The Mystical Sources of Pseudo-Dionysius and the Making of Roman Catholic Church Tradition

Among the most enigmatic figures of early Christian mysticism stands Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a mysterious theologian and philosopher writing under a pseudonym in the late fifth or early sixth century. Long believed to have been the Athenian convert of St. Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, his true identity remains unknown. Yet his writings; especially The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, and The Celestial Hierarchy; exerted a profound and enduring influence on Christian theology, particularly within the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox mystical tradition.

Translated and interpreted by figures such as Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius presents a deeply mystical vision of God; utterly transcendent, beyond all knowledge and being, and accessible only through negation, silence, and unknowing. His fusion of Neoplatonic metaphysics with Christian theology helped shape the Church’s understanding of hierarchy, sacraments, angelology, and mystical union.

This essay explores how many of these Dionysian mystical teachings; while foundational to Catholic theology and liturgy; find no explicit source in the Bible or the Didache, the earliest Christian manual of faith and practice. By tracing parallels between Pseudo-Dionysius’s vision and earlier Egyptian-Osirian mysticism, we uncover a shared symbolic language of divine emanation, sacred order, and ritual ascent that predates Christianity but reemerges in its mystical and hierarchical structures.

Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Dominican theologian whose Summa Theologica became the foundation of Roman Catholic doctrine, offers one of the most insightful commentaries on the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Deeply revering him as “the divine Dionysius,” Aquinas recognized that Dionysius’s works were deliberately obscure, not out of confusion but by careful design.

Aquinas explained that Dionysius “used an obscure style … so that the sacred and divine teachings might be hidden from the ridicule of unbelievers.” This reveals an ancient esoteric principle: the deepest theological truths are not meant for casual readers but for those spiritually prepared to receive them. Divine wisdom, in this view, must be veiled; guarded from distortion and mockery by those outside the mystical path.

For Aquinas, Dionysius’s use of Platonic and Neoplatonic language, his compressed allusions, and his seemingly excessive repetition were not flaws but signs of mystical depth. What appeared obscure or verbose was in fact an intentional layering of meaning meant to draw the reader beyond intellect into contemplation.

In praising this method, Aquinas helped sanctify the Church’s mystical heritage; affirming a theology where divine truth is approached not through clarity but through holy obscurity, an ascent of the soul that continues to echo throughout Catholic mysticism, liturgy, and philosophy.

While Pseudo-Dionysius’s writings are wrapped in Christian terminology and cite Scripture, the framework of his mysticism reflects ideas that arose long after; and far outside; the revelation of the one true God of Scripture. The God of the Bible is not discovered through ascending hierarchies or secret knowledge but reveals Himself directly to humanity through His Word, His prophets, and ultimately through Christ Himself. This revelation came first and stands complete; all later mystical systems are human attempts to reach upward toward what God had already made known.

The Hebrew Scriptures present a God who is personal, sovereign, and accessible to all who believe. There is no “divine hierarchy,” no emanation from a hidden source, and no ritual ascent toward God. Instead, God descends to meet His people, calling them into covenant relationship and obedience. Yet Pseudo-Dionysius’s vision; later absorbed into the Roman Church; reflects the influence of Greek and Egyptian mysticism, where truth is reached through layers of mediation and the soul must climb toward the divine.

From Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism and Neoplatonism, came the notion of an ineffable “One” and the idea of spiritual emanations. From Egyptian religion, especially the Osirian mysteries, came themes of death, rebirth, and the soul’s symbolic journey through hidden realms. These concepts, though ancient, were not divine revelation but human constructions; philosophical and religious attempts to explain the mystery of existence apart from the truth revealed by the God of the Bible.

By weaving these traditions into his Christian framework, Pseudo-Dionysius created a system that sounded biblical but rested on non-biblical foundations. His influence shaped the Roman Catholic Church’s mystical and hierarchical theology, blending faith with philosophical speculation. Yet when measured against the clear teaching of Scripture, his ideas reveal how far the Church’s later doctrines drifted from the simplicity and purity of the gospel of Christ.

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”— Colossians 2:8 (KJV)

Fair warning: this is going to be a long read, but I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

The Light That Dispels Darkness

In his Letter to the Monk Gaius, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite writes:

“Darkness disappears in the light, the more so as there is more light. Knowledge makes unknowing disappear, the more so as there is more knowledge.” (1065A, 263)

At first glance, this sounds like a lofty mystical insight; but it is, in truth, a restatement of what the Hebrew Scriptures had already revealed centuries earlier. The Bible consistently portrays light as divine truth and darkness as ignorance, error, or sin. From the very beginning; “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3); God defines illumination as His own self-revelation.

The same theme runs through Scripture:

• “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” (John 1:5)

• “The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” (Psalm 119:130)

• “The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” (Proverbs 4:18)

• “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:6)

Each of these verses expresses the same truth Dionysius echoed: the more divine light there is, the less darkness remains. Yet in Scripture, this light does not arise from human mysticism or philosophical pursuit; it comes directly from God’s Word and is fully revealed in Christ.

Dionysius’s language may sound mystical and Greek in form, but its roots reach unmistakably back to Hebrew revelation, where light and knowledge have always symbolized the presence and truth of the one true God.

Knowing Through Unknowing

In The Divine Names, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite writes:

“If all knowledge is of that which is and is limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcends being must also transcend knowledge.” (593A, 53)

Here Dionysius expresses a core idea of what he calls “divine unknowing.” Human knowledge, he says, can only grasp things that exist within creation; therefore, the Creator; who stands beyond all created being; also lies beyond the reach of human comprehension. To know God truly, one must pass beyond the limits of intellect into the mystery of faith.

While this sounds philosophical, the principle is already deeply rooted in Hebrew and Christian Scripture. The Bible repeatedly affirms that God cannot be fully known or contained by the human mind:

• “Can you find out the deep things of God? … It is higher than heaven—what can you do?” (Job 11:7–9)

• “[God] alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.” (1 Timothy 6:16)

• “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 55:8–9)

• “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments.” (Romans 11:33)

Even the apostle Paul writes that “now we see through a glass, darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12); our knowledge of God in this life is partial and dim.

Thus, when Dionysius speaks of “knowing through unknowing,” he echoes the same truth Scripture had already declared: that God’s essence surpasses all created thought. True wisdom begins in humility; recognizing that the finite mind cannot contain the Infinite. The mystic’s “unknowing” is therefore not foreign to the Bible, but a philosophical restatement of a truth first revealed by the God of Scripture, who “dwells in unapproachable light.”

