Introduction

This paper examines the reception of the writings which are known under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite1 in the early thought of the Greek Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras.2 The Corpus Dianysiacum has greatly

• This article is based on the third chapter of my Licentiate thesis entitled L’Apofatismo Dionisiano: Dionigi l’Areopagita alla luce delle interpretazioni di Christos Yannaras e Jean-Luc Marion, accepted by the faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Atheneum of St. Anselm, Istituto di Storia della teologia «J. Mabillon», Rome 2017.

¹ The critical edition published by B. R. Suchla, ed., Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De divinis nominibus, Corpus Dionysiacum I, de Gruyter, Berlin 1990; and G. Heil, A. M. Ritter, ed., Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, De caelesti hierarchia, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, De mystica theologia, Epistolae, Corpus Dionysiacum II, de Gruyter, Berlin 1991. The English translation consulted: Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. C. Luibheid and P. Rorem, Paulist Press, London 1987. For a good introduction to Dionysius Cf. A. Louth, Denys the Areopagite, Continuum, London 1989.

² For a general overview on the theological and philosophical thought of Yannaras, in addition to the monograph of B. Petrà, Christos Yannaras, Pensiero Teologico, Morcelliana, Brescia 2015. Cf. O. Clément, «Préface. Situation de la parole théologiqué selon la tradition orthodoxe», in C. Yannaras, De l’absence et de l’inconnaissance de Dieu, d’après les écrits aréopagitiques et Martin Heidegger, (Théologie sans frontières), Cerf, Paris 1971, 7-42; Y. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, EDB, Bologna 1993, 296-322; A. Louth, «Intruduction», in C. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 1-14; Id., «Some Recent Works by Christos Yannaras in English Translation», Modern Theology 25 (2009), 329-40; S. Mitralexis, «Person, Eros, Critical Ontology: An Attempt to Recapitulate Christos Yannaras’ Philosophy», Sobornost 34 (2012), 33-40; N. Russell, «Christos Yannaras», in Key Theological Thinkers: From Modern to Postmodern, ed. S. J. Kristiansen, S. Rise, Ashgate, Farnham 2013, 725-34; Id., «The Enduring Significance of Christos Yannaras: Some Further Works in Translation», International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 16 (2016), 58-65. The recent conversation with Norman Russel Metaphysics as a Personal Adventure: Christos Yannaras in Conversation with Norman Russell, Orthodox Christian profiles series 9, St Vladimir’s Seminary

influenced the history of theology and Philosophy both in the East and in the West. It has returned to the postmodern theologians and contemporary philosophers as one of the most important texts in the patristic period. The theological method of Dionysius is brought by theologians and philosophers of the postmodern age to introduce a solution to current problems concerning theological language and its validity, notably in the thought of Jean-Luc Marion.3 Almost a decade before Marion, for the first time, Yannaras strived to sustain a rebirth of the Dionysian apophatism through Heidegger’s critique of the Western philosophical and theological tradition known as onto-theology. It was an original voice in steering a critique of the theological imitative style of the generation of Greek theologians in the sixties. The influence of Vladimir Lossky’s theological view is particularly evident in his emphasis on the centrality of apophatism in theological discourse.

Our study is divided into two parts: the first is dedicated to the contextualization of the early thought of Yannaras. It will examine the historical development of modern Greek theology and his engagement with it. The second part will be a detailed assessment of his interpretation of Dionysius4 and how he integrated the Dionysian apophaticism in his theological vision.

Press, New York 2017, unfortunately hasn’t been consulted. Two other new released collected studies of the Conferences held in Oxford and Cambridge respectively: Andreas Andreopoulos, Demetrios Harper, eds., Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture, Routledge, New York 2018; Sotiris Mitralexis, ed., Polis, Ontology, Ecclesial Event: Engaging with Christos Yannaras’ Thought, preface by John Milbank, James Clarke & Co Ltd, Cambridge 2018.

• J.-L. Marion, The Idol and Distance, Five Studies, Fordham University Press, New York 2001, 139-195.

⁴ C. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and theAreopagite, T&T Clark International Ltd, London 2005, 57-110.

1. Yannaras and Modern Greek Theology

“It is no exaggeration to affirm that one can easily distinguish between Greek theology before Yannaras and the one after Yannaras, between Theology as an abstract academic discipline and Theology as a passion for the fullness of life and for the victory over death.”5

To appreciate these words of Basilio Petrà, it is important to mention briefly some historical elements and events of modern Greek Orthodoxy that preceded his project and, in fact, influenced him to contextualize his thinking because his historical consciousness was a constructing role in his theological development.6 And then, inevitably, we must mention the initial intellectual development of our figure and the most significant people and tendencies that were important to his formation.

1.1. Modern Greek Theology before Yannaras

Modern Greek theology is a descendant and a continuation of Byzantine theology with its root in the Roman Empire of the patristic period. This idea is, for modern Greek theologians, an indisputable fact. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and under the Turkish authority, theological thought in Greece entered into a captivity. Only the thinkers who were in the Greek territories of the Ionian islands, occupied by the Venetians, had the opportunity to make a theological contribution.7 In this context, nationalist sentimentality was widespread in the ecclesiastical sphere. Theologians in this period, up to the liberation of the Greek state in the thirties of the nineteenth century, had two main

• B. Petrà, Christos Yannaras, 7.
• Yannaras himself is a historian of modern theology in Greece Cf. C. Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West: Hellenic Self-Identity in the Modern Age, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brooklyn 2006. (Originally published in Athens 1993).

⁷ Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 44

tendencies: the first was that of an opening to the West and the second, was conservative and strongly anti-Latin.

The first tendency accepted to adopt the scientific criterion of the western philosophy. They practiced the scholastic theological method and influenced by the Enlightenment thought. Western systematization has influenced the way of writing theology even if the sources were always the texts of the Church fathers and the councils, nevertheless, used in a positivistic way. Theophilos Koridaleus (1600-1693) brought Neo-Aristotelianism into Greece for the first time, preserving the autonomy of philosophy from theology.8 One example of this western school was Vikentios Damodos (1679-1752) who studied in Venice and Padua, and wrote the first textbook of the orthodox dogmatics inspired by the De theologicis dogmatibus of the Jesuit Dionysius Petavius (1583-1652).9

Another tendency was traditional, faithful to the Greek popular traditions and close to the monasticism of Mount Athos. One representative of this current was St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, a monk and writer of more than a hundred works. His most famous work is the compilation of the Philokalia,10 which he wrote with Macarius Notaras (1731-1805) metropolitan of Corinth. It is a collection of ascetic and mystical texts by authors of the period from the 4th to the 14th century. This work would have a huge impact on

• E. Nicolaidis, Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: from the Greek fathers to the age of globalization, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2011, 132-136.

