Studia Patristica - Papers Presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2019: Individuality, Knowledge, ... the Confessor (18) (Studia Patristica, 121) 9789042947702, 9789042947719, 9042947705

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STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXI

Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 Edited by MARKUS VINZENT Volume 18:

Individuality, Knowledge, Virtue and Existence in Maximus the Confessor Edited by SOTIRIS MITRALEXIS

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXI

STUDIA PATRISTICA Editor: Markus VINZENT, King’s College London, UK and Max Weber Centre, University of Erfurt, Germany

Board of Directors (2019): Carol HARRISON, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Mark EDWARDS, Professor of Early Christian Studies, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Neil MCLYNN, University Lecturer in Later Roman History, Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, UK Philip BOOTH, A.G. Leventis Associate Professor in Eastern Christianity, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, UK Sophie LUNN-ROCKLIFFE, Lecturer in Patristics, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, UK Morwenna LUDLOW, Professor, Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, UK Ioannis PAPADOGIANNAKIS, Senior Lecturer in Patristics, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, UK Markus VINZENT, Professor of the History of Theology, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, UK Josef LÖSSL, Professor of Historical Theology and Intellectual History, School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, UK Lewis AYRES, Professor of Catholic and Historical Theology, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, UK John BEHR, Regius Chair in Humanity, The School of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History, University of Aberdeen, UK Anthony DUPONT, Research Professor in Christian Antiquity, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium Patricia CINER (as president of AIEP), Professor, Universidad de San Juan-Universidad Católica de Cuyo, Argentina Clayton JEFFORD (as president of NAPS), Professor of Scripture, Seminary and School of Theology, Saint Meinrad, IN, USA

STUDIA PATRISTICA VOL. CXXI

Papers presented at the Eighteenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2019 Edited by MARKUS VINZENT Volume 18:

Individuality, Knowledge, Virtue and Existence in Maximus the Confessor Edited by SOTIRIS MITRALEXIS

PEETERS LEUVEN – PARIS – BRISTOL, CT

2021

© Peeters Publishers — Louvain — Belgium 2021 All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form. D/2021/0602/155 ISBN: 978-90-429-4770-2 eISBN: 978-90-429-4771-9 A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in Belgium by Peeters, Leuven

Table of Contents Sotiris MITRALEXIS Introduction .........................................................................................

1

Marcin PODBIELSKI Philosophical Poly-Consistency in Maximus the Confessor ..............

5

Dionysios SKLIRIS The Notions of the Person and the Individual in Light of the Question of the Individuality of Christ in Saint Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662) .......................................................................................

29

Alexis TORRANCE ‘Christ is not an Individual’: The Meaning and Reception of an Early Byzantine Christological Argument ..........................................

43

Demetrios BATHRELLOS The Concepts of Sin and Sinlessness in St Maximus the Confessor .

51

Demetrios HARPER Self-Determination and the Question of Subjectivity: Moral Selfhood in Maximus the Confessor .........................................................

59

Aleksandar DJAKOVAC Soul According to St Maximus the Confessor: Entity or Person? ....

67

Vladimir CVETKOVIC The Relationship between the Logos of Well-Being and Mode of Existence in Maximus the Confessor..................................................

83

Matthew B. HALE Virtue, the Indwelling of the Word, and Incarnate Meaning: A Reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua 7 and 10 ................................

95

Eric LOPEZ Ascetic Knowledge and Anagogical Knowing in Maximus the Confessor .................................................................................................... 109

Abbreviations AA.SS AAWG.PH AB AC ACL ACO ACW AHDLMA AJAH AJP AKK AKPAW ALMA ALW AnalBoll ANCL ANF ANRW AnSt AnThA APOT AR ARW ASS AThANT Aug AugSt AW AZ BA BAC BASOR BDAG BEHE BETL BGL BHG BHL

see ASS. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen Philologisch-historische Klasse, Göttingen. Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels. Antike und Christentum, ed. F.J. Dölger, Münster. Antiquité classique, Louvain. Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. E. Schwartz, Berlin. Ancient Christian Writers, ed. J. Quasten and J.C. Plumpe, Westminster (Md.)/London. Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, Paris. American Journal of Ancient History, Cambridge, Mass. American Journal of Philology, Baltimore. Archiv für katholisches Kirchenrecht, Mainz. Abhandlungen der königlichen Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin. Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin du Cange), Paris/Brussels. Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, Regensburg. Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Buffalo/New York. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed H. Temporini et al., Berlin. Anatolian Studies, London. Année théologique augustinienne, Paris. Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, ed. R.E. Charles, Oxford. Archivum Romanicum, Florence. Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, Berlin/Leipzig. Acta Sanctorum, ed. the Bollandists, Brussels. Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Zürich. Augustinianum, Rome. Augustinian Studies, Villanova (USA). Athanasius Werke, ed. H.-G. Opitz et al., Berlin. Archäologische Zeitung, Berlin. Bibliothèque augustinienne, Paris. Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, New Haven, Conn. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd edn F.W. Danker, Chicago. Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études, Paris. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, Louvain. Benediktinisches Geistesleben, St. Ottilien. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, Brussels. Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina Antiquae et Mediae Aetatis, Brussels.

