Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
6th century · AD 532 · Works attributed to the fathers · 14 passages
Background on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
In his own words on Isaiah
- Isaiah 6:3
The scriptural declaration "they cried out to one another" means, I think, that they ungrudgingly impart to each other the conceptions resulting from their looking on God. And we should piously remember that in Hebrew the Scripture gives the designation of seraphim to the holiest of beings in order to convey that these are fiery hot and bubbling over forever because of the divine life which does not cease to bestir them. - "Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 4.3.9"
- Isaiah 42:1
The goodness of the Deity has endless love for humanity and never ceased from benignly pouring out on us its providential gifts. … It made it possible for us to escape from the domain of the rebellious, and it did this not through overwhelming force, but, as Scripture mysteriously tells us, by an act of judgment accomplished in all righteousness. Beneficently God's goodness wrought a complete change in our nature. It filled our shadowed and unshaped minds with a kindly, divine light and adorned them with loveliness suitable to their divinized state. It saved our nature from almost complete wreckage and delivered the dwelling place of our soul from the most accursed passion and from destructive defilement. Finally, it showed us a supramundane uplifting and an inspired way of life in shaping ourselves to it as fully as lay in our power. - "Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 3.3.11"
Quoted verbatim from public-domain English translations of the fathers — Aquinas's Catena Aurea, the Ante-Nicene and Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers, and related editions. Each quotation links to its source.