Глава 2. Эстетика духовных озарений

Aesthetic spirit "Areopagitik" The theology of Dionysius the Areopagite is permeated with aesthetic intuitions, indicating that its author was open to aesthetic experience and perceived Christianity as a luminous, elevating, enlightening, transforming force and harmonizing the Universe. All texts of the Corpus are imbued with the spiritual light of mystical revelation, transmitted to the reader from the first pages and illuminating his soul with high joy, delivering aesthetic pleasure. He perceived his texts, like the texts of Holy Scripture, as well as the works of other theologians, as hymns, “hymns” to the glory of the Lord and his creation, the Church and all humanity; as music that supports a person’s spiritual aspirations. “The sacred hymnologia (hymnologia) of theologians” glorifies God (“God’s Headship” - in the Areopagite) (DN I 4) 22, the Apostle Paul glorifies (hymnesai) “the supposed “foolishness of God”” (VII 5), in the texts of Scripture the Predest is “sung with justice” (V 8), and Dionysius himself regularly asks the Lord to give him a gift “divinely” to sing the virtuous plurality of the unnameable and unnameable divinity,” “to sing the eternal Life” (VI 1), etc. The author of the Areopagitik feels well and constantly emphasizes that in ordinary human language the highest spiritual values, the highest divine truths, as well as especially the properties of God himself, cannot be conveyed or described, but hymn, that is, combined with music, is sublime, hymn a sung (hymneo) word, a poeticized word, we would say now, is a different matter. He can do what ordinary speech cannot cope with 23. Therefore, clearly somewhat idealizing, he calls the texts of Scripture, the works of theologians, and his own texts hymns. The very subject of this group of texts seemed to Dionysius, like many other Fathers of the Church, so high, sublime 24 that he believed that only poetic, and perhaps even musically given texts could express it more or less adequately, which was realized in church services. I think that it was precisely this idea that the author of the Areopagitik sought to convey to his readers by applying the terms “hymnology” and “chanting” to theological writings. His soul, like that of many Church Fathers, prayed and sang hymns when he wrote his works, and in the texts of Dionysius we clearly sense the musical and poetic intonations. Yes, he verbally emphasizes this repeatedly. Starting a conversation, for example, about the name Jehovah in relation to God, he “reminds” readers that “the purpose of the word is not to explain how the super-essential Essence is super-essential, since this is inexpressible, unknowable, completely inexplicable and transcends unity itself, but to glorify (hymnesai) the essence-creating appearance of the God-originating Beginning of every essence into all that exists.” (DN V I). This phrase itself already sounds like a poetic stanza of a sublime style. And Dionysius really sings in a similar sublime tone about God, about the divine hierarchy, about the harmony of being, interpreting each of the symbols meaning God, his properties, strength, action, energy, etc. In this context, it is quite natural that Dionysius highly values ​​the chanting of the actual poetic texts of the psalms during church services, or the performance of “hierarchical sacraments,” as he more often calls the essence of worship, archaizing his text on the model of more ancient texts. Let's not forget that the author of the Areopagitik presented his texts as the works of the legendary disciple of the Apostle Paul, who lived in the 1st century. The hymnology of the psalms, the author of the “Church Hierarchy” is convinced, brings “our spiritual properties into harmonious correspondence with what will be celebrated a little later,” that is, with the sacrament being performed, and the “unanimity (homophonia) of divine songs” leads those participating in the service to unanimity regarding themselves, each other, the divine itself - “as if in a single unanimous round dance of the sacred” (EN III 5). The spirit of ancient mystery aesthetics emanates from this “round dance” (choreia) of the Christian thinker, which once again expresses his special attention and even passion for the aesthetic side of Christianity, the fulfillment of its sacraments, and the world order envisioned and legitimized by it. The world, in the understanding of the Areopagite, was created by God, or rather, by the Wisdom of God Sophia, beautiful as “a single symphony and harmony” based on correspondence and order (DN VII 3), and in it the highest level is occupied by the “heavenly and unalloyed harmony of divine minds” (EN VI 6). From the divine First Cause, “the simplest divinity... one day suddenly grew and spread every unalloyed completeness of every impeccable purity, every creation of beings and structure. She expels all disharmony, inequality and disproportion, rejoices (ganymene) in decency of identity and correctness, and leads with Her those worthy to partake of Her” (DN XII 3). All these terms, which are quite regularly repeated in the Areopagitica, and here collected in two quotations: harmony, symphony, correspondence, order (or rank, as the ancient Russian scribes translated, and this term is preserved in their texts by modern translators), decorum, order, purity, equality, proportionality, identity, correctness - are aesthetic terms and not only for the modern consciousness, which knows the science of aesthetics, where many of them occupy a place aesthetic categories. They already performed this function in ancient poetics, rhetoric, treatises on music and painting. And the Fathers of the Church (especially the great Cappadocians or Blessed Augustine 25) used them precisely in this ancient aesthetic meaning in their writings to show and emphasize the beauty of divine creation. So the Areopagite follows here the ancient patristic tradition, strengthening with them the general sublimely spiritual style of his texts. The term “rejoices” in the last quotation is also significant, with which, willingly or unwillingly, although this tradition goes back to the book of Genesis, Dionysius shows that a harmoniously, beautifully, orderly created world pleases, first of all, God himself. It is known, and below we will have the opportunity to verify this, that God in the understanding of the Areopagite is transcendental, that is, no human standards, names, designations are applicable to him, much less the attribution of human feelings (apophatics of the Areopagite), and yet Dionysius regularly and not without pleasure attributes them to him (kataphatics), apparently trying in this way to bring us as close as possible to God. Meanwhile, in mysticism, as we know, in the interior aesthetic experience of the Church Fathers, the limit