This concept of “knowing through unknowing” became one of the cornerstones of later Catholic mystical and hierarchical theology. Pseudo-Dionysius’s idea that God transcends knowledge and being was expanded into a complex system of mediation; angels, sacraments, priests, and saints; each representing a step in the ascent toward the unknowable divine. Over time, this framework shaped the Church’s understanding of divine order and worship, yet much of it rests on philosophical interpretation rather than biblical revelation. The Scriptures teach that God reveals Himself directly through His Word and His Spirit, but Dionysian thought replaced that immediacy with layers of mystical hierarchy. In this way, the simplicity of Christ’s gospel gave way to a structure built on Greek metaphysics and human tradition, echoing Paul’s warning: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit…” (Colossians 2:8).

From Thearchy to Theology: The Rise of a Mystical System

Let’s trace how the Dionysian concept of “thearchy”; the idea of God as the transcendent source of all being; shaped later Christian mystical and theological thought in Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and Thomas Aquinas. Though each drew inspiration from Scripture, their systems gradually absorbed philosophical categories that went beyond, and at times obscured, the simplicity of biblical revelation.

Gregory of Nyssa (4th century) taught that God is infinite (apeiros), forever beyond full comprehension. “The true vision of God,” he wrote, “is never to be satisfied in the desire to see Him.” This captures the soul’s endless ascent toward an inexhaustible God; a view echoed by Dionysius, who said that God “transcends every source.” Scripture agrees that no one can fully see God’s face (Exodus 33:20) and that believers continue to press toward Him (Philippians 3:12). Yet while the Bible presents this as a personal, relational pursuit of the living God, later mystical theology turned it into a philosophical ascent of the intellect, echoing more of Plato than of Moses.

Maximus the Confessor (7th century) built on Dionysius, describing God; the Holy Trinity; as both the source and goal of all things. All creation, he said, flows out from the divine Logos and returns to Him, as if by a cosmic cycle of emanation and reunion. While this mirrors the biblical truth that “all things were made through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16–20), it shades toward a Neoplatonic pattern rather than the biblical narrative of creation, fall, and redemption. The Bible teaches that creation depends on God’s will, not that it emanates from His being or must return by mystical necessity.

Thomas Aquinas (13th century), calling Dionysius “the most divine among the philosophers,” refined these mystical ideas into scholastic form. For Aquinas, God is Ipsum Esse Subsistens; Being itself, the very act of existence from which all beings derive their being. Drawing on Dionysius, he taught that God “transcends every name,” and thus must be described by analogy, not direct comprehension. Though Aquinas grounded this in “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14) and “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), his metaphysical framework leaned more toward Aristotelian essence and causality than the prophetic revelation of the personal “I AM” who speaks and redeems.

From Gregory to Aquinas, the Dionysian concept of thearchy evolved into a vast mystical-philosophical system that viewed God as the transcendent Source beyond being. While Scripture affirms God’s transcendence, it never describes Him as an abstract principle of existence or a chain of emanations. The God of the Bible is personal, self-revealing, and knowable through His Word and Spirit; not approached through philosophical ascent but through faith in Christ alone. Thus, much of this mystical tradition, though rich in insight, reflects the slow drift from revelation to speculation, from divine light to human philosophy.

Baptism, Inherited Sin, and the Mystical Pattern of Rebirth

When we turn from Scripture to the sacramental theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, we find a profound shift. In his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, baptism becomes the first step in a hierarchical initiation; a symbolic death, burial, and resurrection through which the initiate enters the mysteries of divine illumination. He writes that the candidate is “hidden completely in the water as an image of death and burial,” emerging as one reborn into divine light.

This view reflects a mystical pattern of purification, illumination, and perfection; the same triad that structures Dionysius’s entire theology. Yet here the rite functions less as a confession of faith and more as a ritual transformation, a stage in a graded ascent toward divinization. Paul Rorem observes that this structure mirrors the initiatory mysteries of the ancient world, particularly I believe, the Osirian rites of Egypt, where the initiate passed symbolically through death and resurrection to attain immortality and divine likeness.

Scripture, however, presents baptism not as a mystical ascent or ritual purification, but as an outward testimony of repentance and faith. It follows belief; it never precedes it. The Bible nowhere teaches the doctrine of inherited sin, which later became the foundation for infant baptism within the Roman Catholic Church.

God speaks plainly through the prophet Ezekiel:

“The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”— Ezekiel 18:20

Likewise, Deuteronomy 1:39 affirms:

“Your little ones … which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil.”

And Christ Himself said:

“Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”— Mark 10:14

In the plain testimony of Scripture, children are innocent before God; they do not inherit guilt. Accountability comes only with moral understanding. Baptism, therefore, is for those who repent and believe: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16).

The Didache, the earliest manual of apostolic instruction, confirms this same order. Before baptism, the believer was to receive instruction, confess faith, and fast in preparation (Didache 7:1–4). Teaching, repentance, and faith always come before baptism. How, then, can an infant; who cannot comprehend good or evil, who cannot repent or believe; fulfill these biblical and apostolic requirements?

Dionysius and the Osirian Pattern

Paul Rorem’s Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence shows that, although Pseudo-Dionysius never mentions Egyptian religion or the god Osiris by name, his system of initiation and symbolism closely mirrors the Osirian mysteries of Egypt. Both traditions center upon the same spiritual themes: death and rebirth, ascent through purification and illumination, and divine union through light emerging from darkness.

In Dionysius’s Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, baptism is portrayed not simply as an act of obedience or confession of faith, but as a ritual death and resurrection. He writes that the initiate is to be “hidden completely in the water as an image of this death and this burial,” anointed for what he calls “our divine birth.” This image parallels the Osirian initiate’s symbolic descent into the underworld pit, his death and subsequent rebirth through divine power. In both, water and anointing serve as mediators of transformation; a sacred death leading to new life.

Dionysius expands this concept through his constant emphasis on the threefold ascent of the soul: purification, illumination, and perfection. This triad governs every order of his mystical hierarchy, whether angelic or ecclesiastical. Its aim is to make creatures “as like as possible to God and to be at one with Him.” The same triadic progression governed the Egyptian initiatory rites, where the disciple of Osiris was ritually cleansed, enlightened through sacred revelation, and perfected through union with the god. Both systems seek holiness through ordered transformation, not through personal repentance and faith as taught in the New Testament.

Underlying the entire Dionysian framework is a philosophy of procession and return, the idea that all things flow out from the divine source and return to it again. This cyclical structure, drawn from late Neoplatonism, mirrors Egyptian cosmology in which life continually emanates from and returns to the divine order of Ma’at through the death and renewal of Osiris. The soul’s journey is thus one of descent and re-ascent, a cosmic rhythm rather than a moral conversion.

