Being in the Likeness of the Good God (original) (raw)

"Filled with the Visible Theophany of the Lord: Reading Dionysius East and West"

Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 2012

This article is the latest in a series of papers in which the author has explored how the Divine Names and Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite have been read in terms of three 'frameworks': Neoplatonic, Greek patristic/ Orthodox Christian, and Medieval Latin scholastic. In this article, the author focuses on Dionsyius's reference to the Transfiguration of the Lord (DN 1.4, 592B-C) and the sort of embodied knowledge we can have of God in theophanic experiences. This text provides a very good example for contrasting the Latin scholastic and Orthodox/Greek patristic interpretations of Dionysius. It also provides an excellent example of a text that cannot be accommodated within a strictly Neoplatonic interpretation of the Divine Names. The author spends most of the article examining the quite different frameworks in which St. Gregory Palamas, on the one hand, and Sts. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, interpret this text. In the end the author shows that these different frameworks for interpreting Dionysius's reference to the Transfiguration rest on quite different epistemologies.

Aquinas on 'The Good' as the Principal Name of God: An Aristotelian Reading of Dionysius

Analogia, 2023

On a number of occasions, when considering the names that can properly be said of God, Aquinas notably holds that the most proper name is 'He Who Is'. In this way, Aquinas's account of divine naming could be seen to stand in contrast to the Platonic tradition of favoring the name of 'Good' for the first principle since, in that tradition, the Good is beyond being. With that said, it is important to note that Aquinas himself at times speaks in terms similar to the Platonists, observing both that God is beyond being (supra ens) and that the name of 'Good' should, in a respect, be seen as the 'principal name of God' (principale nomen dei), namely, inasmuch as he is a cause. This paper offers clarification on how Aquinas reconciles this claim about 'Good' as the principal name of God with his position that 'He Who Is' is the most proper name of God. Fundamental to this investigation is a consideration of Aquinas's treatment of as he presents them in his commentary The Divine Names of Ps.-Dionysius.

Three misuses of Dionysius for comparative theology

Religious Studies, 2009

In his 2000 Religious Studies article ' Ineffability ', John Hick calls upon the Dionysian corpus to bear witness to the ' transcategorality' of God and thereby corroborate his comparative theology of pluralism. Hick's Dionysius avows God's transcendence of categories by negating God's names, while at the same time maintaining that such names are metaphorically useful means of uplifting humans to God. But herein reside three common misunderstandings of the Dionysian corpus: (1) the divine names are mere metaphors; (2) the divine names are therefore negated of God; and (3) the negation of divine names is the means by which humans return to and unite with God.

Dionysius the Areopagite on Nous

In this paper, Ps.-Dionysius' use and understanding of the term nous is considered. Ps.-Dionysius uses the (rare) plural of the term (noes - intelligences) for the angelic host. I argue that this usage is best understood against the background of the Origenist tradition which Dionysius, however, sought to modify. To this end, he drew on the hierarchical ontology of Neoplatonism. As a result, the created intelligences of Ps.-Dionysius are not changing to bring about the variety of our present world. Rather, as immaterial they remain unchanging in their eternal vision of God. In this connection, Ps.-Dionysius also alters another major element in the Origenist tradition by understanding the operation of the nous less as an active power characterised by free will, but as a passive, entirely receptive form of intuitive knowledge. This aspect is brought out in the paper through noting the stark contrast in this regard between Ps.-Dionysius and Gregory of Nyssa. Further parts of the paper explore Ps.-Dionysius' application of nous to human beings and to God. It emerges that the anonymous author departs rather radically from earlier Patristic ideas about humanity as the centre of creation based on Gen. 1, 26 (the verse hardly features in the Corpus Dionysiacum). In his teaching on God as nous, however, Ps.-Dionysius is closer to earlier Patristic precedent and, by the same token, rather distant from the Neoplatonic doctrine of the One.