Ps-Denys and Christian Visual Culture

Recently released is a book that treats one of the most mysterious and debated figures of Christian antiquity in the context of ante-iconoclastic history: Pseudo-Dionysius and Christian Visual Culture, c.500–900, eds. Dell’Acqua, Francesca, Mainoldi, Ernesto Sergio (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), xxix+329pp; 8 b/w illustrations, 25 illustrations in colour.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book uses Pseudo-Dionysius and his mystic theology to explore attitudes and beliefs about images in the early medieval West and Byzantium. Composed in the early sixth century, the Corpus Dionysiacum, the collection of texts transmitted under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, developed a number of themes which have a predominantly visual and spatial dimension.  Pseudo-Dionysius’ contribution to the development of Christian visual culture, visual thinking and figural art-making are examined in this book to systematically investigate his long-lasting legacy and influence. The contributors embrace religious studies, philosophy, theology, art, and architectural history, to consider the depth of the interaction between the Corpus Dionysiacum and various aspects of contemporary Byzantine and western cultures, including ecclesiastical and lay power, politics, religion, and art.

Ashley Purpura on God, Hierarchy, and Power

I briefly met Ashley Purpura last November at a conference on the future of the liberal arts hosted at Purdue University. I have been greatly edified by her book God, Hierarchy, and Power, and will be drawing on it for a presentation I'm giving next January in Romania at the inaugural conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association, at which I am also one of the official ecumenical observers. I was delighted to be able to arrange an interview with her about this new book. Here are her thoughts.

AD: Tell us about your background

I grew up Orthodox and started really reading about saints’ lives, theology, and Christian history as a teenager. I graduated from Florida State with B.A. in Religion, and then earned a M.T.S. at Harvard Divinity School where I studied the history of Eastern Christianity (primarily in Syriac and Greek sources). I went on to complete my Ph.D. in theology at Fordham University, where I specialized in the history of Byzantine and Orthodox Christianity. Currently, I am an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Purdue University in Indiana, where I live with my husband and four children.

AD: What led to the writing of God, Hierarchy, and Power?

I wanted to write something grounded in historically Byzantine sources, but that spoke to present conversations and concerns. I thought of this project as a way to step back from the more commonly (and to my mind, unsatisfactorily engaged) question of “Why can/’t women be priests?” and address instead, why there is a hierarchy at all, and how it functions theologically when confronted with pragmatic challenges. Certainly, the experience of having an ecclesial leader who appears to fall short of the ideal of his calling is nothing new! In so many hagiographies, liturgical moments, patristic writings, etc. maintaining proper order, offering total obedience, and serving with humility appear as important markers of spirituality—and I wanted to see how theologians who address the nature and limits of hierarchy negotiate these ideals in theological, ritual, and practical terms. This led to some insights about power and about the iconic nature of hierarchy that I had not originally anticipated—but that I am very glad to have had the opportunity to explore.

AD: Your introduction notes how historically saturated Orthodoxy is with hierarchy in its ecclesio-sacramental life while facing three contemporary challenges: inclusivity, exclusivity, and the relationship between power and hierarchy. Tell us a bit about each.

By these challenges, I point to the way that hierarchy functions and is perceived to function at both theological and pragmatic levels. The hierarchy determines by councils, sacraments, etc. who is inside the Church (inclusivity) and where the Church is recognized. At the same time, however, it also excludes not only those who are not included in ecclesial participation, but also certain categories of individuals from joining the priestly hierarchic ranks (women, for example). I suppose you could say by that by naming certain boundaries of Orthodoxy, the hierarchy includes some and excludes others—but of course as Dionysius would note, the divine hierarchy is not limited to or actually subject to our ecclesiastical administration.

In terms of power and hierarchy, I really explore this in the final chapter, but even in the introduction I consider how the visible leaders of the Church have authority and in what ways this authority is limited. The relation between power and hierarchy is very much tied to spiritual leadership and authority, under what conditions does a bishop, for example, have authority to lead and speak on behalf of the Church, especially considering cases of potential abuses of power. I think being able to articulate and respond to these challenges will help contemporary Christians (and perhaps others) develop a greater understanding of how and why hierarchy functions religiously. Although it can indicate lines of demarcation, it also is divinely dynamic in ways that often are obscured.

