Theodor Damian, New York
The concept of "Imago Dei" in the Theology
of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite
(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)   (references)

"Silence is the language of the coming ages."
St. Isaac the Syrien

"Language is not something you make
The only language, your total language
Master over waters and light
Is the ome in which you know to be silent."
Lucian Blaga

PRELIMINARIES

The Man
Dionysius is a controversial personality both in respect to his biography and to his thought.  He lived during the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the sixth.  It is not clear why he wanted to have an apostolic authority in his writings choosing the name of the supposed disciple of St. Paul; some scholars think that because of his modesty, of his meekness;  others think that he was conscious of the novelty and the boldness of his teaching and with this pseudo-name, he wanted to prevent marginalization of his writings or even a condemnation.  Whatever the reason, he was very inspired in choosing the pseudo-name.

Here we have one of the explanations for the reason of his pseudonimity:  it is said that he was "un de ces chretiens platonisants, un eleve, peut-etre un ami de Proclus, aussi fervent dans sa croyance religieuse que fidele a ses doctrines philosophiques, excite par le desir de pacifier son ame en mettant d'accord sa foi et sa raison ... de pacifier du meme coup le monde intellectuel de son temps."

It was the medieval humanist Lorenzo Valla who first raised the problem of the authenticity of Dionysius' name.  Valla was followed in his affirmations by Erasmus of Rotterdam and other scholars, especially from the Protestant Tradition.  An important point that leads to the denial of his identity is the fact that Dionysius and his works were not mentioned by the Early Church Fathers, theologians or historians.

There were many attempts to identify Dionysius with several authors of the first Christian centuries.  Perhaps the most recent one is that of Gh. Dragulin and Augustin Gh. Dragulin who, on the basis of a comparative theological and historical study, thinks that Dionysius Pseudo-Areopagite was, in fact, Dionysius Exiguus.

There is no doubt about the Platonic and neoplatonic influences in Dionysius' writings.  As the quotation from L. Montet indicates, Dionysius is supposed to have been a friend or disciple of Proclus.  The philosophical influences he received from outside the Church are most visible in the general pattern of his understanding of creation and existence as descent and return.  However, he was not the only Christian writer influenced by the Greek philosophy.  Origen himself was considered to be even a founder of neoplatonism.

Dionysius had other influences from the Christian theology that preceded him.  D. Rutledge, at this point, mentions especially that of St. Gregory of Nyssa.

As for those who succeeded him, the Areopagite had the chance to be believed in his assumed identity and to enjoy a great authority and credit in the Church.  An important, rather decisive contribution in his accreditation as a theological authority had Maximus the Confessor who, as Olivier Clement says, "a su l' equilibrer par une tradition plus ancienne, progrement existentielle et par un sens aigu de la liberte personnelle et de sa tragedie."

Although it is said that he lacked greater accent on Christology and on the theology of love, these fields may not be the most developed by him but they are not marginal in his theological system.  J. Leclercq says that "Dionysius' ideas were frequently abstract and had little basis in Sacred Scriptures";  however, Dionysius' writings contain not less than 1000 Scriptural quotations or references.  For the amount of work we have from him, this is not little.

In order just to mention the great influence, at times overwhelming, Dionysius had on the Theology of the Church, I just reiterate the information of J. Pelikan who said that only St. Thomas Aquinas quoted Dionysius 1700 times!

Method
The concept of Imago Dei in Dionysius' thinking encompasses a wealth of dimensions and aspects.  It may be said that it starts even with the divine paradigms, it refers very much to the invisible world, is continued with the visible creation and follows the destiny of man until his final eschatological reintegration in the mystical communion with God.

In this paper, although my focus will be on the destiny of the human being in the world and in Eschaton, I will have to make several references to the invisible world and even to treat it in a sub-chapter on the celestial hierarchies.

I will develop my presentation in the general framework of the Protology, Soteriology and Eschatology of Dionysius.  These three general headings will relate to the Dionysian concept of Procession and Return (through Purification, Illumination and Union).  The Procession comes in the line of Protology and the Return in the lines of Soteriology and Eschatology of Dionysius.  The three general headings will be developed in sub-chapters that will give the structure to this paper.  I will finish it with a few general conclusions.

Dionysius' Apophatism
One of the most well-known characteristics of Dionysius' theology is its apophatism.  It does not mean, however, that he is not kataphatic in the development of his thought.  Nevertheless, the via negativa is his way of doing theology.  For Dionysius, no words can reach or express the inexpressible Good, the One, the unapproachable Light, the Source of all unity, the Supra-existent Being, the Mind beyond Mind.

God, the supreme Cause, the Areopagite says, "is not soul or mind...nor is it speech or understanding...it is not number or order, not immovable, moving or at rest...it has not power, it is not power or...life...or light...or substance...or eternity or time....It is neither one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness...It falls neither under the predicate of nonbeing nor of being...It is beyond assertion and denial.  We make assertions and denials of what is next to it, but never of it, for it is both beyond every assertion...it is also beyond every denial."

