MYSTIC KNOWLEDGE OF SAINT DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE AND PLOTINUS

Abstract

The intention of this essay is to highlight the existence of a thrill that calls man to its existential fulfillment, which is to meet and to stay with God. Although the directions are different, depending on the way how Divinity is perceived - Christianity being based on Personal Trinity, the creation out of nothing, and the insurmountability between the created and the uncreated, and Plotinian philosophy being centred on the apophatic but impersonal One, and on the idea of man's kinship with the divine, because it originates from it - mysticism remains the path through which man expresses his apophatism, the mystery of the being that was not created only for a fleeting life. If for Plotin, the mystical experience was perhaps only an ecstasy of the intellect, seeing the light of your own mind that was extending through Eros toward the One - having to wait until the true meeting - in the Areopagite mystical theory takes place a personal meeting manifesting itself through love and by being out of yourself in a biunique way, giving man the chance of deification.

Headnote

Abstract: The intention of this essay is to highlight the existence of a thrill that calls man to its existential fulfillment, which is to meet and to stay with God. Although the directions are different, depending on the way how Divinity is perceived - Christianity being based on Personal Trinity, the creation out of nothing, and the insurmountability between the created and the uncreated, and Plotinian philosophy being centred on the apophatic but impersonal One, and on the idea of man's kinship with the divine, because it originates from it - mysticism remains the path through which man expresses his apophatism, the mystery of the being that was not created only for a fleeting life. If for Plotin, the mystical experience was perhaps only an ecstasy of the intellect, seeing the light of your own mind that was extending through Eros toward the One - having to wait until the true meeting - in the Areopagite mystical theory takes place a personal meeting manifesting itself through love and by being out of yourself in a biunique way, giving man the chance of deification.

Keywords: mystic, apophatic, Personal God, created, uncreated, One, emanation, kinship.

"Human thinking working autonomous can be

an expression of the natural longing for God,

but not a way of reaching the absolute truth [...],

the limit of the being is the limit of knowledge."1

The present paper wishes to emphasize the calling that man has toward perfection, the longing toward the absolute that encourages him to search for something that is beyond this world. Will be presented two types of mystical theories, which at first sight may seem similar, the Plotinian and the Areopagite, a close analysis however will show them as two uneven parallel paths, with common things on portions, but which in the whole they offer an entire different perspective.

Both monasticism and mysticism, are not pure Christian vocations, but they are related to the characteristic of human nature, therefore they shall meet in various environments, and with different forms, that are not related to imitation. The way in which the mystics interpret the union with divinity arises from what they believe about God, and this faith is influenced by what they experience.2 Therefore, the mystic does not wish to learn something about God, but to become one with Him, this meaning that it can be from: an identity in the literal sense, absorption in God, until the union experienced as a perfection of love, while keeping identity.

In the Christian vision, starting on the thread of reason and living a virtuous life, man can have also certain hunches or approximations relating to the fundamental questions of life, the level difference between the being created and the uncreated - in the absence of Revelation - is however insurmountable in ascendant terms, therefore everything that is being put into theory, starting from man toward God, is a beneficent effort but imperfect and limited, whatever descends from God toward man, can bear the stamp of the sacrament, the impossibility of being trapped in concepts, is however unlimited and absolute, and the meeting of the soul with God, even though most of the times is initiated by man - whether he is a Christian or not - is not achieved unless the Lord answers.

The mystical feature of Platonism develops from the concept relating to the nature of the essentially spiritual nature of man, from the faith of his kinship with the divine, therefore the search of the soul to meet God is regarded as something natural, a climbing, a return in which he realizes which is his true condition.3 Plotinus frames his philosophy in Plato, especially as regards the issue of the soul's climbing up to One, being however deeply original, with a unifying vision on Plato's teachings and on the discussions generated there from over the centuries.

