On the "Reading Method" in Rorem's Pseudo-Dionysius*(1)
Peter J. Casarella
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.
Like a medieval palimpsest, the persona of the one whom modern scholars call Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite has been scraped away many times only to reveal a new mask hidden underneath each time. For almost nine centuries most Western Christian theologians looked upon him as an Athenian (sometimes confused with a bishop of Corinth of the same name) whom St. Paul converted in Acts 17. Along with this assumed identity went the claim that the Areopagite influenced Platonism in the post-Christian era, especially that of Proclus. Modern scholarship, following the lead of skeptics who arose in the East as early as the ninth century and in the West among humanists in the quattrocento, was able to prove that the relationship between Dionysius and Proclus was exactly the opposite. The view that he was simply a Neoplatonist posing in the garb of Christian doctrine goes back to Martin Luther and has proven even harder to dispel since his definitive unmasking by modern historians. Today scholars in the history of Christian thought are often more eager to elaborate upon his pseudonymous identity than to decipher the obscure style of his theological treatises and letters.
The same cannot be said about Paul Rorem, a professor at Princeton Seminary, for he showed in an earlier work, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols in the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis,(2) that the texts of Dionysius were, pace Luther, detailed anagogical exegeses of traditional Christian symbols. The present work supplements his earlier study by attempting to make the Dionysian corpus accessible to a broader audience. In Pseudo-Dionysius Rorem aims to avoid a narrowly focused, technical argument and instead present "the contents of the corpus, both in their details and as a whole" (3).
The subtitle of the book neatly summarizes its dual aim: to provide a running commentary on the texts and to introduce the reader to the history of their reception in the Christian tradition, particularly the medieval tradition, which is the subject of the book's own afterword. The five parts of the book are divided up according to the extant corpus: the letters, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, The Divine Names, and The Mystical Theology. Each part takes the reader by the hand through the text explicating Dionysius' notoriously and sometimes deliberately cryptic writing, noting his frequent play on words, highlighting possible inconsistencies, and drawing connections between the texts of the extant corpus as well as to works by Dionysius that are alluded to in the corpus but have never been discovered.
The Wirkungsgeschichte which comprises the second part of each chapter examines the varied interpretation of Dionysian notions of hierarchy, allegorical interpretation, angelology, aesthetics, liturgical commentary, procession and return, and apophaticism. Even those who consider themselves knowledgeable with the history of medieval theology are still going to be educated by these sections of the book. Not nearly enough attention has been paid to the considerable influence of the Dionysian corpus in the medieval West (it is cited by St. Thomas over 1700 times!), and Rorem's history of its reception delineates lines of influence that have often been overlooked, e.g., Dionysius' role in bestowing apostolic authority on the story of the dormition of the virgin.
If I could suggest one small but not insignificant addendum, I would amplify Rorem's claim that "there was no significant doubt about the apostolicity and therefore the authority of the corpus until the sixteenth century" when Erasmus circulated "some brief, stray comments" that Lorenzo Valla had made in 1457 (16). In fact, Erasmus cites not only Valla as one of his predecessors in the discovery of the forgery but also the English scholar William Grocyn. More significantly, Rorem seems not to be aware of the fact that Valla's discovery was not sui generis in the fifteenth century. Valla lived in proximity to a number of humanists in Rome who not only had already hit upon the idea that Dionysius might be a fake but probably were also circulating Greek arguments against his apostolic authenticity. As least two such scholars from the 1450's have already been identified, Pietro Balbi and Theodore Gaza, and there may be more.(3)
Pseudo-Dionysius is intended to introduce, not substitute for, a reading of the Dionysian corpus (4). With the addition of an index, it might serve as a handy reference work for readers who have only a minimal familiarity with these difficult texts. But what sort of audience does Rorem have in mind? He makes no bones about the fact that the commentary is intended for a "modern reader." In justifying his "reading method for 'an obscure style,'" Rorem alludes to what he calls "the complexity of the corpus" and maintains that the author's own interpretative guidelines "are not definitive and do not dictate the best plan of introduction for a modern reader" (6). This hermeneutical presupposition leads one to surmise that with Rorem's critical apparatus the "modern reader" will be equipped to understand Dionysius better than he understood himself. This is the key to the entire commentary and is in many senses justifiable. Even St. Thomas warned his thirteenth-century contemporaries that Dionysius' "obscure style" was partly due to "a manner of speaking which the Platonists used, which is unfamiliar to modern readers."(4) But the attempt to transfer Dionysius' avowedly hidden doctrines into an idiom that is plain to "modern readers" also has its pitfalls, as Rorem himself sometimes notes.
