-Latin traditions [Isaias 29:13; Matthew 15:5–9; Marcus 7:6–15; Colossians 2:8–15], calling days and months by the pagans’ invalid “names” for them with capital letters and no quotation marks [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:17], referring to superstitions with capital letters as “religions” and their festivities with capital letters as “holidays” which is an insult to ReLigion, referring to superstitious books as “holy” and/or “religious” and the “masoretic” texts, the vulgate, the “received” texts, and/or their vernacularizations as “bibles” and/or “discarding” the Prayer of King Manasses of Juda [2 ParaLipoMenon 33:19–33] which is an insult to (the Dead Sea Sacred Scrolls, the Aramaic Peshitta, the Greek SeptuaGint, and the AntiQue Latin which alone are) the Sacred Bible, referring to Hellenizers as “saints” which is an insult to the Saints you claim to venerate, helping Rome, Istanbul, Alexandria, AntiOch, and JeruSalem impersonate and each referring to 501(c)3s and other sects and their meetinghouses as “churches” which is an insult to the Church, their members as “orthodox”/”catholic”/ “christians”, their leaders as “deacons”, “pastors”, “bishops”, “archbishops”, “metropolitans”, “primates”, “legates”, “cardinals”, and/or “popes”, and their conventicles “synods” and/or “councils”, putting decked out trees in your homes [Jeremias 10:2–3], such amulets as rosaries, chotkis, et cetera under the specious of “sacramentals”, vainly repetitiously babbling [3 Kings 18:27; Matthew 6:6–8], calling men by the title “Father” [Matthew 23:5–6,9], et cetera, probably misbelieve the jews were ever God’s People, “outer space” is real, the new year starts in the dead of midwinter, daylight nonsavings time makes a day longer like your could cut off the edge of a blanket, sow it to the other side and have a longer blanket, an iceberg sunk Titanic and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the “holocaust”, happened, and the “moonlandings” were real, and probably never even read a history book written before 1910. JeruSalem, AntiOch, Alexandria, ConStantinoPolis, and Rome lost Apostolic Succession in 422, 428, 444, 877, and 896. Moscow consequently never had Apostolic Succession. The pagan Roman-Byzantine-Russian “EmPire” was revived (as the Hunnish Greco-Russian unorthodox AntiChurch founded under the pseudonym “Greco-Russian OrthoDox Church” by “Photios” from 863 to 867 then in 877 and Simeon of Klev in 1481 and the Frankish Latin uncatholic AntiChurch founded by AntiPope “Stephen VI(I)” in 896) upon such forgeries as the PseudoApostolic PseudoCanons, the PseudoApostolic PseudoConStitutions, the PseudoDionySian Corpus, et cetera. Rome is the sea beast ridden by the whore of Mystery Babylon [Daniel 7:7–8; 2 Thessalonians 2:3–7; 1 Peter 5:13, Apocalypse 13:11–18; 17:5–6,9–10,12–14,16; 18:2; 19:11–21]. Moscow, London, GuttenBerg, Istanbul, Alexandria, AntiOch, JeruSalem, and all protestant 501(c)3s are all her harlot daughters [Daniel 7:7–8; 2 Thessalonians 2:3–7; 1 Peter 5:13, Apocalypse 13:11–18; 17:5–6,9–10,12–14,16; 18:2; 19:11–21] no matter what that claim to teach from wherever they claim to teach it.
Hey Miguel,
I didn’t grow up speaking English but I can still write a sentence that makes sense. What you’re written has confirmed my initial evaluation but you’re piqued my interest. Is there some kind of denomination you claim to speak for or are your fantasies your own?
Hey Miguel,
I don’t know if you’ve ever bothered to read anything on Craig’s website but you should.
I get it – everyone’s an Apostate! Luckily you and your Bible (with your random proof texting) has things figured out.
Hey Stephanie, I don’t know if you ever bother to read the Bible for what it really says but you should try it sometime. I get it you can’t answer 1 simple question based on the Bible. No wonder protestantism rightly so succeeded.
Hi Craig,
You are right that Jerome doesn’t mention Athenagoras in his catalogue of Illustrious Writers. He does mention Aristides however.
I’m still curious why Eusebius doesn’t mention Dionysius in his Church History. I’m curious what Pavoni and Nikitopoulos say.
My other question is that Photius reviews a book by Theodore the Presbyter (other wise unknown) in his Bibliotheka that argues that the Dionysian Corpus is a forgery. Photius is non committal in his review. Photius doesn’t go out of his way to refute Theodore. Any response to this evidence?
I haven’t read this in the Greek. Evangelos sees this as a proof in the affirmative. In the English I agree, it seems non-commital. My response is that two fold. I think early writers, if they were not educated in Alexandria, were probably unaware of the corpus. The only copy seems to have been there at that point and it was too dense to attract the interest of very many other than the really brilliant there.
As for Photius, he probably found the arguments interesting and out of respect to the saint, did not endorse them. So, even if he was convinced of inauthenticity (something that requires reading minds), the fact he did not actually endorse the thesis makes his tentatively in favor of authenticity. So, while not a ringing endorsement, it maintains the “streak” that the Church’s best minds have either not commented on the question or accepted authenticity. These men, like Saint Maximus, were their era’s most brilliant thinkers. So, this should mean something.
Oops, I take it back. Theodore argues for the genuineness of the Corpus but Photius is non-commital.
https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/photius_03bibliotheca.htm#1
Hi Stefano,
In another passage of his Bibliotheca (no
231), Photius calls Dionysius “rich in words but even richer in wisdom,” something he only would have said if he accepted the Corpus as authentic. I also find it telling that of all the books Photius could have started his collection with, he chose Theodore’s Defense of Dionysius. My hypothesis is that the Iconoclasts were attacking the authenticity of the Corpus at the time, and Photius (a staunch Iconophile) wanted to say something on the subject in the works’ defence.
As for Jerome and Eusebius, they also don’t mention Theognostus of Alexandria. So the absence of witnesses is not in itself proof of spuriousness. I think if you tally up all the linguistic parallels in Aristides, Athenagoras, Pantaenus, Clement, Origen, and Plotinus, it shows definitively that Dionysius is authentic. It fits too many obscure details of the first and second century for . Stay tuned, we will be coming out with an academic paper on this in the near future which will flesh things out in great detail.
The authors defending 1st century ‘Dionysian’ authorship are attempting to explain away all of the careful scholarly research which has indubitably established a late 5th – early 6th century date for the corpus. I read the Dionysian corpus 18 years prior to reading Proclus’ On the Theology of Plato, and it is patently obvious that ‘Dionysius’ is cribbing Proclus, while Proclus is giving extensive commentary on Plato’s writings. Proclus’ divine henads are an attempt to modify Plotinus’ ontological schematic by positing mediating deities between the One and the Nous so that the One remains unparticipated by Intellect/Being. ‘Dionysius’ does not claim to be teaching his own doctrine when he sets forth his doctrine relating to the divine processions, which are the functional equivalent of Proclus’ henads or Intelligible superessential gods. Moreover, ‘Dionysius’ claims to have been present with the apostles when they witnessed a vision of the Dormition of Mary, but scholars have determined that no Dormition literature appears before the 5th century A.D. It is childish to deny truth in order to hold onto fictions.
I appreciate your feedback. Dr. SHoemaker dates several dormition homilies before the 5th century. At least one as early as the 2nd. My own published research dates another to the 2nd century.
As for Proclus, he flat out says he is quoting another authority at one point and that authority matches St Dioysius.
There is pending, published research. This blog post is the tip of the ice berg.
“Dionysius does not claim to be teaching his own doctrine when he sets forth his doctrine relating to the divine processions, which are the functional equivalent of Proclus’ henads or Intelligible superessential gods.”
Where are you getting this? Proclus’ henadology is patently opposed to the idea of “processions.” Here is Edward Butler on Proclus: “But neither, Proclus explains, can the henads come about by proödos, that is, ‘by a change in essence, as in the case of the production of the procession of images from paradigms’ for this mode of causation does not even exist among intelligibles, much less supra-essentials.” “The Gods and Being in Proclus,” Dionysius 26 (2008), p. 94
This is exactly what Dionysius teaches. He says that the divine names express the “beneficent processions [ἀγαθουργοὺς προόδους]” (DN 1.4) and calls that the divine names “images” (εἰκόνας or ἀγάλματα). Dionysius’ doctrine of the divine names fits within Hellenistic Judaism (Philo speaks in almost identical terms). If you want to call Dionysius Proclean, you might as well say the same about Justin Martyr, Clement, the Cappadocian Fathers, and Saint Paul.
I didn’t say that the Proclean henads are processions, I said the ‘Dionysian’ processions are equivalent to the Proclean henads, i.e. they mediate between God and Being/beings. Even though the henads are not proodoi in the Proclean system, which has to do with the production of beings which differ in essence from their causes, he still holds that the henads proceed from the One as their Cause: I will quote Proclus himself in regard to this matter:
“It is necessary therefore, from the before mentioned axioms, since there is one unity the principle of the whole of things, and from which every hyparxis derives its subsistence, that this unity should produce from itself, prior to all other things, a multitude characterized by unity, and a number
most allied to its cause. For if every other cause constitutes a progeny similar to itself prior to that which is dissimilar, much more must the One unfold into light after this manner things posterior to itself, since it is beyond similitude, and the One itself must produce according to union things which primarily PROCEED from it. For how can the one give subsistence to its progeny except unically? For nature generates things secondary to itself physically, soul psychically, and intellect intellectually. The one therefore is the cause of the whole of things according to union, and the progression from the one is uniform. But if that which primarily produces all things is the one, and the progression from it is unical, it is certainly necessary that the multitude thence produced should be self perfect unities, most allied to their producing cause.” (On the Theology of Plato, 3.1, Thomas Taylor, trans.)
Dr. David Bradshaw, an unapologetic defender of Christian Neoplatonism, states that “they [henads] proceed from the monad” (Aristotle east and West, p 144).
FURTHERMORE: The Proclean henads are participated by Being/beings while the One is imparticipable, just as the divine processions according to ‘Dionysius’ are the participle principles (for beings) of the imparticiple God. (DN 2.5 + 11.6)
But Dionysius also aligns the divine names with the Primary Beings of Proclus, who [‘Dionysius’] says that God is the Hypostates (i.e. Creator) of the Primary Beings (i.e. the divine processions), angels, and men and other worldly beings: ”Hence the Good God is said to be the Substantiator (ὁ ἀγαθὸς ὑποστάτης λέγεται), first, of the Very Primaries: then, of those creatures which participate completely therein; then, of those which participate partially therein.” (DN 11.6)
He also states that his religious preceptors taught him that God is the Hypostates (creator) of Goodness and Deity itself (DN 11.6). This idea he cribbed from Proclus’ On the Theology of Plato 2.7 + 3.3. Yet another indication that ‘Dionysius’ is cribbing doctrines from Proclus and ‘Christianizing’ them.
So ‘Dionysius’ teaches that the divine processions are providential energies (DN 9.9) and powers (DN 11.6) and also Primary Beings (ton Protos onta), that is, ONTIC ENERGIES, which I submit are logically indemonstrable and therefore logically impossible objects, because ‘Dionysius’ wants to have his cake and eat it too, in trying to meld Proclean emanationism and participation into the Christian religion, by calling the processions powers and energies, to get rid of the pagan deities, on the one hand, but keeping the nomenclature of created onta (Primary Beings), on the other hand, to preserve God’s imparticibility and the processions’ particibility, because if they are not Being/Beings, beings can’t participate in them, for being doesn’t participate in energy, being participates in Being.
In conclusion, the Pseudo Dionysian metaphysics fails when analyzed closely, which implicates Palamism in the same errors when it speaks of the divine energies so called as “essential participle principles” of God (150 Chapters, 88), who [Palamas] also wants to have it both ways, saying on one hand ‘essence differs from energy’, while on the other hand ‘energy is an essential participle principle’, assuming ‘Dionysius’ was saying something profound when he spoke in this manner, when he actually was speaking out of both ends of his mouth, and fabricating logically indemonstrable objects/principles, in fashioning his Christian Neoplatonist synthesis.
Finally, St. Paul speaks of the energizing of divine power (Eph 3:7) or divine strength (Eph 1:19). Therefore power and strength are proper to God’s essence and nature, and not his energy, and Basil was mistaken in dividing God’s power from His essence in Letter 234. John of Damascus says that energy is the activity of nature and essence, that nature is the capacity for energy, and that energy is the effect or result of power (On the Orthodox Faith, 2.23 + 3.15). So when St. Paul speaks of the energizing of God’s power and strength, God’s power and strength are God’s capacity for energy, and thus proper to the divine nature and essence, and ‘Dionysius’ and Palamas are wrong in reducing all divine names to God’s providential operations/energies, for when St. Paul refers to God’s power and strength, he is referring to the divine nature and not to God’s providential operations, for it is the power and strength of God which energizes, therefore God’s power and strength cannot be energies. The Son is the brightness of eternal light (Wis 7:26) and the brightness of the Father’s glory – thus the glory is synonymous with the divine nature and not with the divine energy, and thus we read in the Creed, “Light out of Light consubstantial (homoousian) with the Father”. Basil agrees that the Nicene Council taught that “Light out of Light” signifies unity of essence between Father and Son, according to the unity of the uncreated Light, and does not identify God’s Light therein with His energy (cf. Letter 52 to the Canonicae). The ‘Dionysian’ – Palamite theology, then, is theologically incompatible with and an abrogation of the teaching of Sacred Scripture and of the Nicene Creed, BECAUSE it is an adapted form of Neoplatonism, and not the authentic teaching of Sacred Scripture.
And it’s not just me saying this. The radical difference of the Dionysian conception has been noticed in modern peer-reviewed scholarhsip. One recent example:
“That the primary beings are themselves ‘imparticipably participated’ represents another revealing oddity. According to the Procline scheme, there is no reason for the middle terms to be described in this way—they are simply participated, while only the first term in the triad is said to be unparticipated. According to Dionysius, however, not only is the transcendent Godhead said to be imparticipable, but even the participated processions are in some sense imparticipable.”
Daniel Heide, The World as Sacrament: The Eucharistic Ontology of Maximos Confessor, PhD Dissertation (Montreal: McGill University, 2022), p. 97.
If you are going to cite Daniel Heide, you should include what he says on page 96: ”Further evidence of Dionysius’ transformation of Neoplatonic mediation may be found in his reworking of Proclus’ threefold schematic of unparticipated/participated/participating.” So Daniel Heide is quite explicit in stating that ‘Dionysius’ borrowed from Proclus, and modified his teachings for his own purposes. Heide does not support your argument, but rather refutes it.
The whole point of ‘Dionysius’ doing away with mediating terms is to get rid of the pagan deities in the ontology of Proclus and to replace their ontological function with the divine energies. Mr Heide reads from his work on a Youtube video titled “Daniel Heide: the Transformation of Proclus’ Hypostases in Pseudo-Dionysius”, which is simply an excerpt from his doctoral dissertation titled “The World as Sacrament: The Eucharistic Ontology of Maximos Confessor“, which you cited. It’s an interesting video, and it just so happened that after conducting my own research, I posted a response on that site just two days ago which explains that the Pseudo Dionysius’ adaptation of Proclus is logically invalid, for trying to square the circle of Neoplatonic emanationism with Christian monotheism, he posits the existence of a logically indemonstrable and therefore logically impossible object, to wit, an ONTIC ENERGY, something that is both onta/ being/essence and energy.
If we look at Proclus’ On the Theology of Plato 3.1-3.3, he teaches that the Supreme God is the Substantiator of all deity, and of all things whatsoever. That means that God is Supreme Creator of all outside of the One. Then we have the idea of the existence at the super essential level of reality of the principle of the Limited holding all together, and of the Unlimited exercising power to manifest the realm of Being. Then at each primary level of existence (One – Being – Soul – Nature) there is the imparticiple monad, the participle being/existence as image of the imparticiple, and these latter exercise power to manifest the level of existence below them, which participate in what is higher than them through the participle beings/existences.
So the idea is that the mediating term is a Being which energizes the existence of a lower order of existence, and this being the case, Gregory Palamas’ essential energies and essential participable principles (150 Chapters, 98-102) are likewise logically indemonstrable and logically impossible objects, being derived from the teachings of the Pseudo Dionysius. In DN 2.5 ‘Dionysius’ means that God as superessential cause is ‘imparticiply participated’ through His gifts/energies. He states this again even more clearly in DN 11.6. In DN 11.6 ‘Dionysius’ also refers to God as the Hypostates (creator) of both the divine processions, men and angels and all other created things. This is taken from Proclus’ On the Theology of Plato 2.7 and 3.3, where the One is said to be the Hypostates of Goodness, Deity and all things. In On the Theology of Plato 3.1-3.3, Proclus teaches that the levels of superessential, essential/intelligible and psychic/sensible each have an imparticiple principle, and a participle principle, which produces/energizes the level of existence below it.
‘Dionysius’ gets rid of the participle divine being, and transfers its energizing capacity to the Supreme God Himself, while retaining the notion of participle onta, not in respect to God Himself, but transfers it instead to the divine energy, thus positing the existence of an ONTIC ENERGY, which as I have said before, represents a logically indemonstrable and therefore logically impossible object.
The more thoroughly one analyzes this matter, the more apparent it becomes that ‘Dionysius’ adapted Proclus, but ultimately could not make it work, and that Palamas in substantially teaching the same thing as ‘Dionysius’ taught the same erroneous things that ‘Dionysius’, and imposed a modified and logically indemonstrable form of Christian Neoplatonism as the dogmatic teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and abrogated the teaching of Sacred Scripture and the Council of Nicea, as I explained in my previous post.
I will try to keep this as brief as possible.
#1 My point about “procession” is that Proclus does not liken the origination of henads to the procession of images from paradigms, “for all images will naturally deviate in their essence from their paradigms” (In Parmenidem 746). Yet Dionysius explicitly affirms that the divine energies are “images”:
“We know God, not from His own nature (for that is unknown, and surpasses all reason and mind), but, from the ordering of all existing things, as projected from Himself, and containing certain images (εἰκόνας) and similitudes (ὁμοιώματα) of His Divine exemplars (παραδειγμάτων).” (DN 7.3) In DN 9.1 he calls the divine names “divinely-names statues” (θεονυμικὰ ἀγάλματα).
Another word Dionysius uses for the divine names is “powers”:
“If we have named the superessential Hiddenness, God, or Life, or Essence, or Light, or Word, we have no other thought than that the powers (δυνάμεις) brought to us from It are deifying, or essentiating, or life-bearing, or wisdom-imparting.” DN 2.7
All of this is in line with Hellenistic Judaism and Christianity, not Platonism. See Philo:
“For the great Cause of all things does not exist in time, nor at all in place, but He is superior to both time and place; for, having made all created things in subjection to Himself, He is surrounded by nothing, but He is superior to everything. And being superior to, and being also external to the world that He has made, He nevertheless fills the whole world with Himself; for, having by His own power extended it to its utmost limits, He has connected every portion with another portion according to the principles of harmony….And it is said that He, at the same moment, is close to us and at a great distance, touching us with His creative or his punishing powers.” (On the Posterity of Cain, 14, 20)
In Questions on Exodus II.62, Philo calls the Cherubim overshadowing the Ark of the Covenant “figures” (μιμήματα) and “symbols” (σύμβολα) of the divine powers.
You also have Saint Paul: God dwells in “unapproachable light” (1 Tim 6:16) but His “power (δύναμις)” is made known by the things He has created (Romans 1:20).
Clement of Alexandria says: ”The First Cause is not then in space, but above both space, and time, and name, and conception. Wherefore also Moses says, Show Yourself to me (Exodus 33:18) — intimating most clearly that God is not capable of being taught by man, or expressed in speech, but to be known only by His own power (δυνάμει).” (Stromata 5.11)
Saint Gregory of Nyssa: “For power (δύναμις) and purity and remaining one and the same, and being unmixed with the contrary, and all such things imprint the appearance of a divine and elevated notion upon the soul. From the preceding it is demonstrated that the Lord speaks true when he promised that those who are pure of heart shall see God, and Paul does not lie when he declared in his own words that no one has ever beheld God, nor is able to see him. For He who is invisible by nature becomes visible by His energies (ἐνεργείαις), being seen by those things that are around Him.” (On the Beatitudes, VI, PG 44, 1269A)
Show me where Proclus calls the henads “images,” “statues,” and “powers” and I will concede your point.
#2 Let us examine the passage from DN 11.6 that you made a big deal about. The critical edition by Suchla has:
Διὸ καὶ πρῶτον αὐτῶν ὁ ἀγαθὸς ύποστάτης λέγεται εἶναι, εἶτα τῶν ὅλων αὐτῶν, εἶτα τῶν μερικῶν αὐτῶν, εἶτα τῶν ὅλως αὐτῶν μετεχόντων, εἶτα τῶν μερικῶς αὐτῶν μετεχόντων.
Some manuscript variants read “πρώτων αὐτῶν” instead of “πρῶτον αὐτῶν.” πρῶτον αὐτῶν may actually be more gramamtical, but I want to be fair to you (and Dionysius does use the expression πρώτως ὄντα further up, as you say) so let’s grant that this is the correct reading. A literal translation of the above would be as follows:
“Therefore the Good One is called the Substantiator of the first of them, then of all of them, then of a part of them, then of those who participate in them fully, then of those who participate in them partially.”
What is the referrent of “them” (αὐτῶν)? It is what Dionysius speaks of in the precedeing sentence, τὰς προνοητικὰς δυνάμεις, the providential powers. These powers He defines in the same section as essentiating, vivifying, and deifying, harkening back to DN 2.7.
What about the expressions ὅλων αὐτῶν and μερικῶν αὐτῶν? These are other expressions he uses elsewhere to talk of God’s providences, e.g.:
“Theologians do not honour alone the Names of God which are given from universal or particular providences (ἀπὸ τῶν παντελῶν ἢ τῶν μερικῶν προνοιῶν), or objects of His forethought.” DN 1.8
“I do not think of the Good as one thing, Being as another, Life and Wisdom as yet other, and I do not claim that there are numerous causes and different Godheads, all differently ranked, superior and inferior, and all producing different effects. No. But I hold that there is one God for all these good processions and that He is the possessor of the divine names
of which I speak and that the first name tells of the universal Providence of the one God (τῆς παντελοῦς προνοίας), while the other names reveal general or specific providences (τῶν ὁλικωτέρων καὶ μερικωτέρων).” DN 5.2
So what Dionysius is saying in DN 11.6 is this: “God is the ultimate source of all His energies and providences, both generally and paricularly, and of all things which participate in them, either completely (like man, who has existence, life, and deification), or partially (like plants, animals, or minerals).”
I don’t see how this has anything to do with Proclus. In fact, in the very same section of DN 11.6, Dionysius attacks those who believe that “there is some other life-causing deity (ζωογόνον ἄλλην θεότητα) apart from the superdivine divinity of all…or causative and demiurgic substances or hypostases (ἀρχικὰς τῶν ὄντων καὶ δημιουργικὰς οὐσίας καὶ ὑποστάσεις). The “henads” are precisely “causative hypostates.” The second noetic triad specifically produces “life” (ζωή).
What about the πρώτως ὄντα? John of Scythopolis believed that Dionysius was referring to the angels. But let us suppose he is talking about “ontic energies” as you call them. This would correspond to what Saint Gregory of Nyssa calls “the things that are around God” (τὰ περὶ αὐτόν). Philo calls this “the glory that is around Thee” (τὴν περὶ σὲ δόξαν) and “the powers which attend Thee as thy guards” (τὰς περὶ σὲ
δορυφορούσας δυνάμεις). On the Special Laws 1.45
It’s your right to disagree with this concept, but what you can’t say is that it’s Proclean.
#3 I am aware of what Daniel Heide says. I was simply citing him to show that modern scholarship has noticed important differences between Dionysius and Proclus.
Oh, there was a point I missed after all in my last post. The Nicene fathers defeated the Arian sectaries by demonstrating that the Divine Names of Sacred Scripture properly applied to the Divine Essence, for the predication of the same names (Light, Life, Truth, etc., above all Light) in regard to both Father and Son demonstrated their consubstantiality (homoousian). Thus the article ‘only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light co-essential (homoousian) with the Father’ in the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. Basil and Gregory combatted Eunomius’ assertion that ‘Unbegotten’ names the essence of God by arguing that the Divine Names are products of human conception relating to God’s providential activities/energizings in creation. Later on ‘Dionysius’ modifies this idea and states that the Divine Names are given to us in the sacred oracles, but that they represent providential manifestations of divine energy/energizing, and he imports and adapts Neoplatonic (especially Proclean) ontology to plot out the Divine Processions, thus giving shape to what he deemed to be a theological science. Gregory Palamas builds upon and modifies ‘Dionysius’ by (for the most part) dropping the ontic element of the divine processions as outlined by the Pseudo Dionysius and almost entirely focuses upon the notion of energetic procession and participation. The Eastern Church from the time of the Pseudo Dionysius had moved far from the Nicene theology which was much more Scripturally based and replaced it with a Neoplatonic ontological schematic onto which was plotted out the data of the Gospel. It would have been impossible to defeat the Arian heresy if the Divine Names signified only the divine energies, as in the teaching of the Cappadocians and ‘Dionysius’ and Palamas – Basil and Gregory of Nyssa frequently and inconsistently adopting the Athanasian methodology of identifying the Divine Names with the Divine Essence when needed to defeat the Arians – for then the Arian argument that the Father and Son possessed energy in different degree would not have been able to have been refuted, for the Son as brightness of glory in the sense of energetic manifestation would have been compatible with the Eunomian idea that the Son as brightness of the Father’s glory is the seal of the Father’s energy. Thus Gregory of Nyssa energetically combatted this notion by stating that energy is neither essence, image nor hypostasis (cf. Against eunomius 2.12). The fact that he wants to have it both ways is not my problem, but Gregory’s. I have noticed a tendency in the Greek fathers to be more creative than the Latins, but also to be less consistent in argumentation than their Latin counterparts. The Latin tradition is consistent with the Nicene Creed in respect to the ontological status of the Divine Light as synonymous with the Divine Essence, whereas the Greek tradition transforms radically, to the point that the Synodikon of Orthodoxy can declare as a dogma that the supremely divine light is not the essence, but rather the energy of God, subject to anathema, thereby implicitly anathematizing the fathers of the Nicene Council and the Nicene Creedal definition which taught that the Son is only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light homoousian with the Father. This represents a more severe abrogation of the Nicene Creed than does the Filioque itself, and is the fruitage of the dogmatizing of the Neoplatonic speculation under the influence of the Pseudo Dionysian deception that ‘Areopagite’ was transmitting the hidden esoteric wisdom teaching of the apostles, when the truth of the matter was that he was fashioning a 6th century Christian Neoplatonist synthesis. The discovery of pseudonymous authorship of the Corpus Dionysiacum has severely undercut its authority, most especially within the Latin Church, but even in educated Byzantine and Oriental Orthodox circles. A re-appraisal of the dogmatic content of the Palamite teachings is in order in light of these developments.
The points you brought forward in your previous post can most certainly be met.
I explained to you that Dionysius adapts the henads to his concept of the divine processions in the sense that they mediate between the Supreme God and Being/beings. You did not address that. You are pointing out how the henads differ from the divine processions within the theology of Proclus. You are not addressing how Dionysius adapts the henads as mediating between the Superessential God and Being/beings as one of the elements which goes into making up his own concept of the divine processions, which is but one of the many adaptations that Dionysius made in borrowing from the theology of Proclus. Dionysius also adapts the divine processions to the Proclean Primary Beings, viz. Being, Life, Intellect. Dionysius is adopting all sorts of ideas from Plotinus and Proclus and is adapting them to his own theological hermeneutic. You keep harping on the henads and showing how they don’t align with the Primary Beings. Dionysius incorporates elements of both Proclus’ henads and Primary Beings into his own concept of the divine processions, so you are not refuting what I have been saying in any way by showing that henads differ from Primary Beings, for the fusion of these two disparate ontological notions and their reconceptualization as divine energies rather than as divine existences [hyparxes] (henads) or divine beings (Primary Beings) by Dionysius, in an attempt to mold pagan polytheistic metaphysics into Christian monotheist metaphysics, leads him into predicating a logically indemonstrable concept of an ONTIC ENERGY. That is, he can’t fit a square peg (pagan polytheism) into a round hole (Christian monotheism).
With respect to Dionysius’ logically indemonstrable concept of an ONTIC ENERGY in respect to DN 11.6, you yourself provided a quote right at the beginning of your response which illustrates that he is doing precisely this, where you said:
“Yet Dionysius explicitly affirms that the divine energies are “images”:
“We know God, not from His own nature (for that is unknown, and surpasses all reason and mind), but, from the ordering of all existing things, as projected from Himself, and containing certain images (εἰκόνας) and similitudes (ὁμοιώματα) of His Divine exemplars (παραδειγμάτων).” (DN 7.3) In DN 9.1 he calls the divine names “divinely-names statues” (θεονυμικὰ ἀγάλματα).”
As I pointed out to you, Gregory of Nyssa stated explicitly in Against Eunomius 2.12 that an energy has no independent existence, because it is neither essence, image, nor hypostasis. If a divine procession is an image, it would have to be an image of an essence or a hypostasis. How then can an energy be an image? Only if it is an ONTIC ENERGY, which is a logically indemonstrable predication. In the Neoplatonic conception, the processions are actual beings, but as a monotheist, Dionysius has to do away with them, so he arbitrarily and non demonstrably predicates them simultaneously as being and as energy, which is logically absurd.
And that Dionysius derives the concepts of “images” and “statues” from Proclus is shown from Proclus’ Chaldean Philosophy (fr, 5.5-8), where he states: ”The soul consists both of holy reason-principles and of divine symbols. The former have their origin in the intellective forms, the latter in the divine Henads. And we are images of the intellective essences, but statues of the unknown tokens.” Here the image is image of an essence. How can an energy be an image of an essence, as ‘Dionysius’ would have us believe?
