He lived in the time of Alexius Comnenus, in the eleventh century, and among the Greeks of his age he was most learned and most diligent, as is clear from the books which are extant: namely, the commentaries on all the Psalms and on the four Gospels, and the Panoply against heresies. In this work he adduces many rather ample passages from our Dionysius, as from that great Areopagite. I shall give some from the translation of Franciscus Zinus.
In part 1 of the Panoply of the Orthodox Faith, title 2, On the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the account of divinity at once distinct and joined, he says: “Dionysius the Areopagite, from the chapter On United and Distinct Theology: We have received from the sacred books that the Father is, so to speak, the fountain of divinity; but that the Son and the Spirit are fruitful shoots of divinity, if one may so speak, divinely springing forth, and, as it were, flowers and lights superior in essence. But in what way these things are, we can neither express nor understand.” These things are in On the Divine Names, chapter 2, page 268. You see how genuinely these belong to our Dionysius, whose Greek grandeur of speech scarcely any eloquence of Latin discourse can fully express; this will be equally clear from the rest.
Likewise, from the first chapter of the book On the Divine Names: “Wherefore in almost every theological discussion we see the supreme divinity celebrated in holy fashion, both as Monad and Unity, on account of the simplicity and unity of its nature, which surpasses division. From it, as from a unifying power, we are made one; and, when our divided diversities have been joined together in a manner above the world, we are gathered into a Godlike monad and a union imitating God. We also see it celebrated as Trinity, on account of the manifestation of the fecundity surpassing essence in the three persons, from which every fatherhood in heaven and on earth exists and is named.” These things and all the rest which he subjoins are extant in our author from page 244.
Likewise, from chapter 3 of the Mystical Theology, he cites this: “In that book which we entitled Theological Outlines, we declared the principal matters of affirmative theology: how the divine good nature is said to be one and triune; what in it is the notion of Father, what the notion of Son, what the theology of the Holy Spirit signifies; by what reason, from the incorporeal and indivisible Good, the inward lights of goodness spring forth, and from their coeternal springing with it remain in it, and in themselves, and among themselves, in such a way that they never depart from it.” They are found in Greek on page 425.
There follow in Euthymius two passages from chapter 2 of On the Divine Names. The first is this: “In the divine union, or in that nature which surpasses essence, joined and common to the one-principled Trinity are existence, the divinity surpassing essence, the deity above deity, the goodness surpassing goodness,” and so forth, from that passage on page 262. The later passage is from the beginning of the same chapter: “‘No one is good except God alone.’ This has been explained and demonstrated by us both here and elsewhere: that all denominations worthy of God are always celebrated in the holy books not partially, but in the whole, perfect, entire, and full divinity; and that all of them are attributed indivisibly, absolutely, and without any observance of distinction, in an entire manner, to all the integrity of the perfect and whole divinity.” And many things which follow are from page 256.
Behold five testimonies from one title. I fear that I would be troublesome if I mentioned all the rest from the same work; for they are many and very great. For in title 3 there are contained twenty-seven fragments, cited paraphrastically from the book On the Divine Names and from other works; one in title 5; and in title 7 two from the same book, one from the fourth Letter to Gaius, one from the book Theological Outlines, and two from the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.
Moreover, in part 2, title 18, he reports the fifth letter of Maximus to Nicander, in which Maximus explained at length that passage of blessed Dionysius on the God-manly operation from the Letter to Gaius. Because this explanation is very learned, and shows the wisdom and learning of Maximus, whose ignorance Scaliger boasts that he has shown, I shall set it down here, in Scaliger’s honor, not in Greek, because I lack the exemplar, but in Latin from Zinus’s translation. He therefore says:
“We can say the same about the actions, and yet for that reason we do not deny, far be it, the singular expressions of the divine Fathers about those actions, which either the most holy Dionysius, so excellent in explaining divine things, or the wise Cyril pronounced. By these expressions the divine and human action is so declared that it appears to be joined and one. For the terms devised by them on account of the conjunction and mutual coupling of the natural actions themselves are pious and to be approved; just as those terms also are pious which declare twin actions on account of the difference subsisting in essence and nature. For that word ‘theandric,’ composed by Doctor Dionysius, signifies divine and human, so that by a single utterance he might indicate the double action of a double nature. Again, wise Cyril called it one joined action, so that he might teach the related coupling of the natural actions.”
And after a little: “Wherefore the one and joined action of both, as Cyril says, which has been demonstrated, no otherwise than that theandric expression of Dionysius, by naturally indicating the coupling of the actions, properly demonstrates their diverse and double account.”
The same Euthymius, in the same title, chapter 83, cites a clearer explanation of the same Dionysian passage, handed down by blessed Damascene against the Monothelites. It is this:
“Blessed Dionysius says that Christ used a certain new theandric action. By this word he does not remove the natural actions, but establishes one action consisting of the divine and the human. For in this way we would also say one new nature, which consists of the divine and the human. For those whose action is one have one essence also, as our divine Fathers think. But since he wished to show the new and hidden mode by which the natural actions of Christ were manifested, on account of the hidden reason by which the natures of Christ pass mutually into one another, he fittingly called even his customary action, so far as it pertains to the humanity, new and admirable. For we do not say that the actions are divided, nor that the natures act separately, but that each nature, joined with the other, acts together with the other’s fellowship, doing what is proper to itself,” and so forth, down to this:
“This, therefore, is what the theandric action signifies: when God had become man, his human action also was divine, that is, deified, and not without share in his divine action; and likewise his divine action was not without share in his human action, but each is considered together with the other. This manner of speaking is a compounded expression, when we embrace two things in one word. For just as we speak of one action of a fiery sword, both a cutting burning and a burning cutting, although cutting is one action and burning another, and they proceed from one nature and another, namely burning from fire and cutting from iron, so also, when we speak of one theandric action of Christ, we understand the twin actions of his two natures: the divine action of his divinity, and the human action of his humanity.”