Neoplatonic Theurgy and
Dionysius the Areopagite*
GREGORY SHAW
Until recently, Neoplatonic theurgy has been defined by scholars as an attempt
to manipulate the gods through ritual, and its influence in late antique Platonic
circles has been interpreted as evidence for the decline of Greek rationality
caused in large part by the teachings of the fourth-century Syrian Platonist,
lamblichus. Although scholarly research on theurgy and lamblichus has now
corrected these misunderstandings, they have left their mark on related areas
of research; a notable example is the role of theurgy in the Christian liturgy of
Dionysius the Areopagite.
This essay argues that the distinction between lamblichean and Dionsyian
theurgy—asserted by leading theologians and scholars—is based on a
caricature of lamblichean theurgy. When lamblichean theurgy is properly
understood, the Christian theurgy of Dionysius may be seen as an example of
the same kind of theurgy that lamblichus defined in the De mysteriis. This
essay aims to refute the false distinction between “pagan” and Christian
theurgy and to suggest that such distinctions reflect more the apologetic
interests of scholars than an accurate reading of the evidence.
n. . . enlightened with the knowledge of visions, being both
consecrated and consecrators of mystical understanding, we shall
become luminous and theurgic, perfected and able to bestow
perfection. ”
Dionysius (EH 372B}
INTRODUCTION
Why are Christian theologians reluctant to admit that Dionysius was a
theurgist? Why do they resist seeing the liturgy as a theurgical rite? And
*1 would like to thank Stonehill College for a President’s Summer Grant to support
the preparation of this essay.
Journal of Early Christian Studies 7:4, 573-599 © 1999 The Johns Hopkins University Press
574 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
why is ir that the term theourgia and its cognates—which appear forty-
seven times in the Dionysian corpus—never appear in the Luibheid and
Rorem translation, but are explained away in the footnotes?1 To suggest
that Dionysius was a theurgist places one in. a volatile arena, for the
status of the Areopagite and the value of this work continue to be
matters of heated debate. Recently, Fr. Kenneth Wesche reaffirmed
Luther’s well-known censure that the Areopagite “platonizes more than
he Christianizes”2 and declares that ’‘we cannot share the view that his
chief inspiration was the Christian faith. . . . [for] the center of Dio-
nysius’ ‘theoria’ is not the christological confession of the Church, but
‘gnosis.’”3 Wesche maintains that Dionysius was so enthralled by
Neoplatonic gnosis that it -undercut his understanding of the Christian
faith,”4 5 6 diverted him from the saving work of Christ, and caused him to
embrace a dualistic Christianity that promoted clericalism? Wesche
concludes:
. . . because his [Dionysius’] thought is centered on gnosis, rather than on
the Incarnation, his thought leads on a subtly divergent path that radically
shifts the focus and distorts the real meaning of Christ.1'
In the eyes of Orthodox Christians like Wesche, Dionysius’ spirituality
was not truly orthodox because of the influence of Neoplatonism, spe-
cifically that of the fifth-century Neoplatonist Proclus; only when the
Dionysian writings have been corrected by the commentaries of Maxi-
mus the Confessor and John of Scythopolis do they reflect genuine prin-
ciples of Christian faith. In response to Wesche, Dionysius has been
1. Pseudo-Dtonysius: The Complete Works, translation by Colm Luibheid: fore-
word, notes, and translation collaboration by Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist Press,
1987). Ir should be noted that, while the translation includes helpful footnotes by
Rorem and an exhaustive index to biblical “allusions and quotations?’ it includes no
index of important Neoplatonic terms. All translations and citations in this essay have
been checked with the critical text of Dionysius, the Corpus Dionystacum I (the
Divine Names edited by В. M. Suchla) and II (other writings, including the letters,
edited hy H. Ritter and G. Heil; Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990, 1991). Citations will be
given the column and number of the Migne text (as appear in the Luibheid and Rorem
translation) and, when appropriate, the page and line numbers of the critical text in
parentheses.
2. Kenneth Paul Wesche, “Christological Doctrine and Liturgical Interpretation in
Pseudo-Dionysius,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 33 (19891: 44.
3. Ibid., 54.
4. Ibid., 68.
5. Ibid., 59.
6. Ibid., 73, my emphasis.
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 575
defended by Hieromonk Alexander Golitzin along with counter charges
that his accusers are ignorant of “Greek Christianity” and that our un-
derstanding of Dionysius generally has been hampered by a Protestant
bias. Golitzin, in his passionate and learned defense of the Areopagite,
forthrightly admits that scholarship on Dionysius—including his own—
reflects the “confessional presuppositions” and even the temperament
of individual scholars? With a figure as theologically seminal as the
Areopagite—long believed to be Paul’s convert (Acts 17.34)—this is not
surprising. Scholarship on Dionysius often seems to have the unspoken
agenda of trying to determine whether or not his teachings are in accord
with one’s preferred theology;7 8 9 One theme, however, seems to persist
throughout the polemics: the more Neoplatonic Dionysius appears, the
less acceptable. This, clearly, is the position of Wesche.10 The critique of
Neoplatonism as a merely cerebral spirituality incapable of penetrating
the mystery of the Incarnation has long been a topos among Christian
apologists. In a Christian apologetic context, too much Neoplatonism is
believed to alienate one from the central mystery of Christ, and this has
had significant consequences on Dionysian scholarship. Those who want
to preserve the Christian authority of the Areopagite must argue, with
Vladimir Lossky, that Dionysius’ dependence on the writings of the Neo-
platonists “is limited to outward resemblances which do not go to the
root of their teaching, and relate only to a vocabulary which was com-
mon to the age.”11 Andrew Louth, more recently, follows Lossky, noting
that all educated men of the fifth and sixth centuries—Christian or
pagan—“shared a culture,” which accounts for Dionysius sharing many
7. Alexander Golitzin, “On the Other Hand,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly
34 (1990): 321-22. The Protestant bias has also come to influence Orthodox and
Roman Catholic scholars (see below, n. 10).
8. Alexander Golitzin, “The Mysticism of Dionysius Areopagita: Platomst or
Christian,” Mystics Quarterly 3 (1993): 98.
9. Golitzin. “On the Other Hand," 306, n. 7.
10. See n. 3. In a further response to Wesche, Golitzin maintains a far more nu-
anced position, arguing that the well-known distinction between a “biblical” and a
“platonizing" Christianity is questionable. This distinction. Golitzin says, “echoes
altogether too clearly the reaction of Roman Catholic and Orthodox scholars earlier
this century to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century thesis of a ‘Helle-
nized’—and therefore corrupted—Christianity associated in particular with Adolf
von Harnack.” See Golitzin, “Hierarchy Versus Anarchy? Diouyius Areopagita,
Symeon the New Theologian, Nicetas Stethatos, and Their Common Roots in Ascet-
ical Tradition.” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38 (1994): 152-53 n. 95.
11. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 32.
576 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
terms with Neoplatonists. Yet, like Lossky, Louth argues that the
Areopagite’s spirituality was distinctively Christian, not Neoplatonic.12
If being too Neoplatonic diminishes Dionysius, then his practice of
theurgy presents a far more serious problem. Since the time of Augustine,
theurgy has been condemned by Christians as a diabolical attempt to
converse with demons and manipulate the gods?3 Today theurgy is not
only considered anathema to the Church but to most who value rational
thought. In an article that continues to shape scholarly thinking, E. R.
Dodds maintained that theurgy was promoted by the fourth-century
Neoplatonist lamblichus, a “superficial” thinker whose divine work
{theion ergon) was simply an Oriental superstition that appealed to
human weakness. According to Dodds: “As vulgar magic is commonly
the last resort of the personally desperate, of those whom man and god
have alike failed, so theurgy became the refuge of a despairing intelligen-
tsia which already felt ‘la fascination de Pabtme?”14 15 16 For Dodds and an
entire generation of scholars, theurgy exemplified the “failure of nerve”
and decline of the rationality that we admire in the classical Greeks and
in ourselves.
