Глава 4. Символология
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The themes of the transcendence of God and the ways of uniquely “overcoming” it in the system of the sacred hierarchy and in the spaces of aesthetic experience in Dionysius the Areopagite, discussed above, constantly lead us, like the Christian thinker himself, to the understanding that it is, naturally, not complete and not absolute, but symbolic, suggesting different levels only in hints of approaching the One Whom, in principle, it is impossible to approach at the level of earthly existence as an entity in essence that does not possess neither essence nor being even in the most abstract and sublime sense of these concepts as concepts of the human level and consciousness. For “in Him and around Him is everything that relates to being, to the existing and to the present, He Himself was not, will not be and has not happened, He did not arise and will not arise, and - moreover - He does not exist. But He Himself represents being for beings” (DN V 4).
Well aware of the unrepresentability, indescribability, and incomprehensibility of God Himself and much of the divine sphere for the human mind, on the one hand, and also continuing the early Christian and early patristic esoteric tradition of hiding essential Christian truths from the uninitiated, the author of the Areopagitik developed, as far as can be understood even from his texts that have come down to us, a deeply thought-out symbolic theology 55 . It gives us one of the main keys not only to his aesthetics (which is essential in this work), but also to all medieval Christian aesthetics, at least, and to Christian theology in general, which, although afraid of the radicalism of the Areopagite, nevertheless recognized the truth of most of his insights and the relevance of the theological methodology he developed, and therefore regularly quoted his texts both in the East and in the West of the Christian ecumene.
Even from the surviving texts it is clear that the author of the “Areopagitik” in his symbolology continues the tradition of symbolic-allegorical exegesis of the texts of Holy Scripture, which was quite well developed by his time, dating back to Philo of Alexandria 56, the early Christian fathers and the great Cappadocians (to Gregory of Nyssa in the first place) 57. Actively relying on it, he wrote a treatise “Symbolic Theology”, in which, as can be understood from his Epistle IX (to Hierarch Titus), he gave a symbolic interpretation of many passages of Holy Scripture. Unfortunately, this treatise has not reached us, but some of its ideas, like other provisions of symbolology, are scattered throughout all the texts of the Corpus and are especially fully set out in the “Divine Names” and in Epistle IX, which is, as it were, a covering letter attached to the text of “Symbolic Theology” sent to Titus. The latter, writes the Areopagite, “of all symbolic theologies, as I think, is a good disclosure, corresponding to the Sayings of sacred traditions and truths” (Ep IX 6).
In fact, the entire Corpus of the Areopagite texts is an extensive symbolic theology. In “Divine Names”, “Symbolic Theology”, Epistle IX we are talking mainly about symbolic images and names of Holy Scripture, and in treatises on hierarchy (“On the heavenly hierarchy”, “On the church hierarchy”) - about the symbolism of all levels of the sacred hierarchy and the main Christian sacraments, which are also inscribed in the hierarchy on the border of the transition from the heavenly level to the earthly. The complex provides a fairly complete understanding of the meaning of Christian symbolism as such in the understanding of the Areopagite, and of the meaning of many specific biblical and theological symbols in its interpretation.
“Symbolic theology” is devoted, as far as one can understand, to the interpretation of the most “outlandish”, according to the Areopagite, that is, excessively anthropomorphic, zoo- and theriomorphic, objective-material, we would now say, and sensual images of Holy Scripture, applied there to God and to the divine sphere. An explanation of the meaning of some of them is also given in Epistle IX to Titus, who asked how to understand the house of Wisdom, her cup, food and drink. To this the Areopagite responds that all this, like many other similar things, he explained in detail in “Symbolic Theology,” but gives an answer here too, complaining that there are many “delusional fictions” regarding such “symbolic sacredness” of Scripture, and with his texts he tries to fight them, giving the most, as he is convinced, the most accurate understanding of it.
Having listed a large number of sensual and crudely ordinary images of Holy Scripture, around which many absurd ideas are twisted, the Areopagite claims that behind them lies the beauty of the bright divine light. These images were created not for their own sake,” he repeats the thesis traditional for the Alexandrian-Cappadocian fathers, “but with a twofold purpose: to hide the “ineffable and invisible knowledge for many” from the uninitiated and to reveal it “only to the true adherents of piety,” who, “thanks to the simplicity of the mind and the property of speculative power,” are able, having rejected all childish imagination, “from sacred symbols” (epi ton). hieron symbolon) ascend “to the simple supernatural truth above the symbols” (Ep IX 1). By this, the Areopagite tries to define certain boundaries of sacred symbolism. Firstly, he distinguishes it from pure allegorosis, when the meaning of the sacred image simply needs to be known, because it is not at all read from the image itself.
Secondly, he opposes the absolutely arbitrary (childish fantasy, delusional fiction) interpretation of symbols and, thirdly, argues that in order to correctly reveal their meaning, the recipient (adherent of piety) must have certain spiritual qualities. He does not explain them in detail, but, based on the context of his writings, it can be assumed that by “simplicity of mind” and “speculative power” he understands the rejection of sophisticated rhetorical flourishes of the formal-logical level and focus on pious in-depth contemplation of the symbolic image of Scripture, spiritual concentration on it in order to penetrate the truth hidden in it.
The main criterion for the theological hermeneutics of sacred symbols should be the sublimely pious context of Christian teaching itself, which is clearly felt primarily in the New Testament, but also in the early fathers of the Church. And he, in turn, orients us to the anagogical nature of sacred symbolism. Due to the fact that the prototypes, or archetypes (the Areopagite uses both terms in the same sense), of these symbols relate to sublime and even unimaginable, undesignable, incomprehensible spheres due to their essential supramundaneness, exceeding human understanding, then the symbols that mean and express them on our earthly level must have an anagogical character.
The Areopagite regularly emphasizes that figurative and symbolic cognition is given only to people. Angels and other heavenly orders receive divine knowledge in a different way, in particular, as has been shown, in the form of luminous illumination with the help of a special divine gift-outpouring-radiation - photodosia. The authors of Holy Scripture themselves, Dionysius is convinced, knowing the level of human rational and mental abilities, took care to give people sacred knowledge in poetic images and symbols, which, expressing the inexpressible, would lead them to this inexpressible and indescribable, that is, in the modern understanding, would have the aesthetic character of raising them to harmony with the higher worlds. “For theology also artlessly used poetic sacred images (tais poietikais hieroplastiais) to describe indescribable minds, having studied, as has been said, our mind, providing for a natural construction corresponding to it and transforming erective sacred descriptions (tas anagogikas hierographias) for it” (CH II 1).
So, according to Dionysius, the symbolic images of Scripture are created taking into account the perceptive capabilities of man, including aesthetic (=poetic), and are designed for their correct perception and understanding. People just have to find the way to this understanding. All the hermeneuts (=exegetes) of Scripture, including one of the most talented ones, are occupied with finding this path.
The Areopagite sees in Scripture two layers, or types, of texts: one symbolic (ineffable and mysterious), and the other philosophical-didactic, generally understandable, historical 58 . The latter includes everything related to creation and historical events of biblical times. Symbolic texts act and affirm “in God through unlearned secrets” (Ep IX 1), that is, they instill (see the later term of the symbolists, suggestion in a similar sense) extra-rationally and outside consciously in some special (mystical, in particular, but also “poetic”, perhaps) ways something hidden about God and lead to Him.
Philosophical and didactic biblical texts are accessible to everyone, they are descriptive and demonstrative, but symbolic texts are only available to initiates, that is, those who have received the gift of their non-rational, in particular at the level of perception of light giving (photodosia), understanding. The scholiast explains this passage as follows: “Symbolic theology (meaning Holy Scripture - V.B.) does not tend to convince and prove, however, it can produce some implicit effective divine action, which affirms and, as it were, establishes in Christ contemplative souls capable of seeing the mysterious through mystical, or symbolic, riddles - through sacraments not explained in words, but through silence and the revelation of lights God’s enlightening the mind for the understanding of the ineffable mysteries” (Ep IX 1, scholium 12).
The Areopagite is convinced that the symbolic layer of Scripture is revealed to initiates in the process of mystical contemplation of symbolic images. For him, the symbolic is often almost synonymous with the mystical, which is also noted in the above passage from the scholiast. It is no coincidence that Dionysius, in a number of places in his Corpus, asserts that sacred symbols are luminous and carry indescribable beauty under their covers, that is, he combines the mystical content of symbolic knowledge with aesthetic metaphors.
Distinguishing between two layers, or types, of texts of Scripture - explicit, philosophical-didactic, and symbolic, implicit - the Areopagite tries to show that the explicit, or literally understood, type contains something hidden, anagogical, leading to the divine nature. On the basis of obvious “god-like pictures” in a “mind” that is piously disposed and has an innate tendency towards mystical insights, “a certain image (typon tina) arises that guides the comprehension of the said theology” (Ep IX 1). The phrase in Dionysius is not entirely clear. The scholiast understands this and strives to somehow rethink it in his own way. In general, it follows from it that the author of symbolic theology seeks to show that all texts, images, pictures of Holy Scripture have a symbolic-constructive character. And even philosophical and historical texts have, if not directly symbolic, then some kind of figurative, not only literal-narrative meaning.
In particular, the Areopagite, following the patristic tradition that had already developed by his time, considers many moments of Old Testament history to be symbols of what actually happened in the New Testament period, that is, during the time of the incarnation and earthly life of Christ. One Testament “wrote the truth in types, and the other showed it to be fulfilled. For the fulfillment of the prophecies in this Testament made one believe in the truth, and the completion of theology (that is, allegorical imagery - V.B.) was the action of God” (EH III theor. 6). The author of the Areopagitik himself does not pay special attention to this symbolism in his surviving works, but for him it is obvious.
Convinced of the comprehensive, albeit different levels, symbolism of Scripture, Dionysius calls on his readers “contrary to the general opinion about this” (i.e., in his circle of friends, apparently, the literal understanding of the texts of Scripture was more common) to penetrate “in a proper sacred way inside the sacred symbols, and not to neglect them, which are traces, imprints and clear images of inexpressible and amazing divine [phenomena]" (Ep IX 2). Indirectly asserting several levels of symbolization here, the author of Areopagitik shows that, in addition, the same symbol or image can have different meanings, depending on the context and ontological status of the symbolized phenomenon itself. So, for example, the symbol of fire and its derivatives can be applied in Scripture to God, and to his words, and to various angelic ranks.
