György Geréby: The theology of the „Hymn to god” and counter-Eunomian Arguments in the Cappadocians

The authorship of the hymn attributed to Gregory Nazianzen or to the Corpus Dionysiacum in the manuscript tradition is still unclear, as scholarship found a third candidate for the authorship in Proclus (Cousin, Jahn, Rosán). Modern scholarship agrees that it is misattributed to Gregory (although there are dissenting voices, recently Bernardi, Frangeskou), and there is a growing consensus to attribute it the Corpus Dionysiacum' s author (Sicherl, Saffrey, van den Berg). Sicherl concluded his important article that „everything speaks for ps-Dionysius as the author and nothing against it.” I argue that ps-Dionysius cannot be the author (a fortiori not Gregory), since 1) the argument from the mss. tradition is not compelling, and 2) the terminological similarities can be given a different interpretation, since 3) the hymn's doctrine contravenes both Gregory’s and the CD’s positions. However, since Cappadocian epistemology (especially that of Nazianzen) is generally associated with an elaboration of „negative theology” within the Eunomian debates and „apophatic theology” was brought to culmination by the Corpus Dionysiacum, the general thrust of the hymn got associated with either of them. However, neither in the Eunomian debates nor in the CD is the argument for a purely negative approach, which is, however the case with the standard „Neoplatonic,” or rather Hellenising theology of the period. The Christian approach is presented in both authors (albeit in different ways) as a theology in which the divine names and predicates require a systematically more complex interpretation than as it is shown in the Hymn.