With respect to DN 11.6, forget what Dionysius claims in DN 11.6. Analyze what he teaches. That Dionysius understands God as Hypostates (i.e. one who gives substantive existence to – viz. a Creator) of the divine processions, he admits near the end of DN11.6 that he learned that God is Hypostates of Goodness itself and Deity itself – i.e. the divine processions – from his religious preceptors, and I showed that these ideas are taught in Proclus’ On the Theology of Plato 2.7 and 3.3. This is licit for Proclus, because in his theology, Primary Beings are divine beings which possess energy, they are not divine energies per se. Dionysius wants to have his cake and eat it too, and says that Primary Beings are both onta and energeia, which as I have stated repeatedly, is a logically undemonstrable predication. But they have to be onta for beings to participate in them, because beings participate in Being and Deity by existing as beings and as gods – beings participate in Being itself and deities participate in Deity itself, only energies could be said to participate in Energy itself (if there could be said to be such a thing). Dionysius just expects us to accept his predications based upon his claim to be representing a hidden esoteric wisdom teaching of the apostles, without assessing their relative degree of logical cohesiveness, but I have analyzed what he is saying in regard to this matter and in my judgment it is logically incoherent. Again, how can God be a Hypostates of the Primary Beings if they are not hypostases in their own right? He is a Hypostates precisely because He has created individual hypostases. This idea is logically coherent in Proclus and is logically incoherent in ‘Dionysius’, since he ludicrously proposes to us that onta are not hypostases inasmuch as they are energies. A sentence such as this can be lingusitically predicated but it does not describe a logically possible object or a logically possible set of relations, because it is in point of fact logically undemonstrable.
As for Gregory of Nyssa’s teaching about the so called ‘things around God’, he cribbed this idea either from Plato or from Plotinus or from both of them, and modified it for his own purposes, for Plotinus says: ”This is the explanation of Plato’s Triplicity, in the passage where he names as the Primals the Beings gathered about the King of All…” (Enneads V.1.8)
And that Gregory of Nyssa, like ‘Dionysius’ subsequent to him, adopts the notion of an externalization subsisting around God from the Neoplatonists can be demonstrated from the following quote from Plotinus: ”All existences, as long as they retain their character, produce – about themselves, from their essence, in virtue of the power which must be in them – some necessary, outward-facing hypostasis continuously attached to them and representing in image the engendering archetypes: thus fire gives out its heat; snow is cold not merely to itself; fragrant substances are a notable instance; for, as long as they last, something is diffused from them and perceived wherever they are present.” (Enneads, V.1.6)
Like ‘Dionysius’, Gregory transforms Neoplatonic hypostatic emanation into emanation of divine energies. And it is clearly shown that ‘Dionysius’ cribs the idea of the divine processions as images of the Supreme God from the Platonists, and transmutes the divine hypostases into divine energies to rid his system of polytheism, but then illogically identifies the Plotinian hypostatic images of God with divine energies, which are somehow said to be images of the Divine Essence, but this is only plausible in the sense that he speaks of them as onta, or rather, as simultaneously onta and energeia, which is logically absurd.
With regard to Philo of Alexandria, what value is there in citing him as an authority for Christian doctrine, who taught that the Logos was subordinate to the Supreme God, and who was, moreover, one of the sources of Origen’s subordinationist Christology and through his influence the heretical Christology of the Arians? At any rate, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy observes that “Philo makes extensive use of Plato…The presence of the Timaeus in the De opificio mundi is massive, as demonstrated by Runia (2001). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Philo of Alexandria).
Finally, I shall oppose your patristic quotes in regard to Divine Light and Power and the Vision of God with my own:
In regard to the Power of God, St. Athanasius says: ”Paul has written in his Epistle to the Romans…’The visible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead’; and what the Power of God is, he teaches us elsewhere himself, ‘Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God’…For after making mention of the creation, he naturally speaks of the Framer’s Power as seen in it, which Power, I say, is the Word of God, by whom all things have been made.” (Discourse 1.11-12 Against the Arians)’
In regard to God dwelling in Unapproachable Light:
Gregory of Nyssa says: ”Paul says,
1 Timothy 6:16. But there is a great difference between being oneself something and being in something. For he who said, did not, by the word indicate God Himself, but that which surrounds Him, which in our view is equivalent to the Gospel phrase which tells us that the Father is in the Son. For the Son is true Light, and the truth is unapproachable by falsehood; so then the Son is Light unapproachable in which the Father dwells, or in Whom the Father is.” (Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius 12.2)John Chrysostom says:
Is He then Himself one Light, and is there another in which He dwells? Is He then circumscribed by place? Think not of it. By this expression is represented the Incomprehensibleness of the Divine Nature.” (John Chrysostom, Homily 18 On 1 Timothy)And: ”He clothed Himself with flesh, that He might not, by encountering men with the unveiled Godhead, destroy them all; so He sent forth a man for His herald, that those who heard might at the hearing of a kindred voice approach more readily. For (to prove) that He had no need of that (herald’s) testimony, it would have sufficed that He should only have shown Himself who He was in His unveiled Essence, and have confounded them all. But this He did not for the reason I have before mentioned. He would have annihilated all, since none could have endured the encounter of that Unapproachable Light.” (Homily 6 On the Gospel of John 1.7)
And with regard to the Vision of God in the age to come, Gregory Nazianzen says: ”What God is in nature and essence, no man ever yet has discovered or can discover. Whether it will ever be discovered is a question which he who will may examine and decide. In my opinion it will be discovered when that within us which is godlike and divine, I mean our mind and reason, shall have mingled with its Like, and the image shall have ascended to the Archetype, of which it has now the desire. And this I think is the solution of that vexed problem as to
But in our present life all that comes to us is but a little effluence, and as it were a small effulgence from a great Light. (Oration 28.17)That I believe, suffices to answer all that was brought forward in your previous post, other than what was said in respect to Mr. Heide, which is not of any moment at this point. I believe the point has been sufficiently been shown that the Pseudo Dionysius relies extensively upon the Neoplatonists, and that his adaptation on Proclean ontology forces him to posit the existence of an ONTIC ENERGY, which is a logically undemonstrable predication. Furthermore, the Palamite teaching about Light referring to God’s energy and not His essence has nowhere the patristic support he or his partisans would have us believe, much less the of the Gospel or the Nicene Creed.
St. Gregory is specifically attacking Eunomius’ claim that the Son is “the seal of God the Father’s energy.” He correctly reasons that an energy cannot have a “seal,” and consequently, Christ must be the seal of God’s person. He rejects the conflation between “image” and “energy” because he wants to show that the Son is a Person in His own right, not an operation or act of God.
Dionysius is not using “image” in this technical sense. He is using it as a way to approximate how God’s energies reveal something real about God, just like a portrait of Thomas Palmieri would reveal something real about you.
In Hebrews 1:3, St. Paul calls the Son “the express image of the Father’s hypostasis.” If we understand “hypostasis” in a technical sense, as the sum of one’s idiazonta characteristics, then this expression is incorrect. The Son is not a “copy” of the Father’s hypostasis. What Paul meant in this sentence is that the Son is of the same substance of the Father, that He shares everything essential that the Father has. St. Gregory explains this in Ad Petrum.
Dionysius also refers to the energies as “processions”. Again, in a technical sense, only the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from God, but this is not Dionysius’ point. He is using language to approximate a profound theological mystery. It is incorrect and uncharitable to cherry-pick sentences from later Fathers who wrote during specific controversies and then to use these to show “contradictions” with earlier saints. St. Basil himself at one point rejected the term “homoousios.” Does this mean he is inconsistent or duplicitous?
The quote you provided from Proclus, if I am reading it right, does not say that the henads are images of the One (which would be Dionysius’ doctrine, more or less), but that the soul is a kind of “image” of the henads. Completely different.
You keep talking about “ontic energy,” but I’ve yet to see proof that Dionysius ever taught this doctrine. Dionysius calls the divine energies many things—names, images, statues, powers, processions, providences—yet as far as I recall he never calls them ὄντα. Upon closer investigation, the πρώτως ὄντα he refers to in DN 11.6 are clearly the angels. How do we know this? In DN 5.3, when precisely discussing “Being, Wisdom, and Life”, Dionysius calls the angels “above the rest of beings”:
“But if any one assumed the intellectual to be without being, and without life, the statement might hold good. But if the Divine Minds are both above all the rest of beings (ὑπὲρ τὰ λοιπὰ ὄντα), and live above the other living beings, and think and know, above sensible perception and reason, and, beyond all the other existing beings, aspire to, and participate in, the Beautiful and Good, they are more around the Good, participating in It more abundantly, and having received larger and greater gifts from It.”
So when Dionysius in DN 11.6 says that God “is named from things existing, and specially from the first existing, as Cause of all existing things and [apophatically] as being above all, even the first existing of beings,” he is clearly talking about the angels, not some sort of mysterious “ontic energies.”
You write further that when Dionysius speaks of his “religious preceptors” in DN 11.6, he is making a sly allusion to Proclus. I will show you how wrong this is. First of all, you will notice that in DN 11.6, Dionysius does not speak of the Proclean triad of “Being, Life, Intellect” but actually refers to providences which he calls “essentiating, “vivifying,” and “deifying.” Forgive me, but I don’t recall Proclus positing a class of “Deifying” henads!
Secondly, Dionysius is very transparent about who his “teachers” are at the very beginning of his treatise. Just read DN 1.6:
The theologians (θεολόγοι)…celebrate [God] as many-named, as when they again introduce Him as saying, “I am He, Who is” (Exodus 3:14), the “Life” (John 11:25), the “Light” (John 8:12), the “God” (Genesis 28:13), the “Truth” (John 14:6). And when the wise of God (θεόσοφοι) themselves celebrate Him, as Author of all things, under many Names, from all created things as “Good” (Matthew 19:17), as “Beautiful” (Song of Songs 1:16), as “Wise” (Job 9:4), as “Beloved” (Isaiah 5:1), as “God of gods” (Deuteronomy 10:17), as “Lord of lords” (ibid.), as “Holy of Holies” (Isaiah 6:3), as “Everlasting” (Baruch 4:8), as “Being” (Exodus 3:14), as “Author of Ages” (cf. Ecclesiastes 3:11), as “Provider of Life” (Genesis 2:7), as “Wisdom” (Proverbs 8:1), as “Mind” (cf. Isaiah 40:13 LXX), as “Word” (John 1:1), as “Knowing” (Numbers 16:5), as pre-eminently possessing all the treasures of all knowledge (Romans 11:33; Colossians 2:3), as “Power” (I Corinthians 1:24), as “Powerful” (Psalm 89[88]:8[9]), as “King of kings” (I Timothy 6:15), as “Ancient of days” (Daniel 7:9), as “Ageless” (Psalm 102 [101]:24[25]) and “Unchangeable” (James 1:17), as “Salvation” (Exodus 15:2), as “Righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:5), as “Sanctification” (I Corinthians 1:30), as “Redemption” (ibid.), as “surpassing all things in greatness” (Psalm 86[85]:8), and as “in a gentle breeze” (III Kings 19:12). Yea, they also say that He is “in minds” (cf. Ephesians 3:4), and “in souls” (Wisdom 7:27), and “in bodies” (I Corinthians 6:19), and “in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), and at once “the same in the same” (Psalm 102[101]:27[28]), “in the world” (John 1:10), “around the world” (cf. Sirach 43:12), “above the world” (Isaiah 66:22), “supercelestial” (Psalm 113[112]:4), “superessential” (cf. Matthew 6:11), “sun” (Malachi 3:20), “star” (Apocalypse 22:16), “fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24), “water” (John 4:14), “spirit” (John 4:24), “dew” (Hosea 6:4), “cloud”(Exodus 13:21), “self-hewn stone” (Deuteronomy 27:6; Psalm 118[117]:22), and “rock” (Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:8), “all things existing” (cf. I Corinthians 15:28), and “not one of things existing” (cf. Isaiah 46:5).
As you can see, the “theologians” he speaks of as his “teachers” are the Prophets and the Apostles. The designations “Being,” “Life,” and “Intellect” are perfectly Biblical expressions. Was Moses, perchance, cribbing from Proclus too? Conversely, please show me where in the Platonic Theology Proclus calls the One “the self-hewn stone,” “the gentle breeze,” “the Redemption,” and “the Ancient of days.”
Respectfully, it seems to me that you clearly want Dionysius to be teaching something he never actually taught in order to straw man him and impugn the Church Fathers. Yet even Thomas Aquinas, certainly no Palamite, embraced Dionysius as a preeminent theologian. If all the theologians of the Church, East and West, for 1500 years accepted Dionysius as orthodox, it seems incredibly arrogant for you today, in the 21st century, to claim that they were all “confused.”
Sorry, there was a typo above, should have been: “What, then, is that fire?…This is undoubtedly the Holy Spirit Who is called both the fire and light of the countenance of God; light as we said above: ‘The light of Your countenance has been sealed upon us, O Lord.’” (On the Holy Spirit I.14.169)
I would also draw your attention to Saint Augustine, De Trinitate II.8.14, 16.26:
“Let us therefore say nothing of those who, with an over carnal mind, have thought the nature of the Word of God…not only to be changeable, but also to be visible…What is,
(Ex 33:13) unless, Show me Your substance? But if Moses had not said this, we must indeed have borne with those foolish people as we could, who think that the substance of God was made visible to his eyes through those things which, as above mentioned, were said or done.”And Saint Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.20.11:
“If, then, neither Moses, nor Elias, nor Ezekiel, who had all many celestial visions, saw God; but if what they did see were similitudes of the splendour of the Lord, and prophecies of things to come; it is manifest that the Father is indeed invisible..but His Word, as He Himself willed it, and for the benefit of those who beheld, did show the Father’s brightness, and explained His purposes…not in one figure, nor in one character, did He appear to those seeing Him, but according to the reasons and effects aimed at in His dispensations, as it is written in Daniel. For at one time He was seen with those who were around Ananias, Azarias, Misaël, as present with them in the furnace of fire: “And the appearance of the fourth,” it is said, “was like to the Son of God” (Daniel 3:26)…At another time,
(Daniel 7:13-14); then, too, is this same individual beheld as the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven and drawing near to the Ancient of days (Daniel 7:4)…John also, the Lord’s disciple, when beholding the sacerdotal and glorious advent of His kingdom, says in the Apocalypse:
(Revelation 1:12)…For in these words He sets forth something of the glory from His Father…And after these things, seeing the same Lord in a second vision, he says:
(Revelation 5:6)…Thus does the Word of God always preserve the outlines, as it were, of things to come, and points out to men the various forms (species), as it were, of the dispensations of the Father, teaching us the things pertaining to God.”Irenaeus (and Augustine’s) doctrine is identical to Dionysius’: we do not know God’s substance, what we see are His “similitudes,” brightness,” “glory,” “figures,” “characters,” and “dispensations.” Notice how Irenaeus even cites the same forms as Dionysius: the “Ancient of Days” and the “self-hewn stone.”
To address all of the points brought forward in your last post:
Your argument is that ‘Dionysius’ is using inexact imagery in DN 11.6 to suggest that the divine energies reveal something real about God. But as I read it, ‘Dionysius’ is attempting to explain to ‘Timothy’ (i.e. his readers) just what is the ontological status of the divine processions he has been speaking about with such eloquent fervor throughout his work, because he claims to be propagating a “superessential science” (τὴν ὑπερούσιον ἐπιστήμην)” (cf. DN 1.1). Well it’s not much of a superessential science if he can not provide us with a proper ontology regarding the very subject matter of his work, to wit, the divine names/processions. And this matter, which should have been dealt with in a proper manner and at sufficient length in one of the earlier chapters of his work, as laying the necessary groundwork for our understanding of the divine names of Sacred Scripture, he finally deigns to discuss in a very brief and cursory fashion in one of the later chapters of the work, at which time he confidently declares that the explanation of this matter is quite simple indeed. But none of his commentators can seem to agree on what he is really trying to say here, and I submit that the reason that this is so is because his teaching in DN 11.6 is logically contradictory, for his doctrine does indeed amount to teaching that the divine processions are ONTIC ENERGIES (it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t use this exact phrase, for it is the implication of the argument he is making in DN 11.6), and inasmuch as he is teaching that the divine processions are ontic energies, he is teaching something that is categorically rejected by Gregory of Nyssa, who taught in Against Eunomius 2.12 that energy is not essence.
With regard to Hebrews 1.3, in Biblical discourse the word “hypostaseos” means substance, so as a matter of fact it is a technically correct description of the homoousian between Father and Son. It was the Cappadoccians (I believe) who redefined ‘hypostasis’ to mean ‘person/individual subsistence’ to try and clear up the theological misunderstanding which had occured when the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. had anathematized those who taught that the Father and Son are of a different “substance or essence” (ὑποστάσεως ἢ οὐσιάς) from one another.
You say it is uncharitable to point out that Dionysius’ propagation of the existence of ontic energies conflicts with Gregory’s teaching in Against Eunomius 2.12. How so? If I can demonstrate that Dionysius’ teaching contradicts that of Gregory, why is it unfair to point that out? Are we only allowed to point out where their teachings harmonize? This is absurd. You yourself pointed out that Basil’s view regarding the use of the word “homoousian” changed over time. Should this not be examined and brought to light? Most definitely it should be brought to light, for it would provide evidence that his thinking had evolved in regard to the matter, or demonstrate that he had contradicted himself. I would say it is far worse for the Palamites to endlessly quote from St. Basil in Letter 234 where he says that the energies of God are various and come down to us, but the essence of God is simple and is beyond our reach, while ignoring what he says in Letter 52 to the Canonicae, where he states that the fathers of the Nicene Council taught that inasmuch as the Father is light without beginning, and the Son begotten light, but both light and light, that they rightly said “homoousion”, in order to set forth the equal dignity of the nature, or where he says that the Son is “the eternal light that has shone forth from the unbegotten light” (Against Eunomius 2.28), for how can the Unbegotten Light that ontologically precedes the only begotten Son in any way or manner constitute an energetic procession from God? Here is true dishonesty, only presenting a prior father’s teaching in a light that is most favorable to one’s own teaching, without admitting where he taught contrarily to oneself.
Your argument seems to be that I am holding ‘Dionysius’ to too high a standard of ontological precision, when he is attempting to discourse in mere human language upon profound mysteries of the faith. As far as I am concerned, that is the standard I would apply to all of the great theologians of Church history, to wit, that their work represents acceptable theologoumenon, as long as it comports with the teachings of Sacred Scripture and the ecumenical councils, but Gregory Palamas was a man of such arrogant presumptuousness that he decided to force the Byzantine Church to seal his own speculative theologoumenon in regard to divine energetic procesion with the imprimatur of Church dogma, all voices in opposition to his teachings being subject to anathema. I don’t appreciate being termed an accursed heretic because I disagree with the theological speculations of Gregory Palamas. But since he and his supporters have conferred dogmatic status upon his theological formularies, it is only right and proper that we hold his teachings to the most rigorous and exacting standards of theological precision. Now inasmuch as the Palamite formularies are grounded in those of the Pseudo Dionysius, it is requisite to the judgment of the Palamite theses that we ascertain the sources which contributed to the development of the Pseudo Dionysian doctrines, and to assess whether the ‘Dionysian’ teachings comport with what is taught in Sacred Scripture and in the conciliar decrees of the Church. It should be understood, then, that the self arrogating attitude of Gregory Palamas, and not the free spirited inquiry of the Pseudo Dionysius, forms the object of my attack. But the teachings of the Pseudo Dionysius, as the foundation for those of Gregory Palamas, must not be spared of the most searching criticism, if we are to succeed in knocking the Palamites off of their haughty throne. Gregory Palamas refers to “Dionysius the Areopagite, the most prominent of theologians next to the divine apostles” (150 Chapters, 85). If it can be demonstrated, and indeed it has already been demonstrated by competent scholars, that ‘Dionysius’ was not an associate of the apostles transmitting a hidden apostolic wisdom tradition, but rather a 6th century Christian Neoplatonist who plotted out the data of the Gospel upon a Neoplatonic ontological framework, the claim of the Palamites to have faithfully represented the teachings of the apostles and fathers of the early centuries is revealed for the myth that it is, in which the false portrayal of himself on the part of the Pseudo Dionysius as an associate of the apostles played no small part, and is the chief criticism I have of the Pseudo Dionysius himself, but in order to refute the dogmatic pretensions of the Palamites, it is necessary to demonstrate the degree to which the Pseudo Dionysius borrowed from the Platonists, and to point out any theological errors and incongruities which result from the Pseudo Areopagite’s Christian Neoplatonist theological synthesis.
With regard to my quotation from Proclus’ Chaldean Fragments, the object was simply to show that ‘Dionysius’ is borrowing once more from Proclus when he speaks of “statues” (DN 9.1) and “images”, to refute your suggestion that ‘Dionysius’ had originated these terms on his own, and was not borrowing them from Proclus.
You stated moreover that ‘as far as I recall he [Dionysius] never calls them [i.e. the divine processions] ὄντα’, and you stated further: ”I don’t recall Proclus positing a class of ‘Deifying’ henads”.
I reply: Apparently you haven’t read Proclus, for he teaches that “all the others that exist after the superessential gods (viz., the Henads), “are providentially-energized through the participation of those gods”, who receive “the providential impartation of the goods” (Elements of Theology, Propostion 120) – among which would include deification. He also teaches that the Henadic “gods are superessential and subsist prior to The Beings (των οντων), and that “every Divine Henad is participated immediately by one of the [Primary] Beings (των οντων)” (Elements, Prop. 137), the Primary Beings themselves being Being, Life and Intellect (Elements, Prop. 138).
So it is quite clear that Proclus teaches that the Henads divinize the Primary Beings (Being, Life, et al).
Evangelos55, at this point I would ask why is it that you refuse to address the totality of what I am saying, and insist on cherry picking the Henads? You are creating a straw man, and then declaring victory over the straw man’s teaching, rather than arguing with what I am really saying. I have said over and over that the Dionysian processions represent a consolidated reconceptualization of BOTH the Proclean Henads and the Proclean Primary Beings (Being, Life itself, et al). You keep arguing that since the Dionysian processions differ in certain respects from the Henads, that this means that he is not borrowing from Proclus. No serious modern scholar would agree with that assertion. For some reason you refuse to address what I said in respect to what is correlative between the Henads and the Dionysian processions, viz., that they represent participle principles for Being/beings. This is proof that ‘Dionysius’ is borrowing from (and adapting) Proclus, which for some reason you will not acknowledge. IN ADDITION TO correlating that aspect of the Proclean Henads to his modified theory of processions, ‘Dionysius’ imports into his conception of the divine processions the Proclean concept of the Primary Beings (Being, Life, Deity itself), as representiing those ONTIC PRINCIPLES according to which individual beings, viz., angels, men and plants and animals and inanimate beings, can be said to exist, or to live, or to be deified, to the degree that they participate in the principles themselves.
Now to restate the matter as clearly as possible, ‘Dionysius’ teaches that God ‘substantiates’ (i.e. as Hypostaten – DN 11.6) the providential energies/powers (viz., Goodness itself, Deity itself), which are themselves participated by various beings. This idea is clearly adopted from Proclus, who teaches the following doctrine: ”Just as the One is the productive Cause of all, so also, is It the Cause of the participated Henads, and of The Beings that depend upon these Henads. (Proclus, Elements of Theology, 137). Same general idea, but ‘Dionysius’ transforms the Henads into powers/energies of God to maintain Christian monotheism.
Again, Proclus teaches that “every god is participable, except the One” (Elements of Theology, Proposition 116); that “every Divine Henad is participated immediately by one of the [Primary] Beings (των οντων)” (Elements, Prop. 137); that the Primary Beings are Being, Life and Intellect (Elements, Prop. 138), and that lower orders of being participate remotely in the higher orders of Being (Elements, Prop. 136).
‘Dionysius’ adopts the basic structure of the Proclean ontology and modifies it by conjoining the Henads and the Primary Beings into a single participle principle, viz. the divine processions, viz., participle divine powers/energies (DN 9.9) which are themselves substantiated by God (DN 11.6). None of these ideas are taught in Sacred Scripture. This is modified Neoplatonism, plain and simple.
Your argument that ‘Dionysius’ is referring to the angels in DN 11.6 is not supported by the text. No reference whatsoever is made to angels within DN 11.6. Now since ‘Dionysius’ is borrowing from and adapting Proclus here, there and everywhere in the Divine Names, it is much more likely that he has in mind the Primary Beings of Proclus (Viz. Being, Life, Intellect, et al). He also states in DN 11.6 that God is called “Substantiator” (Hypostaten) of the Primary Beings to make it clear that He transcends them. Is there any question that God transcends the angels? None whatsoever. Be that as it may, he states in DN 11.6 that his religious preceptors (YES, PROCLUS + THE NEOPLATONISTS) identify God as the “Substantiator of Goodness and Deity itself” (τῆς αὐτο αγαθότητος καὶ θεότητος ὑποστάτην). If God is the Substantiator of Goodness and Deity itself (DN 11.6), and is the Substantiator of the Primary Beings (DN 11.6), and is the Substantiator of those who participate in them in whole or in part (DN 11.6), and is called “Substantiator of Goodness and Deity itself” so that we should understand that He transcends even Goodness and Deity itself (DN 11.6), which are themselves ontologically superior to the angels who participate in Goodness and Deity itself (DN 5.3), it is obvious, then, that the divine processions are also denominated as Primary Beings by ‘Dionysius’.
But even if you reject these clear textual linkages, your argument founders on its own terms, for you said that “hypostaseos” in Hebrews 1:3 denominates “substance”. Very well, then, if God is the “Hypostaten”, that is, the one who gives substance, to Goodness and Deity itself (DN 11.6), viz., the divine processions, as ‘Dionysius’ himself acknowledges, this once more indicates that ‘Dionysius’ is teaching in DN 11.6 that the divine processions are both powers/energies of God and substantiated existences in their own right, in other words, ONTIC ENERGIES! For God is only Substantiator in the sense that He gives substance to something, and just as He is Substantiator of those who participate in the divine processions wholly (angels and glorified men), or in part (ordinary men, plants and animals and inanimate things), He is Substantiator of the divine processions themselves, and therefore transcendent to all.
With regard to the Pseudo Dionysian religious preceptors, he is quite open about the Judeo-Christian sources of his teaching relating to his faith, viz., the prophets and apostles, but he is absolutely silent in regard to the sources undergirding his ontology of divine procession, but scholars have searched them out, and the foremost among them is the Neoplatonist doctrine taught by Proclus Diadochus. We are expected to believe on the assurance of the Pseudo Dionysius that he learned his doctrine entirely from the Scriptures and from his association with the apostles and fellow travelors such as Hieropolis, and this coming from the one who fabricated letters to the Apostle John, and who falsely claimed that he was a witness to the solar eclipse that was said to have occured during Christ’s crucifixion – whose yes was not yes, and whose no was not no, contrary to the teaching of our Lord – and who was likewise not being truthful in the matter of who had been his religious preceptors, or at least not all of them, i.e. pagan philosophers, because if he honestly admitted that he was adapting the theology of Proclus to the Christian religion, his whole fiction as being an associate of the apostles would have been destroyed, and therewith the authority of his teachings. The results of modern scholarly research forces us to acknowledge (except for those among us who refuse to face facts) that his theology is an adaptation of Neoplatonic metaphysics, and not the hidden wisdom teaching of the apostles. Ever since the Dionysian fabrication was confirmed by the researches of qualified scholars late in the 19th century, the authority of the Dionysian corpus has plummeted, once it was proven that it was a Christianized adaptation of Neoplatonism, and not the hidden teaching of the apostles.
The apostolic provenance of the Dionysian corpus has been disproven by modern scholarly researches, and was even denied as far back as the 6th century by Hypatius of Ephesus at a religious council held in Constantinople in 533 A.D. The situating of the Corpus Dionysiacum in the 6th century profoundly alters our view of the development of theological doctrine in the East. The Palamites can no longer claim that their teaching is witnessed as far back as apostolic times, but only goes as far back as the 6th century, with certain Cappadoccian elements dating to the late fourth century. This places the Palamite theology outside of the theological purview of Nicene era, which had understood the divine names as having reference to the divine nature itself, thereby severely undercutting the Palamite pretentions to representing the faith once delivered by Christ and the apostles, and argues for the removal of its dogmatic status (with the accompanying anathemas) within the Church and for its reduction in status once more to the speculative theologoumenon that it so clearly represents. The identification of the theological problematic of postulating an ONTIC ENERGY, forced upon ‘Dionysius’ by his reconceptualization of the Proclean Henads and Primary Beings as substantiated divine energetic participle processions, only further serves to undercut the Palamite pretensions. ’Dionysius’ simply forced too much Proclean ontology into one single conceptualization to make it all cohere, for he incorporated the Henads into his concept of the divine processsions to provide a mediating buffer and participle principle to exist between the imparticiple God and Being/beings, and he incorporated the Proclean concept of Primary Beings into his concept of the divine processions so that individual beings could participate in the divine providential goodnesses of Being, Living, Deification, etc. But this over-compacting of disparate metaphysical notions into a single ontological principle on the part of the Pseudo Dionysius necessitated that the divine processions be taught to exist as divine energies (DN 9.9 + 11.6) on the one hand and as substantiated existences (DN 11.6) on the other hand, and carried with it the implication that ‘Dionysius’ was postulating the existence of a logically impossible object, to wit, an ONTIC ENERGY. ’Dionysius’ himself acknowledges that Isaiah 6:6-7 presents a problem for his conception of the workings of the celestial hierarchy. I have simply identified another problematic in his teaching.
