Hierarchy and Participation in Dionysius the Areopagite and Greek Neoplatonism by Eric Perl One of the most controversial, and to some objectionable, aspects of the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius is his doctrine of cosmic and ecclesias- tical hierarchy. The prevailing interpretation seems to be that for Dionysius all things are immediately created by and hence in commun- ion with God with respect to their being, but that their illumination and perfection is transmitted through the hierarchies. On this reading, God is the sole and direct source of being to all creatures, but it is their created superiors which give them other perfections. The doctrine of direct creation is often presented as a fundamental break from pagan Neoplatonism, while the theory of hierarchy. is sometimes seen as an unacceptable adoption of Neoplatonic principles. Both views depend 1 Andrew Louth, in Denys the Areopagite (London, 1989), expresses the common interpretation most clearly. Under the heading of “Denys’s Corrective to Neoplatonism,” he says, “Emanation, in a Neoplatonic sense, is a doctrine about the derivation of being: being derives from the One, but in a stream of emanated beings, each being receives from the one above it—creation is not restricted to the One, the whole of being that flows from the One is creative. Denys rejects any idea that being is (as it were) passed down the scale of being: all beings are created immediately by God. The scale of being and the sense of dependence only has significance in the matter of illumination: light and knowledge flow from God down through the scale of being. ...” Thus Dionysius has an “understanding of emanation simply in terms of illumination and not communication of being” (84-85), Endre von Ivanka, “Inwieweit ist Pseudo-Dionysius Neuplatoniker?” in Plato Christianus (Einsiedeln, 1964), draws a similar distinction: “Umsonst behauptet man dann noch, das Sein teil Gott allen Wesen zugleich und allen auf gleiche Weise mit, nur die Erleuchtung sei an hierarchische Mitteilung und an das Nacheinander der Stufenordnung gebunden” (271). Even Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2, tr. A. Louth et al. (San Francisco and New York, 1984), by far the most perceptive modern interpreter of Dionysius, follows Ivanka on this point: “ the system of mediation found in . . . Neo-Platonism is undermined in a Christian sense by Denys with his assertion of the immediate relationship of Copyright 1994, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. LXVIII, No. 116 AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY on the assumption that there is an opposition between direct and hierarchical participation, so that whatever perfection is received through a mediating hierarchy is not received directly from God, and whatever perfection is received directly from God is not transmitted through a created hierarchy. This assumption, however, reveals an insufficiently subtle grasp of both Dionysius and pagan Neoplatonism. For both, every being is wholly and immediately caused to be by God, or the One, and every perfection it has is an immediate participation, not merely in a superior created being, but in God himself. A sound philosophical understanding shows that not only in Dionysius, but also in Plotinus and Proclus, there is no opposition between direct and hierarchical participation, but rather that hierarchical structure is itself the very means and revelation of God’s immediate creative omnipres- ence. In Dionysius’ ontology, God is the Creator in that he is present to and in every being as the determination which makes each thing to be what it is and thus to exist. In this he adopts the understanding of the source of form as cause of being which lies at the heart of Neoplatonism.” “The fulfilling cause of all things is the Godhead of the Son... as... form making form in the formless as source of form, formless in forms as beyond form, substance to whole substances, immaculately standing above and transcending all substance in a manner beyond being, deter- all creatures... to a personal God of love” (192). All these scholars are favorable to Dionysius and approve of his supposed break with Neoplatonism. René Roques, on the other hand, whose L’univers dionysien (Aubier, 1954) has been a major source for later work on Dionysius, sees a difficulty here. Because of the hierarchies, “le Christ n’est pas immédiatement présent a la conscience de tous les chrétiens;” while the mystical union, corresponding to the direct presence of God, is only a special case: “[I]] doit étre extrémement rare et bref. Iln’est accessible qu’a une catégorie de chrétiens pri iée et particuligrement sainte. Pour le grand nombre, Dieu restera lointain et caché.” (828-29). Pursuing this interpretation, John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Washington and Cleveland, 1969), argues that “for Dionysius there are two distinct modes of union with God: on the one hand, theology, mystical, individual, and direct; and, on the other hand, theurgy, which is the ‘activity of the hierarchy’ and of its numerous intermediaries” (82). He sees this as a fundamental theological weakness, since it implies that direct communion is individualistic and extra-ecclesial, while the hierarchically mediated participation makes sacramental life either “magical” or merely “symbolic.” All these writers, favorable and unfavorable alike, take for granted the distinction between direct and mediated communion. Once this false distinction is overcome, both the supposed “correction” of Neoplatonism and the theological difficulty disappear, as we come to see that it is precisely the direct presence of God, creative and mystically unitive, that is at work throughout the hierarchical mediation in the cosmos and the Church. 