The ineffability of God is visible throughout the Dionysian works even from the style of the writings.  The repetitions, the pleonasms and the tautologies present everywhere stress, in fact, the apophatic character of theology, of the speech of God; they are the sign of the impossibility of finding the right word, the sign of weakness of expression, of the humility of the word, they are the sign of the consciousness of lack of means, of the inadequacy of the language in presenting the reality of God.  That is why the highest level of knowledge is the denial of any knowledge;  as he speaks of Moses:  "But then he (Moses) breaks free of them, away from what sees and is seen, and he plunges into the truly mysterious darkness of unknowing.  Here, renouncing all that the mind may conceive, wrapped entirely in the intangible and the invisible, he belongs completely to him who is beyond everything.  Here, being neither oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united by a completely unknowing inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing."

MAN - THE IMAGE OF GOD

Protology
In this part of the paper, through all sub-chapters, the presentation of Dionysius' thought will include his doctrine or procession of all things from God.

Dionysius' Concept of "Imago Dei"
For Dionysius the Areopagite, the universe is a Theurgy, the work of God, this is why the world belongs to God.  The universe in its totality is a sacred order ruled by hierarchical triadic mediations both in the sense of descent of the divine illumination and ascent for deification.  His philosophy and theology is on the line of the Greek philosophical understanding but without being tributary specifically to a certain philosopher;  on the contrary, his teaching is an attempt to harmonize the Greek philosophical vision on the world with the Biblical concept of creation and of man;  he anchors this harmonization on the ground of the sacramental life of the Church.  Harmony, order and measure are key-words in Dionysius thought, as R. Roques notices:  "Unite sans confusion, dans l'ordre, dans la mesure et dans l'harmonie:  telles sont deja les caracteristiques fondamentales du monde dionysian."

Imago in Dionysius' works, generally refers to the whole creation, visible and invisible as locus Dei or locus theologicus, and especially to the human being as a part of creation.

Imago....
As if continuing Origen's idea about the eternality of the creative act of God, Dionysius speaks about the divine paradigms that are the prototypes for the created order, including the human being.  These divine paradigms are not something foreign to God, that is why it is said that God made us in His image and that through this very fact He "gave us a share in the divine condition".  Imago Dei is conformity to this divine condition and this conformation is proportionate to the capacity of every being that bears the Image.  In other words, we are created deiform.  By staying in communion with God we preserve the divine form in us; but because sin introduced the separation, the distance between man and God, the share in the divine condition was diminished.  However, God continues to call man to become "image of the imageless in its supra natural simplity".  He continues to provide for us the progressive illumination that leads us again to deiformity.  It is the divine power that "refurbishes and restores the Image of God" corrupted within the human beings.  But God accomplishes this in a way that does not exclude human contribution.  The restoration of the Image is granted by God, therefore, but not mechanically, automatically.  Man has his part in the process.   For this, he receives not deification but the power of deification.  If the initial Imago is a gift of God in which human beings did not have any work to do, the deification is a gift but for which man is called for a dignifying collaboration with God.

...and Similitudo
Although "in reality there is no exact likeness between caused and cause, for the caused carry within themselves only such images of their originating sources as are possible for them, "because "the causes themselves are located in a realm transcending the caused," all created things, J? B"<J", have a certain degree of similarity to God.  It is the power of this similarity that operates the return to God.  But if the created things are similar to God, God is not similar to them.  Dionysius is careful to draw the attention of his readers on the use of the notions of similarity and dissimilarity in their theologies.  One should avoid the one-to-one correspondence in speaking about God in these terms.   This one way is based on the fact that it is God who grants the Imago to creature and not vice versa.

The Image of God is present in the universe hierarchically by degrees of similarity and by the fact of similarity itself one can understand the dissimilarity, as for example, the being supposes the non-being.  That is how things are both similar and dissimilar to God at the same time.  Dionysius explains:  "They are similar to him to the extent that they share what cannot be shared."  Their dissimilarity consists in the fact that things are "infinitely and incomparably subordinate to him."

The similarity is the factor that contributes to the unity of creation.  The similarity is God's and this implies God's presence in creation.  Or, where God is, there is unity.  Moreover, the things that are similar to each other have this similarity on the basis of God's presence in them all.  One can say that there is a vertical similarity with its corresponding unity and a horizontal one, also with its corresponding unity.  Dionysius puts it this way:  "God is the subsistence of all similarity and all the similarity in the world is similar to a trace of the divine similarity."

Even if, like for Gregory of Nyssa, for Dionysius sometimes the similarity is the same thing with the image, and sometimes they are different but belong to each other, similarity has a dynamic creative character.  By advancing in similarity to God, any member of any hierarchy can become "a fellow workman for God" and a reflection of the works of God.  There is an inherent similarity between God and those created in His image and who are returning to Him by imitation--as far as they can--of what is beyond definition and understanding.

Although one can ask how can one imitate what is not understandable and non-definible, Dionysius' paradoxical aspect of similarity and imitation is explainable in terms of synergy.  On the one hand, we are returned by God and brought into the process of imitation as far as God will want us to be, and on the other hand, we need to turn ourselves towards God, to change the way, and this is conversion;  the will to convert, the turning towards God is our part of contribution in the restoration of Imago Dei in us.

to be continued