In order to evaluate Rorem's "reading method," I will examine his treatment of three crucial theological issues in the Dionysian synthesis: christology, symbolism and real presence, and mystical theology. In each case, we will see how Rorem balances his own modern interpretative lens with the actual teachings of Dionysius.
In his fourth letter Dionysius offers as technical a summation of his christology as one can find in the corpus:
As one considers it all in a divine manner, one will recognize in a transcending way that every affirmation regarding Jesus' love for humanity has the force of a negation pointing toward transcendence...he was neither human nor nonhuman; although humanly born he was far superior to man, and being above men he yet truly did become man. Furthermore, it was not by virtue of being God that he did divine things, not by virtue of being a man that he did what was human, but rather, by the fact of being God-made-man he accomplished something new in our midst--the activity of the God-man (1072BC).(5)
Before examining this controversial passage for its christological content, let us take a look at Rorem's interpretation. Rorem correctly notes that this very passage, or at least some version of it, was used around 532 A.D. by Monophysite opponents of the Council of Chalcedon to claim apostolic authority for their own, non-Chalcedonian views (10). They took the reference to the new activity of the God-man to refer to just one activity, thereby obviating the need to assert a distinctly human one. Their misquotation may derive from a corrupted text, or they many have corrupted the text themselves. In any case, one of Dionysius' earliest and most fervent pro-Chalcedonian defenders, John of Scythopolis, took great pains to show that neither in this passage nor elsewhere in his corpus does Dionysius deny that Christ possessed not only a divine but also a human nature.(6) To this degree, Rorem does not express disagreement with John of Scythopolis. His concluding remark on the passage, however, may say as much as about Rorem's own hermeneutics of suspicion as about the actual text of Dionysius:
Nevertheless, even though Letter 4 does assert both the divinity and the humanity of Christ, it gives supportive examples only of a composite divine-human activity (the miracles) and not of a human nature as such (as evidenced, for example, by eating or by suffering). This composite portrait and lack of emphasis on the human nature of Christ is consistent with the rest of the corpus and has often given pause to its defenders (10-11, italics added).
In two brief sentences Rorem effectively writes off the Dionysian christology as heterodox.(7) The phrase "composite activity" is not to be found in the passage cited but is a well-known formula in the Monophysite christology of Severus, Patriarch of Antioch (ca. 465-538). To be sure, many noted theologians (including Severus himself) have often consigned Dionysius' thought to the category of Severan monophysitism, but for Rorem to do so in a somewhat clandestine manner and without further elaboration seems precipitous.