⁹ Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 55-63. Cf. I.-M. Tshiamalenga, «La méthode théologique chez Denys Petau», Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 48 (1972), 427-478.

¹⁰ K. Ware, «St. Nikodimos and the Philokalia», in The Philokalia. A Classic Text of Orthodox Spirituality, ed. B. Bingaman, B. Nassif, OUP, New York 2012, 9-35.

Orthodox spirituality and Andrew Louth considers its publication as the birth of modern Orthodox theology.11

After the revolution and the formation of the modern state of Greece, the situation of the Church and the religious institution worsened and there was a need to establish institutions to educate the people. In 1837, the University of Athens was born with its Theological Faculty. The new faculty was built on the model of the Protestant German theological faculties.12 The first steps of the nascent theology in the new state of Greece have added the dialectic between the “epigones of the great Byzantine tradition with all their merits and virtues” and those who “wishing to bring to Greece the intellectual and cultural air they breathed in Europe”.13

Spiteris identifies three aspects that characterize the theological faculty of Athens up to the mid-twentieth century14: 1) theology separates itself from the Church and from its monastic and ecclesial experience and academic characteristics play a determining role. 2) Though all the professors studied in Germany, there was a strong polemical tendency and theology was conservative for a certain tradition in the way of the European confessional theologies.

3. The last aspect was that the theologians of the university were almost exclusively laymen and the clergy had no role in the formation of theological thought. In this context, the first half of the twentieth century, a type of “Greek Scholastic Theology” appeared, which took the task of systematizing and organizing all theological knowledge. This was a very

¹¹ A. Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers. from the Philokalia to the present, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove 2015, 1-12; Louth confirm that «the publication of the Philokalia in 1782 can be seen as marking a turning point in Orthodox theology, a move away from the defensiveness of the early modern orthodox Theology ― the theology of the so-called ‘Symbolic Booksʼ ― to a more confident style of theology, based on the authentic sources of Orthodox theology, namely the fathers of the church», 10.

12. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 90-91.
13. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 122.

14. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 91-97.

fruitful period but also very much criticized by some of the contemporary Orthodox theologians.15

1.2. Yannaras and Zoe Movement

Outside the rigidity of the context of the University and at the margin of the ecclesiastical sphere, a popular theology developed. In 1907, Eusebius Matthopoulos (1849-1929)16 – who was fascinated by the monastic reform and the preaching of the reformer Apostolos Makrakis (1831-1905), one of those seeking a religious revival in Greece – helped to establish a fraternity of theologians who lived a communal life called “Zoe” or “Life”.17 It was a type of lay monasticism with restrictive moral requirements. This movement dominated the religious life in Greece for almost 50 years and “influenced not only the spiritual life in general of Greece but also theology”.18 With great success, the movement gave a spiritual force to the life of the Greek Church, encouraging the reading of the Bible and sacramental practice, such as the frequency of the Eucharistic liturgy and confession, and used all the means available to revitalize Christian experience in believers of all

15. Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West, 197-198. Cf. Vasilios N. Makrides, «Orthodox Anti-Westernism Today: A Hindrance to European Integration?», International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 9 (2009), 209-224; Kalaitzidis, «The Image of the West in Contemporary Greek Theology», in Orthodox Constructions of the West, ed. G. Demacopoulos, A. Papanikolaou, Fordham University Press, New York 2013, 142-60; also D. Pallis, «Σχεδίασμα πρόσληψης των άρεοπαγιτικων συγγραφών στη νεότερη ελληνική θεολογία: Με ειδική άναφορά στη γενιά του ’60 (Sketch of the Reception of the Areopagitic Writings in Modern Greek Theology: with Special Reference to the 1960s)», Θεολογία 85 (2014), 302-303.

16. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 191-204.

17. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 206-224. See also: D. Constantelos, «The Zoe Movement in Greece», St Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly 3 (1959), 11-25; E. Psilopoulos, «Le mouvement «Zoï» dans l’Église orthodoxe de Grèce» Revue des Sciences Religieuses 40 (1966), 258-289; A. Logotheti, «The Brotherhood of Theologians Zoe and Its Influence on Twentieth-Century Greece» in Orthodox Christian Renewal Movements in Eastern Europe, ed. A. D. Milovanović-R. Radić, Palgrave Macmillan, Switzerland 2017, 285-300.

Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 207.

ages. The hierarchy of the Church and the professors of the University of Athens did not have much sympathy for the movement and, in fact, opposed it plainly.

The return to the fathers and the renewal of theology was a goal of the movement, but in general, there was a priority of morality over dogmatics.19 The fathers of the Church, in fact, were not the source for renewing the theology of the time but they were the point of reference for practical and moral reasons.20 In the first generation of the movement, only Panagiotis Trembelas (1886-1977)21 belonged to the academy. His dogmatic work, while it adapted the scholastic scheme, was full of patristic quotations.22 Nevertheless, in the fifties and sixties, Greek theology underwent a patristic renewal.23 An article by Amilkas Alivizatos (1887-1969)24 is considered the beginning of the patristic conscience of the Orthodox theology in Greece. Spiteris states that since that time “Theology begins to leave the tunnel of the Western ‘scholasticism’ and becomes more ‘Eastern’”.25 Again in 1962, the Zoe movement, contributing to this patristic turn, organized a symposium entitled “Theologia”. The participants were Russian immigrant theologians, such as Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, Alexander Schmemann, and John Meyendorff, who brought the so-called “neo-patristic synthesis” to orthodox theology26.

19. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 211.
20. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 213.

21. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 227-241.

22. Cf. the french translation in P. Trembelas, Dogmatique de lʼÉglise Orthodoxe Catholique, 3 vol., Desclée de Brouwer, Chevetogne 1966-68.
23. N. Russell, «Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers», Philosophy and Theology 18 (2006), 77-92.