Even the famous Dionysian theme of “divine darkness” finds an analogue in the Egyptian mysteries. For Dionysius, the believer must leave behind all thought and sense to enter the “truly mysterious darkness of unknowing,” there to unite with the hidden God beyond being. In the Osirian initiations, the adept likewise descended into the darkness of the Du’at, the Egyptian underworld, before emerging into renewed light. In both traditions, darkness is not evil but sacred; the veil through which divine union is achieved.

Both Dionysius and the Egyptian system describe the universe as a hierarchy of light. Divine illumination descends through ordered ranks; angels, priests, and faithful in Dionysius’s scheme; gods, priests, and purified souls in Egypt; each reflecting and transmitting the light of the source. In both, spiritual progress depends upon the proper mediation of this light through sacred order and ritual imitation.

This entire structure aligns more closely with the Roman Catholic doctrines of inherited sin and infant baptism than with the biblical and apostolic pattern of faith. In both Dionysian and Catholic teaching, baptism functions as a rite of purification that imparts grace and removes guilt by its own operation. Yet Scripture teaches otherwise. The prophets, Christ, and the apostles all affirm that instruction, repentance, and faith must precede baptism. Ezekiel declares, “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father” (Ezekiel 18:20). Moses writes of children that they “have no knowledge between good and evil” (Deuteronomy 1:39). Jesus Himself said, “Of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Baptism, therefore, belongs only to those who can understand, repent, and believe: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16).

The Didache, the earliest manual of apostolic instruction, preserves the same order. Before baptism, the candidate is to be taught the way of life, to fast, and to confess faith. This presumes understanding, repentance, and voluntary obedience; not the passive participation of an infant. How can a child, who has no knowledge of good or evil and no capacity for repentance, fulfill the biblical command?

Dionysius’s mystical vision, built upon purification and symbolic rebirth, therefore aligns far more naturally with the Catholic concept of baptismal regeneration and the Osirian logic of ritual transformation than with the apostolic faith revealed in Scripture. Both systems place saving power in sacred ceremony; the Bible locates it in faith in Christ alone. What the apostles taught as the simple obedience of belief and baptism became, under Dionysius and his heirs, a complex system of symbolic ascent; a baptized form of mystery religion where grace is mediated through rite and hierarchy rather than received through direct faith in the Word of God.

Theurgy and the Making of the Gods Present

Paul Rorem highlights one of the most decisive differences between biblical Christianity and the Dionysian–sacramental worldview that later shaped the Roman Catholic Church. In late pagan philosophy, particularly in the writings of Iamblichus and Proclus, the practice known as theurgy; literally “divine-working”; was believed to draw the gods into material forms. Through ritual gestures, invocations, and consecrated symbols; especially statues, incense, water, and light; the worshipper sought to make divine powers visibly and tangibly present. A statue, once ritually consecrated, was thought to become the living body of the god it represented. This was not mere representation but actual embodiment, a form of sacred manipulation intended to bridge heaven and earth.

Such practices stand in direct opposition to the Word of God. The second commandment explicitly forbids the making of images for worship:

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath… Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4–5). Israel’s prophets repeatedly condemned the belief that a god could dwell in an image made by human hands: “They have mouths, but they speak not… they that make them are like unto them” (Psalm 115:5–8). The biblical God is not summoned by ritual; He reveals Himself sovereignly, by His Spirit and according to His will.

Pseudo-Dionysius, writing in the fifth or early sixth century, retains the logic of theurgy but clothes it in Christian vocabulary. As Rorem notes, Dionysius “transforms the vocabulary of theurgy; rites that ‘make the gods present’; into a theology of Christian sacraments.” The same ritual mechanism remains: divine power is made present through visible symbols administered by a hierarchy. Baptism, Eucharist, and ordination thus become the instruments through which grace is transmitted. The difference is only terminological; what the pagans called “making the gods present,” Dionysius calls “making God’s grace present.”

In this model, grace operates through the rite itself, independent of the recipient’s personal faith. That concept later solidified in medieval Catholic theology as ex opere operato; grace given “by the work performed.” Thomas Aquinas quotes Dionysius hundreds of times and affirms that the sacraments “cause grace by the power of Christ’s Passion, which operates in them instrumentally.” The act, not the faith of the believer, becomes the channel of divine power. It’s little wonder, then, that the reverence shown to images remains defended; even though the Word of God forbids such worship

The contrast with Scripture could not be clearer. The Bible teaches that salvation and grace come directly from God through faith, not through ritual mediation: “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). Jesus said that true worshipers “worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23–24). When Simon Magus sought to buy the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter rebuked him: “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased” (Acts 8:20). Divine power cannot be summoned, bought, or enacted through material symbols.

The theurgic idea that ritual makes the divine present thus stands wholly outside the biblical revelation. It originated in the pagan world of temple images and sacred magic, passed through the Neoplatonic philosophy of Dionysius, and eventually reappeared in the sacramental system of the Roman Church, where material elements and priestly actions are believed to convey grace. The God of Scripture, by contrast, is not confined to objects or rites. He cannot be made present by human artifice, for He already fills heaven and earth. He is known not through the manipulation of sacred forms but through repentance, faith, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

This Dionysian vision of the Thearchy beyond being differs profoundly from the God of Scripture, who is not an abstract principle but a living, self-revealing Person. In the Bible, God does not withdraw beyond comprehension into mystical darkness; rather, He reveals Himself through His Word and by His Spirit. When Moses asked His name, God did not speak in philosophical terms but declared, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14); the self-existent, personal Being who acts in history and enters covenant with His people. The prophets and apostles never describe God as “beyond being” but as the one true Being from whom all life proceeds and who makes Himself known. As Paul writes, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The biblical God is not hidden in unknowable abstraction; He is Emmanuel; God with us, who took on flesh in Christ so that humanity might know Him.

Dionysius’s theology, for all its beauty and reverence, replaces this revealed relationship with an impersonal ascent toward an ineffable source. Scripture calls believers not to lose themselves in unknowing, but to know Him in truth; “that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Thus, while Dionysius speaks of a transcendent Thearchy beyond all being, the Bible speaks of a God who transcends creation yet graciously steps within it to reveal His nature, His name, and His redeeming love.

