Abstract

Given the renewed interest in Dionysian scholarship in the last decade, one wonders what new things can be said of the enigmatic figure known as "Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite." Rorem's book has much to add to the present state of scholarship. The author intends to present the treatises of the Areopagite--The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and The Epistles--as a coherent whole. He rightfully maintains that medieval readers often "ripped" their favorite material from the Dionysian garment resulting in a patchwork unreflective of the whole. Accordingly, traditional interpretations of the corpus areopagiticum, to switch metaphors, often lost the forest for the trees. Rorem contends that the treatises' material unity results from Dionysius' pervasive concern for the symbols of the liturgy and of the Bible, whether in its names for God or in its descriptions of the angels. These symbols, as outlined in the Mystical Theology, are painted on the backdrop of the Neoplatonic notions of "Procession" and "Return." Hence: "Christian symbolism, whether ritual acts or scriptural language in general, is a divine self-revelation which proceeds 'down' into the human categories of thought and sense perception." This procession allows for a return which uplifts the faithful: initially, to a higher conceptual realm, through the negation and interpretation of all perceptual symbols; then, to the very Godhead, through the negation of all interpretations, all language, and even all thought.