VIII BHO BHTh BJ BJRULM BKV BKV2 BKV3 BLE BoJ BS BSL BWAT Byz BZ BZNW CAr CBQ CChr.CM CChr.SA CChr.SG CChr.SL CH CIL CP(h) CPG CPL CQ CR CSCO

CSEL CSHB CTh CUF CW DAC

Abbreviations

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis, Brussels. Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, Tübingen. Bursians Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Leipzig. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. F.X. Reithmayr and V. Thalhofer, Kempten. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, ed. O. Bardenhewer, Th. Schermann, and C. Weyman, Kempten/Munich. Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. Zweite Reihe, ed. O. Bardenhewer, J. Zellinger, and J. Martin, Munich. Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, Toulouse. Bonner Jahrbücher, Bonn. Bibliotheca sacra, London. Bolletino di studi latini, Naples. Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten Testament, Leipzig/Stuttgart. Byzantion, Leuven. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, Leipzig. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, Berlin. Cahiers Archéologique, Paris. Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Washington. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca, Turnhout/Paris. Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, Turnhout/Paris. Church History, Chicago. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, Berlin. Classical Philology, Chicago. Clavis Patrum Graecorum, ed. M. Geerard, vols. I-VI, Turnhout. Clavis Patrum Latinorum (SE 3), ed. E. Dekkers and A. Gaar, Turnhout. Classical Quarterly, London/Oxford. The Classical Review, London/Oxford. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Louvain. Aeth = Scriptores Aethiopici Ar = Scriptores Arabici Arm = Scriptores Armeniaci Copt = Scriptores Coptici Iber = Scriptores Iberici Syr = Scriptores Syri Subs = Subsidia Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, Bonn. Collectanea Theologica, Lvov. Collection des Universités de France publiée sous le patronage de l’Association Guillaume Budé, Paris. Catholic World, New York. Dictionary of the Apostolic Church, ed. J. Hastings, Edinburgh.

Abbreviations

DACL DAL DB DBS DCB DHGE Did DOP DOS DR DS DSp DTC EA ECatt ECQ EE EECh EKK EH EO EtByz ETL EWNT ExpT FC FGH FKDG FRL FS FThSt FTS FZThPh GCS GDV GLNT GNO GRBS

IX

see DAL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol, H. Leclercq, Paris. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Paris. Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément, Paris. Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines, ed. W. Smith and H. Wace, 4 vols, London. Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique, ed. A. Baudrillart, Paris. Didaskalia, Lisbon. Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks Studies, Cambridge, Mass., subsequently Washington, D.C. Downside Review, Stratton on the Fosse, Bath. H.J. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, ed., Enchiridion Symbolorum, Barcelona/Freiburg i.B./Rome. Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, ed. M. Viller, S.J., and others, Paris. Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant, E. Mangenot, and E. Amann, Paris. Études augustiniennes, Paris. Enciclopedia Cattolica, Rome. Eastern Churches Quarterly, Ramsgate. Estudios eclesiasticos, Madrid. Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. A. Di Berardino, Cambridge. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Neukirchen. Enchiridion Fontium Historiae Ecclesiasticae Antiquae, ed. Ueding-Kirch, 6th ed., Barcelona. Échos d’Orient, Paris. Études Byzantines, Paris. Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Louvain. Exegetisches Wörterbuch zum NT, ed. H.R. Balz et al., Stuttgart. The Expository Times, Edinburgh. The Fathers of the Church, New York. Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin. Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, Göttingen. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments, Göttingen. Festschrift. Freiburger theologische Studien, Freiburg i.B. Frankfurter theologische Studien, Frankfurt a.M. Freiburger Zeitschrift für Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg/Switzerland. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, Leipzig/Berlin. Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, Stuttgart. Grande Lessico del Nuovo Testamento, Genoa. Gregorii Nysseni Opera, Leiden. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Cambridge, Mass.

