Twelfth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

The Corpus Areopagitic contains a noteworthy doctrine of “dissimilar symbols” or “dissimilar similarities” described in Chapter 2 of the treatise “On the Heavenly Hierarchy.” Its main premise touches upon the descriptions of God and angels, which are said to be the more perfect, the more unusual they are, i.e. the less similar are they to God or an angel themselves. The apophaticism of pseudo-Dionysius ex-tends to the verbal (and consequently visual) imagery of the intelligible realm. As far as the intelligible beings are irrelevant to space and time, they consequently have no form, view or appearance. Particularly, they cannot be imagined as people or any human-like creatures. The more distant is a depiction of the intelligible from anthropomorphic imagery, the better it fits the apophatic theology of the Areopagitics. However, this conception appears to be not exclusively a Christian device, as far as very similar argumentation is provided by Julian the Apostate, Roman Emperor of the middle fourth century. His attitude to the ancient Greek myths concerning pagan gods also implies the elimination of anthropomorphism and emphasises amazement as a major source of philosophical inspiration.