How Letter 3 Contradicts Christ’s Teaching; and Foreshadows the Supremacy of Tradition

In his third letter, Pseudo-Dionysius makes what at first seems a faithful confession of the Incarnation: “The transcendent has put aside its own hiddenness and has revealed itself to us by becoming a human being.”Yet immediately he retreats into his mystical language, declaring that “this mystery of Jesus remains hidden and can be drawn out by no word or mind… what is to be said of it remains unsayable; what is to be understood of it remains unknowable.”The effect is that even in revelation, God remains veiled.The divine Word made flesh, instead of revealing the Father, only deepens the sense of mystery. For Dionysius, to know Christ is still to “know by unknowing.”

This notion runs directly contrary to Christ’s own teaching. Jesus declared plainly, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9), and again, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son… hath declared Him” (John 1:18).Christ did not come to preserve divine hiddenness but to reveal God clearly and personally. He said, “Learn of me” (Matthew 11:29) and “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). Where Dionysius turns knowledge into mystical obscurity, Jesus opens it to faith and understanding.The Incarnation was the unveiling of God’s heart, not the deepening of His secrecy. In Christ, revelation replaces speculation, and the invisible becomes knowable in the person of the Son.

Dionysius’s insistence that the divine mystery remains ultimately unknowable introduced a subtle but lasting shift in Christian thought. If God cannot be fully known even when He reveals Himself, then divine truth must continue to unfold through mediation; through hierarchies, symbols, and ultimately tradition.This idea prepared the ground for what later became the Roman Catholic claim that Church tradition stands above, or at least alongside, the Word of God as an equal source of revelation. If revelation remains incomplete and hidden, then the Church must continually interpret and transmit it; the mystical unknowability of God becomes the justification for an ever-expanding authority of tradition.

This trajectory contrasts sharply with the biblical model of revelation. Scripture teaches that God has spoken fully and finally through His Son:

“God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). The Word of God does not require human tradition to complete it, for Christ Himself is the complete revelation of the Father’s will.

Historically, it is vital to note that the Hebrew Scriptures; the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings; were composed roughly between 1400 and 400 B.C., over nine centuries before Christ, and nearly a thousand years before Pseudo-Dionysius wrote in the late fifth or early sixth century A.D. These ancient texts already contained the full revelation of God’s nature, justice, mercy, and coming redemption in the Messiah. Dionysius borrowed their language of light and darkness, revelation and hiddenness, yet reinterpreted them through a Neoplatonic mystical lens, blending biblical imagery with pagan metaphysics. Instead of accepting the Scriptures as the clear self-revelation of God to man, he transformed them into symbols of an ineffable mystery that only the initiated could ascend toward.

This reinterpretation helps explain why, centuries later, the Roman Church came to rely on sacred tradition as an ongoing channel of revelation. If divine truth cannot be grasped directly through the written Word; if it forever remains wrapped in mystery; then only the Church’s hierarchy can “mediate” that truth to the faithful. In this way, the Dionysian vision of an unknowable Thearchy and layered revelation subtly undermined the sufficiency of Scripture and elevated the authority of institutional interpretation.

But Christ’s teaching was the opposite. He said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).The Word of God is not a veil but a revelation; it does not hide truth; it is truth (John 17:17).The God of the Bible is not beyond knowing but has made Himself known, first through the prophets of Israel and finally and fully through His Son, Jesus Christ.

From Mystical Unknowing to Doctrinal Authority: The Dionysian Legacy

The influence of Pseudo-Dionysius did not end with his letters or his mystical treatises. His writings became the intellectual cornerstone of medieval Roman Catholic theology, shaping how the Western Church understood revelation, grace, and authority for nearly a thousand years. By presenting God as ultimately unknowable and inaccessible apart from sacred mediation, Dionysius offered a theological framework that naturally reinforced the idea of a hierarchical Church; one in which divine truth and grace flow downward through ordered ranks, from God to angels, from angels to bishops and priests, and finally to the laity through the sacraments.

This structure perfectly suited the growing institutional power of the medieval Church, which came to see itself as the necessary channel of divine knowledge and salvation. If, as Dionysius taught, the transcendent God can only be approached through symbolic rites and sacred intermediaries, then only those entrusted with such rites; the ordained hierarchy; can properly interpret and administer divine revelation. In this way, the Dionysian system became a theological justification for what would later be called the “magisterium”; the Church’s self-claimed authority to define and interpret truth on behalf of all believers.

By the 13th century, the Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) had fully integrated Dionysius’s thought into the heart of Roman Catholic doctrine. Aquinas quoted Pseudo-Dionysius more than 1,700 times, calling him “the most divine among the philosophers.”  Through Aquinas, Dionysian mysticism entered the bloodstream of scholastic theology, especially in the doctrine of the sacraments. Aquinas taught that God’s grace operates instrumentally through material signs; that baptism, Eucharist, ordination, and other rites actually cause grace to flow into the soul. This principle, known as ex opere operato (“by the work performed”), is directly rooted in Dionysius’s idea that divine power is made present through visible symbols administered by a sacred hierarchy.

At the same time, this framework diminished the sufficiency of Scripture. If God’s essence remains hidden, and divine knowledge must be mediated through symbols, then the written Word of God cannot stand on its own. It requires interpretation by the Church, whose leaders claim special access to the mysteries of revelation. Thus, the Roman Catholic elevation of “Sacred Tradition” above the plain teaching of Scripture finds its philosophical ancestor in the Dionysian insistence that God’s truth cannot be fully grasped through human understanding or direct revelation.

This represents a profound departure from the biblical model, in which God speaks plainly through His Word and reveals Himself in the person of Christ. Scripture declares that “the entrance of thy words giveth light” (Psalm 119:130), and “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine” (2 Timothy 3:16). The light of revelation in the Bible does not pass through hidden hierarchies; it shines openly to all who believe. Yet in Dionysius’s mystical system; later systematized by Aquinas and institutionalized by Rome; divine truth is always mediated, never direct; always sacramental, never sufficient in itself.

Thus, the line from Dionysius to Aquinas to Roman Catholic tradition forms a continuous thread: from mystical unknowing to sacramental mediation, and finally to doctrinal authority. What began as a Neoplatonic reflection on divine transcendence became, in practice, a theological structure that placed the Church above the Word, and tradition above revelation; a structure that endures in Catholic theology to this day.

It’s important to highlight the following point:

It remains one of history’s strangest ironies that no one actually knows who Pseudo-Dionysius was. His writings appeared suddenly in the late fifth or early sixth century, written under a false apostolic name to give them authority; claiming to be “Dionysius the Areopagite,” Paul’s Athenian convert from Acts 17. Yet despite the deception and total anonymity of the real author, the Roman Catholic Church built much of its medieval theology on his works. From the hierarchy of angels to the sacramental system and the doctrine of divine mediation, his ideas became foundational; not the teachings of the apostles and prophets recorded in Scripture, but the speculations of an unknown Neoplatonist centuries later. It is remarkable that a faith once grounded in the clear Word of God came to lean so heavily on the writings of a man whose name, identity, and authority remain a mystery. Go figure.