X GWV HbNT HDR HJG HKG HNT HO HSCP HTR HTS HZ ICC ILCV ILS J(b)AC JBL JdI JECS JEH JJS JLH JPTh JQR JRS JSJ JSOR JTS KAV KeTh KJ(b) LCL LNPF L(O)F LSJ LThK LXX MA MAMA Mansi MBTh

Abbreviations

Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, Offenburg. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament. Tübingen. Harvard Dissertations in Religion, Missoula. Historisches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, successively Munich, Cologne and Munich/Freiburg i.B. Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Tübingen. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen. Handbuch der Orientalistik, Leiden. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Theological Studies, Cambridge, Mass. Historische Zeitschrift, Munich/Berlin. The International Critical Commentary of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, Edinburgh. Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, ed. E. Diehl, Berlin. Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed. H. Dessau, Berlin. Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum, Münster. Journal of Biblical Literature, Philadelphia, Pa., then various places. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Berlin. Journal of Early Christian Studies, Baltimore. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, London. Journal of Jewish Studies, London. Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie, Kassel. Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie, Leipzig/Freiburg i.B. Jewish Quarterly Review, Philadelphia. Journal of Roman Studies, London. Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period, Leiden. Journal of the Society of Oriental Research, Chicago. Journal of Theological Studies, Oxford. Kommentar zu den apostolischen Vätern, Göttingen. Kerk en Theologie, ’s Gravenhage. Kirchliches Jahrbuch für die evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, Gütersloh. The Loeb Classical Library, London/Cambridge, Mass. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace, Buffalo/New York. Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Oxford. H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, new (9th) edn H.S. Jones, Oxford. Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, Freiburg i.B. Septuagint. Moyen-Âge, Brussels. Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua, London. J.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Florence, 1759-1798. Reprint and continuation: Paris/Leipzig, 1901-1927. Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie, Münster.

Abbreviations

MCom MGH ML MPG MSR MThZ Mus NA28 NGWG NH(M)S NIV NKJV NovTest NPNF NRSV NRTh NTA NT.S NTS NTTSD OBO OCA OCP OECS OLA OLP Or OrChr OrSyr PG PGL PL PLRE PLS PO PRE PS PTA PThR PTS PW QLP QuLi RAC RACh

XI

Miscelanea Comillas, Comillas/Santander. Monumenta germaniae historica. Hanover/Berlin. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Louvain. See PG. Mélanges de science religieuse, Lille. Münchener theologische Zeitschrift, Munich. Le Muséon, Louvain. Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th edition, Stuttgart. Nachrichten der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Nag Hammadi (and Manichaean) Studies, Leiden. New International Version. New King James Version. Novum Testamentum, Leiden. See LNPF. New Revised Standard Version. Nouvelle Revue Théologique, Tournai/Louvain/Paris. Neutestamentliche Abhandlungen, Münster. Novum Testamentum Supplements, Leiden. New Testament Studies, Cambridge/Washington. New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents, Leiden/Boston. Orbis biblicus et orientalis, Freiburg, Switz., then Louvain. Orientalia Christiana Analecta, Rome. Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Rome. Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, Louvain. Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, Louvain. Orientalia. Commentarii editi a Pontificio Instituto Biblico, Rome. Oriens Christianus, Leipzig, then Wiesbaden. L’Orient Syrien, Paris. Migne, Patrologia, series graeca. A Patristic Greek Lexicon, ed. G.L. Lampe, Oxford. Migne, Patrologia, series latina. The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, ed. A.H.M. Jones et al., Cambridge. Migne, Patrologia, series latina. Supplementum ed. A. Hamman. Patrologia Orientalis, Paris. Paulys Realenzyklopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Stuttgart. Patrologia Syriaca, Paris. Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen, Bonn. Princeton Theological Review, Princeton. Patristische Texte und Studien, Berlin. Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. G. Wissowa, Stuttgart. Questions liturgiques et paroissiales, Louvain. Questions liturgiques, Louvain. Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana, Rome. Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Stuttgart.