Although there are passages which speak of a visible, "composite" appearance of Christ in the sacraments (e.g., EH 3, 444A), the passage in question is simply not about a "composite divine-human activity." Its main emphasis is on the uniquely human orientation of the Saviour's love (philanthropia tou Iesou, 1072B, cf. Titus 3:4). According to Dionysius, a philanthropic principle originating in God (and not a contingent truth of history, to invoke Lessing's celebrated phrase) is the truest explanation of the incarnation (Ep. 4, 1072B; Ep. 3, 1069B; CH 4, 181B; EH 4, 437A, 441A, 444A, 444C; DN 1, 592A; DN 2, 640C, 648D; DN 11, 953A). Dionysius frequently notes that the fact that God truly became man is not in any way a diminution of God's utter mysteriousness and transcendence of all things (EH 1, 372AB; EH 3, 440B, 444A, 484A; DN 1, 592B; DN 2, 648C). Nor was Jesus' humanity in any way defective by virtue of his remaining divine. "The philanthropy of God took upon itself in a most authentic way all the characteristics of our nature, except sin" (EH 3, 441A). For Dionysius, Christ's humanity is the point of intersection of the transfiguration and what modern Biblical scholars call the messianic secret. God's self-communicating divine nature (what the Areopagite calls "most divine unction") is poured out onto Jesus' flesh to delight the intelligence and to sustain spiritually those who can perceive and understand God's sacrament in the Christ (EH 4, 480A). When Dionysius speaks about Christ, it is often in the context of this wholly present but still eschatological (pace Rorem, cf. 122) self-disclosure of God in our very midst. Even in the fourth letter, a fortiori in the third, there is a strong hint that the humanity of Christ, "possessing the force of a negation pointing upwards towards transcendence," should be treated as a sacramental symbol of the real, self-giving activity of God in and beyond this world. One recent commentator even claims that the plain meaning of this passage is the gift of deification that discloses itself in and through the Church.(8)
I do not want to deny that there are good reasons for allying Dionysius' thought with that of certain Monophysites. As Balthasar writes, "the unknown author, on account of his christological language, must be set in a Monophysite ambience, without having himself to be accused of Monophysitism."(9) If his true identity were ever discovered, it would not be surprising to find that Dionysius either belonged to or was closely associated with a non-Chalcedonian party in late fifth-century Syria or Palestine. In his rush to follow the canons of modern Dionysian scholarship, Rorem nevertheless does not give the Areopagite a chance to speak for himself on the issue of christology. Although he does mention the possible influence of Peter the Fuller (d. 488), Rorem fails to take seriously the attempt by late fifth-century Eastern Christians, epitomized in the so-called Henoticon (482), to circumvent the Chalcedonian decree by returning to a more primitive Nicene faith and drawing upon Cyrilline formulations which did not represent outright contradictions with the Council of 451.(10)
Even though the commentary is only meant to be introductory, a great deal more clarity could have been brought to bear on the issue of christology. Instead we find scattered remarks that Dionysius' christology was "peculiar" (9) and "ambiguous" (92) and that he favored a composite portrait and lacked an emphasis on the human nature of Christ. In sum, Rorem's treatment of christology is insufficient and often misleading.
Turning now to the question of symbolism, I would like to begin with another representative passage from Rorem's commentary. In the context of an otherwise admirable treatment of the liturgical rubrics which undergird the synaxis or communion in The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Rorem states:
This introduction to the Dionysian eucharistic liturgy and its interpretation raises several crucial questions. Does the author presuppose Christ's real presence, or is the synaxis only a set of symbols? The final chapter refers to a bodily communion, but with the "symbols" (EH, 565B).(11)
Once again Rorem's thoroughly modern approach to the text betrays presuppositions that may not get us closer to the true meaning of Dionysius' theology. Before offering a critique of Rorem's understanding of the relationship between sacrament and symbol, two qualifications should be made. First, it would be foolhardy to search in the Dionysian corpus for notions of real presence which conform to Western conceptions of either a real transformation of the material elements or the mechanics of transubstantiation. Dionysius is much less interested than later medieval theologians in the West in what happens to the elements and much more interested in the sacred activity of God symbolically disclosed in the ecclesial performance of the rite. Furthermore, Rorem is absolutely correct to note the real parallels between Dionysius' sacramental theology and the Neoplatonic theurgies of, for example, Iamblichus.
With those qualifications we can now try to understand Rorem's "crucial questions." In posing these questions, Rorem suggests that it is appropriate to make a choice between symbolic and real presence. The problem with these questions as well as the whole of his understanding of symbols and sacraments is that Rorem measures the Dionysian corpus by the modern standard of a subjective understanding of symbolism. Moderns understand symbols to be projective systems of the human mind that bear no real content that is of their own making.(12) Crudely put, symbols express in concrete forms some idea which we can grasp mentally in a more abstract way. In a manner similar to the Neoplatonists, Dionysius understands the sacramental rite in terms of the objective, divine reality of God's work on behalf of humanity. The clear Neoplatonic leaning leads Rorem to suspect "that for Dionysius the crucial factor in the sacrament was the conceptual interpretation of the rite, not a bodily communion with Christ's body and blood" (115). A supposed denial of real presence is identified by Rorem with Neoplatonic intellectualism.
