Daniel Heide

Recently, I have argued that both Dionysius and Maximos Confessor subscribe to a doctrine of creation ex deo, or creation as divine self-impartation, such that all things are grounded in, and hence derived from, the One God as the ultimate archē of existence. This raises a crucial problem: if all things are derived from God in what sense can they be affirmed to be genuinely other than God? Proclus accounts for this otherness through the proliferation of mediating terms. Dionysius transforms this pagan approach into a more ‘immediate’, energeic model of mediation. For Dionysius, creation ex deo is not creation from the divine ousia but from the uncreated energies, or grace, of God. This view is not pantheism but panentheism.

Introduction

Recently, I have argued that both Dionysius and Maximos the Confessor subscribe to a doctrine of creation ex deo, or creation as divine self-impartation, such that all things are grounded in, and hence derived from, the One as the ultimate archē of existence. In this, they are in continuity with pagan Neoplatonists such as Plotinus and Proclus who affirm the necessity of a unifying principle of reality without which multiplicity itself could not exist.