XII RAM RAug RBen RB(ibl) RE

Abbreviations

Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, Paris. Recherches Augustiniennes, Paris. Revue Bénédictine, Maredsous. Revue biblique, Paris. Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, founded by J.J. Herzog, 3e ed. A. Hauck, Leipzig. REA(ug) Revue des études Augustiniennes, Paris. REB Revue des études byzantines, Paris. RED Rerum ecclesiasticarum documenta, Rome. RÉL Revue des études latines, Paris. REG Revue des études grecques, Paris. RevSR Revue des sciences religieuses, Strasbourg. RevThom Revue thomiste, Toulouse. RFIC Rivista di filologia e d’istruzione classica, Turin. RGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Gunkel-Zscharnack, Tübingen RHE Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, Louvain. RhMus Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Bonn. RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions, Paris. RHT Revue d’Histoire des Textes, Paris. RMAL Revue du Moyen-Âge Latin, Paris. ROC Revue de l’Orient chrétien, Paris. RPh Revue de philologie, Paris. RQ Römische Quartalschrift, Freiburg i.B. RQH Revue des questions historiques, Paris. RSLR Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, Florence. RSPT, RSPh Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, Paris. RSR Recherches de science religieuse, Paris. RTAM Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, Louvain. RthL Revue théologique de Louvain, Louvain. RTM Rivista di teologia morale, Bologna. Sal Salesianum, Roma. SBA Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft, Basel. SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien, Stuttgart. ScEc Sciences ecclésiastiques, Bruges. SCh, SC Sources chrétiennes, Paris. SD Studies and Documents, ed. K. Lake and S. Lake. London/Philadelphia. SE Sacris Erudiri, Bruges. SDHI Studia et documenta historiae et iuris, Roma. SH Subsidia Hagiographica, Brussels. SHA Scriptores Historiae Augustae. SJMS Speculum. Journal of Mediaeval Studies, Cambridge, Mass. SM Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige, Munich. SO Symbolae Osloenses, Oslo. SP Studia Patristica, successively Berlin, Kalamazoo, Leuven. SPM Stromata Patristica et Mediaevalia, ed. C. Mohrmann and J. Quasten, Utrecht.

Abbreviations

SQ SQAW SSL StudMed SVigChr SVF TDNT TE ThGl ThJ ThLZ ThPh ThQ ThR ThWAT ThWNT ThZ TLG TP TRE TS TThZ TU USQR VC VetChr VT WBC WUNT WZKM YUP ZAC ZAM ZAW ZDPV ZKG ZKTh ZNW ZRG ZThK

XIII

Sammlung ausgewählter Quellenschriften zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte, Tübingen. Schriften und Quellen der Alten Welt, Berlin. Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, Louvain. Studi Medievali, Turin. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, Leiden. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ed. J. von Arnim, Leipzig. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Mich. Teologia espiritual, Valencia. Theologie und Glaube, Paderborn. Theologische Jahrbücher, Leipzig. Theologische Literaturzeitung, Leipzig. Theologie und Philosophie, Freiburg i.B. Theologische Quartalschrift, Tübingen. Theologische Rundschau, Tübingen. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament, Stuttgart. Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, Stuttgart. Theologische Zeitschrift, Basel. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Lancaster, Pa. Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Berlin. Theological Studies, New York and various places; now Washington, DC. Trierer theologische Zeitschrift, Trier. Texte und Untersuchungen, Leipzig/Berlin. Union Seminary Quarterly Review, New York. Vigiliae Christianae, Amsterdam. Vetera Christianorum, Bari (Italy). Vetus Testamentum, Leiden. Word Biblical Commentary, Waco. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, Tübingen. Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Vienna. Yale University Press, New Haven. Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, Berlin. Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik, Innsbruck, then Würzburg. Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Giessen, then Berlin. Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, Leipzig. Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Gotha, then Stuttgart. Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie, Vienna. Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, Giessen, then Berlin. Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Weimar. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, Tübingen.

Introduction Sotiris MITRALEXIS, Cambridge, UK

It is arguably safe to say by now that we are not merely experiencing a ‘Maximian moment’ in academia. Rather than that, one can easily observe today a sustained, heightened, and enduring scholarly interest in Maximus the Confessor – in conferences and workshops (Patristic and otherwise), journal articles, original monographs, translations, and so on. The reader will be mercifully spared the present co-editor’s theories about why this is the case; what, however, may be safely said is that due to new critical translations and translations of the Confessor’s works (which, in themselves, are a result of the ‘rediscovery’ of Maximus’ thought and historical presence), particularly as far as the Anglosphere is concerned, these works are now more accessible than ever – as is the surprising fecundity of Maximus’ thought, shedding a peculiar light on age-old as well as contemporary debates. This volume results from the XVIIIth International Conference on Patristic Studies at the University of Oxford (August 2019) and largely – yet not exclusively – focuses on terminological challenges in Maximus the Confessor’s rich thought, as well as on questions concerning individuality, personhood, subjectivity, and the soul – both in the case of ordinary human beings and in a Christological setting. Given this focus on terminology, it is only fitting, then, that this volume begins with Marcin Podbielski’s paper on what he calls the ‘Philosophical Poly-Consistency in Maximus the Confessor’. Podbielski points out that the ‘deep consistency’ in terminological choices assumed by many readers of Maximus is not to be encountered in the primary texts, as it is not the case that every piece of Maximian work is consistent with all other claims that he put forward; however, rather than being in-consistent, Maximus’ work demonstrates what Podbielsky calls ‘poly-consistency’, incorporating many different voices in his striving to bring an idea to light and render it fully open to view. The next two papers – Dionysios Skliris’ ‘The Notions of the Person and the Individual in Light of the Question of the Individuality of Christ in Saint Maximus the Confessor’ and ‘“Christ is not an Individual”: The Meaning and Reception of an Early Byzantine Christological Argument’ by Alexis Torrance – both take Maximus’ Opusculum 16 and Maximus’ argument therein that Christ is not ‘an individual’ (stemming from a common genus) as their point of departure, shedding further light on notions such as πρόσωπον, ἄτομον, and ὑπόστασις as used by Maximus and as interpreted by his modern readers.