2 For this doctrine in Plotinus, operative at all levels (the One producing Intellect, Intellect producing Soul, and Soul producing the sensible, each by giving form to its product), see 5.1.3; 5.1.5; 5.1.7; 6.7.2; 6.7.17; 3.8.3; 3.8.7.HIERARCHY AND PARTICIPATION 17 mining the whole principles and orders and established above all prin- ciple and order. And it is the measure of all things. .. .”*> Himself without form and hence beyond intelligibility and being, God creates each thing by entering into it as its formative principle. Thus Dionysius explains that under the name of Beauty, God is the “principle of all things as making cause (poiétikon aition) . . . and limit of all and beloved as final cause (telikon aition), for on account of the Beautiful all things come to be, and paradigmatic [cause] (paradeigmatikon), because all things are determined according to it. Hence creation is the self-multiplication of God, the unfolding of the perfections which are one (monoeidds)® in him into the constitutive differentiating formative principles of creatures. [The Thearchy] is given to all beings, and, overflowing with the participations of all goods, is distinguished unitedly, and is multiplied singly, and becomes multiform without going out of the One; as, since God is in a manner beyond being, but gives being to beings and produces the whole substances, that One is said to become multiform by the production of many beings from him, while that remains no less, and one in the multiplication... by the undiminished flow of his unlessened impartations.® In this creative self-impartation, the divine processions or powers, that is, God as participated by and present in creatures, “fan out” by the progressive addition of determination from the most generic to the most specific, indeed individual forms: from Being, participated by all beings, to Life, shared by all living beings, to Wisdom, common to all cognitive living beings, and soon.” Thus all the more specific perfections of beings are contained in the most generic, Being, as its modes and specifica- tions.® This creative self-differentiation of God culminates in the logoi, the constitutive individual differences of creatures in virtue of which each one is itself and thus is. “In the cause of all things the paradigms of all beings pre-exist, in one embracing union beyond being, and then 3 Corpus Dionysiacum I: De Divinibus Nominibus, ed. Beate Regina Suchla @erlin, 1990), 2.10.184 (PG 8, 648C). Henceforward abbreviated DN. 4 DN 47.182 ona 5 DNS. 24.4) * DN 2. 35-36 (649) 7 DNS (0-81 (816B). . 8 DN 5.5.183-84 (820A-C); 5.9.188-89 (824D-825A). Actually, Being in turn is contained in the still more generic perfection of Goodness, which pecording to Dionysius extends not only to beings but even to non-beings, DN’ 5.1.181 (816B). But since we are here concerned only with the relation of beings to God, we can without distortion leave this aside and focus on Being as the most generic perfection common to all beings as such.18 AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY it produces substance by the going out from substance. Paradigms, we say, are the being-making (ousiopoious) logoi of all beings, which pre- exist uniformly in God, which theology calls pre-determinations . . . determinative and creative (aphoristika kai poiétika) of beings, accord- ing to which the Beyond Being both predetermined and produced all beings.’ Consequently, as Dionysius says, “The being of all things is the divinity beyond being.”!° Himself formless and beyond being, God causes all things to be as the being in which they participate and by which they are beings. God “neither was, nor will be, nor came to be, nor comes to be, nor will come t to be; rather, he is not; but he is being to beings (to einai tois ousi). . + God can be present to all things in a differentiated manner as the being of each, precisely because he is not any one of them. God is not a being, the first link in the great chain, standing at the summit of the cosmic hierarchy. If he were, he would be a determinate being, a member of the cosmos, one existing thing among other existing things. Rather, as the determinative being of all things, himself beyond being, God is at once transcendent and imma- nent, beyond the entire hierarchy of creatures and permeating the whole from top to bottom. “For since the goodness of the Godhead which is beyond all things extends from the highest and most venerable sub- stances to the last, and is still above all, the higher do not outstrip its excellence nor do the lower go beyond its containment.” This doctrine of creation is the basis of the dialectic of the divine names. As formless Nothing, God is without name, but as causal perfections of all things, he is truly named from all creatures, as being in beings, life in the living, stone in stone, “all things in all things and nothing in any.”!® Every perfection of each creature is God in that creature. In such an ontology, it is impossible to draw any distinction between creation and illumination. God’s creative “downward” movement, his self-revelation to the world, is at once, identically, his illuminative “upward” drawing of the world into communion with himself. “Every procession of the light-revelation .. . coming to us in a good-giving way, fills us again in an upward-drawing way, as a one-making power, and returns [us] toward the unity of the Father who gathers. ...”"4 This illumination which God sends down upon creatures and which draws creatures to himself is not merely an added perfection given to an already existing creature, but rather is nothing other than the act of ® DN 5.8,188 (824C), 1De Coelesti Hierarchia, in Corpus Dicnpsiacum II, ed. Ginter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter (Berlin, 1991), 5. Ts 20 (177D). Henceforward abbreviated CH. u DN 5,4.183 (817D). 