The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite

meager acquaintance with Dionysius. The Greek language is molded in a marvelous manner to express the newly revealed Christian faith in its most exalted form, in a style which Daillé confesses to be always of the same "color," and Pearson notes is "always like itself." Jahn has followed Dionysius step by step in order to trace the connection between the language of Plato and Dionysius, for the purpose of exploding the puerile supposition that such complex writings as these could have been evolved from the elementary treatises of Proclus and Plotinus. Most probably, some of the lost writings of Dionysius are in part preserved in those writers and in Clement of Alexandria, but Dionysius is the Master, not the pupil! The works are very distinct and precise upon the Divinity of Christ and the Hypostatic Union. Like St. Paul, Dionysius affirms that He who made all things is God; and further, that Jesus is God, by using some startling phraseology. He speaks of James, "the Lord's brother original: Ἀδελφόθεος," as "brother of God." David, from whom Christ was born after the flesh, is called "father of God original: Θεοπάτορ." When speaking of the entombment of the Blessed Virgin, he speaks of her body as the "Life-springing" and "God-receptive body," thus testifying that Jesus, born of a pure Virgin, is Life and God. He describes the miracles of Jesus as being, as it were, the new and God-incarnate energy of God become Man.