The Transfiguration of Proclus’ Legacy: Pseudo-Dionysius and the Late Neoplatonic School of Athens

Modern Theology 24: 557-571., 2008

This essay examines the earliest Syriac reception of the Corpus Dionysiacum in the first decades of the sixth century. This reception is earlier than the standard Greek reception and moves us closer, I hypothesize, to the original text and context of the CD than do the subsequent Greek edition and commentaries of John of Scythopolis. The principal texts associated with the earliest Syriac reception all betray the influence of “Origenism,” which, I argue, reflects the original milieu of the author of the CD. I conclude this essay with some thoughts on how an acknowledgement of the Origenism of the CD complicates our understanding of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” during this period.

Vigiliae Christianae, 2008

Classical Bulletin, 2004

The Heythrop Journal, 2009

2016

Journal of Late Antique Religion and Culture, 2011

published in Analogia 1.2 (2017): 1-12 Maximus the Confessor and Dionysius the Areopagite are two of the most important representatives of what is often called Christian Neoplatonism, yet each made markedly different use of Neoplatonic categories and concepts. To date, there are no major studies comparing their respective responses to later Greek philosophy, which, this paper argues, are aligned with their respective responses to Origenism. To examine this phenomenon, this paper studies the Confessor's systematic restructuring of the Neoplatonic cycle of 'remaining, procession, and return', which departs significantly from the forms this cycle takes in the corpus Dionysiacum. Maximus' doctrine of the logoi, including the centrality of the incarnate Logos to his metaphysics, is at once a radical critique of Origenism, a tacit dismissal of Dionysian hierarchies, and a comprehensive rethinking of Christian Neoplatonism.

Le Muséon 117/3-4: 409-446., 2004

This study revisits, first, Ronald Hathaway's hypothesis according to which the first nine Letters of Pseudo-Dionysius are echoing the nine hypotheses of Plato's Parmenides as interpreted in Proclus' school. Within this framework it examines the Fourth Letter treating the Incarnation, which, according to this scheme, should correspond to the realm of enmattered forms. It establishes that the text of the Letter, as it is known to us, is unclear and needs a re-edition, which it does through examining, first, the early indirect transmission of the text, which by far antedates the direct transmission, our manuscript evidence starting in the ninth century. The main elements of this indirect transmission are Sergius of Reshaina's early Syriac translation (early sixth century), the Commentary on the Letter by Maximus the Confessor in Ambigua ad Thomam, which contains the entire text (seventh century) as well as the scholia of John of Scythopolis (sixth century) and of Maximus Confessor. Then, it takes the results of the inquiry into the indirect text tradition and attempts at choosing the correct variants from the direct text tradition. The theoretical result of the inquiry is that the Letter is echoing both the third and the fourth hypotheses of the Parmenides but, by means of this Neoplatonist metaphysics, it teaches a kind of a post-Chalcedonian Antiochian Christology combined to a strong Origenistic tendency.

Evangelical Quarterly, 1968