of mystical achievement is the enjoyment of God 26 . The Areopagite even asserts that the enjoyment (apolayein) of God, designated in this text by the name “Peace,” was given to us by Himself (DN XI 2). In this, our many-wise father continues the traditions of both the early mystics and the Byzantine Fathers of the Church, especially the great Cappadocians. The central idea of ​​the entire “Corpus Areopagitica” is the orientation of Christians towards comprehension, knowledge of God that is feasible for man, unity with Him, which is evidenced by the highest spiritual pleasure, indescribable joy. Christians, having embarked on the path of following the divine commandments, “sing the gifts of God and are filled with divine joy” (EN VII 2); approaching the end of earthly struggles, they are filled with “sacred joy and with great pleasure (syn hedone polle) move along the path to sacred rebirth” (VII 3). In the process of worship, incense is constantly used, in particular fragrant myrrh, the meaning of which, as we will have the opportunity to dwell on, the Areopagite paid a lot of attention to. The aroma of the world, he is convinced, giving pleasure to our sense of smell, symbolizes the fragrance of Jesus himself, giving “divine pleasure” (theias hedones) to our spiritual part, and during the sacrament mysteriously contributes to the perception of the “divine”, i.e., a purely spiritual fragrance. Those who receive this fragrance “are filled with sacred pleasure and the most divine food” (EN IV 4). Pleasure as the highest spiritual joy, according to Dionysius, constantly accompanies the receipt of non-rational divine knowledge, the introduction of a person to the divine world, to Jesus himself - “the source of divine fragrances,” i.e., it appears as an integral part of the process of obtaining (introducing to) higher knowledge. Meanwhile, the fragrance of the Areopagite, as we will see, regularly, which is quite natural for it, equates to beauty, i.e. perceives it as an aesthetic phenomenon. Already from this cursory glance at the “Areopagitica” it is clear that they represent one of the significant sources of Byzantine (and more broadly, Christian in general, it is no coincidence that the fathers of classical scholasticism loved to quote it so much) aesthetic consciousness, aesthetic experience, which requires us to study them more deeply and systematically from this angle, a respectful conversation with an outstanding father about the aesthetic experience of Christianity. On the Path to Divine Transcendence And it is necessary to begin this study with a brief presentation of the Areopagite understanding of the Cause of Being and the Limit, towards which both existence in general and man in his earthly life in particular are directed. “Corpus Areopagiticum” is almost entirely devoted to finding ways accessible to man to understand and comprehend God. And these paths, looking ahead, I will say, lie in the border area of ​​religious and aesthetic experiences, where they intersect and are closely intertwined to the point of complete indistinction - they are seamlessly connected, actively complementing each other. For God for the Areopagite, who inherits the best traditions of his predecessors - both the Fathers of the Church (primarily the Cappadocians) and the Neoplatonists 27 - is unconditionally transcendental. And this requires a thinker trying to say something about Him to make great efforts in the field of discursive strategy, constantly leading into non-discursive spheres, i.e. on the path of mystical or aesthetic experience, or at least forces him to use a special system of discourses that have more points of contact with the spheres of mysticism and aesthetics than with the formal logic of philosophers and strict theologians. If we look at the Corpus Areopagiticum from a certain intellectual distance, we will see that before us, in general, a completely unconventional attempt for both philosophy and theology of that time was an attempt to verbally express the transcendence of God with the utmost completeness possible for human consciousness and build a multi-level system of comprehension of Him, communion with Him along the paths of a relatively new religion, still just emerging in many respects, with full awareness of the limits and boundaries of human capabilities in this space. The main treatises of the Corpus, which affirm the absolute transcendence of God already with full awareness of His immanence, that is, the antinomy seen by the fathers of the 4th century. and enshrined by the first Ecumenical Councils, these are the treatises “On Mystical Theology” and “On the Divine Names”. When starting to write them, the Areopagite was well aware of the difficulty of the task. It is one thing to sense and experience that God is Something that is so far superior to any essence and any human ideas and verbal expressions that nothing can be thought or said about Him at all, and quite another to try to not only comprehend this, but also to write about this Indescribable. The thinker who dares to do this must have great courage and extraordinary spiritual strength. Dionysius turned out to be just such a thinker. At the same time, as has already been pointed out, he well understood that at the level of formal logic, that is, traditional philosophical or theological discourse, this enterprise was doomed to failure. And he strives in the treatise “On the Divine Names” not so much to prove as to figuratively show, to poetically hymn, that is, to glorify the transcendence of the Lord through a special rhetorical play on each of the names by which He is designated in Holy Scripture or in the texts of theologians he revered. “On the Divine Names” 28 is a unique theological poem about the transcendence of God immanent to us, leading the reader to the treatise “On Mystical Theology” - an extremely laconic formula of transcendence that opens the mystic the way to silence, thoughtlessness and spiritual contemplation of the “Super-Light Darkness” of God. One of the ancient wise commentators of the “Divine Names” of the Byzantine era 29 explains to us the meaning of this treatise in a poetic epigraph: Having quenched my thirst with the light of Reason, the lips of God, You glorified the beauty of God's names, even after death With living, wise speech you sing godly hymns. In fact, this is exactly what Dionysius himself asserts, only in other words, when he begins his treatise and indicates his goal with a rhetorically sophisticated introduction. I believe it would be useful to cite here this relatively large text, but significant for understanding the general meaning of the Areopagitikum, in its entirety. And now, O blessed one, 30, after the “Theological Essays,” let us move on to explaining, as far as possible, the divine names. And let it be our rule to