was for an approach to God; it was looking for the anagogic path, the way up from man and multiplicity to unity and God. An absorbing interest was taken in the means. Neo-Platonism, the creature of this time, whatever else it was, was mediatorial, a system of mediation between man and the Absolute First Principle. Passing halfway over from paganism to Christianity, the Celestial Hierarchy of Pseudo-Dionysius is also essentially a system of mediation, which has many affinities (as well it might!) with the system of Plotinus.[1] Within Catholic Christianity the great work of Athanasius was to establish Christ's sole and all-sufficient mediation. Catholicism was permanently set upon the mediatorship of Christ, God and man, the one God-man reconciling the nature which He had veritably, and not seemingly, assumed, to the divine substance which He had never ceased to be. Athanasius's struggle for this principle was bitter and hard-pressed, because within Christianity as well as without, men were demanding easier and more tangible stages and means of mediation.
Of such, Catholic Christianity was to recognize a vast multitude, perhaps not dogmatically as a necessary part of itself; but practically and universally. Angels, saints, the Virgin over all, are mediators between man and God. This began to be true at an early period, and was established before the fourth century.[2] Moreover, every bit of rite and mystery and miracle, as in paganism, so in Catholicism, was essentially a means of mediation, a way of bringing the divine principle to bear on man and his affairs, and so of bringing man within the sphere of the divine efficiency.
Let us make some further Christian comparisons with our Neo-Platonic friends Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblicus. As we have adduced Origen, it would also be easy to find other parallels from the Eastern Church. But as the purpose
- ↑ In cap. iii. § 2 of the Celestial Hierarchy, Pseudo-Dionysius says that the goal of his system is the becoming like to God and oneness with Him (ἡ πρὸς θεὸν ἀφομοίωσίς τε καὶ ἕνωσις). He classifies his "celestial intelligences" even more systematically than the De mysteriis of Iamblicus's school. His work is full of Neo-Platonism. Cf. Vacherot, Histoire de l'école d'Alexandrie, iii. 24 sqq.
- ↑ The cult of the Virgin and the saints was of very early growth. See Lucius, Die Anfänge des Heiligen Kults in der christlichen Kirche (ed. by Anrich, Tübingen, 1904).
