Filip Ivanovic

As one of the names attributed to God, justice is defined by Dionysius as something which assigns to everything what is appropriate to it, and preserves the nature of each being in its due order. In this way, it is through divine justice’s definitions that every being is assigned its own proper essence. The same role of justice is applied to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which, in its conformity to God, is an image of divine justice, and ‘gives to each as he deserves and grants an appropriate share of the divine things to all for their salvation’. In practical sense, this concept of justice points to the way of life of each individual – the divine justice ensures that each one receives a return for whatever good or bad he did during his life. In the dimension of the hierarchical order, justice means obedience to the Law, and to the rules of the hierarchy. This paper explores the Dionysian notion of justice in philosophical theological, ecclesiological, and ethical contexts.

Clement of Alexandria (150-215) is one of the first Christian thinkers to offer a detailed account of the relationship between Christian faith and Greek philosophy. As a philosophically educated man himself, Clement claimed that philosophy is necessary for reaching the complete knowledge of God, and that Greek philosophy, being of divine origin, was God’s gift to the Greeks, acting as a preparation for the Gospel. Since it concerns the comprehension and contemplation of truth, philosophy is a propaedeutic method for understanding and interpreting the principles of faith, as well as for the defense against deceptive and fallacious attacks on it. On the other hand, just as the body is healed by medicine, the soul, according to Clement, is healed by philosophy. Such “therapy” of the soul primarily concerns liberation from passions, attainment of the state of passionlessness (ἀπάθεια) and restoration of human person, which is in accordance not just with the purpose of Christian life, but also with the ancient, Platonic, idea of reaching Godlikeness through practicing philosophy as a training for death.

In Platonic terms “all things to which we apply the term ‘many’ participate” in something beyond the world of matter, while for Neoplatonists there is a higher aspect that is unparticipated (One) and the “lower” aspect which is participated (Henads). In Christian sphere, since God is the cause of all things, then all things have a share (participate) in God, and so Dionysius the Areopagite claims that God communicates himself to those who participate in him. this does not mean that there is some sort of a pantheistic understanding of a being as a fragment of the divinity, but that creatures owe their being to God. However, God himself remains unshared, and there is an ontological separation between him and his creation. What creatures do participate in are the acts of God, which are participated but do not participate. The aim of this paper is to examine the Areopagite’s doctrine of participation, in comparison with the (Neo-)platonic understanding of participation.