Among Christians specifically, the question of a Dionysian (and there-
fore Christian) theurgy touches a nerve that still separates Protestant
from Orthodox and Roman Catholic scholars. Orthodox scholars like
Golitzin, who accept the Areopagite as representative of their tradition,
see a Protestant bias in the scholarship of those, like Paul Rorem, who
say the elements of the Eucharist for Dionysius were merely symbols of
something to be apprehended intellectually.Protestant scholars like
Rorem, on the other hand, are reluctant to admit that Dionysius at-
tributed to the sacraments any kind of “magical” efficacy, for that would
taint him with the superstition of imbuing material objects with divine or
“theurgical” power?6 In sum, the charge of guilt by association with
Neoplatonism, in either its philosophical or its theurgical aspects,
continues to shape our scholarship on Dionysius.
If Dionysius practiced theurgy, it would present a serious challenge to
12. Louth, Denys the Areopagite (Wilton-. Morehouse-Barlow, 19891, 23-24.
13. Augustine, City of God, Book 10.
14. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1973), 288.
15. Golitzin, “.Mysticism'' 106. Louth’s statement that the historical divine acts are
“recalled” in the Eucharist is subject to the same critique.
16. Paul Rorem, “The Uplifting Spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius,” in Christian
Spirituality, ed. Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff (New York: Crossroad,
1986), 134.
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 577
his “orthodoxy,” for to have been a theurgist in the Neoplatonic sense
would condemn the Areopagite in the eyes of all scholar-apologists. It is
not surprising, therefore, that his theurgy has been described by two
leading Dionysian scholars, Andrew Louth and Paul Rorem, as funda-
mentally different from Neoplatonic, i.e. “pagan,” theurgy.1” Before we
can evaluate this assessment, however, we must know' more about Neo-
platonic theurgy and how it was practiced. In this essay I hope to show
that Rorem and Louth’s distinction is based on a misunderstanding of
lamblichean theurgy. Further, I hope to demonstrate that Dionysius’
understanding and practice of theurgy, while distinctively Christian, wras
derived from the principles of lamblichus’ theurgy as well as from his
teachings on the soul. Finally, although I agree that Dionysian (Chris-
tian) theurgy should be distinguished from lamblichean theurgy, I will
argue that the distinction ought to be based on grounds other than those
proposed by Rorem and Louth.
I.	IAMBLICHEAN THEURGY
As noted, Dodds’ characterization of theurgy as a corrupt and supersti-
tious form of Platonism still carries a great deal of influence among
scholars, lamblichus’ defense of theurgy in the De mysieriis was dis-
missed by Dodds as “a manifesto of irrationalism, an assertion that the
road to salvation is found not in reason but in ritual.”17 18 19 For a Victorian
rationalist like Dodds, lamblichean theurgy was nothing more than a
superstitious attempt to contact spirits and manipulate gods, practices
not unlike those seen by Dodds in the spiritualist salons of early
twentieth-century Europe.jy It is understandable, therefore, that those
who accept Dodds' assessment would want to separate Dionysius’ the-
urgy from the misguided and possibly nefarious practices of lamblichus.
Curiously, however, Dodds’ definition of theurgy cannot be found in the
writings of lamblichus. Perhaps the brilliance of Dodds as a classicist and
historian of ideas led many scholars to accept his assessment of theurgy
without reading the De mysieriis or, if they read it, to replace the philo-
sophical context in which it was written with the twentieth-century
17. Andrew Louth, “Pagan Theurgy and Christian Sacramentalism,” JTS n.s. 37
(1986): 432-38; Paul Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols Within the Pseudo-
Dionysian Synthesis (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute, 1984), 104-11.
18. Dodds, Greeks and the Irrational, 287.
19. Ibid., 288, 296-97; cf. E. R. Dodds, Missing Persons (Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1977), 55.
578 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
issues that concerned Dodds?0 Research into lamblichus and theurgy in
the last thirty years has yielded much greater insight into later Neo-
platonism and has now determined that Dodds’ evaluation of theurgy
was wrong?1 lamblichus clearly states throughout the De mysteriis that
theurgy was not an attempt to influence the gods, not only because it
would have been impious but impossible. lamblichus is unambiguous on
this issue precisely because the De mysteriis was written to address it. In
response to the charge from his former teacher Porphyry that theurgic
invocations attempt to coerce the gods, lamblichus replies:
This sort of invocation does not draw the impassible and pure [Gods] down
towards what is subject to passions and impure; on the contrary it makes
us, who through generation are horn subject to passions, pure and
unchangeable?2
Despite its apparent meaning, an invocation does not call the gods to us,
it calls us to the gods. xAn invocation, lamblichus says,
20.	Those who have adopted Dodds’ characterization of theurgy as an attempt to
manipulate, influence, or coerce the gods are as impressive as they are diverse. They
include the Jungian/archetypal psychologist James Hillman, Healing Fiction (Dallas:
Spring Publications. 19831, 78-79; scholar of Jewish mysticism Moshe Idel. Kabbalah:
Neip Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 157 ft, Idel’s work in
particular has stimulated an entire generation of scholarship on kabbalistic “theurgical”
practices despite the fact that Idel uses Dodds’ twentieth-century definition of theurgy,
not lamblichus’!; Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western
Mysticism, vol. 1 (New York: Crossroad,1994), 57, 172.
21.	Jean Trouillard, “La theurgie,” in L'un et I’dme selon Proclos (Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1972). 171-89; lamblichi tn Platonis Dialogos Commentanorum Fragmenta,
tr., edited, with commentary by John Dillon (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973); B. D. Larsen,
Jamblique de Chaicis: Exegete et philosophe (Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1972);
A, C. Lloyd, “The Later Neoplatonists,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek
and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A, H. Armstrong iCambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1967), 269-325; Carlos Steel, The Changing Self: A Study on the
Soul in Later Neoplatonism: lamblichus, Damascius and Priscianus, tr. S. Haasl
(Brussels: Paleis der Academien, 1978); Andrew Smith, Porphyry’s Place in the Neo-
platonic Tradition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). 81-99; Anne Sheppard,
“Proclus’ Attitude to Theurgy,” CQ 32 11982): 212-24; A. Sheppard, “Theurgy,'’
Oxford Classical Dictionary (1995); Gregory Shaw, “Rituals of Unification in the
Neoplatonism of lamblichus,” Traditio 41 (1985): 1-28; idem. Theurgy and the Soul:
The Neoplatonism of lamblichus (University Park: Penn State Press, 1995); Garth
Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 131—41; Polymnia Athanassiadi,
“Dreams, Theurgy and Freelance Divination: The Testimony of lamblichus,” JRS 83
(1993): 115-30.
22.	The standard edition is Jamblique: Les mysteres d’Egypte, trans, and ed. E. des
Places (Pans: Les Belles Lettres. 1966). References to the De mysteriis will use the
Parthey pagination of des Places' text and will be noted as DM. DM 42.2-5 (modified
from Fowden’s translation, Egyptian Hermes, 133).
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 5?9
does not, as the name (prosklesis\ 42.6) seems to indicate, incline the
intellect of rhe Gods to men, but according to the truth . . . the invocation
makes the intelligence of men fit to participate in the Gods, elevates it to
the Gods, and harmonizes it with them through orderly persuasion.
(DM 42.9-15)
Tf Dodds was wrong, and his spiritualist context has been inappropri-
ately applied to theurgy, then what was the hieratic Neoplatonism of
lamblichus, and what issues did it address?
The scion of a family of Syrian priest-kings, lamblichus had been a
student of the Pythagorean Anatolius and later studied with Porphyry in
Rome where he was initiated into Plotinian Platonism.23 lamblichus,
however, felt that Porphyry and his teacher Plotinus had diverged from
traditional Platonic and Pythagorean teachings by inflating the powers of
the human soul and suggesting that a “higher’’ part of the soul never
descends into this world or the body. The Plotinian soul, therefore, could
withdraw in contemplation to reach its higher, undescended essence
without the outside support of religious ritual. The consequences of such
a belief are significant both cosmologically and socially,24 25 and, in re-
sponse, lamblichus developed a psychological theory and a soteriological
praxis in sharp contrast to the positions taken by his predecessors,
lamblichus argued that even the highest part of the soul descends into a
body and is therefore far more subject to corporeal experience than
Plotinus and Porphyry had allowed.23 For lamblichus, the human soul, as
defined in Plato’s Timaeus, unknowingly projects its divine logoi outside
itself during embodiment and is thereby sewn into the fabric of the
material world. Although divine and immortal, the embodied soul
experiences a fundamental change unique among immortal entities:
23, For a biographical ottrline. see John Dillon. “lamblichus of Chalicis,” ANRW
II.16.2 (1987): 863-78.