The Plotinian system can be addressed in two ways: regarded as a large hierarchical structure, or in an introspective way of the self. Three principles govern the hierarchy of Plotinus: the highest, absolutely simple, is the One or the Good, next is Nous (which cannot be translated correctly, as an approximation this is the Intellect, or the Intellectual Principle4) and the Soul. He speaks about an emanation, an overflowing in steps, "without the divinity to be diminished and according to a principle of necessity"5, the Intellect emerging from the One, the Soul from the Intellect, and the results of the emanation from the Soul are concrete forms of life, so that the emanation is a progress of the simplicity of the One, and the reverse movement is that of returning, of attracting all things towards the Good, the balance being kept by these processes of exiting and returning.6

Anything strives to return to the One, to the plenitude of existence, and this process takes place in the opposite direction, being a movement of desire, of the Eros, which in his turn is rooted in contemplation and intensifies through contemplation: "All aim toward contemplation [...] and reach it as best as they can according to their nature, managing to contemplate [...] some truly, others by imitation [...]"7 For Plotinus, the supreme thing is not the farthest, but the most inner thing, so that finding the One means finding yourself. "Our homeland is there where we came from and there is the Father. [...] you must leave all and not look any more [...] to wake up the vision which everyone has, but few use."8 The path of moral and intellectual purification, the katharsis, will bring peace "and will no longer be a fight in the soul"9, so that souls which were enticed by the pleasure of freedom tending toward the multiple and which "have forgotten God the Father, no longer know neither themselves nor the One"10, have the possibility to reach the realm of Nous. Here duality is still present, the discursive thinking is replaced with a more intuitive one and knowledge is given by the unity between the knower and the known, and although full of beauty, it is however a rational projection which sends to the One.11

Reaching downright ethereal through purification, from the realm of the Intellect, soul can not do more to reach the One, the initiative no longer belongs to him, although "only through a leap we can reach this One..."12 Everything occurs suddenly, without however to assume that the One - as not being aware of something beneath him - would be the one attracting the soul, and there occurs a passage ,,from himself into another"13 "becoming identical with the divine"14 and beyond the self awareness. It is a story of the experience that Plotinus himself had, at least four times in the time in which Porfir, his apprentice, knew him. The ecstasy is a reality of the union with the One, is beyond utterance "it fills his eyes with light [...] and the light itself is what you see"15 and consists, in a presence that goes beyond all knowledge,"16 no word can describe the extent and the attainment of this unknown One, only that for the divine and happy man the liberation comes through detaching himself from the pleasures from here, being "a run of the single toward The Single."17

For Plotin, the essence of the mysticism could be associated either with a purifying and solitary journey of the soul, which though related to the divine has forgotten his home and is running without fellow travelers and care for them, with an transcendent One and who is not aware of those seeking for him, without knowing or unburden their ascent. Only on the basis of these features, can be noted from the beginning the differences in substance, and the radical opposition against the Christian vision, for which: there is an ontological gap between the creature made from nothing, and God Uncreated with whom is not related (only in Jesus Christ the divine and the human nature are united without mixing), our ascension is facilitated by the descent of God through Incarnation, the aid and watch of God occur through the work of the grace, and the Christian life is characterized by catholicity, personal ascent but also by dedication. All these differences observed do not wish to minimize the effort of life, experience and true asceticism of Plotinus' life, nor to deny or minimize the experience and the joy he felt, but only to stress that it is possible that the ecstasy he experienced was not the encounter with God, but he saw the light of his own mind18, an ecstasy of the intellect that even the Christian ascetics attain, but without going beyond it, and for which they still have to wait.

