Christian or Neoplatonist: is the corpus Proclus baptised, with Christ at its margin, or a Christian mystagogy that speaks the language of the schools?

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite answers

Begin where the Celestial Hierarchy begins, since that is where I placed Christ. I do not set Him at the margin of the work and then bring Him in by courtesy; He is invoked before the first section of the treatise is half done. Having named the gift that comes down from the Father of Lights, I turn at once and say: invoking Jesus, the Paternal Light, the Real, the True, which lighteth every man coming into the world, through whom we have access to the Father, the Source of Light, let us aspire to the illuminations handed down by our fathers in the most sacred Oracles.1

The treatise has no other door. Everything that follows, the ranks of the angels, the veils and symbols, is entered by invocation of Him, and it is received from the Oracles and the fathers, not devised by me. Your question assumes that the language of the schools must belong to the schools. I do not grant it. What the Greeks call procession and return, I read as the going forth of the illuminating ray from the Father, visiting us as a gift of goodness and restoring us gradually, as an unifying power, to the oneness of our conducting Father.2

That sentence closes on the Sacred Word: all things are from Him and to Him. The pattern is scriptural before it is anything else, and if the Greeks saw a part of it, then what is true in them was God's already. Let those who use the divine against the divine answer for their use. It is not I who misuse the learning. Notice, too, what the light is said to do.

It does not remain a doctrine of ascent for the strong. It is enveloped, for the purpose of instruction, in variegated sacred veils, arranged naturally and appropriately for such as we are, by paternal forethought; for otherwise the supremely Divine Ray could not illuminate us at all.3 A philosophy that climbs to the One by the intellect's own power needs no veils and no forethought of a Father.

Mine receives the Ray as a gift, and it lets the Ray stoop to our measure. That stooping is where I would have you look for Christ, in the shape of the whole economy of illumination, and not only where His name is spoken. Last, the light never loses its own unique inwardness. It is multiplied and goes forth for the unifying of what it cares for, yet remains firmly and solitarily centred in itself in unmoved sameness, and it raises those who lawfully aspire to it, making them one after the pattern of its own Oneness.4

Call that Platonic if you will; I call it the Trinity's goodness praised in the only grammar I had. The question is not where an argument was learned, but whom it serves and where it ends. It ends in praise of the Father of Lights, through Jesus.

The position in brief

The names of God, the order of the hierarchies, and the rites are received from Scripture and from the tradition of the holy initiators; the philosophy of the Greeks, rightly used, leads to the Cause of all, and those who use the divine against the divine have misused it. Jesus is the source and power of every hierarchy, the superessential who came forth suddenly into the manifest as man and stayed hidden in the manifestation, working a new divine-human energy.56

Eros may be said of God because Scripture says it, and because God's love goes out of Himself in ecstasy to dwell in all things.789

Sources

  1. Invoking then Jesus, the Paternal Light, the Real, the True, \"which lighteth every man coming into the world,\" \"through Whom we have access to the Father,\" Source of Light, let us aspire, as far as is attainable, to the illuminations handed down by our fathers in the most sacred Oracles
    The Celestial Hierarchy
  2. every procession of illuminating light, proceeding from the Father, whilst visiting us as a gift of goodness, restores us again gradually as an unifying power, and turns us to the oneness of our conducting Father, and to a deifying simplicity. For all things are from Him, and to Him, as said the Sacred Word.
    The Celestial Hierarchy
  3. it is not possible that the supremely Divine Ray should otherwise illuminate us, except so far as it is enveloped, for the purpose of instruction, in variegated sacred veils, and arranged naturally and appropriately, for such as we are, by paternal forethought.
    The Celestial Hierarchy
  4. For it never loses its own unique inwardness, but multiplied and going forth, as becomes its goodness, for an elevating and unifying blending of the objects of its care, remains firmly and solitarily centred within itself in its unmoved sameness
    The Celestial Hierarchy
  5. But, He is hidden, even after the manifestation, or to speak more divinely, even in the manifestation, for in truth this of Jesus has been kept hidden, and the mystery with respect to Him has been reached by no word nor mind, but even when spoken, remains unsaid, and when conceived unknown. LETTER IV. To the same Gaius Therapeutes. How, you ask, is Jesus, Who is beyond all, ranked essentially with all men?
    Letters I-X
  6. In these acts the Father and the Spirit have no share, except of course that they all share in the loving generosity of the Divine counsels and in all that transcendent Divine working of unutterable mysteries which were performed in Human Nature by Him Who as God and as the Word of God is Immutable.
    The Divine Names
  7. ECCLESIASTICAL HIERARCHY. CAPUT I. To my Fellow Presbyter Timothy. DlONYSIUS THE PRESBYTER. What is the traditional view of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and what is its purpose $ Section I.
    The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy
  8. Yea, in a super-essential manner, above the category of origin, It is the Origin of all origin, and the good and bounteous Communication (so far as such may be) of hidden mysteries; and, in a word, It is the life of all things that live and the Being of all that are, the Origin and Cause of all life and being through Its bounty which both brings them into existence and maintains them. 4.
    The Divine Names
  9. And, to speak truly, there is One, to Whom all the Godlike aspire, but they do not partake uniformly of this One and the Same, but as the Divine balance distributes to each the meet inheritance.
    The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy

Where the argument is made

  • Divine Names IV on the Good, the Beautiful, Yearning and Ecstasy, with IV.11-13 defending the name of Yearning (eros) as Scripture's and God's going out of Himself
  • IV.18-35 on evil
  • I.4 and II.9-10 on Jesus and the Elements of Divinity of Hierotheus
  • Mystical Theology III on Jesus, above all essence, stooping to an essential state
  • Letter III on the Sudden
  • Letter IV on Christ's "new God-incarnate energy"
  • Letter VII on Apollophanes, who calls the author a parricide for using the writings of the Greeks against the Greeks
  • Ecclesiastical Hierarchy I and III on Jesus as source of every hierarchy and the synaxis

How the argument was received

The question since Luther, sharpened in 1895 by the proof of dependence on Proclus; the modern readings divide between Christianised Neoplatonism and Christian mystagogy in a Neoplatonic idiom.