Letters

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)

Author:

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Form:

epistles

Approx. date:

c. 500 CE

Eleven letters addressed to Gaius Therapeutes (four), Dorotheus, Sopatros, Polycarp, Demophilus, Titus, John the Theologian (the Evangelist on Patmos), and Apollophanes. Includes Letter X to John of Patmos — the most-discussed letter, traditionally adduced as evidence of the writer's apostolic-era identity.

• 1Letters — Letter I — To Gaius Therapeutes — I. To Gaius — the divine darkness as super-light

  First of the eleven letters. To Gaius the therapeutēs (servant) on the divine darkness as a super-light invisible to created intellect by its very excess of brightness. The famous Dionysian paradox: the darkness is the light that exceeds the eye's capacity to receive it.

  175 words
• 2Letters — Letter II — To the same Gaius Therapeutes — II. To Gaius — God is beyond thearchy itself

  Continuing to Gaius. God is beyond not only every created being but also beyond thearchy (god-ruling-ness) itself — i.e., beyond every name we might give to designate God as principle of being. The radical apophasis pushed one degree further than the Mystical Theology explicitly states.

  152 words
• 3Letters — Letter III — To the same Gaius — III. To Gaius — the suddenly (ἐξαίφνης)

  On the suddenly (ἐξαίφνης) of the Incarnation — Christ's appearance among us as a sudden phenomenon that breaks through the regular orders. The Greek exaiphnēs as the Dionysian name for the temporal singularity of the divine descent.

  127 words
• 4Letters — Letter IV — To the same Gaius Therapeutes — IV. To Gaius — Christ's human nature; the new God-manly operation

  On the human nature of Christ. Christ acted not merely as God nor merely as man but with a new God-manly operation (καινῆν τινα τὴν θεανδρικὴν ἐνέργειαν) — the Dionysian phrase that Maximus Confessor will develop into the doctrine of the two energies of Christ.

  287 words
• 5Letters — Letter V — To Dorotheus, Leitourgos — V. To Dorotheus — Moses entering the cloud

  Short letter to Dorotheus the leitourgos (deacon). On Moses entering the cloud at Sinai and seeing what he did not see — the apophatic vision in which the seer's not-seeing is itself the highest mode of beholding.

  234 words
• 6Letters — Letter VI — To Sopatros, Priest — VI. To Sopatros — refute by setting forth the truth, not by attacking error

  To the priest Sopatros. On the right method of theological controversy: do not refute opponents by attacking what they say; refute by setting forth the truth so clearly that what is false collapses by contrast. Dionysian pastoral counsel for theological dispute.

  150 words
• 7Letters — Letter VII — To Polycarp, Hierarch — VII. To Polycarp — the eclipse at the Crucifixion seen from Heliopolis

  To the bishop Polycarp. On the eclipse at the time of the Crucifixion which Dionysius and his companion Apollophanes are reported to have observed at Heliopolis in Egypt — the moment when Dionysius is said to have exclaimed: 'Either the Deity suffers, or the world is being dissolved.'

  1,259 words
• 8Letters — Letter VIII — To Demophilus, Therapeutes — VIII. To Demophilus — keep your rank; do not transgress the orders

  The longest of the letters. To the therapeutēs Demophilus who has overstepped his rank and rebuked a priest. Stern reprimand: keep your rank, do not transgress the orders; the principle of hierarchical regularity (already taught in CH X) applied pastorally.

  4,660 words
• 9Letters — Letter IX — To Titus, Hierarch — IX. To Titus — the symbolic theology of Scripture

  To the bishop Titus. On the symbolic theology — the third of Dionysius's theological methods (after kataphatic and apophatic). Why Scripture uses sensible images at all; the divine accommodation to embodied intellect through corporeal figures.

  2,510 words
• 10Letters — Letter X — To John, Theologos, Apostle and Evangelist — X. To John the Theologian on Patmos

  Famous brief letter — purportedly written by Dionysius to the Evangelist John during John's exile on Patmos. The chronological impossibility (Dionysius the historical Areopagite would have been dead long before John's exile) is one of the marks that has secured the Pseudo-Dionysian dating.

  427 words
• 11Letters — Letter XI — Dionysius to Apollophanes, Philosopher — XI. To Apollophanes — the philosopher of Heliopolis

  To Apollophanes — the companion of Dionysius at the Heliopolis observation reported in Letter VII. A letter to a pagan philosopher inviting him to recognize what their shared observation pointed to — and to accept the gospel that explains it.

  1,129 words

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