What is the first rank of the heavenly beings, what is the middle, and what is the last?
1. How many ranks are there among the heavenly beings? What kind are they? How does each hierarchy achieve perfection?
Only the divine source of their perfection could really answer this, but at least they know what they have by way of power and enlightenment and they know their place in this sacred, transcendent order. As far as we are concerned, it is not possible to know the mystery of these celestial minds or to understand how they arrive at most holy perfection. We can only know that the Deity has mysteriously granted to us through them, for they know their own properties well. I have therefore nothing of my own to say about all this and I am content merely to set down, as well as I can, what it was that the sacred theologians contemplated of the angelic sights and what they shared with us about it.
2. The word of God has provided nine explanatory designations for the heavenly beings, and my own sacred-initiator has divided these into three threefold groups [Dionysios admits that this triadic arrangement of the nine biblical names is not itself scriptural but is taken from his teacher Hierotheos.]. According to him, the first group is forever around God and is said to be permanently united with him ahead of any of the others and with no intermediary. Here, then, are the most holy “thrones” and the orders said to possess many eyes and many wings, called in Hebrew the “cherubim” and “seraphim.” Following the tradition of scripture, he says that they are found immediately around God and in a proximity enjoyed by no other. This threefold group, says my famous teacher, forms a single hierarchy which is truly first and whose members are of equal status. No other is more like the divine or receives more directly the first enlightenments from the Deity.
The second group, he says, is made up of “authorities,” “dominions,” and “powers.” And the third, at the end of the heavenly hierarchies, is the group of “angels,” “archangels,” and “principalities.”
Concerning the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, and theirs, the first hierarchy.
1. We accept that this is how the holy hierarchies are ordered and we agree that the designations given to these heavenly intelligences signify the mode in which they take on the imprint of God. Those with a knowledge of Hebrew are aware of the fact that the holy name “seraphim” means “fire-makers,” that is to say, “carriers of warmth.” The name “cherubim” means “fullness of knowledge” or “outpouring of wisdom.” This first of the hierarchies is hierarchically ordered by truly superior beings, for this hierarchy possesses the highest order as God’s immediate neighbor, being grounded directly around God and receiving the primal theophanies and perfections. Hence the descriptions “carriers of warmth” and “thrones.” Hence, also, the title “outpouring of wisdom.” These names indicate their similarity to what God is.
For the designation seraphim really teaches this—a perennial circling around the divine things, penetrating warmth, the overflowing heat of a movement which never falters and never fails, a capacity to stamp their own image on subordinates by arousing and uplifting in them too a like flame, the same warmth. It means also the power to purify by means of the lightning flash and the flame. It means the ability to hold unveiled and undiminished both the light they have and the illumination they give out. It means the capacity to push aside and to do away with every obscuring shadow.
The name cherubim signifies the power to know and to see God, to receive the greatest gifts of his light, to contemplate the divine splendor in primordial power, to be filled with the gifts that bring wisdom and to share these generously with subordinates as a part of the beneficent outpouring of wisdom.
The title of the most sublime and exalted thrones conveys that in them there is a transcendence over every earthly defect, as shown by their upward-bearing toward the ultimate heights, that they are forever separated from what is inferior, that they are completely intent upon remaining always and forever in the presence of Him who is truly the most high, that, free of all passion and material concern, they are utterly available to receive the divine visitation, that they bear God and are ever open, like servants, to welcome God.
2. This, then, is the explanation insofar as we can understand it of why they are called what they are, and I must now say something about how I understand the hierarchy which exists among them. Now I think I have already said enough about the fact that the aim of every hierarchy is always to imitate God so as to take on His form, that the task of every hierarchy is to receive and to pass on undiluted purification, the divine light, and the understanding which brings perfection. […]
4. This, so far as I know, is the first rank of heavenly beings. It circles in immediate proximity to God (Is. 6:2, LXX; Rv. 4:4). Simply and ceaselessly it dances around an eternal knowledge of Him. It is forever and totally thus, as befits angels. In a pure vision it can not only look upon a host of blessed contemplations but it can also be enlightened in simple and direct beams. It is filled with divine nourishment which is abundant, because it comes from the initial stream, and nevertheless single, because the nourishing gifts of God bring oneness in a unity without diversity.
This first group is particularly worthy of communing with God and of sharing in His work. It imitates, as far as possible, the beauty of God’s condition and activity. Knowing many divine things in so superior a fashion it can have a proper share of the divine knowledge and understanding. Hence, theology has transmitted to the men of earth those hymns sung by the first ranks of the angels whose gloriously transcendent enlightenment is thereby made manifest. Some of these hymns, if one may use perceptible images, are like the “sound of many waters” (Ez. 1:24; Rv. 14:2, 19:6) as they proclaim: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from His place” (Ez. 3:12, LXX). Others thunder out that famous and venerable song, telling of God: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory” (Is. 6:3; Rv. 4:8).
[…] when the first rank has directly and properly received its due understanding of God’s Word from the divine goodness itself, then it passes this on, as befits a benevolent hierarchy, to those next in line. The teaching, briefly, amounts to this. It is right and good that the revered Godhead, which in fact is beyond all acclamation and deserves all acclamation, is known and praised by those minds which receive God, as far as possible. To the extent that they conform to God they are the divine place of the Godhead’s rest, as scripture says [fn. 85: This is an oblique biblical reference involving the imagery of the ark of the covenant. In Is. 66:1 (quoted in Acts 7:49), the mention of the divine “rest” echoes the tradition of the ark (Nm. 10:36; 1 Chr. 6:31; 2 Chr. 6:41) where God is “enthroned on the cherubim” (Ex. 37:7-9; 1 Sm. 4:4; 2 Sm. 6:2; 2 Kgs 19:15; Ps. 80:1, 99:1; and Song of the Three Young Men 42).]. And this first group passes on the word that the Godhead is a monad, that it is one in three persons, that its splendid providence for all reaches from the most exalted beings in heaven above to the lowliest creatures of earth. It is the Cause and source beyond every source for every being and it transcendently draws everything into its perennial embrace.
*Pseudo-Dionysios,
The Celestial Hierarchy, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 160-166.