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for the interesting discussion. You’re clearly well-read and intelligent. I don’t want you to think I’m being evasive or intentionally stubborn. However, I’m afraid that your argument hinges entirely on the word ὑποστάτης. This word can be translated in many ways, as “substantiator,” “that which undergirds another thing,” “mainstay,” or “cause.” The latter is in fact how Thomas M. Johnson (not me) translates ὑποστατικὸν in Proclus’ Elements of Theology 137. The word is also used twice by Didymus the Blind (who lived before Proclus) in the phrases “ὑποστάτης τῶν ὅλων” and “ὑποστάτης τῶν πάντων” (PG 39, col. 705, 816).
Is is so inconceivable that Proclus (who quotes Origen four times in his extant treatises) cribbed his Elements of Theology 136 from another Christian writer, namely Dionysius? You seem to think that the mere fact that the same expression occurs in two texts is sufficient to determine who borrowed it from whom. I’m sorry, but serious comparative philology does not work like that. We have to look at the entire context of a quote to determine its provenance. This is what we do at great length in our book, showing many instances where Proclus cherry-picks, abbreviates, and adapts Dionysius’ text.
As I showed you above, Dionysius, in the very same passage of DN 11.6 you are quoting, expressly denies that there are such things as “demiurgic hypostases.” You can say “forget what Dionysius claims” or “it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t use this exact phrase” all you want, but that just shows that you are being dishonest and fighting a straw man. The devil is precisely in the details. Otherwise, what prevents us from saying that the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva is really the same thing as the Christian Trinity?
As for what Dionysius teaches in DN 11.6, I do not find that there is anything specifically Platonist or Unchristian in saying that God “causes” or “hypostatizes” specific manifestations or theophanies of Himself, nor that created things “participate” in God’s providence. As I demonstrated above, Dionysius’ theory of the divine names is closely paralleled by first and second-century writers (Philo and Irenaeus). Both refer to the divine energies as “figures” or “similitudes” like Dionysius. If we understand the energies in this way, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that God is the ὑποστάτης of His energies.
When you add this to the fact that Proclus admits in his De subsistentia malorum that he is “summarizing” (scribere breviter) what his “predecessors” (eorum qui ante nos) wrote on the topic of evil, that in the In Parmenidem he acknowleges that he is borrowing the expression “flowers and supersubstantial lights” (which is found only in Dionysius and in Synesius of Cyrene, who died when Proclus was 3 years old) from “someone” (ὡς φησί τις), and that the term “parhypostasis” (Stiglmayr and Koch’s “silver bullet” argument upon which they based their entire case) is attested in Christian writers many decades before Proclus ever uses it, all this strongly indicates that Proclus was inspired by Dionysius and not the other way around.
I also find it curious that the doctrine of henads, which has such striking parallels to the doctrine of the consubstantial Persons, is a late innovation of the Athenian Neoplatonic school (see the recent work by Svetlana Mesyats, who re-examines the traditional attribution of the henads to Iamblichus, arguing that henadology was specific to Syrianus and especially Proclus). I ask: why must the history of ideas be a one-way-street? Why can’t pagans borrow ideas from Christians?
Plotinus himself studied under a Christian, Ammonius Saccas. And according to recent research by Ilaria Ramelli, he was influenced by Origen’s apokatastasis doctrine. This is not “me” saying this, this is one of the current leading experts in late antique philosophy. But if you’re still not happy with that, just listen to Eusebius:
“A great many heretics, and not a few of the most distinguished philosophers, studied under [Origen] diligently, receiving instruction from him not only in divine things, but also in secular philosophy…The Greek philosophers of his age are witnesses to his proficiency in these subjects. We find frequent mention of him in their writings. Sometimes they dedicated their own works to him; again, they submitted their labors to him as a teacher for his judgment.” (History VI.18-19)
If Plotnius quoted Origen and Proclus quoted Origen, then why could not Proclus have quoted Dionysius? That’s all I’m saying. It is biased or foolish not to entertain the possibility. Is this thesis revisionary? Certainly, and we never pretended otherwise. But it is serious and well-documented.
We have precise lexical expressions of Dionysius’ that are attributed to “one who lived before us” by Saint Gregory the Theologian and to “a certain Greek, well-read in the Scriptures,” by Saint Jerome, showing that Dionysius must have written, at the very least, before AD 380. Add the fact that Dionysius alludes to specific 1st-century heresies, describes monasticism in a way that could only have been done by a 1st-century writer, and expresses himself in historically-accurate Attic Greek, I see no difficulty in ascribing the writings to Saint Dionysius.
What, after all, was to be gained by a late forger creating such an elaborate pastiche of Christianity and Neoplatonism?
Regarding the 533 Conference of Constantinople, the Crucifixion darkness, the Dormition, and the Angelic hierarchy, all of this is dealt with in the book. As a teaser, I’ll just say that the angelic hierarchy is attested in a 1st-c. BC text known as the “Angelic liturgy of Qumran” and in a pretty clear way in Ezekiel 9:2-5 (which shows a Cherub dispatching lower angels to perform tasks on earth).
Evangelos
And just in case this was not clear:
God is the “hypostates” (cause) of “them” (his providential powers). These include the
πρώτων αὐτῶν = God’s “principal” names or manifestations, namely as “Being” (Exodus 3:14) and the “wonderful name” of “Lord” (See DN 1.6; Psalm 8:2)
ὅλων αὐτῶν = God’s “general” providences, e.g. as “Wisdom,” “Goodness,” “Beauty,” etc.
μερικῶν αὐτῶν = God’s “particular” providences, e.g. as “Ancient of Days,” “stone,” “pillar of fire,” etc.
Regarding Tertullian:
I have been studying what over 225 patristic and medieval Christian writers have ever said about the Divine Light (I’m up to about 160 right now), and I will publish the results of my researches when completed God willing.
Some of the early fathers distinguished between the Son as visible in His essence (the theophanies) and the invisible and inaccessible Father. Tertullian still held that the Father’s essence was His unseen Light.
As for Pseudo Dionysius, I attack him not for the sake of attacking him, but to undermine the dogmatic claims of Gregory Palamas to have represented the authentic faith of the fathers. In demonstrating that ‘Dionysius’ is a Christian Neoplatonist, Gregory Palamas is implicated in dogmatizing Neoplatonism as the only acceptable interpretation of the Gospel. Finding indefensible flaws in the ‘Dionysian’ adaptation of Proclean ontology to the data of the Gospel only abets my claims against Palamas, whose teachings must be perfect, or fail the test of dogmatic certitude that they claim for themselves.
I don’t dislike the Pseudo Dionysius. He appears to have been a free spirited enquirer seeking to formulate a theosphic vision of the Good and the True and the Beautiful.
Gregory Palamas, on the other hand, was a dogmatist of the worst sort. He must be combatted by first undermining the authoritative status of the Corpus Dionysiacum, upon which his dogmatic claims chiefly rest.
The tradition I represent is my own. I am Roman Catholic, but I do not defend the Filioque nor the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. Fair minded Eastern Orthodox should likewise use their analytical faculties and subject Palamism to the necessary critique that it deserves.
Also, I did not bring this up before for fear of my post being too long, but you are grossly misunderstanding the Fathers whom you are quoting. Certainly, the Son can be called the “light” or “power” of God, but these are not predicates of a specific person, but of the entire divinity. The Father is just as much “light” as the Son, which is why we say “Light from Light” in the Creed. The same applies to the Holy Spirit. Read St. Ambrose (a “Latin” Father, and so “consistent with the Nicene Creed” according to you):
“What, then, is that fire?…This is undoubtedly the Holy Spirit, Who is called both the fire Spirit, Who is called both the fire and light of the countenance of God; light as we said above: ‘The light of Your countenance has been sealed upon us, O Lord.'” (On the Holy Spirit I.14.169)
Trying to conflate predicates of God to a specific person not only destroys the Trinity, but it is ironically what Eunomius was teaching.
Christianity posits two basic truths: (1) God is absolutely transcendent and separate from the world; (2) God truly and really interacts with the created realm (through the Creation, Revelation, the Incarnation, and more generally, through His sustaining and guiding Providence). The first concept has traditionally been expressed by the term “essence,” the second by the term “energies” or “operations.” To deny that God has energies, or to say that His energy is identical to His essence (as you seem to be doing), is to relapse into pantheism…precisely of the sort that Proclus taught.
I’ll leave you with a quote by Hugh of St. Victor, another “Latin” (in fact, a scholastic!):
“If you think of earth, if you think of heaven, if you think of all that is in heaven and on earth, none of these is God. Finally, if you think of the spirit, if you think of soul, this is not God. ‘I know,’ you say, ‘that this is not God, yet this is like God, and God can be demonstrated by His likeness.’ See what similar thing you would show, if you should wish to demonstrate the spirit and the body, of what nature this likeness would be, and yet farther apart are God and spirit than spirit and body. For all things that are created are less distant from each other than He who made is from that which He made. What God is cannot be thought, even if it can be believed that He is, nor can it be comprehended of what nature He is. ‘What,’ said the Apostle, ‘eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man,’ (1 Corinthians 2:9); this is what we wish to say, if however, we can say what we cannot think. ‘What eye hath not seen nor ear heard,’ because it is not perceived by sense. ‘Neither hath it entered into the heart of man,’ since it is not comprehended by thought.” (De sacramentis christianae fidei, I.10.2)
In reply to your comment that I am grossly misunderstanding Scripture by applying a divine attribute to a single person of the Godhead, I would say that you are grossly misunderstanding me if you believe that I said any such thing. Where did I ever state that the divine attribute of Light only applies to the Son, but not to the Father and the Holy Spirit? I mentioned brightness of glory (Heb 1:3) and Light out of Light from the Nicene Creed, in both cases acknowledging the Father and Son as Light – according to ESSENCE. As did St. Basil (cf. Letter 52.2). If it disturbs you that St. Athanasius understands the divine attributes to be proper to the Son of God and thus to the divine essence, your problem is with his teaching, not mine.
With respect to the vision of God:
St. Augustine distinguishes between the vision of God attainable by men in the flesh and that attainable in the age to come. He wrote the most thorough work in regard to the vision of God (Letter 147 De Viviendo Deo) of any Church father, and presents therein the classic Latin teaching (deduced independently by myself nearly 1500 years later, based upon the same correlation of scriptures, thereby demonstrating the relative ease with which the teaching may be articulated for those who are disposed to interpret Sacred Scripture in this manner). The basic idea is that Moses asked God (or the Son of God) to show him His glory, but God responded that no man could see His face and live (Ex 33:18-23). [The Eastern fathers are wont to say that the face of God is His essence and His back parts are His energies.] St. Paul also teaches that God dwells in unapproachable light that no man can approach unto (1 Tim 6:16), and St. John teaches that no one has seen God at any time (Jn 1:18). The Eastern tradition tends to leaves it at that, and affirms that no one, neither man nor angel, will ever see the essence of God. But they ignore or downplay other scriptures which undercut this teaching. St. Paul, aware of what God had taught Moses in regard to seeing His glory (i.e. His face), states that in this life we see the glory of God through a glass darkly (2 Cor 3:17), but in the age to come we will see God face to face, and know Him as we are known by Him (1 Cor 13:12). St. John also promises that in the age to come we shall see God “as He is” (1 Jn 3:2), while Christ Himself declared that the angels in heaven do always behold the face of the Father (Mt 18:10). The very Son of God who declared to Moses that no one can see my face and live – the face here being identified by the Eastern fathers with the essence of God, and distinguished from His back parts, the so called energies, declares as Son of Man that the face of God verily indeed is seen by the angels in heaven. Now whose testimony is greater and more sure in regard to this matter than that of the Son of God Himself? John Chrysostom argues rather implausibly that what Christ has in mind here is that “in the case of angels, we must understand that by reason of their pure and sleepless nature they do nothing else, but always image to themselves God” (ἀλλ’ ἢ τὸν Θεὸν ἀεὶ φαντάζονται – phantasize to themselves). [Homilies On the Gospel of John, c.x. 15] Is that what Christ meant when He stated that the angels behold the face of God in heaven, that they conceptualize God to themselves? Why then did Christ boldly proclaim with regard to angelic vision of God, instead of hedging, as Chrysostom does?
St. Augustine teaches that in the age to come, ‘clean hearts will contemplate God’s substance’ (De Vivendo Deo, 20), but that they will not see as God sees, “for it is one thing to see; it is another to grasp the whole by seeing” (De Vivendo Deo, 9).
Chrysostom has two scriptures which favor his teaching. Isaiah 6:2 reveals the seraphim covering their faces before the throne of God, and Chrysostom interprets this to mean that they could not bear to look upon the glory of the Almighty, which even here was a condescension and accomodation but not an unveiling of the essence (Homily 3.14-15, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God). He also cites Ezekial 1:28, where the prophet beheld “the likeness of the glory of the Lord”.
Given the rule of faith, viz., that the Old Testament is to be interpreted in light of the New, it would appear that Isaiah 6:2 and Ezekial 1:28 would need to be interpreted in light of the Gospel promises that we will see God “as He is” (1 Jn 3:2), and “face to face” (1 Cor 13:12) in the age to come, as the Latin fathers do, instead of the other way around, as the Eastern fathers tend to do.
The consistency of the Latin teaching is demonstrated by the following quotes:
Pope Leo I the Great: ”For the unspeakable and unapproachable vision of the Godhead Itself which is reserved till eternal life for the pure in heart, they could in no wise look upon and see while still surrounded with mortal flesh.” (Sermon 51.2 On the Transfiguration)
And: ”The Father was indeed present in the Son, and in the Lord’s brightness, which He had tempered to the disciples’ sight, the Father’s Essence was not separated from the Only-begotten” (Sermon 51.5 On the Transfiguration).”
Pope Gregory the Great (who had spent years in Constantinople, and was familiar with the Eastern teaching): ”But we are to know that there were some persons, who said that even in that region of blessedness God is beheld indeed in His Brightness, but far from beheld in His Nature. Which persons surely too little exactness of enquiry deceived. For not to that simple and unchangeable Essence is Brightness one thing, and Nature another; but Its very Nature is to It Brightness, and the very Brightness is Nature. For that to Its votaries the Wisdom of God should one day display Itself, He Himself pledges His word, saying, He that loveth Me, shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him. [John 14, 21] As though He said in plain terms, ‘Ye who see Me in your nature, it remains that ye should see Me in Mine own nature.’” (Moralia On Job XVIII.90)
However Pope Gregory I issues the traditional Latin caveat: ”Therefore we shall see God, if by a heavenly conversation we obtain to be above men. Not yet that we shall so see Him as He Himself sees His very own Self. For the Creator sees Himself in a way far unlike to that in which the creature sees the Creator. For as to the unmeasurableness of God there is a certain measure of contemplation set to us, because we are limited by the mere weight that we are a creature.” (Moralia On Job, XVIII.92)
Thomas Aquinas: ”…the saints will see God in His essence” (Summa Theol., Suppl., Q. 92, Art. 1), for ‘God is Light, because of the surpassing brightness of the Divine Essence’ (Ibid., Reply to Obj. 4); and “in that vision we shall see the same thing that God sees, namely His essence, but not so effectively” as He does (Ibid., Reply to Obj. 2).
Therefore all of the major Latin doctors having taught the same doctrine in regard to the vision of God for over 900 years, Pope Benedict XII issued a Papal Bull titled Benedictus Deus in 1336, right before the onset of the Palamite controversies, wherein he declared, after consulting with eminent Latin theologians, that “the souls of all the saints…see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature by way of object of vision; rather the divine essence immediately manifests itself to them, plainly, clearly and openly, and in this vision they enjoy the divine essence.”
There is also some slight Eastern patristic support for the Latin teaching. As I pointed out before, Gregory Nazianzen admits in Oration 28.17 that 1 Corinthians 13:12 seems to suggest that the glorified soul will indeed come to know the nature and essence of God in the age to come.
Meanwhile Epiphanius of Salamis teaches the following with regard to the vision of God: ”But the invisible God has accomplished the impossible by His loving kindness and power, and by His might has rendered some worthy of seeing the invisible. And the person who saw Him saw the
invisible and infinite, not as the infinite was, but as the nature of one who had no power to see Him could bear when empowered to the fullest.” Then he goes on to explain that this is like seeing the sky through a slit or the sea but not its depths. (Panarion, Book III, Section 2, Heresy 70.6-8) There is no essence-energies distinction being taught here in respect to the vision of God on the part of Epiphanius.
The Palamite theology teaches that the illuminated saints see and experience the deifying effects of the uncreated divine energy in this life, and then see and experience the deifying effects of a greater degree of the uncreated divine energy in the age to come. Does this sound anything like seeing the glory of God through a glass darkly now, and seeing God as He is, face to face, as the angels do, and knowing Him as He knows us, in the age to come (2 Cor 3:18; 1 Jn 1:2; Mt 18:10; 1 Cor 13:12)? The Gospel promises suggest a partial realiziation in this life with the reward of complete fulfillment in the age to come, suggesting a profound transformation in state, whereas the Palamite teaching seems to emphasize the continuity in state of partial illumination with ever expanding enlightenment more than the state of exaltation that is proclaimed in the Gospel. The Gospel teaches that God’s glory is seen through a glass darkly in this life and face to face in the age to come. It does not teach that the the divine glory is uncreated energy seen both here and in greater degree in the age to come, as in the Palamite teaching.
To assert, as the Palamites do, that God’s uncreated light is His uncreated energy proceeding out of His invisible essence, is a rejection of the Nicene Creedal definition that the Son of God is ‘only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light homoousian with the Father”. And that this is the teaching of the Nicene Council is affirmed by St. Athanasius himself, who stated in a work titled On the Decrees of the Nicene Council: ”and thus He and the Father are one, as has been said; unless indeed these perverse men [the Arians–ed.] make a fresh attempt, and say that the essence of the Word is not the same as the Light which is in Him from the Father” (De Decretis 24). Is the Son of God, the Divine Word and Wisdom, the brightness of the Father’s glory (Heb 1:3), who is described elsewhere as the “pure outflowing from the glory of the Almighty” (Wis 7:25), and as “the brightness of eternal light” (Wis 7:25), the uncreated energy, as Gregory Palamas and the Synodikon of Orthodoxy teach, or the very essence of Godhead, as the Council of Nicea affirms?
Dionysian/Palamism represents a 6th century innovation and Platonization of the Gospel and an abrogation of the faith of Nicea. The Sacred Scriptures do not teach anything in regard to participle divine energetic principles of the sort peddled by the Pseudo Dionysius and Gregory Palamas. The Latin tradition has remained faithful to the Council of Nicea of 325 A.D., while the Byzantines have become heterodox in this matter. With respect to the Filioque, and the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed of 381, the roles are reversed.
In Discourse 3.65 Against the Arians, St. Athanasius teaches two things that are considered to be blasphemy by the Palamites: ”the Apostle proclaims the Son to be the Radiance and Expression, not of the Father’s will, but of His own Essence Itself, saying, ‘Who being the Radiance of His glory and the Expression of His Subsistence (Hebrews 1:3)”. Here glory = essence, not energy, as in the Palamite theology. Athanasius also declares in Discourse 3.65: ”Moreover, if they [the Arians–ed.] say that the Son is by will, they should say also that He came to be by understanding; for I consider understanding and will to be the same. For what a man counsels, about that also he has understanding; and what he has in understanding, that also he counsels. Certainly the Saviour Himself has made them correspond, as being cognate, when He says, ‘Counsel is mine and security; mine is understanding, and mine strength Proverbs 8:14.’ For as strength and security are the same (for they mean one attribute), so we may say that Understanding and Counsel are the same, which is the Lord. But these irreligious men are unwilling that the Son should be Word and Living Counsel…and let every one rather trust to Solomon, who says, that the Word is Wisdom and Understanding. For he says, ‘The Lord by Wisdom founded the earth, by Understanding He established the heavens.’… The Son of God then, He is the ‘Word’ and the ‘Wisdom;’ He the ‘Understanding’ and the Living ‘Counsel;’ and in Him is the ‘Good Pleasure of the Father.’ He is ‘Truth’ and ‘Light’ and ‘Power’ of the Father. But if the Will of God is Wisdom and Understanding, and the Son is Wisdom, he who says that the Son is ‘by will,’ says virtually that Wisdom has come into being in wisdom, and the Son is made in a son, and the Word created through the Word ; which is incompatible with God and is opposed to His Scriptures…. But if, as we have said before, the Father’s Essence and Hypostasis/Subsistence be not from will, neither, as is very plain, is what is proper to the Father’s Hypostasis/Subsistence from will; for such as, and so as, that Blessed Hypostasis/Subsistence, must also be the proper Offspring from It.”
Athanasius teaches forthrightly here that not only the divine attributes of Wisdom and Power and Light and Truth are the Son, but even the Will of the Father is cognate with the Son of God. The divine names do not name what is ‘around God’ but what is proper to the divine nature itself. How different is the Alexandrian teaching from that of the Dionysian-Palamites! How do you reconcile what St. Athanasius teaches above with this teaching from Gregory Palamas: ”If you accept this as true also for wisdom and goodness and generally all the things around God or said about God, then your theology will be correct and in accord with the saints.” (150 Chapters, 78) But Athanasius says about the things ‘around’ God: ”If then any man conceives God to…have any external envelopement…so that when we say ‘God,’ or name ‘Father,’ we do not signify the invisible and incomprehensible essence, but something about it, then let them complain of the Council’s stating that the Son was from the essence of God; but let them reflect, that in thus considering they utter…blaphemies; for…they falsely say that the Lord is not Son of the very Father, but of what is about Him.” (De Decretis 22)
Gregory Palamas says “If the energies of God are not in any sense distinct from the divine essence, neither will they have any distinction with respect to one another….Therefore, the divine foreknowledge is distinct from the will, and thus each of these is distinct from the divine essence.” (150 Chapters, 100) St. Athanasius says on the contrary, the will of God is the Son of God, and therefore proper to the essence of God. The Alexandrine doctrine, we observe, is much closer to the Latin doctrine than it is to the Dionysian-Palamite doctrine, which provides yet one more indication that the Dionysian-Palamite doctrines relating to divine processional powers and energies represent a post Nicene Platonizing of the Gospel.
“And the person who saw Him saw the invisible and infinite, not as the infinite was.”
The “infinite as it was” is precisely God’s essence! Saint Epiphanius is making a clear distinction between “what God is” and “how we perceive Him.” St. Augustine describes those who think you can see the divine essence as “fools.” No amount of sophistry can make the text say what it doesn’t.
Forgive me if I misunderstood you, but from the way you presented the quotes, it really seemed that you were conflating God’s energies with Christ’s person. I presented quotes from Saint Gregory of Nyssa taking about God’s δύναμις as distinct from His essence, and you responded by saying that God’s δύναμις is Christ.
You agree, then, that the person of the Son is not δύναμις. Good. Δύναμις is a property of the common nature. But notice the word: property. The nature is not reducible to δύναμις, but transcends it. Just like when you predicate a name on a person, the person is not the name.
You will respond that if we cannot know God’s essence, this opens the door to Arians to question the divinity of Christ. The truth is actually the opposite. We know that Christ is consubstantial with the Father, precisely because he has the same energy as the Father:
“For if there existed any variation in their energies, so that the Son worked His will in a different manner to the Father, then (on the above supposition) it would be fair to conjecture, from this variation, a variation also in the beings which were the result of these varying energies. But if it is true that the manner of the Father’s working is likewise the manner always of the Son’s…then how can this man hope to prove the essential difference between the Son and the Holy Ghost by any difference and separation between the working of the Son and the Father? The very opposite, as we have just seen, is proved to be the case; seeing that there is no manner of difference contemplated between the working of the Father and that of the Son; and so that there is no gulf whatever between the being of the Son and the being of the Spirit, is shown by the identity of the power which gives them their subsistence” (Saint Gregory, Against Eunomius 1.27)
A bit before, Saint Gregory uses Isaiah 6:3 to show that the Son and Holy Spirit are divine because they are both named “Holy” by the Seraphim alongside the Father. As you can see, “names” (i.e. energies) disclose essence. If you think that Saint Basil taught a different theology than his own brother or that Saint Gregory contradicted himself between treatises speaks only to your own arrogance I’m afraid. Two ecumenical councils and the greatest theologians East and West for 1500 years accepted Dionysius as an authority. I’m not the outlier.
All the quotes you provided from the Latin Fathers correspond very well to what is known as the “uncreated light” in the Eastern tradition. Saint Gregory Palamas refers to 1 Cor 13:12 and Matthew 18:10 as evidence of the transcendent vision of the saints. This doesn’t contradict the fact that Saint Paul says that “no one has seen [God], or can see.” (1 Timothy 6:16)
Here’s an early Latin Father who teaches that God is invisible in His essence:
“It will therefore follow, that by Him who is invisible we must understand the Father in the fullness of His majesty, while we recognize the Son as visible by reason of the dispensation of His derived existence; even as it is not permitted us to contemplate the sun in the full amount of its substance which is in the heavens, but we can only endure with our eyes a ray, by reason of the tempered condition of this portion which is projected from it to the earth.” (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 14)
By the way, Pope Gregory the Great calls Saint Dionysius “an ancient and venerable Father” in his Homily 34.12 on the Gospel and the late Pope John Paul II called Gregory Palamas a “saint” and a “great theological writer.” So I do not know which tradition you are speaking for.
Hello evangeloss55: Thank you for the kind words. This post is in response to the one where you spoke of evidence for 1st century Dionysian authorship.
I hold MAs in Philosophy and Theology, so although not a first rate scholar, I know enough to competently address myself to these matters, and especially to assess the validity of forms of argument.
I am always open to evidence, as long as it is solid evidence.
The problem with trying to date ‘Dionysius’ to the first century is that we are expected to believe that these highly influential writings went almost completely unnoticed in Christian circles for over 400 years, all the while a long process of philosophical development had been occurring within Neoplatonic circles between Plotinus, Iamblichus and Proclus, none of whom makes any mention of the figure of Dionysius, who would have exercised such a profound influence upon these figures if he had written in the first century, where’s the rationale for any of this? Proclus constantly mentions his predecessors (even Origen – not sure if is the Christian one). How much easier to conclude that his writings are first explicitly mentioned in 528 by Severus, and that containing so much material in common with his Neoplatonist predecessors, that it was he who drank from their well. Are we really to believe that Paul’s companion Timothy was corresponding with this figure asking abstract philosophical questions about the ontological status of the divine processions, when St. Paul had warned the early Christians to avoid philosophy and vain deceit (Col 2:8)? No other Christian literature rises to this level of sophisticated conceptual expression until the third or fourth century, or really the 6th, but we are to assume that something of this complexity was written when nothing other than Gospel narratives and letters were being composed by the early Christians? Beyond that, there are indications from Dionysius’ own writings that he participated in liturgies that could not have existed prior to the late fifth century, that he employed 5th century monophysite vocabulary, etc.
You stated that Proclus is cherry picking and compressing doctrines of ‘Dionysius’. I don’t see how you can make this argument. If anything, Proclus is expanding the ontology of Plotinus by asserting the existence of Divine Henads mediating between the imparticiple One and Being. He is expanding upon an earlier modification of Plotinian ontology made by Iamblichus, and names him in his work. ’Dionysius’, on the other hand, does away with all of the various levels of gods found in Proclus, and combines into one concept of divine processions the ontological functions of the Proclean Henads and the Primary Beings. It is so glaringly obvious I don’t see how you are able to miss this.
The principle of Occam’s Razor highly favors ‘Dionysian’ dependence upon Proclus, and not the reverse, and argues for late 5th – early 6th century ‘Dionysian’ authorship.
Perhaps a case can be made that the Neoplatonists made some use of Christian sources, as Christian authors most certainly made use of them, but ‘Dionysius’ simply is not a good candidate for the above stated reasons.
If ‘Dionysius’ is not a first century author, then he is just a Christian Neoplatonist, and his teachings have to be seen in that light, and not as a transmission of a hidden esoteric wisdom teaching of the apostles, which they claim to be.
As far as the word “Hypostaten” goes, although it is sometimes translated as “mainstay”, viz., that which undergirds, given the likely dependence of ‘Dionysius’ upon Proclus, it is best to see how the latter employs the term. In the writings of Proclus, “Hypostaten” signifies “Substantiator”, for the Monad is the one who substantiates Primary Being into existence as an essence or a being, and not as an energy, and by its own energy Primary Being gives existence to individual beings, who participate in Being itself, as beings. This then is the most likely meaning for ‘Dionysius’. [Didymus does not use the term “Hypostaten” in reference to Primary Beings, so he doesn’t factor into this discussion]. ’Dionysius’ for his own part does not make any distinction between God as “Hypostaten” of the divine processions and “Hypostaten” of the men and angels who participate in them. But let us see what Gregory Palamas says: ”But in that they [divine processions] possess being they are said to participate in absolute being, since without this they neither exist nor possess participation” (150 Chapters, 88). So all divine processions sequent to Absolute Being participate in Absolute Being. Well if they participate in Absolute Being they too are beings, and yet they also are energies. What is something that is both energy and being? An ONTIC ENERGY!
YES evangeloss55, it is precisely in the details where ‘Dionysius’ and Palamas founder. They are compacting too many ontological determinations of the Neoplatonists into their adapted concept of the divine processions, and it results in the predication of a logically impossible object, viz., an ontic energy. If Life itself and Goodness itself participate in Being itself, they themselves must be beings, or else the whole meaning of participation becomes arbitrary and meaningless. What does it mean for an energy to participate in another energy anyway? Well they participate in order to have being, but they are not beings. Why ought not this type of ‘reasoning’ be looked upon as mere gobbledygook instead of being uncomprehendingly accepted as the revelation of the most profound of mysteries? In my judgment, mere assertion does not constitute valid demonstration. So I will stick with my own interpretation until someone can demonstrate that the idea that ‘energies participate in Absolute Being in order that they might exist and have being, but they themselves are not beings’, actually signifies something other than a logical absurdity.