And in each specific case, this symbol (=image) will have different meanings, hide different meanings: “Otherwise one and the same image (eikona) of fire should be understood when applied to the super-understanding of God, differently - to His noetic thoughts, or words, and differently - in relation to angels; in one case the reason is meant, in another being, in the third participle, in others - something else, which is determined by their consideration and intelligible order (i.e. context. - V.B.)" (Ep IX 2).
Having made this theoretical introduction to his symbolic theology, the Areopagite further in this epistle gives his interpretations of the symbolic images of the house of Wisdom, her cup, food - solid and liquid, feast, i.e., he answers the specifically posed questions of Titus, and for the remaining interpretations he refers him to the “Symbolic Theology”, which is appended to this epistle.
In “Symbolic Theology,” as far as can be understood from the surviving texts of the Areopagite, he symbolically interprets mainly everyday objects (which he often calls “unlike resemblances”, or symbols themselves - see below about them) images of Holy Scripture applied to God and the divine sphere. In the treatise “On the Divine Names” he gives another layer of his symbolology - he develops a detailed system of figurative-symbolic naming and designation of God - the so-called cataphatic (affirmative) and partly apophatic (negative) theology, or rather - cataphatic-apophatic theology as something holistic - based on the consideration and interpretation of the names of God used in the Holy Scriptures (used by “theologians”, as he calls Dionysius of the authors of Scripture).
At the same time, the main emphasis in this treatise is on cataphatic names, and apophaticism was quite likely devoted to another treatise that has not reached us - “Theological Essays”, in which, in the words of the Areopagite himself, it was about the transcendence, in philosophical language, of the Triune God - “about the One, Unknowable, Superessential, Good-in-Itself, as It can only be - I have in a type of threefold, equal in divinity and goodness to the Unit,” about which nothing “can be said or thought” (DN I 5).
Beginning with the treatise “On the Divine Names” and remembering the apophatic experience of the “Theological Essays”, the Areopagite affirms, without going into details, the essential antinomianism of the cataphatic-apophatic names of God in the system of his holistic symbolology. All the names of God and the designations of the highest ranks of the divine hierarchy are only symbols, for both the transcendental God himself, as not even possessing existence in human understanding, and His immediate spiritual environment are in principle incomprehensible and unnameable. However, the human mind, Dionysius is convinced, cannot accommodate the understanding of God as Nothing, therefore Holy Scripture endows Him with many positive (cataphatic) names-symbols, so that their combined use shows the optimal positivity of His actions and industries directed outward - into our world. Theological Tradition (in the development of which the Areopagite himself took an active part), again relying on the images of St.
Scripture also develops the space of negative, negative names for God, trying to bring the most pious minds to the realization of the fundamental insufficiency of positive names to designate God, affirms His transcendence and seeks to direct the most sensitive to the spiritual sphere of believers to a mystical (in secret silence) communion with Him.
“The God-originating super-essentiality, whatever the super-existence of super-goodness, should not be sung by anyone who loves the Truth, which exceeds all truth, neither as word or power, nor as mind, or life, or essence, but as every property, movement, life, imagination, opinion, name, word, thought, limit, infinity, everything that exists, exceedingly transcendental. Since, being the being of Goodness, by the very fact of its being, It is the cause of all things, the benevolent providence of the Godhead should be glorified based on everything caused by Him” (DN I 5). Already here the Areopagite shows that only apophatic names (more precisely, general namelessness) with the prefixes of negation or superiority: “not”, “neither”, “over”, where negation means superiority over everything that is negated, and hypernomination is the negation of everything cataphatically said about God, befits God as exceeding everything that is intelligible and imaginable.
And at the same time, as the Creator of everything, constantly directing His energies, His grace, His providential management into the world He created, it is not indecent to glorify Him with all the positive names that Holy Scripture uses and which figuratively and symbolically express all the positive potencies and deeds of God pouring into the world. “Knowing this, theologians glorify Him both as the Nameless One and as being consistent with every name,” “many-named” (DN I 6); “Thus, both anonymity and all the names of beings are suitable for the universal, all-exceeding Cause” (I 7).
Variety of symbolic phenomena
The entire set of symbols and images (Areopagite often uses these concepts as synonyms) in pseudo-Dionysius can be classified into several categories. Moreover, some of them are indicated by the author himself, others are obvious from the context of his writings. They differ in the bearer of symbolic meaning and the nature of symbolization. First of all, these are two main types of symbols, which I would designate as epistemological and sacred-liturgical.
The first should include all the symbolism that the Areopagite sees in Holy Scripture and partly in the Patristic Tradition; he does not speak about it often, but still constantly has it in mind. These are, as a rule, verbal symbols and images from individual names denoting God to entire scenes, actions, characters in biblical history, specific sayings and prophecies. They are carriers of sacred knowledge, most often amenable to verbal fixation, but not always, as has already been indicated above. All Christian theology is based on these symbols.
The second type of symbolization is associated with the special symbolism of the ranks and actions of the main church hierarchy, including the main church sacraments. In terms of their bearer, these symbols are mystical-ontological, and the “knowledge” contained in them, or rather, perhaps, revealed by them, is often revealed in a mystical-aesthetic form - light, beauty, fragrance; it most often does not have an intelligible character, but a participle-presentational one. With the help of these symbols, they not so much cognize something in the narrow epistemological sense of the word, but rather mystically or aesthetically become involved with it, become part of it, and it itself reveals its presence in them. This symbolism manifests itself most fully procedurally and topologically - at the moments of the implementation of church sacraments, in church services.
Sacred-liturgical symbols include almost the entire objective and spatio-temporal environment of the church. True, the Areopagite himself in the surviving texts does not pay attention to all objects, phenomena and aspects of this environment, but with his interpretations he laid a solid foundation for further and more detailed hermeneutics of church-liturgical symbolism, which was what many Byzantine fathers and teachers of the Church of subsequent centuries did.
Epistemological symbols, in turn, are divided into:
– apophatic – with negative-superlative prefixes “not” and “over”;
– cataphatic, or “similar similarities”;
These symbols, or special symbolic images (=names), are primarily devoted, as has already been indicated, to the large treatise “On the Divine Names,” in which the many positive names of God in Holy Scripture are examined in detail and a detailed explanation of their symbolic meaning is given, and partly to the treatise “On the Heavenly Hierarchy,” which gives a symbolic interpretation of the names of the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy surrounding the throne of God, and their descriptions in biblical texts.
In “Divine Names,” Dionysius emphasizes that all these names-images-symbols refer to the entire Divinity as a whole, “to the entire Divinity,” and not to individual hypostases of the Trinity. And they do not mean some aspects of the essence of God, which is incomprehensible to the mind, but “concepts of causality”, pointing to the entire set of positive characteristics of being, the Cause of which is God. “After all, everything Divine that is revealed to us is known only through participation. And what it is in its beginning and foundation is above the mind, above all essence and knowledge. So when we call the super-essential Hiddenness (huperoysion kryphioteta) God, Life, Essence, Light or Word, we mean nothing else than the powers emanating from It into our midst, deifying, creating beings, producing life and bestowing wisdom” (DN II 7).
We come directly to this Hiddenness itself not with the help of names, but through mystical communion, “participation” that exceeds everything intelligible: “We come to It only by abandoning all mental activity, not knowing any deification, nor life, nor essence, which would exactly correspond to the transcendental all-transcending Cause” (ibidem).
However, one can approach this mystical “involvement” only through a sufficiently long process of spiritual improvement, having realized and comprehended the entire pleroma of the multi-level world of symbols and gradually overcoming it, removing level by level with a negation that surpasses everything - cutting off everything superfluous, like a sculptor gradually cutting off everything superfluous (other) from a block of stone, freeing the beautiful statue hidden in it 59 . Having devoted an entire book to the interpretation and identification of the symbolic meanings of the cataphatic names of God, the Areopagite emphasizes their, in general, complete difference from the denoted, for which he introduces a very precise word - the “otherness” of everything in relation to God, and that is why, he is convinced, God is called the name “Other” (That heteron). “One should pay attention to the otherness (ten heteroteta) in relation to God of His different images in multi-faceted phenomena, to some difference between the Manifesting and the manifested.”
And that is why pious interpretations of all these images are necessary: “it is fitting, through sacred explanations of the mysterious, to purify the otherness of forms and images applied to Him Who is beyond everything” (DN IX 5).
Cataphatic names and symbols are “similar” images, that is, they contain a certain “similarity” (homoiosis) to God, which does not mean that in God there is a positive property named by this symbol, for example, goodness, beauty or life, but that God is the Cause of all the value properties of being, which are designated by positive names. This is a special, almost conditional, symbolic, unidirectional similarity, for in fact “only those who are made in the same way can be similar to each other,” which are, for example, angels in relation to each other or people. Therefore, an angel can only be like an angel, and a man can only be like a man. God is not “made” with anyone in the same way as the Cause and Creator of every order. Moreover, “God is the Cause of [the very] ability to be similar of all those who participate in the likeness and is the substance of the likeness itself (aytes tes aytoomoiotetos hypostates)” (DN IX 6).
Developing this idea further in the spirit of his theological antinomianism, the Areopagite, with reference to Scripture, argues that in general there is nothing like God, but the same phenomenon (and accordingly its name) can be both similar and dissimilar to God. “After all, theology itself reveres Him as Incomparable and Incongruous with everything, as Differing from everything, and - what is even more paradoxical - says that there is nothing like Him. However, this does not contradict what has been said about the similarity to Him. The same thing is both like God and unlike: like to the extent that it is possible to imitate the Inimitable, but unlike because the effects are inferior to the Cause, limitlessly, immeasurably not reaching It by any measures” (DN IX 7).
Not forgetting this, the Areopagite nevertheless gives a detailed symbolology of similar, i.e. cataphatic, names of God, emphasizing that although they are unclear, they are still images (eikona) of their transcendental Archetype, for, having a nominative connection with any positive phenomenon of the created world, they designate - and this is the meaning of the similarity and imagery itself, most often denoted by the Areopagite with the term eikon, - the corresponding aspect of the spiritual-energetic act of God outward, into the world. He speaks about this when he begins to interpret the very first positive name of God - “Good” (or “Good” - agathon). God is called Good because He spreads the rays of His goodness to everyone. “For just as the sun in our world, without reasoning, without choosing, but simply existing, illuminates everything that, by its properties, is capable of receiving its light, so the superior Goodness of the sun, a kind of transcendental archetype, located above its obscure image, by virtue of its own existence alone imparts, in proportion to all things, the rays of complete Goodness” (DN IV 1).