discover the true meaning of what is said about God, “not in the convincing words of human wisdom, but in the manifestation of the spirit-moved power” (cf. 1 Cor. 2:4. - V.B.) of theologians, which inexpressibly and incomprehensibly connects us with the Inexpressible and Incomprehensible much better than is available to our verbal and mental strength and energy. It is absolutely not proper to dare to say or think anything about the super-essential and hidden divinity other than what is divinely revealed to us by the sacred Sayings. After all, ignorance (agnosia) of its super-existence that exceeds the word, mind and essence must be dedicated to it by those who strive for the heavenly - as far as the radiance of the God-primary Sayings reveals itself, and who, for the sake of the highest radiances (pros tas hyperteras aygas), clothe their desire for the divine with chastity and piety. For if it is necessary to have at least some faith in the all-wise and truest theology, the divine reveals itself and is perceived in accordance with the ability of each of the minds, and the divine goodness in saving justice in a manner befitting the deity separates immensity as inconceivable from the measurable. Just as for the sensible the mental is elusive and invisible, and for those endowed with form and image the simple and without image, and for those formed in the form of bodies the insensible and formless formlessness of the incorporeal, so, according to the same word of truth, above the essences is the super-essential infinity (he hyperoysios apeiria), and the unity exceeding the mind is above the minds. And the One that exceeds thought is incomprehensible by any thought; and no word exceeding the word Good is inexpressible; The unit that makes every unit one; Super-essential entity; The mind is inconceivable; The word is ineffable; Wordlessness, Inconceivability and Namelessness, existing in a different way than all that exists; The cause of universal existence, which does not exist itself, because it resides beyond the limit of all essence, is how She herself can truly and in a comprehensible way, perhaps, reveal herself (DNII). In fact, in this first paragraph of the first chapter of the book, the main thoughts of the entire treatise are briefly and clearly formulated in the style of the Areopagite. God is transcendental, a Super-essential entity, inconceivable by the human mind and cannot be expressed in any words. All his names used in Scripture can be somehow explained, the Areopagite is convinced, only from the text of Scripture itself, but here he removes almost all of them with antinomies with the prefixes of the negation of “non-” (a-) or the superiority of “super-” (hyper-). And he claims that even theologians, i.e., the authors of Scripture, themselves comprehended the Incomprehensible with His help through ignorance, ignorance (agnosia) to the best of the abilities of each of them and in the form of “highest lights,” that is, not in words (= names). It would seem that everything has been said, and there is nothing more to add to this. However, who in ancient times, or even today, could pay attention to these short formulas that are almost incomprehensible to reason? Yes, they are not mind-oriented. And the Areopagite, well understanding this, writes them into a whole large book, not so much proving anything to the minds of dedicated readers (and he writes only for them), but rather turning to their subconscious, or superconscious - those spheres of the spirit that are affected not so much by the words themselves, but by the special (in ancient times magical, then poetic, rhetorical, i.e., actually aesthetic) form of their organization. He slowly goes through the main series of positive names with which God is designated in the texts of Scripture or the most revered theologians, and, following the great Cappadocians, he shows that these are symbols that mean something that significantly exceeds their literal, although quite high in everyday meaning, content. This is how cataphatic (positive, or affirmative), or more precisely, symbolic theology takes shape. Then, with the help of negative conjunctions and prefixes, all positive names of God are removed and the apophatic (negative) theology of the Areopagite arises, on the basis of which antinomian constructions of various configurations are formed. And this entire system of cataphatics, symbolism, apophatics, hypernomics, and antinomics, exquisite in form and structurally complex, revolves in some constantly repeating, semantically self-pumping rhetorical figures around the anonymous and existential Self, closed in Itself, ultimately causing the reader of the treatise a feeling of absolute transcendence and complete inaccessibility of God. We do not find anything like this in any of the Greek or Latin theologians of either that time or subsequent periods. Proclus has only an intricate statement that “God is above all the named principles - essence, life and mind” (Elem. theolog. 115). This is probably why the Areopagitica became the most authoritative source for most theologians of the Byzantine, Western European, and Russian Middle Ages. And the philosophers of the New Age did not forget about this anonymous author. From the treatise “De divinis nominibus” almost nothing can be gleaned at the narrative or formal-logical levels, but it weaves such a unique lace cocoon of several figurative rhetorical structures, which, tightly enveloping the transcendental Core, for the description and comprehension of which it was created, by the very fact of its existence and its organization, actively influences the inner world of an educated and spiritually prepared Christian reader, convincing him of the absolute transcendence of God and at the same time in the possibility of His comprehension. This verbal cocoon itself, dynamically developing in the process of reading, is one of the non-verbal (!) ways of such comprehension. In fact, before us is a unique work of art created to express the fundamentally Inexpressible at the human level. It is clear that it, like any work of art, is almost impossible to describe or interpret in any way in the words of everyday speech. Let us try, however, to at least take a closer look at the very principle of the Areopagite’s approach to the multi-level anonymous naming of God, in the process of which the effect of expressing His transcendence was achieved. It should be borne in mind that the entire work of the Areopagite is focused on a unique onto-epistemological problem of the highest, i.e., transcendental level, where the problem of the name and specifically the Name plays a significant role. In addition to the surviving works, the Areopagite repeatedly mentions and briefly speaks about the content of two more of his treatises that are significant for our topic: “Theological Essays” and “Symbolic Theology”. Moreover, he calls the first work cataphatic theology (see: MTh 3) and in it, judging by the brief description in MTh, he sets out the foundations of what was later classified as Christian dogmatics. In the second treatise, he explains the symbolic meaning of sensory images and designations applied to God in Scripture such as organs of the human body, human feelings and experiences, human (and even negatively human such as intoxication, oaths, curses, etc.) actions, etc. In general, the system for identifying the transcendental-immanent (i.e., antinomian at its core) essence of God in the Areopagitics is built as follows. “Symbolic theology”, which gives a symbolic interpretation of the overly sensual imagery of Holy Scripture in relation to God. “Theological Essays” – a description of the essential foundations (and main names) of Trinitarian and Christological issues. “On the Divine Names” – symbolism of the actual cataphatic names of Holy Scripture. “On Mystical Theology” is apophatic theology in its purest form, affirming the absolute transcendentalism of God. This is the diagram of the internal structure of the Areopagitik in relation to the development of the problem of the transcendence of God, and it develops in a similar paradigm, but in more complex rhetorical forms and figures, in the texts of the entire Corpus. At the same time, the Areopagite emphasizes that the verbal volume of his texts decreases as he ascends from symbolic theology to mystical, from cataphatic to apophatic - from verbosity and vivid imagery to verbal laconicism and absolute silence when approaching the divine Essence. Without dwelling in detail on the philosophical and theological problematics of the Areopagite, to which numerous fundamental studies were devoted in the last century, 31 I will cite the most significant moments for our topic of the peculiar and in its own way unique transcendentalism of Dionysius the Areopagite, which led him quite logically along the path of non-rational knowledge, strongly colored by aesthetic overtones. God for Dionysius is, of course, the Trinity and, of course, Christ incarnate in Jesus. However, the texts of Dionysius on the Trinitarian and Christological problems, about which all the fathers of the 4th-5th centuries broke their spears, have practically not reached us 32. According to the Areopagite himself, the treatise “Theological Essays” was dedicated to them. In “Divine Names” he speaks only in passing about the Trinity and even less about Jesus (about His “supernatural physiology” - DNII 9, about “fullness of presubstantiality” - Ep. 4). Nevertheless, he demonstrates the absolute transcendence of God, understanding Him primarily as a Trinity in the unfused unity of hypostases, which is inaccessible to any mental understanding and is expressed by the author of the Areopagitik on the verbal level by an intricate system of antinomies. “Thus, in the divine unity, that is, super-essence, the one and common thing for the original Trinity is the super-essential existence, super-divine divinity, super-good goodness, identity that exceeds everything, surpasses any particularity, super-unit unity, silence, polyphony, ignorance, omniscience, affirmation of everything, negation of everything, that which exceeds all affirmation and negation, the presence and abiding of the initial hypostases, if so possible to say, in each other, completely over-united, but not fused in a single part” (DN II 4). With the entire structure of this comprehensive definition, based on antinomies and hypernomies, Dionysius seeks to show that there is no way to approach the comprehension of God at the level of intellectual, mental cognition or naming. Words and reason are powerless here. God is absolutely transcendental. And this is exactly what the Areopagite constantly repeats in a variety of verbal constructions and combinations, as if promoting our consciousness into some other dimensions. God, according to the Areopagite, is outside everything and, accordingly, above everything. He is “super-primary in relation to every beginning” (Ep. 2), “invisible due to excessive lightness and unapproachable due to the excess of super-essential light outpouring” (Ep. 5). He is unnameable, above all names, above all affirmation and negation, all finitude and infinity, any limit and infinity itself, He is “super-simple infinity” (DN V 9). To express the transcendence and transcendence of God, Dionysius resorts to both complex antinomic rhetorical constructions, including sublime statements about Him, the negation of these statements through direct denial or hyperaffirmation, and to simple names that signify His absolute essential isolation in Himself with unconditional immanence to the world. These are names such as “The Same” (To tayton) and “Other” (To heteron). That tayton means the absolute self-identity of God and is described by Dionysius with such an indescribable hymnology, which can only be cited in its entirety, given that any translation turns out to be significantly inferior in verbal sophistication to the original. In the structure of aesthetic research, only such a detailed quotation, I emphasize once again, can give an idea of ​​the nature of the spiritual and aesthetic consciousness of such an amazing author as Dionysius the Areopagite. “The name Same indicates the super-essentially Eternal, immutable, abiding in Itself, and likewise always equal to Itself; simultaneously present in everything equally; firmly and purely established by Itself in Itself within the best limits of super-essential identity; unchangeable, constant, unwavering, unchangeable, unalloyed, immaterial, simplest; having no need for anything, non-growing, non-decreasing, unborn, absolutely unborn, eternally existing; Being perfect in the proper sense of the word; That which exists is the same in Itself; Uniformly and identically determined by Itself; with the same from Himself all those worthy to participate in the shining; combining one with another due to the abundance of identity; having in Itself equally and opposites, being the one and only Cause of all identity, surpassing identity” (DN IX 4) 33. With such a complex hymnology, Dionysius tries to express the absolute self-identity, self-closure of God, his complete transcendence. The Areopagite explains the name “Other” in relation to God as testifying to His immanence in being, when for the sake of saving the Universe God becomes “All in all” without leaving His absolute Identity (DN IX 5). The Areopagite reaches the heights of apophatism as an affirmation of the absolute transcendence of God in the last two brief chapters of Mystical Theology. God as the Cause of everything, as the Areopagite never tires of asserting, is not anything imaginable by the human mind. “She has no