Yes, ‘Dionysius’ denies that the divine processions are demiurgic hypostases, but according to him, they participate in Absolute Being (and thus are beings) and create individual beings. If it walks like a demiurgic hypostasis, and it quacks like a demiurgic hypostasis, I submit that IT IS A DEMIURGIC HYPOSTASIS!
The theophanies of the Old Testament were understood by the earlier fathers to be created images, not energies. If they are to be understood as God’s uncreated light, then I would say that they are the glory of God seen through a glass darkly (cf. 2 Cor 3:18; 1 Cor 13:12), not modified Proclean energetic processions. We have Biblical language to describe Biblical phenomena. We don’t need to import Neoplatonic emanationism to explain the data of Sacred Scripture.
Your citation of Philo as an authority for the use of “powers” actually constitutes the point of my objection to the dogmatizing of pagan metaphysical speculation on the part of the Palamites. Philo is said to have adopted the ‘δύναμης’ from Plato. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states “in Spec. 1.45, Philo uses a Platonic metaphor to assert that God is surrounded by a great number of powers who are like His bodyguards”. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Philo] Once again, the things around God! Plato-Plato-Plato! Not the Gospel. Therein lies my objection to all of this metaphysizing of the Gospel until it had become an abstraction of the philosophers and theologians, and not the living word of God. Herein lies the wisdom of Protestantism, to have realized how the theologians had produced a vast abstraction, and the resulting conviction on their part to return to the plain Gospel. Prayer, self denial, love of God and neighbor, these are what makes a saint, not the acknowledgement of the Dionysian-Palamite metaphysical jargon as Church dogma which Palamas and his partisans had forced upon the Church at large, with the attendant anathemas for those who would not bend the knee to their metaphysical abstractions. I hold no brief for Thomism, which constitutes yet another metaphysical abstraction.
I have scaled the heights of metaphysical abstraction, and realized that it does not deliver what it promises, and have realized for many years now that it should only serve as handmaiden to the Gospel, and not arrogantly assume the role of its interpreter. I prefer the Athanasian methodology which interprets the Gospel by means of the Gospel, and reject the arid Aristotelean rationalism of Thomism and the Neoplatonic emanantionist metaphysical abstractionism of the Dionysian-Palamites, the latter of which dares to elevate human philosophy as sovereign judge over the word of God.
I just noticed an interesting parallel to God as ὑποστάτης of his powers that is relevant to this discussion. In Wisdom 12:16-18, it says:
“For Thy power (ἰσχύς) is the beginning of righteousness (δικαιοσύνης ἀρχή), and Thy sovereignty over all (τὸ πάντων σε δεσπόζειν) maketh Thee (ποιεῖ) to be gracious unto all. 17 For when men will not believe that Thou art of a full power, Thou shewest Thy strength, and among them that know it Thou makest their boldness manifest. 18 But Thou, mastering Thy power (δεσπόζων ἰσχύος), judgest with equity, and orderest us with great favour: for power (τὸ δύνασθαι) is present to Thee (πάρεστι γάρ σοι) when Thou wilt.”
Here, “power” is presented as something distinct from God, almost as a separate object. It “acts,” is “mastered” and is “present” besides God. There’s also Sirach 43:27-33:
“We may speak much, and yet come short: wherefore in sum, He is all. 28 How shall we be able to magnify Him? for He is great above all his works. 29 The Lord is terrible and very great, and marvellous is His power (θαυμαστὴ ἡ δυναστεία αὐτοῦ). 30 When ye glorify the Lord, exalt Him as much as ye can; for even yet will He far exceed: and when ye exalt him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary; for ye can never go far enough. 31 Who hath seen him, that He might tell us? and who can magnify him as He is (καθώς ἐστι)?“
Here we find the classic distinction between God “as He is” and “His power.” The Lord is “great above all His works,” again suggesting a separation between God and His power.
A final quote from Josephus, a proud Jew from a priestly family raised in the best traditions of his people:
“Our legislator (viz. Moses)…represented God as unbegotten, and immutable, through all eternity; superior to all mortal conceptions in pulchritude: and, though known to us by His power (δυνάμει), yet unknown to us as to His essence (κατ᾽οὐσίαν).” (Against Apion II.17.167)
This suggests to me that there was a specific Hellenistic Jewish belief in God’s powers. Anyway, mull this over and let me know what you think.
This is a reply to the post on power:
By what power did God master His power? His power is almighty and without limit. Obviously this is anthropomorphizing divine graciousness, not an attempt to distinguish God from His power. The power is infinite, the works are finite. God is Spirit. We can only ‘know’ Him in the Spirit. To ‘know’ His essence is to know Him conceptually. Only infinite Intellect could know an infinite Nature. But that doesn’t mean we cannot encounter an infinite Nature. Or does it? The Eastern father’s generally believe that we cannot encounter an infinite Nature, while the Latin father’s generally believe that we can, but only ‘know’ it in a finite capacity.. Scripture gives us reasons to believe either way. I believe that it is better to say “we piously believe” than “we dogmatically know”, which is why I like Gregory Nazianzen, who said in regard to these matters, let each philosophize as he will. ’Dionysius’ was not a dogmatist. He said if there are better explanations for what he is trying to say, by all means speak. Gregory Palamas is the exception. He determined to dogmatize the ‘Dionysian’ theology as modified by himself, such that no others were allowed to philosophize as they wished. I am an anti-dogmatist, except for those things pertaining to the rule of faith. Speculating about whether God substantiates energies as participle processions, rather than God entering into us as in a sacred temple, and energizing graces without mediating subsistences, or mediating energies, is not something that should be made the subject of dogmatic definition, but Palamas forced the fight due to his arrogance and lack of humility.
Hi Thomas,
This is in reply to your last comment about the reasonableness of assuming a Proclean dependence on Dionysius. Forgive me in advance for the length, I wanted to be thorough and “put all cards on the table,” so to speak.
All the specific chronological objections you cite are addressed in the book. Dionysius is quoted long before the 530s. In fact, we have a pseudepigraphal work dating at the latest from the 520s called the Book of Holy Hierotheos, which was written to exploit the popularity of the Dionysian Corpus. Modern scholarship (including by Stiglmayr) has undoubtedly established that Dionysius was received as authentic by Orthodox, Monophysites, and Nestorians at this time. So the corpus must have been written significantly before the sixth century to gain such popularity and reputation.
As for your point about “biblical simplicity,” the Apostles did not categorically condemn philosophy but what Saint James calls “the wisdom that descendeth not from above” (3:15). Saint James himself says to “ask wisdom of God” (1:5). Saint John’s Gospel opens with a profound philosophical statement, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The earliest Christian apologist, Aristides of Athens, described God as “not born, not made, an ever-abiding nature without beginning and without end, immortal, perfect, incomprehensible, without name.” Saint Irenaeus (no Platonist) who was the disciple of Polycarp, the disciple of Saint John the Evangelist (to whom Christ revealed the depth of His wisdom), says, as I said above, that none of the prophets beheld God but saw “similitudes,” “figures,” “characters,” “dispositions” and “dispensations” of His glory (Against Heresies 4.20.11). Dionysius is not engaging in abstract speculation but grounds all of his exegesis on the scriptures, no different than what Saint Paul does when commenting upon Melchizedek or Habakkuk. I’ll show you an example of this method with DN 11, which has been the chapter at issue:
In DN 11.1, Dionysius introduces the topic of his chapter: the divine peace. He says that peace “unites together the higher of the conciliatory powers” (συναγωγῶν δυνάμεων), and all things together. He then cites a saying from the Apostle Justus calling the divine peace “ineffable.” This is similar to Philippians 4:7, “the peace of God which transcends all understanding,” so I have no reason to doubt it is an authentic apostolic fragment. Dionysius then describes God’s peace as a ray staying the same internally but multiplying itself as it proceeds forth. The very same imagery appears in DN 5.8 (where he clearly took the metaphor from Clementine Homily 17.8) and again in CH 1.2. Proclus quotes it in the In Parmenidem.
In DN 11.2, Dionysius speaks of peace being the “mainstay” (ὑποστάτις) of all things. This recalls DN 1.7, where he said that God is “all in all” and is hymned as “the ὑποστάτις of all things.” Dionysius goes on to say that all things through peace and love are brought into “unconfused and indivisible union,” an expression used ad verbatim by Proclus in another chapter of his In Parmenidem (and so seemingly not Chalcedonian in origin). Dionysius speaks of the divine peace “passing through” (διήκει) everything, even to the last (ταῖς ἐσχάταις ἀποπερατώσεσι), echoing DN 4.20, which says that the Good “extends itself to the most remote” (ἄχρι τῶν ἐσχάτων). He ends this section by discussing how each thing participates in God οἰκείως (in its own proper degree), an expression which occurs dozens of times throughout all his treatises in different ways.
In DN 11.5, Dionysius says that even those things that are “inimical to peace” possess “obscure images of a peaceful aspiration.” This again harkens back to DN 4.20: “the very man, who desires the very worst life, by the very fact of desiring, and desiring life, and looking to a best life, participates in the Good.” This is an idea shared by Origen in his On the Song of Songs and completely absent from the corresponding section of Proclus’ De malorum subsistentia. Dionysius then cites Colossians 3:11 and 1:20: Christ is “all in all” and “has reconciled all things to Himself, having made peace by the blood of His cross, whether the things on the earth or the things in the heavens.” Again, a perfectly apostolic sentiment that grounds his entire discussion.
In DN 11.6, Dionysius turns to a question Timothy had asked him, namely how it is that we can call God “peace itself” and the “cause of peace itself.” The first expression, he explains, is cataphatic, naming God “from existing things” while the second is apophatic, showing how God is above creation itself. This goes back to DN 1.5: “to none who are lovers of the Truth above all Truth is it permitted to celebrate the supremely-Divine Essentiality…but since, as sustaining source of goodness (ὡς ἀγαθότητος ὕπαρξις), by the very fact of Its being, It is cause of all things that be, from all created things must we celebrate the benevolent Providence of the Godhead.” Dionysius then attacks the notion of “causative essences or hypostases,” citing Deuteronomy 13:6 to this effect (“gods whom you and your fathers have not known”) before finally saying that God is the “cause” (ὑποστάτης) of His “providential powers,” which are “essentiating, vivifying, and deifying,” closely reprising what he said earlier on the subject in DN 11.1 and DN 5.2. He also uses the words “general” and “particular” (μερικῶν) to describe these providences, which connects the passage to DN 1.8 and DN 5.2. By contrast, Proclus says only that “the One is cause (ὑποστατικόν) of the henads and those things which participate in them.” A lot more cut-and-paste.
Dionysius’ section concludes by saying that “our divine instructors in holy things affirm that the Super-good and Super-divine Goodness and Deity Itself is mainstay even of the self-existent Goodness and Deity; affirming that the good-making and deifying gift issued forth from God (ἀγαθοποιὸν καὶ θεοποιὸν ἐκ θεοῦ προεληλυθυῖαν δωρεὰν).” Compare this to Saint James (1:17): “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights” (πᾶσα δόσις ἀγαθὴ καὶ πᾶν δώρημα τέλειον ἄνωθέν ἐστι καταβαῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν φώτων). Saint James teaches that God grants “goodness” to beings. So Dionysius is perfectly justified in calling God the “mainstay of goodness.”
Looking at the big picture, what does this analysis show? At every step, Dionysius grounds his discussion on scriptural sayings. It has consistent internal logic and is closely integrated with his wider treatise, both in terms of vocabulary (ὕπαρξις, ὑποστάτις, ὑποστάτης) and imagery. I find it very unlikely that Dionysius took three stray comments by Proclus (from two different treatises), “reverse-engineered” the context, and recast the whole discussion as an exegesis of Saint Paul and James’ Epistles. It seems much more reasonable to me to say that Proclus excerpted a handful of expressions from Dionysius, something he does many times elsewhere. Here are two examples:
In On First Alcibiades (II.153), Proclus writes:
“Therefore, the gods also love the gods: the senior love the inferior, but considerately; and the inferior loves the senior but suppliantly.”
In DN 4.20, Dionysius says:
“By reason of [the Beautiful and the Good], the less love the greater suppliantly, and those of the same rank, their fellows brotherly, and the greater, the less considerately.”
Proclus has clearly abbreviated Dionysius’ three-fold scheme. The notion of “triple hierarchies” is ubiquitous in Dionysius, so I find it hard to believe Dionysius took a random comment by Proclus that just happened to perfectly correspond to his doctrine and “fixed” the broken parallelism.
In De malorum, Proclus writes :
“This power does not want to remain in itself, but, as it were, brings forth that which the gods are allowed to engender, that is to say, all beings” (De Cousin, col. 209; Carlos and Steel, p. 65)
In the corresponding section of the Divine Names (actually in the very same paragraph as the preceding), Dionysius says:
“Love itself, the benefactor of things that be, pre-existing abundantly in the Good, did not permit itself to remain unproductive in itself, but moved itself to creation, as befits the abundance which is generative of all.” (DN 4.20)
In Oration 38.8, Saint Gregory cites “one of those who came before us” with regard to the Seraphic hymn, closely matching CH 6.4. In the sentence immediately following this quote, he says:
“Since goodness was not content to be moved solely by the contemplation of itself, but the Good must be poured out and go forth beyond itself to multiply the objects of Its beneficence, for this was essential to the highest Goodness, He first conceived the heavenly and angelic powers.”
As you can see, Saint Gregory’s text matches Dionysius’ a lot closer than Proclus’. Both talk about “movement” and “beneficence” in addition to goodness “remaining in itself.” Occam’s razor would say that Gregory cited Dionysius, and Proclus abbreviated Dionysius.
Addendum.
In DN 11.1. Dionysius refers to the divine peace as “bolts” fastening together creation:
“Passing indivisibly to the whole, [it] limits and terminates and secures everything, as if by a kind of bolts (κλείθροις), which bind together things that are separated; and do not permit them, when separated, to rush to infinity and the boundless, and to become without order, and without stability.”
So this reinforces my reading of ὑποστάτης as “mainstay” or “prop” rather than “substantiator.”
This is in reply to your remarks with respect to the Divine Name/Procession “Peace” as set forth in DN 11.1, which according to your interpretation indicates that God is “Hypostaten” in the sense of “mainstay”, for divine peace is said to be a unifying power which holds things together, and this being the case, it demonstrates that God is “Hypostaten” in the sense that He undergirds things and holds them in consistence and unity. That I take to be your argument.
I would answer you by pointing out that it is divine peace as divine procession that is identified in DN 11.1 as the immediate agency holding things in unity and consistence, and that it is the imparticiple God that is the ‘remote’ agent as it were, for those who are unified are unified only in the sense that they participate in divine peace, whereas God, properly speaking (according to this theological system), is imparticiple. So if it is your position that “mainstay” signifies “that which holds in unity and consistence”, it will be the divine procession that is the “Hypostaten”, properly speaking.
But observe that ‘Dionysius’ does not use the term “Hypostaten” within DN 11.1. Moreover, he never identifies any divine procession as a “Hypostaten” anywhere in the entirety of the Corpus Dionysiacum, which indicates that this is not how he understands the term “Hypostaten”, viz., as having anything to do with the divine processions themselves.
However, if we turn to DN 9.6, it will become clear what ‘Dionysius’ has in mind in referring to God as “Hypostaten”. Here he is speaking in reference to the divine name “similar”. He explains that God can be denominated as “similar” to Himself, but in respect to Himself as Cause of those things caused to be similar, He cannot be spoken of as similar. But those things that participate in the divine procession of similarity itself, can be spoken of as similar, as being of equal rank. God is said to “bequeath a divine similarity to those who turn to Him…by imitation according to their capacity”. Moreover, ‘the power of divine similitude turns all things toward God as their Cause’. Finally, “Almighty God becomes Cause of their being similar, and is ‘Hypostates’ of the self-existing Similarity itself’ (αὐτῆς
τῆς αὐτοομοιότητος ὑποστάτης).
Now if God is “Hypostates” in the theology of ‘Dionysius’ in the sense of “mainstay” of those who participate in the divine processions, according to your interpretation of DN 11.1, ‘Dionysius’ would have used ‘Hypostates” in DN 9.6 to demonstrate that He is “mainstay” of those beings who participate in the divine procession denominated ‘Similarity itself’ (αὐτῆς τῆς αὐτοομοιότητος). But that is not what he says in DN 9.6. He says rather, God is the Cause of those beings who imitate Him insofar as they participate in the divine procession known as ‘Similarity itself’, God Himself remaining transcendentally imparticiple, but as “Hypostates” of the divine procession known as “Similarity itself”, the super substantial God substantiates a divine participle principle which can in fact be participated, while He Himself cannot be participated by beings.
Let us examine DN 1.7, 11.2 and 11.6:
DN 1.7: ’Dionysius’ refers to God as “Hypostatis” of all (πάντων ὑποστάτις).
You say that this means “mainstay” because God is said to be “all in all” just prior to this.
Let’s see how translators render this: ENGLISH: J. Parker: ”producing” (all); C.E. Rolt: “Creator”; C. Luibheid: ”creator”; Hannon: ”principle substance”; LATIN: Marietti: ”omnium substantia principalis” (principal substance); Migne: ”procreans” (procreator).
ALSO: István Perczel (born 1957), a Hungarian scholar of Byzantine history and early Christianity and a hyperpolyglot (including Ancient Greek): “[In] Dionysius’ Christian Platonist system (. . .) the creating activity is not distributed among different divine entities or hypostases like in Proclus, but is attributed to the highest and universal cause of all things. Proclus’ Demiurge is a subordinate deity occupying a rather modest rank in the Diadochus’ sophisticated pantheon. But Dionysius’ “Producer (ὑποστάτης) of all things” is the supreme Godhead (. . .).” Cf. Perczel 2000: 494. [“Christian Insights into Plotinus’ Metaphysics and His Concept of Aptitude (Ἐπιτηδειότης).” Αkropolis: Journal of Hellenic Studies 1: 5–32. Perczel, István (2000).]
Thomas Aquinas: ”[Dionysius] says that God truly is praised as the principal substance of all things, inasmuch as he is the principle of existing for all things” – i.e. He causes all things to exist (viz., Creator). [Commentary On DN C.1, L.3, 100]
DN 11.2: The Greek text is a little unclear, because ‘Dionysius’ finished DN 11.1 speaking about Peace itself, not God. Thus Parker renders (ὅτι τῆς αὐτοειρήνης
καὶ τῆς ὅλης καὶ τῆς καθ᾽ ἕκαστόν ἐστιν ὑποστάτις) as: ”First then, this must be said, that It is mainstay of the self-existent Peace”, but this is absurd, that the self existent Peace is mainstay of itself. Thus the other English translators above render it: Rolt: ”God is the Fount of Very Peace and of all Peace”; Luibheid: ”God is the subsistence of absolute peace”; Hannon: ”it makes to subsist per se peace itself both whole and particular”. LATIN: Marietti: ”per se pacem…subsistere facit” (per se peace is made to subsist); Migne: ”per se pacis…effector sit ipse Deus” (God creates/ causes/makes peace itself).
YOU SAY: “Dionysius speaks of peace being the “mainstay” (ὑποστάτις) of all things.”
HOWEVER, Thomas Aquinas says: ”Then when he says, and first of all this must be said, he shows in particular the causality of the divine peace; and first, as regards CREATED peace itself, considered according to itself; second, as regards those things in which peace is found, at and that it makes all things cemented.
Therefore he [Dionysius] says, first, that this must be said first: that God makes (facit = make) there to be per se peace itself, considered in the abstract, considered both in the universal and in particular: for here to subsist is received commonly for to be: for there is not any created peace subsisting per se.
COMMENT: Aquinas understands this as God creates per se peace (or peace itself as a divine procession), because peace per se does not exist of its own within the created order.
George Pachymeres (1242 – ca. 1310), Byzantine scholar, Commentary on DN 11.2, in Migne’s Latin translation reads: ”First of all, therefore, we say that divine peace is the ineffable producer [effectricem = <fem.> one who creates/causes/makes] of peace itself”.
DN 11:6: ”Hypostaten”: J. Parker: ”mainstay”; Rolt: ”Fount”; Luibheid: ”subsistence of”; Hannon: ”substantifier”; LATIN: Marietti: ”substantificatorem (one who gives substance to)”; Migne: ”creatorem” (Creator) / effectionem (efficient cause) / constitutivam (constitutive).
Frankly, I can’t figure out what you are trying to say about the word “Hypostaten” in 11.6, other than to say that it means “Cause” (it doesn’t). Like ‘Dionysius’, your interpretation is vague when it comes to the actual question as to what the word “Hypostaten” actually and specifically means in DN 11.6, which impinges greatly upon the ontological status of the divine processions. Yes, ‘Dionysius’ says that they are providential powers of God, but he also refers to them as “Primary Beings”, which he has stated previously, in that they participate in Being itself (DN 5.5), and that God is their “Hypostaten” (DN 9.6, 11.1, 11.2, 11.6). He can’t seem to slow down his melodious prolixity of address and actually explain to his readers how these three constituent elements of his ontology actually amount to a cohesive doctrine. ”Hypostaten”, as I said, does not mean “Cause”, for ‘Dionysius’ goes out of his way to state that God is said to be “Life” or “Power” because He is the “Cause of all beings” (αἴτιος πάντων τῶν ὄντων), but that He is “Hypostaten” of Life and Power “as being over all things, superessentially transcending being, even the Primary Beings” ( ὡς ὑπὲρ πάντα καὶ τὰ πρώτως ὄντα ὑπερὼν ὑπερουσίως). Yes, “the good-making and deifying gift issued forth from God”, but what was its ontological status when it issued forth from God? He still hasn’t answered ‘Timothy’s’ question, and neither have you.
Fortunately, Thomas Aquinas applies his genius where Dionysius’ has failed his readers. Thomas says: “because per se life is not said simply, but manifoldly, it is not contrary that we should call God per se life or per se virtue; and again that we should call him the substantifier, that is, creator, of per se life or per se peace or per se virtue” (substantificatorem, idest creatorem per se vitae aut per se pacis aut per se virtutis).
For when we say that God is the substantifier of per se life and things of this sort, we praise him as the cause of all existing things from those existing things that most of all and first exist. For it is manifest that per se life is prior to a living thing and thus concerning the others.”[Comm. DN 11.6, C.11, L4, 928]
Later he explains: ”And because the unparticipated principle is the cause both of participations and of things participating, for this reason God is the substantifier both of participations and of things participating” (ideo Deus et participationum et participantium substantificator est). He has already explained that “substantificator” (Hypostates) means “Creator”. (C.11, L. 4, 933)
Thereafter he says: ”And God is the cause of all these things; and this is what he says: that the good, that is, God, first of all is said to be the substantifier of these, namely of per se life and per se being and things of this sort, as it is considered per se and absolutely; afterwards, of the whole of these, the same of universal being and like things; afterwards of these particulars, as of particular being or particular life; afterwards of those totally participating these, of universal living and universal existing; afterwards of those particularly participating these, as of this or that being or living thing” (C. 11, L. 4, 937). Here Thomas explains once more that God is taught by ‘Dionysius’ to be the Creator (Hypostaten) of the divine processions.
Then he says: ”Then when he says, and what is it necessary to say, he confirms the proposed solution through the sayings of others, and he says that it is not necessary to doubt about the things set forth, since some of the doctors of the divine and Christian religion, as Hierotheus and other disciples of the apostles, say this very thing” (C. 11, L. 4, 938).
Now if the vast majority of modern scholars are correct in attributing a great deal of borrowing from the writings Proclus on the part of the Pseudo Dionysius, the idea that “Hypostates” indicates “Creator” or “Substantiator” in On the Divine Names will be only too easy to understand, inasmuch as Proclus uses “Hypostates” with precisely this signification, as the following examples make clear:
As Saffrey-Westerlink remarked…“Proclus understands…[that] the One made the Limited and the Unlimited to come into existence.” Effectively [As a matter of fact], this existential interpretation…is common in Proclus:
Theology of Plato, III.8…: “Λέγει τοίνυν ὁ ἐν Φιλήβῳ Σωκράτης ὡς ἄρα θεὸς πέρατός ἐστι καὶ ἀπειρίας ὑποστάτης.“ [“As Socrates said in The Philebus, God is the one who gives subsistence/substance-giver to the Limited and to the Unlimited.”] (Concetta Luna, Syrianus as a Source for Proclus, from a series of articles appearing under the title of Proclus and the Platonic Theology, pp. 275-276.)
“Intellect gives subsistence to/gives substance to and sends forth Soul” [νοῦ πρόεισι και νοῦς ὑποστάτης ψυχῆς] (Proclus Diadochus, Elements of Theology, Proposition 194)
“the Father is the generator of the gods and the superessential henads [unities], but the maker of the essences and the substance-giver of beings” [ὁ…πατὴρ τῶν θεῶν ἔσται γεννητικὸς καὶ τῶν ὑπερουσίων ἑνάδων, ὁ δὲ ποιητὴς τῶν οὐσιῶν καὶ τῶν ὄντων ὑποστάτης]. (Proclus Diadochus, On the Theology of Plato, 5.53.4-5)
I do not have access to the original Greek texts, but I was easily able to find 4 different quotes where Proclus employs the word “Hypostates” in the sense of “Creator”. There could well be many more.
With respect to the evidence you are citing trying to show Proclean dependency upon ‘Dionysius’, I would have to ask, are you proficient in Greek? Do you hold advanced degrees in ancient philosophy/religion? Have you published research in peer reviewed publications?
It seems like many of the examples you cite are what one would expect from the Watchtower Magazine of the JWs, where evidentiary points that could point in many different directions are always interpreted to go in the direction you want them to go.
At least here in regard to the interpretation of “Hypostates” in the DN I have brought in numerous translators, Latin and English, to buttress my position, as well as reputable commentators such as Thomas Aquinas and George Pachymere.
I briefly looked up the work regarding Hierotheus, which I had seen something on before, but from what I could glean, scholars have good reason for locating that work and those of ‘Dionysius’ as relatively contemporaneous, which would certainly not support a first century claim for the Corpus Dionysiacum. And really, when you cited a word or phrase in the New Testament that might have some high philosophical resonance, and compared that with the kind of philosophical complexity that drips from every sentence within the Dionysian Corpus, as demonstrating that each could represent the same stage of conceptual development within the early Church, that is an absolute cop out, and not worthy of someone who aspires to be taken seriously as a scholar.
TO SUM UP: I was able to bring up a good deal of evidence in support of my understanding of the use of the word “Hypostates” in the DN. God only is identified as “Hypostates” in DN, and usually in regard to the divine processions themselves. The processions are never identified as “Hypostates”. Every translator or commentator I brought forward at some point in DN identified God as Creator in regard to being “Hypostates”. The Latin translation of George Pachymere’s commentary on DN 11.6 seems to agree with that of Aquinas in once more identifying God as “Creator” (Hypostaten) of the divine processions, and in identifying the Primary Beings with the divine processions, but I didn’t have time to parse it out and confirm it in the original Greek, which would just about have sealed the deal, if both Greek and Latin commentators agreed on this specific meaning of the text, but I don’t have anymore time to go over that tonight, so I will leave matters there for now, but I do believe I presented a substantial amount of information to support my interpretation of “Hypostates” in the Divine Names.
Ok, your reasoning about the “bolts” metaphor in DN 11.1 applying to the procession itself rather than to God qua hypostates is sound. I read Pachymeres on DN 6 (PG 3: 860A) and he seems to concur. I would also like to correct something I said above: upon re-reading DN 11.1 and looking at Pachymeres’ interpretation, I think “the more reverend of the conciliating powers” refers to the angels, not to the divine powers of God. You keep insisting that the πρώτως ὄντα are the divine energies, not the angels. We’ve already been over that, so I won’t add anything more.
All that being said, my point about the divine processions as a “gift” still stands. In DN 11.6, Dionysius says: “Our divine teachers say that Goodness and Divinity Itself (αὐτοαγαθότητα καὶ θεότητα) refer to the Good-making and Deifying gift (ἀγαθοποιὸν καὶ θεοποιὸν δωρεὰν).” There is a very similar thought that appears in Epistle 2 to Gaius: “How is He, Who is beyond all, both above Source of Divinity (θεαρχίαν) and above Source of Good (ἀγαθαρχίαν)? [This is so] provided you understand Deity and Goodness as the very substance (αὐτὸ τὸ χρῆμα/rem ipsam) of the Good-making and God-making gift (τοῦ ἀγαθοποιοῦ καὶ θεοποιοῦ δώρου)…by aid of which we are deified and made good.” In DN 11.1, the procession of peace is called εἰρηναρχία and εἰρήνης αἰτίαν.
In other words, the reason we can speak of God as “hypostates” of peace (or peace itself) is because this peace is viewed as a “gift.” You may translate hypostates however you like (as fount, source, substantiator, cause, maker), the point is that Dionysius grounds this theology on the Christian notion of grace being a “gift from God,” as Saint James writes (1:17): “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights.” Or Christ Himself: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” (John 14:27). Or Saint Paul: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)
Two authors can use the same word and interpret it differently. They can even quote eachother and adapt what the other says. For instance, when Saint Paul quotes Aratus saying that “we are Zeus’ offspring” he is not following the pantheistic sense of the original, but is adapting it to his transcendent understanding of God as creator.
Of course, everyone knows that Dionysius was actually lying and took hypostates from pagan philosophy. No matter that Dionysius repeatedly affirms that it is impermissible to use anything other than Holy Scripture to understand God, that he attacks secular wisdom and paganism every chance he gets, and that he frequently refers to the sources he quotes from. No matter that Dionysius’ theology is paralleled by other 1st-century sources. No matter that Proclus himself tells his audience that he has borrowed his arguments about evil from “those who came before” him and cites “someone” as the source of the “supersubstantial lights” expression. Who cares about comparative philology? No, can’t you see they used the same one word! We are 21st century academics with fancy degrees. Polyglots even! Saint Gregory Nyssa, Saint Basil, Saint Maximus, what did they know? God’s promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church was a lie, and people did not really know what true Christianity was until Luther appeared 15 centuries after the Crucifixion to save us from idolatry.
