On Divine Names
Translation: The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, Vol. I · Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th–early 6th c.) · source: sacred-texts.com / chr/dio (mirror of James Parker & Co., London, 1897)
Thirteen caputs on the names predicated of God in Scripture — Good, Light, Beautiful, Love, Being, Life, Wisdom, Power, Righteous, Salvation, Perfect, One. The middle text of the Dionysian corpus, between Mystical Theology and the two Hierarchies. Greek title Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων.
Source context· Greco-Christian stream · Greco-Latin cultural age
- Stream
- Greco-Christian
- Cultural age
- Greco-Latin (4th post-Atlantean cultural age)
- Composed
- c. 500 CE
- 1On Divine Names — Caput I — I. Of the divine names; the unspeakable Godhead
Opens with the great theme: the divine names by which the Scriptures designate God, and the priority of the unspeakable Godhead over every name. The Scripture-given names are the proper subject of theology; their interpretation is the work that follows.
2,777 words - 2On Divine Names — Caput II — II. The Trinity; the unique substance and the unique distinctions
The Trinity expounded. The unique divine substance held in common; the unique distinctions (Father, Son, Holy Ghost); the great Dionysian theme of the unities and distinctions in the Godhead — names that name the one God and names that name the three hypostases.
3,498 words - 3On Divine Names — Caput III — III. The power of prayer; the blessed Hierotheus
On the place of prayer in the work of approaching the divine names. The metaphor of pulling a chain that hangs from above — when we draw down, we do not move the chain but bring ourselves up. The testimony of the blessed Hierotheus, Dionysius's master.
1,352 words - 4On Divine Names — Caput IV — IV. Good, Light, Beauty, Love (ἔρως)
The longest chapter and the most beautiful. The divine name Good (ἀγαθόν) — and from it Light, Beauty, Love. Includes the famous Dionysian doctrine of eros as a name of God; the four divine ecstasies of love. The chapter most cited by the entire Christian-Platonist tradition.
10,571 words - 5On Divine Names — Caput V — V. Being (τὸ ὄν)
The divine name Being. God as the principle of every existent; as the He Who Is of Exodus; as that without which nothing can be said to be. The relation of created beings to the unparticipated Being who gives them being.
2,568 words - 6On Divine Names — Caput VI — VI. Life (ζωή)
The divine name Life. God as life-giver, as life-itself, as the life by participation in which all living things live. The hierarchy of life: the simplest organic life, the sensitive life, the rational life, the angelic life — all participations in the one divine Life.
700 words - 7On Divine Names — Caput VII — VII. Wisdom (σοφία), Mind (νοῦς), Word (λόγος), Truth, Faith
A cluster of names of the intellectual life: Wisdom, Mind, Word (Logos), Truth, Faith. Each examined in its proper sense; the relation of human wisdom and human faith to the divine names that ground them. The chapter on the intellectual attributes.
1,955 words - 8On Divine Names — Caput VIII — VIII. Power, Justice, Salvation, Redemption
The chapter on the names that express God's governance of creation. Power (the divine omnipotence); Justice (the proportionate giving of each its due); Salvation (the rescue of what was lost); Redemption (the buying-back). The economic-soteriological names.
1,942 words - 9On Divine Names — Caput IX — IX. Great, Small, Same, Different, Like, Unlike, Rest, Motion, Equality
A cluster of names taken from the categories of magnitude, relation, and movement: Great-Small, Same-Different, Like-Unlike, Rest-Motion, Equality. Dionysius shows how each pair is true of God in a sense that transcends the contradictions that bind them in creatures.
1,713 words - 10On Divine Names — Caput X — X. Almighty, Ancient of Days, Eternity, Time
The temporal names. God as Almighty (παντοκράτωρ); as Ancient of Days (Daniel 7); as Eternity (αἰών); as Time (in the sense in which Scripture calls God lord of time). The relation of God to past, present, and future.
703 words - 11On Divine Names — Caput XI — XI. Peace — also He Himself, being-itself, life-itself
Peace as a divine name — the divine eirēnē in which all things are held together. Also the doctrine of the himself names: being-itself, life-itself, wisdom-itself — the autoousia, autozōē, autosophia of the divine self-subsistent perfections.
1,812 words - 12On Divine Names — Caput XII — XII. Holy of holies, King of kings, Lord of lords, God of gods
The Scriptural superlative names. Holy of holies, King of kings, Lord of lords, God of gods — each expounded as naming the divine eminence over every order of being (saints, kings, lords, gods). The structure of the of-X superlatives.
519 words - 13On Divine Names — Caput XIII — XIII. Perfect and One
The closing chapter on the name Perfect and the name One. The divine teleion — perfection — as that which lacks nothing; the divine henōsis — oneness — as the source from which every multiplicity proceeds. The work closes on these two highest names.
1,473 words
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