In a certain sense, Rorem's questions are well-put. Dionysius demands that the participants in the divine liturgy grasp the deeper, spiritual sense of what is happening. Unreflective, mechanical following of the rite is precluded. An ascetical rigor of both life and thought is required. But only when filtered through the lens of a post-Kantian view of symbols does it seem fair to pose a question such as the following to Dionysius: "When he considers the Eucharistic elements, does he believe in the real presence of Christ contained within them or is he more interested in understanding the symbols in terms of concepts which we grasp in our heads?" Such a question presupposes a modern separation of symbolic and real presence and is, in effect, the way in which Rorem understands Dionysius' view of symbols.
No alternative between symbolic and real presence exists in the Dionysian corpus so long as by presence one understands the dynamic activity of God rather than a static, worldly object. In the words of Andrew Louth, "Denys seems to take for granted that [the elements] are changed into Christ--'He offers Christ to our view.'"(13) When Dionysius writes that the hierarch (a bishop presiding over the Eucharistic celebration) "offers Jesus Christ to our view" (EH 3, 444C), he is valorizing neither Western medieval conceptions nor modern, subjective ones. Dionysius takes the liturgical actions of the hierarch to be an unannounced disclosure of the power of God in our midst (EH 7, 565C), a real presence not completely unlike the new theandric activity mentioned in the fourth letter. Perhaps Rorem's questions were only a goad to stimulate further reflection on the part of readers who share modern preconceptions about the bifurcation of symbolic and real presence. That notwithstanding, further clarification of the difference between ancient and modern symbolism would have been in order.(14)
Finally, I would like to comment upon a principal thesis in Rorem's otherwise admirable interpretation of The Mystical Theology and the history of its reception. As is often the case in Pseudo-Dionysius, Rorem's historical erudition outstrips his philosophical insight. He correctly notes that the word eros does not appear in The Mystical Theology and that Christ is referred to only once. But he makes a different sort of claim when he characterizes The Mystical Theology as "loveless" and "mostly Christless" (220). The first point raises a question about the relationship between The Mystical Theology and those passages in the other works which accentuate eros and Christ. The second claim suggests that something of weighty significance is missing in The Mystical Theology.
We learn more about the missing element when he contrasts Dionysius' approach with the mystical theology of the Victorines, St. Bonaventure, Hugh of Balma, and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, each of whom in varying degrees drew heavily upon the Dionysian corpus but interpolated his own brand of love mysticism in the process. To this rich Cistercian and Franciscan tradition of following Christ's concrete example of self-emptying love, Rorem juxtaposes two putatively intellectualist Dominicans, St. Albert the Great and Meister Eckhart. Rorem's personal preference for love mystics is not hidden when he states that Hugh of St. Victor's claim that love is superior to knowledge supplies "a crucial amplification" of the Western Dionysian tradition (217).
To be sure, Rorem warns against treating affective and intellective tendencies in the Western mystical tradition as mutually exclusive (216, 228-29 n. 19), but it seems that this is exactly what he has done to The Mystical Theology. Rorem notes Eckhart's remark from the fourteenth century: "Knowledge is better than love. But the two are better than one, as knowledge carries love within itself" (224). Eckhart assumes that knowledge and affect are separable faculties, and that union with God will come about through the subsumption of the latter under the former. Dionysius, however, makes neither this claim nor does he even distinguish between affect and intellect. When Rorem places Dionysius within the intellective tradition of the West, he seems to assume not only the Eckhartian distinction just mentioned but even the stricter modern one between feeling and thinking. These categories are all terra incognita to the Areopagite. Whatever the term "mystical" means in The Mystical Theology (Rorem is judiciously circumspect in his use of this notoriously polysemic term), it depends ultimately upon a union with God which leans neither in the affective nor in the intellective direction.