I’ll leave it to readers to determine which view sounds more like a conspiracy.
This is in reply to the post on “gift”:
BUT FIRST: I said in my last post that I had run out of time last night, and was hoping to find out how George Pachymeres interpreted DN 11.6, at least in regard to the Primary Beings. And this is what he says:
George Pachymeres: “From there he [Dionysius–ed.] continues and explains how he understands God to be Life itself, and Hypostaten of Life itself, and of Similarity itself, because this was also written [about] in the epistles, and Saint Timothy spoke about this. It is said of course that it is not contradictory to say God is Life itself, and the Hypostaten of Life itself; for God is also named from beings, as the Cause of things caused, and indeed from the Primary Beings. But the Primary Beings themselves are considered to be the supercosmic natures, the pure and primary participle divine gifts, [such as] Life, Immortality, and the rest.” (George Pachymeres, Commentary On DN 11.6)
Πρώτως (Primary) δὲ (But) ὄντα (Beings) οἶμαι (considered) αὐτὸν (themselves) εἰρηκέναι (I call) τὰς (the) ὑπερκοσμίους (supercosmic) φύσεις (natures), ὡς (as) πρώτως (Primary) καὶ (and) ἀκραιφνῶς (pure) τῶν (the) θείων (divine) δωρεῶν (gift) μετεχούσας (participation), ζωῆς (Life), ἀθανασίας (Immortality), καὶ (and) τῶν (the) λοιπῶν (the rest).
So it turns out that George Pachymeres agrees with Thomas Aquinas that the Primary Beings are none other than the divine processions, viz., Life itself, Immortality itself, etc.
Now Proclus calls the Supreme God (i.e. the Father) the Hypostates of the [Primary] Beings: ”ὁ…πατὴρ…τῶν ὄντων ὑποστάτης”. (Proclus Diadochus, On the Theology of Plato, 5.53.4-5)
He also teaches that the Primary Beings (viz., Being, Life, Intellect) are the archetypal causes of individual beings: ”The [Primary] Beings (των οντων) which subsist from themselves, subsist prior to those which are certain beings, by being common to all beings, and all archetypal causes, and not to certain beings, but simply, by being common to all of them [Proclus, Elements of Theology, Proposition 90]
And ‘Dionysius’, we observe, teaches that God is the “Hypostates” of the Primary Beings, in whom all individual beings, viz., angels, men, plants, animals and inanimate things, all participate in whole or in part (DN 11.6).
Now Proclus indicates in On the Theology of Plato 3.8 that he derived his doctrine of God as “Hypostates” from Plato’s Philebus: [Theology of Plato, III.8]: “Λέγει τοίνυν ὁ ἐν Φιλήβῳ Σωκράτης ὡς ἄρα θεὸς πέρατός ἐστι καὶ ἀπειρίας ὑποστάτης.“ / “As Socrates said in The Philebus, God is Hypostates to the Limited and to the Unlimited.”] (See Concetta Luna, Syrianus as a Source for Proclus, from a series of articles appearing under the title of Proclus and the Platonic Theology, pp. 275-276.)
Furthermore, in Proclus, the Limited and the Unlimited are transcendent principles subsisting above Being itself, which combine with one another to create the Mixed, and the Mixed = the Primary Beings (Being itself, Life itself, Intellect itself).
Plato’s Philebus was written in the 5th century B.C., and Proclus openly acknowledges Plato as his source for the doctrine of a superior level of existence acting as “Hypostates” to substantiate a lower level of existence.
So Proclus, relying upon Plato as a source, teaches that the Supreme God is the Hypostates of the Primary Beings (viz., Being itself, Life itself, etc.), and we observe also that ‘Dionysius’ in DN 11.6 teaches that God is the “Hypostaten” of the Primary Beings (viz., Being itself, Life itself, etc.).
You stated in your last post that “Dionysius repeatedly affirms that it is impermissible to use anything other than Holy Scripture to understand God, that he attacks secular wisdom and paganism every chance he gets”.
Well if the source of Proclus’ doctrine in regard to the Supreme God as “Hypostates” of the Primary Beings is from Plato’s 5th century B.C. work The Philebus, and ‘Dionysius’ is writing in the first century A.D., and he disdains pagan philosophy, where then did he get the very same idea that God is “Hypostaten” of the Primary Beings (vs., Being itself, Life itself, etc.) that Proclus had learnt from Plato? You would have to posit the existence of a pre-Christian Jewish wisdom tradition which taught that God is the “Hypostates” of the Primary Beings (viz., Being itself, Life itself, etc.), and then go about proving that such a wisdom tradition actually existed, to avoid implicating ‘Dionysius’ in a lie with regard to the source of his teaching regarding God as Hypostaten of the Primary Beings. And inasmuch as there was no such pre-Christian Jewish wisdom tradition which taught that particular doctrine, either ‘Dionysius’ is a first century Christian author who is lying to his readers when he says that he disdains pagan philosophy, and that it is impermissible to use anything other than Holy Scripture to understand God, OR [THE CORRECT ANSWER] he cribbed his doctrine about God being the “Hypostates” of the Primary Beings from Proclus Diadochus, as scholars have been saying with near unanimity for over 100 years now. And thus ‘Dionysius’ is exposed as having misrepresented himself to his readers on a rather large scale: he is not Dionysius the Areopagite; he did not live in the first century A.D.; he did not correspond with St. Paul’s companion Timothy about matters which are discussed in the writings of Plato; he was not a witness to the solar eclipse which was said to have occurred at the time of Christ’s crucifixion; he was not present with the apostles at Mary’s dormition; he did not correspond with Titus nor with the Apostle John; nor did he limit his discussion of the things about God to what is taught in the Sacred Oracles; and yes he was born into the world sequent to Proclus Diadochus; and yes he drank heartily from the well of the Procline metaphysics; and yes he was a late 5th century – early 6th century Christian Neoplatonist, as modern scholarship long ago confirmed!
But to be charitable to the man, he appears to have been a member of a secretive Syriac wisdom tradition, and a likely Christian convert from paganism, who may have hidden his true identity under symbols that were only understood by members of his esoteric circle, which perhaps were misinterpreted when his writings reached the wider world. It is speculated by some scholars that after Justinian closed Plato’s Academy in Athens, that the Pseudo Dionysius, who evidently had continued to find spiritual value in the rich intellectual heritage which had been bequeathed to Byzantine Christendom by Hellenic civilization, deliberately conjoined the Greek speculative metaphysics which had been such a rich source of inspiration to him with his adopted religious communion, in quest of a theosophical vision of the Good and the True and the Beautiful, and had achieved such a marvel of syncretic beauty in the works which go into making up the Corpus Dionysiacum that he ‘inspired Abbot Suger’s program for a new architecture, the Gothic cathedral’ (Standford Encyclopedia of Religious Philosophy, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite).
The Pseudo Dionysius was one of if not the most graceful Christian author who ever wrote. There is a profound and magnetic charm to his writings. From my acquaintance, the Syriac writers far outshine all others in expressive beauty of language. But whereas St. Paul wrote that he vowed to know nothing but Christ crucified, Christ as suffering Savior plays very little role in the Dionysian writings, which are profoundly metaphysical, but grant very little place for meditation upon the saving ministry and passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I find Martin Luther to be an even more bilious and arrogant and divisive figure than Gregory Palamas the Dogmatist, for Luther thought he knew the Gospel even better than its author the Holy Spirit, and dared to exclude books from the New Testament which refuted his teachings on salvation by faith alone. But you know what, there was wisdom in Luther’s rejection of the God of the schoolmen, which had turned the Christian religion into something of a metaphysical abstraction. Indeed, there was stinging rebuke in Luther’s pithy statement: ”Dionysius is most pernicious: he Platonizes more than he Christianizes.“
Beautiful as Dionysius’ Christian Neoplatonist theosophy was, his vaunted hierarchical economy was refuted by the Scriptures, which taught that the seraph cleansed the Prophet Isaiah of his sins, when his “system” demanded that it be a member of the lowliest angelic class. Rather than admit his error, ‘Dionysius’ had the effrontery to suggest that God had deceived the prophet into thinking it was a seraph, when it was really one of the lowliest angels who had performed God’s will upon him, instead of admitting that his pretty world building did not harmonize with the Biblical record.
A good scholar squarely faces the truth, and assesses the good and the bad in anyone’s endeavor. The Eastern Orthodox love to lay into Augustine and Aquinas, but demonstrate that they can dish it out but that they cannot take it when the fire of criticism is directed back at their ecclesiastical heroes and their own unexamined theological assumptions.
As for the processions being identified with the Primary Beings, Thomas Aquinas preceded me in that view by nearly 800 years, and C.E. Rolt by over a century. Daniel Heide also concurs with me in this matter. The only difference is that I critique the notion that something can be both onta and energeia at one and the same time. I sense that Aquinas harbored doubts that ‘Dionysius’ had explained the ontological status of the divine processions in a satisfactory manner, but out of respect for ‘Dionysius’, whom he admired greatly, and who was at the peak of his renown and authorititative status within the ancient Churches of Christendom during the period of the high middle ages, he opted not to give voice to them, and satisfied himself with Dionysius’ appeal to authority, as having adequately expressed himself on the matter.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that the doctrine of divine gifts of grace is in harmony with the Gospel. The doctrine that these gifts proceed from God as Hypostaten and are at the same time participle energies in their own right, and likewise participate in a metaphysical suppositum denominated Absolute Being is completely Unbiblical.
Somehow the Church prospered for centuries before the Dionysian writings became well known. They ought not be made the subject of idolatry, when their own author admits that things he discourses upon within his writings can be better said by others. ’Dionysius’ seamlessly interweaves Biblical themes with pagan metaphysical speculation in pursuit of a theosophic vision of the Good and the True and the Beautiful, but his Christian Neoplatonic religious synthesis represents a profound transformation in the understanding of the faith, as far as I am concerned, and I am as free to critique the Corpus Dionysiacum as any Eastern Orthodox Christian believer is to critique the writings of Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, and O how unsparing they have been toward these holy men over so many years now!
Action generates reaction. Criticism generates criticism. It comes with the territory. Do not make an idol out of the ‘Dionysian’ legend. Let truth always be your guide, and if that means that nearly the whole Church East and West fell for the Dionysian imposture hook, line and sinker, so be it. The academic resources that are available both to you and to myself, much less to the top line scholars, during this day and age, far outstrip what Basil, Gregory, and Maximus had to work with in their own day. So ‘Dionysius’ has been displaced from the place of prominence he once held amongst the celebrated theologians, on unearned authority. This only proves that God is just. He still has his many admirers, even if he has lost his position as unquestioned transmitter of a hidden apostolic wisdom tradition. Christ, not ‘Dionysius’ and his theosophy, nor Thomas Aquinas and his scholastic philosophy, is the object of our faith. At the end of his life, Aquinas realized that all his endeavors in comparison with true divine revelation were but straw. Amen, even so, amen!
Alright, I don’t want to end this on a sour note, so think we can agree on your final sentiments 🙂
I personally remain unconvinced that Dionysius copied Proclus. Dionysius presents his thoughts as a straghtforward exegesis of the Scritpures, and I think it’s perfectly normal to take them at face value. When I read his corpus for the very first time, I did not get the sense that he was writing on the backdrop of a centuries-long developed theological tradition. The “theologians” he refers to are consistently the prophets and the Apostles, as we would expect from an Apostolic father. His language is unusual, fresh, and unique in Patristic literature, at the same time biblical and learned, just like we would expect from an Athenian convert of Saint Paul. His system has a beautiful simplicity, viewing God as being fully immanent but at the same time fully transcendent, whereas Proclus’ system adds numerous (superfluous in my view) accretions in an attempt to salvage the worship of the ancient gods. Thus, it seems much more straghtforward to me to posit that Proclus excerpted some imagery and ideas from Dionysius than to believe that Dionysius was a dishonest forger who cobbled together his writings from the most reviled pagan author and recast them as a scriptural commentary. The loftiness of his thoughts and consistent idiosyncratic voice weighs against this thesis (as do numerous internal details). I also reject the modern academic bias which views Christianity as being indebted to pagan thought. After studying the entire 400-year history of the Dionysian debate, I am convinced that Dionysius was dismissed too quickly and deserves a rehabilitation like Saint Ignatius got.
In any case, we are all entitled to our own educated opinions and I enjoyed the exchange. God bless.
Well evangelos55, you showed a lot of knowledge of source material in your posts and an easy ability to adapt, which are all to the good. If you accept Pachymere’s commentary on DN 11.6 that Dionysius is teaching that the divine processions are the Primary Beings, and meditate on the argument laid out by me that Proclus avers that his source for the idea that God is Hypostates of the Primary Beings is the writings of Plato, and bear in mind that Dionysius is teaching the same doctrine, it will be impossible to sustain the idea that Dionysius is a first century Christian author, and he will have to have derived this notion from pagan sources. All you need do is peruse the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Dionysius and the evidence for 5th – 6th century Dionysian authorship is overwhelming, his utilization of the language of theurgy, descriptions of the liturgy in use at the time, and so many other indications are given just in that one article. My single argument is just one more indication of a vast collection of evidence pointing to Dionysius as a 5th – 6th century Christian author, but I have to say it’s a pretty solid argument just on its own merits.
When I was a grad student in theology 17 years ago, I couldn’t understand why we were reading so much academic commentary on the writings of the fathers, because if we came to theology school to learn about God, only the fathers were going to lead us to the goal. But I’ve adjusted my opinion since then. While most academic papers are a waste of time (and these should be excised from graduate student reading lists), the top line people in the field are doing tremendous research throwing light on so many areas of patristic commentary, ferreting out the pseudonymous works from those correctly attributed, helping to see the wider historical and cultural context in which the fathers wrote, exploding pious myths and accretions to tradition. I’m glad to know that it was a myth that the apostles came together and each recited a line from the longer version of the Apostles Creed used in the West, and don’t want to live as a child believing such pious nonsense. Reality is much more interesting. The EO Church has its own accretion of pious fraudulent beliefs such as first century Dionysian authorship that it too needs to let go of, but it tends to be so wedded to the notion of tradition, that it has a hard time of letting go of untrue beliefs which had entered into the tradition, in fear of casting a threat to the whole of tradition. As long as the true core of the tradition is solid meat (i.e. that which was founded by Christ and the apostles), we can do without the garnishments (Origen’s and Basil’s and Gregory’s and Dionysius’ and Maximus’ and Gregory Palamas’ and Augustine’s and Aquinas’ adaptation of elements of Greek speculative metaphysics) that have been placed upon the solid meat, or at least not place so many garnishments upon the solid meat that we can no longer taste the solid meat itself.
And thanks to our back and forth, I have been able to clarify the relation subsisting between the Proclean Henads and Primary Beings and the Dionysian divine processions that I have been searching for for nearly a year now. So thank you for pushing my researches where they properly needed to be extended. And Godspeed!
My comment on the debate between Evangelos and Thomas is that it appears Thomas is backwards engineering shis objections based upon philosophical abstractions and how one system or thinker corrects another (ironically something he originally critiqued as his reason to be a Protestant), but not based upon a historical methodology or lexical categories.
It does make me think whether the issue is that the people interested in Dionysius are philosophical as opposed to historical thinkers, and as a result try to discern authenticity philosophically instead of historically. In effect, using the wrong tool for the job.
My reaction to your comment on the debate is that you have your facts wrong. I am Roman Catholic (suffering under the current Pope), and hold an MA degree in Theology from the Catholic University of America in Washington DC.
Appreciation for the Protestant critique of metaphysisizing the Gospel does not make me a Protestant. It was Tertullian who said all the way back in the early 3rd century: ”what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”
My interest is in the longstanding debate between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics with respect to the uncreated light of God, whether it is energy (EO) or essence (RC), and the related question of what is it that is signified by the vision of God in the age to come, encounter with a divine person or merely that person’s proceeding energies.
And like the issue of the Filioque, it has to do with the proper interpretation of the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D., specifically the article which states that the Son of God is ‘only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light Co-essential (homoousian) with the Father’, which constitutes the first and most important creedal affirmation in all of Christendom, upon which all others have their basis.
The debate then, is whether the Roman Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox stayed faithful to the teaching of the Nicene fathers in their dispute with the Arian sectaries.
The Palamites ground their claim to fealty to the oldest tradition of teaching within the Church by citing their fealty to the teaching of the Pseudo Dionysius, upon whose teachings of divine procession Gregory Palamas formulated his own theology of divine energetic procession. By demonstrating that ‘Dionysius’ had plotted out the data of the Gospel upon a Neoplatonic metaphysical framework, it can be demonstrated that the chief Palamite formularies are of Neoplatonic provenance, and therefore have no dogmatic value whatsoever in determining the contents of the Christian faith, though many find the Dionysian framework fruitful for contemplation of the truths of the Christian religion. Thereby the Palamite anathemas against those who question his teachings are shown to be without merit, since his teachings are riven with Neoplatonic ontology.
This was demonstrated by showing that Dionysius’ understanding that God is the Hypostaten (Substantiator) of the Primary Beings (Being itself, Life itself, etc.) as set forth in DN 11.6, as confirmed by the Byzantine scholar George Pachymeres, as well as by Thomas Aquinas, two of Dionysius’ most renowned commentators, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that ‘Dionysius’ derived this teaching from pagan sources, for the same exact thing is taught by Diadochus Proclus in Elements of Theology and in On the Theology of Plato, who states that he derived his own teaching from the writings of Plato, specifically from the Philebus, and inasmuch as Plato lived 400+ years before Christ, it is impossible that ‘Dionysius’ derived his teaching in regard to this matter from Christian sources, unless they too derived them from Plato. This completely rules out a first century dating of the Corpus Dionysiacum. And since the divine processions as formulated by Proclus represent a consolidated adaptation of the Proclean Henads and Primary beings, the Henads representing divine participle principles existing above Being/beings, mediating between beings and the imparticiple God, and the Primary Beings representing the participle and substantiating principle for individual beings themselves, the Palamite claims to have taught apostolic doctrine collapse utterly, and the EO Church is demonstrated to have departed from the teaching of the Council of Nicea in having denied that the Divine Light is synonymous with God’s essence as taught in the Creed, and not His proceeding energy as taught by Gregory Palamas.
Conceptually, the Palamites are teaching that essence differs from energy, and also that the divine energies are onta (= being = essence) in their own right, which is logically absurd, but they are forced into this affirmation by consolidating too many ontological notions from the Platonists into their concept of divine energy as participle procession.
There you have it, an argument based upon BOTH historical and philosophical considerations!
My reaction to your reaction to his comment is you’re both on the wrong side of the Greco-Latin schism-heresy-apostasy: Greeks eversince 877: Latins eversince 896: which means none of y’all have Apostolic Succession which means there’s no Pope to suffer under as proven by the Church’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Marks alone which the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox, the Latin uncatholics, and the protestants alike don’t have; nor does a “degree” mean anything to Christians; nor did the Apostles ever go to college or seminary.
Christ Jesus’ and Apostles’ use of and reliance on the SeptuaGint and their Successors’ translation of the SeptuaGint into the Peshitta are why the Christians’ New TestaMent’s quotes match the Judeans’ Old TestaMent’s Texts and the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox’, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox’, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox’ new perjuries’ quotes match their old perjuries’ texts while apostates Hieronymus’ and William TynDale’s reliance on the “masoretic” texts are why Latin cultists’ and protestants’ new perjuries’ quotes contradict their old perjuries’ texts which is why the Latin uncatholics and the protestants hold to many more heresies than the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox hold to.
TerTillianus was a Hellenizer; not a Christian.
Thomism and Palamism are 2 sides of the side coin.
All 8 Ecumenical Synods settled all these matters before the 877-896 Greco-Latin schism-heresy-apostasy: Greek schism in 877: Latin schism in 896: and not in the apostates Thomas Aquinas’ or Gregorius Palamas’ favors either.
Which cult do you belong to?
None. I’m an OrthoDox SedeFinitIst SedeVacantIst. I don’t babble-on. I don’t worship or invoke the dead. I don’t carry amulets. I don’t worship leavened bread or alcoholic fermented yeasted wine idols. I don’t “pray” with pagan, mortal sinners, schismatics, heretics, or apostates or go anywhere near their meetinghouses.
I wrote that snide rejoinder because of your stinging use of language in your first post to me…but I found we have certain commonalities and I want to encourage you to keep challenging the suppositions of those who would set up metaphysics as judge over the Gospel!
I didn’t ask why you wrote that snide language. Our commonalities are the result of certain of y’all stealing certain Dogmas y’all like from us; not the other way around.
I agree with Padre Pio, who saw Vatican II as doing great harm to the Church, whose bad fruitage is being further witnessed under the abominations of Francis, who is contemplating further secularization of the Church before he passes on, and actually installed a priest who wrote erotic literature as his prefect for the doctrine of the faith, allowed a statue of a pagan deity in the Vatican, and now with the trans-prostitute funeral service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, what does it tell you about the changes that have been wrought by Vatican II and accelerated under Francis? I have generally attended the Latin liturgy, because it was impossible for these type of sacrileges to go on under the ancient rite, but once again Francis has banned the Latin rite because he wants to deprive those who object to remaking the Church in Satan’s image of their spiritual resources. How interesting that a statue of St. Peter in Francis’ former diocese in Argentina was struck by lightning on the day that he signed off on homosexual blessings in the Church.
I didn’t ask why you wrote that snide language. Our commonalities are the result of certain of y’all stealing certain Dogmas y’all like from us; not the other way around.
I never argued for the “defectibility” of any Seat. I said the “pornocracy” proves the Finish of the Seat of Rome.
The city of Rome apostatized and consequently lost Apostolic Succession due to “pornocracy” in 896.
The city of ConStantinoPolis apostatized and consequently lost Apostolic Succession which means Moscow never had the SacerDotium due to Photianism in 877.
The city of Alexandria apostatized and consequently lost Apostolic Succession due to EuTychianism in 444.
The city of AntiOch apostatized and consequently lost Apostolic Succession due to Nestorianism in 428.
The city of JeruSalem apostatized and consequently lost Apostolic Succession due to Nestorianism in 422.
You’ll do well to crack open the WebSter’s Dictionary and research the difference between Vacancy vs defectibility. You’re not permitted to interact with me until then.
On Sat, Mar 30, 2024 at 3:11 PM Miguel PasaMano < migueljuanpasamano@gmail.com> wrote:
Pio was no Christian thus was no Padre thus is no San. He had the stigmata which means he was cursed; not Blessed. He denied the Salvation Dogma. He told a girl are AntiEpiscopalian mom went to Heaven and jewish dad went to Purgatory which means didn’t go to Hell when they died which is heresy. He celebrated the novus ordo sæculorum nigrum massæ under the apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Paul VI” in 1965 before he died in 1968 before it was compulsory in 1969 before he was AntiCanonized by the apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “John Paul II” the Terrible in 2002.
This made you sound Protestant, I read later down thread you identify as RC:
“Herein lies the wisdom of Protestantism, to have realized how the theologians had produced a vast abstraction, and the resulting conviction on their part to return to the plain Gospel. Prayer, self denial, love of God and neighbor, these are what makes a saint, not the acknowledgement of the Dionysian-Palamite metaphysical jargon as Church dogma which Palamas and his partisans had forced upon the Church at large, with the attendant anathemas for those who would not bend the knee to their metaphysical abstractions. I hold no brief for Thomism, which constitutes yet another metaphysical abstraction.”
To CT:
My idea was that Luther was onto something when he sensed that the Latin theology which he had been studying in theology school had become too caught up in metaphysical abstractions and had lost touch with the simple Gospel. He wasn’t too well versed in Eastern Christian theology, but the same issues plagued the East as did the West, where Gregory Palamas and his followers had forced the idea upon the Church that if one did not accept the Christian Neoplatonic metaphysical speculations of the Pseudo Dionysius and of Maximus the Confessor as the authentic expression of the Gospel, one was an accursed heretic subject to ex-communication from the sacraments. How did matters come to such a head? Something was clearly out of whack. And it was from the Greeks after all whom the Latins had learned to metaphysisize the Gospel, with an Aristotelean twist with the transmission of that particular philosophers’ writings to Western Europe via Muslim Spain. But the development of the Cathedral schools and the rationalizing method in scholastic theology, whatever its drawbacks in the field of theology, became the basis of the modern scientific revolution, so there is always positive and negative to assess in any situation.
All that said, while Luther had a profound insight that the school men had turned the Christian religion into something of a metaphysical abstraction, he immediately contravened his own wholesome insight by propagating his own distorted metaphysics as it were with respect to his notion of man’s inherently depraved will and the related idea of de facto double predestination, which perverted the Gospel entirely. Calvin systematized the doctrine of double predestination and made it the organizing principle of his Institutes of the Christian religion, and produced a kind of mass psychosis amongst his followers, who in a fascinating twist doubled down on the works righteousness which Luther had so forcefully – and too forcefully – condemned in what they took to be a hopeful sign that they had been ‘predestined’ by God to salvation. Calvin’s rigid and austere and socially domineering and imperious mindset had projected onto God a personality characterized by dominating and domineering will which could not in any way be opposed, and therefore he reasoned that God must have predetermined the creation and damnation of all those who had received the judgment of condemnation, wholly perverting the Gospel teaching that God is just and that God is love, and wills to save all (and God being love itself, He allowed men and angels the freedom of will to choose to return the love that he had shown in creating them in His own image), and perversely denied Christ’s own testimony that He had willed to gather all under his wing as a mother hen her chickens, but that certain men willed not – this will on the part of men to contravene the will of God to save all men constituting for Luther and Calvin God’s ‘hidden majestic will’ as Luther so perversely described it, God’s ‘hidden majestic will’ having predestined certain men and women to reject His expressed will in the Gospel to save all men. What more perverse blasphemy could there be against God than this, and what greater contradiction of their own doctrine of Sola Scriptura, to posit a ‘hidden majestic will’ in God that contracts His will as expressed in Sacred Scripture? Damnable heresy! This ‘hidden majestic will’ of God which Luther had dreamed up according to a distorted view of God’s free grace was a thousand times worse blasphemy and calumny against the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a distortion of the Apostle’s teaching that God is love than all of the the abstract metaphysization of the Gospel which had been indulged in by the Greek and Latin theologians in the preceding fourteen centuries! These distorted notions of God’s will which had been propagated by Luther and Calvin were so utterly perverse that over time most Protestants have abandoned them, to their own credit.
So no, I hold no brief for Protestantism, especially for its chief founders, other than Luther’s initial insight that things had gotten distorted in the gospels of the school men, and that a return to the simple gospel was in order, which, unfortunately, he can hardly be said to have practiced, importing his own delusive distortions into his interpretation of the Gospel mysteries, who had such a perverted understanding of the notion of God’s free grace that he could state ‘sin boldly, but believe and be saved’, which whatever allowance for hyperbole might be made in respect to this saying, is a gross distortion of Christ’s admonition that we ‘be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect’.
My reaction to your reaction to his comment is you’re both on the wrong side of the Greco-Latin schism-heresy-apostasy: Greeks eversince 877: Latins eversince 896: which means none of y’all have Apostolic Succession which means there’s no Pope to suffer under as proven by the Church’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Marks alone which the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox, the Latin uncatholics, and the protestants alike don’t have; nor does a “degree” mean anything to Christians; nor did the Apostles ever go to college or seminary.
Christ Jesus’ and Apostles’ use of and reliance on the SeptuaGint and their Successors’ translation of the SeptuaGint into the Peshitta are why the Christians’ New TestaMent’s quotes match the Judeans’ Old TestaMent’s Texts and the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox’, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox’, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox’ new perjuries’ quotes match their old perjuries’ texts while apostates Hieronymus’ and William TynDale’s reliance on the “masoretic” texts are why Latin cultists’ and protestants’ new perjuries’ quotes contradict their old perjuries’ texts which is why the Latin uncatholics and the protestants hold to many more heresies than the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox hold to.
TerTillianus was a Hellenizer; not a Christian.
Thomism and Palamism are 2 sides of the side coin.
All 8 Ecumenical Synods settled all these matters before the 877-896 Greco-Latin schism-heresy-apostasy: Greek schism in 877: Latin schism in 896: and not in the apostates Thomas Aquinas’ or Gregorius Palamas’ favors either.
Well there seems to be some common ground that we are both against the metaphysisizing of the Gospel.
St. Paul stated that Christ appointed some as teachers within the Church (1 Cor 12:28; Eph 4:11). This is a particular grace (if used appropriately). Education can be a great aid to the office of teacher – would you go to a doctor who did not have a proper education in his field of endeavor?
Inspired interpretation of the Gospel does not require a degree – only the assistance of Spirit of God (cf. 1 Cor 12:3). However, the art of distinguishing genuine from pseudonymous authorship of texts, dating of texts, critically assessing the work of theologians, and so forth greatly depends upon accumulation of the necessary educational tools to carry on that particular type of research, much like a research scientist working on a cure for various physical maladies that afflict mankind. To succeed at any art, one must have natural endowment, proper instruction in the principles of the art, and proper disposition to succeed at one’s craft.
But thanks for the endorsement of my rejection of attempts on the part of any and all (Gregory Palamas especially) to elevate metaphysics as sovereign judge over the Gospel.
Well it can “seem” all it want but that doesn’t make it so.
The (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox AntiChurch, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox AntiChurch, the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox AntiChurch, the (“pornocratic”) Latin uncatholic AntiChurch, and the protestants all contradict each other in y’all ingesis because y’all have 0 claim to the Bible because y’all not the Acts 9:31 Biblical Catholic Church which Pope Doctor Saint Gregorius I the Great DiaLogIst TheoLogian called the OrthoDox Church.
