Глава 3. Красота и прекрасное

Hence it is clear why beauty and light occupy such an essential place in the Areopagite system. According to his conviction, everything in the Universe is subject to a law of a higher order, the basis of which is the desire from multiplicity to unity. The main force aimed at its implementation, for the author of the Areopagitik, who heavily relies on the Neoplatonic tradition, is divine eros. It acts in the world in different forms, but its goal is one - unity, merging, leading to unity. “Eros,” the Areopagite quotes lines from the hymns about love of a certain “holy Hierotheus,” “whether we call it divine, or angelic, or mental, or spiritual, or physical, we understand it as a certain force of unity and fusion, which encourages higher [beings] to take care of the lower, equals leads to mutual enrichment, and, finally, turns the lower to more perfect and higher ones” (DN IV 15). Eros appears to Dionysius, who here continues the Platonic tradition, as the driving force of the entire Universe from the First Cause-God to the lowest being and back. Ontological meaning of beauty Beauty and the beautiful 40 are the most important stimulants and nourishing energies of this force. Therefore, divine beauty, or Beauty, appears in the Areopagitica along with Good, or Good, (sometimes as a synonym for it) the most important cataphatic (affirmative) name of God. In the system of cataphatic designations of God, the One-good-and-beautiful (to hen agaton kai kalon) occupies one of the main places, emphasizing, as it were, the “indistinguishable distinction” of close but different concepts included in this unity, which in an “unfused unity” make it possible, at the cataphatic level, to come closest to the expression of the inexpressible essence of God. Everything that exists has a share in the One-good-and-beautiful, which is “the only Cause of all the multitude of goods and beauties.” From Him comes the “essential existence of all things”: divisions and unions, differences and identities, dissimilarities and similarities, the unity of opposites, etc. - everything has its beginning in Him. The One-Good-and-Beautiful, which exceeds everything and everyone, quite naturally appears to the author of the Areopagitik as the Cause of all types of movement, all beings, all life, mind and soul, all energies, all feeling, thinking, knowledge. “In a word, everything that exists comes from the Beautiful-and-Good, and everything that does not exist is super-essentially contained in the Beautiful-and-Good, and it is the beginning of everything and remains above all beginning and all perfection” (DN IV 7-10). The degree of participation in the One-Good-and-Beautiful determines the measure of the existence of a thing. All beings strive for Him, all actions, desires and thoughts are connected with this desire. Hence Dionysius’s special attention to God as Beauty and the Cause of all beauty and beauty in the world, to the “Super-essentially beautiful”, which he defines based on the well-known thought of Plato (Symp. 21 lab) and clearly not without the influence of Plotinian ideas: “The super-essentially beautiful is called Beauty because from Him its own beauty, distinctive for everyone, is communicated to all things, and It is the cause of proportionality and brilliance (tes panton eyarmostias kai aglaias aition) in all things; like light, It exudes into all objects its deep rays that create beauty, and, as it were, calls (kaloyn) to Himself all that exists, which is why it is called Beauty (kallos), and collects everything in everything into Itself... Thanks to this Beautiful, all that exists turns out to be beautiful, each thing in its own measure; and thanks to this Beautiful there is harmony, friendship, communication between everything; and in this Beauty everything is united. The beautiful is the beginning of everything, as an efficient cause that sets the whole in motion, embracing everything with the eros of its beauty. And as the final cause, It is the limit of everything and the object of love (for everything arises for the sake of the Beautiful). It is also the Reason-model, for in accordance with It everything receives certainty” (DN IV 7) 41. Thus, the truly Beautiful, or divine Beauty, is for the author of the Areopagitik both a model and the creative cause of all things, and the source of all beauty, the guarantor of the harmony of the world, but also the object of love, the limit of all aspirations and movements. When the Areopagite designates God, the Beautiful and Beauty are practically synonymous, and he himself emphasizes this. The beauty of the world seems to him to be a derivative of absolute Beauty. What is beautiful is that which in one way or another is involved in beauty or even the highest Beauty as the Cause of all beauty. Meanwhile, in the 7th century. the famous commentator on the Areopagitica, Maximus the Confessor, brings to this place a scholia (his own or the scholiast who commented on the Areopagitica before him), which emphasizes that Dionysius puts different meanings into the concepts of beauty and the beautiful in relation to both the created world and God. If for the