How the Church Discovered the Deception

For nearly a thousand years, the Church accepted the writings of “Dionysius the Areopagite” as genuine works from the apostolic age. Early readers such as Maximus the Confessor (7th century) and later Thomas Aquinas (13th century) treated them as sacred authorities, believing they were written by the same Dionysius converted by Paul in Acts 17. Because the texts combined biblical language with deep philosophical reflection, few questioned their origin; and the Roman Catholic Church absorbed their mystical theology into its doctrines of hierarchy, sacraments, and divine mediation.

It wasn’t until the Renaissance and Reformation eras that scholars began to notice serious problems. In the 15th century, the humanist Lorenzo Valla and others compared the Dionysian Greek style with actual first-century writings and realized it was far too advanced. By the 16th century, Protestant theologians such as Martin Luther and later John Calvin openly rejected the claim of apostolic authorship. Luther called the writings “a devil’s dung”; not because he denied their intellectual brilliance, but because they had been used to exalt Church hierarchy above Scripture.

Modern scholarship now dates the Corpus Dionysiacum to around 480–520 AD, probably written in Syria by a Christian heavily influenced by Neoplatonism (especially Proclus and Iamblichus). The name “Dionysius the Areopagite” was chosen deliberately to give the work false apostolic authority; a common literary tactic in late antiquity, but one that sowed centuries of confusion.

Despite this discovery, the Roman Catholic Church never retracted its reliance on Dionysius. His ideas were so deeply woven into medieval theology that they remain embedded in Catholic thought; in its sacramental system, its angelology, and its doctrine of hierarchical mediation. Thus, even after the mask was lifted, the anonymous Neoplatonist of the 6th century continued to shape the beliefs and worship of millions who still think they are following the teachings of the apostles.

The Setting of the Fourth Letter

In Letter 4, Pseudo-Dionysius pretends to write “to Polycarp, a hierarch”; that is, a bishop.The name Polycarp seems chosen to evoke the authority of the early Church, since the real Polycarp of Smyrna (c. 69–155 AD) was one of the most respected second-generation Christian martyrs, personally taught by the apostle John. However, this is historically impossible: the real Polycarp lived three centuries before the anonymous author of the Dionysian corpus, who wrote around 500 AD. So, once again, the name serves to create a false aura of apostolic authenticity; as though the letter were part of the early Church’s correspondence between bishops.

In the letter itself, the supposed “Polycarp” quickly fades into the background.The real target is a Greek philosopher named Apollophanes, who has accused Dionysius of “making unholy use of Greek ideas to attack the Greeks.” In other words, Apollophanes says, “You Christians borrow our philosophy to argue against us.”

Dionysius responds by turning the accusation upside down. He insists that the Greeks are the ones misusing divine truth, because the very wisdom they call “philosophy” was itself a gift from God. As he puts it:

“They try to banish divine reverence by means of the very wisdom which God has given them. This knowledge of beings… should have led true philosophers to be uplifted to Him who is the Cause of all beings.”

Here Dionysius cleverly claims that Greek philosophy, properly understood, points toward the Christian God. He even quotes 1 Corinthians 1:21–24, where Paul speaks of the “wisdom of God” revealed in Christ; a passage that actually warns against exalting human philosophy above divine revelation. But Dionysius uses that verse to defend his own use of Platonic philosophy, saying that true “wisdom” (even pagan wisdom) ultimately comes from God and therefore can lead one upward to Him.

This exchange shows the heart of Dionysius’s method: he blends the Bible with Greek metaphysics, claiming that the two are not opposites but stages of one divine truth. By doing so, he baptizes pagan philosophy; especially Neoplatonism; into Christian language.The idea that Greek “wisdom” comes from God sounds noble, but it subtly contradicts Paul’s actual warning:

“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” — Colossians 2:8

Paul never suggested that pagan philosophy was an early form of revelation; he said it was a counterfeit wisdom that blinds people to the true knowledge of God in Christ. By contrast, Dionysius treats philosophy as a preparatory ladder leading toward divine truth; an idea much closer to Plato’s “ascent of the soul” than to the gospel of grace through faith.

Why It Matters

Letter 4 therefore illustrates the philosophical compromise at the root of the Dionysian system. By claiming that Greek wisdom and Christian revelation come from the same divine source, he laid the groundwork for a theology in which human reason, mystical ascent, and sacred hierarchy become equal partners with Scripture.The Roman Catholic tradition later built on this very foundation; treating Church philosophy and tradition as parallel channels of divine truth, sometimes even higher than the written Word of God.

In short, what began as Dionysius’s attempt to defend Christianity against pagan critics ended up absorbing pagan categories into Christian theology; a synthesis that Scripture itself never authorizes.

On a personal note, what I find deeply troubling is the clear pattern that emerges when we step back and look at history honestly. No one knows who wrote the Corpus Dionysiacum, yet the Roman Catholic Church built vast sections of its theology upon it; theology that shaped not only its hierarchy but its entire sacramental system. The true author hid behind the name “Dionysius the Areopagite,” an alleged apostolic convert of Paul, and the Church accepted the deception for a thousand years as genuine divine teaching. When the Renaissance scholar Lorenzo Valla; the same man who exposed the Donation of Constantine as a medieval forgery; also proved that the Dionysian writings could not possibly have come from the first century, the Church did not repent or correct the record. It quietly continued to teach doctrines that had grown out of those false foundations.

The Donation of Constantine had claimed that the emperor had granted the pope supreme temporal power over Rome and the Western Empire; a document later proven by Valla, through linguistic and historical analysis, to be an eighth-century fabrication. Yet for centuries it had served as the legal basis of papal supremacy. Likewise, the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus, another forgery cloaked in apostolic authority, became the theological basis for the Church’s sacramental and hierarchical system. Two pillars of ecclesiastical power; one political, one spiritual; both stood upon forgeries.

The deeper issue is not merely that such documents were forged, but that the Church, once confronted with the truth, refused to dismantle what those falsehoods had built. Instead of returning to the revealed Word of God as the sole authority, Rome clung to the structures those deceptions had justified. The pattern is unmistakable: a preference for the appearance of ancient authority over the plain truth of Scripture, and for institutional control over spiritual transparency. When truth becomes inconvenient to power, forgery becomes useful; and history shows that this pattern was not an accident, but a method.