2DN 4.4.147 (697C). 13DN 7.3.198 (872A). “CH 1.1, (120B-121A),HIERARCHY AND PARTICIPATION 19 creation itself. The rays of himself, of uncreated light which illumine all things, are rays of Being. God as the Creator is named Light because of the fundamental principle that what makes the creature to be is the determination in virtue of which it is intelligible. “The Good is hymned under the name of Light. ... For thus the Goodness of the Godhead which is beyond all extends from the highest and most venerable substances to the last... and it illumines those that are able, and creates (démiourgei), and vivifies, and holds together, and perfects; and it is the measure of beings ... and number, and order, and containment, and cause, and end.”? Creation is illumination; illumination is creation. All the divine activities, of purification, illumination, perfection, and so on, are nothing but God’s making things fully to be by granting them intelligible determination. Creatures do not first exist and then receive divine illumination, but rather come to be by being illumined, that is, by receiving God as their perfections, all of which are contained in their being. Thus, when we read the Hierarchies in the light of the ontological principles laid out in the Divine Names, it is clear there can be no twofold communion with God, one direct and creative, the other mediated and illuminating. Rather, all things exist by participating in God's creative illumination, which is at once direct and hierarchically ordered.!® Therefore the hierarchical structure of the cosmos, far from separat- ing the lower orders of creation from God, is itself the very ground of the direct participation of all things in him. As the being of all things, God dwells wholly and immediately in every creature, but in the differenti- ated way which is proper to and constitutive of each one. Thus each creature participates directly in God precisely by occupying and insofar as it occupies its own proper position in the cosmic hierarchy. A stone participates in him by being a stone, to the extent that it is a good stone, that is, succeeds in being a stone. The seraphim participate in him by being seraphim, to the extent that they are good seraphim, or succeed in being seraphim. It is not hierarchical structure, but on the contrary a false levelling or egalitarianism, blurring the differences and ranks of creatures, that violates the direct communion of all things with God: The divine righteousness orders all things, and sets their bounds, and preserves all unmixed and unconfused with all, and gives to all beings what is appropriate to each.... And ... those who rail against the divine righteousness do not DN 4.4.146-47 (697BC). 16Cf, Otto Semmelroth, “Die Theologia symboliké des Ps.-Dionysius Areopagita,” Scholastik 27 (1952), 2-3: “Gott als agathon gibt den Dingen ihr Dasein aus sich heraus in der photadosia... ,” and 4: “[D]er Areopagit mit Vorliebe die schépfung Gottes als Ausstrahlung des géttlichen Lichtes.. . schildert.... Von hier aus wird die ganze Schépfungstheologie des Ps.-Areopagiten Lichttheologie.”4d: dh 4 20 AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY realize that they are condemned for their manifest un- righteousness, for they say that immortality ought to be in mortal things, and what is complete in the incomplete... and identity in differing things, and perfect power in the weak ... and altogether they attribute to one what belongs to another (ta allén allois apodidoasin). But... the divine righteousness in this is really true righteousness, because it assigns to all things what is proper to each according to the status of each being, and [preserves the nature of each in its proper order and power.! This hierarchic participation in God may be illustrated by the tradi- tional image of created beings as a series of vessels of differing sizes, all of which are equally and completely filled with divine being, but are equally full precisely by containing unequal amounts. When Dionysius says that the higher ranks of creation are “closer” to God than the lower, therefore, this must not be taken to mean that they stand between God and the lower orders. It means, rather, that the higher orders participate in God in more and greater ways. All creatures participate in God as their being; living things participate in God as being and life; intelligent things, as being, life, and wisdom. Thus Dionysius responds to a hypothetical questioner who suggests that since the divine procession Being is prior to Life and Life is prior to Wisdom, it should follow that inanimate objects are higher than living things and irrational animals higher than intelligent beings. This follows only, says Dionysius, “if one supposes intellectual beings are not beings and living things.” But since the divine minds [i.e., the angels] also are [in a way] above other beings, and live [in a way] above other living things, and are intelligent and know {in a way] above sense and reason . . . they are nearer to the Good, participating in it in an eminent manner, and receive from it more and greater gifts; likewise rational beings excel sensitive ones, having more by the eminence of reason, and the latter [excel other living things] by sense-perception, and [living things excel mere beings] by life. And... the things which participate more in the one and infinitely-giving God are closer to him and more divine than the rest.” Life is the more specific and intense mode of being proper to plants in relation to stones; intelligence is the more specific and intense mode of ‘DN 8.7.204 (896AB). 