  In the case of (2) (hierarchy and divine presence), Dionysius emphasizes, much more so than the impression often suggested by Neoplatonism, the directness of creation. Every being, no matter where it is placed in the scale of beings and no matter how dependent it might be on beings ontologically higher than it (e.g., for human beings, angels) is directly and immediately dependent upon God in and for its existence. Again, the contrasts often drawn between Neoplatonism’s “flight of the alone to the alone” and Dionysius’ community of hierarchy or between the supposed Neoplatonic view that the One causes the existence of lower beings only through the mediation of the higher, while Christianity sees creation as immediate are simply false or too simplistic. Plotinus’ mysticism is not “solitary” in the sense often supposed and, for Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus, the One causes existence immediately and most profoundly, whatever other influences enter into the complexity of existence. What we see in Dionysius, by contrast, is a retention of one’s place in hierarchy and a very concrete return to identity—in  the case of human beings, for instance, through scripture, ritual, and practical performance to a deeper union with God rather than a simple, spatially conceived movement “up” the hierarchy. More broadly still, we see in Dionysius’ thought new possibilities for thinking about divine love, a love that combines beyond beingness and unrestricted being, transcendence and yet even a kind of hyperessential vulnerability in rather startling ways, new ways consequently of thinking about both divine and human eros, about affectivity (cf. Dionysius’ famous dictum about learning from sacred writers, or discovering the truth oneself, or not only learning but “experiencing the divine things” (pathein ta theia) (DN 2, 9); and compare Aristotle, fr. 15 (Rose) and Hebrews 5:8), about the nature of signification and the limits of language (see section 4 below), about the theory of evil as privation and non-being, however dependent this is upon one of Proclus’ opuscula (cf. DN 4, 18–35), about the aesthetic richness of this world in the light of theology and the life of the Church, and even about the soul–body relation, though anthropology is not a part of Dionysius’ primary concern (but see his comments at EH 404B, 433c, 437a–440a, 441b, 553a ff, 565b–c).