24. Amilkas Alivizatos, «Αἱ σύγχρονοι θεολογικαὶ τάσεις ἐν τῇ ἑλληνικῇ Ὀρθοδοξίᾳ (The contemporary theological tendencies in Greek orthodoxy)», Θεολογία 20 (1949), 80-98.

25. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 225.

26. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 213. Cf. Θεολογία – Αλήθεια Και Ζωή: Πνευματικόν Συμπόσιον (Theology – Truth and Life: Spiritual Symposium), ed. Η. Μαστρογιαννοπουλος, Αδελφότης Θεολόγων Η ΖΩΗ, Athens 1962. For

This is the environment in which Yannaras was formed. Christos Yannaras was born in Athens in 1935. He entered the Zoe movement when he was nineteen years old, and in 1953 he became an internal member.27 However, on 26 February 1964, he left the fraternity, after engaging with Russian thought through the mediation of the personalism of Dimitrios Koutroubis (1921-1983). The readings of the few texts translated into Greek by Nicolas Berdyaev, psychiatrist Paul Tournier and Igor Caruso were decisive for his discovery of the personalism.28 Yannaras, then, became one of the accusers of the movement. In his later writings, especially those that were autobiographical, Yannaras contests the Zoe movement by declaring that, to give only some examples among others, it has a pietistic and moralistic spirit, a Western Protestant inspiration and that it makes life parallel to ecclesial life.29

1.3. The Early Thought of Yannaras

Yannaras later went to Germany taking with him his existential problems. Slowly he perceived two different ways of the Christian experience: on the one hand the life of the Church as a mystical celebration without the stain of ideology and founded on the person and on the implementation of the truth of Christ; and on the other hand, an ideological experience of Christianity with its obedience to moral and disciplinary codes in all the details of individual life.30 In 1963, Yannaras published an article criticizing the moralistic reduction of Christianity by explaining that:

the protagonists of this movement Cf. Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 77-93; 96-105; 178-213; C. I. Toroczkai, «The Orthodox Neo-patristic Movements as Renewal of Contemporary Orthodox Theology: An Overview», Review of Ecumenical Studies Sibiu 7 (2015), 94-115.

27. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 298.
28. Petrà, Christos Yannaras, 12-14.

29. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, 214-223.

30. E. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras, thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Durham, Department of Theology and Religion 2008, 52.

“The essential content of faith, salvation through grace and the grafting of our corrupt nature into the new humanity of the New Adam, are unknown and incomprehensible realities for our contemporary social Christianity. We have unilaterally cultivated the social mission of Christianity, basing ourselves on the moral representation of the integral man, fomenting a hypertrophic superego and remaining blind before the true image of our fall and corruption and before the necessity of God’s grace”.31

The Russian literature, especially that of Dostoevsky and his criticism of the West that attracted the attention of the young Yannaras, led him to rebel against a Christianity reduced to ethics.32 At a conference in 1965, he said that “For Dostoevsky, Europe is not Christian”33 and believed that orthodoxy had the responsibility of converting Europe so that Europe finds itself. Not even a month after the departure from Zoe Movement, Yannaras wrote about the importance of Russian orthodoxy for Greece, citing a passage from Dostoevsky’s Demons:

His first book still was not published: The metaphysics of the Body: A Study on John Climacus. Inspired byHeidegger’s Introduction to the Metaphysics, he wanted to find the limit between the soul and the body and overcome the dualism between them with a study of the ascetic tradition, that is, The Ladder of St. John Climacus.40 After studying in Germany, he studied in Paris for almost six years. His thesis of the Climacus was rejected by the Theological Faculty of Athens for its emphasis on the eroticism of the Christian love.41 Petrà informs us that another cause of rejection was the bitter controversy that he has been leading against the academic theology for years.42 However,

38. Petrà, Christos Yannaras, 30.
39. The Orthodox Theological Research Forum Conference dedicated to Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture, at St. Edmunds Hall, Oxford, 2-5 September 2013, https://otrf123.wordpress.com/201 4/07/18/2013-otrf-conference-christos-yannaras-paper, [acceded 15-10-2017].

40. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras,

53. Cf. C. Yannaras, «Eros divin et éros humain selon s. Jean Climaque», Contacts

21. (1969), 190-204 ; C. Yannaras, La métaphysique du corps: Étude sur saint Jean Climaque, Thèse inédite, Bibliothèque la Sorbonne, Paris 1970.
22. Russell, «Christos Yannaras», 726.

42. Petrà, Christos Yannaras, n 2. 53-54.

Yannaras obtained his doctorate in the Faculty of Letters at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Furthermore, in 1970, he obtained a doctorate in theology in Thessaloniki with a dissertation entitled: The ontological content of the theological notion of a person.43

Yannaras considered the problem of demythologization that was present in Germany and found that Rudolf Bultmann’s project still starts from the same scheme criticized by Heidegger because the fundamental question about God and Being does not resolve by the historical research and the modern expressions of the content of the kerygma. Yannaras expresses his vision of Heidegger’s destruction of Western philosophy with these words: “Could I understand Heidegger better than the great Bultmann, or I had illusions of explosives where the other was building towers?”44 Right now, Yannaras realized that the solution to the problem of demythologization would be in the apophatism that has always been an integral part of the Eastern tradition.45 There is no need to demythologize anything if we have refused to identify the expression with its meaning. The language appropriate to the theological discourse would be poetic and prophetic language with its images. What is important for knowledge is not the fragmented nature of the concept, but the whole experience of our relationship that gives us true knowledge.46

Eastern apophatism has guided Yannaras towards the realism of relationship and consequently towards love or Eros as the power that realizes this relationship.

43. Το Οντολογικόν περιεχόμενον της θεολογικής εννοίας του προσώπου, Athens 1970.

44. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras,

54. Cf. M. P. Begzos, «Apophaticism in the Theology of the Eastern Church: The Modern Critical Function of a Traditional Theory», The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 41 (1996), 327-357.

46. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras,

Eros directs us towards God who reveals himself as kenotic love. Only the erotic relationship with God offers to us true theological knowledge. Yannaras develops his thought on the Eros that leads to existential otherness and freedom. To have an erotic relationship with the other, one must deny oneself with a free choice. Otherness is not a journey in the desert, but a place where there is the opportunity to experience relationship and the celebration of the communion. This development has led Yannaras to the notion of the ontological priority of the person. Being is always personal and there is no abstract nature, and our existence is realized in the personal relationship of the Other.47 These were the themes that Yannaras started to develop in his first book on Climacus and there he found the Greek equivalents of the Heideggerian terminology. In Climacus, the body is the place of Dasein and the natural reality of the practice (ἄσκηση) of the relationship, and existence is manifested in ecstasy towards the other in the freedom of the person (πρόσωπο). Apophatism identifies being-in-truth (τό ἀληθεύειν) with being-in-communion (τό κοινωνεῑν).48

Climacus led Yannaras to the apophatism of Dionysius the Areopagite. In Bonn, between January 1966 and February 1967, under the guidance of Luise Abramowiski,49 Yannaras wrote his second book: The Theology of Absence and Unknowability of God. With reference to the Areopagitic writings and to Martin Heidegger.

47. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras,
48. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras, 57-58.

49. Abramowiski was a historical theologian of the early Church and a specialist in Nestorius and patristic Christology. We can find that she had interest in the areopagite and reviewed some Dionysian studies by Corsini, Riedinger e Roques. Cf. C. Markschies, «Bibliographie Luise Abramowski», in Logos. Festschrift für Luise Abramowski zum 8. Juli 1993, ed. H. Ch. Brennecke et al., Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1993, 619-632.

It was the first book of Yannaras which was published in Athens in 196750 and became one of the most famous books in the history of the Greek Orthodox theology.

The book is divided into two parts: the first part is a Heideggerian reading of the history of Western metaphysics, and the second part is about Dionysius.51 The first part tries to articulate the development of metaphysics. From Plato and from the ontic interpretation of Being, it was directed to the rationalism by the monism of the subject in Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz and through the empiricism of Hobbes, Locke and Hume. Rationalism went towards irrationalism and pietism by the religious practice of Kant, arrived with Hegel and Fichte to an absolute subjectivism. In the end, metaphysics is transformed into axiology.52 Hence, accepting Heidegger’s interpretation in his reading of the madman of Nietzsche,53 Yannaras sees that God has been reduced to a first cause and to a supreme value and the realities that included God are linked to their utility not to their truth. Yannaras quotes Heidegger’s famous passage:

“To this God (of rationalism and utilitarianism) man can neither pray nor offer sacrifice. Before the causa sui man cannot fall on his knees in reverence, nor can he hymn or worship such a God. For this reason, atheistic thought that denies the God of philosophy, the God as causa sui, is perhaps closer to the divine God.”54

⁵⁰ Η θεολογία της απουσίας και αγνωσίας του Θεού: Με αναφορά στις αρεοπαγιτικές συγγραφές και στον Martin Heidegger, Athens 1967. A french translation of the this edition: C. Yannaras, De l’absence et de l’inconnaissance de Dieu, d’après les écrits aréopagitiques et Martin Heidegger, (Théologie sans frontières), Cerf, Paris 1971. The English translation of the second edition (1988) is translated as On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, T&T Clark International Ltd, London 2005.

51. For a detailed discussion of the history of philosophy in the interpretation of Yannaras Cf. C. Yannaras, The Schism in Philosophy, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline MA 2015.
52. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 21-47.

Cf. F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2001, 119-120; M. Heidegger, «Nietzsche’s Word: “God is Dead” (1943)», in Off the Beaten Track, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, 157-199.

Following Heidegger, for Yannaras the coup de grâce to God that led to the announcement of his death was not given by atheists, but by theologians. That is not a triumph of atheism, but a loss of God that has left its place empty. Yannaras distinguishes in Heidegger a possibility of apophatism, in contrary to the West in which “denial is the reverse of affirmation, that is to say, once again a conceptual determination”.55 The nothingness that results from negation, therefore has a rational origin; it is “the most abstract of abstract”.56 Yannaras found in the Dionysian writings the model of the Eastern way of the apophatism and the renunciation of the discursive language that does not deal with God as a concept but opens to another dimension of knowledge as a relationship of ecstatic love with the person.

2. The Reception of Dionysius in Yannaras

In Greece in the sixties, a theological shift changed the look of studies on Dionysius and influenced the next generation.57 From the early modern period to the beginning of the 20th century, given the rigid state of the university mentioned above, there was no detailed study on the Corpus Dianysiacum in Greece. The representatives of early modern Greek theology had not dealt with a search to understand the…

54. Citation from Heidegger in Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 51.

55. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 55.

56. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 55.

The protagonists of this turn are, among others, Trembellas, Yannaras, N. Matsoukas, J. Romanidis, N. Nissiotis, J. Zizioulas, P. Christou, S. Kyriazopoulos, L. Siasos. Cf. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca; Russell, «Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers».

vision of the Dionysian texts. The studies concerned only theories on the identity of the author and the historical and philological questions associated and parallel to the same issues discussed in the West between pros and cons of the attribution of texts to the apostolic age.58 During the Second World War, there was a new tendency of the Dionysian studies among the Greek philosophers who began to write the history of patristic and Byzantine philosophy. We also see a dialogue on the relationship between Neoplatonism and Christianity in Dionysius.59 The philosophers, like Vasilis Tatakis (1897-1986),60 were the first to direct research into Dionysius and read Dionysius, starting from the structure of his thought and from his philosophical heritage in Christianity. Yannaras, in his book on Dionysius the Areopagite and Heidegger, has introduced a new perspective in Dionysius’ interpretation with his articulation of the apophatism61 and the ontology of the person on the same line as the reception of Dionysius by the Russian immigrant theologians, especially in France, as Vladimir Lossky.62

⁵⁸ Pallis, «Σχεδίασμα πρόσληψης των άρεοπαγιτικων συγγραφών στη νεότερη ελληνική θεολογία: Με ειδική άναφορά στη γενιά του ’60», 305-306. An example of these studies is the debate between Dimitrios Balanos (1877-1959), a professor of Patristics in the theological faculty of Athens against the hypothesis of Athenagoras, metripolitan of Paramythia and Parga, who support the identification of the author with Dionysius of Alexandria in the third century as heir of the tradition of Clement of Alexandria. For a brief evaluation of this hypothesis it is possible to consult: J. -M. Hornus, «Les recherches recentes sur le Ps.-Denys l’Areopagite (depius 1932)», Revue d’histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 35 (1955), 406-407.