word, no name, no knowledge; She is neither darkness nor light, nor error nor truth; neither affirmation nor negation are applicable to Her at all... since above any affirmation is the perfect and one Cause of everything, and above any negation is Her superiority, as completely transcendental to everything” (MTh 5). God is absolutely transcendental: “He is above mind and essence, and it is absolutely not characteristic of Him to be knowable or to exist (mede einai),” therefore, the Areopagite repeats many times like an incantation, only “complete ignorance, in the best sense, is the knowledge of Him who is above everything knowable” (Er. 1). The Areopagite even denies the only positive property of God, which the previous fathers of the Church endowed Him with and which was established in Christian dogma - His existence: only one thing can be confidently said about Him, that “He is.” The Areopagite, in his refined apophatics and antinomianism, believes that God, as the creator of being, Himself cannot possess being. In the human understanding of the word “to be,” one cannot even claim about Him that He exists. Accordingly, there is practically no subject for knowing Him, again in human understanding. What does not have being, i.e., ontological status, cannot in any way be known or comprehended by man. Dionysius is no longer an ancient philosopher, for whom the law of non-contradiction was an absolute dogma, but a Christian thinker who is well aware of the new antinomian principle of thinking when approaching the transcendental God and the divine sphere as a whole. By his time, it had become the norm among highly spiritual Christian theologians that the hypostases in the Trinity and the two natures in Christ are “inseparably united” and “inseparably separated.” He himself makes a significant contribution to the development of Christian antinomianism and to the realization that this antinomianism, showing the boundaries of formal logical thinking and knowledge, is a springboard for a leap to other levels of consciousness, into another space of spiritual existence, where “cognition”, “comprehension”, “knowledge” mean something different than in the philosophical paradigm, and are carried out not at the level of thinking, but by existence itself, the very special type of existence of the seeker of higher knowledge subject, and in the sphere of consciousness – not by discursive methods. In paragraph VII 3 of “Divine Names” the Areopagite clearly and clearly outlines the system of Christian knowledge of God. He once again states the idea, in many aspects, rhetorical formulas and other methods of verbal suggestion, carried through all the texts of the Areopagitik: to know what God is, in its essence, is impossible, for He is in principle unknowable, surpassing the abilities of any mind and created consciousness. And yet, the Areopagite affirms here two ways of knowing God available to man. Firstly, by contemplating the well-being, i.e., the beauty of the Universe created by Him and, secondly, by consistently distracting the mind from everything that exists, cutting off in the understanding of God everything created and then a mystical (apophatic) ascent to the First Cause. As a result, the general epistemological conclusion of the Areopagite sounds antinomic, which emphasizes the fundamental incomprehensibility for the human mind of even the very meaning of knowledge of God and at the same time affirms the very fact of such knowledge: “Being everything in everything and nothing in anything, He is known by everyone in everything and by no one in nothing,” but as the Cause of everything is constantly sung by everyone in the appropriate way (hymneitai), which, perhaps, is the only worthy way of Him. comprehension-cognition - in hymnology, in glorification, i.e. in the spaces of that experience that we today comprehend as aesthetic 34. In fact, the apophatic-mystical path of knowing God itself ends with the Areopagite almost aesthetically - in unity with Sophia the Wisdom of God - the effective Creator of all things according to the laws of beauty and harmony - and in the highest enlightenment. According to the Areopagite, this is knowledge through ignorance (agnosia), when the mind, having renounced everything that exists, leaves itself and unites with the luminous rays of the incomprehensible abyss of Wisdom, achieving a state of highest enlightenment. However, one can know Sophia, Dionysius insistently adds, by contemplating her creation, for, according to Scripture, it is she who is the specific creator of the Universe, who controls everything, the cause of “indestructible correspondence and order, constantly connecting the completion of the first with the beginning of the second, beautifully creating a single symphony and harmony out of everything” (DN VII 3). And this “symphony and harmony” of creation is seen by the Areopagite primarily in the hierarchical cosmic ordering of the Universe, especially its spiritual component, to the study of which he devotes two large treatises in his Corpus. For the Areopagite, higher knowledge is the result of oncoming flows: divine revelation and human aspiration - desire, will, concentration of all spiritual and emotional forces. And it is carried out in three main directions of spiritual life, which are largely intertwined and complementary to each other. In the Sophian sphere of hierarchical liturgical experience, on the paths of symbolic theology and in pure mystical experience. At the same time, as we will constantly be convinced of and for the sake of which, in fact, this research is being undertaken, on all paths aesthetic experience, aesthetic aura and terminology play significant roles for the author of the Areopagitik. To Christians, according to Dionysius, God reveals himself, as far as it is understandable to a particular perceiver (the author constantly emphasizes), in the spiritual hierarchy 35. It represents a certain ladder of ranks, or levels, orders along which knowledge from God, gradually coarsening (materializing), is transmitted down to the lower ranks of ordinary believers and along which believers, simultaneously with the receipt of this non-discursive knowledge, can rise up to the comprehension of God. Knowledge about the hierarchy is secret, can only be transmitted to those who have been baptized - the Areopagite repeatedly emphasizes this, demanding that his recipients, to whom his treatises and messages are sent, preserve this knowledge from the uninitiated, so that it does not damage their mind, does not blind them, as the sun can blind unprotected eyes (cf.: EH I 1; II adv.). The main definition of Areopagite reads: Hierarchy is rank, knowledge and action, assimilating, as far as possible, to the divine and to the insights given to it from God in proportion to the imitation of God. God-like