The Sun, which brings real good to the entire earthly world, itself acting as an image of good for the material world, seems to the Areopagite to be inadequate, but nevertheless an image of God, denoted by the name Good. It is thanks to the rays of this Good that all spiritual supermundane entities, forces, energies, and the entire Universe, including the visible sun, arose and function.
Hence the transition to calling God Light is quite logical, since light itself is the image (eikon) of God as an Archetype (archetypon) (DN IV 4). Hence all the light mysticism and aesthetics of Areopagitik. Sunlight is an extremely visual image for expressing the essence of the main act of God outside - the constant radiation of Goodness.
In the same vein, the Areopagite explains at some length the figurative and symbolic meaning of the other names of God most used in Scripture or by theologians of his time: Beauty, Love, Life, Wisdom, Truth, Jehovah and others. All of them mean “the splendid exits of God’s outward appearance,” that is, they are images borrowed from the arsenal of positive phenomena or value relations of human life in their highest manifestations, which should show together that all good things are given to the world by God and that is why it is not indecent to call Him by the names of His gifts, which are always comprehended in their ideal limit. Never tired of emphasizing that all positive image-names are only weak echoes and vague imprints of the Archetype, the Areopagite asserts that their main goal is not to explain what cannot be explained, but to glorify the Cause that bestows the benefits denoted by these name-images (cf.: DN V 2). Thus, he perhaps intuitively transfers part of the symbolic load from strictly theological symbolology to aesthetic one.
This is all the more obvious since the Areopagite, as I have already pointed out, uses the term chanting in relation to both the texts of Holy Scripture and theological texts in general, including his own, quite consciously and quite regularly.
Having nevertheless paid much attention to the explanation and interpretation of the positive names of God, the author of the Areopagitik is well aware that these explanations (as well as chanting) are, in principle, far from the Truth. One of the positive meanings of the treatise “On Divine Names” was to show not only the significance of this type of designation of God, but also its fundamental limitations. “By bringing together these intelligible names of God, we discovered, as far as possible, that they are far from not only accuracy (indeed, even angels can say this), but also from the chanting of both angels (and the lowest of angels are higher than our best theologians), and the theologians themselves (in this case, we mean the authors of Scripture - V.B.) and their followers” (XIII 4). The awareness of the indescribability of God and the self-deprecating rhetoric traditional for theologians, which here reinforce each other, are balanced for the reader at the end of the treatise by the author’s confidence that it still says something true about the Cause of all good things, because
She alone grants the theologian “first the very ability to speak, and then the ability to speak well (to eu eipein),” that is, to speak truly (ibidem). In fact, the Areopagite prayed to God about this, beginning the treatise: “May God grant me to gloriously sing the virtuous multi-namedness of the unnameable and unnameable Divinity and may He not take away the “word of Truth” from my lips” (DN I 8).
And today we cannot but agree with the self-assessment of the author of the Areopagitik: he really speaks “well” about God, perhaps much better and more accurately, that is, more correctly, than many of the Church Fathers of that time. He found and quite convincingly developed the only, perhaps, correct way to approach the transcendental sphere, its multi-level symbolic description, which should lead a thoughtful subject of faith to the mystical act of penetration into it. Moreover, the very symbolic path of naming, or expressing, God is recognized by him as an apagogical path, closely intertwined with the aesthetic path itself, where beauty, light, image, chanting are united in a variety of ways in a kind of spiritually concentrated aspiration of grief.
The Areopagite extends the figurative and symbolic meaning of the cataphatic names to the entire spiritual Universe - to the entire heavenly hierarchy. Here, however, he approaches verbal symbols with a different standard than he approaches the names of God. Now in the word as a compressed verbal image, he directly sees the property of the signified. From the names (mostly Hebrew terms) of the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy, he deduces their essential properties. “After all, every name (eponymia) of entities superior to us reveals the God-imitating features of their God-likeness” (CH VIII 1); the names of the heavenly ranks reveal “their godlike properties” (CH VII 1).
Thus, with reference to experts in the Hebrew language, he translates the name “seraphim” as “kindlers”, “flaming” and, starting only from semantics, seeks to explain in detail the essence and functions of this highest rank of the heavenly hierarchy. “Indeed,” he writes, “the name of the seraphim explanatoryly indicates their eternal movement around the divine and the infinity, heat, speed and ebullience of this incessant, unrelenting and unwavering movement, as well as their ability to elevate and effectively liken the lower ones to themselves, as if making them boil and inflame them to equal heat and purify them, like a hurricane and an all-burning fire, as well as their obvious, inextinguishable, always equally light-like and enlightening property - to drive away and destroy every product of darkness and gloom" (SN VII 1).
If one of the main names of God is Light, and His external action is regularly designated by Dionysius as the radiation of goodness, then it is clear that the rank of the heavenly hierarchy closest to it should be luminous and fiery, which is what our exegete sees in the meaning of the word “seraphim”. He apparently knows another Hebrew meaning of this term - sublime, noble - and also actively uses it in his interpretation. He also knows the text of the prophet Isaiah about the seraphim (Is. 6:1–4), which is clearly visible in this interpretation. The name gives impetus to his hermeneutic procedure, into which he skillfully weaves all his knowledge about the phenomenon, one way or another arising from this name or gravitating towards it.
With the same rhetorical grace, he interprets the meaning of the symbols-names of other ranks of the heavenly hierarchy. Thus, the name “cherubim” translates as “abundance of knowledge” or “outpouring of wisdom”, from which the essence of this rank follows: “The name of cherubim reveals their ability to know and see God and perceive the highest light, as well as to contemplate the divine beauty in the primordial power, to be filled with wise alms and to generously involve the lower ones in the outpouring of the gift. wisdom" (ibidem). And the name of the other highest rank of the heavenly hierarchy of thrones (thronon) means “their pure exaltation above all earthly humiliation, supramundane aspiration upward, unchangeable placement beyond any limit and with all the power of unshakable and lasting dwelling near the truly Highest, acceptance in all dispassion and immateriality of the God-initiated influx and God-bearing zealous soaring to the divine shelters" (ibidem).
It is interesting that in these interpretations the author, starting from the etymological-figurative content of the name, actively includes in his exegesis the contextual field of life of this name in a theological, and, moreover, aesthetically colored space. Hence, the outpouring of wisdom of the cherubim is inextricably linked with the giving of light and divine beauty, the essence of the thrones is with the sublime and anagogical nature of their existence in the spiritual hierarchy, and the flaming seraphim are endowed with mimetic, cathartic and anagogical properties. In a similar vein, the author of “Areopagitik” reveals the symbolic meaning of other ranks of the heavenly hierarchy - starting from the basic meaning of the names that designate them, and unfolding it according to the theological and aesthetic context of the active existence of a particular name.
Names for the Areopagite, following the ancient exegetical tradition, “explain the properties of essences,” as he himself states, turning already in the “Ecclesiastical Hierarchy” to the interpretation of the word “seraphim” (EN IV 10). They represent, as it were, the first level of symbolization, which then “according to symbolic image description” (kata symboliken eikonographian) unfolds into a whole system of “sensory perceived images” (ton aistheton eikonon). And they, in turn, appear as nothing more than purely symbolic images that require a special noetic interpretation, which, in fact, is what the Areopagite does in almost all of his treatises and messages. He himself understands the essence of this interpretation, i.e., symbolic hermeneutics, in fact, as an aesthetic experience, we would say now, - he proposes to consider “their most godlike beauty” with “the most disembodied eyes” (EN IV 6).
And this beauty lies both in the revealed meaning of figurative symbols, and in the very event of revealing the symbolic meaning of the images of the same seraphim, represented in Scripture by sensually perceived images of six-winged creatures. Under the pen of the Areopagite, this interpretation turns into a poetic hymn, into a glorification of the highest rank of the heavenly hierarchy, into an anagogical micropoem, aesthetically elevating the reader from symbols to the symbolized, in which Dionysius himself probably saw the beauty of such an interpretation. “Their myriad faces and many-leggedness indicate, I think, as their distinctive property, their multiplicity of vision during the most divine brilliance and the eternal mobility and multiplicity in the ways of contemplating divine blessings. The sixity, as the Sayings say, in the structure of the wings, I think, contrary to the opinion of some, reveals not a sacred number, but that the first, middle and last of their mental god-like powers belong to the highest essence of God, an upwardly directed, completely free supramundane rank.
Why is it that the most sacred wisdom of the Sayings, writing in sacred terms how their wings appear, places wings around their faces, bodies and legs, thereby hinting that they are completely winged and that the power that raises them to the truly Existent is manifold” (EN IV 7).
I would like to dwell here on just one more example of the Areopagite symbolic interpretation of cataphatic names, or similar similarities. In the image of God as the “Ancient of Days,” i.e., a gray-haired old man who appeared in a vision to the prophet Daniel (Dan.7:9). The Areopagite connects this image with the image of God the youth, probably meaning, as the scholiast also points out, the youth who appeared with two angels to Abraham, and interprets this symbol in the antinomian formula of God and the old man and the youth - as a symbolic expression of the timeless-eternal and in-time-eternal existence of God. “As the Old One, God is glorified because He exists both as eternity, and as the time of everything, and before days, and before eternity, and before time. However, time, day, hour, and eternity must be attributed to Him in a god-like manner, because He remains unchanged and motionless with every movement, eternally moving, abiding in Himself and being the Cause of eternity, time, and days.
Therefore, in sacred epiphanies during mystical insights, God is depicted both as gray-haired and as young: an old man means that He is Ancient and existing “from the beginning”; the youth - that He does not grow old; and both show that He passes through everything from beginning to end” (DN X 2). Subsequent theologians both in Byzantium and Ancient Rus' often recalled this interpretation of the Areopagite in polemics regarding the depiction of God on icons precisely as the “Ancient of Days,” that is, in the image of a gray-bearded old man.
Today it is obvious that not all Areopagite symbolic interpretations of cataphatic names or “similar (similar)” images are convincing or poetic enough to have an aesthetic impact on the reader. Some of them are quite vague, arbitrary and do not follow directly from the symbol itself, but in general they all correspond to the general theological enthusiasm of the time and give an idea of the sublime, energetically saturated symbolic-exegetical spirit of a certain and well-developed hermeneutic tradition. At the same time, in Areopagite it is also shrouded in a special aesthetic aura, the fragrance of beauty and the radiance of spiritual light.