The Reformers saw this very pattern as the clearest evidence that the Roman Church had departed from the faith once delivered to the saints. When Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others began to examine the foundations of medieval theology, they found a structure built not on the rock of Scripture, but on the shifting sands of human invention; forged documents, pseudonymous writings, and philosophical speculations masquerading as revelation. Luther recognized this immediately, denouncing the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus as “a devil’s dung,” not because he denied its intellectual brilliance, but because it had been used to enthrone mystery and hierarchy where Christ had preached simplicity and truth.

For the Reformers, the issue was not merely historical error but spiritual corruption. If the Church could knowingly uphold forgeries like the Donation of Constantine to justify its temporal power, and cling to the writings of an unknown Neoplatonist to justify its spiritual hierarchy, then its authority was not divine but self-serving. Truth had been subordinated to control. This is why they called the Church back to Scripture alone; sola scriptura; as the only sure foundation of doctrine. The Word of God, not tradition or hierarchy, was to judge all teaching. As Calvin put it, “God will have His Church governed by the certain rule of His Word, not by the opinions of men.”

The Reformation, then, was not an act of rebellion against the Church, but an act of reverence toward the truth. It was the exposure of a long pattern; where forged authority had replaced genuine revelation; and the recovery of the principle that God’s Word, given once for all, needs no human embellishment or hidden philosophy to make it divine. In this light, the Reformers did not destroy the Church; they sought to deliver it from the darkness of deceit back into the light of truth.

The Dionysian Origin of Church Hierarchy — and Why It Is Not Apostolic

In Letter 8, Pseudo-Dionysius presents what became one of the most influential yet unbiblical ideas in the entire history of Christian thought: the concept of hierarchy; a sacred order of ranks through which divine grace and revelation supposedly descend. The letter concerns a fictional monk named Demophilus, who takes it upon himself to correct a priest. Dionysius rebukes him sharply, insisting that even if “disorder and confusion should undermine the most divine ordinances,” no one has the right “to overturn the order which God Himself has established.” In other words, the hierarchy must stand; even above truth or repentance.

Yet what makes this even more astonishing is that none of these letters were written to real people.  The entire correspondence is a literary construction. The recipients; Gaius, Dorotheus, Sosipater, Polycarp, and Demophilus; are characters, not historical figures. The author invents them to illustrate his spiritual system: the monk rebuking the priest, the bishop correcting the monk, the chain of command restored in perfect order. It is a philosophical parable, not a record of Christian life. And yet this imagined world; this hierarchy of invented correspondents; became the model for the real structure of the medieval Church.

In this imagined chain, Dionysius sets up a triple triad: bishops (hierarchs) at the top, priests in the middle, deacons below; then monks, communicants, and finally those “being purified” (catechumens, penitents, the possessed). Revelation, he says, flows down through this sacred pyramid, while the faithful rise upward through obedience and participation in the sacraments. Even the layout of the liturgy mirrors this hierarchy: the bishop nearest the altar, the priests behind him, the monks at the doors, and the laity furthest away. Grace, in this system, does not come directly from God to the believer but through layers of mediation; from the divine down through angelic and clerical intermediaries.

This entire structure, however, is foreign to Scripture. The Bible knows no cosmic pyramid of ranks between God and His people. It declares that “there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). The apostles were not hierarchical successors but eyewitnesses of the risen Lord (Acts 1:21–22). Their authority came from testimony, not transmission; they were chosen to proclaim, not to establish an unbroken chain of sacred power. The idea of apostolic succession, as later developed in the Roman Church, appears nowhere in the New Testament. The apostles laid a foundation once (Ephesians 2:20); the Church builds upon it by faith in the Word, not by inheriting office or rank.

Dionysius, on the other hand, lifted directly from Neoplatonism, where all reality flows from the One through successive intermediaries. He even coined the very word hierarchy (hieros = sacred, archē = rule) to describe this descending order. His triads; hierarch, priest, deacon; mirror the Platonic fascination with “middle terms” that connect the divine and material worlds. In Neoplatonic thought, intermediaries are essential because the divine is too pure to touch the physical directly; in Christianity, however, the opposite is true: God became flesh (John 1:14) and directly entered creation to redeem it. The gospel tears down the veil; Dionysius rebuilds it with philosophy.

When this Dionysian system entered the Church, it transformed its very structure. The Roman Catholic hierarchy; with its layers of clergy, its exalted bishops, and its concept of mediation through ordination and sacrament; reflects Dionysius far more than the apostolic writings. What began as a mystical metaphor in an anonymous Neoplatonist’s fictional letters became the governing reality of Christendom for over a millennium.

But Scripture teaches something profoundly different. Jesus said plainly, “One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren” (Matthew 23:8). Peter calls all believers “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). Authority in the New Testament is service, not rank (Mark 10:42–45). The Spirit is given directly to every believer, not through a chain of intermediaries (Acts 2:17–18). The apostles passed on the gospel, not an institution; they were witnesses, not successors.

Thus, what the Roman Catholic Church later called apostolic succession finds its true source not in the book of Acts but in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius; a man of unknown name and origin, writing centuries after the apostles, constructing a hierarchy out of Platonic philosophy and attributing it to the Christian God. The letters he wrote were not real; the people in them never lived; but the system he imagined became reality. And that system; not the living Word of God; became the foundation of the Church’s earthly power.

And in the words of Peter—who was never proven to be the bishop of Rome, nor commanded to establish a throne there; he says

“And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.”

— 2 Peter 2:3 (KJV)

The Invention of Hierarchy — From Pagan Priesthood to Ecclesiastical Power

One of the most striking facts about Pseudo-Dionysius is that he invented the very word “hierarchy.”  Before him, it did not exist in Christian vocabulary. In the ancient world, the Greek word hierarch (hieros = sacred, archē = source or rule*) referred to a pagan priest; someone who presided over sacred rituals, often as a channel between the gods (demons) and humanity. Dionysius took that word and expanded it into something entirely new: hierarchy, literally “the source or rule of the sacred.”

In doing so, he did not describe a biblical truth; he created a philosophical system. He took a cultic term from Greek religion and turned it into a theological structure for Christianity. In his writings, especially The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, he argues that divine power flows through a sacred arrangement of ranks; from God to the angels, from angels to bishops (whom he calls hierarchs), from bishops to priests, from priests to deacons, and finally to the laity. This, he says, is “the arrangement of all the sacred realities.” In his vision, the Church mirrors heaven itself: a ladder of intermediaries, each level transmitting a measure of holiness to the next.

