Dionysian Influence Thomas Aquinas

Dionysius has a ubiquitous presence in Aquinas’s corpus. The Areopagite is directly referenced in nearly 2,200 texts. Citations of Dionysius exceed those of every other author apart from Augustine and Aristotle. Moreover, the influence of Dionysius goes far beyond explicit citation. Dionysius was a substratal influence on Aquinas— contributing to much of his theological posture. Dionysius served as the vital tributary mediating the Christian Platonism that inundates Aquinas’s thought. Marie-Dominque Chenu first proposed that an exitus-reditus schema frames the entire Summa Theologiae and that the inspiring muse of Dionysius animates this framework. Thus, for example, Aquinas was comfortable drawing upon the Platonic language of “emanation” to describe the going forth of creatures from the divine goodness precisely because it was sanctioned by Dionysius. More specifically, Aquinas’s bedrock metaphysical principle that creaturely existence is one of participation, of existing by way of a “real relation” of radical dependence upon God, has an unmistakable Dionysian lineage. Aquinas never ceased to remind his readers that at each and every moment, the creature “hangs on” and is “rooted in” the divine goodness that is the pulsating source of its being. This emanating goodness—the divine eros in volcanic eruption—serves as the dynamic magnetic force, the élan vital that draws the creature back to the divine goodness from which it first sprung. “All things long for it,” remarks Dionysius. Similarly, Aquinas comments, “Every agent, whatever it be, does every action from love of some kind.” In short, the Platonic participatory ontology that underwrites Aquinas’s exitus-reditus metaphysic is one profoundly beholden to the Areopagite.

An excerpt from "Chapter 1: The Tradition of Affective Dionysianism", from my new book, Affective Knowledge in Thomas Aquinas