St. Dionysius the Areopagite, or Pseudo-Dionysius, is a mysterious figure, about which neither the name nor the period in which he lived are known (centuries I or V-VI), important being however the substantial infusion of his teachings in the Christian mysticism. The Dionysian system - to which will be added later the teachings of St. Maximus the Confessor, and in the XIV-th century, those of Saint Gregory Palamas - makes the distinction between oυσια the incognizable divine (being), and Its manifestations (dynamic attributes or energies, δυναμ[varepsilon]ιsfgr;)19, the revealing energies which have inspired the divine names. The dynamic doctrine of Dionysius, which sets the trend of the Byzantine ideation, has not been picked-up in the West, nor understood. This is the reason why, paradoxically, the teaching mentioned, deciphered correctly will lead in the Eastern Christianity to the halting of Plato's Hellenism, or partially interpreted - in the West, will be the gate through which the neoplatonic elements will enter. It is often said about Dionysius that he is a platonician with a Christian feature, in Lossky's vision (to which I subscribe entirely) there is another decryption. In order to win in the arena of the thinking dominated by neoplatonism, this Christian thinker in disguised as a Neoplatonic, becomes a master of the method of the philosophy in question and by a victorious opposition, ends up being accused of parricide, because he used impiously what belonges to the Greeks against the Greeks."20

It starts from an act of faith, making not natural philosophy, but Christian philosophy21 called by N. Crainic trans churchianity22, in which the life of the entire Universe is seen as a participation in God, as an altar to worship Him, each thing created participating in the grace according to its ability given through creation, in an hierarchical order (heavenly and churchly, each being invested with order, science and action) which extends from the pure, angelic spirits, up to the inert matter. The light of the divine grace descends in cascade from the Father of Lights, "flooding in a graduated participation the hierarchical steps"23, which are not static and receive knowledge from the upper step and give it in their turn to the lower step. Under the burning and attracting love of God, Which "is neither something from those that are not, nor something from those that are"24, man - which also has an innate longing for the Creator - receives by the sacrifice of the Redeemer the chance to overcome the hierarchical step on which he finds himself, that one at the border of the material world with the spiritual one, in order to reach the seraphims through knowledge and ecstatic experience, in the third heaven, as Saint Paul says. Therefore, for Saint Dionysius, the mystic life is characterized by love and contemplative over awareness, and is called theosis25, deification.

In the Dionysian concept, he sees knowledge as a theandric act for Christianity - in different proportions human and divine - and although it is an insufficient knowledge (because only the one following the divine pattern is complete and belongs to God) this is not despised also, and this theory speaks about a cataphatic theology or through statements, and about an apophatic theology or through denials, both necessary, but the latter is more comprehensive and deeper. There is however the exception, unexpected, beyond the power of man, simple, immediate, which unites and following the divine pattern, the mystical contemplation. It is the subject of the short treatise of Mystical Theology of Dionysius and differs from any earthly knowledge, is not obtained neither with the eye of the vision nor with that of mind, it is a faculty superior to any intellectual operation whereas things are not lowered to the level of our understanding, but we leave ourselves, and stop any kind of activity and of common knowledge. As is not a substantial participation, yet real, mystical knowledge is not absolute, for we do not know the divine nature, but very high graces.26

It needs cleansing, prayer and love, "to give up also to the clean things, and the angelic ones, and also to the divine lights"27 and this path is compared to Moses climbing on Mount Sinai, climbing when after he has passed beyond the world in which you are seen and you see, has entered into the mysterious, over-bright Darkness of ignorance28, where it is about a mysterious union, "in which what is above seeing and knowledge, is seen and known by not seeing and unawareness, unable to be seen nor known."29

It can therefore be said that Saint Dionysius values knowledge of any kind, because through statements we understand the existence of God, by denials we feel Him with the purest part of our soul, mystical knowledge however is the highest, being the direct experience or experimentation of Him, being the participation over the centuries and over the place, to the eternal life, the deification.30

From those exposed until now, apart from the differences presented in a general way on page 4, the following are outlined:

Plotinus' God is not unknowable by nature, because when the inherent qualities of the being are removed by negations - i.e. multiplicity - is reached the absolute unity existing beyond the being, because the being is posterior to the One.31 For Dionysius, God is impossible to be known in nature - the creation ex nihilo being only a gift of the Revelation - and the ecstasy is when man leaves the being as such; at Plotinus is rather a reduction of the being to the absolute simplicity. For Dionysius the union with God is not identification such is for Plotinus, but the complete entry into Him, Which is beyond any opposition, as it is not unity but the cause of unity and of multiplicity, and this is the reason for which the Saint "glorifies the name of the Trinity, the most sublime name, which is above the name of the One."32 In this unifying contemplation, the divine and human love are at the maximum, Dionysius daring to say that God also leaves Himself, out of love for people: "the divine Eros is also ecstatic, not allowing those in love to be theirs, but of those they are in love with."33 The Eros is present at Plotinus also, but it only animates the being.