24. Cosmologically, it negates the role of the cosmos in the soul's paideia-, socially,
it condemns the common man to this “lower” cosmos, leaving salvation in the hands
of the philosophical elite. It should be noted, however, that despite Plotinus’
condemnation of matter as “evil itself” lEnnead 1.8.3.39-401 or his description of the
soul as essentially undescended (1.1.12.25-29; 1V.3.12.5-6). he was nor as anncosmic
as lamblichus’ polemical writings on the soul might suggest. In fact. lamblichus’
theurgy might best be understood as an attempt to secure the vision of Plotinus by
grounding it in the experiences of the embodied soul. See G. Shaw, “Eros and
Arirhmos: Pythagorean Theurgv in lamblichus and Plotinus,” Ancient Philosophy 19
(1999): 124-25.
25. This crucial difference between lamblichean and Plotinian Platonism was
pointed out by A, C. Lloyd, “The Later Neoplatonists," in Armstrong, Cambridge
History. See also Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 1-15. 61-69, For the soteriological
consequences of accepting the soul as embodied see Shaw, “Theurgy as Demiurgy:
lamblichus’ Solution co the Problem of Embodiment,” Dionysius 12 (19881: 37-59.
580 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
human souls must become mortal and subject to death. According to
lamblichus,
the soul is a mean, not only between the divided and undivided, the
remaining and proceeding, the noetic and irrational, but also between the
ungenerated and generated. . . . Wherefore, that which is immortal in the
soul is filled completely with mortality and no longer remains only
immortal, The ungenerated part of the soul somehow becomes generated
just as the undivided part of the soul becomes divided.26
The embodied soul, lamblichus says, “becomes a stranger to itself”27 and
once exiled from its own immortality, the soul must receive assistance
from the gods to recover its lost divinity.28
lamblichus’ complex and paradoxical psychology reflected the mystery
and paradox of One itself as it unfolds into its “other”: the multiplicity
of Beings. While this self-inversion causes no rupture among Higher
Beings, whose essences are immediately reflected and returned by their
images, human souls become immersed in a medium that does not allow
for their immediate reflection and return.29 Their divinity may be re-
covered only through the medium of mortal bodies and as integral parts
of the natural world. Therefore, in theurgy the divine and mathematical
proportions (logoi) of the soul are recovered only when the soul ritually
appropriates their correspondences (analogoi) in Nature. For lamblichus
the cosmos was a living temple, a vast theophany, where the soul pro-
gressively recovered its divinity in the process of unifying itself with the
divine powers revealed in the material world. An essential element in
every theurgic ritual, therefore, was the correspondence between the
objects used in the rite and their analogues in the soul: the outer objects,
imbued with divine power, awakened correspondences within the soul,
provided that the soul was able to receive them and had the capacity to
contain their power. In effect, the disorienting flood of sensation de-
scribed in the Timaeus (44) was appropriated and redirected in rituals
26. Simplicius (Priscianus?) In libros Anstotehs de anima commentaria [DA]
89.35-37; 90.21-24 in CAG 9 ed. M. Hayduck (Berlin: G. Reimeri, 1882).
27. DA 223-31: heterousthai pros beauten.
28. The paradox of embodiment for the lamblichean soul has been brilliantly
examined by Carlos Steel, Changing Seif.
29. That all “real beings” descended by producing images of themselves in ocher
things was a principle articulated by Plotinus {Enn. Ш 6.17.12). For a discussion of
this see Pierre Hadoc, Porphyre et Victorinas II (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1968),
330—43; for its expression in lamblichus see Simplicius, In cat. 374.6-376.19; Steel,
Changing Self, 62; John Finamore, lamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the
Soul (Chico: Scholars Press, 1985), 11-27.
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 581
that effected the soul’s return. The material cosmos and sensate experi-
ences were thereby transformed from disorienting obstacles into theurgie
icons capable of uniting the soul with the gods.
The soul’s journey to the One, therefore, incorporated the daimonic
urges and images which bound the soul to the body, yet, lamblichus
argued, since the rulers of these daimons were gods, the proper ritual use
of their material images allowed the soul to enter directly into their
power. lamblichus maintained that the release of this power was a divine
activity, not human; in a word, it was theurgy, the activity of the gods. As
souls were progressively freed from their embodied confusion they em-
ployed ritual objects that were less densely material until, very rarely, a
soul performed entirely immaterial forms of ritual worship (DM 226.9-
13; 230.15-19). Again, the inner/outer correspondence determined the
efficacy of the theurgie rite. As lamblichus put it: “Each attends to his
sacrifice according to what he is, not according to what he is not;
therefore the sacrifice should not surpass the proper measure of the one
who performs the worship” (DM 220.6-9). The kind of theurgie rite one
performed had to be coordinated with one’s spiritual capacity. Intensely
alienated souls required a denser and more material rite, while more
unified souls performed a less material form of worship.
The most distinguishing characteristic of lamblichus’ Platonism was
his doctrine of the incarnate soul and its correlate, that the soul was
unable to effect or to comprehend its own deification; this was accom-
plished only by the gods in theurgie rites. lamblichus explains:
Intellectual understanding docs not connect theurgists with divine beings,
for what would prevent those who philosophize theoretically from having
theurgie union with the Gods? But this is not true, rather it is the perfect
accomplishment of ineffable acts, religiously performed and beyond all
understanding, and it is the power of ineffable symbols comprehended by
the Gods alone, that establishes theurgical union. ... In fact, these very
symbols, by themselves, perform their own work, without our thinking. . . _
(DM 96.17-97.6)
Although lamblichus sometimes describes theurgical union as noesis
or gnosis, he was careful to distinguish theurgical gnosis and noesis from
its human correlates. Theurgy was always the work of the gods, not of
man.30
30. for example, lamblichus refers to the soul’s ‘‘innate knowledge” (emphutos
gnosis} of the gods (DM 7.14) and then says that “in truth, our contact with the gods
is not knowledge because knowledge is always separated from its object." and
theurgical union transcends the duality of knowing (DM 8.3-5).
582 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
II.	DIONYSIAN AND lAMBLICHEAN THEURGY
In his groundbreaking study of the Dionysian liturgy, Paul Rorem
presents persuasive evidence that lamblichus’ theory of theurgy influenced
the Areopagite. There is no patristic precedent, Rorem argues, for Dio-
nysius dividing worshipers into three classes: 1) those who worship with
the aid of obscure (material) images; 2) those who need no material aids
at all; and 3) “our hierarchy,” which stands as a “mean between
extremes” and thus uses both material and immaterial forms of wor-
ship.” Rorem says that Dionysius borrowed this threefold division from
lamblichus, who had distinguished three classes of souls and three forms
of worship in the De mysteriis?1 lamhlichus* divisions reflect his under-
standing of the different levels of thcurgic capacity in human souls.
Accordingly his divisions are: 1) the great “herd” who follow fate and
employ a material form of worship; 2) the rare souls who have risen to
the level of the divine Nous and who practice an immaterial form of
worship; and 3) those souls between the extremes who practice both
material and immaterial forms of worship (DM 224.6-225.10). Rorem
also credits lamblichus for influencing Dionysius’ unique interpretation
of the liturgy. Rather than typologically correlating the actions of the
liturgy to events in Jesus’ life and death—as was standard patristic
practice—Dionysius relates liturgical actions to timeless and intelligible
realities. This, Rorem notes, is precisely how lamblichus interpreted
Egyptian theurgic rites, encouraging his readers—as Dionysius did
later—to elevate themselves to the “intelligible truth” and to abandon
the merely visible or aural impressions.31 32 33
Rorem explains that, although Dionysius adopted lamblichus’ triadic
division of worship, he made significant changes. The Areopagite dis-
tinguished the material order from the intermediate according to the
mythic chronology of the Church where chronological priority is
equated with spiritual immaturity. Prior to Christ we lived under the Old
Law, and the divine was veiled under obscure images which nevertheless
foreshadowed the divine work, or theurgy, of Christ (EH 432B). To
worship through the “sacred pictures of the scriptures” (EH 432B),
Dionysius says, is appropriate for those bound by greater materiality and
multiplicity. After the advent of Christ, the less material choreography of
31. Rorem, Symbols, 106-7; cf. Ecclesiastical Hierarchy [EH] 501C, see Luibheid
and Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysts, 234 n. 146; Celestial Hierarchy [CH] 121D-124D,
Luibheid and Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysis, 146—47.