18DN 5.3.182 (817AB).HIERARCHY AND PARTICIPATION 21 being and life proper to angels in relation to all lesser creatures. If the angels are “closer” to God than men, this is not because men do not directly participate in him, but because the angels, who by possessing intelligence necessarily also possess the lesser perfections of life and being which intelligence presupposes, “participate in him in a multiplic- ity of ways.”!9 Higher creatures, then, possess the perfections of lower ones in an eminent way, while the lower orders possess the superior perfections in a lesser way. Dionysius explains, for example, that although the angels are not sensitive beings like men and lower animals, this does not mean that we have some knowledge that they lack. Rather, “the Scriptures say that the angels know things on earth, knowing them not by sense- perception (although they are sensible things), but by the proper power and nature of the deiform intellect.” And conversely, sense-perception itself is but a weaker mode of intellection, an “echo of Wisdom.” If intellect is a more intense mode of sense, life, and being, then the sense-perception of animals, the life of plants, and even the mere being of stones may be seen as the attenuated modes of intellection and life proper to such creatures. “All things desire [the Good]: the intellectual and rational beings, by way of knowledge; the sensitive, by way of sense; those without a share in sense-perception, by the implanted motion of vital desire; those which are not living but only are, by their fitness for only essential participation.” Every hierarchy is governed by this principle of inclusion and manifestation. The higher levels are not exempt from, but rather include in an eminent way, the perfections of the lower in their own, and the lower do not lack but rather manifest in a lesser way the perfections of the higher. Hence as we survey the hierarchy from top to bottom, at no point do we find any new or different activities which are not present in the appropriate way at every other level. Rather, it is one and same activity which is present throughout the entire hierarchy in different modes and degrees. For all the perfec- tions of creatures are their proper participations in the one all-embrac- ing creative divine Goodness. Dionysius expressly applies this principle in both the Celestial and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. Among the angels, “just as the first have in an eminent way the holy properties of the lower, so the later have those of the earlier, not in the same way but in a lesser way.” Likewise he explains that in the Church, the sacramental activity of a priest or deacon is not other than or additional to that of the bishop, but is wholly contained in it: “Therefore the divine order of the hierarchs [i.e., the 19 CH 4.1.20 (177D). 20 DN 7.2.197 (869C), 2 DN 7.2.195 (868BC). 4, i 148 (700B) 1 2DN ). 2CH 12.2.42-48 (292C-93A).fe Le : 22 AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY bishops] is the first of the orders which see God, but it is also the highest and last, for in it are perfected and fulfilled all the ordering of our hierarchy. ... The power of the hierarchic order pervades all the sacred totalities, and through all the sacred order effects the mysteries of its own hierarchy.”* This is why a priest, having no sacramental power of his own but only that of the bishop, needs to be ordained and to receive antimens and chrism from the bishop in order to celebrate the myster- ies.” No activity of the Church stands outside of the bishop: “[The angelic} and every hierarchy, and that which is now hymned by us [i.e., the ecclesiastical hierarchy] has one and the same power through all the hierarchic work: the hierarch himself. ...”2° Hence, when a lower level in a hierarchy receives any perfection through an intermediary, it is in actual fact also receiving it directly from the highest level. Thus, for example, the priest does not stand between and separate the layman from the bishop. On the contrary, the activity of the “intermediary” is contained in, indeed manifests and is that of the higher order, so that the latter is directly present throughout the entire hierarchy. Or again, the sacramental activity of a priest, which is hierarchically received from the bishop, is itself the immediate power and presence of God directly at work in the priest. This emerges most clearly in Dionysius’ account of why the prophet Isaiah is said to have been purified by a seraph, when properly speaking only the lowest ranks of angels should be direct contact with men. He explains that it was not actually a seraph that came to Isaiah, but that precisely because the perfections of the lower orders are nothing other than those of the higher, the purifying activity truly belongs to the higher rank. As-Dionysius says, it has been suggested that the angel “ascribed his own. purifying sacred work ... to God and after God to his prior-working hierarchy.””’ He proceeds to explain that it is one and the same light that is at work throughout the hierarchy, so that the lower angels have no activity which is not already contained in that of the seraphim. Thus whatever they do for a lower being is truly being done by their superiors, and is nothing but the presence and manifestation of the latter’s activity. But further, since all the perfections and activi- ties of all creatures pre-exist in God and are the presence of Godin them, this light is God’s own activity which is directly present throughout the whole. Thus Dionysius continues, “The person who said this meant that the thearchic power comes to all things and penetrates and extends irresistibly through all and again is unmanifest to all, not only as superessentially transcending all things, but also as hiddenly spreading “De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, in Corpus Dionysiacum II, 5.1.5.107 (605AB). Henceforward abbreviated EH. 2 EH 5.1.5.107-08 (505BC). %®EH 1.1.2.64-65 (872CD). 2CH 13.7.44 (300CD).HIERARCHY AND PARTICIPATION 23 its providential activities to all. But it is also manifested proportion- ately” to all the intellectual beings, reaching out its own gift of light to the senior substances, through them, as first, imparting it in good order to the subordinates, according to the God-seeing measure (symmetrian) of each rank.”” Hence the activity of the lowest angel, itself a presen- tation of that of the seraphim, is nothing other than the illuminating activity of God himself: the highest beings “ungrudgingly impart to [the lower] the radiance which comes to them, and these again to their subordinates, and in each the first imparts to the one after it the spreading divine light which is given proportionately even to all.”° The entire passage clearly shows that there is no opposition between “direct” and “mediated” participation in God. It is one and the same light, that é God himself, which is directly present in the appropriate way at every level. The essence of hierarchy, therefore, is the sacramental principle of co-operation, or synergy. This means not merely that the creature and God “work together” as though the creature were another being, addi- tional to God, or that the creature’s operation is merely by courtesy attributed to God, but that the activity of the creature, by participation, truly is that of God. Thus when a bishop or priest celebrates a sacra- ment, it is God himself who is at work: “Perfection for each of those appointed in hierarchy is to be led up according to its proper analogy to the imitation of God, and . . . to become a co-operator (synergon) of God, and to show the divine activity revealed in itself.... As, since the order of hierarchy is that some are purified and others purify, some are illumined and other illumine, some are perfected and others perfect, the imitation of God is adapted to each in a certain mode.” ! In virtue of inclusion and synergy, the mediating activity of creatures is the direct activity of God pervading the entire hierarchy. And so Dionysius con- cludes his account of Isaiah and the angel: “God is by nature and truly and properly the source of illumination to all those who are illumined, as the essence of light and cause of being itself. ... But by placement and in a God-imitating way [i.e., by participation] that which is higher ... [is the source] to each thing after, in that the divine lights are derived to the latter through it.... Wherefore they refer every sacred and 2:(Analogos). Dionysius uses this term to mean “in the manner appropriate to a given being’s place in the hierarchy.” For the meaning of “analogy” in Dionysius, see Vladimir Lossky, “La notion des ‘analogies’ chez Denys le Pseudo-Aréopagite,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age 5 (1980), 279-309, ®CH 13.83.44 (301A). %CH 13.3.45-46 (301CD). %1CH 3.2.18 (1658).24 AMERICAN camsouic ‘PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY God-imitating activity to God, as cause, but to the first deiform minds as the first effectors and teachers of divine things.”” Dionysius adopts the Neoplatonic image of all creation as an array of mirrors, all reflecting and passing on the divine ray of being, while the light itself, remaining one and the same no matter how many times it is passed on, permeates the entire structure. “The purpose of hierar- chy, then, is likeness and union with God as far as possible ... making its members divine images, clear and spotless mirrors, receptive of the original light and thearchic ray.”* The Church and the world are hierarchical precisely in order that the fulness of God’s glory may be manifested by the direct communion of all things with him. The hier- archy of creation, from stones to animals to men and angels, and of the Church, from laity to priests to bishops, reflects and manifests the hierarchical arrangement of the creative divine activities themselves. “Since the hieratic orders are images of the divine activities, revealing in themselves the ordered illuminations of the well-adorned and uncon- fused order of the divine activities ... they are ordered in hierarchical distinctions. ... The hierarchy of the divine images divides itself into distinct orders and powers, visibly revealing the thearchic activities. Dionysius is often said to “correct” Proclus by his insistence that the divine processions are not distinct “substances or hypostases” in their own right, mediating between the One and lesser beings, but are simply the differentiated presence of the one God in his creatures,” Dionysius of course rejects the late Neoplatonic practice of identifying such causal substances with the pagan gods and worshipping them as such. But the metaphysical content of his doctrine that the lower level is included in the higher, so that there is no conflict between direct and mediated causation and all things are produced directly by God or the One, is already present in pagan Neoplatonism. Indeed, the notion that for the latter each ontological level is caused to be by its immediate superior and therefore not directly by the One represents a serious misunder- standing of the meaning of emanation or procession. Plotinus, as is well known, consistently teaches not only that each level participates in the one above it but also that all things, at every level, participate directly in the One and that the One is immediately present tous and to all things.” This is because throughout the process of emanation, each level is not outside of, but is rather contained in, its cause: “The last and lowest things are ... in the last of those before them, and these are in those prior to them, ‘and one thing is in another up to the First, which is the Principle.’ This follows from the very CH 13,3.46 (301D). 3CH 8,2,17-18 (165A), 4 EH 5.7.109-10 (508C-509A). 3% DN 2.7.131 (645A); DN 5.2, 181 (816C- as DN 11.6.222 (953CD). See e.g. 9.8.9; 5.1.11; 6.9.4; 6.9.7; 6.9.8; 6.9.HIERARCHY AND PARTICIPATION 25 meaning of “cause of being” in Neoplatonism. The cause of being to each thing is its formative principle, the source of the determination which makes it to be by making it to be what it is. The causal relation is not efficient causality as usually understood, like that of a craftsman to his artifact or a father to his son, but rather that of a Form to a particular. Such causation is not the production of new beings additional to the cause, but rather the manifestation in differentiated multiplicity of what is already present in undifferentiated unity in the cause. “How is that One the principle of all things? By possessing them beforehand. . .. But it has them in such a way as not to be distinguished; they are distinguished on the second level . . .” ie., as Intellect.* Likewise Plotinus says of the procession from Intellect to Soul and the sensible world that “all things [in Intellect] already were and always were and were in such a way that one could later say ‘this after that’; for being extended and as it were unfolded it can manifest this after that, being together it is all ‘this.”°9 Consequently there is no introduction of new content in the move- ment from Intellect to the sensible world. Rather, as Plotinus repeat- edly insists, Intellect, as produced by the One, is “already all things. Throughout the hierarchy of emanation, each level is its product in greater unity or concentration, and each level is its cause in greater - differentiation or dispersion. All the reality there is, is the content of Being or Intellect, the “trace of the One,”"' and it is that same content which subsists less perfectly as the world of sensible particulars. “If someone admires this sensible world . . . observing its size and beauty and order... and all animals and plants, let him ascend to its archetypal and truer reality and there see them all intelligible and eternal in it.”# Plotinus expresses this most clearly in his great treatise on the Forms and the Good: “Does the world There, then, have all the things that are here? Yes, as many as are made by logos and according to form,”” which is to say everything, even matter itself.* Consequently, the sky too must be a living thing There, and a sky not empty of stars, as they are called here, and this is what it is to be for 375.5.9. 385,3.15; cf. 6.8.18, ous %6.7.1. This idea is perhaps most clearly expressed by Nicholas of Cusa in his doctrine of emanation as complicatio-explicatio, enfolding-unfolding, but it is already present in Plotinus and is fundamental to all Neoplatonism. On this see ‘Thomas McTighe, “The Doctrine of Complicatio-Explicatio in the Neo-Platonic Tradition” (unpublished article). 40 496.7.11. “The matter of the sense-world exists archetypally in the intelligible: 2.4.4.26 AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY sky. And clearly there is also earth There, not empty, but much more filled with life, and living things are all together in it...and plants ... and sea is There, and all water... There is, as it were, a flow of [all things] from one spring... as if there were one quality having and maintaining all qualities in itself, sweetness with fragrance, and at once the quality of wine and the powers of all juices and the visions of colors and all that touches recognize; and there are all that hearings hear, all tunes and every rhythm.*® Clearly, as we ascend from sense to Intellect, we leave nothing behind, but rather encounter the same content more richly, as true reality, what it really is. Thus Intellect is the cause of being to Soul, and Soul to the sensible world, not in the sense that each produces another being additional to itself, but on the contrary, in the sense that the effect has no being whatsoever outside of or apart from its superior. The lower levels’ otherness from Intellect is not an addition but rather a loss of intelligibility and being. Each level is the re-presentation of its superior in a more differentiated, and hence less intensely real, form. The intelligible and the sensible, therefore, do not constitute two separate worlds,“* but are rather the same world, the same intelligible content, cognized perfectly or imperfectly. For Plotinus there is only one world: - that which is, Being or Intellect, of which the so-called sensible world is only an imperfect apprehension. “Sense-perceptions here are dim intel- lections, but the intellections there are clear sense-perceptions.”’ Thus Plotinus insists that bodies themselves exist (intelligibly) in Intellect.