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Pseudo-Dionysius: The Celestial Hierarchy - Notes

Book Overview and Structure

  • Work Title: Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works

  • Translation: Colm Luibheid

  • Foreword, Notes, and Translation Collaboration: Paul Rorem

  • Preface: Rene Roques

  • Introductions: Jaroslav Pelikan, Jean Leclercq, and Karlfried Froehlich

  • Publisher: Paulist Press, New York Mahwah

  • Cover Art: Designed by Pomona Hallenbeck, an artist and teacher specializing in textile designs and multimedia education materials.

  • Copyright: © 1987 by Colm Luibheid. All rights reserved; no part may be reproduced without publisher's permission.

  • Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (BR65.D6E5 1987):

    • ISBN: 0-8091-2838-1

    • Dewey Decimal Classification: 230'.14

    • LC Control Number: 87-2502

    • Subject Headings: God-Knowableness, Spiritual life, Mysticism, Sacraments (all as Collected works).

  • Contents: Includes Foreword, Preface, Abbreviations, three Introductions (The Odyssey of Dionysian Spirituality, Influence and noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century), and the main works: The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, The Letters, Bibliography, and several indexes (Biblical Allusions and Quotations, Foreword/Preface/Introductions, Text, Contemporary Authors in Footnotes, Names and Terms in Footnotes).

The Celestial Hierarchy: Chapter Three

Definition and Purpose of Hierarchy

  • A hierarchy (as defined at 164D) is a sacred order, a state of understanding, and an activity that approximates the divine as closely as possible.

    • It is uplifted to imitate God in proportion to divinely given enlightenments.

    • This definition (order, understanding, activity) serves as an organizing principle for R. Roques's L'Univers Dionysien (p. 30).

    • Further general definitions are found in EH 1 373C and EH 5 500D-504A.

  • God's Beauty:

    • Is simple, good, and the source of perfection.

    • Completely uncontaminated by dissimilarity.

    • Grants every being a share of light according to merit.

    • Bestows its own form through a divine sacrament, in harmony and peace.

  • The Goal of a Hierarchy:

    • To enable beings to be as like as possible to God and to be at one with him (165B).

    • God leads all understanding and action within a hierarchy.

    • A hierarchy constantly looks at God's comeliness and bears His mark.

    • It causes its members to be images of God—clear and spotless mirrors reflecting primordial light and God Himself.

    • It ensures that members, having received divine splendor, pass this light on generously and according to God's will to those further down the scale.

  • Improper Conduct:

    • It is contrary to sacred order for either initiators or the sacredly initiated to act or exist against the orderings of God, the source of all perfection.

    • This is especially true if they desire God's splendor, gaze upon it, and are proportionably conformed to it.

  • Hierarchy as a Perfect Arrangement:

    • An image of God's beauty.

    • Sacredly works out the mysteries of its own enlightenment within its orders and levels of understanding.

    • Is likened to its source as much as permitted.

  • Perfection within the Hierarchy:

    • Consists in being uplifted to imitate God as far as possible.

    • More wonderfully, it involves becoming a