32. Rorem, Symbols, 108-9.
33. Ibid.
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 583
the Christian liturgy represents a kind of worship which Dionysius says
“is both celestial and of the Law for it occupies a place half way between
the two opposites [of spiritual and material worship]” (EH 501D).
Celestial worship—corresponding to the purely immaterial theurgy of
lamblichus—was practiced bv angels, Dionysius says, not by mortals/4
For the Christian community at the intermediate level, which Dionysius
refers to as “our hierarchy,” the theurgies of Christ are revealed in the
liturgy of the Church.
While 1 agree with Rorem’s analysis, I believe it can be pressed further.
I would suggest that the differences between lamblichus and Dionysius
on the orders of worship reflect the differences in their respective world-
views. lamblichus situated himself within the Pythagorean/Platonic myth
where, as described in the Timaeus, the cosmos is rooted in a divine
beneficence that continually reveals itself in mathematical proportions.
These divine ratios unfold into the heavenly cycles, the seasonal rhythms,
and are eventually crystalized into the four geometric elements that sus-
tain all material bodies.''3 Dionysius, by contrast, was situated within the
biblical myth and chronology celebrated by the Church?6 This included
a divinely given world rejected by souls who fall prey to the devil,
followed by the descent of a redeemer who enters the world to offer
salvation from demons through the rites of the Church. The lamblichean
soul was also “fallen,” but this was caused by the disorienting experience
of embodiment that was necessary to the soul’s mediating function.
Significantly, while the status of the material cosmos for Christians was
ambiguous or demonic, for lamblichus the cosmos was esteemed as a
living theophany, a “liturgy” choreographed by the Demiurge and built
into the substance and patterns of nature?7 Material theurgy for 34 35 36 37
34. Dionysius' divergence from lamblichus as regards “celestial worship” (immate-
rial theurgy) may be nuanced by the fact that lamblichus says souls who perform the
noeric/immarerial theurgy—“the rarest of all things”—are. themselves, “most rare”
{DM 219.14-1 5; 228.2-3), and this immaterial worship comes only at the culmina-
tion of one’s life (228.5-11). Further, lamhichus explains that these rare and most
blessed theurgists are elevated to the rank of angels (69.12-14). Significantly. Dio-
nysius designates the bishop (hierarch) an “angel” because of his likeness to angels
and his ability to transmit divine power iCH 293A). Thus, immaterial theurgy for
both lamblichus and Dionysius is performed by angels or angelic souls.
35. Timaeus 53c-55c.
36. Dionysius refers to this sacred history as a record of “theurgies,” i.e., the
actions of the divine “for us” (EH 440BC).
37. Dionysius also participated in the Platonic-Pythagorean myth but, unlike
lamblichus, he viewed it through the fall/apocalypse/redeemer mythology of the
Church.
584 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
lamblichus, therefore, included the use of natural objects such as stones,
plants, herbs, seeds, animals, and other tokens (sunthemata) capable of
awakening the soul to its participation in the divine.58 The background
for lamblichean theurgy was the creative activity of the gods in. nature;
for Dionysius it was the activity of Christ as recorded by rhe Church. The
consequences of this difference will be discussed later,
lamblichus’ psychology of the divided soul may well have influenced
Dionysius’ understanding of material symbols. According to lamblichus,
while heavenly beings possess immediate access to the divine—demon-
strated by their circular (noetic) movement—embodied souls move rec-
tilinearly and must proceed “outside” themselves to reach the unity of
Nous.38 39 Dionysius similarly contrasts the circular movement of divine
intelligences, who have immediate access to the divine, with the rectilin-
ear movement of human souls who must proceed outside themselves to
be “uplifted by external things.”40 Both lamblichus and Dionysius main-
tain that the dividedness of human souls requires multiple and material
forms of worship—corresponding to the soul’s divisions—“until we are
brought as far as we can into the unity of deification.”41 The hieratic use
of sensate imagery, essential to Neoplatonic theurgy, was thus also
essential to Dionysian theurgy, but Dionysius draws his symbols from
the scriptures and the liturgy, not from nature. lamblichean theurgy is
thus narrowed by Dionysius into an ecclesiastical context, but in both
cases material symbols reveal the immaterial presence of the divine,
lamblichus declares that “the gods produce signs through nature which
serve them in the work of generation. . . .”42 Through the work of
attendant daimones, the gods manifest their intentions and communicate
their ineffable presence symbolically through “particular bodies, ani-
mals, and everything in the world. . . .”43 For Dionysius, however, this
presence is revealed specifically through the material symbols of the
liturgy. He says:
38. DM 233.7-16.
39. In Tim., frag. 49, Dillon, lamblichi Chalctdensis-, on the importance of noetic
circularity for lamblichus see Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 89-91.
40. Divine Names [DN] 705B; (Suchla: 154.4).
41- EH 373B; (Heil/Ritrer: 65.12-13), tr. by Luihheid and Rorem, modified.
42. DM 135.14.
43. DM 136.2-3. lamblichus explains that the function of daimones is to give
concrete expression to the ‘‘good will” of the gods, including the binding of souls to
particular bodies (DM 67.15-68.1?, cf. Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 130-33.
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 585
It is not possible for the human intellect to be lifted up to the immaterial
mimesis and contemplation of the heavenly hierarchies unless it makes use
of the material guide proper to it. The visible beauties [of the liturgy] are
signs of the invisible beaut)', the beautiful odors of incense represent the
diffusion of the intelligible, and the material lights are icons of the
immaterial gift of light. . . . Order and rank [of the clergy] here below are a
sign of the harmonious ordering [of the soul] toward divine things, and the
reception of the most divine Eucharist [an icon] of participation in Jesus.
And as many things as are given to heavenly beings transcendentally
(huperkosmios), are given to us symbolically.44
Another lamblichean influence may be detected in Dionysius’ impera-
tive to complete one’s material worship through biblical imagery prior co
participation in the liturgy. Dionysius cautions catechumens not to pro-
ceed to the intermediate rites of “our hierarchy” before completing their
“incubation in the paternal scriptures.” Should they fail to complete
their material worship, catechumens would emerge from baptism into
“our hierarchy” like “still-born fetuses” and receive no benefit from the
liturgy.45 In the De mysteriis lamblichus similarly insists that immaterial
theurgies should not be engaged before one has completed all rites to the
material gods. He explains:
According to the art of the priests, it is necessary to begin sacred rites from
the material Gods. For the ascent to the immaterial Gods will not otherwise
take place. (DM 217.8-11)
Failure to perform the material rites puts the soul at odds both with
material daimones and with the bodily instincts and passions that cor-
respond to them. Theurgists ascended to the noetic gods only by assim-
ilating themselves first to “everything in the world.” As lamblichus put
it, “the ascent to the One is not possible unless the soul coordinates itself
to the All and, with the All, moves toward the universal principle of all
things.”415 Souls who have not yet coordinated their passions with the
powers of the natural world must complete the material theurgies or
“they will utterly fail to attain immaterial or material blessings. . . .”47
On the other hand, lamblichus says that
586 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
he who celebrates all these powers and offers to each gifts that are pleasing
and honors thar are as similar to them as possible, will always remain
secure and infallible since he has properly completed, perfect and whole, the
receptacle of the divine choir.44
The lamblichean theurgist who becomes the receptacle of the divine
choir by bringing his or her soul into correspondence with the theurgic
powers of nature seems to have been the model for the Dionysian
hierarch. “If you talk of hierarchy,” Dionysius says, “you are referring in
effect to the arrangement of all the sacred realities. Thus, whoever says
‘hierarch’ indicates an inspired and divine man learned in all sacred
knowledge, and in whom his own hierarchy is completely perfected and
made known.”48 49 If one accepts Golitzin’s argument that the bishop must
bring the “interior” hierarchy—within his soul—into correspondence
with the outer hierarchy revealed in the liturgy, then we see a Christian
transposition of the principles of lamblichean theurgy. For both Dionysius
and lamblichus the human soul is transformed and deified in theurgic
rites and in the same way. the powers of the soul are brought into cor-
respondence with divine archetypes by means of their symbolic icons.