AD: I well remember a doctoral seminar with the Orthodox scholar John Jillions some 15 years ago (while teaching in Ottawa and before he became chancellor of the OCA) who said very forcefully that he thought the ideas of Dionysius the Areopagite about hierarchy had created significant problems for Orthodoxy and the Church in general. You draw on Dionysius. Tell us your own take on him—is he problematic? 

I do not read him problematically, although several scholars I greatly respect do take issue with his writings and his legacy. Dionysius has always been debated in terms of where he fits christologically, and for some more contemporary authors, in terms of his heavy reliance on Neoplatonism. Historically, Dionysius’s concept of hierarchy was widely influential and later patristic authors cite him as an authority on a range of soundly Orthodox topics (icons, liturgy, etc.). There are certainly ambiguities in his writings, and places where he does not necessarily speak to issues modern readers would like to see him specify—so in that way he does provide us with challenges for interpretation. He is very insistent on one properly fulfilling the function of a particular rank to be actually in that hierarchic rank. Dionysius’s insistence that correction come from above rather than below one’s rank, in my read is not giving hierarchs a free pass to do what they want until the other hierarchs chastise them, but rather idealizing that those in the hierarchic positions have more knowledge to do things that may not yet be understood by those hierarchically beneath them. I think Dionysius offers us a way of understanding and speaking about God’s relation to the world and the Church that can be read as quite beneficial and insightful.

AD: The bulk of your book, after Dionysius, is spent on three Byzantine figures—Maximus, Niketas, and Nicholas—and you say (p.133) that they offer us two key insights: God alone is the source all power, and any power, to be authentic, must be divine. Those seem to me quietly subversive claims! In other words, where we may be tempted rather lazily to excuse certain exercises of power as just a lot of political intrigue or patriarchal egos on the global stage (a kind of ecclesiological “crypto-Arianism” if you will), these insights challenge us always to remember that the Church is both human and divine, and thus human hierarchy is always held to divine account, and at its best is an icon of the divine. Is that a fair read of your argument? 

Yes, I don’t intend it to be a type of rebuke as much as reminder—but it is still subversive for those who would claim for themselves power instead of humbly considering how they are empowered and to what end. For those perhaps who feel disconnected or put off by the business of church politics and egos, in very simple terms, God is bigger than all of that! His gift of love (especially sacramentally) is not somehow impaired by our sinful humanness (although our ability to receive/perceive it might certainly be).

AD: Tell us a bit about how you arrived at your four modern interlocutors: Marx, Foucault, Butler, and Arendt. Two of them in particular—Foucault and Butler—are of course well known for their reflections not just on power but also on gender and sexuality, which themes also come up to some extent in your (65-68) discussion of Maximus the Confessor. Is it possible in Orthodoxy (and Catholicism for that matter) ever to separate out questions of power and hierarchy from sex and gender, or does such an attempted separation merely reinforce certain problems, including exclusivity and inclusivity mentioned in your introduction?

I think it is important when reframing the position of power in the world as unconventionally as I do to consider the other ways in which power has been interpreted quite influentially. With these particular four interlocutors I found parallels and reframing of the source of power and authority and how they function, that was helpful in articulating what I found going on in the Byzantine authors.

To your second question, I think gender is a category largely constructed around disparate power dynamics, so I do not think one could talk about power and hierarchy, and sex and gender separately. Even to just talk about power and hierarchy and omit sex and gender really just reinforces the notion that these issues and identities are excluded from the authoritative dominant (arguably male) discourse. This of course is a modern take, and one that I think fruitfully can be considered with pre-modern theologians. As you mention, I do give some attention to gender in its relation to hierarchy in this book, but there is still so much work to be done on how disparate power dynamics relate to gender constructions, religious ideals of authority, and one’s sex. I would like to see more consideration on these intersections, but I think there are numerous ways of entering into conversation on these topics and even a more segmented approach may prove insightful for a broader sustained and integrated reflection.

