Josh

Today is the feast day of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, one of my favorite authors, the beauty of whose metaphysics makes me want, perhaps more than anything else, to be a Christian. Some favorite sayings: "Indeed the inscrutable one is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this supra-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name.... To those who fall away it is the voice calling, "Come back!" and it is the power which raises them up again. It refurbishes and restores the image of God corrupted within them. It is the sacred stability which is there for them when the tide of unholiness is tossing them about...It is the guide bringing upward those uplifted to it and is the enlightenment of the illuminated. Source of perfection for those being made perfect, source of divinity for those being deified, principle of simplicity for those turning toward simplicity, point of unity for those made one; transcendently, beyond what is, it is the Source of every source. Generously and as far as may be, it gives out a share of what is hidden." "But the 'beautiful' which is beyond individual being is called 'beauty' because of that beauty bestowed by it on all things, each in accordance with what it is. It is given this name because it is the cause of the harmony and splendor in everything, because like a light it flashes onto everything that beauty - causing impartations of its own well-spring ray. Beauty 'bids' all things to itself (whence it is called 'beauty') and gathers everything into itself...Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things." "He binds the whole universe totally to himself. He generates everything from out of himself as from some omnipotent root and he returns all things back to himself as though to some omnipotent storehouse...He keeps them thus in a transcendent bond and he does not permit them either to fall away from him or to be destroyed by being moved from their perfect home." "Whatever there is, whatever comes to be, is there and has being on account of the Beautiful and the Good. All things look to it. All things are moved by it. All things are preserved by it. Every source exists for the sake of it, because of it, and in it and this is so whether such source be exemplary, final, efficient, formal, or elemental. In short, every source, all preservation and ending, everything in fact, derives from the Beautiful and the Good...Here is the source of all which transcends every source, here is an ending which transcends completion. 'For from Him and through Him and in Him and to Him are all things' says Holy Scripture." "This divine Righteousness is also praised as the 'Salvation of the World,' since it ensures that each being is preserved and maintained in its proper being and order...benevolently operating for the preservation of the world, [it] redeems everything in accordance with the capacity of things to be saved and it works so that everything may keep within its appropriate virtue. This is why the theologians name it 'Redemption,' because it does not permit the truly real to fall to nothingness and because it redeems from the passions, from impotence and deficiency anything which has gone astray toward error or disorder or has suffered a failure to reach its proper virtues. Redemption is like a loving father making up for what is missing and overlooking any slack. It raises a thing up from an evil condition and sets it firmly where it ought to be, adding on lost virtue, bringing back order and arrangement where there was disorder and derangement, making it perfect and liberating it from defects"