Beauty, as simple, as good and as completely original, is completely pure from all dissimilarity, and imparts its light to everyone according to their dignity, and in the most divine sacrament of initiation perfects those initiated into it in harmony with its unchanging image. So, the goal of the hierarchy is, as far as possible, to become like God and unite with Him, considering Him to be the mentor of every sacred thing, both knowledge and action, steadily looking at His most divine splendor, to the best of its ability, imprinting it and making its participants divine likenesses - the most transparent and pure mirrors - receiving the luminous and God-originating ray and sacredly filled with the bestowed light, which is then generously given to others pouring out according to God's original laws (SN III 1–2). Thus, the hierarchy, or hierarchy in the literal Russian translation, is a kind of spiritual structure, i.e., an ordered formation, a device (taxis), which is both knowledge and action (or energy), which indicates its unique multidimensionality and multifunctionality. One of the main goals of the hierarchy is the transfer of special, “hierarchical”, as E. Ivanka puts it, knowledge, which “is knowledge about the method and image of how hierarchical knowledge will be transmitted further” 36 . G. Goltz sees it as a “pyramid of hierarchical cognitive forms” 37, which are by no means verbal in nature. The hierarchy is based on the principle of similarity to the divine, and with the help of God-given light energies - insights - each of its ranks, in proportion to its capabilities, is elevated to imitation of God 38 . Actually, the divine, and in fact God himself, from whom the hierarchy receives knowledge in the form of light insights of various strengths and natures, to which it is likened and to which it is raised to imitation, is designated here, i.e. in the first and main definition of the hierarchy, beauty is “god-like Beauty,” absolutely simple, good, extremely authentic (devoid of any dissimilarity). Of the many positive (cataphatic) names of God, to which the Areopagite’s large treatise “On the Divine Names” is devoted, in defining the hierarchy he uses the name “Beauty,” i.e., he immediately transfers the conversation to the aesthetic sphere and virtually the entire detailed definition is kept in aesthetic terminology. The content of the hierarchy, or hierarchy as knowledge, is the light shed by Beauty, that is, the beautiful (as we can see later), and the hierarchy as effective energy is a system of insights that form (perfect) the levels of the hierarchy in harmony with its image, which is nothing other than beauty, radiance (=sacred knowledge), the most divine “splendor” (eyprepeia). The goal of the hierarchy is to bring its members, through a gradual assimilation to God, to complete unity with Him, which is carried out (the action of the hierarchy) by transforming them into the purest mirrors and imprinting in them divine beauty, which they are obliged to transmit in light form to lower ranks. The basis of the world order - the hierarchy of heavenly ranks and church leadership - is described by the Areopagite as a beautiful, luminous, harmonious living system (organism), which is the image of God himself, perfect, commensurate in everything and constantly improving itself in the direction of likening God, imitation (mimesis) of Him, imprinting Him in oneself and thereby comprehending Him, complete unity with Him. In fact, before us is a living, ideal, effective and functioning work of art, described in the best traditions of ancient, or rather classical, aesthetics and extremely authentic to the ancient Christian aesthetic consciousness. The concepts of beauty, radiance, mimesis, similarity, image, imprinting, order, harmony, proportionality, perfection form the basis of this consciousness. From here it is clear why the aesthetics of the Areopagite became a model for many medieval and later thinkers of the Christian world, who in one way or another touched on the aesthetic sphere. Having presented the basic definition in which the essence of the hierarchy and its purpose is clearly formulated, the Areopagite, throughout his two treatises, in which he describes the ranks of the heavenly and church (earthly) hierarchies, constituting one continuous ladder to God and the path of transmission of spiritual knowledge from Him, continues to develop the theme of the hierarchy as a luminous, aesthetic essence and a peculiar epistemological function of an effective mediator between the transcendental God and humanity. The very word “hierarchy” (hierarchy), Dionysius emphasizes, “points to a certain sacred order - the image of God’s original beauty (horaiotes), - which, through ranks and sacred knowledge, accomplishes the holy sacrament of illumination (elampsis)” (CH III 2). “Hierarchy” is called “the totality in general of everything that relates to the structure of the sacred (ten ton hieron diakosmesin)” (EH I 3). Structure and beauty (Greek root kosm) constitute the essential basis of the hierarchy at the etymological-semantic level, which is what the author of “Areopagitik” strives to show in his own way. The perfection (teleiosis) of each member of the hierarchy consists in, as far as possible, “raising to the imitation of God,” becoming a “co-worker with God” (CH III 2). Dionysius never tires of constantly repeating that the goal of any hierarchy is “divine likeness to God,” communion with God and “teaching to others unalloyed purification, divine light and perfecting knowledge” (SN VII 2). The deep meaning of the hierarchy is “for some to be purified and for others to be purified, for some to be enlightened and for others to be enlightened, for some to be perfected and for others to be perfected” and “everyone’s imitation of God will be in harmony with this order” (SN III 2). Purification (katharsis), enlightenment (photismos) and improvement (teleiosis) are the main functions of all ranks of the hierarchy, bringing the world of spiritual beings into complete harmony and commensurate with the hierarchical level of each member of the hierarchy, imitation of God (godlikeness). Moreover, each member of the hierarchy acts simultaneously as both a receiver of a higher level of knowledge and action (energy) from a higher rank, and a transmitter of them to the lower ones. The purified one purifies, the enlightened one enlightens, the one who has achieved perfection perfects himself. Moreover, each of the members has a double volitional intention - to ascend to a higher level of the hierarchy and to pull the lower ones up to their level. These functions of hierarchical ranks reach particular dynamics and intensity among the ranks of the earthly (church) hierarchy, where the personal will to spiritual improvement in the context of a