® Since for all Neoplatonists to be is to be intelligible, the dimming of intelligibility as we move from the unity of a form grasped by intellection to the multiplicity of particulars taken in by sense-perception is a loss of being. Sensible objects are imperfectly existing intelligibles; intelli- gibles are perfectly existing sensibles. Because of this identity of content throughout the hierarchy, the containment of the lower in the higher, the intelligible world does not stand between us and the One. Since sensibles truly exist only insofar as they are contained in, indeed, are Intellect, in causing Intellect the One immediately causes all things, and all things, insofar as they are at all, participate directly in the One. “For there is something of [the One] in us as well; indeed, there is nowhere where it is not, in the things 456.7,12. 96.2.1. 76.7.7. “86.7.6 and 7; 6.2.21. For a good exposition of how the so-called sensible world is the intelligible world insofar as it is at all, see John N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation, and the One (Toronto, 1967; 2nd ed., Burdett, NY, 1991), ch. 8, “Is Nature Real for Plotinus?”HIERARCHY AND PARTICIPATION 27 which can participate in it.“° Indeed, Plotinus is the source for the image of the cosmic hierarchy as a series of mirrors, in which the same reality is reflected at every point, differentiated according to the mode of the recipient.>° Thus he stresses the continuity of the One’s presence throughout all the levels: “All things are the One and are not the One: they are he because they come from him; they are not he, because it is by abiding by himself that he gives them. It is then like a long life stretched out at length; each part is other than that which comes next in order, but the whole is continuous with itself, differentiated by difference, the earlier not perishing in the later.” Even more often than Plotinus, perhaps, Proclus is misinterpreted as holding that each term in his cosmic hierarchy participates in and is directly produced by, not the One, but only its immediate prior. But in fact, for Proclus, as for Plotinus and Dionysius, the production or causation of being is the self-multiplication of the cause: “That which engenders is established without change or diminution, multiplying itself through its generative power and providing secondary beings from itself.” This understanding of causation underlies Proclus’ well known. doctrine of remaining, procession, and reversion: “Every effect remains in its cause and proceeds from it and reverts to it.”> The moment of “remaining” represents the effect’s containment in its cause so that, just as in Plotinus, procession is not addition but differentiation from the more universal to the more particular. Indeed, the entire cycle of remaining, procession, and reversion describes the differentiation of the cause into its effects and and the unification of effects in the cause, that is, the participation of particulars in the forms in virtue of which they exist. Hence the production of the first effect from the First Cause already includes all that will follow from it, so that the entire hierarchy proceeds immediately from the One. As in Plotinus, then, each level in the hierarchy is the manifestation or unfolding of what is already present in a more unified and therefore more real way in its superior. “Where one thing receives bestowal from another in virtue of that other’s pre-existence, the giver possesses primally that which it gives, while the other is secondarily what the giver is. Just as in Dionysius, the being and all perfections of the lower level are those of the higher by participation. “For either the product is seen in the producer, pre-existing in its cause, for every cause comprehends its effect before its emergence, being primally what the 43.8.9; cf. n. 36, 6.4,10-11. 515,2.2. *2Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed. E.R. Dodds, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1963; repr. Oxford, 1992), prop. 27.32. Henceforward referred to as ET. ‘83 ET, prop. 35.38, «ET, prop. 18,20,a 4 28 AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY latter is secondarily; or the producer is seen in the product, for the latter, participating in its producer, reveals in itself secondarily what the producer is primally.”° This deads to the well known Neoplatonic doctrine, adopted by Dionysius,® that “all things are in all things, but in the manner appropriate to each.”"” Thus, as we saw in Dionysius, all the perfections of all beings, at every level, are modulations of one and the same power, that of the One itself, whose differentiated presence to each thing causes each to be by establishing it in its own proper mode of participation. Proclus, even more explicitly than Plotinus, applies this doctrine to the theory of procession to show that the One directly produces and illuminates all things. Indeed, to stress a point that is often overlooked, he argues that a thing is produced and receives its perfections more from its higher source than from its “immediate” prior. His explanation is so clear that it is worth giving in extenso: All that is produced by secondary beings is more produced from those prior and more causal principles from which the secondary were themselves derived. For if the secondary has its whole existence from its prior, thence also it receives its power of further production. ... But if it owes to the superior cause its power of production, to that superior it owes its character as a cause in so far as it is a cause, a character meted out to it from thence in proprtion to its constitutive capacity. If so, the things which proceed from it are caused in virtue of its prior.... If so, the effect owes to the superior its character as an effect. Again, it is evident that the effect is more from the superior. For if the latter has given to the secondary the causality which enabled it to produce, it must itself have possessed this causality primally, and it is in virtue of this that the secon- dary being generates, having derived from its prior the capac- ity of secondary generation. But if the secondary is productive by participation, and the prior by impartation and primally, the latter is more cause, in that it has communi- cated to another the power of generating consequents.