Pseudo-Dionysius

Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. The Classics of Western Spirituality.
Translator: Colm Luibheid. 
Paulist Press International. 1987. ISBN: 9780809128389.
 
Pseudo-Dionysius, likely a Syrian monk from the late 5th or early 6th century, wrote under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite from Acts 17:34, to claim apostolic authority. His true identity remains unknown, but his corpus gained immense influence despite later exposure as pseudepigraphic. A pivotal figure in Christian mysticism, his works blend Neoplatonic philosophy with theology, profoundly shaping Western spirituality.
 
This Paulist Press volume collects his complete works: The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and ten letters. He employs apophatic theology, describing God by negation, ascending beyond affirmations to unknowing union, and cataphatic approaches via divine names and hierarchies. Angels and church orders mirror divine procession from unity to multiplicity and return.
 
Colm Luibheid, born in 1936 in Dublin, Ireland, earned his B.A. and M.A. from University College Dublin, followed by a Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University in 1961. He then joined the faculty at University of Galway, where he taught for decades. Luibheid’s 1987 Paulist Press edition translates the full Dionysian corpus from the Greek Migne text (Patrologia Graeca 3), incorporating updates from the impending Göttingen critical edition. Noted for its clarity amid the texts’ dense difficulty, it features collaboration with Paul Rorem on notes, plus prefaces by Jaroslav Pelikan and others. He also translated John Climacus for the same series.