In the developed system of symbolology of Dionysius the Areopagite, “similar resemblances,” closely associated with cataphatic designations, are closest to what modern aesthetics understands as an artistic image. Their originality lies in the fact that they have a special nominocentric orientation. Such images are most often based on a name, which is interpreted as indicating by its content the essence of what is named. And already from the name and around the name a certain symbolic image unfolds, that is, a visually or intellectually imaginable image that can be actually depicted by means of art, which was actively used by the subsequent Christian, in particular iconographic, tradition. This image has its own archetype in metaphysical reality, but not always, according to the Areopagite, it visually or mentally coincides with it, for, as a rule, all these “similar”, i.e. visually or mentally representable, images are symbols, i.e. they are practically far from the isomorphism of images, in principle non-visualizable, i.e.
having no visible appearance, spiritual reality. Nevertheless, they give the recipient’s consciousness a certain vivid non-verbalized spiritual idea of this reality. This is their main significance in Christian culture, at least. Meanwhile, we encounter a similar principle of depiction, or more precisely, symbolization of the undepictable in visually accessible images, in almost all religious cultures from ancient times to the 20th century. This understanding will become one of the cornerstones of the theology and aesthetics of icons that later developed in the Byzantine area 60.
Dionysius the Areopagite calls another type of symbolic images “unlike resemblances”; it is built on the principle opposite to the cataphatic designation, namely, not on affirmation, but on “withdrawal” (aphairesis). It was this type of images that Dionysius himself called truly symbolic and dedicated the treatise “Symbolic Theology” to it - the largest in volume of the three treatises directly devoted to symbolology. In the most laconic treatise “On Mystical Theology”, which concludes the “Areopagitica”, Dionysius explains that he devoted two treatises to cataphatic images - the shorter “Theological Essays”, devoted mainly to the interpretation of Trinitarian and Christological symbolism, and the expanded one “On the Divine Names”. And only after writing these treatises did he move on to “Symbolic Theology,” which deals with dissimilar resemblances, i.e., images of “divine withdrawal,” as he himself calls symbols, from the opposite (i.e., from what is completely not inherent in God, completely opposite to Him) denoting God and his properties (see: MTh III).
These three treatises, explains Dionysius, mark the path of figurative and symbolic ascent to God. “Symbolic Theology” is the lowest, so it is the most verbose. Above is “On the Divine Names,” and even higher is “Theological Essays.” Therefore, it is the least voluminous of all three. According to Dionysius, the higher we rise along the steps of spiritual perfection, the closer we approach God, the more we enter areas where words and any images are powerless. Therefore, treatises are becoming increasingly brief. This path is crowned by the shortest treatise “On Mystical Theology,” which describes the transition from figurative and symbolic comprehension of God to the mystical, where images, symbols, words lose all meaning and the “mind” plunges into divine darkness, “complete wordlessness and lack of understanding” (ibidem).
Without having today the main treatise on “unlike resemblances,” we are forced to be content with reconstructing the ideas expressed there based on other texts. To our consolation, the author of the Areopagitik, who paid special attention to symbolic thinking, in almost all of his works in one form or another speaks about all types of figurative and symbolic knowledge of God. Moreover, in the treatise “On the Heavenly Hierarchy,” he devotes the entire Second Chapter to explaining that dissimilar likenesses, or symbols themselves, may be even more appropriate for depicting the heavenly ranks and God himself than similar ones, i.e., cataphatic images and names.
One important clarification needs to be made here. Despite the obvious desire of the author of the Areopagitik to create a holistic and consistent system of knowledge of God, he was a man of his time, that is, the time of still late antiquity. He was a Christian Neoplatonist, and not a university scholastic and logician of the Western European mature Middle Ages. He did not build a strictly logical structure in his Corpus, but first of all he sang of God and the divine-spiritual spheres and he himself lived in this service-chanting-reflection on the divine. In addition, he was well aware of the transcendence of God and the need to use not logical, but antinomian constructions to designate Him, which had already been established in theology by his time since the adoption of the Creed and centuries of trinitarian and Christological polemics.
All this I remind you not to look for scholastic accuracy in the texts of the Areopagite. Yes, he was the first to recognize two levels of theology - cataphatic and apophatic, raising them to two types of symbolization found in the Holy Scriptures and in the early fathers of the Church. Yes, he was the first to show, on this basis, the equality of two types of theological symbolization - similar images and “dissimilar similarities.” However, it cannot be said that he accurately and unambiguously defined and consolidated the meaning of these concepts. His Corpus of Texts is not a completed, extremely verified document-act of conciliar thinking, but a verbally recorded path of a living spiritual search for truths and Truth. Of course, it is much more systematic and structural than any search of a similar type of the previous period - the same Cappadocians, Alexandrians or Antiochians, but is still very far from the only system in Orthodox medieval theology of John of Damascus, the eastern predecessor of the Western scholastics, which did not receive its continuation in the Greek Orthodox world.
Dionysius, with his semi-systematics, semi-poetics, was more to the liking of the medieval Byzantines and Eastern Slavs than the Western scholasticism that developed from Damascus.
Today's more or less strict and systematic presentation of the theology of the Areopagite is the fruit of many years of research by new European researchers, both Western and Russian. The Areopagite himself handled quite freely the concepts of apophatic, cataphatic, similar, dissimilar. The same images and names in some cases were considered cataphatic or similar, in others - dissimilar and even apophatic. Therefore, using today the complex of his terminology as more or less unambiguous, we must understand this only as a certain intention towards unambiguity.
One example. According to the above presentation of the concept from the Third Chapter of “Mystical Theology”, which was entitled, most likely, by the first publishers of “Areopagitik”, and not by the author himself, “What is cataphatic theology and what is apophatic”, it follows that the treatise “Symbolic Theology” is devoted to apophatic theology (theology of dissimilar similarities, the theology of “subtractions”), from which the ascent through the steps only begins knowledge of God. And it seems that cataphatic theology (the other two treatises mentioned above) are higher levels of knowledge. From Chapter 2 of the “Heavenly Hierarchy,” which we are now considering, and from some other texts, we can draw another conclusion that dissimilar similarities and the apophatic method seemingly associated with them are a higher level of comprehension of God and the entire celestial sphere than cataphatics.
Modern researchers of the Areopagitik also follow this, without identifying apophatics with “dissimilar similarities” 61, which has real grounds, although it contradicts certain statements of the author of the Areopagitik himself. All this is a consequence of the living spiritual search to which he orients us and which appeals not so much to the strict logic of our consciousness, but to the spiritual and aesthetic polysemantic experience of symbolic hermeneutics and the text of Dionysius itself.
After these explanations, we can finally turn to an extremely interesting text devoted to dissimilar similarities, i.e., a special class of symbols - to the Second Chapter of the “Heavenly Hierarchy”.
Dionysius begins by very persistently and figuratively warning his addressee, and with him potential readers, that everything said in Scripture about the heavenly orders should not be taken literally. And they would not believe, like the majority, that “the heavenly god-like minds are certain many-legged and many-faced, transformed in the bestial likeness of bulls or the bestial image of lions, embodied in the crooked appearance of eagles or the hair-like winged nature of birds, and did not imagine above the sky some kind of fiery wheels and material thrones for the Lord to sit, and some multi-suited horses, spear-bearing archangels, and everything else that was conveyed to us by the sacred invention of Sayings in a variety of explanatory symbols” (SN II 1).
The Areopagite, as the heir of ancient esotericism, is convinced that the unlike similarities of Scripture serve primarily to hide Christian truths from the uninitiated - it is appropriate “to hide and make inaccessible to the majority the sacred secret truth of supramundane minds behind ineffable sacred allegories,” which was successfully accomplished by the authors of biblical texts (II 2). The main thing, according to our author, is that unlike images for initiates are more preferable symbols than “similar sacred images.” Although cataphatic names and images indicate to us the high positivity of all the properties of God, they cannot in any way be essentially “similar” to the One who exceeds all essence, life, light, beauty and any likeness. It is incomparable to anything existing or conceivable. Therefore, in Scripture, God is often designated not by what He is, but by what He is not, that is, by negative images.
“Therefore,” concludes the author of the Areopagitik, “if the denials (hai apophaseis) in relation to the divine are true, and the affirmations (hai kataphaseis) are not consistent with the hiddenness of the inexpressible, for the invisible it is more appropriate to explain it through unlike images.” Therefore, Holy Scripture honors and does not dishonor the heavenly ranks, “explaining them with unlike images (anomoiois morphopoiais) 62 and with their help presenting that which is supramundanely superior to all that is material,” for “of the likenesses, the unlikeliest ones elevate our mind rather than similar ones” (II 3).
“Such images” tempt us into thinking that somewhere live golden-like, light-like men and beings, shining like lightning with unearthly beauty. The beauty of such images, with which Scripture often depicts the heavenly ranks, can stop spiritually immature minds, and they should strive higher for these visually imaginable beautiful images, for everything spiritual and divine is higher than any visible beauty. To avoid the temptation to stop the mind on it, the wise writers of Scripture also depict the divine sphere with the help of “improbable likenesses” (apemphainoysas anomoiotetas), which will repel even the crudest minds from a literal understanding of such images and excite the sublime of their souls in search of spiritual archetypes. The very “ugliness” (to dyseides) of many dissimilar resemblances attached by Holy Scripture to the heavenly ranks and even to God himself, “does not allow our mind to dwell on inappropriate images,” encourages us to abandon our predilection for the material and teaches us to “piously strive through the visible to transcendental meanings” (II 5).
The Areopagite cites numerous examples from Scripture where God is credited with the guise of a lion, a panther, a leopard, an angry she-bear, even a worm. And he shows that all this must be interpreted symbolically and exclusively in a piously exalted spirit. Dissimilar resemblances, borrowed, as a rule, from the low and unworthy spheres of human or animal life and applied to the divine sphere, should be understood in a completely different sense than we understand them in ordinary usage. If, for example, anger or lust at the level of human life are understood as negative and sinful phenomena, then in relation to heavenly beings they should be interpreted in the opposite, sublimely positive sense. The angry principle can be conceptualized as symbolizing "their courageous intelligence and unyielding adherence to godlike and unchangeable foundations."
