Dionysius the Areopagite set his sights one finding ways to attain the highest levels of metaphysical reality. With this scope in mind, he led the concept of the absolute transcendence of God practically to the ultimate limits of discursive thinking. However, being a Christian thinker, he has a solid understanding that this trancendent Absolute of his own free will is immanent (open) to humans. Thus he focused all his efforts on conceptualizing the boundaries of this immanence, i. e., the ways in which humans can attain the incomprehensible God. The author of theAreopagiticaoutlined two principal directions on the way of humans to God. Both had been practiced by the Christian Church for several centuries: the way of symbolic interpretation of sacred Scripture and the way of ecclesiastical–liturgical ascent to God. Both these ways should bring one to the third, highest, way, which is the pinnacle and end of all ways: to a mystical union with God, or to an immersion into the blessed space of supra–luminous darkness that exceeds all understanding.

One of the ways to transfer human consciousness from the level of logical thought to the level of irrational immersion into that space, according to the Areopagite, is to use the system of principally antinomical formulae that are applied to the highest level of spiritual being. Moreover, he understood well that one’s awareness of God’s transcendence, together with the antinomical formulae, lead one’s consciousness out of the discursive sphere and into an irrational space. Armed with this understanding, he felt that it is aesthetic experience that plays a prominent role in this space. Aesthetic experience, according to him, has just as much, if not more, influence on the human being as discursive logical thought. Some of his predecessors also felt that intuitively, but Dionysius used aesthetic experience in theology at a principally new level. His texts reflect this at the levels ofcontentandform.

At the level of content, some of the principal names of God, according to Dionysius, are Beauty and Light. Therefore he conceptualizes practically the entire system of transfer of knowledge from God to humans as a system of aesthetic experience, in modern parlance. The Areopagite immediately immerses us into the metaphysics of light, which is nothing else but the aesthetics of light. He sees God and the entire celestial sphere as imbued with beauty, light, and fragrance, which brings indescribable pleasure to all who are able to perceive them. He understands sacred knowledge itself as a certain type of quantified light or shining of various levels of objectivation and materialization. He calls the transmission of this knowledgephotodosia(a giving of light). He often uses the terms ‘light,’ ‘beauty,’ and ‘fragrance’ as synonyms that are supposed to mark the non–rational, supra–intellectual, elevating and pleasure–giving character of sacred knowledge.

This knowledge is transmitted both within the system of ecclesiastical–liturgical experience and in the process of symbolic interpretation of sacred Scripture. All the multiplicity of symbols (names and metaphorical expressions in sacred Scripture) ultimately do not lead one to a conceptual–rational understanding of God or the highest ranks of celestial hierarchies. Instead, they incite, in the soul of an exegete or a recipient of his interpretations, a feeling of sublime and indescribabale spiritual joy provoked by the feeling that these hermeneutic texts allow him to penetrate, in some inexplicable manner, into the hidden spiritual mysteries of being.

The Areopagite strengthens this feeling by continually emphasizing the polysemy of symbols, their anagogical nature, ability to bring light and beauty that lies hidden under the cover of their visual and verbal form that can be perceived by the senses. He draws our attention to the outward «non–likeness» of the symbol with what it symbolizes due to the latter’s inapproachable sublimity and spiritual significance. Among «unlike likenesses» — the principal and most general term for Dionysius’ image–symbols — one can distinguish between two extremes. First of all, these are images that are literally completely «unlike» the sphere of the divine. They normally refer to indecent, shameful, and ugly phenomena of the created being. These words are designed to repel the recipient from their external shell by their very unseemliness and ugliness (an aesthetic reaction to the ugly), at the same time inspiring and directing his spirit towards something that is diametrically opposed to the form of the symbol—towards a sublime and enlightened understanding of the spiritual sphere. The other pole is occupied by the images that refer to neutral or even positive and beautiful phenomena of the created world, i. e., to some extent by «like» likenesses. However, even those images, according to Dionysius, as so far removed from the heavenly world that they also must be perceived as unlike likenesses, because they are symbols of sublime and supra–sensible things that are even higher than those symbols. The likenesses that are «alike» (similar) in the proper sense are constituted by theentirety of the kataphatic imagesthat are formed on the basis of the lofty content of the principal positive divine names and are aimed at lifting the believer up to the highest levels of metaphysical reality.

The other way of enhancing the emotional–aesthetic impact of the Areopagite’s texts on the recipients, which can be styledform–creating,consists in, I think, a conscious aesthetization of these texts, in orgnaizing them according to the rhetorical–artistic principles. When he speaks of a certain divine name or a symbol of the spiritual space, he often employs a developed terminological apparatus of properly aesthetic terms, examples from the sphere of the arts, uses an elevated rhetorical style, antithetical imagery, powerful metaphors, long clauses with a great number of lofty epithets and comparisons, and ultimately envelopes his texts with a prominently espressed aesthetic aura.

All this allows one to claim that the author of theAreopagiticapossesses a well developed aesthetic sense and esteems aesthetic experience highly as one of the esential ways of ascending to the highest levels of metaphysical reality. In fact, in his theology, which is permeated by beauty, light, and aesthetic terminology and is organized according to the laws of rhetorical art, Dionysius presents to us one of the best examples of implicit aesthetics. It is not an accident, then, that it has become a foundation of many trends in medieval theology and aesthetics, both in the Western Christian world (Byzantium, medieval Russia) and in the West. The mystical luminous aesthetics of the liturgical action in the Orthodox lands, the symbolic mystique of the icons, the exegesis that is based on images and symbols, and even Western scholastic aesthetics in many respects mined theAreopagiticafor ideas and aesthetic intuitions.

Keywords:Dionysius the Areopagite, Patristics, Byzantine Aesthetics, Patristic symbolism, exegesis, aesthetics, light, beauty, symbol, fragrance