José asked:

Hello my good friend.

I'm writing with a short question about a writer and philosopher who is mentioned in the New
Testamentby Paul in the book of Acts 17 when he is in Athens. Thank you very much.

============

I take it you mean Dionysius the Aeropagite (Acts 17:34). Dionysius is known as Pseudo-Dionysius,
because he was what we call today "a literary fraud." Philosophically he clarified what is called
"negative theology" and coined the term "mystical theology", both rather important movements in the
history of thought. Thomas Aquinas quotes him about 1,700 times in his writings and would surely
have known that his writings did not predate the early Councils of the Church, although it was
Erasmus in the 16th century who exposed the fraud, first discovered by the Italian humanist Lorenzo
Valla in the century before.

The writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite were unknown until the year 532. At this date
Innocent the Marionite was in conference with the Severians, followers of Severus of Antioch who a
Monophysite [the heresy that Christ had one nature not two]. The purpose of the colloquy was to
discuss differences between the two parties arising from statements of the Creed made at the fourth
Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451. Among a battery of authoritative citations for their positions,
the Severians quoted the apostolic authority of Dionysius the Areopagite against Innocent. Innocent's
Conference Report makes mention of this peculiar authority. It is the first he has heard of Dionysius
and the first time we too hear of him. A member of Innocent's delegation, Hypatius of Ephesus,
queried the Severians: "Those quotations that you claim to have come from the Blessed Dionysius
the Areopagite — how can you prove they are authentic, as you maintain? For if they do come from
him, they would not have been unknown to the Blessed Cyril."

Cyril of Alexandria (c.376-444) had never mentioned Dionysius. He should surely have done so had
Dionysius been the one associated with Paul, rather than a literary fraud. What Cyril did not know
about theology was scarcely to be known. But an authority as ancient and as well connected with St.
Paul as Dionysius was so great as to usurp the authority of Cyril himself.

The name of Dionysius the Areopagite began to resound through the world. In short, the writings of
Dionysius the Areopagite came to prominence through the Syrian and Arabian provinces of the
Eastern Church; areas dominated by Monophysitism and Nestorianism. There was every reason to
suppose that "Dionysius the Areopagite" was a tool of heretical propaganda.

John of Scythopolis was the first orthodox theologian to fire back at the heretics with their own
weapon. The 'divinising' or Monophysite tendencies of Dionysius' writings were read by him in such a
way that it seemed as if he uncannily anticipated the credal formulations of Chalcedon (451) by four
centuries.

[From Matthew Del Nevo The Theological ImaginationSheffield Academic Press, forthcoming.]

Matthew Del Nevo

http://www.sicetnon.com