Acts 17:34 tells how Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus council at Athens, believed when Paul preached there; tradition made him the first bishop of Athens, and he is honoured as a saint. Around 500 an unknown Christian writer, probably a monk in Syria, took his name and wrote as though he were Paul's disciple, addressing his works to Timothy and other figures of the apostolic age.
The writings he left, the Divine Names, the Mystical Theology, the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies and ten Letters, teach that God is beyond every name and concept. We praise him through the names Scripture gives, then pass beyond them into a divine darkness where he is known by unknowing. Creation and the church are ordered as hierarchies, through which God's light and love come down and lift creatures back to him.
Dionysius the Areopagite in the library (1 work)
- Dionysius the Areopagite: Works — c. 500; translation 1897–1899
The Divine Names, the Mystical Theology, the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies and the Letters: written about 500 under the name of Paul's Athenian convert, and read as an authority by East and West alike.