Studia Patristica CXXI, 1-3. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

2

S. MITRALEXIS

Continuing this Christological section of the present volume,1 Demetrios Bathrellos studies the concepts of sin and sinlessness in St Maximus, including the precise content of Christ’s sinlessness and the threefold meaning of ‘sin’ within Maximus’ anthropology and Christology. In Maximus the Confessor (as with certain other Church Fathers), his investigations of theological/philosophical anthropology shed light on his Christology, and vice versa. Thus, we continue our examination of individuality and personhood with Demetrios Harper’s ‘Self-Determination and the Question of Subjectivity: Moral Selfhood in Maximus the Confessor’, which studies the Confessor’s understanding of self-determination through the lens of contemporary philosophical discourse concerning the origin of the categories of autonomy and heteronomy, with a particular focus on Christopher Gill’s work. Our next paper examines the question of the soul according to Maximus, in which Aleksandar Djakovac shows that there are two lines of the argument regarding the soul in his works, a ‘Neoplatonic’ one and a ‘Cappadocian’ one – one identifying the soul as an entity, the other in the context of personhood. Departing somewhat from an almost exclusive focus on anthropological as well as Christological questions concerning individuality, subjectivity, personhood, and the soul, Vladimir Cvetković offers a study of the relationship between the notions of ‘logos of well-being’ and the ‘mode of existence’ in Maximus the Confessor (against the backdrop of the recent science-fiction film Annihilation, no less) – showing that the human being establishes its own mode of existence by acting in accordance with the logos of well-being. In a way that is anything but alien to Cvetković’s treatment of the ‘logos of well-being’, we move to the question of virtue with Matthew B. Hale’s ‘Virtue, the Indwelling of the Word, and Incarnate Meaning: A Reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua 7 and 10’, which argues that, for Maximus, the indwelling of the Logos effects a mode of virtuous choosing, deciding, and acting that participates in and communicates the Logos, so that it can be said that the Christian incarnates a meaning that is like the meaning incarnate in Christ’s choosing, deciding, and acting. This volume closes with Eric Lopez’s paper, titled ‘Ascetic Knowledge and Anagogical Knowing in Maximus the Confessor’; Lopez focuses on Maximus’ understanding of knowledge and theological epistemology in the context of the latter’s vision of Christian ascent, defining not only what is knowable concerning God and creation but also what kind of knowledge is possible in each case. 1 We can also cross-reference the volume here with the paper by Marius Portaru, ‘From the Hypostatic Union to Person-Hypostasis. On the Interplay between Identity-Language Christology and Composition-Language Christology in Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor’, SP 112 (2021), 187-207, which brings Cyril of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor in dialogue, tracing the development of the philosophical-theological articulations of Christ’s identity and the interplay of differing Christological languages through the centuries.

Introduction

3

I would like to thank the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, which is generously hosting me as an IOCS Sabbatical Research Scholar at the time of this writing (May–July 2021). And allow me to hope that the sustained, heightened, and enduring scholarly interest in Maximus the Confessor that we are witnessing will continue; there is so much more to be done.

Philosophical Poly-Consistency in Maximus the Confessor Marcin PODBIELSKI, Jesuit University Ignatianum in Cracow, Poland

ABSTRACT The consistency of the work of Maximus the Confessor is examined in this article through a double focus. On the one hand, various proposals elaborated by Maximian commentators will be treated as constructed on the basis of a principle of ‘deep consistency’, the assumption being that every piece of Maximian work is consistent with all other claims that he put forward. The result of that approach is that various mutually inconsistent commentaries have emerged, and while Maximus is credited by such commentators with having adopted complex philosophical stances, the Maximian commentaries themselves turn out to still be open to interpretation. At the same time, Maximus’ work is rarely scrutinized as regards the internal consistency (or inconsistency) of its arguments, and an analysis of this kind, focused on the crucial passage of Ambiguum 10.89-90 (Chapter 37), reveals a twofold set of inconsistencies that show up in the course of just two paragraphs; the inner logic of the argument, identified as Stoic in origin, does not match the logic of the conclusion. In spite of this, Maximus’ argument works as a whole, since his aim was to bring an idea to light, and render it fully open to view, rather than seeking to prove a philosophical claim. The conclusions of this analysis are considered in the final section of the article, placing them in the larger context furnished by the multiplicity of Maximian sources of inspiration. Maximus’ works emerge as instantiating a form of poly-consistency consisting of multiple voices, through which a theological vision of reality emulating the divine point of view is put forward. As long as this vision, expressed through a multiplicity of voices, is not subjected to a synthetic philosophical reading, his work can be viewed as advancing a message of hope, to the effect that we may one day be presented with an account of the created world that amounts to a truly explanatory theory without eliminating the divine perspective, and which shows all reality as pointing to God.

