By Daniel John Lewis (aka "Bro. Daniel Lewis - of Bristol")
I have recently been reading the Complete Works of Pseudo-Dionysius [1], and I was asked to give a brief overview of who Pseudo-Dionysius was and what he wrote about. As Freemasons, his work is quite interesting and useful in many ways.
Pseudo-Dionysius was a person who used the pseudonym of “Dionysius
the Areopagite”. Pseudo-Dionysius probably lived around 500 AD, he was
a writer of Christian Theology and Philosophy, he often quoted both
the Bible and the works of Aristotle and Plato but more on that in a
moment. Who was Dionysius the Areopagite? He appears in the Bible in
Acts chapter 17 verses 30 to 34 (NKJV) [2]:
And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” So Paul departed from among them. However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
As can be seen in Chapter 17 of Acts, Dionysius and Damaris were Athenians, and so most probably followed the Greek Religion and Philosophy, and they became “believers” following Saint Paul. This combination of Greek Religion/Philosophy with Christianity becomes the basis for the works by Pseudo-Dionysius.
What about Pseudo-Dionysius, his currently known writings are:
- The Divine Names – about the various names that we can attribute to God and the Divine, and the reasons why we can call God those names
- Mystical Theology – about the method of interpreting the symbols of the Bible, and discusses Affirmative Theology and the negative
- The Celestial Hierarchy – about the hierarchy of angels
- The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy – about the hierarchy of the church, and its rites
- Ten Letters to various people
...and there are a few other writings which are missing, including: - Theological Representations – where Pseudo-Dionysius “Praised the notions which are most appropriate to affirmative theology”
- Symbolic Theology – where he discusses “analogies of God drawn
from what we perceive”
At the time of writing I have just finished reading The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology. I am very much looking forward to reading the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, as they appeal to me greatly.
In The Divine Names, Pseudo-Dionysius seems to use extensively Aristotelian Logic in addition to the philosophy of Plato, Plotinus and Proclus in order to bring reason to why we should use certain names, symbols and concepts to describe God and the Divine – all with references to Bible Scripture.
This is extended in The Mystical Theology, in which he describes his methodology of reasoning in an attempt to help the reader and aspiring theologian to decode the Bible (and his future writings in the Heirarchies').
Not only should anyone who loves Christian Mysticism and Christian Esotericism read Pseudo-Dionysius, but I would highly recommend his works to any Christian who is keen on understanding their own faith
p.s. if you are a Freemason, you may find some familiar imagery described in The Divine Names - but I'll let you find out more about that.
References
- The Complete Works of Pseudo-Dionysius - Translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem - with Preface and Introductions by Rene Roques, Jaroslave Pelikan, Jean Leclercq, Karlfried Froehlich - Published by Paulist Press (1987)
- Acts 17:32-34