AD: This is less a question than a comment: I think the most outstanding feature of your book is its refusal to shrink from theology proper, which seems to me a particular weakness of too much ecclesiology today, focused as it often is on the understandable temptation to treat everything in terms of human politics and dynamics of power. Thus I greatly cheered your argument at both the beginning and end of the book where you insist that “hierarchy as developed and reflected by Byzantine theologians is most fundamentally and consistently rendered as the communication of divinity” (p.16) and that “justifications for breaks in communion, even when grounded in differing ecclesiological or administrative conceptions, need to be discussed at the level of divine reflectivity, divine participation, and divine communication” (164). Is it hard to keep God in the picture sometimes when the humanity of it all—the offices, personalities, rituals, and vestments of hierarchy—weighs so heavily?  

Yes, I think there is a temptation at times to want to hold tightly onto all of the “things” of our religious identities as the essence of what makes us Orthodox (or some other religion). Such offices, rituals, jurisdictions, and vestments, etc., however, do not determine our Faith. Being in communion with God, being in His image and likeness, recognizing and venerating God in others—these get to the essence of who we are as Christians! The hierarchy is about communicating God to the world through material and relational means, allowing humans to be in communion with God sacramentally, and increasingly forming humans in His likeness. I think this is the insight I find appealing in Dionysius and the later Byzantine authors I present—that the authenticity and authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, as we perceive it (and its assorted trappings that you mention) are dependent on communicating God to the world and bringing us into communion with Him.

AD: On that point, you weave into a good deal of your work reflections on the ritual and liturgy of hierarchy. I’ve often heard it said that Byzantine hierarchical liturgy—e.g., the greeting and vesting of the bishop, the kissing of his hands, the repeated singing of Εις πολλά έτη—reinforces certain habits of mind that may be less than healthy or desirable and that such liturgies should be reformed today. What are your thoughts on the rituals surrounding ecclesial hierarchy? 

I think there are ways in which ritually greeting and vesting the bishop the participants are reverencing and icon of God, even if it is at times a poorly depicted icon, the one who venerates it is still blessed. I do think the rituals and liturgies need to be intelligible to and understood by their participants. That has quite a bit to do with education, and perhaps a little with reform. Outside of liturgical contexts and ritual actions of respect, personal and pastoral interactions with a bishop can be more challenging if a bishop thinks something is owed him based on his position, rather than gaining loving respect from manifesting Christ-like kenotic service on behalf of his flock.

AD: What are your hopes for this book, and who especially should read it?

I hope this book will encourage scholars, clergy, and laity to reflect further about how power in general and hierarchy specifically, functions theologically within Christianity (and perhaps reflect on parallels in other religions). Additionally, I think this book prompts a reconsideration of how theological interpretations of power relate to religious structures of authority and diverse devotional expressions. For the more Byzantine-minded reader (academic or otherwise), I hope this book sheds light on the ways four historically disparate (and in the case of Stethatos and Cabasilas, understudied) theologians can be brought into conversation with each other to inform contemporary Orthodox thought, and how our understanding of pre-modern authors can be accentuated by considering modern critical theoretical developments.

AD: Having finished God, Hierarchy, and Power, what are you at work on now?

Presently, I am working on a series of articles that focus on the constructions of gender, “the other,” and Orthodox identity in Byzantine hymns, rituals, and hagiographies. In working on these manuscripts, I find myself still coming back to power and authority quite a bit, but by focusing more on patriarchy instead of hierarchy.

Dionysian Mystical Theology

The identity of the author has haunted many from the beginning, and his thought--whoever he was--has haunted Christian ideas both East and West for just as long. I refer, of course, to the so-called Pseudo-Dionysius, about whom a new book has just been published: Paul Rorem, The Dionysian Mystical Theology (Fortress, 2015), 157pp.

