Theurgy and embodiment

A few days ago, I posted a piece on Christian Platonism. I noted that in my PhD thesis,¹ I propose that liturgical theology, in order to provide a coherent account of liturgical participation (as well as Christian life and Christian practices in general), should embrace a theurgic approach, where human acts are consummated by the divine. In this post, I intend to explain a little further what ‘theurgy’ (Gk. theourgía) is, while showing how Christian and non-Christian approaches to Neoplatonic theurgy differs when it comes to embodiment.² Theurgy is a term from Neoplatonic philosophy which denotes that our worship is a participation in a divine work (Gk. theĩon érgon), something which is primarily actualised in ritual. The most central actor in this tradition is Syrian Neoplatonist Iamblichus.³ For him, this is not principally our acts but divine acts in which we can participate, as Peter Struck puts it: “Theurgy is a divine act, a θεῖον ἔργον, insofar as it is action, established by gods, put into use by humans, whose effect is to bring the material world (including that part of the celebrant which is material) into harmony with the divine order.”⁴ The term was later adopted by amongst others Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in the 5th or 6th century.⁵ In this blogpost I aim to show not just that Christian and non-Christian approaches to Neoplatonic theurgy share many similarities but that they also diverge on a central point: the nature of embodiment.

According to Iamblichus, if the theurgist is able, the ultimate end of the theurgic act is a purely spiritual and intellectual union with the divine, something, he notes, only a few select humans have attained:

A certain few individuals … employing an intellectual power which is beyond the natural, have disengaged themselves from nature, and turned towards the transcendent and pure intellect, at the same time rendering themselves superior to natural forces. … Those … who conduct their lives in accordance with intellect alone and the life according to intellect, and who have been freed from the bonds of nature, practise an intellectual and incorporeal rule of sacred procedure in respect of all the departments of theurgy.⁶

For Iamblichus, a theurgist can, if he is able (and perhaps only only temporarily) lose his humanity and become divine:

The theurgist, through the power of arcane symbols, commands cosmic entities no longer as a human being or employing a human soul but, existing above them in the order of the gods, uses threats greater than are consistent with his own proper essence—not, however, with the implication that he would perform that which he asserts, but using such words to instruct them how much, how great and what sort of power he holds through his unification with the gods, which he gains through knowledge of the ineffable symbols.⁷

Furthermore, as Gregory Shaw notes, for Iamblichus, “while heavenly beings possess immediate access to the divine--demonstrated by their circular (noetic) movement--embodied souls move rectilinearly and must proceed “outside” themselves to reach the unity of Nous.”⁸ Shaw notes that we find a parallel to this in Pseudo-Dionysius:

Dionysius similarly contrasts the circular movement of divine intelligences, who have immediate access to the divine, with the rectilinear movement of human souls who must proceed outside themselves to be “uplifted by external things.” Both Iamblichus and Dionysius maintain that the dividedness of human souls requires multiple and material forms of worship--corresponding to the soul’s divisions--“until we are brought as far as we can into the unity of deification.” The hieratic use of sensate imagery, essential to Neoplatonic theurgy, was thus also essential to Dionysian theurgy, but Dionysius draws his symbols from the scriptures and the liturgy, not from nature. Iamblichean theurgy is thus narrowed by Dionysius into an ecclesiastical context, but in both cases material symbols reveal the immaterial presence of the divine.⁹

Shaw goes on to point out how Pseudo-Dionysius borrowed categories from Iamblichus, before incorporating them into a Christian ecclesial context. The main difference, then, is in what constitutes divine revelation.¹⁰ But there is, however, some differences that Shaw does not pick up on, namely the relationship between spirituality and embodiment in Christian thought.

First, as I have argued, even spirits do not have immediate access to the divine, because God is only spiritual in an analogous sense. There is a complete ontological difference between God and any creature, spiritual and otherwise, and God cannot be comprehended at all but must, in some sense, be mediated to all creatures. For Pseudo-Dionysius, God is ‘beyond being’ (even ‘non-being’).¹¹ No creature, however advanced, has immediate access to the divine.¹²

And secondly, as I have argued in my PhD thesis, Christian Neoplatonists, Pseudo-Dionysius included, do not envision a completely spiritual end but a perfection of the body.¹³ The point of the liturgy is to point beyond itself, but that which it points to is not something disembodied but Christ, the Logos made flesh (John 1:14).¹⁴ I agree with Iamblichus that rites and symbols point beyond themselves. We will probably not be celebrating the earthly Eucharistic rite in heaven, nor will we probably baptise anyone there. These are symbols, though symbols which participate in, and really gives, that to which they point.¹⁵

