Theology Matters — Dionysius and the Hierarchy of Being
Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite by Eric D. Perl (Chapter Five)
Chapter Five — The Hierarchy of Being
The whole of reality is a hierarchy descending from God through angels to man to plants to inanimate beings.
The divine names are Good, Being, Life, and Wisdom and are processions in which God is present in the various ranks of being. All things participate in the Good because God is present as Goodness in all beings and non-beings. Being is present to everything from inanimate beings on up. Life is present in living beings. Wisdom is present in cognitive beings.
What is this non-being that participates in the Good? The answer was anticipated in prior discussions about whether pure matter is Good. According to Proclus, matter is “non-being” that participates in the Good. Matter underlies Being, which underlies Life, and Life underlies Intellect.
God works through the hierarchy of Being. It is in the nature of hierarchies to ascribe to a lower level of a hierarchy the dignity of a higher level, as when Isaiah was said to have been purified by a Seraphim. The function of being in contact with a human should have been delegated to a lower-ranking angel, but since the angel was engaging in an action of a higher level, it was proper to ascribe to the lower the title of the higher. Higher levels work through lower levels in a “lesser, analogous way.”
Just as plants, in living, are exercising thought in their lower mode, so the angel, in purifying, is exercising the seraphic activity in his lower mode. So also, in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Dionysius remarks that not only the angelic hierarchy but “that and every hierarchy, and that which is now hymned by us, has one and the same power throughout the hierarchical activity” (EH 1.2, 372CD). For this reason, all the sacramental activity in the church is in fact that of the bishop: “Therefore the divine order of the hierarchs [i.e. bishops] is the first of the orders which see God, but it is also the extreme and last, for in it are perfected and fulfilled all the ordering of our hierarchy … The power of the hierarchic [i.e. episcopal] order pervades all the sacred totalities, and through all the sacred order effects the mysteries of its own hierarchy” (EH V.1.5, 505AB). This is simply an application of the principle of analogy articulated in the Divine Names for the hierarchy of being as a whole.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 1206–1211).
This hierarchy is the way that particular beings experience the “immediate constitutive presence of God.”
All things participate in God as Goodness and Being; living things participate in God as Goodness, Being, and Life; cognitive things, as Goodness, Being, Life, and Wisdom. Thus all things, at every level, participate directly in God in the manner appropriate to them. Therefore the hierarchical structure of reality, far from separating the lower orders of being from God, is itself the very ground of his immediate presence in all things. Every being participates directly in God precisely in and by occupying its proper place within the cosmic hierarchy: stones by merely existing; plants by living; animals by sensing, humans by being rational, nal, angels by being intellectual. It is not hierarchical order, but rather an egalitarian leveling, that would violate the immediate participation of all things in God by blurring the differences and ranks of beings which constitute that very participation. Hence, in discussing the divine name Righteousness or Justice, Dionysius castigates the egalitarian view that rejects hierarchical order and identifies justice with equality:
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 1218–1221).
These are probably hard concepts to wrap our minds around at this point in history. We tend to think of hierarchy as inherently unfair or unjust, but that wasn’t always the case, and it may be worthwhile to set aside our modern prejudice to understand a classic view of ‘justice.” From a certain perspective, hierarchy is essential to justice:
Justice, properly understood, means not equality but due proportion, “a place for everything and everything in its place.”19 All things participate equally in God by being unequal, by occupying different ranks in the hierarchical order of the whole.
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 1225–1227).
Perl reminds the reader that the idea that God is the “first and highest being” standing above the angels at the peak of the hierarchy of beings is a mistaken idea. “God is not any being, but is “all things in all things and nothing in any” (DN VII.3.872A). God does not stand at the top of the universal hierarchy but transcends and permeates the whole.” The entire hierarchy “from the highest seraph to the least speck of dust is the immediate presence and manifestation of God of unity and goodness according to the different modes and degrees that constitute different levels of being.”
There is a notion of unfolding in Neo-Platonism where the One unfolds into the Soul into Intellect into the sensible universe, but Perl prefers to explain this unfolding as being participated in by the One at all levels rather than being merely linear. This means that without the One, there is no sensible being.
In addition, in Neo-Platonism, God is immediately present to each being but transits that presence through hierarchy. The order of existence, therefore becomes important to defining the importance of the being:
So also, in Dionysius, there is no opposition, or even distinction, between God’s immediate productive presence to all things and the transmission mission of that presence through the hierarchy of creatures. Each thing’s participation in God, its being, lies in its fulfilling its proper place within the hierarchical structure of reality. But this means that its participation in God consists in its rightly relating to other beings, above, below, and coordinate with it in the universal hierarchy. A being exercises its proper activities, its being, not in isolation but in relation to other beings. Hence, as Dionysius says, the love of all things for God, which is their reversion, their participation in him, and hence their very being, consists in their love for each other, according to the proper rank of each: “To all things, then, the Beautiful and Good is desired and beloved and cherished; and through it and for the sake of it also the lesser love the greater revertively, and those of the same sort [tia o Io ‘roixa] their coordinates communally, and the greater the lesser providentially … and all things, by desiring the Beautiful and Good, do and wish all things that they do and wish” (DN IV.10, 708A) The higher being’s love for or participation in God, its being, then, is its providence to the lower, and the lower being’s love for or participation in God is its reversion, or receptivity, to the higher. Providing ing to the lower and reverting to the higher is the very meaning of occupying pying a given position in the hierarchical structure of the whole. Dionysian hierarchy, therefore, has nothing to do with domination and subservience, but only with love, the love of all things for one another which is the love of God in them all.26
Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 1294–1303).
Relationship is the sine qua non of Dionysian theology. “Hence the light, the being, derived (literally, poured through a sluice) from the higher to the lower genuinely is God present in each. This is simply a particular application of the general principle laid out in the Divine Names: “This, the one Beautiful and Good, is singly cause of all the many beautiful and good things. [Eric D. Perl. Theophany (Locations 1336–1338).] “[I]n Dionysius’ metaphysics, then, there is no such thing as an individual, a being conceived as a closed, self-contained unit which extrinsically enters into relations with other beings.” “Each thing, indeed, is nothing but its relations to others, its place within the structure of immediate mediation.”
This may be radically unsettling for “Jesus and me” Christians, for people who think spirituality is going out alone on a mountaintop. This view says that humans are not the only thing God is concerned with because humans are part of a hierarchy of beings, all of which enjoy Being and Goodness from God through the hierarchy.
It also emphasizes Love. Every Being has a relationship with every other Being. Every Being communicates the Good to other Beings. By definition, that amounts to love, not the love of warm feelings but the love of willingly and sharing the Good.
