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Thinker profile

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

Frames theology through hierarchy, divine names, negation, participation, and the ascent of creatures toward God.

Dates

late 5th-early 6th c.

Tradition

Greek Christian Neoplatonism

Core profile

Frames theology through hierarchy, divine names, negation, participation, and the ascent of creatures toward God.

Concepts to watch

Divine nameshierarchynegative theology

How to study this thinker

  1. 1Start with the basic problem this thinker is trying to solve.
  2. 2Name the concepts Aquinas receives, corrects, or resists.
  3. 3Return to Aquinas and ask how the borrowed insight is reordered.

Aquinas connection

Influence on Aquinas

Aquinas cites Dionysius often on divine names, hierarchy, angelic order, and the need to speak about God both affirmatively and negatively.

Aquinas responds

He receives Dionysian apophatic theology while preserving analogical predication, so negation purifies speech about God without making it empty.

Adjacent profiles

Previous thinkerAugustineJoins Platonist interiority with Christian doctrines of grace, illumination, evil as privation, and the restless desire for God.Next thinkerBoethiusTransmits logic and gives influential definitions of person, eternity, providence, and participation.