Lust among spiritual beings - here the Areopagite clearly echoes Gregory of Nyssa, who, as we saw above, interpreted the Song of Songs in a similar spirit - “should be understood as divine love for immateriality that exceeds word and reason and a steady, unceasing aspiration towards an essentially immaculate dispassionate contemplation and a truly eternal mental participation in this pure and highest splendor and pious invisible beauty" (II 4).
It is possible that the hermeneutical meaning of such interpretations of dissimilar similarities is not always convincing, but how colorfully it is rhetorically, i.e. aesthetically, presented. The very sophistication of the figures of speech cannot but raise us from physiologically understood lust to something sublimely beautiful. This, in fact, is what Dionysius the Areopagite constantly achieves with his interpretations of dissimilar images and symbols. In this he sees one of their main meanings: by their very dissimilarity to divine essences, they should arouse our spirit to a similar artistic and aesthetic ascent to the heavenly spheres and to God himself.
According to the Areopagite, images of angels and their properties are particularly diverse in Scripture. Our author refers to all this as “incomparable resemblances,” although, as we will see, not all of these symbols borrow their form from low, despised or disrespected objects of the material world. Some of them could well be classified as cataphatic images, for example fire or light. However, in order to emphasize the sublimity and incomprehensibility of the angelic ranks for human consciousness, the Areopagite calls the entire set of symbolic-allegorical images related to them dissimilar similarities, and the very method of hermeneutical explanation calls them the method of “dissimilar similarities” (kata tas anamoioys homoiotetas) (CH XV 8).
Perhaps, as I have already mentioned, this exegesis from a theological point of view is not always convincing and gives little to theology as a specific science, but it is indicative in terms of identifying some of the features of the aesthetic consciousness of that time, so it makes sense to dwell on it in more detail. Moreover, the subsequent Christian tradition will often turn to these interpretations of the Areopagite, especially when comprehending the corresponding medieval Christian images, both in the Orthodox and Catholic areas.
In his interpretations of the symbolism of the angelic ranks, which is the subject of Chapter 15 of the “Heavenly Hierarchy,” the Areopagite continues the already well-established tradition of similar interpretations in early patristics (Cappadocia-Alexandrian exegesis), dating back to Philo of Alexandria. He further develops the method of his predecessors and brings together what they have scattered across many texts. In addition, interpretations of the Areopagite often have such a pronounced aesthetic connotation that it would not be out of place to quote some of them.
According to the research of Dionysius, Scripture gives the greatest preference when describing angelic powers to the image of fire. Having cited some of these fiery images, he concludes: in general, Scripture “selectively prefers to both mountain and valley the creation of fiery images (empyrion typoplastian).” Frequent likening to fire means, the Areopagite believes, “the highest degree of godlikeness of heavenly minds,” for the authors of Scripture and God himself, “the essential and indescribable Essence are often described in the image of fire” (XV 2). He goes on to explain why this symbol has such high significance in Scripture, describing in great detail and sublimely the properties of fire. So detailed and eloquent that it even caused surprise in the scholiast: “The discussion about the nature of fire is worthy of surprise” (XV 2, schol. 10). And indeed, there is something to be surprised about:
After all, sensual fire is, so to speak, in everything, and passes through everything without mixing, and is isolated from everything, and, being completely obvious, at the same time, as if hidden, imperceptible in itself, if there is no suitable substance in which it could manifest its action, elusive and invisible, has power over everything and changes what it finds itself in for its effect, transmits itself to everything that approaches it in one way or another, is renewed from the igniter heat, illuminates everything with clear illuminations, irresistible, unmixed, selective, unchanging, directed upward, fast, sublime, not enduring any humiliation to the earth, is in constant and monotonous movement and moves others, all-encompassing, vast, does not need anything else, secretly cultivating itself and revealing its greatness to the substances that perceive it, active, powerful, everything inherent invisibly, being in negligence, it seems non-existent, but friction, like some kind of search, naturally and simply suddenly appears and flies away again in an incomprehensible way, and generously distributing itself to everyone, does not decrease.
And many more can discover the special properties of fire - as if sensual reflections of God’s initial energy. That is why theosophists, who know this, depict heavenly beings in a fiery form (ek pyros), thereby revealing their likeness to God and, to the extent possible, their imitation of God (XV 2).
Much of this detailed description of fire is quite applicable to the description of the essential characteristics of God himself in a cataphatic manner, which the author of the Areopagitik himself is well aware of.
He describes man in no less detail and sublimely as one of the most common symbols of the angelic orders in Scripture. His pathos in glorifying the spiritual abilities and physical capabilities of man is, perhaps, comparable only with the pathos of the 4th century author. Nemesius of Emesa, who wrote the treatise “On the Nature of Man” 63. The mind of man, his upright posture, the upward gaze, the beauty of his appearance, his dominance over all irrational creatures, his natural unenslavement and rebellion of the soul - all this and much more speak for the fact that his image is quite suitable for depicting heavenly powers. And the Areopagite dwells in detail on the uniqueness of many members of the human body and sense organs in order to show their symbolic meaning in depicting angels in human form.
It is impossible not to cite here these interpretations of the Areopagite, which are significant not only for understanding the symbolic meaning of anthropomorphic images of angels, but also to an even greater extent for identifying the peculiar aestheticization of the image of man himself by the famous Byzantine thinker.
Human visual abilities express the purest aspiration upward, towards the divine lights, and also a gentle, soft, unhindered, quick, pure and dispassionately open acceptance of divine insights;
the discriminative powers of smell mean susceptibility, as far as possible, to the spread of fragrance that exceeds the mind and the ability to skillfully distinguish what is not so and completely avoid it;
powers of hearing - participation in the divine inspiration and reasonable acceptance of it;
and gustatory – saturation with spiritual food and acceptance of divine feeding flows;
tactile – the ability to clearly distinguish between what is suitable and what is harmful;
eyelids and eyebrows - storage of contemplative thoughts;
blooming and young age is an image of an ever-blooming vitality;
teeth mean the ability to share the perfection that nourishes them, which is given to them (for each rational entity, given to it by the highest divine essence, divides and multiplies by providential power a single understanding for the corresponding construction of a smaller entity);
shoulders, elbows and, again, hands are a creative, energetic and active principle;
and the heart is a symbol of god-like life, graciously dissipating its life force on the one governed by Providence;
the breast, in turn, shows tirelessness and the ability to protect the spread of life inherent in the heart that is located in it;
the spine is what contains all the life-giving forces;
legs – mobility, speed and the ability for eternal rapid movement towards the divine. That is why theology depicted the feet of holy minds as winged. For the wing indicates upward-rising speed, closeness to the sky, the direction of their path to the top and, thanks to the upward direction, distance from everything that gravitates downward, and the lightness of the wings indicates a complete absence of earthiness and a completely pure and unburdened ascent to heights;
nakedness and shoelessness mean freedom, lightness, unburdenedness and freedom from any external addition and assimilation, to the extent possible, to divine simplicity (XV 3).
Next, the Areopagite explains the symbolism of many clothes, objects, substances that are found in descriptions of angels and other heavenly powers in the Bible, giving, as he writes, for each type “a mystical interpretation (anagogiken anakatharsin - anagogical purification) of the imprinted images” (XV 7). Interesting are his symbolic “purifications” (i.e., liberation of archetypal meanings from visible form) of well-known animal images found in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel (the so-called tetramorph - Ezek. 1:10) and in other places of Scripture. The human face has already been mentioned above, and here are the images of a lion, a calf, an eagle, which in the Christian tradition became symbols of the evangelists and in this form are widely included in Christian art.
The image of a lion, presumably, reveals their (heavenly ranks - V.B.) primacy, and strength, and indomitability, and the fact that, to the best of their ability, they are likened to the secrecy of the inexplicable God-Superior by concealing and mystically implicitly concealing mental traces on the path that leads to Him through divine illumination;
the image of a calf is strength and flowering power, expanding the furrows of the mind to receive heavenly fertile rains, and the horns are the ability to protect and invincibility;
eagle - royalty, soaring height and speed of flight and vigilance, vigilance, agility and skill in obtaining food that gives strength and the ability, directing its mighty gaze upward, to the abundant, bright ray of God's original sunlight, to look straight, unwaveringly and unwaveringly (XV 8).
To this we can also add an expressive interpretation of the image of a horse, often found in Scripture when presenting certain visions of angelic forces and heavenly phenomena: “and the image of horses means obedience and obedience, white - clarity and special kinship to the divine light, black - intimacy, red - fiery and boldness, and piebald black and white - that transitional force that binds extremes and for the sake of conversion, or guardianship is united by the higher with the lower and the lower with the higher” (ibidem).
All this symbolic hermeneutics is interesting today in at least two respects. It gives a vivid and fairly comprehensive idea of the level and nature of symbolic thinking of both the author of the Areopagitik himself and one of the influential trends in Byzantine culture of that time. In another sense, the very specificity of this hermeneutics of biblical images became a good spiritual basis for medieval art, both visual and verbal. And also for a symbolic understanding of many images of this art. Especially often, throughout almost the entire Middle Ages, both in the West and in Ancient Rus', heated controversy arose over the depiction of heavenly ranks and God himself in anthropomorphic and other visually perceived images, that is, in “unlike likenesses” - in the broad sense of this concept, used by the Areopagite along with the narrow sense. And then the apologists of these images almost always put forward the texts of the highly revered “doctor of hierarchy” as the main argument.
After this, the controversy subsided for some time, although the spirit of iconoclasm, that is, the struggle against visually perceived images of heavenly ranks and God himself, as is known, always lived somewhere on the edges of the Christian ecumene, from time to time flooding it all with heresies or Protestant schisms.
The last thing I would like to dwell on in the Areopagite's consideration of dissimilar similarities is his apologetic explanation of the meaning of the “joy” (tes charas) of the heavenly orders, which is spoken of in Scripture. Areopagite separates it from the sensual pleasure inherent in people and emphasizes its highly spiritual meaning. The angels “are not at all susceptible to our passion-filled pleasure, but rejoice with God, as Scripture says, in finding the lost, indulging in godlike idleness 64 and a beautiful, non-envying joy in the care and salvation of those turned to God, and that indescribable pleasure in which holy men were often involved when divine insights descended on them from above” (XV 9).