About this book we are told:

The Dionysian Mystical Theology introduces the Pseudo-Dionysian "mystical theology," with glimpses at key stages in its interpretation and critical reception through the centuries. In part one, the elusive Areopagite's own miniature essay, The Mystical Theology, is quoted in its entirety, sentence by sentence, with commentary. Its cryptic contents would be almost impenetrable without judicious reference to the rest of the Dionysian corpus: The Divine Names, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and the ten Letters. Of special importance is the Dionysian use of negations in an "apophatic" theology that recognizes the transcendence of God beyond human words and concepts.

Stages in the reception and critique of this Greek corpus and theme are sketched in part two: first, the initial sixth-century introduction and marginal comments (Scholia) by John of Scythopolis; second, the early Latin translation and commentary by the ninth-century Carolingian Eriugena and the twelfth-century commentary by the Parisian Hugh of St. Victor; and third, the critical reaction and opposition by Martin Luther in the Reformation. In conclusion, the Dionysian apophatic is presented alongside other forms of negative theology in light of modern and postmodern interests in the subject.

Dionysius, Thomas, and Albert Walk into a Bar...

Bearing an official release of today, this new book seems to be a good companion to read alongside Marcus Plested's splendid Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (I interviewed him here): Bernhard Blankenhorn, Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (CUA Press, 2015), 544pp.

About this book we are told by the publisher:

Dionysius the Areopagite exercised immense influence on medieval theology. This study considers various ways in which his doctrine of union with God in darkness marked the early Albert the Great and his student Thomas Aquinas. The Mystery of Union with God considers a broad range of themes in the early Albert's corpus and in Thomas that underlie their mystical theologies and may bear traces of Dionysian influence. These themes include the divine missions, anthropology, the virtues of faith and charity, primary and secondary causality, divine naming, and eschatology. The heart of this work offers detailed exegesis of key union passages in Albert's commentaries on Dionysius, Thomas's Commentary on the Divine Names, and the Summa Theologiae questions on Spirit's gifts of understanding and wisdom. The Mystery of Union with God offers the most extensive, systematic analysis to date of how Albert and Thomas interpreted and transformed the Dionysian Moses "who knows God by unknowing." It shows Albert's and Thomas's philosophical and theological motives to place limits on Dionysian apophatism and to reintegrate mediated knowledge into mystical knowing. The author surfaces many similarities in the two Dominicans' mystical doctrines and exegesis of Dionysius. This work prepares the way for a new consideration of Albert the Great as the father of Rhineland Mysticism. The original presentation of Aquinas's theology of the Spirit's seven gifts breaks new ground in theological scholarship. Finally, the entire book lays out a model for the study of mystical theology from a historical, philosophical and doctrinal perspective.

If It's "Inexpressible" How Did You Manage to Write a Book about It?

I've previously mentioned a number of recent books looking at Ps-Dionysius. Two more join that pile, both taking a more "philosophical" approach at least as that term is defined by the (post-?) modern academy. First is Melanie Walton, Expressing the Inexpressible in Lyotard and Pseudo-Dionysius: Bearing Witness as Spiritual Exercise (Lexington Books, 2013), 326pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

The event happens. To it, you bear witness; to it, you are commanded to testify; and yet, by the command and by the event, you are unable to speak. Testimony demands the witness to demonstrate her knowledge—that knowledge that she must have by the fact of being a witness to something. And, yet, this something exceeds the possibility of its grasp by any manner that could yield its expression amenable to verification. One example is the Holocaust survivor silenced by the odious logic of the historical revisionist who forbids the living to evidence death camps. The horror of the example is not just the difficulty of actually undoing such a foul bind that masks hatred with sophistic flourish; it is the realization that the bind’s power is fueled by the true inexpressibility of the Holocaust itself. A second example is the religious faithful called to testify to that superessentiality who supremely exceeds every capacity to know Him. While heterogeneous in time, place, and philosophical situation, the contemporary French father of postmodernism, Jean-François Lyotard, and the late antique, presumably Syrian father of Neoplatonist Christian mysticism, Pseudo-Dionysius, both do justice to their witnesses by endeavoring under this weight of impossibility to express the inexpressible. Lyotard rigorously analyzes every aspect of the differend and explores a plethora of attempts to lift the silence, and finds each to fail. Pseudo-Dionysius founds a radical, stuttering method of speaking and unspeaking the names of God to give forth this inconceivable testimony. Expressing the Inexpressible undertakes a critical reading of each individually and then brings their distinct methods to bear on their shared problem of that which resists its articulation. Their conjunction finds its voice in a reading of silence and eros as forging a new idiom by which the witness may do the impossible: express the inexpressible. 