Is Dionysian theurgy, then, a specifically Christian expression of
lamblichean theurgy? As Rorem has demonstrated, Dionysius borrowed
his triadic division for worship from lamblichus. Indeed, the triads and
mean terms that can be found throughout the Dionysian corpus are also
borrowed—at least indirectly—from the Syrian Neoplatonist.50 lamblichus’
rationale for the theurgic use of material symbols is adopted by Dio-
nysius, as is lamblichus’ imperative that one must complete material rites
before proceeding to less material theurgies. It would seem that Dionysius
simply adapted the principles and some of the terminology of lamblichus’
psychology and theurgy to complete his hieratic vision of the Church/1
In light of the evidence it is hard not to see Dionysius as kind of
48. DM 229.3-7.
49. EH 373C; (Heil/Ritter: 66.2-5). See Golitzin’s translation and comments on
this passage in ‘‘Hierarchy Versus Anarchy?” 148.
50. That lamblichus was responsible for introducing the mean term and triadic
structures into Neoplatonic vocabulary see E. R. Dodds, Proclus: The Elements of
Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1933] 1992), xxi-xxii.
51- Consider, for example, Dionysius’ use of the term snnthema to describe the
“solid food” and the “table” used in the celebration of the Eucharist (Letter 9
[1Ю9А, 1112AJ; Heil/Ritter: 200.12; 203.7). Sunthema was a technical term in the
Chaldean Oracles to denote the hidden names of the gods that allow theurgists to
ascend to the divine; see The Chaldean Oracles, text, translation and commentary by
Ruth Majercik (Leiden: Brill, 19891, 141. The term appears throughout the De
mysteriis; see Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 48-50, 26”. For other theurgical terms in
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 587
“Christian lamblichus'’ who succeeded—where lamblichus himself had
failed—in building a theurgic society/2
III.	WHO IS THE SUBJECT OF THE ERGON THEOU?
Despite the wealth of evidence pointing to an lamblichean influence on
Dionysius, Paul Rorem—who is largely responsible for uncovering this
evidence—maintains that Dionysian theurgy was fundamentally differ-
ent from the theurgy of lamblichus. Rorem acknowledges that Dionysius’
use of the term theurgy derived from lamblichus but claims that the
Areopagite transformed its meaning. He writes-.
Our author used the term “theurgy” to mean “work of God,” not as an
objective genitive indicating a work addressed to God (as in lamblichus, e.g.
de Mysterits I, 2, 7:2-6) but as a subjective genitive meaning God’s own
work . . . especially in the incarnation.-3
Another important difference, Rorem says, is that while lamblichus be-
lieved that the theurgical symbols themselves elevated the soul, for Dio-
nysius “the uplifting does not occur by virtue of the rites or symbols by
themselves but rather in their interpretation. . . .”* 52 53 54 55
Andrew Louth accepts Rorem’s distinctions, but with some qualifica-
tions. Like Rorem, Louth characterizes Neoplatonic theurgy as if it were
an objective genitive so that the ergon theou is “a work concerned with
the gods: human beings accomplished a work which affected the divine
realm,”-4 yet Louth then seems to nuance (or contradict) his point, say-
ing that lamblichus did not believe the gods were affected by human,
actions but that “theurgic action made humans responsive to the di-
vine.”56 With Rorem, Louth agrees that the ergon theou for Dionysius is
the Dionysian corpus see H. D. Saffrey, “New Objective Links Between the Pseudo-
Dionysius and Proclus,” Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, ed. Dominic O’Meara
(Norfolk, VA: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1982). 64-75. 246-48.
52. On this suggestion, see the very interesting essay by John Rist, “Pseudo-
Dionysius, Neoplatonism and the Weakness of the Soul,” From Athens to Chartres:
Neoplatonism and Medieval Thought, ed. H. J. Westra (Leiden: Brill, 1.992), 144-45.
53. Lubheid and Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, Si n. 11. Cf. Rorem, Symbols, 14-15.
and Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to
Their Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 120.
54. Rorem, Symbols, 116.
55, Louth. Denys, 73.
56. Ibid., 74. Rorem also explains that “theurgic invocations do not actually call
down the gods but rather elevate the human soul toward the divine. . . .” Symbols,
108.
588 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
a subjective genitive, the work of god, specifically the divine works of the
incarnate Christ.57 He maintains that for Dionysius the term theourgia
“seems never to be used of religious rituals”58 but refers only to the
“historical divine acts recalled in liturgical celebration.”59 Concerning
the anagogic power of theurgical symbols, Louth argues chat, although
for Dionysius generally it is our interpretation of symbols and not the
symbols themselves that elevates the soul, there are significant exceptions
as, for example, when Dionysius says that many of the mysteries of the
sacraments are beyond our understanding (EH 568A).60
Rorem refers to the De mysteriis (1.2; 7.2-6) to support his claim that
lamblichean theurgy was an objective genitive, a “work addressed to
God” and not “God’s own work,” yet the passage cited by Rorem merely
describes lamblichus' methodology in responding to Porphyry’s ques-
tions about theology, theurgy, and philosophy. lamblichus says:
We will explain to you appropriately what is germane to all questions: we
will answer theological topics theologically, theurgical topics theurgically,
and together with you we will examine philosophical issues. (DM 7.2-6)
One must assume that Rorem erred in citing this passage, for there is
nothing in it that supports his contention that the ergon tbeou for
lamblichus was an objective genitive, that is, a human activity concern-
ing and directed to the gods.61
Annick Charles-Saget has recently analyzed the components of the
term “theurgy” (theos/ergon) in the De mysteriis, focusing precisely on
the “question of the subject of the ergon”62 Charles-Saget argues that,
for Jambfichus, the subject of the ergon cannot be a hnman being be-
cause of the profound change suffered by the soul in its embodiment, or
as John Rist recently put it, because of the “weakness of the soul.”63 To
57. Ibid., 74; Andrew Louth, “Pagan Theurgy,” 434.
58. Ibid., 434.
59. Ibid., 435.
60. Ibid., 437-38.
61, Andrew Smith has discussed the passage cited by Rorem, “lamblichus’ Views
on the Relationship of Philosophy to Religion in De Mysteriis," The Divine
lamblichus: Philosopher and Man of Gods, ed. H. J. Blumenthal and G. Clark
(London: Bristol Classical Press, 1993), 74-86. and explains that lamblichus makes
“constant use of discursive argument” on theurgical issues (78). This should not be
taken to mean that lamblichus understood his discursive argument to he theurgy!
62. Annick Charles-Saget, “La theurgie, nouvelle figure de Pergon dans la vie
philosophique,” Divine lamblichus, 107.
63. Rist, Pseudo-Dionysius, 141-44. lamblichus often emphasizes the weakness of
the soul, e.g.: “The human race is weak and small, it sees but little and is possessed by
a congenital nothingness” (DM 144.12-14).
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS .$89
be effective, theurgic rituals must be empowered by the gods and convey
their good will by ritually recapitulating the gods’ work of creation.64
lamblichus says:
Is not every sacred rite legislated noetically from first principles according to
the laws of the Gods? For each rite imitates the order of the Gods, both the
intelligible and the celestial Gods, and each possesses the eternal measures
of the universe and wondrous signs which have been sent down here by the
Demiurge and Father of all things, and through which the unspeakable is
expressed through ineffable symbols. . . . IDA! 65.6-9)
It is frustrating that lamblichus does not provide concrete details to
exemplify what he means, but his explanation of theurgic prayer comes
closer and again addresses the question of the subject of the ergon. He
says:
If anyone would consider the hieratic prayers, how they are sent down to
men from the Gods and are symbols of the Gods, how they are known only
to the Gods and possess in a certain way the same power as the Gods, how
could anyone rightly believe that this sort of prayer is derived from our
empirical sense and is not divine and spiritual? (DM 48.5-11)
Strictly speaking, a theurgical prayer was not an address to the gods but
a way of entering the power of their voice and awakening a correspond-
ing voice in one’s soul.65 Unless one is constrained by '‘confessional pre-
suppositions” to overlook what lamblichus himself says, it would be
difficult to read the De mysteriis and conclude that lamblichus believed
a theurgic rite was man addressing (or affecting) the gods rather than
what lamblichus says it is: the gods addressing man, calling us back to
divinity through rituals designed by the Demiurge himself in the act of
creation.66
The question of the subject of the ergon, however, is exceedingly com-
plex for, after all, it is a human being who performs the ritual. How then
can he or she not be the “subject” of the ergonr Charles-Saget acknowl-
edges that a theurgic ritual appears to be a human activity, one that
64. See DM 44.11-14 where the good will of the gods is mingled with their
necessity; 141.6-13 where all forms of divination manifest one beneficent will;
209.14-17 where all forms of life are said to preserve the will of their creator,
65. lamblichus refers to this divine aspect in the soul as the ‘’one in us.” See Shaw,
Theurgy and the Soul, Chapter 11: “Eros and the One of the Soul,” 118-26.
