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Translated by John Parker
St Dionysius the Areopagite Resources Online and in Print
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18 Pages
Page 13
TITUS.
ZENAS, one of the seventy-two disciples, who was versed in the science of law, wrote a life of Titus, and says that he was descended from the family of Minos, King of Crete. Titus gave himself to the study of Homer and Philosophy till his twentieth year, when he heard a voice from heaven, which told him to quit this place and save his soul. He waited one year, to test the truth of the voice, and then had a revelation which bade him read the Hebrew Scriptures. Opening Isaiah, his eye fell on chapter xli. vv. 1-5. He was then sent to Jerusalem by the pro-consul of Crete to report upon the reality of the miracles said to be performed by Jesus Christ. He saw our Saviour, and His miracles, and believed; and became one of the seventy-two. He witnessed the Passion and Ascension; the Apostles consecrated him, and sent him with Paul, whom he attended to Antioch, to Seleucia and to Crete, where Rutilus, pro-consul, was baptized, and Titus appointed Bishop. In A.D. 64, St. Paul addressed his Epistle to Titus, and about the same time Dionysius also, this letter. Dexter records that Titus visited Spain, and that Pliny, the younger, was converted to the Faith by Titus. He consecrated the second Bishop of Alexandria, and died at the age of 94.
EPISTLE IX. To Titus, Hierarch, asking by letter what is the house of wisdom, what the bowl, and what are its meats and drinks?
SECTION I.
I do not know, O excellent Titus, whether the holy Timothy departed, deaf to some of the theological symbols which were explained by me. But, in the Symbolic Theology, we have thoroughly investigated for him all the expressions of the Oracles concerning God, which appear to the multitude to be monstrous. For they give a colour of incongruity dreadful to the uninitiated souls, when the Fathers of the unutterable wisdom explain the Divine and Mystical Truth, unapproachable by the profane, through certain, certainly hidden and daring enigmas. Wherefore also, the many discredit the expressions concerning the Divine Mysteries. For, we contemplate them only through the sensible symbols that have grown upon them. We must then strip them, and view them by themselves in their naked purity. For, thus contemplating them, we should reverence a fountain of Life flowing into Itself----viewing It even standing by Itself, and as a kind of single power, simple, self-moved, and self-worked, not abandoning Itself, but a knowledge surpassing every kind of knowledge, and always contemplating Itself, through Itself. We thought it necessary then, both for him and for others, that we should, as far as possible, unfold the varied forms of the Divine" representations of God in symbols. For, with what incredible and simulated monstrosities are its external, forms filled? For instance, with regard to the superessential Divine generation, representing a body of God corporally generating God; and describing a word flowing out into air from a man's heart, which eructates it, and a breath, breathed forth from a mouth; and celebrating God-bearing bosoms embracing a son of God, bodily; or representing these things after the manner of plants, and producing certain trees, and branches, and flowers and roots, as examples; or fountains of waters y, bubbling forth; or seductive light productions of reflected splendours; or certain other sacred representations which explain superessential descriptions of God; but with regard to the intelligible providences of Almighty God, either gifts, manifestations, or powers, or properties, or repose, or abidings, or progressions, or distinctions, or unions, clothing Almighty God in human form, and in the varied shape of wild beasts and other living creatures,
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/dionysius-areopagite/letters.asp?pg=13