In conjunction with the differences in essence that exist between the Aeropagite and Plotinian mysticism, should however be mentioned also the real, confusing elements, which have given rise to the attempts to consider the Areopagite doctrine as a Platonician Trojan Horse, namely the kinship of expressions and the existence of a specific parallelism of themes. Beyond any resemblance or difference between Saint Dionysius and Plotinus, mysticism remains the path by which man manifests his apophatism, the mystery of the being that was not created only for a transitory life.

Footnote

1 Nichifor Crainic, The Course books on Mystic: Mystical Theology, German Mystic, Sibiu, Deisis Publishing House, 2010, pp. 395-396.

2 Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys, translated into Romanian by Elisabeta Voichita Sita, Sibiu, Deisis Publishing House, 2002, p. 13.

3 Ibidem , p. 15.

4 In MacKenna's translation, for Enneads, apud. Andrew Louth, cited work, p. 65.

5 Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Bucharest, All Publishing House, 2008, p. 420, Tome I.

6 Andrew Louth, cited work, p. 67.

7 Plotinus, Enneads III, 8, 1 apud. Andrew Louth, cited work, p. 67

8 Idem, Works I, translated in Romanian by Andrei Cornea, Bucharest, Humanitas Publishing House, 2003, Enneads I, 6, 8-9 p. 171

9 Ibidem, Enneads I, 2,5 , p. 430

10 Ibidem, Enneads V,1,1, p. 315

11 Andrew Louth, cited work, p. 77

12 Plotinus, Enneads V, 5,8, apud. Andrew Louth, cited work, p. 77

13 Andrew Louth, cited work, p. 78

14 Plotinus, Works I, Enneads IV, 8,1, p. 251

15 Idem, Enneads VI, 7, 36, apud. Andrew Louth, cited work, p. 77

16 Idem, Works I, Enneads VI, 9,4 , p. 293

17 Ibidem, 11, p. 311

18 Archimandrite Sophrony Sakarov, We Shall See Him As He Is, translated into Romanian by Raphael Noica, Bucharest, Sophia Publishing House, 2005, p. 248.

19 Vladimir Lossky, The Vision of God, translated into Romanian by Remus Rus, Bucharest, Publishing House of the Bible and Mission Institute of the Romanian Orthodox Church, 1995, p. 115.

20 Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, The Complete Works and the Scholias of Saint Maximus the Confessor, translated into Romanian by Dumitru Staniloae, Bucharest, Paideia Publishing House, 1996, Epistles, p. 259.

21 Nichifor Crainic, Holiness, Human Fulfillment, Iasi, Publishing House of the Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bukovina, 1993, p. 46.

22 Idem, The Course books on Mystic, p. 215.

23 Ibidem, p. 48.

24 Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, cited work, On Mystical Theology, p. 250.

25 Ibidem, On the Divine Names, p. 150.

26 Ibidem, On the Divine Names II, 6, p.141.

27 Ibidem, On Mystical Theology I, 3, p. 248.

28 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, translated into Romanian by Vasile Raduca, Bucharest, Bonifaciu Publishing House, 1998, p. 25.

29 Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, cited work, On Mystical Theology, p. 248.

30 Nichifor Crainic, The Course books on Mystic, p. 406.

31 Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 27.

32 Idem, The Vision of God, p. 105.

33 Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, cited work, On the Divine Names, p. 150.

References

REFERENCES

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Idem, (1993), Holiness, Human Fulfillment, Iasi, Publishing House of the Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bukovina.

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