Maximian Commentary and the Question of the Consistency of Maximus’ Work The publication in 1941 of Cosmic Liturgy by Hans Urs von Balthasar has not only rekindled the interest of Patristic scholars in the work of Maximus the Confessor,1 1

This article presents some results of the author’s research carried out within the framework of the project ‘Neochalcedonian Philosophical Paradigm’, financed by Poland’s National Science Centre (grant UMO-2016/22/M/HS1/00170).

Studia Patristica CXXI, 5-27. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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but also established an interpretative paradigm.2 Von Balthasar proposed, very much in line with the customs of the era, a synthetic picture of the Maximian oeuvre. He did not even consider it necessary to outline a method for deriving such a picture from Maximus’ writings, and just assumed that it could easily be found there. It is with a discussion of the consequences of this assumption that von Balthasar starts his book, devoting an entire section of his introduction to ‘The Synthesis’.3 The certitude that Maximus is to be counted among thinkers ‘who can work, surely, with traditional material but who also know how to arrange the pieces according to their own architectural design’ makes it possible not only to ascribe to Maximus an ‘ecstatic vision of a holy universe’, but also to see in him a metaphysician and a master of spiritual doctrine.4 Von Balthasar could only ever analyse Maximus’ sources of inspiration in a manner in line with the scholarship of his time. Thus, for instance, he credited Maximus with ‘overcoming the “emanationism” of Pseudo-Dionysius’ with a tool consisting in ‘the Aristotelian and Stoic conception of the concrete universal (καθόλου), which is, ultimately, also proper to Neoplatonism’.5 Much has happened in the history of ideas since Balthasar published the first edition of his book, resulting in a deep and complex revision of the language used to speak about Neoplatonism, or about Stoic or Aristotelian logic. More importantly, in historical studies, any such synthesis can nowadays only be constructed as a result of, and in the context of, detailed analyses. A synthesis not preceded by the analysis of arguments, not involving a discussion of contradictions, and not based on textual studies in which larger pieces of texts are dissected, is something one would not expect to see being seriously proposed now.6 Apparently, however, where studies of Maximus the Confessor are concerned, the older paradigm still prevails. The very fact that it does so is visible less in the types of works devoted to the study of Maximus, or in the issues raised, than in the very manner of discussing his ideas. While all-encompassing syntheses in the style of Cosmic 2 The first edition of this work was published in German as Kosmische Liturgie. Maximus der Bekenner, Höhe und Krisis des griechischen Weltbilds (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1941). The excellent English translation, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley, A Communio Book (San Francisco, 2003), is based on the second German edition, Kosmische Liturgie: Das Weltbild Maximus des Bekenners (Einsiedeln, 1961). In what follows, I refer to page numbers in Fr. Daley’s translation. 3 H.U. von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy (2003), 56-73. 4 Ibid., respectively, 57,8, 60,2. 5 Ibid. 61. 6 As an example of such a now rare synthesis, we can adduce the study by Anthony A. Long and David N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1, Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary, vol. 2, Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography (Cambridge, 1988). Hereafter, this study will be used for comparative purposes as one of the sourcebooks for Stoic philosophy, and cited as ‘L&S’ via the numbers of chapters and passages.

