Among the works of Origen Adamantius, volume 2, there are extant certain orations on various places of the New Testament. In the first of these it is written: “For in him, as the divine mouth speaks, we live, move, and are; and, as the great Dionysius the Areopagite says, the being of all things is super-essence and divinity.” You have the passage in our author in On the Celestial Hierarchy, chapter 4, page 25: “For the being of all things is the divinity beyond being.”
If you deny that this homily is Origen’s, you will do so by your own right, by which whatever pleases you is permitted to you. Certainly it belongs to a very ancient writer, since Rufinus, or someone else, translated it from Greek as Origenian. A more recent translator could have added something of his own to Origen, as we know happened not rarely; for in that homily mention is made of Arians, who are later than Origen. At least it will be the work of some ancient anonymous Father.
Blessed Dionysius of Alexandria flourished at almost the same time as Origen, according to some a hearer of Origen. Anastasius of Sinai, Patriarch of Antioch, in the book which he calls the Guide, and Maximus the Martyr on chapter 5 of the Celestial Hierarchy, testify that this man wrote scholia on these little works of Dionysius the Areopagite. From this are refuted those who attempted to attribute these little works to Dionysius of Alexandria.
But why does Eusebius not mention these scholia of Dionysius of Alexandria? He followed his own plan, so that not even in this way would he point out the books of the Areopagite. His evil mind betrayed itself, because he passed over in silence the writings of Dionysius of Alexandria in which Arius, so many years before his condemnation, was punished by anticipatory judgment. By contrast, he carefully mentioned those writings in which Dionysius, disputing sharply against Sabellius, seemed to some Catholics to favor Arianism, not from malice but from incautious zeal against an adversary, as Basil the Great accuses him in letter 41 to Maximus the philosopher, which begins “Images of souls.”
Dionysius of Alexandria, then, and those who followed him, Anastasius and Maximus, held these books as Areopagitic. For if Dionysius of Alexandria had held them to be books of Dionysius of Corinth, Anastasius and Maximus would by no means have kept silent about it. As it is, they indicate sufficiently what I have said. Moreover, between Dionysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Corinth there did not intervene a hundred years, so that it is not likely that the former composed scholia on the latter’s books.
Therefore let the suspicion cease about Dionysius of Corinth as author; it is incredible that a holy martyr of God wished in this way, under a mask, to make sport of the Church of Christ. And even if the works belonged to Dionysius of Corinth, they would be judged to have an antiquity of more than fourteen hundred years. But they are not his, as I said. Finally, Eusebius and Hilduin testify that Dionysius of Corinth, in his letter to the Athenians, made mention of our Dionysius; and he would have feared to ascribe to him things about which he would then easily have been refuted.