created world beautiful, as we have seen, is called participation in beauty, then God is called Beauty (kallos) “because from Him everything is given charm (kallone), and because He attracts everything to Himself (kalei - calls), and the Beautiful - as eternally existing and never decreasing or increasing” 42. This differentiation is essential not so much for understanding the meaning of the Areopagite text (it is already clear), but to illustrate the fact that Byzantine thought in the aesthetic sphere, generally at the level of ratio not very relevant for the Fathers of the Church, sees significant semantic differences in the same concepts depending on the context of their application - to the level of created being or to the First Cause. Regarding God Himself, Dionysius, as I noted above, uses the names Beauty and the Beautiful as synonyms. The later scholiast “Areopagitik” also emphasizes this, explaining the thought of the author of “The Divine Names”, and at the same time Plato, whom the Areopagite quoted in this place: “God is the one-formed Beautiful, since he is not scattered into properties and types that give rise to beauty, and is not beautiful for some, and not for others, but unshakably, without beginning, absolutely, naturally and in the same way eternally appears himself. Wonderful. And it is said that He has beauty in Himself because He, before all created things, is the Source, the Beginning and the Cause of the beautiful, but everything that is beautiful is from Him and is not beautiful like Him. Whence it follows that He is the causeless Beautiful, and everything is due to reason and participation. After all, God is the uniquely Beautiful, since from Him comes the beautiful after Him, and it possesses the beautiful, as it were, in the form of a quality” 43 . God, as the highest transcendental Beauty, inextricably linked (inextricably united) with the Good, in the context of the naming “The One-Good-and-Beautiful” appears, as I have already briefly pointed out, as the energetic source of divine Eros. It is in this semantic space that “God is Love.” God's love for existence (ton onton eros) became the reason for the creation of the world, its management, and action in it. And therefore there is nothing shameful or obscene,” the Areopagite objects to some of his rigoristic critics, “in the fact that we call God simply Love, without adhering to the absurd prejudices that people have some kind of obscene love. All true love, according to Dionysius, is from God, and therefore it is hardly appropriate to call God himself “True Love,” hinting that there is some kind of untrue love unworthy of God. Everything that is unworthy of God in human relationships cannot be called love. Love for God, for the “Beautiful and Good,” is higher than the love of people for each other, but the latter is also sanctified by divine Love and is the path to God (see: DN IV 10–12). “So let us not be afraid of the name Love, and let no frightening word concerning this trouble us.” Unfortunately, Dionysius laments, “the majority cannot accommodate the unifying power of the divine one Love.” Meanwhile, the Areopagite emphasizes, this great power that binds lovers to each other arose from the “Beautiful-and-Good” and for the sake of the “Beautiful-and-Good”, it moves through Him and raises people to Him (DN IV 12). Divine love is ecstatic (ekstatikos), that is, directed outward (the prefix ek means “from-”), “it encourages those who love to belong not to themselves, but to their beloved.” This applies not only to people, but also to God, who “He Himself is the Cause of everything thanks to the love of the beautiful and good in everything, due to the excess of loving goodness, finds himself outside of Himself,” that is, he pours out his love into the world, zealously cares about things. “In a word, attraction and love (to eraston kai ho eros) belong to the Beautiful-and-Good, have their foundation in the Beautiful-and-Good, and thanks to the Beautiful-and-Good they exist and arise” (DN IV 13) 44. Transcendent Beauty, according to Dionysius, radiates like light, never diminishing, into the hierarchy of heavenly and earthly beings, organized in the likeness of this Beauty, but reflecting it to varying degrees (the degree of participation in absolute Beauty is inversely related to the degree of materialization of hierarchical ranks). Ontologically, the Areopagite distinguishes three main stages of beauty: 1) absolute divine Beauty, truly (or essentially) Beautiful (aka the One-good-and-beautiful); 2) the beauty of heavenly beings - the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy (CH II 5; CH II 2); 3) the beauty of objects and phenomena of the material world, visible beauty. All three levels are united by the presence in them of some general “information” about absolute Beauty - “spiritual beauty” (noeras eyprepeias - CH II 4), contained at each level to the appropriate extent. This “spiritual beauty” constitutes the enduring value of all beauty, for it contains in a special (actually and purely aesthetic) form non-discursive knowledge of transcendental Beauty. Well aware of the transcendental nature of divine