66. For a critique of Rorem’s objective/subjective genitive distinction concerning
theurgy, see Thomas Tomasic's review in Speculum 62 (1987): 178-82; Tomasic char-
acterizes Rorem’s Biblical and Liturgical Symbols as an exercise in “belief justification”
ratber than an “objective, historical analysis.”
590 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
includes gestures and symbols, but she explains that the visible activity
serves only to make the soul receptive to the invisible activity of the gods.
If the soul has been properly purified and is sufficiently receptive, the
ineffable symbols in the rite are awakened and act through the soul, even
if they are not conceptually understood?7 In this awakening, lamblichus
says, “the soul is then entirely separated from those things which bind it
to the generated world, and it flies from the inferior and exchanges one
life for another. It gives itself to another order, having entirely abandoned
its former existence” (DM 270.15-19).67 68 69 Thus, in theurgy human activ-
ity becomes the vehicle for a divine activity measured by the receptive
capacity (epitedeiotes)^ of a soul that experiences a “secret sumpatheia”
with divine powers.70 71 72 Charles-Saget concludes:
Thus, there are not two incompatible meanings of theourgia: the accor of
the human rite, in his ritual effacement, imitates in his order the
communication of rhe indivisible and rhe divisible that the divine demiurgy
accomplishes at every moment.7'
To receive, to enact, and to be elevated by theurgic symbols was to enter
rhe hidden activity of the Demiurge and become a cocrearor. Rather than
escaping from the cosmos, as Porphyry had encouraged, the theurgist
embraced it by entering a demiurgic dimension where even his own body
was transformed into an icon of the divine. In theurgy, lamblichus de-
signed a praxis that not only saved the soul but also solved the Platonic
problem of embodiment that had so vexed Plotinus/2 In the act of the-
urgy the soul was simultaneously human and divine, mortal and im-
mortal, united in the One and divided in the body, all within an activity
that embraced and transcended the oppositions. lamblichus explains:
All of theurgy has two aspects. One is that it is a rite conducted by men
which preserves our natural order in the universe; the other is that it is
empowered by divine symbols, is raised up through them to be joined on
high with the Gods, and is led harmoniously round to their order. This
latter aspect rightly assumes the shape of the Gods. (DM 184.1-8)
67. Charles-Saget, “Theurgic/ 111-12.
68. The particular soul, however, never ceases to remain soul even as it becomes the
participant in a divine and universal action (DM 69.5-19).
69. On the importance of epitedeiotes in theurgy see Shaw, Theurgy' and the Suul3
86-87.
70. Charles-Saget, “Theurgie,” 113.
71. Ibid., 113, my emphasis.
72. Shaw, “Theurgv as Demiurgy.”
SWA^TNEOMATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 591
If the ergon theou of lamblichean. theurgy is more accurately described
as a subjective genitive, “god’s own work,"’’ then what would distin-
guish the theurgy of Dionysius from that of lamblichus? Rorem contends
that lamblichus connected the soul’s ascent in theurgy “to the force of
the rituals per se” while Dionysius linked the ascent of the soul to a
“spiritual process of understanding the ritual and never to the rites
themselves.”"4 Clearly, lamblichus was more concerned than the Areo-
pagite not to reduce the transcendent power of titual to a conceptual
schema, for it was precisely the purpose of the De mysteriis to respond to
the overly rationalized Platonism that lamblichus saw in Porphyry’s
school. Yet, despite the polemical tone of the De mysteriis in this regard,
lamblichus maintains that without “our thinking” the ritual hendsis of
theurgy cannot occur [DM 98.8-10). In short, the mind played a nec-
essary auxiliary role to prepare the soul for- theurgy.However, because
of the soul’s embodied condition, “our thinking” can never effect the
soul’s henosis.
Dionysius would certainly have agreed with lamblichus’ insistence on
approaching the divine through symbols.’6 And, although the Areopagite
says chat the contemplation of symbols elevates the soul, this contempla-
tion was not merely a human theoria, “certainly no detached knowledge
of specific facts,”'7 but a theoria shaped, inspired, and prepared by the
divine through the images of scripture and sacramental rites. Rorem says
that for Dionysius, theoria can indicate a “spiritual perception of the
highest order,”73 74 75 76 77 78 79 so to characterize it as an “interpretation” may be mis-
feaa’mg.”’ For if the material' elements of the liturgy do not convey the
73. Smyth #1330-1331 clearly distinguishes the objective genitive from the sub-
jective, which makes it all the more surprising that Rorem and Louth give to lam-
blichean theurgy die sense of an objective genitive, as if the gods were the passive
objects of man's activity, a point that lamblichus denies throughout the De mysteriis.
See Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, revised by Gordon M. Messing I Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1976/.
74. Roretn, Symbols, 109.
75. On this point see Andrew Smith, “lamhlichus’ Views,” 74-86.
76. See Rorem, Symbols, 105-6; CH 121CD.
77. Ibid., 110.
78. Ibid., 114. As Rorem notes, angels themselves engage in the theoria of God in
an immediate (and circular) way, CH 205C.
79. The problem here may simply be one of translation, by no means an easy task!
However, when Luibheid translates the Greek noetos as ’’conceptual” throughout the
corpus it tends to obscure rather than illuminate the meaning of the text. Most
readers would not characterize nondiscursive intuition as ‘'conceptual.” Golitzin
seems to have the same concern with Rorem’s language, but in a liturgical context. He
592 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
divine presence but need, rather, to be interpreted to grasp their “con-
ceptual” meanings, then Dionysius would rightly be subject co the kind
of critique offered by Wesche.80 Dionysian theoria was not, however, a
conceptual interpretation, it was more a direct and performative experi-
ence.81 Although Dionysius clearly is freer in his use of the term theoria
than lamblichus, I believe that this was probably due more to the
difference in their intellectual milieux than to an essential difference in
their conceptions of theurgy. When the Areopagite wants to emphasize
the transcendence of the divine beyond human understanding he sounds
very much like lamblichus. Describing his ineffable union with god, Dio-
nysius says that the “theurgic lights” he received from both the scriptures
and divinely inspired masters (DN 592B) initiated him into experiences
beyond thought. He explains:
We call a halt to the activities of our minds and, to the extent that is
proper, we approach the ray which transcends being. Here, in a manner no
words can describe, preexist all the goals of all knowledge and it is of a
kind that neither intelligence nor speech can lay hold of nor can it at all be
contemplated since it surpasses everything and is wholly beyond our
capacity to know it.82
If the role of theoria in Dionysius is not, perhaps, as foreign to
lamblichean theurgy as the term might suggest, and if the subjective/
objective genitive distinction is incorrect, then what would distinguish
Dionysian from lamblichean theurgy? Louth contends that Dionysian
theurgy differs from the lamblichean in that divine acts for Dionysius
refer only to the acts of Christ and never to ritual acts.83 Here, I believe,
Louth draws too firm a line between the historical acts of Jesus and their
expression in the liturgy. For, if the purpose of the liturgy is to deify its
says: “It is difficult, for me at least, to avoid the impression that Christ’s presence here
is meant to be more than merely ‘conceptual’" (Golitzin, “Mysticism,” 106-7).
80. Wesche, “Christological Doctrine,” 68.
81. The apophacic exercises in Dionysius might be better characterized as
“performative” than “conceptual,” for only the former allows the “utterly transcen-
dent to be revealed as utterly immanent. . . .” See Michael Sells, Mystical Languages
of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994), 1-10. To engage the
transcendent ritually through immanent objects was neither opposed to, nor a
prerequisite for, the exercise of negative theology; it was, rather, the direct result of
and correlate to apophasis. This point is explained, with references to Dionysius, by
A. H. Armstrong, “Negative Theology,” Downside Review 95 (1977): 176-89.
82. DN 592D; (Suchla: 115.9-13), translation by Lubheid and Rorem, modified
slightly.