The second, shorter book was published a little earlier: Michael Craig Rhodes, Mystery in Philosophy: An Invocation of Pseudo-Dionysius (Lexington, 2012), 142pp.

About this book we are told:

Typically, mystery does not receive much attention in philosophy. Although Heidegger and other key philosophers have made a place for mystery in philosophy, many find such philosophizing suspect and unconvincing. As a general rule, contemporary philosophers have taken a different approach, and, thus, there has been very little discussion of mystery in philosophy. As a study of mystery in philosophy, this book is therefore somewhat unique. Moreover, it is also distinctive in the way it approaches the subject, tuning to an unpopular figure—Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500)—in contemporary philosophy in effort to make connections between that form of thought and various claims and indications of mystery. Thus, the book is unconventional in terms of both its subject matter and its methodology.

Searching for the Sacred in Dionysius and....Fort Wayne?

I have the happy and high privilege of collaborating with my friends at the OCA parish in Ft. Wayne, the Archpriest Andrew Jarmus and the Protodeacon Michael Myers, in co-hosting a conference next month entitled "Searching for the Sacred." To be held the evening of August 9 and all day on the 10th, at both St. Nicholas parish and on the campus of the University of Saint Francis, the conference will feature three speakers, including the OCA's bishop of the Bulgarian diocese, Alexander (Golitzin), who taught at Marquette University for more than two decades. Fr. Silviu Bunta of the University of Dayton and Fr. Peter Galadza of Saint Paul University, Ottawa, are the other two speakers.

Details of the conference may be had here. I do encourage all within the area not only to come, but to continue to spread the word. Fort Wayne is an easy drive from many major cities (Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Indianapolis, etc.) where there are large numbers of Eastern Christians of all traditions. Others, Catholics especially, but also Protestants and Jews interested in the topics, are heartily encouraged to register and come. It is designed not as a "heavy" academic conference but as something to benefit lay people interested in the search for the sacred in liturgy, the Scriptures (especially the Jewish scriptures), and monastic-ascetical life, showing the connection of all these with "everyday" life.

His Grace Bishop Alexander is a scholar of the Fathers, of the spiritual life, and of early Christianity in general. This fall he has a book coming out that builds on some of his earlier work: Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, ed. Bogdan Bocur (Cistercian Press, November 2013), 416pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Mystagogy proposes an interpretation of the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus in light of the liturgical and ascetic tradition that defined the author and his audience. Characterized by both striking originality and remarkable fidelity to the patristic and late neoplatonic traditions, the Dionysian corpus is a coherent and unified structure, whose core and pivot is the treatise known as the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. Given Pseudo-Dionysius fundamental continuity with earlier Christian theology and spirituality, it is not surprising that the church, and in particular the ascetic community, recognized that this theological synthesis articulated its own fundamental experience and aspirations.

The Bulgarian and Romanian Scholars in the OCA

I attended a splendid ordination at the OCA parish of St. Nicholas yesterday, and there saw a considerable number of her theologians gathered, including my friend Fr. Radu Bordeianu, whom I interviewed here, and whose magnificent book, as I noted before, remains the most important work published in ecclesiology so far this century: Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology. 

The ordinand, Fr. Silviu Bunta, is a scholar teaching at the University of Dayton, specializing in Jewish-Eastern Christian mysticism and biblical and apocalyptic literature. This was the focus of his doctoral dissertation at Marquette, under his Doktorvater and the bishop who just ordained him, Alexander Golitzin. As a scholar who taught at Marquette until being elevated to the episcopate last year, Golitzin has published several books: The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain: Contemporary Voices from Mount Athos (St. Tikhon's Seminary Press, 1995), 311pp.  (Another recent book on Mt. Athos was noted here, where I also interviewed the author.)