⁵⁹ Pallis, «Σχεδίασμα πρόσληψης των άρεοπαγιτικων συγγραφών στη νεότερη ελληνική θεολογία: Με ειδική άναφορά στη γενιά του ’60», 309-311.

60. Tatakis wrote the part concerning the Byzantine philosophy in the series of Émile Bréhier. Cf. B. Tatakis, Byzantine Philosophy, Hackett Publishing, Cambridge 2003.
61. Pillas noted that the “Apophatism” as terminus technicus was not widespread in the scientific research, nor was found in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and was linked to the Eastern (asian) traditions. One of the first articles of dictionaries that dealt with the apophatism was written by Yannaras himself in a German encyclopedia Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon (1986). Cf. C. Yannaras, «Apophatic Theology», The Encyclopedia of Christianity, vol. 1, ed. Erwin Fahlbusch, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1999, 105-107.

2.1 The Interpretation of Dionysius in Yannaras

Norman Russell, the translator of the Yannaras’ books in English, confirms that the book on Dionysius (and Heidegger), which Yannaras wrote in the early period of his life, contain the kernel of his later writings.63 The second part of the book includes a study dedicated to Dionysius as a representative of the apophatism of the Christian East. Yannaras divides the second part into four chapters: he distinguishes between Western and Eastern apophatism; then he deals with the theme of nihilism and how Dionysius says the truth of God outside the category of being; after that he speaks of a way of existing of the person and of the participation in the life of God and its relationship with knowledge; finally, he highlights the erotic characteristic of the communitarian and ecclesial mode of existence.
Despite the fact that the Corpus Dionysiacum was a source for Western theology, for Yannaras, the negative theology of the West is a rejection of the qualities of beings attributed to God while at the same time indicating a reality of God. Therefore, God can be described with the terms that are known and is definable but in inverted form. Yannaras not only cites the Western dogmatists like Michael Schmaus and Karl Barth, but also the Greek Orthodox theologian Trempelas who is on the same line.64 On the other hand, the Dionysian apophatism, explains Yannaras, is “the abandonment of all claims to an ‘objective’ assessment of truth, or the denial that we can exhaust the truth in its formulation”.65 The apophatism of Dionysius is not the use of a negative language about the divine reality, but a renunciation of the hope of being able to say the reality of God with the categories of reason, both in the form of affirmation or negation. The substance of God is always beyond the capacity of human knowledge and his being is a reality totally outside our time-space articulation.
Recalling the Dionysian passage from Divine Names

62. P. L. Gavrilyuk, «The Reception of Dionysius in Twentieth-Century Eastern Orthodoxy», in Rethinking Dionysius the Areopagite, ed. S. Coakley-C. M. Stang, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford 2009,177-194.

63. Russell, «Christos Yannaras», 726.
64. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and theAreopagite, n.3, 124.

7.3:

“It might be more accurate to say that we cannot know God in his nature, since this is unknowable and is beyond the reach of mind or of reason. But we know him from the arrangement of everything, because everything is, in a sense, projected out from him, and this order possesses certain images and semblances of his divine paradigms. We therefore approach that which is beyond all as far as our capacities allow us and we pass by way of the denial and the transcendence of all things and by way of the cause of all things. God is therefore known in all things and as distinct from all things. He is known through knowledge and through unknowing”.66

Yannaras rejects the scholastic tradition of the analogia entis, which uses this passage to support the analogy between the Creator and creation. Thus, Yannaras states that there is no analogy between the substance of God and that of beings.67 He affirms that “Apophatic knowledge presupposes and comprises determinations on the grounds of analogy and causality as a preliminary starting-point, yet it is not exhausted in these determinations”.68 The divine “paradigms” mentioned by Dionysius in the Divine Names 5.8 are “iconic representations” of the Creator and belong to the divine energies but not to the essence of God (Epistle 9). Yannaras calls these “paradigms”, in the manner of Maximus the Confessor, the logoi of God’s providence of the creature. In fact, Maximus used the term logoi to indicate the “processions” of Dionysius.69 An example would be that of the builder: through his works only his qualities are known, but not his substance.

⁶⁵ Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 59-60.

66. English translation from Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, 107-108.
67. Cf. O. Davydov, «Reception of Analogy of Being in Contemporary Eastern Orthodox Theology», Dialog: A Journal of Theology 56 (2017), 290-297.

Accordingly, Yannaras take up the Palamite doctrine of the difference between the essence of God and his energies as a way of refuge from agnosticism. Yannaras sees the Dionysian theme of the unions and the distinctions in God (Divine Names 2) corresponding to the Palamite doctrine. In God there is the essence that is unknowable but there are also the energies that manifest the “mode of existence” of God as “person”. The term “mode of existence (τρόπος ύπάρξεως)” will be fundamental in the development of the articulation of his ontology of the person.70 Every human person has his essence that manifests itself through a series of expressions and activities that are the energies of the person and with the participation in these activities we know the otherness of this person and his personal uniqueness. This distinction between essence and energies deals with two issues. On the one hand, it preserves the mystical union of which Dionysius speaks as an impenetrable mystery; and on the other hand, it also preserves the Church’s doctrinal forms based on participation in the divine energies.71 The Church’s doctrines serve as a guide on our way of faith, but they do not fully exhaust God’s description.

⁶⁸ Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 69.

69. V. Cvetković, «Predeterminations and Providence in Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor», in Dionysius the Areopagite between Orthodoxy and Heresy, ed. F. Ivanović, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle 2011, 135-156.
70. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras,
71. Yannaras later wrote an article on this issue which is essential in his thinking Cf. C. Yannaras, «The Distinction between Essence and Energies and Its

In Yannaras’s vision, there are two distinct types of apophatism between the east and the west. Western apophatism calls for an apophatism of the substance which exerts an architecture of the analogical knowledge of God. Yannaras believes that – as for Anselm and for Aquinas – God always remains a “thing” even if this thing is “something than which nothing greater can be thought”.72 The apophatism of Dionysius, and according to Yannaras of the whole Christian East, is dissimilar to the Western one. Eastern apophatism does not attribute supernatural qualities to God, nor recognize that He is beyond, or that He is unknowable. There is no expression adequate to God. Only through the relationship with the person of God can we know God, but we cannot say that adequately. It will always be a silence before this experience of the relationship. But this silence is not a passive silence, as an expression of ignorance, but a reaction of our weakness and otherness before the reality of God. The oxymoronic expressions in Dionysius are the full representation of this inadequacy of words to express the experience. This experience of silence will be expressed in an ecclesial community among the people who make this experience. In fact, every word, as for example “glory”, regardless of its meaning, referring to God in the language of the Church is an oxymoron because God is an alterity to this word that expresses the experience of the Church.