person’s sinful existence plays a primary role. In the sphere of the heavenly hierarchy, the divine will operates, and accordingly, the structure, beauty, and luminosity there are purer, higher, organic and harmonious; serve as a high ideal for the ranks of the earthly hierarchy. The driving factor of the hierarchy, its internal spring and incentive and at the same time the ultimate goal, the limit is “continuous love for God and the divine, divinely inspired and unitedly sacred” (EH 13). God’s love for man, the desire to save him, was the reason for His creation of the hierarchy, and within the hierarchy itself, the reciprocal love of all its members leads to complete harmony of the Universe, stimulating the “harmonious ascent” of each member of the earthly hierarchy to “deification” (theosis), which the Areopagite understands as “likening God and unity with Him” to the extent of the hierarchical possibility of each (ibid.). God himself is called by Dionysius “the universal super-essential Harmony,” which harmoniously organized the entire hierarchy (SN X 2). At the same time, the earthly hierarchy “in divine harmony and proportionality” is supported by the lowest rank of the heavenly hierarchy (X 1). Accordingly, our hierarchy, being likened to the order of heaven, bears “angelic beauty”, being transformed by it (typoymene di' aytes) and ascending to its “ranking” (SN VIII 2). Transformation, transfiguration of the way, image, essence of one’s being with the help of beauty is the basic principle of moving from bottom to top along the steps of spiritual perfection in the hierarchy of the Areopagite, preserving one’s harmonious existence in the Universe, the most important guarantee of the reality of deification, likening to God, unity with Him in the act of ever-increasing love for Him. The cause and beginning of the hierarchy, according to Dionysius, is God the Trinity, and, accordingly, he builds the hierarchy to some extent in his own image - the trinitarian principle. The heavenly hierarchy consists of three triple ranks, arranged in descending order: the first consists of thrones, cherubim, seraphim; the second - domination, strength, power; third – beginnings, archangels, angels. The church hierarchy also includes three triple orders 39. Moreover, the first order, i.e., the one that mediates between heaven and humanity, consists of the main church sacraments: enlightenment (=Baptism), communion (Eucharist) and “the perfection of the world” (the sanctification of the world; in the Orthodox tradition - Confirmation). The second rank consists of clergy: hierarchs (bishops), priests (priests) and liturgists (deacons). The third includes: monks (or therapists), the faithful people (all those who have been baptized and have not fallen away from the Church), those being purified (all those who gravitate toward the faith, but are not yet allowed to perform sacred rites). One of the main goals of the hierarchy is the transfer of special sacred knowledge that cannot be verbalized, but is well assimilated at the non-rational level by all ranks of the hierarchy to the best of their hierarchical capabilities (to each according to his rank and to the extent of this rank). It is this knowledge that opens the path (it is also this path) of climbing the hierarchical ladder, at least at the level of the earthly hierarchy. The ranks of the heavenly hierarchy, naturally, do not ascend anywhere, but each perform the functions of transmitting knowledge at their own level. The uniqueness of this knowledge is such that the Areopagite is forced to constantly resort to aesthetic terminology when describing it, in fact, to describe the system, ways and means of becoming familiar with it by analogy with what modern aesthetics understands as aesthetic experience. Thus, members of the highest rank of the heavenly hierarchy receive knowledge not as people, with the help of sensual and rational symbols, but “as saturated with the highest light of all immaterial knowledge and filled, to the extent permitted, with the essential triluminous contemplation of beneficial primordial Beauty.” As those closest to God, they are drawn by Him “to the contemplation of immaterial noetic beauty.” And they become familiar with Jesus not through “sacred images,” like people, but directly “in the first communion with the knowledge of His God-created lights.” At the same time, idolatry (godlikeness) was initially bestowed upon them by the Lord himself (SN VII 2). The rank of thrones, seraphim and cherubim appears to Dionysius as a certain host of the highest spiritual beings, circling in an endless dance around God, knowing him to the extent permitted by them and silently singing hymns to him. In order to more or less adequately convey the sublimity of this rank and give it the glory worthy of it, Dionysius himself resorts to highly aestheticized, almost poetic speech, to a high style of eloquence. This rite, “standing directly with God, and simply and endlessly in His eternal knowledge in a round dance, circling around the highest church for angels, in constant movement, and purely contemplating many blessed visions, illuminated by simple and immediate brilliance and saturated with divine food, abundant in the primordial outpouring, but one unequal and uniquely creating by the unity of God's original treat, many communion with God and co-operation with Him, worthy, thanks to being like Him, to the extent possible, with wonderful properties and deeds, excellently cognizing much of the divine and partaking, to the extent permitted, of God's original knowledge and knowledge. That is why theology taught those living on earth his (first order) hymns, in which the superiority of his highest illumination is sacredly revealed” (CH VII 4). A similar sublime, decorated, fancifully developing in an endless stream of “weaving words” (as the ancient Russians called this style) style is generally characteristic of Dionysius the Areopagite, especially when he talks about God, the divine, close to the divine sphere. Describing in aesthetic terminology the spiritual experience of communion with God, elevation to Him, harmonization with the divine sphere, the author of the Areopagitik, by the very stylistics of the text, its artistic organization, elevates the reader to the spheres that he describes. This is the specificity of aesthetic experience, and our author seems to feel this well and actively uses it in his writings to enhance their spiritual and emotional impact on the reader. From the highest rank of the heavenly hierarchy, luminous knowledge, principles of imitation and likeness to God, unity and harmony with Him are transferred to lower hierarchical orders down to the earthly (church) ranks. God Himself brings those who strive for Him along the hierarchical ladder “to a uniform and divine