83. Lourh, “Pagan Theurgy,” 434,
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 593
members, this would require direct participation in the theurgies, and
this could hardly be effected by simply recalling tor interpreting! the acts
of the historical Jesus.84 85 While Dionysian theurgy is distinctively Chris-
tian—with Christ as the “principle and essence of every theurgy” {EH
372A)—Dionysius understood that Jesus’ transmission of “theurgic
mysteries” (ta theourga musteria]^ in rhe Eucharist required the hier-
arch, in performing these rites, to be assimilated to these theurgies and
communicate their deifying power to others. Louth’s insistence that the-
urgies be confined to the activities of Jesus “recalled” in the liturgy,86
simply cannot account for this deifying activity7 nor for the diversity of
other evidence.8' The kinds of theurgic experience that Louth does not
discuss include the “theurgic lights” visited upon angels and holy men
(CH 208C, 340B), the “theurgic gnosis” desired and received by angels
(CH 309A-C, EH 501 B), the “theurgic measures” by which we receive
God’s presence (EH 477D), the perfecting power of “every theurgic holi-
ness in us” (EH 484D), and the “theurgic lights” (theowgika phota) that
Dionysius says he received from holy men (DN 592B). These exemplify
more than our recalling or celebrating the divine works of the historical
Jesus; they describe a direct transmission and experience of deifying
activity: theurgy. John of Scythopolis explained Dionysius’ use of
theourgikos pbos as follows: “He calls theurgic lights the teachings of
the saints, in so far as they produce a light of knowledge and make gods
of those who believe.”88 When Dionysius states that the purpose for
members of “our hierarchy” is to become “luminous and theurgic,
perfected and able to bestow perfection” (EH 372B), he is describing the
deifying power that priests experience and transmit in the liturgy and
initiations.
84. In any case, the theurgy of Jesus' incarnation is more often described by
Dionysius in terms of a metaphysical unfolding chan as a concrete record of historical
events. The incarnation is a movement from wholeness to fragmentation, from sim-
plicity to complexity, from eternity to temporality (D.V 592A). and from indivisible
unity to divided plurality (EH 429A). These are the same definitions that lamblichus
used to characterize the effects of embodiment on the soul!
85. Letter 9 (1108A); (Heil/Ritter; 198.4).
86. Louth, "Pagan Theurgy,” 435.
87. Louth is responding, he says, to “the common view that Denys' Christianity
has been swamped by his enthusiasm for Neoplatonism. . . (“Pagan Theurgy.”
434). In an effort to insure Dionysius’ “orthodoxy,” despite his theurgical language,
it seems that Louth interprets the evidence to avoid Neoplatonic, or worse, theurgical
contamination.
88. Translation by H. D. Saffrey, who says that John of Scythopolis “offers us an
explanation altogether pagan and without any basis in the Christian tradition”
(“New Objective Links,” 71-72).
594 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
It may be more correct to see Dionysian theurgy as a specific ex-
pression of the theurgy that lamblichus described in general terms. The
De mysteriis tells us almost nothing about the actual performance of
rituals, while Dionysius outlines specific rites in detail. The principal
outlines of lamblichus’ theory of theurgy might, m fact, be applied to any
religious community that receives and enacts divine power through
religious ritual. In Dionysius’ Christian theurgy, Hierotheus provides a
model for “experiencing communion with the things praised” (i.e., the
theurgies of Christ), an experience that Dionysius describes as a kind of
ecstasy.89 90 He says of Hierotheus:
He was so caught up, so taken out of himself (existamenos heautou]
experiencing communion with the things praised, that everyone who heard
him, everyone who saw him . . . considered him to be inspired, to be
speaking divine praises.9li
This was possible to Hierotheus because he, like the Egyptian theurgists
of lamblichus,91 92 “not only learned but also experienced divine things, for
he had a sumpatheia with these things” (DN 648B). Sumpatheia or
homoiosis with divine theurgies was the Dionysian norm, not the ex-
ception. Consider his description of the eucharistic mystery:
After the hierarch sings the holy theurgies, he performs the most sacred
actions and lifts up into view the celebrated objects through the sacredly
displayed symbols. And having revealed the gifts of the theurgies he himself
enters into communion (koindnia) with them and exhorts the others to
follow. (EH 425D)
As in lamblichean theurgy, the hierarch—united with divine theurgies—
no longer acts only as a man but as a god, or, in this case, the god-man
Christ, and he exhorts others to share in this deification. Indeed, if a
priest does not enter into koinonia with these theurgies, if he remains
unilluminated and untheurgic, he has no light to pass on to others and
should be expelled from the priestly orders.91 For Dionysius, the liturgy
89. See Rist, “Pseudo-Dionysius,” 148, who notes liturgical comparisons to
Hierotheus’s experience in EH 425D, 440В, 444A. For the role of ecstasy in
lamblichean theurgy see Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 234-36.
90. DN 681D-684A; (Suchla: 141.11-14), rr. by Lubheid and Rorem.
91. Speaking of the veneration of star gods. lambichus says: ‘'The Egyptians do not
simply contemplate these things theoretically, but by means of sacred theurgy they
report that they ascend to higher and more universal realms. , . .” (DM 267.6-9).
92. Letter 8 (1092B); Dionysius’ idealistic views of the Church are in sharp
contrast to those of Augustine; sec Rist, “Pseudo-Dionysius,” 158.
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 595
is more than a human ritual, it is “god’s own work,” an invitation to
enter theurgies that “make gods of those who believe.” As lamblichus
put it:
If these things were only human customs and received their authority from
our legal institutions one might say that the worship of the Gods was the
invention of our ideas. But in fact God is the leader of these things . . . and
each nation on earth is alloted a certain common guardian by him, and
every temple is similarly allured its particular overseer. (DM 236.1-8)
IV.	CONCLUSION; THEURGY—COSMOCENTRIC OR
ANTHROPOCENTRIC?
Like lamblichus, Dionysius believed that god was present in the liturgy
and leading the rices, which explained their deifying power. Did Dionysius,
then, simply transpose the principles of lamblichean theurgy into his
ekklesia? Did he create a theurgie society, as Rist suggests, in a manner
that was more politically successful than anything lamblichus or other
Neoplatonists were able to achieve?93 The effort of theologians to deny
this by making a caricature of lambichean theurgy and then finding
substantial differences to distinguish rhe theurgy of the Church from the
“pagan” theurgy of lamblichus is, quite simply, contradicted by the evi-
dence. To suggest that Dionysian theurgy was not different in kind, but
only in specific expression, from lamblichean theurgy should not be
reason to condemn the Areopagite. It simply recognizes that in the fourth
to the sixth centuries, particularly among Syrian theologians—both
Christian and non-Christian—there was a pronounced interest in experi-
encing the divine rather than merely thinking and talking about it, and
lamblichus was the first to provide a comprehensive rationale for doing
so.94 Unless we choose to dismiss the role of experience in the rites of the
Church, we must follow Dionysius in seeing the liturgy as theurgy, a rite
that effects a cognitive, perceptual, and ontological shift so profound in
receptive participants that it culminates in theosis, the deification of rhe
soul. Eor both lamblichus and Dionysius this deification was effected in
rites that united the “fallen” soul with divine activities (ta theia ener-
geia}, and scholars of Neoplatonic theurgy could learn a great deal from
93. Rist, “Pseudo-Dionysius,” 144, 156.
94. See Goliczin’s reference co rhe “current of thought” among fourth-century
thinkers in Syria-Palestine as regards the soul’s liturgical experience (“Hierarchy Ver-
sus Anarchy?” 172-73 n. 3 64).
596 JOURNAL OF EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES
Dionysius about the specifics of theurgic ritual that lamblichus does not
discuss.
Despite the profound similarity between the theurgies of lamblichus
and Dionysius, there is at least one very significant, perhaps crucial dif-
ference: the role of nature and the material cosmos in their respective
systems. As R. T. Wallis explained: “Neoplatonic ‘sacramentalism’ dif-
fers from its Christian counterpart in that it depends solely on the
world’s basic god-given laws, not on a supernatural intervention over
and above those laws.”9,? A simple point with far-reaching consequences. '
lamblichus maintained that Egyptian theurgy “imitated the nature of
the universe and the creative activity of the Gods” [DM 249.14-250.1).