beauty, Beauty as an expression of the incomprehensible creative potential of God, the Areopagite constantly strives to instill this in his readers, multiplying and sophisticated the rhetorical formulas of its verbal expression. In them, with ever-increasing pathos, he affirms the absoluteness of Beauty, its complete self-sufficiency and concentration in itself, its complete difference from everything material and intelligible, constantly and incessantly endowed with participation in it, that is, participation in the entire totality of beauties and insights available to one or another level of the earthly hierarchy. “Godlike beauty, as simple, as good, and as completely original, is completely pure from all dissimilarity, 45 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 unchangeable image” (SN III 1). Beauty (theoprepes kallos) identical to God is transcendental, says the author of the Areopagitik, because it is simple, absolutely perfect, devoid of any materiality and at the same time immanent to the world as constantly radiating into it the beautiful in light forms of different dignity and harmonizing all initiates with its image, i.e. actively introducing them to beauty. To designate divine Beauty, the Areopagite introduces another interesting concept - “beauty-in-itself” (aytokallos), which has the ability to create “both beauty as a whole and partial beauty; and in general beautiful, and in part beautiful” (DN XI 6, col. 956B). At the same time, the Areopagite devotes an entire paragraph to explaining the prefix ayto- 46 before a number of names of God such as Being, Life, Wisdom, Beauty, etc. And the meaning of this explanation boils down to the fact that in this way he is trying to show the fundamental super-essentiality (i.e., using the new European philosophical language, transcendence) of God (hyperon hyperoysios - DN XI 6, col. 953C). Speaking about the ranks of the heavenly and church hierarchy, Dionysius often uses the term “most divine beauty” (to theoe-idestaton kallos), showing that they all have a special beauty, similar to the divine, but not equal to it. Nevertheless, it is precisely this beauty that allows those who contemplate it to rise through the steps of the spiritual hierarchy to the divine Beauty itself, which is once again stated by the author of the Areopagitik, concluding the treatise “On the Church Hierarchy” with an appeal to co-presbyter Timothy, to whom he directs this treatise in response to his questions. “This is how beautiful, oh child, are the uniform pictures of our hierarchy that I contemplate, visible by other, perhaps more sighted minds, not only in this way, but much more clearly and more God-like. And to you, as I think, a brighter and more divine beauty will certainly shine upon you if you take advantage of the indicated steps to higher rays. Tell me, friend, then you too can tell me about more perfect insights and show my eyes what divine and more uniform beauty you can see. For I am confident that with what I have said I will fan the sparks of divine fire hidden within you” (EN VII 11). In addition to the fact that here once again the hierarchy of beauty in the metaphysical world is stated, its outflow in the insights of divine radiance, its spiritual richness and attractiveness, we see that the author of the Areopagitik strives to envelop all symbolic hermeneutics (or exegesis), in line with which his texts are written, in an aesthetic aura of divine beauty, which is intended and is able to fan the sparks of the divine огня, заложенного во многих человеческих душах. This is, perhaps, one of the obvious meanings of the increased aestheticization of the entire corpus of Dionysian writings, conscious aestheticization, I would like to emphasize, having devoted more than a decade to thinking about these texts. The entire spiritual world of prototypes of various levels, which Dionysius the Areopagite is trying to show in his corpus, seems beautiful to him, not to mention the First Cause of this entire world - the absolute Beauty of God. Therefore, he regularly rhetorically calls on his readers to move with him from the symbols from which his text is woven to the “blessed, clearly shining beauty of the prototypes” hidden by them like clothing (EN III 2). Thus, in the treatise “On the Church Hierarchy,” after describing each church phenomenon in all chapters, he moves on to the section Theoria (interpretation, speculation), in which he strives to look beyond the symbol, to reveal the beauty of the hidden meaning contained in it. It is absolutely logical that all the sensually perceived beauties of the world, and the Areopagite knows a lot of them, he calls to be perceived as “an image of invisible beauty” (CH13), that is, the beauty of prototypes. Moreover, he is convinced, based on a well-known phrase from the book of Genesis (panta kala Han - everything is very beautiful - Gen. 1:31 47), “that there is nothing in the world that is completely devoid of participation in the beautiful” (SN II 3), for all material matter, even the coarsest and ugliest, having acquired existence from true Beauty, “in all its material structure has some echoes of spiritual beauty (tes noeras eyprepeias)" (CH II 4). Matter itself “participates in the order of things, in their beauty and appearance,” and therefore cannot be the cause of evil, as many fighters against matter claim (DN IV 28). The entire material world, the Areopagite is convinced, is involved in beauty to one degree or another, carries its reflections, which always point to their Cause - the divine absolute Beauty. The essence of beauty in the entire created world is the “logos of harmony and conformity” (ho tes harmonias kai symmetrias logos), which never completely disappears with the most seemingly catastrophic loss of beauty, but only somehow changes, “loses the ability to remain the same” (DN IV 23). Therefore, for the Areopagite, the ugly as a phenomenon does not actually exist; he does not actually pay any attention to it in his texts. Only occasionally when talking about evil, which also actually does not have any ontological status for him, but only indicates a lack of good or is a certain act, the subject of which himself perceives it nevertheless always as good - so only in this context he sometimes calls disorder and ugliness some characteristics of evil. Ugly (akalles - not beauty), like evil, “has a contingent existence, arising thanks to another, and not from its own beginning” (DN IV 32). God is not the creator of evil and ugliness. On the contrary, he has a direct participation in beauty of all kinds, including ours. Being himself beautiful, he “formed our God-likeness with primitive beauties,” made us “participants in our own beauties,” and after we lost our godlike beauty, he gave us another chance to return to it, revealing himself among us as the Beautiful Christ 48 . Concepts practically adequate to beauty in the theology of Dionysius the Areopagite are fragrance, incense (eyodia) and light (phos). Fragrance and Light, along with Beauty, stand in the same row of cataphatic names of God and have a pronounced onto-aesthetic character: they, as special (I would even say artistic) symbols, orient the believer to the idea of ​​the highest limit of imaginability of positive indescribable qualities of metaphysical reality and at the same time give him high pleasure, possessing at the level of the created world a pronounced aesthetic semantics. Fragrance in the Areopagitica is discussed mainly in the 4th chapter of the Church Hierarchy when interpreting the sacrament of peace (sanctification of the world). The fragrance of the world symbolizes divine Beauty, and God himself is the “most divine Fragrance”, exuding it, worthy to be accepted by everyone according to his degree of receptivity to divine outpourings. These essentially specific epistemological quanta, outpourings, or insights, whether in the form of beauty, light or fragrance, have in the Areopagite a structure that is clearly hierarchized in both qualitative and quantitative terms - each member of the hierarchy is allowed to the extent corresponding to his hierarchical status and the adequate possibility of his perception. The Areopagite regularly emphasizes the esotericism of divine revelations in all their verbally indescribable forms and images (beauty, fragrance, light) and constantly calls on those who own them, who know how to receive them from God, to hide them from the uninitiated, “unlike”, who in fact do not themselves strive to see them (cf. EH IV 1). In the most complete and adequate form, divine fragrances are perceived closest to the Source by the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy, which constantly strengthens the power of their spiritual perception and supports the ability of “the highest contemplation and participation in what is inviolably hidden” from all other ranks of the hierarchy. Such, first of all, are the twelve-winged seraphim, possessing “the most divine beauty,” located closest to the fragrant Jesus, indulged in the most blissful contemplation of Him and sacredly filled “in all-holy containers with spiritual penetration” (EN IV 5), that is, with a knowledge of the Divine that cannot be described in any way. The divine fragrance is transmitted to people in a significantly simplified composition, adapted to their spiritual level, nevertheless, it gives them the highest indescribable pleasure and spiritually enriches them. At the same time, our spiritual organs, which the Areopagite constantly collectively designates as “mind” 49, must be tuned to the perception of the divine fragrance, be “similar” to it. “We are convinced,” he writes, “that the most divine Jesus is super-essentially fragrant and, intelligibly (in the modern sense: incomprehensibly - V.B.) spreading, fills our mental part with divine joy. After all, if the perception of sensually perceived aromas gives pleasure and nourishes the sense of smell with great joy, if it is not damaged and they mutually correspond with each other with fragrance, similarly, it seems, our mental powers, being in natural strength, our ability to judge, inaccessible to being reduced to the worse, turn out to be - as God acts and the mind responds to the divine - perceiving God's original fragrance and being filled with sacred pleasure and the most divine