You seem to be filled with self righteous pride and a palpable dislike of all who are not of your persuasion. The Apostle John said: ”He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now.” (1 Jn 2:9)
Your pseudohumility is useless to Christians. Christians have no fraternity with unBelievers which includes all heretics and all apostates. Satan can also quote Scripture. You’re trying to insert yourself into a history you were never even part of or were always on the wrong side of.
In the interests of good scholarship, I have to issue the following CORRECTION:
Yesterday I had a look at Plato’s Philebus. Although Proclus states in On the Theology of Plato 3.7 (3.8?) Greek text [3.3 Thomas Taylor translation] that Plato teaches in the Philebus that God is the Hypostates of the Limited and the Unlimited, Plato does not himself refer to God as “Hypostates”, which gives a little wiggle room to those who wish to argue for 1st century Dionysian authorship. On the other hand, Plato uses the words “Maker” (τὸ ποιοῦν) and “Producer/Creator” (δημιουργοῦν) of the Limited and the Unlimited in Philebus 27 A-B. So my argument that Proclus derived his understanding of God as “Hypostaten” directly from Plato’s Philebus is not valid, although it is clear that Proclus’ notion of God as “Hypostates” definitely comprehends the notions of “Maker” and “Demiourgoun/Creator/Fashioner” as set forth in Plato’s Philebus.
On the other hand, this does indeed demonstrate that Proclus understands “Hypostates” (ὑποστάτης) in On the Theology of Plato 3.7 to mean Maker/Fashioner/Creator, and this should be borne in mind when assessing the Pseudo Dionysius’ use of this term in the Divine Names, especially DN 5.4, for here ‘Dionysius’ refers to God as “Substantiating Cause [ὑποστάτις αἰτία], and Creator/Fashioner of beings (καὶ δημιουργός ὄντος)”, which would appear to be devastating for the Palamite doctrine that the divine energies (as understood by ‘Dionysius’) are uncreated, for ‘Dionysius’ identifies God as both material and formal cause of the Primary Beings, as “Substantiating Cause” (material) and as “Demiurgos” (formal cause), for technically speaking, in Platonic theology a Demiurge is one who fashions pre-existing material into various forms, and God, according to ‘Dionysius’, first substantiates existence per se, and as Demiourgos fashions it into specific forms. This is said in respect to ontological, and not necessarily to temporal sequence. If God then according to ‘Dionysius’ is Demiurgos of the Primary Beings (DN 5.4, 11.6), Palamas’ divine energies as derived from the teaching of ‘Dionysius’ cannot be uncreated, and his arguments that ‘Dionysius’ taught that they are uncreated are all to no purpose, since ONCE AGAIN he ignores inconvenient passages in the writings of prior fathers he cites in support of his own doctrines.
Christians couldn’t care less what the Hellenizers teach about God unless it’s to refute them.
That’s the point, to prove to the Palamites that their doctrine which is rooted in ‘Dionysius’ who cribbed it from the Neoplatonists, not the Gospel, and thus has no claim to dogma.
That’s the point I keep trying to drill into these Thomist Latins’ and Palamist Greeks’ heads. This is 1 of many areas Richard Ibranyi does great work in but, if he were consistent about, not just that, but also, the desecrations, and also, the simony, he’d’ve had to at least take the 1012 SedeVacantIst Position.
That’s the point I keep trying to drill into these Thomist Latins’ and Palamist Greeks’ heads. This is 1 of many areas Richard Ibranyi does great work in but, if he were consistent about, not just that, but also, the desecrations, and also, the simony, he’d’ve had to at least take the 1012 SedeVacantIst Position.
In response to : ”That’s the point I keep trying to drill into these Thomist Latins’ and Palamist Greeks’ heads.”:
As a well know politician once said…drill baby drill!
all politicians are scum. Christians don’t “vote”. The pagans invented “democracy” and “republic”. That’s their system.
You wrote: ”all politicians are scum. Christians don’t “vote”.”
St. Peter wrote: ”Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme…” (1 Pet 2:13), and:
“Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.” (1 Pet 2:17)
If the ordinance of man according to the US Constitution is that citizens (and St. Paul claimed the right to appeal to Caesar because he was a Roman citizen – Acts 25:11) are to vote for their leaders, it is entirely licit for Christians to vote for their governing officials.
If you say “all politicians are scum”, you are not honoring the king, as St. Peter taught, but are following a gospel of hate that was not taught by Christ and the apostles.
And if you respond to this post with further invective, you will be failing to give heed to the Apostle James’ admonition: ”If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.” (Jas 1:26)
all politicians are indeed scum. you can’t be a Christian and a politician at the same time. you can’t access the oval office without the jews having blackmail material over you. noone can. no Israelite King was ever “voted” in.
You misquoted the “received” texts; not the New TestaMent.
Here’s what the New TestaMent actually teaches.
Matthew 6:24:
“No man can serve 2 masters. For either he will hate the 1 and love the other or he will honor the one and neglect the other. Ye cannot serve God and man.”
Acts 5:29:
“God Is to Be Obeyed; rather than men.”
Acts 25:11:
“For, if I be an offender, or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die: but, if there be none of these things, whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto Cæsar.”
NOTE! Apostle Saint Paul placed the impossible burden of “proof” of their imaginary “legitimacy” where it lies: solely on them who claim it.
2 Corinthians 6:14–18:
“And bare ye not the yoke of inFidels. For what yoke Has Righteousness with iniquity? or what yoke Has Light with darkness? or what yoke Has Christ with Satan? or what part has a Fidel with an inFidel? or what agreement has the Temple of God with that of demons? For ye are the Temple of the Living God. As it is Said “I Will Dwell Among them and Walk Among them and Will Be their God and they shall be My people.” [Ezechiel 37:27]. Wherefore, “come ye out from among them, and be ye separate from them” Says the Lord “and come not near the unclean thing and I Will ReCeive you; and will Be to you a Father. and ye shall be sons and daughters to me.” [Isaias 52:11] Says the Lord OmniPotent.”
James 1:26–27:
“And if anyone thinks himself ReLigious, and controls not his tongue, but his heart deceives him, his “religion” is in vain. For the Pure and Sacred ReLigion, before God, is this: to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and that one keeps himself unspotted from the world.”
NOTE 1! superstitions, schisms, heresies, and apostasies are not ReLigion.
NOTE 2! It’s impossible to partake in pagan systems and still be spotless. A choice must be made between choose 1 or the other.
James 4:12:
“There is 1 LegisLator and Judge, Who Can make alive, and Who Can destroy: but who art thou that thou “judges” thy neighbor?”
NOTE 1! God Is the Sole LegisLator.
NOTE 2! God Being the Sole LegisLator Is the Sole Source of Authority.
NOTE 3! God’s Authority Is given only to Christian men.
1 Peter 2:13–18:
“And be ye submissive to all the sons of men for God’s Sake, to Kings, on AcCount of their Authority; and to Judges, because they are sent by Him for the PunishMent of offenders, and for the praise of them who do well. For so is the Pleasure of God, that, by your good deeds, ye may stop the mouth of the foolish, who know not God: as free men, yet not like men who make their freedom a cloak for their wickedness, but as the servants of God. Honor all men. Love your brethren. Fear God. And Honor Kings.”
NOTE 1! In no way, shape, or form can any mortal sinners, any schismatics, any heretics, or any apostates possibly be the “sons of men” to whom Christians Owe Obedience.
NOTE 2! In no way, shape, or form can any mortal sinners, any schismatics, any heretics, or any apostates possibly be the “all men” to whom Christians Own Honor.
NOTE 3! In no way, shape, or form can Christians accept any system other than TheoCracy.
Ted WeiLand actually thoroughly debunked your pagan statism in his book Bible vs “ConStitution” and articles Why Romans 13 Is Not ABout Secular “GovernMent” and A Biblical ExAmination of the “DeClaration” of “InDePendence”. I’ll see you whenever you decide to step off the spiritual planation.
all politicians are indeed scum. you can’t be a Christian and a politician at the same time. you can’t access the oval office without the jews having blackmail material over you. noone can. no Israelite King was ever “voted” in.
You misquoted the “received” texts; not the New TestaMent.
Here’s what the New TestaMent actually teaches.
Matthew 6:24: “No man can serve 2 masters. For either he will hate the 1 and love the other or he will honor the one and neglect the other. Ye cannot serve God and man.”
Acts 5:29: “God Is to Be Obeyed; rather than men.”
Acts 25:11: “For, if I be an offender, or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die: but, if there be none of these things, whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto Cæsar.”
NOTE! Apostle Saint Paul placed the impossible burden of “proof” of their imaginary “legitimacy” where it lies: solely on them who claim it.
2 Corinthians 6:14–18: “And bare ye not the yoke of inFidels. For what yoke Has Righteousness with iniquity? or what yoke Has Light with darkness? or what yoke Has Christ with Satan? or what part has a Fidel with an inFidel? or what agreement has the Temple of God with that of demons? For ye are the Temple of the Living God. As it is Said “I Will Dwell Among them and Walk Among them and Will Be their God and they shall be My people.” [Ezechiel 37:27]. Wherefore, “come ye out from among them, and be ye separate from them” Says the Lord “and come not near the unclean thing and I Will ReCeive you; and will Be to you a Father. and ye shall be sons and daughters to me.” [Isaias 52:11] Says the Lord OmniPotent.”
James 1:26–27: “And if anyone thinks himself ReLigious, and controls not his tongue, but his heart deceives him, his “religion” is in vain. For the Pure and Sacred ReLigion, before God, is this: to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and that one keeps himself unspotted from the world.”
NOTE 1! superstitions, schisms, heresies, and apostasies are not ReLigion.
NOTE 2! It’s impossible to partake in pagan systems and still be spotless. A choice must be made between choose 1 or the other.
James 4:12: “There is 1 LegisLator and Judge, Who Can make alive, and Who Can destroy: but who art thou that thou “judges” thy neighbor?”
NOTE 1! God Is the Sole LegisLator.
NOTE 2! God Being the Sole LegisLator Is the Sole Source of Authority.
NOTE 3! God’s Authority Is given only to Christian men.
1 Peter 2:13–18: “And be ye submissive to all the sons of men for God’s Sake, to Kings, on AcCount of their Authority; and to Judges, because they are sent by Him for the PunishMent of offenders, and for the praise of them who do well. For so is the Pleasure of God, that, by your good deeds, ye may stop the mouth of the foolish, who know not God: as free men, yet not like men who make their freedom a cloak for their wickedness, but as the servants of God. Honor all men. Love your brethren. Fear God. And Honor Kings.”
NOTE 1! In no way, shape, or form can any mortal sinners, any schismatics, any heretics, or any apostates possibly be the “sons of men” to whom Christians Owe Obedience.
NOTE 2! In no way, shape, or form can any mortal sinners, any schismatics, any heretics, or any apostates possibly be the “all men” to whom Christians Owe Honor.
NOTE 3! In no way, shape, or form can Christians accept any system other than TheoCracy.
Ted WeiLand actually thoroughly debunked your pagan statism in his book Bible vs “ConStitution” and articles Why Romans 13 Is Not ABout Secular “GovernMent” and A Biblical ExAmination of the “DeClaration” of “InDePendence”. I’ll see you whenever you decide to step off the spiritual plantation.
This is in response to:
NOTE 1! In no way, shape, or form can any mortal sinners, any schismatics, any heretics, or any apostates possibly be the “sons of men” to whom Christians Owe Obedience.
NOTE 2! In no way, shape, or form can any mortal sinners, any schismatics, any heretics, or any apostates possibly be the “all men” to whom Christians Owe Honor.
NOTE 3! In no way, shape, or form can Christians accept any system other than TheoCracy.
Reply to Note 1: St. Peter did not say “sons of God”, but rather “sons of men”, and by that he clearly included those who were not true “sons of God”. You are interpreting St. Peter’s teaching contrary to the way that he had expressly set it forth to suit your own agenda.
Reply to Note 3: Where is the word “theocracy” set forth in the New Testament? Christ said that we are to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, including taxes levied by him upon us (Mt 22:17:22). You quote St. Peter to this effect: “And be ye submissive to all the sons of men for God’s Sake, to Kings, on Account of their Authority; and to Judges, because they are sent by Him for the Punishment of offenders, and for the praise of them who do well” (1 Pet 2:13), and then you reject the very thing the apostle tells you to do – as he says, for the very sake of God Himself, who wants you to do these things – as being unworthy of you.
Reply to Note 2: You state: ”In no way, shape, or form can any mortal sinners, any schismatics, any heretics, or any apostates possibly be the “all men” to whom Christians Owe Honor.” But Christ Himself tells us in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount:
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
46 For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?
47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?
48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
What reward from Christ, then, are you expecting, if you only honor those who do good unto you?
If, as the Lord Himself says, we are to do good to those who hate us, and to salute them, and to pay taxes to the civil authorities, how can you say that we are not to render honor to the civil authorities? Indeed, St. Paul himself teaches in Romans 2:
“13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.”
So here the apostle teaches that the righteous gentile who observes the law of God which has been written in his heart, even though he has never heard nor read the Law of Moses, shall be justified before God, and it is clear here that he does not exclude kings or governors from having the law written in their hearts, how again do you say that a Christian is not obliged to observe the apostle’s precept that we honor the king?
Again, you cite the following verse in an attempt to justify yourself:
Acts 5:29: “God Is to Be Obeyed; rather than men.”
But if it is the will of God Himself (1 Pet 2:15) that we honor the king (1 Pet 2:17), and if it is the will of God and Christ that we do good unto both the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45), who then are we to fight against God (cf. Acts 5:39)?
You seem (yes, that word “seem” again) to have managed to reduce the all inclusive phrase “all men” as taught by Christ and the apostles, to whom we are to render appropriate honor and similar good things, to a very narrow slice of men and women who happen to belong to whatever religious communion it is that you belong to.
I would pray, as Christ enjoins us, for your conversion of heart to His Gospel and to that proclaimed by the apostles.
Regarding Acts 25:11, you state:
NOTE! Apostle Saint Paul placed the impossible burden of “proof” of their imaginary “legitimacy” where it lies: solely on them who claim it.
Reply: This is not an accurate reading of Acts 25:11, for it says in Acts 25:9 that the Roman Governor Festus sought to please the Jews by inducing Paul to go to Jerusalem to be judged, where the pressure would be enormous upon Festus to do what they wished him to do (much as they exercised over Pilate in regard to Jesus), but it was Paul himself who decided to appeal his case to Caesar in Rome, and Festus granted Paul his wish. His wish to appeal to Caesar in Rome was was granted because Paul himself was a Roman citizen (Acts 16:38 – Ῥωμαῖοί / Romaioi). So yes, St. Paul did appeal to the civil authorities when he thought it was right and proper to do so.
My comment on the debate between Evangelos and Thomas is that it appears Thomas is backwards engineering shis objections based upon philosophical abstractions and how one system or thinker corrects another (ironically something he originally critiqued as his reason to be a Protestant), but not based upon a historical methodology or lexical categories.
It does make me think whether the issue is that the people interested in Dionysius are philosophical as opposed to historical thinkers, and as a result try to discern authenticity philosophically instead of historically. In effect, using the wrong tool for the job.
My reaction to your comment is you’re both on the wrong side of the Greco-Latin schism-heresy-apostasy: Greeks eversince 877: Latins eversince 896: which means none of y’all have Apostolic Succession which means there’s no Pope to suffer under as proven by the Church’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Marks alone which the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox, the Latin uncatholics, and the protestants alike don’t have; nor does a “degree” mean anything to Christians; nor did the Apostles ever go to college or seminary.
Christ Jesus’ and Apostles’ use of and reliance on the SeptuaGint and their Successors’ translation of the SeptuaGint into the Peshitta are why the Christians’ New TestaMent’s quotes match the Judeans’ Old TestaMent’s Texts and the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox’, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox’, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox’ new perjuries’ quotes match their old perjuries’ texts while apostates Hieronymus’ and William TynDale’s reliance on the “masoretic” texts are why Latin cultists’ and protestants’ new perjuries’ quotes contradict their old perjuries’ texts which is why the Latin uncatholics and the protestants hold to many more heresies than the (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, and the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox hold to.
TerTillianus was a Hellenizer; not a Christian.
Thomism and Palamism are 2 sides of the side coin.
All 8 Ecumenical Synods settled all these matters before the 877-896 Greco-Latin schism-heresy-apostasy: Greek schism in 877: Latin schism in 896: and not in the apostates Thomas Aquinas’ or Gregorius Palamas’ favors either.
Hello Craig, I’ve been looking into pseudonymity since December, and still haven’t found any academic studies on this. If you’re in the possession of some, would you mind sharing them? Thanks.
On them being fake?
The statement “Herein lies the wisdom of protestantism.” doesn’t make Thomas sound like a protestant so much as it does make him sound uncontaminated by the Latin uncatholics’, Greek unorthodox’, and Coptic unorthodox’ Hellenization “of” Christianity which the Coptic unorthodox taught the Greek unorthodox who taught it to the Latin uncatholics. The vast majority of your meetinghouses which you call “churches” are interiorly and exteriorly desecrated with jew-masonic-Satanic, Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan, otherwise mythological, otherwise idolatrous, pornographic, otherwise immodest, secular, attempted “representations” of the Father [John 6:46], immodest attempted “representations” of the Son Who Is Risen not Dead [1 Corinthians 15:1–4] e.g. any false “”Christ” “Jesus”” e.g. Cesare Borgia half-naked on a Cross, inaccurate attempted “representations” of the TheoTokos, the Angels, and/or the Saints e.g. a false “Maria” e.g. Giovanna “Vannozza” (dei) Cattanei or white guys in robes passed off “as” the Fathers or artwork of AntiFathers or other AntiSaints, otherwise grotesque images, accurate representations made by unorthodox hands, and other unorthodox images. A majority of your own apostate AntiBishops even have jew-masonic-Satanic symbols on their staffs. A majority of your homes also have pagan trees set up and decorated inside during December. Your own apostate AntiPatriArchs “signed” the apostate invalid Florentine AntiSynod which not only nominally “officially” AfFirms the Petrine Supremacy, FilioQue, Purgatory Dogmas which you “officially” condemn but also “officially” teaches the “delayed Chrismation until 7”, the “TranSubStantiation” heresy, the “2-in1 Species” heresy (that both the Bread (whether unleavened or leavened) and the Wine (whether nonalcoholic unhopped unyeasted or alcoholic hopped yeast) “TranSubStantiate” InTo Both Christ Jesus’ Divine Body and Divine Blood), the “1 Species” heresy (that Christians (in the status of Grace) only need to eat the Body (under the Species of Bread) and not also drink the Body (under the Species of Wine) of Christ Jesus to have life in them), and the “Living Species” heresy (that Christ Jesus’ Soul Is PreSent in Both His Divine Body and Divine Blood in the EuCharist) against the Dogmas that ComPlete Baptism is always followed immediately by Chrismation (whether Ordinarily by a Bishop or ExTraOrdinarily by the Holy Ghost HimSelf), the Unleavened Bread ALone ConSubStantiates With the Divine Dead Body ALone and the Nonalcoholic Unhopped Unfermented Wine ALone ConSubStantiates With the Divine Dead Blood ALone both of which all Christians of both sexes/genders must receive In the EuCharist under Both Species (whether Ordinarily by a Bishop or ExTraOrdinarily by Christ Jesus HimSelf in Way Known Only to Him)on Lord’s Day. Both the protestant revolution and the Jesuitical Tridentine Latin uncatholic counterrevolution were a stageshow. Both sides were and still are controlled “opposition”. All the protestant revolutionaries and the Jesuitical Tridentine Latin uncatholic counterrevolutionaries were crypto-jew-masonic-Satanists.
For a summary of the case against, you can read Stiglmayr’s article for the Catholic Encyclopedia entitled “Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite.” There’s a full bibliography there, although dated. The most recent work against was done in the 1970s and 80s by Henri-Dominique Saffrey. There’s also the occasional modern article where someone tries to identify who the “Pseudo” was. Works in favour of the Corpus are listed in the bibliography to our book (most are in French or Latin). The major defences in the 19th century were by Parker (English), Schneider (German), Baltenweck, and Vidieu (French).
Christians couldn’t care less what the Hellenizers teach about God unless it’s to refute them.
Christians couldn’t care less about what the Latin uncatholic encyclopedia says unless it’s to refute Latinism.
Christians couldn’t care less about what the Latin uncatholic encyclopedia says unless it’s to refute Latinism.
Interesting conversations going on. After reading the Scriptorium Press book I’m convinced the Dionysian corpus is legit.
Two things:
We’re not interested in your opinion on the “scriptorium press”.
2 things.
1. No real Christian ever used the “masoretic” texts.
2. EvAngelIst Apostle Saint John did indeed write Apocalypse.
3. This is none of “atheists”‘ business.
4. fundamentalist protestants are much closer to Christianity than (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox, and (“pornocratic”) Latin uncatholics combined.
We’re not interested in your opinion on the “scriptorium press”.
2 things.
No real Christian ever used the “masoretic” texts. 2. EvAngelIst Apostle Saint John did indeed write Apocalypse. 3. This is none of “atheists”‘ business. 4. fundamentalist protestants are much closer to Christianity than (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox, (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox, (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox, and (“pornocratic”) Latin uncatholics combined.
This article states: ”due to the pioneer work of Anthony Pavoni and Evangelos Nikitopoulos, the scales have decisively shifted in favor of the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus.”
I looked on Amazon just now and found a total of 1 review of the work of Pavoni and Nikitopoulos (positive, but unattributed), and virtually no articles on the internet in regard to their claims of 1st century Dionysian authorship. If you look at Dr. David Bradshaw’s recent book Aristotle East and West, which conducts a study of the use of the word “energeia” in Greek intellectual culture from Aristotle to Gregory Palamas, and presents a strong defense of the Byzantine Christian theological tradition, we find that it was winner of the Morris D. Forkosch prize in the Journal of the History of Ideas (for its study of the word energeia, not for its Eastern Orthodox polemics against Thomism, for which it was criticized), and there are 50+ internet sites devoted to that book alone. By what objective criteria can it be said that the scales have turned decisively in favor of first century Dionysian authorship when the work of Pavoni and Nikitopoulos thus far appears to have been ignored altogether in academic circles? If reviews of the authors’ thesis were appearing in reputable and distinguished publications and were favorably disposed to the presentation of evidence (such as it is), then the scales would have indeed begun to turn. Until the authors’ work begins to receive favorable notice in the academic community, this claim of having ‘turned the scales’ remains completely unsubstantiated, and casts doubt upon the commitment to academic rigor of whoever might be making this claim.
One does not need a doctorate level education to be a theologian, but one does need a doctoral level education to distinguish date and authorship (genuinely attributed vs. pseudonymous) of ancient texts. This is highly specialized work requiring vast expertise in the field of endeavor, knowledge of ancient languages and texts, familiarity with peer reviewed literature, etc.
I believe that I have identified the manner in which the Pseudo Dionysius reconceptualizes and condenses the Proclean Henads and Primary Beings into his own conception of the divine processions, but this is built upon the scholarly consensus that ‘Dionysius’ is influenced by Proclus and represents an extension of it, but I would never have dared to submit my meager researches for academic review and assumed I had turned the scales against an academic consensus if that consensus assumed Proclean dependence upon Dionysius. I might suggest that I have found evidence which suggests that the consensus might be in error, and that further study might be in order, but to overthrow an existing consensus, one needs to produce research that meets the exacting standards of the profession.
I submit that if Pavoni and Nikitopoulos truly believe that their research meets the standards for what is allowed to appear in peer reviewed journals, that they submit their research to such journals for peer review and publication, and let the chips fall where they may..
Well it can “seem” all it want but that doesn’t make it so.
The (Nestorian) Meroitic-Orontian unorthodox AntiChurch, the (EuTychian) Coptic-TewaHedo unorthodox AntiChurch, the (Photian-Kirillic) Greco-Russian unorthodox AntiChurch, the (“pornocratic”) Latin uncatholic AntiChurch, and the protestants all contradict each other in y’all ingesis because y’all have 0 claim to the Bible because y’all not the Acts 9:31 Biblical Catholic Church which Pope Doctor Saint Gregorius I the Great DiaLogIst TheoLogian called the OrthoDox Church.
As for the paradigms (παραδείγματα), if you read Divine Names 5.8-9, you can see that Dionysius is crystal clear that the exemplars of creation are not “beings” but “predestinations” (προορισμοὺς) and “wills” (θελήματα). This is a unique Christian doctrine you also find in Pantaenus:
“Neither does He know things sensible sensibly, nor things intelligible intellectually…but we afirm that He knows existing things as His own volitions (θελήματα)…since by willing He made all things being.” (Fragment 2, Reliquiae Scarae, Routh, 1856 ed, Volume 1, pp. 60, 62)
All this is grounded on Ephesians 1:5, 11: “ Having predestinated (προορίσας) us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will (θελήματος)…In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated (προορισθέντες) according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (θελήματος).”
God bless you. My name is Lucas Queiroz and I am an 18-year-old young man who is translating the entire Corpus Dionysiacum into Portuguese, and I firmly believe in the authenticity of the works. I wish to preface my translation with an apology for its authenticity. In addition to The Life of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, a book by Angelos, what other articles, websites or books do you recommend for me to study authenticity?Hail the Virgin Mary.
God willing, there will be a peer reviewed article with the same by the same author. But that’s not published yet.
Hello friend, I have a question about the parallel between Saint Dionysius in letter 9 and Proclus in On Providence, §63. Dionysius in the letter says: “And differently we must take the same likeness of fire, when spoken with regard to the inconceivable God; and differently with regard to His intelligible providences or words; and differently respecting the Angels. The, one as causal, but the other as originated, and the third as participative, and different things differently, as their contemplation, and scientific arrangements suggest.”, and Proclus in the treatise says: “One type of henads is complete in itself, the other type of henads is sown as seeds into the things that participate of them. For the one and the good are threefold: either in a causal mode, as in the case of the first; of all the henads; or according to its existence, as in the case of every single god, who is one and good; the form of good”. Can you see the parallel of the triple hierarchy of causal, formal and participatory? How to explain this parallel? Yes, we can say that it is Proclus who is quoting Dionysius, but what is the criteria for knowing this? God bless you through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mother of God.
This may help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSzrjPajfNM&
Hi Lucas! God bless your efforts! It might interest you that we are currently in negotiations to have our book on Dionysius translated in Brazil, stay tuned for that.
Yes, that’s a good parallel I was not aware of. To determine the direction of the borrowing in this instance, I would say that it is helpful to look at the broader context of the ideas of “participation” and the “One” in Neoplatonism vs. Christianity, and see whether Dionysius or Proclus is an organic continuation of one or the other. You are right that Dionysius distinguishes between three different things: the transcendent essence of God, which has no name; the participated energies of God, which do have names; and the participating creatures. All of these notions can be found in Christian writers preceding Proclus:
However, it is very important to note that in the Christian system, God’s energies do not exist on their own in an independent middle “hierarchy” but as an inseparable outflowing of God’s essence. Thus, in Divine Names 2.5, Dionysius says that the divine energies are “imparticipably participated”. Daniel Heide comments on this:
“That the primary beings are themselves ‘imparticipably participated’ represents another revealing oddity. According to the Procline scheme, there is no reason for the middle terms to be described in this way – they are simply participated, while only the first term in the triad is said to be unparticipated. According to Dionysius, however, not only is the transcendent Godhead said to be imparticipable, but even the participated processions are in some sense imparticipable. This points once again to the suppression of mean terms. Insofar as the communications of God ad extra simply are God, they too are unparticipated; insofar as they represent God in His knowable, immanent aspect they are participated. The paradoxical nature of all of this stems from the rejection of mediating hypostases such that the antinomy of sameness and otherness is confronted head on. God is at once simple and manifold, transcendent and immanent.”
The Neoplatonic system prior to Proclus was more or less in line with this idea. Plotinus believed that the One was transcendent and yet contained all things in itself “potentially” (Enneads V.3.5). Iamblichus believed in a doctrine of “two Ones” or a “whole-before-wholes” (In Parmenidem, Steel ed. 1107): the One in its transcendent aspect and another in its causative aspect.
Proclus is far more radical and takes issue with both Plotinus and Iamblichus, saying that the One is above all determination. He stratifies God into two distinct levels: the One which is unparticipated, and the henads which are participated. In other words, he introduces a new ontological level that was absent in Dionysius and earlier Neoplatonists. He takes Dionysius “divine energies” and makes them into independent hypostases, something which Dionysius explicitly rejects in Divine Names 11.6.
So the fact that Dionysius is in line with early Christianity whereas Proclus is the innovator shows that Proclus is taking the language from Dionysius. Hope this is helpful.
Only 1 of your sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantus” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
Only 1 of your sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantus” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
This is in response to Evangeloss55′ reply to Lucas:
The arguments and linkages you are attempting to make in an effort to persuade Lucas that ‘Dionysius’ was a 1st century Christian author are not of the sort that would survive peer review in a scholarly journal, much less my own rebuttal. The idea that the One is beyond being (hyperousia) and beyond naming goes at least as far back as Plato, so all your early Christian fathers (Aristides, Justin, and Theophilus, who were all learned in Platonic Philosophy), are citing Plato and his philosophical successors, not ‘Dionysius’, and you cannot demonstrate any reference to this figure ‘Dionysius’ in any of the writings of these fathers to establish your claim that he is their source for this teaching.