But note what Dionysius does here. He presents this as a “venerable sacred tradition,” as if the Church had always understood itself this way. In truth, he is the one inventing it.  He takes the pre-Christian idea of a priest as the “source of the sacred,” elevates it to an abstract principle, and then declares that the entire Church order derives from this one man — the hierarch. As he writes:

“If you talk of ‘hierarchy’ you are referring to the arrangement of all the sacred realities. Talk of ‘hierarch’ and you are referring to a holy and inspired man… in whom an entire hierarchy is completely perfected and known.” (EH 1, 373C)

That sentence alone lays the cornerstone for centuries of ecclesiastical absolutism. The hierarch is not just a servant or elder; he is the indispensable mediator of divine things, the channel through whom perfection, illumination, and purification flow. The entire system depends on him. Without the hierarch, there is no access to divine perfection. The sacred becomes institutional; and human authority becomes the gatekeeper of God.

This framework, of course, has no root in the New Testament.  Jesus explicitly warned His disciples not to lord authority over one another, saying, “It shall not be so among you” (Mark 10:43). The early Church had elders (presbyters) and deacons serving local congregations, but there was no class of “hierarchs,” no notion of a priest as a mediator of divine illumination, and no system of purification or perfection controlled by a spiritual elite. The apostles were witnesses of the Word, not custodians of a cosmic chain of command.

Yet Dionysius’s invention; a system of sacred ranks where authority descends and grace is dispensed; became the model for the Roman Catholic Church’s structure. The bishop, then the archbishop, then the pope: each level mediating the sacred down the ladder, mirroring the “arrangement of all the sacred realities.” Even his triadic pattern of purification → illumination → perfection became embedded in medieval sacramental theology, where the deacons, priests, and bishops each represent one of these powers.

The irony is that Dionysius justifies all this by invoking a chain of submission that ends with “the apostles and the successors of the apostles.” But the apostles never taught succession in this sense; they pointed everyone directly to Christ. What Dionysius calls “the divine order” is, in fact, a philosophical reconstruction; a Christianized Neoplatonism that places mediation and ritual at the center, instead of faith and revelation.

By coining one word; hierarchy; this anonymous author transformed the Church’s understanding of authority. He turned a community of Spirit-filled believers into a pyramid of sacred intermediaries, and his invention gave theological legitimacy to the idea that the sacred can be controlled, channeled, and governed by men. The Bible teaches that “the veil was torn” when Christ died (Matthew 27:51); Dionysius stitched that veil back together with philosophy.

What began as linguistic creativity became, over time, the foundation of an empire; a Church that claimed to “source” the sacred through office, not through the living Word of God. That is why this one invented word; hierarchy; carries so much weight in history. It represents the moment when divine grace was institutionalized, and when authority shifted from the Spirit to a system.

The Twofold “Tradition” — How Pseudo-Dionysius Redefined Revelation

In this letter, Pseudo-Dionysius sets out what he calls the dual aspect of theological tradition; and with it, he quietly reshapes the entire Christian understanding of revelation. He says there are two sides to theology: one “ineffable and mysterious,” the other “open and more evident.” The first “resorts to symbolism and involves initiation,” while the second “is philosophic and employs the method of demonstration.” One persuades by reason; the other acts by mystery, “putting souls firmly in the presence of God.”

At first glance, that might sound harmless; even profound. But beneath it lies a complete redefinition of how truth is known. For Dionysius, theological truth does not rest in what God has spoken plainly, but in hidden meanings and sacramental symbols accessible only through ritual and interpretation. Revelation is no longer an unveiled word; it becomes a system of sacred riddles decoded by the initiated. In his framework, even Scripture itself operates on two levels; the “lower” perceptible meaning, and the “higher” spiritual content hidden within. The goal of theology, then, is not to receive truth by faith, but to ascend through contemplation and sacramental participation until one perceives the invisible through the visible.

This idea would profoundly influence medieval thought. By teaching that divine truth is partly “ineffable” and must be reached through symbols, Dionysius laid the foundation for the later Roman Catholic claim that Scripture and tradition are two streams of one revelation; that God’s full truth is not confined to the written Word but continues through the Church’s liturgy, sacraments, and mystical interpretation. The notion that “sacred initiators” use symbolism to lead souls into divine presence anticipates the very logic of the Church’s sacramental system: outward forms containing inward grace, visible signs mediating hidden realities.

Yet this concept is entirely foreign to the biblical view of revelation. Scripture teaches that God’s Word is not a riddle for the initiated, but a light for all who believe:

“The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.” — Psalm 119:130“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” — 2 Timothy 3:16

The prophets and apostles did not veil the truth in symbols to conceal it; they proclaimed it openly. Jesus Himself said, “I spake openly to the world… I said nothing in secret” (John 18:20). When He used parables, it was not to create an elite of initiated mystics, but to fulfill prophecy and reveal truth progressively to those willing to hear. The early Church understood revelation as clear, sufficient, and final in Christ; “the Word made flesh,” not a hidden mystery that must be unlocked through ritual ascent.

Dionysius’s scheme, however, blurs that distinction. By equating biblical revelation with the “sacraments of the most holy mysteries,” he merges the Word of God with the rites of the Church. The same symbolic method, he says, interprets both. That means Scripture and liturgy become two halves of one initiatory system: the text and the rite are both “mysteries” pointing to higher realities accessible only to the hierarchs who possess the interpretive key. In this way, theology itself becomes hierarchical; truth descending through sacred mediators rather than through the Spirit’s direct illumination of the believer.

This explains much of what followed in Church history. The Roman Catholic Church would later teach that the Magisterium; the hierarchy of bishops and the pope; is the divinely authorized interpreter of both Scripture and tradition. The ordinary believer, like Dionysius’s “uninitiated,” must depend on that hierarchy for access to divine truth. In that sense, Dionysius’s mystical “twofold theology” became the spiritual architecture of the medieval Church: one half visible and instructional, the other hidden and sacramental; both ruled by the same clerical order.

But the gospel knows nothing of such secrecy. Christ tore the veil, not to hide truth behind new symbols, but to make the presence of God available to all who believe. The apostles preached an open revelation, not a mystagogical ascent. The mystery once hidden is now revealed:

“The mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints.” — Colossians 1:26

Where Dionysius invented two levels of knowledge; one for the initiated, one for the ordinary — Scripture sees only one Lord, one faith, one Spirit who reveals truth equally to all believers. His “dual tradition” thus became the seed of a divided Church: an elite class holding the keys of interpretation, and a dependent laity waiting in the outer courts for illumination that should have been theirs all along.