food "(EN IV 4). Thus, the Areopagite quite often shows this in many places in his texts, varying in different ways purely aesthetic terminology, higher knowledge, comprehension of God, or rather, His fragrances available to man, is carried out exclusively according to aesthetic laws, they would say today: communion with the divine occurs at the non-rational level of a special spiritual “smell” and brings a person high “sacred pleasure.” At the same time, which is essential for Dionysian and patristic thought in general, in one phrase he twice insists that the process of spiritual and aesthetic enrichment of a person occurs with an active counter movement of wills: both on the part of God - to give knowledge in a special form - and on the part of man: his mind must be tuned to accept the divine fragrance, must correspond to it. Elsewhere, in more detail and figuratively, exclusively in an aesthetic sense, even relying on an example from the sphere of fine art, he depicts the very process of the divine gift of his “fragrant beauty” to a spiritually inclined soul, associated with images of true virtue, which must be kept hidden within oneself. “For the hidden and fragrant beauties of God, transcending the mind, are inviolable and spiritually appear only to spiritual beings, 50 - desiring to create in souls uniform images that are undistorted in relation to virtue. After all, if one contemplates a well-liked image of god-like virtue that cannot be described, this intelligent (spiritual) and fragrant beauty, then it means that she portrays herself in this way and gives herself an appearance - for the best imitation of herself.” God, the Areopagite believes, acts here like an artist creating an illusory, we would now say - and some would even call it realistic - image - “creates what is depicted as it is,” when the image differs from the image only in essence, but in form is completely identical to it. Likewise, “persistent and unwavering contemplation of fragrant and hidden beauty by people who love beauty, who draw in their minds, grants them its true and most godlike likeness” (EN IV 1). In practice, the Areopagite here depicts for us an extremely interesting picture of a specific aesthetic contemplation, in which the Artist strives to inscribe fragrant beauty immediately in the soul of the recipient striving to possess it, without the mediation of any material intermediary (a work of art), and the recipient (the believer) makes maximum spiritual efforts to adequately perceive it in the act of spiritual (mental) contemplation. Moreover, as an example, the author of “Areopagitik” uses the method of work of painters, widespread in late antiquity and early Byzantium, striving for the most accurate representation of the visible forms of the depicted object in their picture. The aesthetic nature of such a process of spiritual comprehension of God is emphasized not only by the constant repetition of the terms beauty, fragrance, image, image, likeness, mimesis, but also by the regular emphasis on the fact that the subject receiving this divine gift experiences indescribable pleasure, divine joy, etc. It is clear that the Areopagite is by no means primarily interested in purely aesthetic themes. In his time they did not stand before him or before the other fathers of the Church. However, it is significant that in order to solve and clarify theological, epistemological, spiritual and moral problems, he regularly uses his own aesthetic and fairly extensive terminological apparatus, examples from the sphere of art, and invests his texts with a pronounced aesthetic aura. This undoubtedly testifies, firstly, to the highly developed aesthetic sense and taste of the Byzantine thinker himself; secondly, about his good knowledge of the already quite developed artistic and aesthetic church culture by this time and, thirdly, it clearly shows how highly the Areopagite valued aesthetic experience, regularly turning to its various aspects when solving a variety of spiritual problems. Another and, perhaps, the most important not-quite-synonymous-synonym of beauty in the aesthetics of the Areopagite was light in all its manifestations from visible radiance to the spiritual light of the divine sphere and the “super-light darkness” of God himself. Light appears in Dionysius, as in practically all patristics, as a kind of universal link connecting all spheres of the spiritual Universe into a single whole: its ontology, epistemology, mysticism, aesthetics are united into something whole by waves of light that permeate everything and everyone, which gives indescribable pleasure to those who see it with physical or spiritual vision and fills them with special knowledge of existence, which is not conveyed by any in other ways. Light is constantly defined in the Areopagitica as beautiful, and beauty is always radiant, luminous, radiant like light. Actually, both Beauty and Light appear in a number of cataphatic names of God as almost synonymous with Good, i.e., with their help, the author of symbolic theology tries to express, as far as possible on the verbal level, the superpositive potentiality of God, His comprehensible-incomprehensible