As for Origen, in his Commentary On the Gospel of John 2.2 he teaches that the Father is Autotheos – God Himself, but the Son and all other creatures are god by participation, but the Son as firstborn of all creation is both archetypal image and “God” in the sense that he bestows divinity upon all other images of God insofar as he always exists in uninterrupted contemplation of the Father. This notion of the Logos as Second God was derived by him from the Middle Platonic philosophers Philo and Numenius. Then he says in Comm. Jn. 2.18 that although other Christians of his time believed that John 1.9 and 1 Jn 1:5 establish that the Son and Father are of the same Divine Essence as Divine Light and Divine Light – the very doctrine proclaimed at the Council of Nicea nearly a century later, viz., Light = essence not energy, contra Palamas, he argues rather that the Father is greater than the Son because He is the Father of Wisdom (i.e. the Son), and because He exists in/as unapproachable light (cf. 1 Tim 6:16) in which there is no darkness at all, whereas the Son is that light which descended into darkness but was not overtaken by it. Eunomius appropriates all of these arguments from Origen to deny the true Godhead of the Son, and Gregory of Nyssa responds in Against Eunomius 12.2 by stating that 1 Tim 6:16 ‘God dwells in unapproachable light’ means the Father dwelling in the Son as in John 14:10, thereby affirming the Nicene definition that the Son is only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light homousian with the Father, and thereby contradicting his own teaching that the Scriptural names for God represent mere human conception (epinoia) about God or have reference to the ‘things around God’ – which again were notions appearing in the writings of Plato and Plotinus, from either of which source Gregory had gotten them. But when it is crunch time, Gregory has to revert to the assumption that the Divine Names of Sacred Scripture do indeed relate to the very nature of God Himself, for his notion of the names as signifying the ‘things around God’ is of no use whatsoever to him in combatting the Arian heresy, but in fact has the effect of reducing the Son of God to a creature, thereby buttressing rather than refuting the teaching of the Arians!
Finally, John Chrysostom states that the Son of God is not merely “Life itself” in the Proclean-Dionysian sense, but rather Enhypostatic Life – “for the (Son) Himself is Enhypostatic Life” (πῶς ἐστιν αὐτοῦ ἐνυπόστατος ἡ ζωή) [Commentary On the Gospel of John V.3]. That is, Life in respect to His very own Hypostasis, not in respect to ‘the things around Him’. In Comm. On John. VI.1 Chrysostom states that the incarnate Son had no need of John the Baptist to be His herald, for had Christ only exhibited His unveiled essence, no man could have borne the assault of that unapproachable Light. Again (enhypostatic) Light = Essence, not energy, although Chrystostom does in fact teach that only God’s energy comes down to us (at least in the flesh – it’s a little less clear what he understands as constituting the vision of God in the age to come), but He does not restrict the Divine Names of Sacred Scripture to divine energizings only.
The point of all this is that you are making simplistic linkages between the writings of ‘Dionysius’ and earlier Christian authors in an attempt to hold onto a cherished but no longer tenable belief that ‘Dionysius’ was a first century Christian author, but when you go into the texts in depth and examine them at length and find that Dionysius’ Christian predecessors assigned rather different meanings and usages to the Divine Names than does ‘Dionysius’ himself, and were writing under the influence of pagan philosophers and not ‘Dionysius’ (who likewise was writing under the influence of [later] pagan philosophers), even the notions of “Autotheos” (Origen) and (enhypostatic) Life itself (Chrysostom) having very different significations in Origen and Chrysostom from those of ‘Dionysius’ – the latter of whom having written under the influence of Proclus, whose writings are posterior to those of both Origen and Chrysostom, the argument you are endeavoring to establish collapses under the weight of all of the accumulated evidence to the contrary.
Inasmuch as you felt that we had sufficiently debated the relationship existing between Proclus and ‘Dionysius’ based upon internal textual considerations, I did not attempt to carry on with that discussion in accordance with your wishes, but here we are considering exterior textual considerations, and I felt it was untrod ground that was worth a response, inasmuch as I do not agree with what is being argued here.
The real elephant in the room is the only 1 of pseudoevangelos55’s sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens was well-familiar but condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantus” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent (a (REAL) Pope and Saint) via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria (a (REAL) Pope, Doctor, and Saint) ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
If you can’t prove something just from the Bible ALone in AcCordance with just the (REAL) Ancient OrthoDox Doctorly Saintly Church Fathers alone, it’s because it’s not True.
I would recommend an article by Svetlana Mesyats, “Iamblichus’ Exegesis of Parmenides’ Hypotheses and his Doctrine of the Divine Henads” where she shows in a footnote that Dionysius is actually a lot close to Iamblichus than Proclus. For further resources on authenticity, we list some titles in the bibliography of our book (most are 19th-century though).
I recommend the Bible instead.
To evangelos55:
I did not realize Lucas’ age when I posted to him. Please remove my post and accept my apologies. I would not want to dampen his enthusiasm for his theological pursuits.
Regrets for my boorishness.
to thomas palmieri:
It doesn’t matter how young or old Lucas is. It only matters if what you said was True or false. There’s no such thing as the “age of reason”. The Bible teaches no such thing.
You still have the problem that only 1 of your sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens was well-familiar but condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantius” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
EyTychianism is not (Coptic) Christianity. EuTychians are not (Coptic) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Coptic) Churches. Their leaders are not Clerics.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent (a (REAL) Pope and Saint) via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria (a (REAL) Pope, Doctor, and Saint) ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
ProClus was a neoPlatonist; not a Christian.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
Photianism is not (Byzantine) Christianity. Photians are not (Byzantine) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Byzantine) Churches. Their leaders are not (Byzantine) Clerics.
“pornocracy” is not (Latin) Christianity. “pornocrats” are not (Latin) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Latin) Churches. Their leaders are not (Latin) Clerics.
Nowhere in the Bible are mortal sinners, schismatics, heretics, or apostates ever non-sarcastically called “Christians”, “ProPhets”, “Apostles”, “Deacons”, “Pastors”, “Bishops”, or “Doctors” or their sects or meetinghouses “Churches” because they’re not.
The apostate Thomas Aquinas was an Aristotelian protoCalvinist “pantheistical” “pornocrat”; not a Christian.
The apostate Gregorius Palamas was a crypto-hindu Photian; not a Christian.
The apostate AntiPatriArch George PachyMeres of ConStantinoPolis was a Photian; not a Christian.
If you can’t prove something just from the Bible ALone in AcCordance with just the (REAL) Ancient OrthoDox Doctorly Saintly Church Fathers alone, it’s because it’s not True.
There is a time and a season for all things (Ecc 3:1); a time to serve sweet milk (Heb 5:122), and a time to serve strong meat to them that are of full age (Heb 5:14), lest you do more harm than good.
Satan also quotes Scripture [Psalm 90(91):12; Matthew 4:6; Lucas 4:10] which doesn’t even apply to you and corruptions thereof which means you’re in “good” company. Apostle Saint Paul referred to your Hellenizing sources as pseudoapostles [2 Corinthians 11:3–15] who give neither milk [Hebrews 5:12] nor meat [Hebrews 5:14] but only foolery [1 Corinthians 3:19], pseudophilosophically deceit manmade traditions [Colossians 2:8], pseudoscience [1 TimoTheus 6:20], and jewish myths [Titus 1:13–14; Apocalypse 2:9; 3:9] and, btw, full age [Hebrews 5:12] is the age of adulthood which is 20 [Numbers 1:1–3]; not the unBiblical “age of reason at 7”; not the unBiblical “age of discernment at 14”; not the 18 as the apostate invalid “26th amendment” claims; not 21 as the apostate invalid “14th amendment” claims.
You claim to follow the Bible alone, but whenever it counsels compassion, discretion, obedience, or self examination, you deny what it teaches, rather like Gregory Palamas and Martin Luther.
I actually do indeed follow only the Bible. You don’t. The apostates Thomas Aquinas, Gregorius Palamas, Martin Luther, Heinrich Zwingli, AntiKing Henry VIII, John Calvin, et cetera didn’t either. You, like they did, constantly break the 1st and 9th ComMandMents. You, like they, can’t intelligate the Bible because it doesn’t apply to you as it didn’t apply to them either because God Cursed you, As He Cursed them, with blindness [1 Corinthians 3:13] because you’re not a Christian nor were they Christians either. You’re a sick sumbitch statist idolater who brings such a new “gospel” which claims rapists, pederasts, serial murderers, cannibals, warmongers, drugdealers, human-specially-child-sex-traffickers, et cetera are Due any ReWard for our labors which none of them ever put any work on let alone any Honor or any Obedience. I’m not. You follow the pagan invalid Julian “calendar” repackaged as the apostate invalid AntiPapal “Gregorian” “calendar” and call days and months after demon idols’ names which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19]. I follow the (Traditional/)Biblical Calendar and ObServe all Feast Days on a Lord’s Day AcCording to the new moon [Isaias 40:2; 66:24–25]. The pharisees also “added” many pseudodoctrines [Ecclesiasticus 7:17; 19:19–22; 21:15,19,21; 37:23, Isaias 29:13–14; 33:18; 44:24–45; Matthew 15:5–9; Marcus 7:6–15; 1 Corinthians 1:16–20; 3:19; Colossians 2:8–17; 1 TimoTheus 6:20; Titus 1:13–14] “to” God’s Word and passed them off “as” “Tradition” (e.g. epikeia”) as you also do [Isaias 29:13–14; Matthew 15:5–9; Marcus 7:6–15].
You wrote: ”I follow the (Traditional/)Biblical Calendar and ObServe all Feast Days on a Lord’s Day AcCording to the new moon [Isaias 40:2; 66:24–25].”
I reply: But you don’t follow St. Paul, who taught “let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, OR OF THE NEW MOON, or of the sabbath days: which are a SHADOW of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Col 2:16:17), and who said furthermore: ”Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain” (Gal 4:10-11).
I have tried to support you more than others in this comment section, but in the end you always find a way to turn a positive into a negative. Please reconsider your approach. It is not doing you any good spiritually.
Oh but I do indeed follow Apostle Saint Paul who Taught the exact opposite of what you lie while you reject Dogmatic DeClarations and DeFinitions by not only ProPhet Saint Isaias and Apostle Saint Paul but also Pope Saint Victor, the 1st Nicene Synod, the AntiOchian Synod, and Pope Doctor Saint Leo I the Great that the Sabboth Day is now Custodiated Sanctified [ExOdus 20:11; DeuteroNomy 5:12] in ObServance of the Lord’s Day [Apocalypse 1:10] and a month is measured by lunation [Isaias 40:2; 66:24–25; Galatians 4:10–11; Colossians 2:16–17]. Christians know the Sabboth Day [ExOdus 20:11; DeuteroNomy 5:12] and the Judean new moons were a foreshadow of the Lord’s Day [Apocalypse 1:10] and the Christian new moons. I asked for no support from any schismatic, any heretic, or any apostate on this site.
Oh but I do indeed follow Apostle Saint Paul who Taught the exact opposite of what you lie while you reject Dogmatic DeClarations and DeFinitions by not only ProPhet Saint Isaias and Apostle Saint Paul but also Pope Saint Victor, the 1st Nicene Synod, the AntiOchian Synod, and Pope Doctor Saint Leo I the Great that the Sabboth Day is now Custodiated Sanctified [ExOdus 20:11; DeuteroNomy 5:12] in ObServance of the Lord’s Day [Apocalypse 1:10] and a month is measured by lunation [Isaias 40:2; 66:24–25; Galatians 4:10–11; Colossians 2:16–17]. Christians know the Sabboth Day [ExOdus 20:11; DeuteroNomy 5:12] and the Judean new moons were a foreshadow of the Lord’s Day [Apocalypse 1:10] and the Christian new moons. I asked for no support from any schismatic, any heretic, or any apostate on this site. Please stall me out with your pseudocharity and your pseudohumility and grow a spine and a pair.
You said I lied when I said you are not following St. Paul’s teaching in regard to feasts and new moons. How so? St. Paul said: ”let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, OR OF THE NEW MOON, or of the sabbath days: which are a SHADOW of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Col 2:16:17), and who said furthermore: ”Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years, I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain” (Gal 4:10-11). You responded with quotes from the Old Testament, but you didn’t address the two texts above from Paul. You quoted texts from the Old Testament in an attempt to refute Paul rather than to support him. Only when you have addressed those texts properly will you have demonstrated that you follow Paul’s teachings as set forth in these two texts.
As for your assertion that Augustine’s letters to Jerome were forged, and the City of God was forged, I ask: What is your evidence that Augustine’s correspondence with Jerome was forged, much less his work City of God? Assertion is not proof. Are you resorting to this stratagem because you cannot accept that Augustine was a friend and admirer of Jerome? This would appear to be the case. Offer your evidence that these works were forged, and we will assess whether what you say has any validity. If you want your assertions to be taken seriously, back them up with actual evidence. If you can prove it I will accept it – but first prove it.
I actually do indeed follow only the Bible. You don’t. The apostates Thomas Aquinas, Gregorius Palamas, Martin Luther, Heinrich Zwingli, AntiKing Henry VIII, John Calvin, et cetera didn’t either. You, like they did, constantly break the 1st and 9th ComMandMents. You, like they, can’t intelligate the Bible because it doesn’t apply to you as it didn’t apply to them either because God Cursed you, As He Cursed them, with blindness [1 Corinthians 3:13] because you’re not a Christian nor were they Christians either. You’re a sick sumbitch statist idolater who brings such a new “gospel” which claims rapists, pederasts, serial murderers, cannibals, warmongers, drugdealers, human-specially-child-sex-traffickers, et cetera are Due any ReWard for our labors which none of them ever put any work on let alone any Honor or any Obedience. I’m not. You follow the pagan invalid Julian “calendar” repackaged as the apostate invalid AntiPapal “Gregorian” “calendar” and call days and months after demon idols’ names which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19]. I follow the (Traditional/)Biblical Calendar and ObServe all Feast Days on a Lord’s Day AcCording to the new moon [Isaias 40:2; 66:24–25]. The pharisees also “added” many pseudodoctrines [Ecclesiasticus 7:17; 19:19–22; 21:15,19,21; 37:23, Isaias 29:13–14; 33:18; 44:24–45; Matthew 15:5–9; Marcus 7:6–15; 1 Corinthians 1:16–20; 3:19; Colossians 2:8–17; 1 TimoTheus 6:20; Titus 1:13–14] “to” God’s Word and passed them off “as” “Tradition” (e.g. epikeia”) as you also do [Isaias 29:13–14; Matthew 15:5–9; Marcus 7:6–15].
Satan also quotes Scripture [Psalm 90(91):12; Matthew 4:6; Lucas 4:10] which doesn’t even apply to you and corruptions thereof which means you’re in “good” company. Apostle Saint Paul referred to your Hellenizing sources as pseudoapostles [2 Corinthians 11:3–15] who give neither milk [Hebrews 5:12] nor meat [Hebrews 5:14] but only foolery [1 Corinthians 3:19], pseudophilosophically deceit manmade traditions [Colossians 2:8], pseudoscience [1 TimoTheus 6:20], and jewish myths [Titus 1:13–14; Apocalypse 2:9; 3:9] and, btw, full age [Hebrews 5:12] is the age of adulthood which is 20 [Numbers 1:1–3]; not the unBiblical “age of reason at 7”; not the unBiblical “age of discernment at 14”; not the 18 as the apostate invalid “26th amendment” claims; not 21 as the apostate invalid “14th amendment” claims.
to thomas palmieri:
It doesn’t matter how young or old Lucas is. It only matters if what you said was True or false. There’s no such thing as the “age of reason”. The Bible teaches no such thing.
You still have the problem that only 1 of your sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens was well-familiar but condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantius” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
EyTychianism is not (Coptic) Christianity. EuTychians are not (Coptic) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Coptic) Churches. Their leaders are not Clerics.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent (a (REAL) Pope and Saint) via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria (a (REAL) Pope, Doctor, and Saint) ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
ProClus was a neoPlatonist; not a Christian.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
Photianism is not (Byzantine) Christianity. Photians are not (Byzantine) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Byzantine) Churches. Their leaders are not (Byzantine) Clerics.
“pornocracy” is not (Latin) Christianity. “pornocrats” are not (Latin) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Latin) Churches. Their leaders are not (Latin) Clerics.
Nowhere in the Bible are mortal sinners, schismatics, heretics, or apostates ever non-sarcastically called “Christians”, “ProPhets”, “Apostles”, “Deacons”, “Pastors”, “Bishops”, or “Doctors” or their sects or meetinghouses “Churches” because they’re not.
The apostate Thomas Aquinas was an Aristotelian protoCalvinist “pantheistical” “pornocrat”; not a Christian.
The apostate Gregorius Palamas was a crypto-hindu Photian; not a Christian.
The apostate AntiPatriArch George PachyMeres of ConStantinoPolis was a Photian; not a Christian.
If you can’t prove something just from the Bible ALone in AcCordance with just the (REAL) Ancient OrthoDox Doctorly Saintly Church Fathers alone, it’s because it’s not True.
To Lucas: I see that evangelos55 answered you by making reference to Daniel Heide. If you read farther up this comment section, you will see that I made it abundantly clear to evangelos55 that Daniel Heide, a PHD scholar in Religious Studies at McGill University, has no doubt whatosever that ‘Dionysius’ is dependent upon Proclus, and not the other way around, as evangelos55 wishes to argue. In fact, the quote evangelos55 supplies from Mr. Heide addresses the manner in which ‘Dionysius’ modified Proclus, so one may rightly ask evangelos55 in what way does Heide establish rather than refute what evangeloss55 is attempting to argue?
You will also note from our discussion in the comment section above that ‘Dionysius’ taught in Divine Names 11.6 that God is the Hypostates (Substantiator) of the Primary Beings (ton protos onta). Evangelos55 tried to argue that the Primary Beings are the angels, but had to concede that these referred to the divine processions (viz., Being itself, Life itself, etc.) when I cited ‘Dionysius’ illustrious 13th-14th century Byzantine commentator George Pachymeres of Constantinople as explaining the same thing. Daniel Heide for whatever reason simply ignores the fact that ‘Dionysius’ refers to God not only as Substantiator (i.e. one who gives substance or subsistence to) of the Primary Beings in DN 11.6, but moreover as Creator/Fashioner of the divine processions themselves in DN 5.4, as George Pachymeres again explains: ”God [is]…the Creator of the paradigmatic [principles] of all beings.” [Θεοῦ…τῷ δημιουργῷ τὰ τῶν ὄντων πάντων παραδείγματα.] (PG 3, 848 A-B) Thomas Aquinas agrees with these determiniations in his own Commentary On the Divine Names, composed decades prior to Pachymeres’ commentary, to wit, that God is Creator/Substantifier of the divine processions. ’Dionysius’ refers to the divine processions as energies proceeding from God (DN 9.9), and as powers proceeding from God (DN 11.6), but also as Primary Beings created and given substantial existence by God in DN 11.6. These ideas are patently self contradictory, and in effect determine the divine processions as ontic energies – which are logically undemonstrable objects. The whole point of the Dionysian inspired Palamite theology is to argue that being or essence differes from energy, but ‘Dionysius’ inconsideratly asserts that they are in fact one and the same thing.
Why does ‘Dionysius’ assert such contradictory things about the divine processions? It is because he adopts and adapts the notion of divine procession from Proclus, and condenses the multiple levels of divine procession in the polytheistic ontology of Proclus into a simpler ontological schematic – hence Heide’s reference to ‘Dionysius’ doing away with Proclus’ mediating terms. In the Procline system God as Supreme Monad is imparticiple, but He produces “superessential” Henads (unities) which are participated by the Primary Beings (Being itself, Life itself, Intellect itself, etc.), and these Primary Beings produce their own “essential” Henads, which are participated by Universal Soul, which produces Henads of its own, which are participated by individual beings of the mundane creation (humans, plants, animals, etc.). The participated level energizes in the participating level, which partakes of some aspect of the level which is above it. God is Absolute Good. The Superessential Henads are individual divine goods. The Primary Beings participate in one of the goods of a particular Superessential Henad, which energizes that good in them at the level appropriate to their station. The Primary Beings are Absolute (or Universal) Being, Life, etc. They produce henads which are aspects of Being, Life, etc. These are participated by Universal Soul, and so on down the chain of being until we arrive at individual beings of the mundane creation. ‘Dionysius’ condenses the Proclean Henads and Primary Beings into a single ontological reality (as he understands it), which are created by the imparticiple God, but are themselves participated by individual beings (angels, men, plants, animals, rocks, stones, etc.). To embody all that exists and to perform all that is done by the Proclean Superessential Henads and Primary Beings, viz., energizing/creating those individual beings which exist below themselves, while constituting universally that in which individual beings participate, i.e. being, living, deification, etc., ‘Dionysius’ has to assert without offering a plausible explanation to his readers that the divine processions are simultaneously beings/onta created by God and also participle powers and energies of the imparticiple God. Daniel Heide is being generous towards ‘Dionysius’ in trying to put the best face on Dionysius’ predication of logically undemonstrable objects as somehow signifying a hidden mystery of some sort, but in my opinion it is vital to point out the logical impossibility of ‘Dionysius’ predication on ontic energies, for this exposes the flawed ontological schematic which lies at the heart of the prevailing Eastern Christian metaphysic, and not only explains the reason why the theology of post Dionysian Eastern Christianity differs from that of the Nicene fathers, but also explains why the theology of the Latin and Coptic Churches in respect to the Divine Names of Sacred Scripture is much more in harmony with one another and is consistent with the dogmatic definition set forth in the First Council of Nicea in regard to the existence of the Son of God as only begotten out of the essence of the Father Light out of Light consubstantial with the Father, whereas the Byzantine theology is at odds with Nicene Christianity and with the Latin and Coptic Churches which remained fiathful to the dogmatic determinations of the Nicene fathers, as witnessed in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The establishment of these facts calls for the demotion of the Palamite theology to the domain of theologoumenon [divine philosophizing, as Gregory Nazianzen puts it (Oration 28.17)], where it properly belongs, which would remove a significant obstacle to reunion between the Greek and Latin Churches of Christendom (although Pope Francis appears to be dead set upon erecting as many new obstacles to reunion as he can before his pontificate comes to a blessed ending)].
It is to be observed that DN 11.6 is explicitly devoted to addressing the question with respect to the ontological status of the divine processions/Primary Beings, but other than saying that God transcends them as the One who substantiated (i.e. created) them, and asserting that they are not divine hypostases in their own right (how then is God Hypostates of that which is not a hypostasis? – illogical), but rather are powers of God which give existence, life and deification to individually existing creatures, he has nothing to offer us, other than to say that he had learned these things from his religious preceptors (viz., Hierotheos and his circle – actually Proclus and Plato and Plotinus), and that we are to be satisfied with this appeal to invalid or non existent tradition. For if he was truthful with his readers, and dropped the fiction he was peddling to them as being a transmitter of a hidden esoteric wisdom teaching of the apostles, ‘Dionysius’ would have had to admit that he or his teachers had cribbed all of these notions of divine procession from Proclus and Plato and Plotinus, and had to compress them into the logically undemonstrable object of an ontic energy in order to express polytheistic pagan metaphysics in a form which was in some sense resemblent to monotheistic Judeo-Christianity, for he was importing the ontology of divine procession into a Christian revelation which knows nothing or next to nothing of such things, in hopes of presenting a theosophic vision of the Good and the True and the Beautiful, which has ever been dear to the heart of the Hellenized Christian East. It required the fiction of apostolic provenence to make this syncretic fusion known as Christian Neoplatonism into an acceptable interpretation of the Christian religion, and in the intervening centuries matters had progressed to the point that the Byzantine Church could no longer distinguish between the two elements constituting the Dionysian fusion, having adopted the adapted Neoplatonism of ‘Dionysius’ and Maximus the Confessor as given expression in the theology of energetic progression by Gregory Palamas as the dogmatic teaching of the Church as a whole, subject to anathema, which was itself buttressed by the Cappadocian fathers’ prior incorporation of Platonic and Plotinian metaphysics into their own earlier interpretation of the Divine Names of Sacred Scripture and the account which they had given with respect to God’s activities in creation and the matter concerning the supposed ‘things around God’ (yet another Platonic and Plotinian metaphysical contrivance). Modern Greek religious scholars no longer accept this mistaken and self serving hagiography of the Byzantine Church [see John Demetracopoulos, “Palamas Transformed” (available online), who does a marvelous job of exposing the many discontinuities which exist within the Eastern Christian theological tradition], and without stating it outright they understand all too well that the Byzantine Church erred in proclaiming the Palamite theology the unblemished teaching of the fathers, and in elevating its adaptation of Platonic metaphysics as an explanatory mechanism of the Christian Gospel to the status of Church dogma.
The attempt of evangelos55 and his colleague(s) to resuscitate a long abandoned and no longer defensible tradition maintaining 1st century Dionysian authorship is nothing more than tilting at windmills, but they also sense that the exposure of pseudonymous authorship of the Dionysian Corpus has also undercut not only the authoritative status of the Palamite theology, but moreover of the claims of the Eastern Orthodox Church itself to represent the one true Church which has faithfully preserved the teachings of Christ and the Apostles without spot or blemish, when the truth of the matter is that they have accumulated as much historical conceptul baggage in their speculative theologizing as any other Church communion, but in their hubris they simply to refuse to admit what modern scholarship has now indisputibly proved to all who are willing to look upon with unbiased eyes.
Finally, you will observe further down in the comment section that evangelos55′ simplistic attempt to establish linkages proving that Church fathers from the second century such as Aristedes, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, as well as Origen of Alexandria from the 3rd century and John Chrysostom from the late 4th to the early 5th century were all literarily dependent upon ‘Dionysius’, is easily disproven, and that the claim to Proclean dependence upon Dionysius is without merit in terms of both internal and external textual considerations. These men are of course entitled to their opinions, but if they wish to overturn a scholarly consensus on a matter of this import they ought to submit their ‘research’ for peer review in reputable scholarly journals, instead of focusing their efforts on bamboozling an unwary public with false claims and simplistic linkages that do not hold up when examined by those who possess the requisite education and scholarly abilities to assess their truth claims. These men are claiming to overturn a scholarly consensus in the field of Dionysian studies on what amounts to undergraduate level research and speculation. I hold an MA each in Philosophy and Theology and can easily pull apart their arguments. One could only imagine what scholars who have attained to doctoral and post doctoral level education and attainment in the field would have to say about what is being propagated in their book. It would be something like reading the Da Vinci Code for them I suspect (i.e. not worth bothering with). These men who are seeking to rehabilitate ‘Dionysius’ seem to be well meaning, but they are simply way in over their heads. Hopefully as they mature they will adjust their thinking to the realities of the situation, for their fear (as they expressed it to me) is that if the Eastern Orthodox Church erred in its assessment of the personage of the Pseudo Dionysius, this would somehow mean that the Christian religion itself is called into question, or that the Eastern Church has become invalid if it can be shown that the Holy Spirit did not guide each and every activity of the Church over the ages, which is frankly a childishly impossible standard to hold anyone, for Christ imparted perfect sacraments to a Church of imperfect men and women, who sometimes err. I would rather side with the truth than hold to a falsehood, even if it cast the men who govern the Church in an imperfect or in a negative light, for the Gospel alone is the truth, not the speculative theologizings of the Church’s members, especially when drawn from pagan sources, which the Eastern Orthodox to this day have not yet come to accept.
The real elephant in the room is the only 1 of pseudoevangelos55’s sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens was well-familiar but condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantus” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent (a (REAL) Pope and Saint) via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria (a (REAL) Pope, Doctor, and Saint) ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
If you can’t prove something just from the Bible ALone in AcCordance with just the (REAL) Ancient OrthoDox Doctorly Saintly Church Fathers alone, it’s because it’s not True.
I see only 1 of your sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens was well-familiar but condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantus” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
EyTychianism is not (Coptic) Christianity. EuTychians are not (Coptic) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Coptic) Churches. Their leaders are not Clerics.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent (a (REAL) Pope and Saint) via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria (a (REAL) Pope, Doctor, and Saint) ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
ProClus was a neoPlatonist; not a Christian.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
Photianism is not (Byzantine) Christianity. Photians are not (Byzantine) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Byzantine) Churches. Their leaders are not (Byzantine) Clerics.
“pornocracy” is not (Latin) Christianity. “pornocrats” are not (Latin) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Latin) Churches. Their leaders are not (Latin) Clerics.
Nowhere in the Bible are mortal sinners, schismatics, heretics, or apostates ever non-sarcastically called “Christians”, “ProPhets”, “Apostles”, “Deacons”, “Pastors”, “Bishops”, or “Doctors” or their sects or meetinghouses “Churches” because they’re not.
The apostate Thomas Aquinas was an Aristotelian protoCalvinist “pantheistical” “pornocrat”; not a Christian.
The apostate Gregorius Palamas was a crypto-hindu Photian; not a Christian.
The apostate AntiPatriArch George PachyMeres of ConStantinoPolis was a Photian; not a Christian.
If you can’t prove something just from the Bible ALone in AcCordance with just the (REAL) Ancient OrthoDox Doctorly Saintly Church Fathers alone, it’s because it’s not True.
I see only 1 of your sources are Christian.
The apostate Josephus was a ChristSlayer.
Bishop Saint Aristides of Athens was well-familiar but condemned Egyptian-Greco-Latin pagan pseudotheophilosophology and pseudotheophilosophologians.
The apostate Justin AntiMartyr was a Hellenizer who called days by their pagan pseudonyms after their demon idols which God ProHibits [ExOdus 23:13; Osee 2:19].
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “TheoPhilus” of AntiOch was also a Hellenizer who “glorified” the sybils as if they were ProPhets.
The apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Origen AdaMantius” of Alexandria was a Hellenizing protoArian and was cursed by ImPerator Saint ConStantinus I the Great and ConDemned by ImPerator Saint Justinian in the 5th Canon against him.
EyTychianism is not (Coptic) Christianity. EuTychians are not (Coptic) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Coptic) Churches. Their leaders are not Clerics.
The apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis slandered the TheoTokos as “a proud sinner” and was ConDemned by Pope Saint Innocent (a (REAL) Pope and Saint) via his Ratification of the Oak Synod at which Pope Doctor Saint Cyril of Alexandria (a (REAL) Pope, Doctor, and Saint) ConDemned the apostate AntiBishop AntiSaint John ChrysosTom of ConStantinoPolis.
ProClus was a neoPlatonist; not a Christian.
PseudoDionySius has been repeatedly debunked.
Photianism is not (Byzantine) Christianity. Photians are not (Byzantine) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Byzantine) Churches. Their leaders are not (Byzantine) Clerics.
“pornocracy” is not (Latin) Christianity. “pornocrats” are not (Latin) Christians. Their sects and meetinghouses are not (Latin) Churches. Their leaders are not (Latin) Clerics.
Nowhere in the Bible are mortal sinners, schismatics, heretics, or apostates ever non-sarcastically called “Christians”, “ProPhets”, “Apostles”, “Deacons”, “Pastors”, “Bishops”, or “Doctors” or their sects or meetinghouses “Churches” because they’re not.
The apostate Thomas Aquinas was an Aristotelian protoCalvinist “pantheistical” “pornocrat”; not a Christian.
The apostate Gregorius Palamas was a crypto-hindu Photian; not a Christian.
The apostate AntiPatriArch George PachyMeres of ConStantinoPolis was a Photian; not a Christian.
If you can’t prove something just from the Bible ALone in AcCordance with just the (REAL) Ancient OrthoDox Doctorly Saintly Church Fathers alone, it’s because it’s not True.
please spare us your constant credentialism. You don’t need a PhD to be smart or to make discoveries (in fact, I think it’s healthy for someone outside academia to think outside the box and come up with fresh ideas for a change). You might recall that Michael Ventriss, the man who deciphered Linear B after none of the best linguists at the time could do it, unlocking a whole new field of study, was an architect by trade and only an amateur classicist. So people like Lucas can read our book and make up their own minds. You don’t have to gatekeep information.
Also, fyi our thesis was recently approved for publication in a peer-reviewed theological journal with an impressive editorial board, and a follow-up article which will forensically prove a pre-6th century provenance of the text is projected and will be submitted to one of the big-named patristic publications in the future. You, like the irreverent Stiglmayr and the 19th century German source-critics, clearly have ideological motivations behind your opposition to Dionysius’ authenticity. It’s just too bad that you’re too blind to see that. I’ve also studied philosophy at the university level and can read Latin and Greek. So please stop pretending that your opinions are superior to everyone else’s because you have a fancy piece of paper on your wall. Sorry for the harsh tone but your slanders had to be addressed. I hope you will do some soul-searching and use your God-given talents in a more humble and constructive way.
“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” 1 Corinthians 3:19
“There are many who think it praiseworthy to hold opinions contrary to those of the ancients or to discover some new thing by which they may appear learned.” Cassiodorus, Institutes 1.11
In response to your most recent post, evangelos55, I would say that I was reading comments from the bottom up and was not aware of Lucas’ age (which was mentioned farther up) when I posted to him and I apologized to you for my error in posting those comments to him, because I would not want to dampen a young person’s enthusiasm for their studies with criticisms that are better left for college or graduate school or age equivalent (i.e. age 21-24 or so). Unfortunately what’s done is done.
Although I should not have posted to Lucas due to his age, what is wrong with my pointing out all of the flaws in the things you have been posting on this site? I haven’t read your book, I am reacting to your posts, which are problematic in many respects. Haven’t I changed your own thinking in a couple of matters by forcing you to examine the Divine Names more closely than you had previously? My motto is ‘point out my mistakes, it’s the only way I’ll get better!’
As for your remarks about credentialism, credentials do matter, which is why you have to be board certified in medicine to practice medicine, or possess a law degree to practice law, and so forth.
Michael Ventriss, whom you cite as a successful amateur, was a polymath who was fluent in 12 languages (and was able to learn new languages in a matter of weeks) and a philologist and had been involved in the field of deciphering for 20 years (beginning as an adolescent) before his breakthrough achievement with Linear B – which points to the fact that he was a genius (!), and a man long devoted to his craft. Is that what you are claiming for yourself?
Truglia’s article begins by stating that “due to the pioneer work of Anthony Pavoni and Evangelos Nikitopoulos, the scales have decisively shifted in favor of the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus.” I was reacting to that dishonest statement. The scales have not shifted. If your work is well received after its publication in whatever journal it is being published in (you did not name it), and it generates genuine response and further research in the field in the direction which you are hoping to take it, I will be the first to admit that your work has begun to shift the scales in the field of Dionysian studies. But until that happens Truglia’s comments are false and misleading to the readers. He should have said, “in what the authors hope/believe will shift the scales in favor of the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus”, etc.
The evidence has been cumulative and ever more decisive for 500 years now that ‘Dionysius’ was not the 1st century pagan convert mentioned in Acts 17:29 but a 5th – 6th century Syrian Christian Neoplatonist. You have a high bar to meet to reverse the scholarly consensus. If you were somehow able to achieve your stated goal, your work would certainly be even more lauded in the academic community than Dr. Bradshaw’s work on the use of the word “energeia” in ancient and medieval Greek discourse as outlined in his work Aristotle East and West. I don’t say it cannot be done, but it is incumbent upon you to prove your assertions.
If you had been making impressive points in your posts, I would acknowledge them to be such, but there is much to be desired in what I have seen so far. For instance, you were not aware that the Primary Beings referenced in Divine Names 11.6 are synonymous with the divine processions (and mistakenly identified them with the angels) until I demonstrated this to you from both the text itself and from George Pachymeres’ commentary. You also were mistakenly of the opinion that ‘Dionysius’ was teaching in the Divine Names that the divine processions are the Hypostates of individual beings until I demonstrated to you from out of the text itself that ‘Dionysius’ is teaching that God Himself is the Hypostates of both the Primary Beings/divine processions and of all individually existing beings.
This demonstrates two things: one, you have not even bothered to master the text of Divine Names itself before making sweeping claims about its relationship to the works of Proclus; and two, if you are not even aware that ‘Dionysius’ refers to God as both Demiurge (DN 5.4) and as Hypostates/Substantiator (DN 1.7, 5.4, 6.1, 7.1, 9.6, 11.2, 11.6) of the Primary Beings/divine processions in his book On the Divine Names, how then will you be able to assess the relationship of these concepts in the writing of ‘Dionysius’ with their usage in the writings of Proclus, where they play a key role in his ontology, who teaches that “(God) the Father is the generator of the gods and of the superessential henads [unities], but the Maker of essences and the Hypostates/Substance-giver of beings” [ὁ…πατὴρ τῶν θεῶν ἔσται γεννητικὸς καὶ τῶν ὑπερουσίων ἑνάδων, ὁ δὲ ποιητὴς τῶν οὐσιῶν καὶ τῶν ὄντων ὑποστάτης]. (Proclus Diadochus, On the Theology of Plato, 5.16)? That is, if you are of the mistaken opinion that ‘Dionysius’ teaches that God is the Hypostates/Substance-giver to the angels only but not to the divine processions, in what way are you qualified to assess the relationship of his teaching in regard to this matter to Proclus’ teaching that God is Hypostates/Substance-giver to (all) beings (τῶν ὄντων ὑποστάτης) – including the Primary Beings (viz., Being, Life, Intellect)? I would say that this lack of familiarity on your part with the source materials upon which you are basing your theories of literary dependence is well nigh disqualifying.
Someone with a doctorate in the field of ancient philosophy/theology – ancient philosophy of religion would be expected to master this material before attempting to establish literary dependencies between the texts and before submitting the conclusions of his researches for publication.
As to the matter of education, I am not parading my education, because I told everyone in my posts here that I have not attained sufficient expertise in the field to publish in scholarly journals, but I am well educated enough that I can assess differing levels of expertise in the field, and point out the serious deficiencies which manifested in your understanding of the Divine Names, which bear directly upon your attempt to assign literary dependency between Proclus and ‘Dionysius’. If you want to get your car fixed, are you going to trust the opinion of an experienced mechanic or some guy who has never gone under the hood before? So yes, experience and qualifications do matter. My computer skills are trash, and I constantly have to go to my work associates to bail me out. When it comes to theology, I am the one with advanced knowledge and critical evaluation skills.
My father was a hard working Italian American plumber, and he drilled in his boys’ heads over and over again as we grew up: ”never do anything half-…ed!” That is the standard I am holding you to.
Finally, you accused me of having some kind of agenda which simply will not allow me to accept first century Dionysian authorship. Yes, it’s called the truth! If you can present true incisive and persuasive evidence of 1st century Dionysian authorship (which you have not done in these posts so far), I will GLADLY change my opinion. But it was you who posted above and revealed your true agenda when you set forth your complaint to me that if we do not accept 1st century Dionysian authorship, then the following calamities would result: ”Saint Gregory Nyssa, Saint Basil, Saint Maximus, what did they know? God’s promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church was a lie, and people did not really know what true Christianity was until Luther appeared 15 centuries after the Crucifixion to save us from idolatry.” That is, your Eastern Orthodox self conception as an inerrant Church is being called into question, and you and your EO fellows simply cannot bear to adjust your thinking to the reality that the EO Church’s theology is riddled with Platonism and has fundamentally erred on several questions of doctrine. You proudly point out to other Christians when you perceive such errors on the parts of Protestants and Roman Catholics, but you cannot accept it when it turns out that these same errancies and strayings from Apostolic and Nicene Christian theological doctrines and teachings are shown to exist in your own cherished tradition. It is an immature reaction to disquieting facts, and manifests an inability to adjust in the face of new realities, and a lack of humility when confronted with your own shortcomings.
I am just as hard on Roman Catholics who push the Mary Co-Mediatrix and Co-Redemptrix doctrines, or the idea of certain Roman Catholic popes that Mary offered her Son on the cross as an oblation to the Father, or is the neck of the body of Christ, whom we suddenly after her ascension into heaven in the middle of the 1st century A.D. can no longer go straight to Christ as the one mediator between God and men, because at that time her Divine Son supposedly appointed her to be His secretary and asked her to fulfill all of His prior mediating functions in the economy of grace (‘Dionysius’ appears to have played a large role in all of this re-conceptualization of the notion of divine mediation with all of the Neoplatonic hierarchies he introduced into the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies in the works of the same name), or on Protestants who deny that Christ created a visible Church on earth, or who deny intercessory prayer to saints (i.e. to intercede on our behalf as the apostles did for us while on earth, whose prayers, unlike ours, are sweet smelling to God and are most fervent and effectual and availeth much – Jas 5:16), justification by faith alone, Sola Scriptura, etc.
Some people (like you) are more gentle in spirit, and some (like me) are born polemicists, which has its purposes in God’s plan. Your hero Gregory Palamas was one of the most polemical Christians who ever lived. You approve of his polemicism because he championed what you believe, but you reprove my polemicism because I demonstrate him to be in error. Frankly, the Eastern Orthodox tend to be the most judgmental and condemnatory of all Christian bodies that I know, but they hate it when the tables are turned on them, because they have a false sense of superiority and inerrancy which simply does not hold up under close examination.
You yourself claimed that Plato uses the word ὑποστάτης and then retracted it, so I can use the same “gotcha” tactics against you, but I don’t think that is helpful. I am not an expert on every single word or concept that appears in the Dionysian Corpus (I doubt anyone is). Every day I refine the thesis and find new evidence. What I am somewhat of an expert in and what I have been studying for the past year is the history of those “500 years” of philological objections to the Dionysian Corpus, something which you refuse to interact with. For instance, I highly doubt you have ever read what Erasmus or Lorenzo Valla actually wrote in the 16th century that got this whole ball rolling. By any modern academic standards, most of their arguments would be laughed out of the room. Thing is, you can build the most “convincing” philosophical case, but at the end of the day, when you have Proclus himself expressly quoting “someone” and the only text that matches that “someone” is in Dionysius, everything else is a house of cards. I made that discovery, and in a free world I should be permitted to share it, especially on an informal blog like this. I don’t need anyone’s permission or thousands of publications to be able to defend the traditional position that the Church has always held. The scales change when people who care make them change.
I’m not claiming to overturn a scholarly consensus in a field of study, and I was just getting started in studying the Divine Names, and Proclus’ works, but I had already surpassed your own researches into these works in terms of the use of KEY notions of Hypostates and Primary Beings. You are claiming to overturn an academic consensus in a field of study, and you haven’t even mastered your source materials. You are submitting your work for academic review and not just commenting in a blog. A higher standard is expected of your work. Plato uses the words Maker and Demiurge, and Proclus says that these words indicate Hypostates. But you say Proclus got the word Hypostates from ‘Dionysius’, and this would mean that Paul’s companion Timothy was corresponding with Dionysius about the meaning of the word Hypostates and the Primary Beings, which is frankly preposterous. If your argument of dependency is based upon one possible linguistic linkage, which has other possible interpretations, but does not answer all of the other objections to Dionysian priority to Proclus, it will not overturn an academic consensus, which you are claiming to do.
I already proved you lied when you said I don’t follow Apostle Saint Paul’s Dogmatic DeClaration and DeFinition regarding the Sabboth Day [ExOdus 20:11; DeuteroNomy 5:12; Colossians 2:16–17] which, as I previously mentioned, was the foreshadow of, which it was FulFilled by, the Lord’s Day [Apocalypse 1:10], and the Judean new moon [Isaias 40:2; 66:24–25] which, as I previously mentioned, were the foreshadow of, which it was FulFilled by, the Christian new moon [Isaias 40:2; 66:24–25; Galatians 4:10–11; Colossians 2:16–17]. My quotations of ProPhet Saint Isaias’ and Apostle Saint Paul’s Dogmatic DeClarations and DeFinitions in ConJunction prove you, yet again, broke the 9th ComMandMent [ExOdus 20:16; DeuteroNomy 5:20], which is an obvious hobby of yours and pseudoevangelos55’s, when you slandered me of “pitting” them “against” each other in which case, if you were consistent, you’d’ve just outright slander Pope Saint Victor of the same for when he Issued a DeCree of ExCommUnication AGainst the QuartoDecimans over the Sacred PassOver despite pleas from other Bishops not to because the QuartoDecimans refused to celebrate Sacred PassOver on the 1st month’s called Abib’s 3rd Lord’s Day which is always the 1st Lord’s Day after the full moon after the spring equinox [ earlychurchtexts.com/public/eusebius_quartodeciman_controversy.htm] [ ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.iii.x.xxv.html] [ newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pope_Victor_I#Easter_controversy]. The Very Biblical DeFinition of a month is an interval between 2 new moons. The apostate invalid AntiPapal “Gregorian” “calendar” aligns with neither the solar year nor the lunar months. Then there’s the Dogmatic Fact, as the Nicene Synod, the AntiOchian Synod, and Pope Doctor Saint Leo I the Great DeClared and DeFined, PostFulFillMent PassOver is always on the 1st Lord’s Day after the full moon in Abib, the Most Sacred Nativity and the Most Sacred CirCumCision are always in Tebeth, and the Most Sacred EnCounter and the Most Sacred Baptism are always in Sabat, and the Christians always celebrate all PostFulFillMent Feast Days on a Lord’s Day no matter what. We don’t need pagans’ invalid “calendars”. We have God’s Calendar. Only a liar such as yourself says otherwise.
As for your medieval slander that Bishop Doctor Saint Augustinus of Hippo Regius authored medieval forgeries (e.g. “City of God”, “ConFessions”, “ReTractions”, “letters” of fraternity “from” Bishop Doctor Saint Augustinus of Hippo Regius “to” the apostate Hieronymus, et cetera) and the medieval Greco-Latin myth that the apostate Hieronymus was ever a Christian, I ask: where in the Bible does it say Bishops can err and not cease to be Christians let alone Clerics for such resistance to the Holy Ghost? It doesn’t. It repeatedly says the opposite [John 14:16–17,26; 15:26–27; 16:7,12–14]. The 2nd ConStantinoPolitan Synod, under ImPerator Saint Justinian, Canonized Bishop Doctor Saint Augustinus of Hippo as, and I quote, “of Most ReLigious Memory”. The Christians never spoke of the apostate Hieronymus in such a manner and his and his apostate pal Rufinus’ apostate invalid “Epistles” to each other are proof of why. Noone ever even heard of “ConFessions”, which teaches Hellenism and claims Bishop Doctor Saint Augustinus of Hippo Regius was an ex-Manichean which may or may not be true, before the scholastics were founded, “EnChiriDion”, which apostately calls the apostate Hieronymus “of Blessed Memory”, before the apostate AntiPope “BoniFacius VIII” PseudoCanonized and PseudoDoctorized the apostate Hieronymus, “ReTractions”, which heretically “recants” Petrine Supremacy, before the apostate AntiPope AntiSaint “Pius V” forged and published it, or “The City of God”, which contains the “6,000 years” pseudoprophesies and teaches the “Baptism of heresy, before the apostate Marcus Dods forged and published it. Either Bishop Doctor Saint Augustinus of Hippo Regius never wrote them or he either lost the Bishopric or never ObTained it in the 1st place. There’s no other possibilities. Everyone who says otherwise is a liar. No wonder why such guys as the apostates Michael HoffMan and Richard Ibranyi made and released such videos and books as The DeSecration of (“)Catholic(“) (“)Places(“) [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr036_wq_desecration_peters_basilica.html] (21st Abib (11th Ram) 2013) [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr037_wq_desecration_of_catholic_places.html] (24th Tebeth (5th Goat) 2013) [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/books/rjmi/br61_desecration_of_catholic_places.pdf] (2nd Adar 2 (11th Fish) 2013), The Great Apostasy [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr038a_wq_great_apostasy_part_1.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr038b_wq_great_apostasy_part_2.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr038c_wq_great_apostasy_part_3.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr038d_wq_great_apostasy_part_4.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr038e_wq_great_apostasy_part_5.html] (26th Tebeth (7th Goat) 2013) [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/books/rjmi/br63_great_apostasy.pdf] (7th Elul (10th Lion) 2014), The Hellenization “of” Christianity by the AntiChurch AntiFathers and the Scholastics [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr040-wq_antichurch_fathers_hellenization_christianity.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr041-wq_anti-church_father_Jerome.html] (5th Tebeth (Goat) 2014) [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr051a_wq_hellenization_by_scholastics_part_1.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr051b_wq_hellenization_by_scholastics_part_2.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr051c_wq_hellenization_by_scholastics_part_3.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr051d_wq_hellenization_by_scholastics_part_4.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr051f_wq_hellenization_by_scholastics_part_5.html] [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/video_pages/lectures/rjmi/vlr051g_wq_hellenization_by_scholastics_part_6.html] (15th Tebeth (5th Goat) 2015) [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/books/rjmi/br76_hellenization_of_christianity.pdf] (18th Elul (32nd Crab) 2018) and The OcCult “Church” of Rome [ amazon.com/dp/0990954722/?coliid=I15CE9KGJE0CE5&colid=1XEZDM3L1MJG1&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it] (7th Ziu (14th Bull) 2017), and On the “Hieronimo”-“Sistine”-“CleMentine” vulgate’s Errors and Heretical ComMentaries [ johnthebaptist.us/jbw_english/documents/books/rjmi/br78_clementine_vulgate_errors_heretical_commentaries.pdf] (17th Adar (21st Fish) 2019)!
I overlooked some other glaring mistakes you made. You wrote:
τὰς (the) ὑπερκοσμίους (supercosmic) φύσεις (natures), ὡς (as) πρώτως (Primary) καὶ (and) ἀκραιφνῶς (pure) τῶν (the) θείων (divine) δωρεῶν (gift) μετεχούσας (participation), ζωῆς (Life), ἀθανασίας (Immortality), καὶ (and) τῶν (the) λοιπῶν (the rest).
You translated this as:
“the supercosmic natures, the pure and primary participle divine gifts, [such as] Life, Immortality, and the rest.”
Again, this is wrong.
πρώτως and ἀκραιφνῶς are adverbs meaning “firstly” and “purely”, respectively, not “primary” and “pure”
μετεχούσας is a present participle meaning “participating” (governed by φύσεις) not a noun “participation”. In Greek, the expression “to participate in” is formed with the verb μετέχω + the genitive. This is why δωρεαί, ζωὴ, ἀθανασία, and λοιπὰ are in the genitive.
So here is an accurate translation of what Pachymeres wrote:
“By ‘primary beings’, I (Pachymeres) believe Dionysius is referring to the supercosmic natures, which firstly and purely participate in the divine gifts, in Life, Immortality, and the rest.”
The natures (angels) participate in the gifts, they are not the gifts themselves.
If you cannot properly render this most basic of sentences, you should not be getting into debates that go over your head, let alone disparaging other people’s work.
There are a little too may words being spilled here. To distill your argument:
1. Evangelos is not smart enough.
2. Craig is dishonest because the force of the arguments have not trickled through scholarship (yet).
3. “I have philosophical objections to the thesis.”
Due to the logical fallacies inherent in your first to arguments (ad hominems and ad populum), it is hard to take seriously the vigour of your philosophical objections. At its core, Evangelos’ arguments are historical and phonological, and so while your philosophical argumentation is suggestive, it is ultimately much more subjective than arguments which demonstrate Proclus was quoting and external authority which matches only Dionysius, that Gregory Nazianzus did the same, that the internal Greek phonology matches a 1st century style of writing, that the degree of lexical parallels and the differences in how they are employed point to writers individually borrowing from Dionysius as opposed to the other way around, etcetera. Granted–not all of this comes out in a blog post. This thesis will have its day in the sun *and* it will have its opposition who will pretend it does not exist (cancel it), ad hom, and ad pop (as you are doing) because they do not have actual responses to the real evidence.
So, I’d point you to the actual evidence and a bit of patience for it to be published. The blog post is not even the spark notes, it is something made for general, easy consumption. I am aware this is what you are somewhat responding to, but this is why I ask politely you leave the logical fallacies at the door and deal strictly with the evidence as presented.
All the best
Craig
You claimed that an academic consensus has already been overturned, when it has not, so I did not engage in ad hominum, I pointed out that you had misrepresented the state of affairs in the academic community. If evangelos55′ work changes the direction of academic studies in the field, THEN your claim will be true. As of now it is not true. That is the standard I am holding you to. Do not make claims which are not true.
As for this blog, I can only react to what I see in the blog, and so far evangelos55′ grasp of his subject matter has been woefully inadequate, as I have demonstrated. Perhaps he should present here some of what you two believe are your stronger points, so that we can have a more favorable view of what he claims to be doing.
This discussion has strayed. I’d like to focus on substance if that’s ok with you. In sum, your whole objection, as you now admit, boils down to the claim that the word “hypostates” in the sense of “source of being” is just “too advanced” for a late first-century Christian to have used. This is not a serious objection. Here is Tatian, a second-century writer, in his Address to the Greeks, using the word “hypostasis” in the same sense as Dionysius:
“For the Lord of the universe, who is Himself the necessary ground (ὑπόστασις) of all being, inasmuch as no creature was yet in existence, was alone; but inasmuch as He was all power, Himself the necessary ground (ὑπόστασις) of things visible and invisible, with Him were all things.” (Chapter 5)
The same vocabulary occurs in Philo:
“For God is the name of goodness, the cause (αἰτίου) of all things; that you may understand that He also created all inanimate things, not by His authority, but by His goodness, by which also He created all living things; for it was requisite for the manifestation of the better things, that there should also subsist (ὑποστῆναι) a creation of inferior things.” (Allegorical Interpretation III.73)
Philo clearly connects the ideas of God as “cause” with that of “subsistence.”
I also showed you above that Didymus the Blind (who lived before Proclus) uses the word “hypostates” in the sense of “Creator” twice: “ὑποστάτης τῶν ὅλων,” “ὑποστάτης τῶν πάντων” (PG 39, col. 705, 816).
As for the “protos onta”, we never established that this was referring to the divine energies and not to the angels. That was your assumption. I was content to let that slide and take your word for it, but upon looking up Pachymeres’ commentary, it is now evident to me that you did not read the text correctly. This is what you cited earlier:
Πρώτως (Primary) δὲ (But) ὄντα (Beings) οἶμαι (considered) αὐτὸν (themselves) εἰρηκέναι (I call) τὰς (the) ὑπερκοσμίους (supercosmic) φύσεις.
First of all, your gloss is inaccurate:
οἶμαι is first person present, not aorist, which would be ᾠήθην or ᾠήθησαν.
αὐτὸν is masculine singular, not neuter plural. αὐτὸν is referring to Dionysius, no to the ὄντα.
εἰρηκέναι does not mean “I call”, it is a perfect infinitive meaning “to have called”.
The construction Pachymeres is using is called an accusative-infinitive, in which the subject is put in the accusative in reported speech. So this is the correct translation:
“By ‘primary beings’, I (Pachymeres) believe Dionysius is referring to the supercosmic natures.”
I don’t mean to be mean, but if you are to lecture people on how many degrees you have, you should first avoid making elementary Greek mistakes.
In addition, if you had bothered to read a few lines below, Pachymeres writes:
Όταν δε αυτός λέγεται ο Θεός αυτοζωή, υπέρ πάσαν φύσιν λέγεται, ήγουν και υπέρ αγγέλους και πάσαν νοεράν ουσίαν. (PG 3: 965D-968A)
“When God is said to be Life-Itself, He is said to be above every nature, that is, also above angels and every intelligible substance.”
φύσεις refers to the αγγέλους. In other words, when Dionysius says that God is “hypostates of the primary beings” he is saying that God is “above the angels, which are the highest part of creation”.
This parallels what Dionysius says in DN 5.3:
“But if any one assumed the intellectual to be without being, and without life, the statement might hold good. But if the Divine Minds (οἱ θεῖοι νόες) are both above all the rest of beings (ὑπὲρ τὰ λοιπὰ ὄντα), and live above the other living beings, and think and know, above sensible perception and reason, and, beyond all the other existing beings, aspire to, and participate in, the Beautiful and Good, they are more around the Good, participating in It more abundantly, and having received larger and greater gifts from It.”
John of Scythopolis/Maximus’ commentary concurs with this:
Πρώτως όντα τας νοητάς φησι δημιουργίας, τας ασωμάτους, τουτέστι τους αγγέλους. (PG 4: 400C)
“[Dionysius] calls ‘primary beings’ the intelligible and bodiless creations, that is, the angels.“
So I’m afraid everything you have been arguing on this thread is factually and demonstrably incorrect.
Miguel, you are clearly an extremely arrogant and disturbed individual. You can critique our thesis all you want, but when you start spewing blasphemies about Saint John Chrysostom, a doctor of the Church who knew Scripture far better than you, that crosses a line. Your endless delusional rants have contributed absolutely nothing to this debate. Please refrain from posting, as all you succeed in doing is distracting readers with your mental drivel. And learn how to spell like a human being.
pseudoevangelos55 you are clearly a liar so stall me out with your pseudohumility. You thesis is easily debunked on its own but the fact you could barely cite 1 Christian source speaks even higher volumes and the fact you slander me of blaspheming a mere man who was ConDemned by 2 Popes: 1 of Rome: 1 of Alexandria: the 1 of Alexandria whom happens to be a (REAL) Doctor: both of whom happen to be (REAL) Saints: both of whom (REALLY) knew the Bible: is tantamount to AntiSaintolatry with is idolatry which is apostasy which is a violation of the 1st ComMandMent and, by extension a violation, of the 9th ComMandMent. I’m not the 1st to expose expose your apostate AntiSaints. Even Michael HoffMan and Richard Ibranyi have done the same thing. Please stop worshipping the damned, babbling-on, et cetera and encouraging others to do so as well as all you succeed in doing is dragging others with you to the abyss of Hell. And shitcan the tone-“policing” for which, among other things, Christ Jesus ConDemned the pharisees and learn some Greek etymology.
Thomas: “You claimed that an academic consensus has already been overturned, when it has not…”
The article makes reference to the evidence (“the scales have decisively shifted in favor of the authenticity of the Dionysian corpus”) and pending peer reviewed research. It nowhere claims all of academia is yet on board. Imputing “dishonesty” is simply not honest in this case. Further replies of yours on this topic will not be welcomed and this is a serious issue and it must be discussed with respect. I am sure you understand.
I’ve tried to use this forum to have a congenial and constructive debate. Anyone who re-reads this exchange can see from the beginning that I was open to considering your perspective, learning new things, and taking your objections seriously, something which sadly you did not reciprocate.
I cited you two commentaries (John and Pachymeres) which say black on white that the “πρώτως ὄντα” are the angels. When prompted, I provided you 3 examples of the use of the word ὑποστάτης/ὑφίσταμαι in Jewish-Christian authors preceding Proclus. I also showed you multiple times that Dionysius denies that the divine processions are “hypostases” in DN 11.6. Finally, I cited two modern researchers (Daniel Heide and Svetlana Mesyats) who concur with me that Dionysius, contrary to Proclus, does not place the divine energies in a middle “ontic” state but elevates them as aspects of the One itself (something in line with ancient Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism). The text itself, the ancient commentaries, and modern research all prove you wrong. And yet, you continue to cling on to your theory of “ontic energies,” a phrase that Dionysius never uses and which I’ve never heard outside this context.
The fact that you still hold on to the possibility that your translation of Pachymeres might be right, even after I forensically parsed the Greek to you, is just astounding. It just shows me and anyone who reads this debate how dishonest you are. Someone who repeatedly shames other people with ad hominems only to admit that he himself used a machine translation to even read the primary texts is not to be taken seriously. Additionally, someone who cannot distinguish between the words μετεχούσας (participating) and μεθεκτὰς (participable) is not a trustworthy interpreter of any ancient text, let alone one so complex and nuanced as Dionysius. Let this be a lesson in humility for all those who would throw stones from glass houses. I have nothing more to say.