So, the author of the “Areopagitik” includes a very wide range of images borrowed from the visually perceived objective world as dissimilar similarities, as the most developed level of symbolic expression in Scripture. Among them, two extremes stand out. First of all, in the literal sense of the word, these are images completely different from the divine sphere, borrowed from indecent, ugly, shameful phenomena of created existence, which by their very ugliness and ugliness should repel the perceiver and excite, direct his spirit to something diametrically opposed to the form of the symbol - to a sublimely enlightened understanding of the spiritual sphere. And at the other pole are images borrowed from neutral and even positive and beautiful phenomena of the created world, that is, to some extent similar similarities. However, according to Dionysius, they are so far from the heavenly world that they too should be understood as dissimilar similarities (in the broad sense), that is, as symbols of things even higher, sublime, supersensible than themselves.
Actually, similar (similar) similarities are the entire set of cataphatic images that reveal the high content of the main positive names of God, to which the treatise “On the Divine Names” is dedicated.
From here the logic of symbolic ascent (equal to the comprehension of God) in the Areopagite system becomes clear: dissimilar similarities (including similar similarities for the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy) - similar similarities equal to the cataphatic names of God - actually apophatic symbols-names.
The latter can only conditionally be classified as symbols, for they all, despite their sufficient diversity, mean one thing - the denial of everything that the human mind can imagine, think and say about the transcendental God. All of them together are one symbol - an expression of the transcendence of God. We are talking about statements about Him with the help of “superior negation (hyperochikes apophaseos” (Ep. IV), leading the seeker of higher knowledge to the mystical transition from the logosonoetic and symbolic level of knowledge to the mystical, where every feeling, every word, every reason is silent. These are statements about God that deny all the positive properties and qualities accepted among people (i.e. cataphatic names) as unworthy of Him, saying nothing about Him 65.
The apophatic “not” placed before cataphatic names does not mean simple negation, but elevation and superiority over everything intelligible; it is identical to the prefix “super-” 66, which is also included in the system of this last conversation about God at the verbal level before the leap of consciousness into another, mystical dimension. As the Areopagite himself writes, the unpreserved apophatic treatise “Theological Essays” was dedicated to these generalizing names-symbols of God. These include “Super-good, Super-deity, Super-essence, Super-life, Super-wisdom, which through superiority express negation” (DN II 3).
It is no coincidence that the quintessence of apophatics is the content of the very short last chapter of “Mystical Theology”, after which there is only silence and immersion in the “super-light darkness” of the “super-essentially existing.”
Here the Areopagite calls God “the Cause of everything mental” (by the way, I note that he does not often use the name God itself, but more often uses something from the arsenal of cataphatic names), which he concludes with pathos.
Further ascending (from the whole set of symbols, images, names. - V.B.
), we say that She is not a soul, not a mind; She has no imagination, or opinion, or words, or understanding; and She is neither a word nor a thought; It cannot be expressed or understood in words; It is neither number nor order, neither magnitude nor smallness, neither equality nor inequality, neither similarity nor difference; and She does not stand, does not move, does not remain at rest, has no strength and is neither force nor light; She does not live and is not life; She is neither essence, nor age, nor time; She does not have mental perception; She is not knowledge, not truth, not kingdom, not wisdom; She is not one and unity, not divinity or goodness; It is not spirit in the sense known to us, not sonship, not paternity, nor anything else accessible to our or anyone else’s perception of existence; She is not something of the non-existent and not something of the existing; neither the existing knows Her as she is, nor does She know the existing as she is; She has no word, no name, no knowledge; She is neither darkness nor light, nor error nor truth; Neither affirmation nor negation is applicable to Her at all; and when we add to Her or take away from Her something from what is beyond Her, we neither add nor take away, since the perfect and one Cause of everything is above any affirmation, and above all denial is Her superiority, as completely beyond everything (MTh V).
The result of the epistemological symbolism of Dionysius the Areopagite, its deep meaning as a leading mechanism to the highest knowledge of God can be summed up in beautiful and precise words from the “Divine Names”:
God is known in everything and beyond everything, known by knowledge and ignorance. On the one hand, it is characterized by thinking, reason, knowledge, touch, feeling, opinion, imagination, naming and all the like; on the other hand, God is not comprehended, is not named, is not said, and is not anything that exists, and is not known in anything that has existence. He, being all in all and nothing in anything, is known by all from all and by no one from anything. However, we gain the most divine knowledge of God by cognizing Him through ignorance in a unity that transcends reason, when our mind, having renounced everything that exists and then leaving itself, unites with the most luminous rays and from there is illuminated by the unknown abyss of Wisdom (DN VII 3).
Sacred-liturgical symbolism
This symbolism is mainly devoted to the treatise “On the Church Hierarchy” and, perhaps, the essay “On Mentally and Sensibly Comprehensible”, which has not reached us, to which the Areopagite himself refers, beginning a consideration of the symbolic meaning of the sacrament of baptism, where he reports that in it (the treatise) “it is clearly shown that the sensory is a sacred reflection of the noetic.” When considering the symbolism of church sacraments, the author of the Areopagitik is guided, as he himself claims, by the knowledge obtained through a “sacred ascent” to hieratic principles as a result of “sacred initiation” into them, which gave him the opportunity to comprehend “imprints” of what characteristic features of the higher world they are and “of what implicit images” (EN II 2). His symbolic exegesis is also facilitated by the “legend of symbols” (he ton symbolon paradosis – II 5), that is, the experience of a symbolic-allegorical understanding of certain sacred sacraments and church images of the patristic exegetes who preceded him.
Based on this tradition, Dionysius begins his treatise with a key phrase, which largely explains the characteristic feature of church-mysterial, or liturgical, symbolism. The purpose of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is defined here as follows: “That our hierarchy... is the realization of divinely inspired, divine and idolizing (theoyrgikes) knowledge, action and perfection, we must show from the most worldly and most sacred Sayings, to those who, by hierarchical mysteries and traditions, are perfected in the sacred occult science” (EH I 1).
Here the key word, in addition to other significant semantic images, is the term “theurgic”. The church hierarchy, by which in this case we mean the entire church-liturgical (mystermal, as the Areopagite defines it, using ancient and early Christian terminology) experience, carries out the theurgic sacrament of knowledge, action (energeias) and perfection (completion - teleioseos). This means that all church ritual activity is understood as mystical, that is, not only symbolically denoting something, the explanation of which this treatise is mainly devoted to, but also actually mystically realizing (idolizing) what it symbolizes. The scholiast also draws attention to this meaning of the term theurgic, using the late antique-early Christian terminology, which the Church would later abandon as gravitating towards polytheism: “He calls them theurgic because they have an effect, or rather are bestowed, from God; and because the Christian hierarchy shapes and creates gods (theoys)” (I 1, schol. 1).
It is clear that by this he tried to explain in a language understandable to his contemporaries that the church-liturgical experience, in particular the experience of ascending the steps of the church hierarchy (corresponding consecration) and receiving church sacraments (baptism, communion, confirmation), actually accomplishes, completely mystically transforms a person, elevates him to the superhuman level {of gods, by which in this case the scholiast undoubtedly meant simply the level heavenly hierarchy, superior to human nature).
From this it is clear, and we will be convinced of this more than once, that the sacred-liturgical symbolism of the Areopagite has a slightly different character than its epistemological symbolism. The semantic aspect itself, to which he pays a lot of attention here, is also loaded with theurgic in the just identified sense. This tradition would later be actively supported and developed by many Byzantine interpreters of church-liturgical symbolism 67 .
Having briefly outlined in each of the chapters devoted to the main church sacraments - baptism, the Eucharist, the sanctification of the world - the content of the actions performed by the clergy, the Areopagite further gives their most detailed symbolic interpretation, designating these parts of the chapters as “Speculation” (Theoria). At the same time, he repeats once again, starting a conversation about baptism, which he calls either enlightenment or the birth of God, meaning that at baptism a person is, as it were, reborn in God for a new life, that all actions performed in the sacrament are of a sublimely symbolic nature: “This rite of the sacred birth of God, as if consisting of symbols, does not contain anything inappropriate and unsacred, nor sensual images, but only the sacred (ainigmata), worthy of high contemplation, reflected by physical and corresponding to human perception mirrors” (II theor. 1) 68.
The sacrament of baptism is called by the Areopagite “mystery of enlightenment” (mysterion photismatos), and the main meaning of this sacrament lies in the root of the word “enlightenment” - light - phos. The hierarch leading the sacrament appears here as a symbol, an imprint of God himself, pouring out special knowledge - photodosia - on the recipient of baptism, and the meaning of this knowledge lies in its transformative character. Coming down on a person with the help of the hierarch, it changes his ontology, his nature, transforms him into a new quality, introduces him, makes him a partaker of a new society of people - Christians. Hence, all the actions of the hierarch and his assistants during baptism are interpreted by the Areopagite as mysterial-symbolic. They not only mean something, not only point to something sacred, but also commune the recipient of baptism with this sacred thing.
Thus, the Areopagite, referring to the “tradition of symbols,” interprets the stripping of clothes from the person receiving baptism as a mysterial stripping of his former life and his liberation from his last ties with it. The triple immersion of the enlightened person in water testifies, if we “mystically explain” the “sacred symbols” (here the Areopagite cannot contain his admiration for the high meaning of sacred symbolization: “understand well: how appropriate these symbols are!” - EH II theor. 7), about dying with Christ in sin. “The symbolic teaching mysteriously initiates the person being baptized into the fact that by three immersions in water they imitate the death of the life-giver Jesus, which began with the third night burial” (ibidem). The “light-like clothes” then put on the baptized person mean that through the mystery of baptism he firmly joined the One, completely transformed, for everything that was disordered in him was ordered (everything that did not have beauty was adorned), and what did not have a form (eidos) acquired it, “illuminated throughout by the light-like life” 69.
This transformative unity “with the God-originating Spirit” is completed by the “perfecting anointing of the perfected world,” the mystical meaning of which, as completely inexpressible, the Areopagite himself no longer undertakes to explain, sending his addressee to those who are more “worthy of sacred and theurgic communion in the mind with the divine Spirit” (ibidem).
It is significant that in this phrase “communication in the mind” the Areopagite uses the same term koinonia as he uses to designate the communion of the Blessed Sacrament in the Eucharist, to a symbolic interpretation of which he immediately proceeds in the next chapter. The highest knowledge is possessed by the one who theurgically in the mind has communed (participated, become a part) of the Holy Spirit. In the Eucharist, all Christians perform mystical communion, actually receiving the Holy Gifts. Explaining at length the meaning of the Eucharistic act, which, by the way, the Areopagite does not yet distinguish as the most important of the other church sacraments, he does not forget to designate it as a “symbolic sacred act,” which “through sacredly offered symbols” introduces those participating in the liturgy to Jesus Christ (III theor. 12).
