  There is a major tension between Platonism and Christianity in Dionysius’ writing. Luther expressed the negative side of this tension: “Dionysius is most pernicious; he platonizes more than he Christianizes” (Babylonian Captivity of the Church (Weimarer Ausgabe 6, 562)). Von Balthasar has been more positive, seeing Dionysius’ Christianization of Neoplatonism “as a side-effect of his own properly theological endeavor”, namely, “the clear realized synthesis of truth and beauty, of theology and aesthetics” (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2, 148–9). Perhaps one may suggest that neither Christianity nor Platonism are side shows in Dionysius’ thought; They are rather mutually important whole perspectives that do not get lost in the mix, no matter how subordinate Neoplatonism nonetheless may be to Christianity for Dionysius himself. Dionysius’ central concern is how a triune God, that he calls—among other things—the thearchy (god-rule; god-beginning), who is utterly unknowable, unrestricted being, beyond individual substances, beyond even goodness, can become manifest to, in, and through the whole of creation in order to bring back all things to the hidden darkness of their source. To this end Dionysius employs some major Neoplatonic insights: (1) The abiding—procession—return or conversion of all things as the creative and receptive expression of what it means for anything created to be. In Proclus’ terms in the Elements of Theology, prop. 35: “Every effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and converts to it”. This is a way of expressing the vertical connectedness of everything by identity, difference, and the overcoming of difference by a return to identity that constitutes the nature of anything that is caused. (2) The hierarchical ordering of beings as an expression of both their natural placements and their freedoms as well as the simultaneous immediacy, without intermediary, of the unknown God’s presence (on hierarchy see CH 3). Each thing and order bears relation to the whole or manifests the whole, but “according to its own capacity”, as the famous Neoplatonic saying puts it. A rock or a worm, for instance, is a window upon the entire universe if you only know how to look.