But even so, these rites and symbols do not point to something purely spiritual but to the one who, in his person (and in his very body), holds together God and humanity, without confusion or separation. Christ (as true God and a true, embodied, man) is the focal point of the divine-human union, allowing us to also become one with God, not just ‘spiritually’ but also bodily.¹⁶ We are, then, given the privilege to participate in the divine work, the theurgy, in Christ. Our salvation or deification is grounded in Him. He is the focal point of the divine-human union because he is the exemplar of human life, ordered to God. As St. Paul puts in in Colossians 2:9-10: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority.”

This is one of the central differences between Iamblichean and Christian approaches to theurgy, though Shaw is correct that it is rooted, most particularly in revelation. But the revelation is rooted in Christ Himself, in God made flesh.

1. Kjetil Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation: On Theurgic Participation in God, PhD dissertation (Durham University, 2021).

2. For some introductions to theurgy, see Crystal Addey, Divination and Theurgy in Neoplatonism: Oracles of the Gods (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016); Sarah Iles Johnston, “Rising to the Occasion: Theurgic Ascent in its Cultural Milieu,” in Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar and Symposium, eds., Peter Schäfer and Hans G. Kippenberg (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 165-194; Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity: The Invention of a Ritual Tradition (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013).

3. For some introductions, see Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, 2nd ed. (Kettering: Angelico Press/Sophia Perennis, 2014); Struck, “Pagan and Christian Theurgies”; Eugene Afonasin, John Dillon, and John F. Finamore, eds., Iamblichus and the Foundations of Late Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Riccardo Chiaradonna and Adrien Lecerf, “Iamblichus,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2019 Edition, ed., Edward N. Zalta.

4. Peter T. Struck, “Pagan and Christian Theurgies: Iamblichus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Religion and Magic in Late Antiquity” (Ancient World 32:2, 2001): 30, cf. John F. Finamore, Iamblichus and the Theory of the Vehicle of the Soul (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985); Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 1-20.

5. See Eric Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007); Charles M. Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: “No Longer I” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Charles M. Stang, “Dionysius, Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym” (Modern Theology 24:4, 2008): 541-555; Struck, “Pagan and Christian Theurgies,” 26-30; Sarah Klitenic Wear and John Dillon, Dionysius the Areopagite and the Neoplatonist Tradition: Despoiling the Hellenes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Stang’s book is open access.

6. Iamblichus, De mysteriis, Greek and English, intro. and trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), V, 18 (pp.256-259).

7. Iamblichus, De mysteriis, VI, 6 (pp.286-287).

8. Gregory Shaw, “Neoplatonic Theurgy and Dionysius the Areopagite” (Journal of Early Christian Studies 7:4, 1999): 584.

9. Shaw, “Neoplatonic Theurgy and Dionysius the Areopagite,” 584, cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy (De coelesti hierarchia), 121D-124A; Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names (De Divinis Nominibus), 705B. For the Greek text of the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus, see Corpus Dionysiacum I, ed. Beate Regina Suchla (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990) and Corpus Dionysiacum II, 2nd ed., eds. Günter Heil and Adolf Martin Ritter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012). There are two complete translations in English; Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid, in collaboration with Paul Rorem (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987), and The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, trans. John Parker (London: James Parker and Co., 1897, 1899). If not otherwise noted, I use Parker’s translation. See Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 4, n2.

10. Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 112.

11. Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the metaphysics of Aquinas, new ed. (Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 65-84, esp. 76-84. For my discussion of this, in comparison to Aquinas’s doctrine of God as subsistent being itself, see Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 30-34. I maintain that though their vocabulary is difference, Aquinas and Pseudo-Dionysius are essentially in agreement.

12. Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 176-188.

13. Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 12, n15; 112-114.

14. This is why I am not a fan of translations which say that “the Word became man/a human being.” In Norway, the standard translation of the Bible Society says, “the Word became human” (“Ordet vart menneske”), while this translation is not very common, as far as I can tell, in English. There are examples, though they seem to be fairly fringe. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

15. See Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 165-198, esp. 188-196.

16. See Michael J. Gorman, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), esp. 14-52, cf. Kringlebotten, Liturgy, Theurgy, and Active Participation, 40-44.