596 FOUETH PEKIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
Luther called him a dreamer, and this was one of his hereti cal views which the Sorbonne of Paris condemned.
THE SEVERAL WHITINGS.
The Dionysian writings, as far as preserved, are four treatises addressed to Timothy, his " fellow-presbyter," namely: 1) On the Celestial Hierarchy (ftepi r^c obpavia^ fepap%lac). 2) On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (ire pi rrfi &xxty0ea0Texyjz tepap%tac). 3) On the Divine Names (nepi fteuov duojudrajv). 4) On Mys tic Theology (Kepi fjatarexr^ $soAof/ac). To these are added ten letters addressed to various persons of the apostolic age.1
THE SYSTEM OF DIONYSIUS.
These books reveal the same authorship and the same system of mystic symbolism, in which Neo-Platonism and Christianity are interwoven. The last phase of Hellenic philosophy which heretofore had been hostile to the church, is here made subser vient to it. The connecting ideas are the progressive revelation of the infinite, the hierarchic triads, the negative conception of evil, and the striving of man after mystic union with the tran scendent God. The system is a counterpart of the Grseco- Jewish theology of Philo of Alexandria, who in similar manner mingled the Platonic philosophy with the Mosaic religion. The Areopagite and Philo teach theology in the garb of philo sophy; both appeal to Scripture, tradition, and reason; both go behind the letter of the Bible and the facts of history to a deeper symbolic and allegoric meaning ; both adulterate the revealed truths by foreign elements. But Philo is confined to the Old Testament, and ignores the New, which was then not yet written; while the system of the Areopagite is a sort of philosophy of Christianity.
The Areopagite reverently ascends the heights and sounds
1 An eleventh letter which exists only in Latin (paid to have been written by Scotus Erigena), and a Latin Liturgy of Dionysius (published by Renaudot and in Migne's ed. I. 1123-1132), are spurious.
2 137. THE PSEUDO-DION YSI AN WRITINGS. 597
the depths of metaphysical and religious speculation, and makes the impression of profound insight and sublime spirituality; and hence he exerted such a charm upon the great schoolmen and mystics of the middle ages. But he abounds in repetitions; he covers the poverty of thought with high-sounding phrases ; he uses the terminology of the Hellenic mysteries;1 and his style is artificial, turgid, involved, and monotonous. .
The unity of the Godhead and the hierarchical order of the universe are the two leading ideas of the Areopagite. He de scends from the divine unity through a succession of manifesta tions to variety, and ascends back again to mystic union with God. His text, we may say, is the sentence of St. Paul : " From God, and through God, and unto God, are all things" (Rom. 11: 36).
He starts from the Neo-Platonic conception of the Godhead, as a being which transcends all being and existence,2 and yet is the beginning and the end of all existence, as unknowable and yet the source of all reason and knowledge, as nameless and inexpressible and yet giving names to all things, as a simple unity and yet causing all variety. He describes God as " a unity of three persons, who with his loving providence pene trates to all things, from super-celestial essences to the last things of earth, as being the beginning and cause of all beings, beyond all beginning, and enfolding all things transcendentally in his infinite embrace." If we would know God, we must go out of ourselves and become absorbed in Him. All being pro ceeds from God by a sort of emanation, and tends upward to him.
The world forms a double hierarchy, that is, as he defines it, " a holy order, and science, and activity or energy, assimilated
1 As for the three stages of spiritual ascent, Kfidapai.^ fj-i^cfic, reXe/oxr/f, and the verb ETroTrrEveadai, i. e. to be admitted to the highest grade at mysteries, to become an t-^^rrjq or JUVOTTJC. For other rare words see the vocabulary of Dion, in Migne, I. 1134 sqq., and II. 23 sqq.
3 ro ov VTrepovaiov, das uberseiende Sein.