ABSTRACT
The Athenian Neoplatonists Proclus and Damascius are the intellectual forebears of Dionysius the Areopagite, one of the most important figures in early Christian mysticism. His appropriation of them was made possible by certain developments in the Neoplatonic understanding of the One and its causal activity, the relation between the finite and the infinite, the structure of the intellect, the mediatory function of soul and the theurgic deployment of material objects. Christian meditation on the tension between unity and differentiation, on triadic divisions within the cosmos, on the threefold process of emanation, return and remaining, on participation in God and on identity were informed by the teaching of these Neoplatonists and other pagan philosophers, though the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and God’s universal love cannot be reduced to pagan antecedents.