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Liturgy or Lars Thunberg’s Microcosm and Mediator7 are rarely proposed, a reader of studies on Maximus will frequently encounter discussions in which it is assumed that Maximus’ work can be treated as characterised by a kind of deep or perfect consistency. Maximus’ claims in various works, written at different stages of his life and with different purposes, and figuring in arguments of quite different kinds, are lifted out of their contexts and treated as conclusive and definitive doctrinal statements. When Maximus’ philosophical views are being discussed, especially, the reader is presented with a collection of assertions that are considered, usually without further deliberation, to constitute a philosophical doctrine. Participation, the teaching about logoi, the relationship between the particular and the universal, temporality and eternity, and the eternal motion of creation, are presented through compilations of claims made by Maximus in various works and in various contexts. In the introduction to his book The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor, Torstein Theodor Tollefsen simply announces the adoption of a synthetic approach,8 and in his subsequent analyses there, quotations from and references to various works of Maximus are set one against another, compared with possible philosophical sources, and assembled into arguments that do not in and of themselves figure in Maximus’ texts. A similar approach can be found, for instance, in the discussions elaborated by Melchisedec Törönen, Eric Perl, Christophe Erismann, and Clement Yung Wen.9 A somewhat different intention is announced by Sotiris Mitralexis in the first words of his Ever-Moving Repose: he advances a reading of Maximus’ views on time ‘through the perspective’ of Christos Yannaras, John Zizioulas, and Nikolaos Loudovikos.10 One might also count Dionysios Skliris among the adherents to this program.11 It is rooted in philosophical and/or theological 7 Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis 25 (Lund, Chicago, 1965); Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1995). 8 Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor, OECS (Oxford, New York, 2008), 2. 9 See, respectively, Melchisedec Törönen, Union and Distinction in the Thought of St. Maximus the Confessor, OECS (Oxford, New York, 2007); Eric David Perl, ‘Methexis: Creation, Incarnation, Deification in Saint Maximus Confessor’, PhD Thesis (Yale University, 1991); Christophe Erismann, ‘Maximus the Confessor on the Logical Dimension of the Structure of Reality’, in Antoine Lévy et al. (eds), The Architecture of the Cosmos: St Maximus the Confessor, New Perspectives, Schriften der Luther-Agricola-Gesellschaft 69 (Helsinki, 2015), 51-69; Clement Yung Wen, ‘Maximus the Confessor and the Problem of Participation’, The Heythrop Journal 58 (2017), 3-16. 10 Sotiris Mitralexis, Ever-Moving Repose: A Contemporary Reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time, Veritas 24 (Eugene, 2017), xv. 11 Dionysios Skliris, ‘“Hypostasis”, “Person”, “Individual”, “Mode”: A Comparison between the Terms that Denote Concrete Being in St Maximus’ Theology’, in Maksim Vasiljević [Bishop Maxim] (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection: Proceedings of the Symposium on St Maximus the Confessor, Belgrade, October 18–21, 2012 (Alhambra, CA, 2013),

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reinterpretations of some insights extracted from Maximus by the aforementioned authors. In particular, the proposals of Zizioulas and Yannaras are offered as philosophical elucidations of the human condition. What is common to their discussions, and to attempts to reapply such philosophical postulates, is a highly speculative abstract discourse, in which terms such as ‘mode’, ‘person’, ‘hypostasis’, ‘essence’, ‘history’ and ‘temporality’ are juxtaposed in complex configurations. A reader may well gain the impression that statements found in those discussions are themselves in need of clarification and exemplification. When, for example, Zizioulas states that a person ‘is capable of “modifying” its being without losing its ontological uniqueness and otherness’ because the human hypostasis is ‘a mode of being’, and that the uniqueness of persons consists precisely in that capacity, while also claiming that ‘every creature possesses a tropos hyparxeos’, the very meaning of ‘modality’, ‘tropic identity’ and ‘ontology of tropos’, supposedly all drawn from Maximus, stands in need of disambiguation.12 Zizioulas appears to be saying that given Maximus’ claims, we must assume that each kind of being possesses its own inalienable mode of being, while it is also specific to persons that they are a mode of being. While persons are a mode of being, they also seem to possess the hypostatic mode of being. As characterised by, or possibly tantamount to, that mode of being, persons are also deemed capable of modifying their mode of being. One may easily conclude, however, that any such modification of the mode of being of a person itself should result in a persons’ losing their mode of being and, alongside this, the only existence they have. No less puzzling is, it seems, the statement of Christos Yannaras, according to which ‘Man (and only Man within the limits of created nature) has the power of realising the mode of existence of uncreated nature, that is, of constituting a personal hypostasis’.13 This statement crowns a long inquiry into ‘The Cosmic Dimension of the Existent’ of Chapter 3.3 of The Schism of Philosophy, in which Maximus’ view of movement and hypostasis are treated as offering a solution ‘to the ontological problem’. Based on his interpretation of Maximus, Yannaras attributes to humans an ‘ecstatic mode of existence’, ‘which means: human beings have the existential possibility of standing-outside of the createdness of their nature, of standing-outside of the limitations of their nature, of hypostasising their existential identity as otherness and as freedom from any 437-50; Dionysios Skliris, ‘Syn-odical Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Proposition for Ontology, within History and in the Eschaton’, in Sotiris Mitralexis and Marcin Podbielski (eds), Christian and Islamic Philosophies of Time (Wilmington, DE, 2018), 85-117. 12 John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. Paul McPartlan (London, New York, 2006), 22-31, quotes from 29 and 4 n. 36. 13 This and other statements of Yannaras are made on page 287 of his The Schism in Philosophy: The Hellenic Perspective and its Western Reversal, trans. Norman Russell (Brookline, MA, 2015). In the chapter ‘The Cosmic Dimension of the Existent’ (271-337), ontological claims based on Yannaras’ interpretation of Maximus are discussed in detail; see pages 284-9.