absoluteness balancing on the brink of transcendence. And to convey this, first of all, in terms that automatically evoke in a person a state of aesthetic experience that is anagogical (constructive) in nature. The Areopagite begins his conversation about Divine names with a family of names that have a pronounced aesthetic energy: Good (as the main concept that summarizes all the positive characteristics of God), Light, Beauty, Love, Ecstasy, Zeal. Everything, starting with Light, is directly related to the aesthetic sphere; in fact, they entered the categorical apparatus of aesthetics when it formed as an independent discipline. Here, on an implicit level, they show how highly the Areopagite valued the sphere of aesthetic experience if he began the study of the “names” of God, that is, cataphatic symbols, in a complex expressing His essence, with aesthetic symbols. God bears the name of Light as possessing all the qualities of light to the highest, all-surpassing degree. “So, spiritual light (phos noeton) 51 is called the Good that surpasses all light, as radiance emitting light and effervescent outpouring of light; enlightening all supramundane, near the world and in the world minds from its fullness; all their mental powers are renewing; embracing everyone, embracing; surpassing everything in its superiority; as the primordial light and superlight in itself, concentrating, super-having and having decisive dominion over every luminous force; everything mental and rational that collects and combines”, etc. (DN IV 6). God himself is light, but special, different from any visible, intelligent, spiritual light, from any radiance imaginable by human knowledge. He is “the archlight and superlight” (archiphotos kai hyperphotos), moreover, He is “superlight darkness” (hyperphoton gnophon), “the essential radiance of divine darkness” (MTh I 1), “impregnable light”, which in Scripture is designated as “divine darkness” (Ex. 20:21; Er. 5). By using antinomian formulas 52 The Areopagite here, as in many other places in his texts, seeks to show that all human ideas cannot rise to an adequate understanding of this Light, the human mind must stop in its attempts to look for something accessible to its understanding here. The Divine Light is revealed to a person only in one case, when he himself desires to be accessible. But he constantly desires this, and precisely for this purpose he gave us Holy Scripture and a system of hierarchy (heavenly and church), in which knowledge about God is gradually transmitted in the form of light insights of various natures and intensities. Holy Scripture is all permeated with divine light, divine insights, “the initial and primary light-giving,” Dionysius the Areopagite is convinced, which are contained in the system of symbols of Scripture; and we must comprehend them by “symbolically” interpreting and mystically penetrating them (EH 12). The entire system of Areopagite symbols, which we will turn to later, carries its meanings in a special luminous form, that is, it is revealed not so much at the rational level as in the emotional-aesthetic sphere. The Areopagite emphasizes this in a specific way, focusing on the hymnological form of comprehension of the knowledge of Holy Scripture (“Sayings” in his terminology): “... we rush towards the rays shining to us in the sacred Sayings, led by their light to the divine hymns, super-peacefully enlightened by them, inspired to sacred hymns, to contemplate in proportion to the divine beginnings given to us lights, to glorify the gracious Beginning of every sacred manifestation of light as It Expressed Itself in the sacred Sayings” (DN I 3). Divine knowledge, contained in luminous form, is most adequately conveyed in Scripture in the form of chants and hymns, that is, in aesthetic form. To an even greater extent, the non-rational-aesthetic nature of the transmission of divine (luminous) knowledge is emphasized by the Areopagite when talking about hierarchy. The very content of the hierarchy is illumination, radiance, light of different levels of accessibility. The ranks of the hierarchy accept the “light-beginning and God-beginning ray” and, having been filled with the given light, generously pour it out on others according to the God-beginning laws (SN III 2); angels are “the heralds of God’s initial illumination” (SN V); the highest ranks of the heavenly hierarchy constantly “strive with reverence toward the God-initiated insights,” toward the “immeasurable light” (SN VII 3), etc. All knowledge in the hierarchy is transmitted with the help of the God-initiated “illuminations” (elampsis) and “light-giving” (photodosia). Reading these texts, we see that light plays a much larger role in them than a simple metaphor, indicating only the high significance of the knowledge being transmitted, as it may seem to a superficial reader. And this applies to both the heavenly hierarchy, consisting only of spiritual luminous ranks, and the church hierarchy, formed from specially enlightened people and church sacraments. It is no coincidence that the main sacrament by which a person is included in the sacred hierarchy - baptism - is called by the