In the fifth chapter, Yannaras uses for the first time the treatise The Mystical Theology of Dionysius when he wants to explain the eastern meaning of nihilism. Nihilism means that God is nothing in the sense that it is non-being and non-existent (μηδαμῶν ὤν) unlike our ontic knowledge of the things. Demythologization is that openness that leads to having a more divine idea of God.

Importance for Theology», St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 19 (1975), 232-245.
72. Proslogion, II, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Davies, Brian, and G. R. Evans, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998, 87.

As Yannaras says:
“Knowledge of God is only possible when we abandon the objectification of the mythical language of symbols. The position of ‘demythologization’ is defined in the Areopagitical writings as a radical denial, that is to say, the abandonment of any ontological category, concept or symbol”.73

For this reason, Dionysius uses the symbolic language that takes images from the created world but, while using them, he knows that these symbols are only indications of the divine reality. Even words like Divinity, Spirit, Fatherhood or Sonhood etc., are not considered autonomous concepts (Epistle 9).

In the sixth chapter, Yannaras underlines the fact that the Areopagitical writings indicate no way to the knowledge of God except man’s participation (μετοχή) to the divine life that guarantees the possibility of knowledge. Therefore, participation is not a process of discursive reasoning to acquire an understanding of a divine concept of God, but rather a dynamic existential event and a turning point of all existence that seeks the face of God and the union with Him. For Yannaras, it is very important that the experience of the relationship with God is not an experience of an individual, but an experience of the person who is always in the consent of the ecclesial experience and in communion with other persons. This emphasizes the realism of the apophatism itself and the experience of union with God. The Church is aware of this priority of the experiential correlation of the mystery of God which makes her divine way of knowledge, or her apophatism, coherent, rather than the use of terms and discursive definitions (Divine Names 3). The mystery of God, for the Dionysian theology, is approached only through personal involvement and requires a personal commitment to understanding the depths of the mystery of the divinity. The desire to know God must be looked for in a personal journey.74 Since it is an experience of the person, freedom is a decisive fact of this relational choice. First of all, the human person responds to the Divine call self-consciously in an ecstatic movement (εκστατικός). Yannaras dedicate the last chapter to this movement which qualifies the act of love.

⁷³ Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 74.

At this point, we must clarify that the sense of the ecstatic movement of man cannot be understood as a contempt of the human nature. One of the reasons why Yannaras left the Zoe movement was the exaltation of the spirit at the expense of bodily functions. The meaning of the term εκ-στατικός is that the insufficiency of the human capacity to existing without a relationship. This relationship must be with what is outside of himself. In the theological sense, after the fall, man had less relational way of existence. He became little person and more individual.75 What constitutes man’s existence is that he is a person (πρό -σωπο) who is in relationship with God.76

In the last chapter, Yannaras uses the terminology of Dionysius the Areopagite (Divine Names 4) to qualify the apophatic experience of the knowledge of God or the….

74. Grigoropoulou, The Early Development of the Thought of Christos Yannaras, 115-118.

75. For an explanation of the “fall” in its ontological reality see: C. Yannaras, Elements of Faith. An Introduction to Orthodox Theology, T & T Clark, London 2000, 75-88.
76. Yannaras developed this theme later: C. Yannaras, Person and Eros, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline MA 2007, 5-23. Cf. R. Williams, «The Theology of Personhood, a Study of the Thought of Christos Yannaras», Sobornost 6 (1972), 415-430; B. Petrà, «Personalist Thought in Greece in the Twentieth Century: A First Tentative Synthesis», Greek Orthodox Theological Review 50 (2005), 1-48, especially 15-26.

participation in divine life as an erotic relationship.77 The theology of the Church as a description of the personal correlation with God uses that language which reflects the experience of the erotic love. The term is not only of Dionysius but of the whole Greek patristic tradition and also of the biblical text.78 Starting with Dionysius (Divine Names 2.9), Yannaras emphasizes that “first of all, knowledge of God is not learning, it is a passion in the literal sense of something suffered”79. Therefore, the word love as agape does not have that richness of the Dionysian’s eros to express the union with God, but rather identifies itself with merely social acts and expresses the human behavior of charity. Dionysius has chosen Eros as a name of God that manifests the apophatic knowledge of our relationship and union with God. Yannaras is aware of the difficulties that arise in using this term: “The eros or erotic must have provoked reserve, or even scandal among the Christians of the period when the Areopagitical Corpus was written – just as they do even today”80.

Among other things, the word “eros” sounds like a self-sufficient love and linked to the pleasure of a self-centered man, but the tradition of the Church considers this meaning as a lack of the true ecclesial sense. Eros in the tradition of Dionysius, is a “mode of being” that unites those who participate in the union event. Yannaras also believes that this term is very adequate, as it does not contain a rationalism that is opposed to God’s apophatic knowledge. The erotic suffering and the desire for union are suitable for transmitting this ecstatic experience. Even the sense of the word “eros” as pleasure – which does not express its full meaning – indicates a tendency towards union and a lack of self-sufficiency.

77. Cf. N. Depraz, «Théo-phénoménologie I: l’amour – Jean-Luc Marion et Christos Yannaras», Revue de métaphysique et de morale 74.2 (2012), 247-277.

78. Yannaras refers to the verses: Gen. 4,1; 4,17; 4,25; Judg. 21,12; Matt. 1,25; Luk. 1,34.
79. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 99.
80. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and theAreopagite, 99.

Yannaras, through Dionysius (Divine Names 4.13), synthetically outlines his vision of “eros” in these words:

“The Unique identity of Christian revelation – and also of the apophatic theology of the Areopagite – is this experience of God a the ‘mad lover’ of the whole creation and of each human person. God, not as the abstract idea of the highest Good, not as the concept of the ‘first cause’ of existent beings, nor as the intimidating image of implacable justice, but God as Person in a ‘transport of erotic goodness’ is the ‘good news’, the gospel, of the Church, the message of its experience”.81

The erotic ec-stasis of God towards man is the only possibility of the knowledge of God as love experienced through the personal relationship with Him. Therefore, the distinction between essence and energies in Yannaras is fundamental for understanding erotic love in the sense of giving of himself to the other (Divine Names 4.13).