Already from these examples it is clearly seen that Dionysius the Areopagite perceives church worship with its main sacraments as a dynamically developing space of sacred symbols, aimed both at designating many phenomena of heavenly space, and at the real mysterial-theurgic communion (communion) of those taking part in it to the divine sphere.
In more detail, as I have already pointed out, this issue will be dealt with by subsequent Byzantine interpreters of liturgical symbolism, starting, by the way, with the first commentator on the Areopagitik, Maximus the Confessor.
The extensive symbolology of the author of the Areopagitik, which permeates the entire corpus of his texts that have reached us and has not reached us and was the main theme of his spiritual research, significantly influenced the entire figurative and symbolic culture of Christianity and Christian art in the first place. It opened up broad prospects for spiritual and artistic creativity, mystical and aesthetic ascent to harmony with the Universe and its First Cause for the creative personalities of the Christian world.
Metaphysics of the image (ontological section)
From the previous presentation it is clear that the Corpus Areopagitica, including texts that have not reached us but are mentioned by the Areopagite himself, is devoted to solving one task - to lead readers in as much detail and thoroughly as possible to the main goal of Christianity - comprehension of God, communion with Him, unity (henosis) with Him. And in solving this problem, as we have already seen, he is significantly helped by turning to the aesthetic sphere, to non-rational ways of aesthetic experience, understood, naturally, in the spirit of his time. And this spirit inextricably linked the aesthetic sphere with the mystical and liturgical, in which the almost ontological unity of man with the higher spiritual spheres, and ideally with God himself, was realized. Comprehension of God at these levels was thought of as an existential unity with him, and therefore Areopagite symbolology often balanced between epistemology itself and mystical ontology. This explains many of the aesthetic features of both the author of the Areopagitik himself and all patristics in general.
Several centuries before the Areopagite, humanity acquired a fundamentally new quantum of sacred knowledge, which was enshrined in the body of texts of the New and Old Testaments - the Holy Scriptures. And immediately began a period of active formation of Christian mythology as an exegetical (hermeneutic) unfolding and assimilation of the acquired knowledge and religious and church liturgical practice for the mysterious realization of this knowledge and its introduction to the masses of believers. The Areopagite saw this period of active development of Christianity and took an active part in it. At the same time, he was not interested in logomachy - polemics about terms, to which almost all the Church Fathers of that time paid a lot of attention and which then had a certain meaning, because
ancient tradition often associated a name with the essence of what was named, especially if this name related to the highest level of the spiritual world, 70 but the very essence of the teaching, expressed by names; the very spiritual, essential meaning of Christian teaching, which he saw in finding the right path to the vision of God, comprehension of God, communion with God and in the practical organization of this path for Christians.
At the same time, while revealing the deep, mystical meaning of Christian teaching, he was well aware that this meaning was not accessible to everyone, even his highly educated and far from poor in spirit contemporaries. Therefore, when sending this or that treatise to the addressee (and they are all messages to specific individuals), he, as we have repeatedly seen, does not tire of warning him about the esotericism of the teaching that he personally reveals to him, but calls on him to keep it hidden from the uninitiated. Directing the book “On the Heavenly Hierarchy” to co-presbyter Timothy, he instructs him: “But you, child, according to the holy charter of our priestly tradition, listen in a holy manner to what is piously pronounced, being filled with the Divine during initiation into the divine, and, in the recesses of the mind, hiding the holy from the multitude of the uninitiated, as one of a kind, keep it. For it is not permissible, as the Sayings say, to throw before swine the pure splendor of mental pearls, like light and exuding beauty” (SN II 5 with reference to Matthew 7:6).
Esotericism characteristic of that time and especially interesting to us for its aesthetic aura. The beauty and radiance of higher knowledge should be hidden from the profane, those who are not able to perceive or comprehend them. He warns Timothy about this, sending him the book “On Divine Names.” He demands that he follow “the most sacred rule not to speak or show anything divine to the uninitiated,” so that they, not understanding its meaning, would not mock and mock him, thereby falling into the terrible sin of fighting against God (DN I 8). And this sin was widespread among the intelligentsia of late Antiquity. The simple and crude texts of the Gospel, written in the vernacular Greek language - Koine, aroused ridicule among the educated Greeks and Romans of that time, who had studied classical Greek language, rhetoric and philosophy since childhood, which, under the influence of Neoplatonism, had already moved far from the primitive understanding of the myths about the Greek gods in the direction of transcendentalism of the spiritual sphere and an allegorical understanding of ancient mythology.
Let us remember that Augustine could not accept Christianity because of the simplicity and primitiveness, as it seemed to him, having tasted the fruit of Neoplatonism, of the main Christian sacred texts, until in the sermons of St. Ambrose of Milan did not hear the symbolic exegesis of Holy Scripture. The treatise “On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy” also begins with Timothy’s admonition to hide the knowledge received from “unsacred people who are not allowed to touch even the symbols” (EH I 5).
Therefore, Dionysius constantly reminds his dedicated co-religionists - “equal in rank to God-like people” - that Christian knowledge is hidden from “unlikes” by “winged riddles” (EH IV theor. 2), i.e., it is given in images, parables, symbols, the meaning and significance of which becomes clear as the believer spiritually improves in the system of the church hierarchy, and the highest knowledge itself is accessible only to those at the pinnacle of spiritual perfection, i.e. e. at the top of the church hierarchy. To them, as akin to the mental light, the “fragrant ray of the All-Holy” shines purely and directly and “unveiled” enters their mental sensibilities (ibidem). Here, in fact, figuratively, that is, artistically, the essence of the Areopagite higher epistemology - the study of God - is expressed.
God directly reveals himself with his shining, beautiful, fragrant ray only to those who are at the highest sacred-ontological level of spiritual development, while to the rest - only in a multi-level figurative-enigmatic, symbolic system, to the explanation of which almost the entire corpus of texts of the Areopagite is devoted. Meanwhile, climbing the steps of the church hierarchy is not only a statement of a high level of spiritual knowledge, but, first of all, a change in the ontological hierarchical status. Each step is a new quality of being for the initiate.
Therefore, as we have already partially seen, the figurative-enigmatic system of Dionysius covers three significantly different forms of spiritual experience: 1) symbolic interpretation of the texts of Scripture and, on this basis, the symbolism of the objective world, one way or another mentioned in Scripture, i.e. the exegetical path; 2) church and liturgical experience; 3) mystical ascent into the super-light Darkness, prepared on the paths of symbolic exegesis and liturgical service. In all this, the Areopagite relies on the well-known patristic tradition, especially on the Cappadocian fathers and mystic fathers of the 4th-5th centuries, and, clearly recognizing the inadequacy of a verbal description of the highest forms of spiritual experience, more often than many of his predecessors, willingly or unwillingly, he clothes his reasoning with a cloud of shimmering artistically given meanings. Actually, aesthetic terminology and artistic imagery occupy a prominent place in his theology as he approaches spaces that are practically not amenable to literal verbalization.
In this regard, the very concept of “image”, along with “symbol” and “enigma” plays a prominent role in his texts, sometimes almost being identified in meaning with the “symbol”, but often acquiring not only a different semantic coloring, but also a different status, moving from the epistemological to the ontological sphere.
If the symbol belongs to the Areopagite mainly to the religious-epistemological or even aesthetic-epistemological sphere, then the image has, along with this, a clearly expressed ontological character. The entire created world, according to Dionysius, is a collection of more or less accurate, depending on the degree of materialization, images of eternally pre-existing prototypes in God, or samples, ideal ideas of creation, logos - paradeigmata, hypothetikoi logoi. These divine prototypes are “a certain world of ideas,” wrote G.V. Florovsky figuratively, “but not self-existent and self-sufficient, but existing in God and revealing Him to the world. It is like the face of God facing the world. And it radiates with goodness and beauty, and these “rays” or “forces” enter the world itself, penetrate it, create it and preserve it, give it life. These “types” are the living and life-giving providence of God, the “essential outcomes” of God” 71 .
The Areopagite himself, in his manner of artistic weaving of words, expresses this idea as follows: “We call the prototypes (paradeigmata) the pre-existing in God in unity creating the essence (oysiopoioys) logoi of all that exists (ton onton), which theology calls predestination and divine and good wishes, dividing and creating the existing, in accordance with which the Super-essential all existing and predetermined and produced" (DN V 8).
Hence, everything in the world of creation in one way or another reflects divine paradigms and, moreover, strives for maximum similarity to them, i.e., it tends to improve its figurative essence through internal aspiration towards divine models (its essences). It is interesting that, using the traditional patristic visual-plastic terms eikon, typos, morphe, agalma, homoiosis to denote an image, the Areopagite never (at least in the texts that have reached us) does not address the topic that worried all his Christian predecessors - the creation of man in the image and likeness of God. Here his tribute to Neoplatonic transcendentalism is obvious, on the one hand, and an obvious sense of the mystical, sacred-symbolic nature of the statement “in Our image and likeness” (kat eikona kai kath' homoiosin - Gen 1, 26) - on the other. Meanwhile, knowledge and understanding of this most important concept for Christianity shines through quite clearly throughout the entire eikonology of pseudo-Dionysius. It is no coincidence that his texts were often used in iconoclastic polemics 72 .
For him, an image (eikon) is a sensually, often even visually perceived “imprint” of something that, in principle, does not lend itself to sensory perception and visualization, is invisible; it is “the visible of the invisible” (ta horata ton aoraton) (Ep 10). How this is possible is not given to the human mind to understand, therefore, for the Areopagite, the image is shrouded in a mystical aura, endowed with mystical energy, which helps us really ascend from images to archetypes, without understanding with our minds the mechanism of what is happening. This is the main meaning of the image, both verbal and visual. If a symbol requires for its understanding a certain knowledge that allows us to understand its innermost meaning through hermeneutic procedures, then the image does not require such hermeneutics - it, with its direct impact on our soul, imprinting itself on it, elevates us to higher knowledge-communion, and has a pronounced anagogical character of the ontological type.
