Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names · 22 of 39 · tr. C.E. Rolt
Chapter 4, Section 1v
cannot be free from pain, nor without a feeling of ill, since there would be something causing Him trouble, yea, all things must in that case be in a state of disorder and perpetual strife; whereas the Good imparts a principle of harmony to all things and is called by the Sacred Writers Peace and the Bestower of Peace.
And hence it is that all good things display a mutual attraction and harmony, and are the offspring of one Life and are disposed in fellowship towards one Good, and are kindly, of like nature, and benignant to one another.
And so evil is not in God, 339 339 i.
e.
Evil does not arise through the passage of the Good from Super-Essence into Essence.
It is not in the Good through the Good submitting to the conditions of existence (D.
has already shown that evil has no place in the ultimate Super-Essential Nature of the Good).
and is not divine.
Nor cometh it of God.
For either He is not good, or else He worketh goodness and bringeth good things unto 119 existence.
Nor acts He thus only at some times and not at others, or only in the case of some things but not of all.
For were He to act thus, He must suffer a change and alteration, and that in respect of the divinest quality of all—causality.
And if the Good is in God as His very substance, God must, in changing from the Good, sometimes exist and sometimes not exist.
Doubtless if you feign that He hath the Good by mere participation therein, and derives It from another, in that case He will, forsooth, sometimes possess It and sometimes not possess It.
340 340 This is a reductio ad absurdum.
D.
considers it obvious that God possesses the Good as His Substance and not by participation.
The Persons of the Trinity are not products of the Absolute but Emanations or Differentiations of It.
Evil, therefore, doth not come from God, nor is it in God either absolutely or temporally.
341 341 The argument is as follows: No evil is from God.
All existence is from God.
Therefore no existence is evil.
22.
Neither inhereth evil in the angels.
342 342 Having shown that existence as such is not inherently evil, D.
now takes various forms of existence and shows that none of them is, as such, inherently evil.
For if the good angel declares the Divine Goodness, he is in a secondary manner and by participation that which the Subject of his message is in a primary and causal manner.
343 343 Cf.
Old Testament title, “Sons of God,” and D.
on Deification.
Cf.
also “I have said, Ye are Gods.” And thus the angel is an image of God, a manifestation of the invisible light, a burnished mirror, bright, untarnished, without spot or blemish, receiving (if it is reverent to say so) all the beauty of the Absolute Divine Goodness, and (so far as may be) kindling in itself, with unallowed radiance, the Goodness of the Secret Silence.
Hence evil inhereth not in the angels; they are evil only in so far as they must punish sinners.
But in this respect even those who chastise wrong-doers are evil, and so are the priests who exclude the profane man from the Divine 120 Mysteries.
But, indeed, ‘tis not the suffering of the punishment that is evil but the being worthy thereof; nor yet is a just exclusion from the sacrifices evil, but to be guilty and unholy and unfit for those pure mysteries is evil.
23.
Nor are the devils naturally evil.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The text states that all good things display a mutual attraction and harmony towards one Good.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text distinguishes between Super-Essence and Essence in relation to God's nature.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The passage explicitly argues that evil does not exist in God or angels but arises from the conditions of existence and lack of participation in the Good.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The passage contrasts the harmony of good things with the disorder caused by evil and the suffering of punishment.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text discusses angels as images of God and the deification of the Good through participation in divine nature.