Bishop Alexander is also the translator of On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 1: The Church and the Last Things and the second volume: On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 2: On Virtue and Christian Life. 
Both of these books were published in the Popular Patristics series of St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, some of whose other offerings were noted here, here, and here.

Golitzin has also published on that most mysterious of characters, Dionysius: Et Introibo Ad Altare Dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with Special Reference to Its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition (1994). Other works on Dionysius have been noted here.

Finally, Bishop Alexander was one of the editors of The A to Z of the Orthodox Church,which was republished in 2010.

When it came time for communion, there was a Romanian triumvirate distributing the holy mysteries: Frs. Radu and Silviu, along with their friend and compatriot, Fr. Bogdan Bucur, author of Angelomorphic Pneumatology (Brill, 2009), 238pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This book discusses the occurrence of angelic imagery in early Christian discourse about the Holy Spirit. Taking as its entry-point Clement of Alexandria’s less explored writings, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae propheticae, and Adumbrationes, it shows that Clement’s angelomorphic pneumatology occurs in tandem with spirit christology, within a theological framework still characterized by a binitarian orientation. This complex theological articulation, supported by the exegesis of specific biblical passages (Zech 4: 10; Isa 11 : 2-3; Matt 18:10), reworks Jewish and Christian traditions about the seven first-created angels, and constitutes a relatively widespread phenomenon in early Christianity. Evidence to support this claim is presented in the course of separate studies of Revelation, the Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, and Aphrahat.

Bucur is also author of the article "From Jewish Apocalypticism to Orthodox Mysticism" in that wonderful new collection edited by Augustine Casiday, The Orthodox Christian World, which I started reviewing in detail here.

Apophasis and Dionysius

Studies on Dionysius the Areopagite, as I have noted before, continue to emerge regularly today. He remains an enormously influential figure on all theology, Eastern and Western. Along comes another study of his thought from Harvard University's Charles Stang: Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: "No Longer I" (Oxford Early Christian Studies, 2012), 272pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This book examines the writings of an early sixth-century Christian mystical theologian who wrote under the name of a convert of the apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite. This 'Pseudo'-Dionysius is famous for articulating a mystical theology in two parts: a sacramental and liturgical mysticism embedded in the context of celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, and an austere, contemplative regimen in which one progressively negates the divine names in hopes of soliciting union with the 'unknown God' or 'God beyond being.'
Charles M. Stang argues that the pseudonym and the influence of Paul together constitute the best interpretive lens for understanding the Corpus Dionysiacum [CD]. Stang demonstrates how Paul animates the entire corpus, and shows that the influence of Paul illuminates such central themes of the CD as hierarchy, theurgy, deification, Christology, affirmation (kataphasis) and negation (apophasis), dissimilar similarities, and unknowing. Most importantly, Paul serves as a fulcrum for the expression of a new theological anthropology, an 'apophatic anthropology.' Dionysius figures Paul as the premier apostolic witness to this apophatic anthropology, as the ecstatic lover of the divine who confesses to the rupture of his self and the indwelling of the divine in Gal 2:20: 'it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.'

Building on this notion of apophatic anthropology, the book forwards an explanation for why this sixth-century author chose to write under an apostolic pseudonym. Stang argues that the very practice of pseudonymous writing itself serves as an ecstatic devotional exercise whereby the writer becomes split in two and thereby open to the indwelling of the divine. Pseudonymity is on this interpretation integral and internal to the aims of the wider mystical enterprise. Thus this book aims to question the distinction between 'theory' and 'practice' by demonstrating that negative theology-often figured as a speculative and rarefied theory regarding the transcendence of God-is in fact best understood as a kind of asceticism, a devotional practice aiming for the total transformation of the Christian subject.