The deification mentioned by Dionysius (EcclesiasticalHierarchy 1.3), for Yannaras, is the saving reality of the man which moves from the fullness or pleroma of God and the pleroma is the apophatic-erotic divine knowledge. This move makes sense in the Christological dynamic that manifests the way of the existence of God without falling into conceptual language. The Church speaks of deification in this sense as having the way of divine existence and erotic ec-static love. Therefore, the ecclesial tradition makes it perceptible through hymns and icons. The relational knowledge of the Church uses the apophatic technique of praising what is iconified as a reference to the prototype of the beauty of the divine person. True knowledge is a celebratory knowledge. The asceticism of monasticism is an ec-static movement and the purpose of its erotic renunciation is that it leads to, as Dionysius says, “The single, pure, coherent and true knowledge” of God (Divine Names 4.4) and that unites the person of the monk himself and unites the monk with God.

⁸¹ Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 105-106

2.2. Yannaras and Dionysius of Lossky

Besides what has been observed in the reading of Yannaras of the Dionysian texts, it is impossible not to recognize – as we have noticed – the strong influence of the thought of Vladimir Lossky and particularly his interpretation of the Areopagitic writings. Very significant is that both began their academic career with studies on Dionysius. Yannaras generally accepted Lossky’s theses82 that first of all, Lossky’s personalism is the matrix of the Yannarasian personalism.83

Furthermore, as assumed in Yannaras, Lossky proposed an Eastern reading of Dionysius that preserves the authentic apophatism and objective unknowability of God against the Western readings and the subjective knowledge of God. However, Lossky sees some positive signs in the West. While Lossky compares the apophatism of Dionysius with that of….

82. V. Lossky, «La théologie négative dans la doctrine de Denys l’Aréopagies», Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 28 (1939), 204-21; Id., The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 23-43; Id., In the Image and Likeness of God, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, New York 1997, 13-43. Cf. A. Papanikolaou, Being With God. Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame 2006, 12-25; Gavrilyuk, «The Reception of Dionysius in Twentieth-Century Eastern Orthodoxy», 712-716; S. Coakley, «Eastern “Mystical Theology” or Western “Nouvelle Théologie”?: On the Comparative Reception of Dionysius the Areopagite in Lossky and de Lubac», in Orthodox Constructions of the West, 125-141.
83. Rowan Williams states that: “Those of us familiar with the work of the late Vladimir Lossky, especially his various studies of the significance for Christian theology of the Chalcedonian distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘person’, will recognise familiar themes in Dr. Yannaras’s book, though here they are given a philosophical grounding, of great subtlety and sophistication, which would have been somewhat alien to Lossky’s general style of doing theology” Williams, «The Theology of Personhood, a Study of the Thought of Christos Yannaras», 415. The book intended here is the thesis of university of Thessaloniki: The OntologicalContent of the Theological Notion of Personhood (1970).

Aquinas, realizing the other types of Western apophatism,84 Yannaras extends and reinforces this comparison between only two lines of traditions: the Western one, in the broadest sense of the word and the Eastern one and in particular the Greek-Byzantine. Taking advantage of the criticism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Yannaras articulates the difference between the whole Western tradition, including all its variations from Augustine onwards, and the Greek apophatic model which has been preserved in Byzantine culture until the time of the palamites in the fourteenth century. As Pallis summarizes, in the interpretation of Yannaras taken from Lossky, Dionysius became the “theological filter” that separates the two traditions.85.

In addition to assimilating the interpretation of analogy into Dionysius as the ability to participate in the life of God,86 Yannaras is also very close in his affirmation of the distinction between essence and energies and Lossky’s Neo-Palamite interpretation of the nature of intelligible as the uncreated energies or powers. Lossky repeatedly highlights the antinomy of God’s incommunicability and his simultaneous, intimate sharing, in communion with us, which expresses the true dogmatic distinction between divine essence and divine energies.87 Yannaras did not meet Lossky when he was studying in Paris; however, he frequented his immigrant community, who studied Dionysius and lived a period of searching for its own identity.88

See the criticism of W. J. Hankey, «Misrepresenting Neoplatonism in contemporary Christian Dionysian polemic. Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa versus Vladimir Lossky and Jean-Luc Marion», American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2008), 683-703.

85. D. Pallis, «Μία “Νεοβυζαντινή” Πρόταση Πολιτισμού; Κριτική Αποτίμηση της Αφομοίωσης του Αρεοπαγιτκού Αποφατισμού στην Πρώιμη Σκέψη του Χρήστου Γιανναρά [Μέρος πρώτο] (A ‘Neobyzantine’ Cultural Proposal?: A Critical Appraisal of the Assimilation of Areopagitic Apophaticism in the Early Thought of Christos Yannaras [Part I])», Φιλοσοφείν 15 (2017), 281-289.

86. Cf. V. Lossky, «La notion des ‘analogies’ chez Denys le Pseudo-Aréopagite», Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age 5 (1930), 279-309. Cf. A. Papanikolaou, «Created for Communion: Vladimir Lossky on Creation and the Divine Ideas», in Metropolitan Methodios of Boston: A Festal Volume, ed. G. D. Dragas, Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston, Boston 2009, 650-669.
87. B. Gallaher, «The ‘Sophiological’ Origins of Vladimir Lossky’s Apophaticism», Scottish Journal of Theology 66 (2013), 278-298.

2.3. Yannaras and the Dionysian apophatism
We have seen how Yannaras reads the Areopagitic texts in his book; now let us make some observations on his use of Dionysius in his theological project and in his affirmation of the apophatism. The book of Yannaras in the eyes of a Westerner is a victim of an anti-Western scheme. Nonetheless, although it appears right, his thought in the context of the modern Greek background is not considered as such. In fact, among his generation, Yannaras was not considered totally anti-Western in his analysis of philosophical thought. After a long period of captivity, in fact, modern Greek theology began with the question: what really is the East? In front of the fragmentation that Yannaras saw in the European crisis of the sixties, he tries to criticize it through Dionysius, without worrying about studying Dionysius in his own historical context. As a substantial response to the absence of God in the modern world and to the problem of nihilism, the Dionysian tradition, which Yannaras uses to support an Eastern solution of the Western problem, invites us to take this existential position towards a totally experiential reality. The knowledge of God comes through an experience of a powerful realism, which brings a guarantee of the knowledge that is formed through the experience of the relationship. Beyond this, we can say that the aim of these criticisms is not directed primarily towards the Western tradition per se, but towards that Western influence on Greek domestic theology, which is seen in the dogmatic works of the professors in the University of Athens.