How One Invented Word Built an Empire: The Rise of Hierarchy in the Church

When we speak today about “church hierarchy,” most people assume it’s simply part of Christianity’s natural order; bishops, priests, popes, and the faithful below them, arranged like rungs of a divine ladder. But that entire concept, as Paul Rorem shows, began with one man: the anonymous Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. He invented the word hierarchy itself.

Yet the brilliance (and danger) of Dionysius’s invention lay in how portable it was. He had built a symbolic, almost mystical structure to describe the spiritual order of the Church; not a political system, but a liturgical one. But once the term hierarchy entered the bloodstream of Christian thought, it began to mutate.

By the ninth century, Latin translators such as Hilduin and John Scotus Eriugena had carried the Dionysian writings to the West. They rendered hierarchia directly into Latin, not translating but simply adopting the Greek word. To them, it sounded authoritative, ancient, and divinely profound; the vocabulary of a mysterious apostolic wisdom. Soon, thinkers like Hincmar of Rheims and Pope Nicholas I were invoking Dionysius to defend the independence of the clergy from secular rulers. Hierarchy now meant not just a spiritual chain of illumination, but an institutional chain of command. Letter 8, which originally chastised a rogue monk for overstepping a priest, was suddenly being used to tell emperors they had no right to judge bishops.

The slope from liturgical order to clerical power was steep and swift. By the twelfth century, theologians like Hugh of St. Victor, Richard of St. Victor, and later Thomas Aquinas had fully baptized Dionysius into the Western tradition. They divided reality into three hierarchies; divine, angelic, and human; each a mirror of the other. The Church on earth, they said, reflected the hierarchy of heaven itself, with the pope as the visible head corresponding to Christ above. The word that Dionysius invented as a metaphor for spiritual mediation became a justification for ecclesiastical monarchy.

By the time of Giles of Rome in the thirteenth century, this evolution reached its climax. Giles, writing in defense of pope Boniface VIII, used Dionysian principles to build a theological architecture of papal supremacy. Quoting from The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; “It is the all-holy ordinance of the divinity that secondary things should be lifted up to the most divine ray through the mediation of the primary things”; Giles concluded that all earthly authorities must be subordinate to the pope, who stands as the ultimate “primary” mediator between God and man. This exact principle found its way into the infamous papal bull Unam Sanctam (1302), which declared:

“We declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”

That single sentence, often seen as the height of papal absolutism, rests on Dionysius’s rule of divinity: the lower must reach the higher only through intermediaries. The pope became not just the spiritual head of the Church but the indispensable mediator of grace; the earthly hierarch at the summit of all sacred order.

What began as a symbolic triad in a fictional monk’s letter had become the blueprint of Christendom’s power structure. The word hierarchy; coined in a work falsely attributed to an apostolic figure; shaped the Western world’s understanding of both Church and empire.

Ironically, even those who opposed papal overreach could not escape Dionysius’s shadow. John of Paris, writing in the same year as Unam Sanctam, argued that while the pope indeed held supreme spiritual authority, his power did not extend into temporal affairs. Yet even John built his rebuttal using the same Dionysian framework: that spiritual authority operates through the hierarchy of clergy, not directly by the Spirit or the Word. Both sides, papal and royal, drew from the same well; the Areopagite’s chain of intermediaries.

By the late Middle Ages, the meaning of “hierarchy” had drifted far from its mystical beginnings. It no longer described a symbolic order of illumination but a rigid bureaucracy of command. The invisible ladder of divine mediation became a visible pyramid of authority; crowned by the pope, sanctioned by “apostolic succession,” and supported by the argument that God Himself ordained such ranks.

And yet, none of this appears in Scripture. The apostles taught no such pyramid, only a fellowship of believers united under Christ, who is “the one mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5). The Church of the New Testament is a body, not a chain; its leaders are servants, not sources of the sacred. Dionysius’s hierarchy reintroduced what Christ abolished: an intermediary priesthood standing between God and His people.

That is the real legacy of the Areopagite’s invention. From one word; hierarchy; came a millennium of spiritual stratification, culminating in papal monarchy and the vast machinery of ecclesiastical control. The irony could not be deeper: an anonymous philosopher, writing centuries after the apostles, built the framework upon which the Roman Catholic Church would later claim divine authority over all Christians and even over kings.

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.”

— 2 Thessalonians 2:3–4 (KJV)

The Biblical Alternative: Christ the Only Head

When we return to Scripture itself, we find no trace of the intricate pyramid that Pseudo-Dionysius imagined and the Roman Church later institutionalized. The apostles never describe a chain of sacred intermediaries or a hierarchy of illumination descending through ranks of clergy. What they describe instead is a living body; the Church as the body of Christ, joined directly to its Head.

“And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.” — Colossians 1:18

In the biblical pattern, authority does not flow downward through layers of mediation. It flows outward from the indwelling Spirit of Christ into every believer. The same Spirit who inspired the apostles now inhabits all who are born of God, not a chosen elite. There is no “hierarch,” no mortal “source of the sacred.” There is only one source; the living Christ; and all who trust in Him are priests in His service:

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” — 1 Peter 2:9

The Church of the New Testament is not a ladder to climb but a fellowship to enter. Its leaders are not mediators of grace but servants of the Word. Its authority does not depend on succession of office, but on fidelity to Christ and His teaching. The apostolic calling was not to inherit power, but to bear witness to what they had seen and heard. The gospel they preached was open, public, and final; not a secret wisdom passed through a chain of initiates, but the revealed Word of God made flesh, crucified, and risen.

Where Dionysius saw light descending through orders, the apostles saw light breaking into the world directly through the face of Jesus Christ. Where his hierarchy required mediation, theirs proclaimed immediate access to the Father through the Son. Where his system centralized authority in a hierarch, theirs spread it through the Spirit who gives gifts “to every man severally as He will” (1 Corinthians 12:11).

As the Roman Empire crumbled under its own corruption and decay, a new kind of empire began to rise; one draped not in armor and banners, but in robes and incense. It was during this collapse, in the shadows of the fifth and sixth centuries, that Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite appeared; an anonymous writer hiding behind a false apostolic name to lend his teachings divine authority. His elaborate system of “holy hierarchy” offered a convenient replacement for the empire’s fading power: a spiritualized chain of command that turned the Church into the new Rome. In truth, it was not revelation from God but philosophy dressed in scripture; Neoplatonism baptized for political control. And Rome seized it. The bishops became emperors in vestments, the sacraments became instruments of power, and the name of Christ was used to build a throne. They told the world it was heaven’s order, but it was the empire reborn; an empire of lies built on forged names and false authority.