To perform a theurgic ritual, therefore, was to participate in this “crea-
tive activity” according to the soul’s receptive capacity (epitedeiotes).
Following traditional Platonic and Pythagorean teachings, the cosmos
was seen as the supreme icon of divinity, and lamblichus honored those
“sacred races” who preserved rituals that mimetically reflected the un-
changing demiurgy of the gods (DM VII.5; 259.1-260.1). Theoretically,
any society could be theurgic as long as its rituals and prayers preserved
the “eternal measures” of creation (DM 65.6), which is perhaps why the
emperor Julian could see Judaism as a “theurgic” religion.95 96 It is im-
portant to note that, for lamblichus, theurgic activity was always—in
analogia—cosmogonic activity, and this is precisely what distinguished
theurgy from sorcery (goeteia).97 Although sorcerers, like theurgists,
exercised a knowledge of cosmic sympathies, their spells did not “pre-
serve the analogy with divine creation” (DM 168.15-16) and thus failed
to be theurgic. Theurgists aligned themselves with the divine currents of
the cosmos while sorcerers, like parasites, drew these same powers to
themselves and eventually to their own destruction (DM 182.13-16).
lamblichus’ theurgy was cosmocentric and could not be adapted to the
selfish practices of sorcerers nor, rightly, to the hegemonic vision of a
single religion, for the diversity of peoples, climates, and geography
would naturally require diversified forms of theurgic worship. Each
sacred community—Egyptian, Assyrian, or Chaldean—practiced a dif-
ferent form of theurgy yet, according to lamblichus, to be genuinely
theurgic the rites of each cult had co be in “analogia with creation.” The
theurgies of each sacred race, therefore, manifested the gods, each was a
95. R. T. Wallis, Neoplatonism (New York: Scribner, 1972), 121.
96. Jay Bregman, “Judaism as Theurgy in the Religious Thought of the Emperor
Julian,” The Ancient World 26 (1995): 135—49.
97. DM 168.13-16; cf. Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 169.
SHAW/NEOPLATONIC THEURGY AND DIONYSIUS 597
living sunthema of the divine. In Dionysius’ terms, these sacred races
would have been, designated “hierarchies,” revealing the divine and lead-
ing souls into deification. For the Areopagite, however, there was but one
human hierarchy as required by the Christian myth, while for lamblichus
there would have been many, for Neoplatonic theurgy was imagined
within a polytheistic and pluralistic cosmos. The embodied variety of the
material cosmos required a corresponding variety of theurgie societies,
and this too was consistent with lamblichean metaphysics where the
utterly ineffable One can be “known” only in the Many: each henophany
both veiling and revealing its ineffable source. In order to create one
universal and theurgie “church,” the Pythagorean myth of cosmogony-
as-theurgy had to be changed, and this was initiated by the Areopagite,
who shifted theurgy’s center of gravity from the cosmos to man.
James Miller has pointed out that, while Dionysius preserved the Neo-
platonic dynamics of prohodos and epistrophe that are ritually enacted
in lamblichean theurgy, in its Dionysian form the natural cosmos is
replaced by ecclesiastic and angelic orders.98 This means that Dionysian
theurgy is no longer an extension of the act of creation (in analogia with
divine creation) but becomes something beyond or beside nature, in what
the Church calls rhe “new creation”: the supernatural orders of the
Church and its angels.99 Theurgical symbols for Dionysius are no longer
found in the natural world but in the ecclesiastical world: its scriptural
images and cultic rites. Miller argues that, by eliminating nature and the
heavenly bodies from Christian theurgy, Dionysius achieved far greater
clarity and increased the Church’s political authority for, in Christian
theurgy', the ekklesca assumes the divine status ascribed to the physical
cosmos in pagan theurgy.100 A. H. Armstrong notes this shift from the
natural to the ecclesiastical cosmos. He says:
98. James Miller, Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance tn Classical and
Christian Antiquity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 461.
99. lamblichean theurgy was also supernatural. Indeed, A. H. Armstrong suggests
that lamblichus was the first to use huperphues as a term meaning above nature
(A. H. Armstrong, “lamblichus and Egypt,” Les Etudes philosophiques 2-3 (1987]:
186-87). Yet huperphues for lamblichus was never removed from nature or creation
for, as a Pythagorean, lamblichus imagined theurgy according to arithmological
principles. The transcendent power of the gods is in matter and in nature, just as
simple numbers reside in and support their complex derivatives without being af-
fected by them. Huper phusis (above nature) could never be equated by lamblichus
with para phusts (against nature) for anything opposed to nature was opposed to the
manifesting gods [DM 158.14-159.3). For Dionysius, however, huper phusts is
synonymous with para phusis [DN 648A). This, I believe, reflects the transformation
of Neoplatonic principles within the context of the Christian myth.
100. Miller, Measures of Wisdom, 461.
It is only in the Church that material things become means of revelation
and salvation through being understood in the light of Scripture and
Church tradition and used by God’s human ministers in the celebration of
the Church’s sacraments. It is the ecclesiastical cosmos, not the natural
cosmos, which appears to be of primary religious importance for the
Christian. There is here a new and radical sort of religious
anthropocentricism, which may have had far-reaching consequences?5,5
It is interesting that the consequence most disturbing to Armstrong was
also feared by lamblichus. To Porphyry’s remark that the gods were too
elevated to he contacted in material rites lamblichus replied that his
opinion “amounts to saying . . . that this lower region is a desert, without
the Gods” (DM 28.9-11). Outside of the “new creation” of the Church,
this lower region does become a desert, deprived of the presence of true
divinity. Armstrong continues:
It is easy to see how the anthropocentrism, with all its consequences, has
outlasted the dominance of the Church. In so far as the Church became the
only theophany, when it ceased to be an effective theophany, (as it has long
ceased to be for most Europeans), there was no theophany left for the
majority of men, no divine self-manifestation here below.101 102
Dionysius can hardly be held responsible for our “wholly profane, de-
sacralized non-human world” lamented by Armstrong.103 Indeed, Diony-
sius followed Origen and Gregory of Nyssa in their positive evaluation
of nature, yet while Origen recognized sacred symbols within the natural
world, Dionysius placed them solely within rhe Church,104 and by
shifting the context of theurgy from the natural to an ecclesiastic world
he necessarily changed the very nature of the “divine work.”105 Ancient
101. A. H. Armstrong, “Man in the Cosmos: A Study of Some Differences Between
Pagan Neoplatonism and Christianity,” in Romanitas et Christiamtas, ed. Wi den
Boer et al. (London: North Holland, 1973), 11.
102. Ibid., 11-12.
103. Ibid., 12.
104. Golitzin, contrasting Dionysius’ system with that of Evagrius says: . . Dio-
nysius has put the Church and its organized worship in the place of Evagrius’
providential cosmos.” See Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzini, Et Introibo ad Altar?
Dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagite, with Special Reference to its Predeces-
sors in the Eastern Christian Tradition (Thessalonika, 1994). 346.
105. The shift away from cosmocentric theurgy, however, was gradual. In
Maximus’ Mystagogia. a commentary on the EH of Dionysius, he says that the
church is an “image of the sensible world” and “the world can be thought of as a
church.” See The Church, the Liturgy and the Soul of Man: The Mystagogia of St.
Maximus the Confessor, tr. with historical note and commentary by Dorn Julian Stead
theurgists worked within the parameters of nature and sought to unify
themselves with its Creator through natural symbols; the Christian
theurgist, by contrast, worked within the parameters of rhe institutional
Church and sought to achieve union with Christ through the ritual
enactments of a myth that asserted an entirely “new creation” and lib-
eration from the “old world” that had become the domain and instru-
ment of Satan. This, I would argue, is the most significant difference
between the theurgy of lamblichus and the theurgy of Dionysius, a dif-
ference with consequences we have only begun to explore.
Gregory Shaw is Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College,
North Easton, Massachusetts
(Still River: St. Bede’s Publications, 1982), 71. The world as church or temple is
perfectly consistent with the principles of lamblichean theurgy, so long as our church
is not the only church.