Areopagite enlightenment (photismos) - filling with the light of initial knowledge, which is by no means formalized knowledge. This is a secret, super-rational knowledge that descends on a person in the sacrament of baptism and is described by theologians using the concept of phos. Therefore, all the actions of the priest in this sacrament are interpreted by the Areopagite as the giving of light, the transfer of light to the recipient of baptism. At the same time, he emphasizes that “the divine light is eternally spread out” in the Universe and can be perceived by spiritual vision at any moment. In a similar way, the priest constantly broadcasts this light of divine knowledge to those who are ready to receive it, preparing them himself and transmitting it in the act of baptism-enlightenment. It is interesting that Dionysius does not use the term baptism itself to designate this sacrament, but always - enlightenment, sometimes - “birth of God” and “rebirth” 53. What is important for him is not so much communion with the sacrament of the Crucifixion of Christ, but rather communion with the divine Light, entering into the aura of this Light. Although the other sacraments, the Areopagite notes, carry knowledge in the form of light, he calls the sacrament of “birth of God” enlightenment, because it gives a person primary hierarchical light (“hierarchical knowledge” - E. Ivanka), opens his spiritual vision to see everything sacred, all divine “light guidance”. “Although it is common for all hierarchical initiations to transmit a particle of sacred light to those performed, this first one gave me the ability to see, and its initial light guides me to the vision of another sacred thing” (EN III). Baptism opens up an endless path of spiritual enlightenment, or, more precisely, light-guiding (derivatives in the Areopagite from the verb photagogeo - light-guide, light-to-light), to the stages, steps and forms of which the entire Corpus Areopagiticum is actually dedicated. Both the texts of Scripture, and the entire building of the sacred hierarchy, and Jesus himself appear in the Areopagite primarily as light guides, bearers of different forms and consistencies of light, or special knowledge that cannot be formalized, given in a luminous form, and guides to the highest Light. And this path of light-guiding will end with the resurrection from the dead of those who strictly followed it for eternal blissful life in the enjoyment of this Light and full communion with it. Our very nature will become light-like, and the highest insights of the divine Light will be revealed to it: “then we will be filled with the visible manifestation of God in the most pure visions, illuminating us with the brightest radiance, as disciples during that most divine Transfiguration, with a dispassionate and immaterial mind partaking of His mental light-giving and transcending the mind of union, when in an unknown and blissful way - in the most divine imitation of super-heavenly minds - we will be reachable by the most luminous rays” (DN I 4). Между тем ум мыслителя, заключив сие, все-таки не может смириться с тем, что ему предстоит ожидать физической смерти, а затем чаемого, но отнюдь не гарантированного лично ему воскресения и приобщения к высшему Свету. И он убеждает себя и своих читателей в том, что еще в этой жизни, пройдя долгий путь иерархически-символического световодительства и богопознания, человек может достичь состояния полного прекращения умственной деятельности и в акте мистического созерцания достичь умонепостигаемого «сверхсущественного света» 54 . Actually, his entire “Corpus” is aimed at clarifying and affirming the path to this light. Неслучайно он завершается кратким трактатом «О мистическом богословии», в котором утверждается абсолютное бездействие и «молчание» ума для перехода на высший уровень созерцания «сверхсветлой тьмы», которая есть и «сверхсущественный свет». This Light is essentially transcendental, for it “cannot be conceived, nor described, nor in any way considered, since it is beyond everything, super-unknowable and super-essentially contains within itself, before the realization, the boundaries of all realized minds and powers and everything in general, incomprehensible to everything, a power that is above the super-heavenly minds” (DN I 4). It may surprise some, and aesthetically only please, that the greatest Byzantine thinker, who set a powerful paradigm for the entire medieval theology, both Byzantine and Western, starting a book about the Names of God, affirming at its very beginning absolute transcendence, i.e., indescribability, equally unnameability of the Divine, immediately immerses us in light metaphysics, which is nothing more than light aesthetics. No theologian before or after has done this. This testifies to only one thing - the extremely high level of understanding by the author of the Areopagitik of the meaning of aesthetic experience in all spheres of human life, including at the highest levels of its spiritual dimension. The concepts of beauty, light, fragrance, which are at the center of the theological aesthetics of Dionysius the Areopagite, actually formed the basis of all Christian medieval