This quite small book contains the Tria Corda lectures given at the University of Jena in 2016 by Professor Adolf Martin Ritter. For his lecture he chose a subject on which he is supremely well qualified to speak, as one of the editors of the critical edition of the Corpus Areopagiticum (1990/91), which has been acclaimed as the ‘event of the century’ so far as patristic studies is concerned. It is certainly one of the last century's landmarks in the field of patristics, though there are other contenders for the ‘Jahrhundertereignis’– the edition, still incomplete, of Gregory of Nyssa, inaugurated by Werner Jaeger, or that of Maximos the Confessor in Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca (and several other notable editions: the last century saw a huge revival of patristic studies). There are five chapters and an appendix (of very uneven length, which suggests that in some cases lectures have undergone considerable expansion). As an introduction to Dionysios the Areopagite, it does not compare with the volume by another of the editors of the critical edition, Beate Regina Suchla (2008): her work is much more systematic and complete; Ritter's is, in comparison, much more of a tract, engaging mostly with currents in recent scholarship that he finds wanting, indeed wayward. It is interesting that both Suchla and Ritter dispense with ‘Pseudo-’ in referring to Dionysios, which could be seen as something of a concession to the currents of scholarship with which Ritter is so concerned.

The first chapter tackles the basic questions raised by the Corpus Areopagiticum: date, milieu from which it emerges and content. It is the shortest chapter and states clearly and concisely what is generally believed: far from being writings by the Apostle Paul's convert, the judge of the Areopagos, they are the works of someone indebted to the Neoplatonism of Proklos, if not Damaskios, and therefore late fifth- or early sixth-century, betraying a West Syrian background, and probably from circles shy of, or opposed to, the Christology of the Council of Chalcedon; a brief and clear account is given of the contents of the four treatises and ten letters. Then follow two chapters concerned with the reception of Dionysios: one chapter on the ‘main stations’ of his reception history, and another on modern research. These two chapters, running to nearly eighty pages, constitute about half of the book. Nevertheless, the reception of Dionysios is so complex and diverse that Ritter can do little more than touch on the main topics. There quickly emerges a polemical edge to Ritter's account that will be amplified later. For Ritter there is no question that in the West there was, compared with the East, ‘a huge fascination’ with the Areopagite – a fascination that had profound metaphysical implications. In contrast, in the East, the importance of the Areopagite was more superficial, and limited to the realm of ‘piety’ (Frömmigkeit); that this piety might be fundamentally liturgical is not something Ritter considers. He singles out two Western scholars who promote what he regards as a false estimate of Dionysios (one of them being myself; the other A. Golitzin, whom Ritter pursues more determinedly; he is now, after all, an Orthodox bishop, and Ritter seems very sensitive to hierarchy). All I would say is that early interest in the Areopagite focused on his notion of hierarchy (witness, the succession of commentaries on the Celestial hierarchy); it was not until the thirteenth century in the West that attention becomes more focused on the Divine names and Mystical theology. Approached in that way, the Neoplatonic skeleton of Dionysios becomes much more prominent, which is central to Ritter's interpretation of the Areopagite. Ritter goes on to give an elaborate account of the varied ways in which Dionysios was received in the West, but has no time to develop it. This chapter ends with some discussion of Dionysios in modernity: in German idealism, leading through the revival of scholarly interest in the early decades of the twentieth century (with a glancing footnote mention of Hugo Ball and Dadaism), to the re-estimation of negative theology in Derrida and Marion. The next chapter focuses on ‘modern’, that is, current research on Dionysios, in which Ritter quickly turns, almost despite himself, to an attack on English-speaking scholarship, adding to the two names already mentioned, Paul Rorem and Charles Stang. All this ‘rethinking’ of the Areopagite Ritter regards as unfounded: ‘Was ist daran neu?’, he asks – ‘What is new here?’ Ritter does not give much indication of what is wrong, but he is clear that it is all misguided. In trying to redirect reflection on Dionysios into fresh channels, Ritter seems to think that this involves ignoring Dionysios’s clear Neoplatonic inspiration and making altogether too much of the way in which Dionysios fertilised, especially, Byzantine theological reflection. As he insists, tertium non datur, even if that tertium were to involve taking Dionysios seriously as a Christian, deeply attracted by aspects of Neoplatonic metaphysical reflection. The fourth chapter discusses the alleged background in Jewish apocalyptic and mysticism that has become a central feature of Golitzin's presentation of Dionysios. This certainly begs a more thorough discussion than Golitzin attempts, but Golitzin does point to striking parallels, even if he tends to make too much of a Jewish/Greek either/or, which effectively plays into the hands of Ritter's tertium non datur. The way in which Ritter presents his attack on Golitzin seems to me quite strange; he seems to me to be arguing that the Book of Hierotheos is the source of Dionysios's ideas, rather than the wilder imaginings of someone inspired by him. A fifth chapter explores the idea of a chain from heaven to earth, an image Dionysios uses once, likely drawn directly from Neoplatonic sources: Ritter's learning is deployed to good effect, but illustrates his settled conviction rather than demonstrates it. An appendix on Dionysios's account of the ‘darkness over the face of the earth’ at the time of the crucifixion is similarly full of learning.

In conclusion, it seems to me that this would have been a much better book if Ritter had allowed himself to develop his own ideas, and display his learning in this way, rather than devoting so much time to scholarship that he has no regard for.