88. Pallis, «Μία “Νεοβυζαντινή” Πρόταση Πολιτισμού; Κριτική Αποτίμηση της Αφομοίωσης του Αρεοπαγιτκού Αποφατισμού στην Πρώιμη Σκέψη του Χρήστου Γιανναρά [Μέρος πρώτο]», 290-291.

In this context, Yannaras, in full awareness, does not highlight the Neoplatonic matrix of Dionysius89 but has elaborated an existential reading regarding modern problems. The social way of Yannaras to verify the truth between “persons” within a single tradition is not the same way that Dionysius proposes in his hierarchical knowledge, of which he says in Celestial Hierarchy 3, 2: “Indeed for every member of the hierarchy, perfection consists in this, that is uplifted to imitate God as far as possible”. Thus, when Dionysius proposes a truth, he recognizes the limitations of his proposal and does not attribute to his thought a certain exclusivity of the truth. So, as Pallis says, Yannaras does not apply a pedagogical sense in the transition to the truth and risks imposing a preference for a particular tradition that prevents others from participating in the truth.90 Dionysius, in his sixth letter, tells Sosipater: “For it could happen that the one hidden truth could escape both you and others in the midst of falsehoods and appearances”. In this small letter, we can see the act of reconciliation and ecumenism of Dionysius in the face of a crisis made of accusations and polemics in the sixth century.

In brief, we come to say that the interpretation of Dionysius, who proposed Yannaras, is considered a philosophical interpretation in association with his contemporary problems. Yannaras wanted to challenge modern nihilism, and his discovery of the Dionysian apophatism in the modern Greek context was regarded as a solution to nihilism, on the basis of his acceptance of the criticism made by Nietzsche and Heidegger of the development of Western theology and metaphysics until the…

⁸⁹ Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, 123-124.

90. D. Pallis, «Μία “Νεοβυζαντινή” Πρόταση Πολιτισμού; Κριτική Αποτίμηση της Αφομοίωσης του Αρεοπαγιτκού Αποφατισμού στην Πρώιμη Σκέψη του Χρήστου Γιανναρά [μέρος δεύτερο] (A ‘Neobyzantine’ Cultural Proposal?: A Critical Appraisal of the Assimilation of Areopagitic Apophaticism in the Early Thought of Christos Yannaras [Part II]», Φιλοσοφείν 16 (2017), 288-289.

announcement of the absence of God and the impact of nihilism in the West. The Dionysian apophatism, in the interpretation of Yannaras, is a radical transcendence of God that does not allow man to say anything or to develop a conceptual discourse on God – neither affirmation nor negation – that is, God is a person outside our metaphysical horizon and morality. The only way to know God is that interior attitude of a relational experience with God through his uncreated divine energies and this experience imposes a way of existence in conformity with the divine way that is and remains a mystery forever. The answer of man before the mystery of God is silence.

The interpretation of Dionysius in Yannaras would be a legitimate contribution to the postmodern reception of the Areopagitic writings and is appreciated in comparison with the theological currents of the Greek Church of the period. However, the ethnocentric characteristics of an idealistic reading of his own Greek tradition put his interpretation in the category of an apologetic reading rather than an interpretation that respects the immense history of reception of the Areopagitic Corpus in all Christian traditions. According to the recent studies on the historical context of the Dionysian texts from Joseph Stiglmayr, which Yannaras probably knew, until the recent studies by Alexander Golizin, István Perczel and Emiliano Fiori, the milieu of the Corpus Dionysiacum most likely does not lie in the Greek-Byzantine East but rather in the Syriac monastic tradition.91 And if we want to trace Greek thought in Areopagitic texts, we should go back to the influences of Neoplatonism or Christian Neoplatonism that Yannaras does not consider in his interpretation.92 It must also be said that this apologetic reading does not coincide exactly with the apophatism that Yannaras would like to follow.

⁹¹ A. Golitzin-B. G. Bucur, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, Cistercian Publications and Liturgical Press, Collegeville (MN), 2014, 6; I. Perczel, «Sergius of Reshaina’s Syriac Translation of the Dionysian Corpus: Some Preliminary Remarks» in La diffusione dell’eredità classica nell’età tardoantica e medievale. Filologia, storia, dottrina. Atti del Seminario nazionale di studio (Napoli-Sorrento, 29-31 ottobre 1998), ed. C. Baffioni, Edizioni dell’Orso, Alessandria 2000, 79-94; Id, «Dionysius the Areopagite», in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Patristics, ed. Ken Perry, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford 2015, 211-225; E. Fiori, Dionigi l’Areopagita e l’origenismo siriaco. Edizione critica e studio storico-dottrinale del trattato sui Nomi divini nella versione di Sergio di Res’ayna, Università di Bologna, Dottorato di ricerca in studi

Conclusion

The Dionysian apophatism recovered by Yannaras has a character of radical separation between God and creation. God is “mystery”: nothing can be said before Him. Knowledge of God cannot be told through language but through the experience of erotic and ecstatic love. The unique way of divine knowledge is an experiential and relational way with the divine person. Silence is the only answer before the divine mystery and a third way beyond affirmation and negation.

Then in the Yannarasian project there is a strong realism based on the Palamite doctrine of the distinction between the essence and the divine energies. Here we find the place of paradoxical criticism: on the one hand a theoretical quasi-agnosticism that avoids any guaranteed secure formulation of the truth of God and on the other side a dogmatism of a specifically Greek-Byzantine tradition against any other type of apophatism. Understanding Yannaras on the background of his own theological development illustrate the specificity of his reception of Dionysius at two grounds: on the one hand the modern Greek Orthodox context and on the other hand the ambiguity of the Areopagitic texts. These two grounds have contributed to an original postmodern reading of Dionysius and normally not without interpretative problems. From what we have shown we can state that the factors contributing to the theological constitution of apophatism in Yannaras are more complicated than merely an accusation of extremism.