aesthetics both in the Byzantine-Russian area and in Western Europe. They were only slightly modified verbally by individual thinkers and Christian theologians, but their essence never changed. Moreover, the aesthetics of church worship, especially magnificent in the Byzantine area, was based on the aesthetic ideas succinctly given in the Areopagitica. The aesthetically uplifting beauty of church architecture, icons and paintings of the church, church decor, the clothes of the clergy, the beauty of the cult action itself and church chants, the exquisitely designed radiance and lighting in the church, the aesthetics of fragrances constitute the most important part, the essential aesthetic component of the Orthodox church service from the time of Dionysius the Areopagite to the present day. For some aspects of Dionysius’ understanding of beauty, see the works: Triantare-Mara S. Ne ennoia tou kallous sto Dionysio Areopagites, theoretike prosengise tes Vyzantines technes: symvole sten aisthetike philosophia; Bender M. The dawn of the invisible: the reception of the platonic doctrine on beauty in the Christian middle ages: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa. Minister, 2010; Sammon B. Th. The God who is beauty: beauty as a divine name in Thomas Aquinas and Dionysius the Areopagite. Eugen, Oregon, 2013. In the above quotation from the Areopagite, I also gave the Greek spelling of the phrase that Beauty is the cause of “proportion and splendor” in the created world, for Western scholastic aesthetics, which actively relied on the ideas of the Areopagite in Latin translations, regularly used the cliche “proportion and splendor” (consonantia et claritas) in definitions of beauty in the material world almost literally: proportionality and brilliance are the main attributes of beauty in the created world. Quote According to the publication: Dionysius the Areopagite. About Divine names. About mystical theology. 1995. Scholiast's Footnote 42. P. 107. Right there. Footnote 43 of the scholiast. P. 107. He wrote soulfully about the Platonic, Old Testament and early patristic origins of the concept of Beauty, the beautiful, erotic nature of beauty in the 30s. last century even G.V. Florovsky. See: Florovsky G.V. Byzantine Fathers V-VIII centuries. From readings at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. Paris, 1933. pp. 106–108. The scholiast in this place gives an interesting explanation of his understanding of the terms of similarity and dissimilarity in the Areopagite, their ontological meaning: “Similarity, equality and identity are called the one and the same-creating, as simple, pure, incomposite. What is called material is dissimilar, unequal, difference, mixed and fluid. So, let God be understood as the One” (Dionysius the Areopagite. On the heavenly hierarchy. St. Petersburg, 1997. Scholium 4. p. 33). In the edition of G.M. Prokhorov, which I regularly use here, it is translated as “in-itself-,” which actually has the same meaning, but it seems to me that “in-itself-” more accurately conveys the Areopagite’s desire to completely absolutize and transcend God with this ayto-, which he himself is trying to explain here. As you know, in the Synodal translation it says “very good,” but Fr. Pavel Florensky insisted at one time that it would be more accurate to translate kala as beautiful, for he quite rightly saw in this text of the book of Genesis more of an aesthetic meaning than a simple approval of the creation of the visible world. See: EN III 7; III 11, II 6. One important clarification needs to be made here. The Fathers of the Church most often understood the word mind (noys) as something significantly different from “mind” in modern usage, namely the organ of spiritual non-rational, non-verbal perception of fundamentally non-verbalizable spiritual knowledge. Therefore, I prefer to more correctly translate the derivative of the patristic “mind” noetos (noeton) as intelligible or spiritual, but not as intelligible, as Russian translators of patristics literally translated this term in the 19th century, and some still translate it this way. This can lead the modern reader into fundamental semantic confusion. Noetos emphainontai monois tois noerois. Russian translators more often translate this noeton as “mental,” which is more accurate in the literal sense, but for the modern reader it does not sound very clear. See footnote 49 for explanation. W. Volker emphasizes that Dionysius uses antinomian formulations when he wants to arouse in the reader a feeling of “the incomprehensible sublimity of God” (Volker W. Kontemplation und Ekstase bei Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita. S. 147). Compare: Florovsky G.V. Byzantine Fathers V-VIII. P. 116. In this place, the scholiast considers it appropriate to emphasize the incomprehensibility of this Light, apparently reacting to the controversy that arose even then and has not been completed to this day: “He spoke about the cessation of mental activity, meaning the incomprehensibility of the divine nature, for nothing that relates to it is comprehended by the movement of the mind (te kinesei toy noy)” (DN I 4, scholia 43).