For Dionysius, union with God as the Supreme Cause "cannot be grasped by the understanding since it is neither knowledge nor truth" (MT 5, 1048a). Obviously both language and concepts falter at this point. The peak of The Mystical Theology is, as Rorem correctly notes, utter silence:
In the work's last words, God is "also beyond every denial." Negation is negated, and the human mind, befuddled, falls silent. The treatise, the corpus, its author, and this commentary have nothing more to say (213, italics added).
This passage shows that Dionysius is not privileging either intellectualism or its abandonment over affective mysticism. Something altogether different takes over. Rorem's interpretation of The Mystical Theology as "loveless" and based upon "conscious cognitive techniques" (200) is therefore highly dubious from the perspective of texts in The Mystical Theology which he interprets adequately.
But even his treatment of the negation of negations in the passage just cited is marred by the statement that the human mind falls into silence "befuddled." Dionysius sees a much smoother transition between knowing and unknowing than Rorem acknowledges. The negation of negation is not so much a technique of purely epistemological self-abandonment as a fulfillment of the prayer which opens The Mystical Theology. In light of this prayerful obedience, one can perhaps speak (without interpolation!) of the unspoken place of divine eros (as opposed to human affect) in The Mystical Theology. Divine eros is neither a representation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit nor a notion (qua notion) of God's goodness. These conceptions, Dionysius assures us, were already treated in The Theological Representations and The Divine Names respectively. The Mystical Theology signals rather an erotic attachment in non-affective prayer to a "brilliant darkness" (MT 1, 997B) that is eloquently described in DN 3 as "a great shining chain hanging downward from the heights of heaven:"
We grab hold of it with one hand and then another, and we seem to be pulling it down toward us. Actually it is already there on the heights and down below and instead of pulling it to us we are being lifted upward to that brilliance above (680c).
This spiritual exercise of ascetical, silent prayer surpassing mind and heart through the unannounced pull of divine yearning is, in my opinion, a more adequate explanation of Dionysius' own path to mystical theology than will ever be permitted by the Western distinction between intellect and affect.
Exactly one hundred years have elapsed since "modern Dionysian scholarship" commenced with the simultaneous publication of two articles by German scholars documenting the Areopagite's dependence upon Proclus' understanding of evil. With this double-fisted blow, Dionysius the apostolic witness was definitively unmasked as a fraud. Balthasar writes of these ambiguous scholarly achievements: "After their tank formations have laid waste his garden, there is for them not a blade of grass left: all that remains is PSEUDO-, written in bold letters, and underlined with many marks of contempt."(15) To that we can add that the view of Dionysius that has dominated modern scholarship has failed to do justice to the synthetic union that can be found in the Dionysian corpus of symbolic and real presence, Neoplatonic metaphysics and the creedal confession of faith, epistemology and mystagogy, eschatology and theosis, and created hierarchies and the dynamic, spirit-filled manifestation of the triune God.
The personae of the Areopagite will continue to multiply with time. Rorem's commentary can be added to the ranks of modern Dionysian scholarship, and among such works it represents a significant achievement. But perhaps we have arrived at a point at which the bulky layers of interpretation that have accumulated around the modern reading of Dionysius need to be peeled away slowly. We in the West do not have the option of going back to the pre-critical view held by Hugh of St. Victor, Aquinas, or Bonaventure. Modern Dionysius scholarship is a good example of how modernity has changed our view of the past in a decisive, irrevocable manner. The modern critical unmmasking of the Dionysian corpus, however, need not be the last word on the matter. If a new, "post-modern" persona is allowed to emerge, this Dionysius, as Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin) has forcibly argued in a new study, will probably bear a strong resemblance to the Eastern Christian fathers and especially the Syriac monastic tradition.(16) But do we have the courage to loosen our ties to our current prejudices and allow the Spirit of Christ proclaimed in these traditions to come to the fore?
* Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).