Biblical and Liturgical Symbols within the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis

by Paul Rorem

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Paul E. Rorem, Princeton Theological Seminary’s Benjamin B. Warfield Professor of Medieval Church History, holds an MDiv from Luther Theological Seminary, an STM from The Lutheran Theological Seminary, and a PhD from Princeton Seminary. An ordained Lutheran minister, he is interested in medieval church history and Pseudo-Dionysius. His courses cover the confessions and influence of St. Augustine, the Christian mystical tradition, medieval Christianity, and the spiritual and theological legacy of the Pseudo-Dionysian writings. He is editor of Lutheran Quarterly and Lutheran Quarterly Books.

Reviews

[Philemon - · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dionysius's importance can't be overstated, but his oeuvre is hard to make coherent sense of. Most of his works are organizational, concerned with ecclesiastical symbols, names, and hierarchy (a word he invented). His explicitly mystical work, Mystical Theology, laying the groundwork for Via Negativa as later expounded by Eriugena, the Cloud of Unknowing author, and Thomas Aquinas, among others, provides the context for his other works. In the return to God, the signs provide a way to avoid or divest the believer of inutile human concepts. But how?

Rorem's work takes a bottom-up approach, dealing with signs first and the mystical path later. I can't help feeling that a top-down approach, starting from the mystical experience and working down and back to the (anagogical) signs, might have been more effective. Whether a top-down method is actually doable in this case is another question; but it if the intention is to bring all of Dionysius's works into one true spiritual unity, more work, and perhaps a special kind of genius, may be needed.