life, state and energy,” that is, acquiring the power of the divine priesthood. “And thus, having gazed upon the blessed and divinely original radiance of Jesus and sacredly, as far as it is possible to behold, having seen Him, and having been enlightened by the sight with knowledge, sanctified and sanctified by the mysterious experience, we can become luminous and God-acting, perfect and perfecting” (EN II). God the Trinity reveals itself to the highest ranks of the heavenly hierarchy in light, radiance, luminous visions; Jesus Christ is also revealed to people who have reached a certain level of hierarchical readiness, corresponding to openness to contemplation, in light-like phenomena, which are special non-formalizable knowledge and energies. Thus, according to the author of the Areopagitik, the purpose of the hierarchy of heavenly and ecclesiastical orders created by God is the transmission of divine knowledge, that is, the revelation of Himself, to people in forms accessible to their abilities of perception, and the elevation (anagoge) with the help of this knowledge of people to God. It is the elevation to a specific, incomprehensible knowledge of Him by imitation of Him, likening to Him, unity with Him, i.e. by achieving harmony with God. The entire complex of sacraments for the transmission of this noetic, non-verbalized knowledge is carried out in light forms, “in the initial and super-initial light-giving (photodosia) of the God-primary Father” (CH12) of varying degrees of strength, which is identified by Dionysius with beauty, for God himself, when describing the hierarchy, is often called Beauty. And the ascent to harmony with God is achieved through imitation and likening to God, that is, mimetically, or, we would say today, aesthetically, through the gradual transformation of oneself, one’s form and image into more enlightened, beautiful states. The texts of the “Areopagitik” are quoted mainly from the latest Greek-Russian edition, prepared under the leadership of G.M. Prokhorov (Dionysius the Areopagite. On Divine Names. On Mystical Theology. St. Petersburg, 1995; aka. On the Heavenly Hierarchy. St. Petersburg, 1997; aka. On the Church Hierarchy. Epistles. St. Petersburg, 2001) indicating in brackets the abbreviated Latin name of the treatise, chapter and paragraph generally accepted in science: CH - On the celestial hierarchy; EH - About the church hierarchy; DN – About divine names; MTh – On mystical theology; Er. - Messages). Good Russian translations of this edition are nevertheless verified with the Greek original (its newest scientific edition: Corpus Dionysiacum, 2 vol. / Ed. B.R. Suchla. V., 1990–1991) and sometimes clarified. It is this aspect of the aestheticized theology of Dionysius that has led the modern researcher to reflect on the influence of Dionysius on sacred poetics: Sudbrack J. Tranken vom hell-lichten Dunkel des Absoluten: Dionysios der Areopagite und die Poesie der Gotteserfahrung. Freiburg, 2006. For more information on the theological aspect of the sublime in Dionysius, see: Porperl Ch Auf der Schwelle: Asthetik des Erhabenen und negative Theologie: Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, Immanuel Kant und Jean-Francois Lyotard. Wurzburg, 2007. For more information about their use in patriotic aesthetics, see: Bychkov V.V. Aesthetica partum. Aesthetics of the Church Fathers: Apologists. Blessed Augustine. M., 1995; aka. 2000 years of Christian culture sub specie aesthetica. T. 1: Early Christianity. Byzantium. M.; St. Petersburg, 1999 (2nd ed.: M., 2007). See: Bychkov V. 2000 years of Christian culture sub specie aesthetica. T. 1. M., 2007. pp. 508–544. The influence of the Neoplatonists, especially Proclus’s Principles of Theology, on Dionysius, including on the issue of the transcendence of God, is well known. See at least the works: Ivanka E. PLATO CHRISTIANUS. Uebernahme und Umge-staltung des Platonismus durch die Fater; Brons B. Gott und die Seienden. Untersu-chungen zum Verhaltnis von neuplatonischer Metaphysik und christlicher Tradition bei Dionysius Areopagita; Perl E.D. Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite; Klitenic S. Dionysius the Areopagite and the Neoplatonist tradition: despoiling the Hellenes. Altershot, 2007. For some philosophical aspects of this treatise, see: Schafer Ch. Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite: an introduction to the structure and the content of the treatise On the Divine Names. Leiden; Boston, 2006. Not all editions of the Corpus contain the following epigraph. The treatise, like other main books of Dionysius, is addressed to a certain co-presbyter Timothy. Some of them are listed in footnote 1. Perhaps that is why the authors of the modern fundamental work on Byzantine theology did not even consider it necessary to mention the name of the Areopagite in the endless, judging by this book, series of those who, in their opinion, are worthy of study as significant figures for modern Orthodoxy (see: Lurie V.M. with the participation of Baranov V.M. History of Byzantine philosophy: Formative period. St. Petersburg, 2006). A slightly different translation was given at one time by Fr. Leonid Lutkovsky. I will quote its beginning: “His Identity is supernaturally eternal, unchangeable, original, omnipresent, always and in everything remaining the same, invariably and unshakably enclosing itself within the perfect boundaries of supernatural Identity... etc.” (see: Mystical theology. Kyiv, 1991. P. 79). Blessed Augustine came to a similar and even more aesthetic conclusion in his time, discussing jubilation (alleluaria) - the wordless (when words are no longer enough to express one’s rejoicing over God) hymnology of God through the melismatically decorated chanting of the word “hallelujah” (see: Bychkov VV. The Aesthetics of Blessed Augustine. pp. 374–377). For more information on the Areopagite concept of hierarchy, see: Rogues R. L'Univers Dionysien. Structure hierarchique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys. Paris, 1954; Hathaway R.F. Hierarchy and the definition of order in the letters of Pseudo-Dionysius: A study in the form and meaning of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings. The Hague, 1969; GoltzH. HIERAMESITEIA. ZurTheorie der hierarchischen Sozietat im Corpus Areopagiticum. Erlangen, 1974. IvankaE. PLATO CHRISTIANUS. S. 275. GoltzH. HIERAMESITEIA. S. 151; 159–179. Compare: Rogues R. L'Univers Dionysien. Structure hierarchique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys. Paris, 1954. P. 92. For a detailed analysis of the treatise “On the Church Hierarchy,” see: Stock W.-M. Theur-gisches Denken. Zur "Kirchlichen Hierarchie" des Dionysius Areopagita. Berlin, 2008; Drews F. Methexis, Rationalitat und Mystik in der Kirchlichen Hierarchie des Dionysius Areopagita. Berlin, 2011.