The Areopagite clearly writes about this at the beginning of the fourth chapter of the book “On the Heavenly Hierarchy.” Starting a conversation about the symbolic meanings of the names of the angelic ranks, he shows that he receives knowledge about this through the contemplation of the verbal “mystical images” of Scripture, i.e. in mystical-aesthetic experience, and conveys it verbally in chanting, hymnology and liturgical thanksgiving: “...now we must sing the praises of the angelic hierarchy and contemplate with supermundane eyes its sacred reflections (tas hieras morphopoiias) in the Word, so that through mystical images (dia ton mystikon anaplaseon) one can rise to its most god-like simplicity and, in godly veneration and ritual thanksgiving, glorify the beginning of all knowledge of hierarchy” (CH IV 1). This phrase itself is already a figurative verbal celebration of what the author of the Areopagitik is trying to talk about, i.e., a verbal image of something that practically cannot be expressed verbally.
And the entire text of the Corpus is saturated with similar figurative expressions, verbal images of a semi-mystical, semi-aesthetic nature. The Areopagite regularly resorts to figurative expression of his thoughts in order not at the level of ratio, but with the help of more subtle verbal matters to convey the meaning of his understanding of this or that spiritual problem, this or that spiritual image, symbol. Sometimes this imagery takes on a vivid pictorial and metaphorical character, showing what efforts the author makes, despite his normative esotericism, to explain one or another of his thoughts, at least to the initiates. Thus, explaining the anagogical meaning of prayer, which he often understands as figurative hymnology, as a special verbal-mystical image, he argues that through prayer we are drawn, like a chain, to the Trinity. At the same time, we do not reduce the Trinity to ourselves, although She is everywhere, but we spiritually elevate ourselves, elevate ourselves, and pull ourselves towards Her.
Having directed ourselves with prayers to ascend to the highest heights to the divine and good rays, as if constantly intercepting with our hands a brightly luminous chain hanging from the sky and reaching here, and thinking that we are attracting it to ourselves, but in reality it is not it, which is both above and below, pulling down, but raising ourselves to the highest radiances of the many-lighted rays. Or, as if being on a ship, grabbing ropes attached to a certain rock and stretched out to us so that we would moor, we would not attract the rock to ourselves, but in fact ourselves and the ship - to the rock (DN III 1).
Clearly aware of the anagogical nature of the artistic image, primarily verbal, well understood and thought out by Antiquity in its culture of eloquence and rhetorical theory (let us recall at least the treatise “On the Sublime” of the pseudo-Longinus), the Areopagite not only actively uses this property in his texts, but also practically endows the very essence of the image - anagoge (elevation) - with mystical-ontological properties. And on this understanding he builds his entire theory of heavenly and church hierarchy. The highest knowledge in it is transmitted through illumination of light, photodosia of different levels of materialization, and the ascension from bottom to top of its beings themselves (we are talking about the earthly hierarchy, since the ranks of the heavenly hierarchy are stationary in their ontological status) through figurative-mystical assimilation - ascent to a higher figurative rank, or, as the Areopagite himself says: through “harmonious ascent (ten enarmonion anagogen) according to the measure of the rank.” At the same time, he is well aware that all ranks of the hierarchy are “imprints” (ta ektypomata) and sensory images (eikones) of the implicit and spiritual (ta noeta) (EH II theor. 2).
And specific images, not only expressing (here literally imprinting) some spiritual archetypes, but also endowed with their strength and energy; By these archetypes, the Areopagite means the corresponding ranks of the heavenly hierarchy. “And since the priestly orders are images (eikones) of divine energies, a well-ordered and unmixed order of divine energies, they reveal in themselves emanations (ellampseis), ordered according to the first, middle and last sacred energies and orders,” which in turn are “divine images,” endowed with “divine energies” corresponding to their order (EN V 7). So, the sacred hierarchy, developed, we would say carefully now, by the author of the Areopagitik, although he himself claimed that he received knowledge about it in the act of “sacred ascent” to hieratic principles as a result of “sacred initiation” (see: EH II 2), is a complex, ordered system of images endowed with the energy of their archetypes and manifested in special light phenomena - radiances.
Accordingly, each initiation into a new hierarchical rank, or each ordination for clergy, represents a mystical transition from one figurative level to another with the acquisition of not only a new eidos (spiritual and visual appearance), but also a qualitatively new quantum of divine energy.
From here, the theurgic nature of the hierarchy, which has already been discussed in connection with sacred-liturgical symbolism, becomes more understandable. The mystical nature of the liturgical sacraments and the liturgical action itself contributes to a change in the image and its energy content. From the texts of the Areopagite it is clear that the metamorphosic-mysterical essence of the figurative hierarchy is realized only in the process of liturgical liturgical action. According to the Areopagite, the reality of these mystical processes is evidenced by various kinds of light phenomena. It is clear that we are talking not only and not so much about sensually perceived light, although often about it. In the general case, we mean a special, verbally inexpressible spiritual-energetic element of different levels and forms of manifestation with a pronounced positive-anagogical impact on the spiritual world of man. All this is designated by the Areopagite, as well as by all representatives of patristics, and by Christian Tradition as a whole, by light terminology, which we could partly observe above (Chapter 3).
The light space of the author of the Areopagitik, as has already been partially shown, is a special, unique mystical space in which the boundary between knowledge and being disappears. These phenomena, different for philosophical consciousness, in the space of spiritual light (phos noeton, lux intellegibilis) are inseparably fused into something integral. To know means to be, and to be means to know—to be in the light. Light and illumination mean both knowledge and being. God as the highest Light (“arch-light and super-light”, “impregnable light”, “essential radiance of divine darkness”, etc.) pours on us “moving light”, elevating and uniting us. This light flows onto us through the divine hierarchy, and in the liturgical action, when those standing at the altar “see and hear the divine, revealed to them by the light” (Ep 8), and in the words of Holy Scripture (SN I 2; DN I 3, etc.). It also shines through the entire system of symbols available to people.
Giving his interpretations of them, the Areopagite calls on the initiates to see in the church action itself “under the guidance of Jesus, a magnificent noetic speculation - the blessed, clearly shining beauty of prototypes” (EN III 2). Symbols are only a way to achieve the “super-essential light”, which “cannot be conceived, described, or in any way considered,” but which will be revealed to us after the resurrection from the dead (DN I 4). This light is the light of Jesus himself, “the most divine power of the entire hierarchy,” and it becomes accessible to the highest ranks of the priestly hierarchy, who, “looking at the blessed and divine radiance of Jesus,” themselves become light-like (EN II).
Both paths of ascension to the divine Light available to man - symbolic and liturgical - are based on one common metaphysical foundation - the image as a sacred carrier of a certain quantum of being-knowledge, an imprint (at a certain hierarchical level, even visually given) of an imageless spiritual archetype, an eidetic paradigm that creates the image, constituting its essence. And at their highest levels, both of these paths lead to the mystical limit of renunciation of all activity, all thinking, any imagery - to immersion in the silence of the light environment of being-knowledge - to the highest stage of hesychy - ontognoseological merging with God, identification with him, dissolution in his goodness.
Compare: Cohen D.F. Formes theologiques et symbolisme sacre chez (Pseudo-) Denis l'Areopagite. Bruxelles, 2010.
For more details, see: Philo of Alexandria. Interpretations of the Old Testament. M., 2000. There is also a bibliography on the topic.
For more information about this, see: Bychkov V.V. Aesthetica partum. Aesthetics of the Church Fathers: Apologists. Blessed Augustine. M., 1995. S. 47–52; 215–251; 258–269; It's him. 2000 years of Christian culture sub specie aesthetica. Vol. 1: Early Christianity. Byzantium. M.; St. Petersburg, 1999, pp. 349–373.
The Cappadocian fathers saw more levels of meaning in Scripture.
Wed. in Gregory of Nyssa, who compares the effect of the psalms on the soul with the work of a sculptor: In ps. inscr. II 11 – 541D-544A.
See for more details: Bychkov V.V. The phenomenon of the icon: History. Theology. Aesthetics. Art. M., 2009.
See, for example: Florovsky G.V. Eastern fathers of the V-VIII centuries. M., 1992. P. 102.
The articles of the Greek researcher: Alexopoulos Th. Paradoxe Formulirungen bei Dionysios Areopagites mit speziellem Bezug auf Gre-gor von Nyssa // Vigiliae Christianae. T. 62. Leiden, 2008. S. 43–78; Idem. Die Paradoxie als Ausdrucksmittel tiefgriindiger theologischer Gedanken bei Gregor von Nissa // Vigiliae Christianae. T. 60, Leiden, 2006. S. 431–446.
See Russian translation: Nemesius of Emesa. About human nature. M., 1998.
This word had a negative connotation even in the early Byzantine period, so the scholiast considers it his duty to show the positive meaning in which the Areopagite applied it to the heavenly ranks: “This word means ease and non-involvement with labor; however, here it expresses bliss, dispassion and serenity” (CH XV 9, schol. 54).
On the theological aspects of the Apophatics of the Areopagite, see: Stang Ch. Apophasis and pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: 'no longer F. Oxford; N.Y., 2012; Ni-entied M. Reden ohne Wissen: Apophatik bei Dionysius Areopagita, Moses Maimo-nides und Emmanuel Fevinas: mit einem Exkurs zu Niklas Fuhmann. Regensburg, 2010; Fisher J. The Pheology of Dis/similarity: Negation in Pseudo-Dionysius // Fhe Journal of Religion. 2001. Vol. 81.No. 4. P. 529–548.
Compare: Florovsky G.V. Decree. Op. P. 102.
See for more details: Bychkov V.V. 2000 years of Christian culture sub specie aesthetica. T. 1. M.; St. Petersburg, 1999, pp. 555–573.
Due to the fact that the chapters of this treatise contain two parts that are not numbered, but within each of them the numbering is repeated from 1 to n, and the second parts have the title Theoria, for clarity of pagination the abbreviation theor has been introduced into the designation of these parts. before the relevant paragraph.
This difficult to translate, but key phrase for understanding the transformative meaning of the very sacrament of baptism as a sacred symbolization in the original sounds like this: pros to hen en syntonia synney sei to akosmon kosmeitai, kai to aneideon eidopoieitai, te» photoeidei katholoy dzoe lamprynomenon – EH II theor. 8.
For more details see: Bychkov V.V. Byzantine aesthetics: Theoretical problems. M., 1977. P. 39.
Florovsky G.V. Eastern fathers of the V-VIII centuries. pp. 107–108.
See, in particular: Ivanovic F. Symbol and Icon: Dionysius the Areopagite and the Iconoclastic Crisis. Eugene, 2010.