Perceiving God through the Spiritual Senses

Pace the title, there is actually much in this book of interest to Eastern Christians; many figures who are so important to Eastern Christian spirituality and theology are examined here, including Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and Pseudo-Dionysius. The beauty of these figures, of course--and others whom one could list--is that they do not belong exclusively to either East or West, but are rightly claimed by both. One editor is a Western Christian (Coakley--an Anglican cleric and important theologian), and the other an Orthodox theologian and deacon in the OCA whom I met last year at the wonderful ASEC conference at Ohio State. Both have brought together a collection examining the role of the body in general, and the senses in particular, in the Christian life--an effort that puts one in mind of another book, published in 2006 (and reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies), by the Syriac specialist and Orthodox theologian Susan Ashbrook Harvey: Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination.

Sarah Coakley and Paul Gavrilyuk, eds., The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge UP, 2011), 336pp.

About this book, the publisher tells us:

Is it possible to see, hear, touch, smell and taste God? How do we understand the biblical promise that the 'pure in heart' will 'see God'? Christian thinkers as diverse as Origen of Alexandria, Bonaventure, Jonathan Edwards and Hans Urs von Balthasar have all approached these questions in distinctive ways by appealing to the concept of the 'spiritual senses'. In focusing on the Christian tradition of the 'spiritual senses', this book discusses how these senses relate to the physical senses and the body, and analyzes their relationship to mind, heart, emotions, will, desire and judgement. The contributors illuminate the different ways in which classic Christian authors have treated this topic, and indicate the epistemological and spiritual import of these understandings. The concept of the 'spiritual senses' is thereby importantly recovered for contemporary theological anthropology and philosophy of religion.

Dionysius Between Orthodoxy and Heresy

2012 will see at least two new studies that I am aware of on the person, work, and legacy of that mysterious character known to history as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Another was released in November of last year: Filip Ivanovich, Dionysius the Areopagite Between Orthodoxy and Heresy (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 187pp.

The publisher provides the following overview of this book:

Dionysius the Areopagite between Orthodoxy and Heresy aims to explore the thought of one of the most controversial characters of Christian history, Dionysius the Areopagite, and put it in a correct context, between pagan (namely Neoplatonic) philosophy on the one side, and Christian theology, on the other. In significant part, the book examines Dionysius Neoplatonic sources, but it also offers insights into the original points of his philosophy and theology, thus showing how he managed to achieve a masterful integration of pagan thought and newly revealed faith. The chapters of the book, taken together, try to offer a broad insight into the Areopagite s thought, through examining not just his intellectual background and milieu, but also some of the crucial features of his work, such as notions of hierarchy, deification, apophatic and cataphatic theologies, icon, and others. This work is of a multidisciplinary character, since Dionysius thought has been studied from different points of view, so the contributions range from philosophy and theology to history and art history. Dionysius the Areopagite between Orthodoxy and Heresy is intended for both specialists and non-specialists. Apart from being a collection of specific studies, it can also serve as an introduction to the Areopagite s thought, and will be useful to all those interested in late antique and early Christian philosophy and theology, patristics, and cultural studies in general.

The Celestial-Ecclesiastical Hierarchy

The Orthodox theologian John Jillions has rightly warned of the difficulties of interpreting, and still more of applying, the notions of hierarchy in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. A new book will be published this fall that may help us understand more fully what Ps-Dionysius was talking about: L.M. Harrington, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy: The Thirteenth-Century Textbook Edition (Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations) (Peeters, 2011). 

About this book the publisher tells us:

The medieval fascination with the mysterious language of Dionysius the Areopagite is nowhere more evident than in the thirteenth-century textbook edition of his treatise on liturgical rites. Dionysius employed unfamiliar Greek to describe people, actions, and texts that would have been perfectly familiar to his readers. The Latin translation used in the thirteenth-century textbook strives to preserve this unfamiliarity, but commentaries are introduced between the lines and paragraphs, disrupting its ability to bewilder and surprise. These commentaries make the Dionysian text less mysterious, while also slightly altering its meaning. In the hands of the commentators, Dionysius becomes less interested in the aesthetic mystery of the liturgy, and more interested in credal orthodoxy. To read text and commentary together is to confront seven hundred years of competing voices speaking on the nature and purpose of the Christian church.