® From this it follows that the One is the total or absolute cause of all perfections of all things, since all power is derived from the One and ‘ET, prop. 65.62. 8% DN 4.7.152 (704C). “ET, prop. 108,92, SET, prop. 56.54.HIERARCHY AND PARTICIPATION 29 none can be added to it. Since the causal activity of each being is, by participation, that of its own superior, so that all activity is ultimately that of the One, there is no conflict between direct production by the One and “mediated” production by a lesser cause. All things proceed and receive their perfections at once immediately from the One and from their own priors.°? Thus Proclus already articulates the doctrine of synergy which we found in Dionysius: “The higher cause, being more efficacious, operates earlier upon the participant (for the latter is af- fected first by the more powerful); and when the secondary cause operates, the higher co-operates (synergei), because all that the secon- dary makes, the higher cause co-generates with it.”° As Proclus repeat- edly insists, the gods (i.e., the henads, which are themselves nothing other than the participated presence of the One in beings) “have filled all things with themselves.” “The divine fills all things from itself with the goods which are in it,” thereby causing all things to be, and hence the divine powers “extend themselves from above even to the uttermost gs. For all these philosophers, then, God is the sole causal power throughout the entire hierarchy, and creatures serves as “intermediar- ies” only to the extent that they co-operate with him, making his activity their own. Thus there is no need for Dionysius to modify or bypass the Neoplatonic hierarchy by falsely distinguishing between being and illumination, or between mystical and sacramental union, in order to affirm the direct. creation of all things by God and their direct commun- ion with him. The hierarchy of being, far from separating us from God, is itself the very basis for the immanence of God in all things. Hierarchy is indeed the very principle of being itself, in virtue of which all things are what they are and thus exist, and of the constitution of the Church as the Body of Christ, “the fulness of him who fills all in all.” This Neoplatonic and Dionysian doctrine has important bearings on recent trends in religious thought. Theologies of divine immanence are the fashion of the day, stressing that God is not simply apart from creation but that all things are contained in and filled with God. But in our time these theories are usually associated with an intense opposition to all forms of hierarchy. The assumption seems to be that since God is equally in all things, all things are equal. By rejecting hierarchy on the ground that if the world or the Church were hierarchically struc- tured some creatures would be closer to God than others, such theories Cf, Jean Trouillard, “Procession néoplatonicienne et création judéo-chrétienne,” in Néoplatonisme: Mélanges offerts a Jean Trouillard (Fontenay aux Roses, 1981), 19. “ET, prop. 70.66. “ET, prop. 121.106. °2ET, prop. 181.116. ® ET, prop. 140.124; see also prop. 142.124-26; prop. 145.128.AMERICAN CATHOLIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY reveal that they remain trapped in the “ontotheological” view of God as the “supreme being,” the first in a series, rather than beyond being, “all things in all things and nothing in any.” In such egalitarian theologies, the hierarchical differences of rank between man and other animals, male and female, clergy and laity, are blurred or denied. But as a result, the very constitutive differences in virtue of which God is present to all things are obliterated. Dionysius and the Neoplatonists, however, pro- vide a vision of creation as theophany, of divine immanence together with transcendence, of the organic unity and sacramentality of the cosmos, inseparable from the traditional metaphysical and institutional hierarchies. Hierarchy, rather than separating us from one another and promoting exploitation and envy, is the very ground of the communion, the sympathy, the interrelatedness and mutual responsibility of all things. The higher are to provide for the lower and the lower to adhere to and follow the higher. Love knows nothing of equality, but leads every being to fulfil its proper place in the order of creation. The hierarchical structure of the world and the Church is the very manifestation of the love of all things for each other, which is itself their participation in the love of God which fills all things. By all things . . . the Beautiful and the Good is desired and beloved and cherished; and on account of it and for its sake, the lower love the higher revertively, and those of equal order their equal communally, and the higher the lower providen- tially, and each thing itself preservingly, and all things by desiring the Beautiful and the Good do and will whatever they do and will. ... [God as Love is] a unifying and preserving power . . . binding those of equal order in commu- nal mutuality, moving the first in providence for the lower, and establishing the lower in return to the higher.** University of Dallas Irving, Texas DN 4,10-12.155-58 (708A-709D).