Dionysian Power: A Positively Medieval Hierarchy
“Dionysian Power: A Positively Medieval Hierarchy.” Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity 36/2 (March/April 2023): 24–30.
Abstract
In this essay, I want to investigate the principles that undergird a hierarchical metaphysic. I will do so by turning to the sixth-century Syrian monk Dionysius, in part because he was the first to use the term hierarchy and wrote extensively about its relation to power, and in part because Dionysius thought deeply about hierarchy both in terms of the structures of reality in general and in terms of ecclesial structures. I hope to show that the Dionysian hierarchy, which undergirded church and society in the Middle Ages, did indeed have the functioning of power at its center, but not the kind of power that violently imposes itself upon the disenfranchised and marginalized but the kind that lovingly lifts others in the being of God.