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natural predetermination’. Yannaras’ statement implies that Maximus’ views make it possible for us to affirm that natural limitations do not bind our nature. An interpretation of this assertion is not an easy task in itself, since the very notion of nature, which emerges in the experience of limitations, is called into question by what the pronouncement suggests. According to what he claims, human freedom is creative to the point of possessing the possibility of influencing the reality around us, in a manner illustrated rather by the realisation of the hero of The Matrix in the last moments of that movie, when he starts reshaping reality according to his will, than by our ordinary experience. If this kind of elusive philosophical theory, purportedly derived from Maximus, is reapplied as an interpretative tool in the context of Maximian commentary, questions of a very similar kind need to be raised. In an article offering a final conceptualisation of his detailed inquiries into issues of time and motion in Maximus, ‘Making Sense of Maximus the Confessor’s Understanding of Temporality’,14 Sotiris Mitralexis seems to suggest that cessation of movement, which results from achieving ‘ever-moving repose’, creates a different ‘modality’ of temporality. This claim relies on an interpretation of the statement of Maximus in which he speaks only about unmeasured time: the aeon is defined as time that cannot be measured, because its motion has ceased (AI 10.[31a.9].73.18-22). Mitralexis considers this definition, which occurs in an interpretation of Moses’ and Elijah’s presence in the Transfiguration in AI 10, as a clarification of the notion of ‘ever-moving repose’ discussed briefly by Maximus in QThal 59.128-9. The notion of a ‘new mode of temporality’, which Mitralexis constructs in this way, seems to itself require further clarification, rather than just putting forward an explanation of Maximus’ statements. The aeon is characterised by Mitralexis as an instance of ‘howness’ and ‘mode of existence’. A change of ‘mode of existence’ from time to aeon is supposed to occur once the reality that is subject to change reaches its perfect state, characterised in terms of ‘ever-moving repose’. This ever-moving repose is the state of those created beings that, like all creatures, are in movement, but which have reached the ultimate actualisation of their potential for this (i.e. movement). It should be noted that such a change of ‘mode of existence’ can easily be interpreted as destructive of everything a given thing was, just as a change from a contingent being to a necessary one, or from an accident to a substance, would be. For all that which a thing is – its ‘whatness’, to use Mitralexis’ terms – cannot be conceived of in separation from its ‘howness’. We describe things in terms of their abstractable features, but also in terms of how those features complete an existent reality. A being that exists as substance has a nature that 14 Sotiris Mitralexis, ‘Making Sense of Maximus the Confessor’s Understanding of Temporality’, Ancient Philosophy 38 (2018), 435-449. I discuss here some of Mitralexis’ ideas advanced throughout the article. See in particular, remarks made on pages 437, 439, 445, and for claims about relationship between nature and divination, 441-2.

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allows accidents; a being which is an accident or part of a larger whole ultimately derives its ‘whatness’ from that of which it is a part. A necessary being cannot allow accidents, and needs to be conceived of as internally simple, or a pure form. Thus, if the aeon is to be a different mode of existence, proper to beings that have reached the ultimate perfection that a created reality can achieve, and so to deified people, then deification needs to be conceived of as a destruction of everything that a deified person was, and an acquisition of a new nature, one which would be compatible with the new mode of existence. Furthermore, since this state is supposed to result from the completion of a natural movement on the part of a created being in its ever-moving repose, deification will, as a matter of fact, be a natural process, in which any personal self-moving nature can somehow alter its temporal and contingent mode of being. Yet how it could be that this does not amount to ascribing to Maximus the idea, at least, that humans are self-creating persons, and as such endowed by nature with divine powers, is difficult to comprehend. (Let it be noted, though, that Mitralexis does not himself draw such a conclusion, preferring to stick to Maximus’ orthodox statements.) Similar claims about temporality and modality are also made by Dionysios Skliris within his larger reading of Maximus as ‘dromic ontology’.15 Within this ontology, Maximus is supposed to have transformed so radically all of the notions inherited from his various sources within the Ancient tradition that the very notion of ‘ontology’ – the philosophical science of being, as thus defined in the 17th century16 – had come to be transformed, over 1000 years earlier, by him: one can say ‘that created nature, after having received ontology by grace, is at the same time at rest, exactly because it has received ontology, and in movement, because it moves towards a God that is in Himself beyond ontology’. Ontology thereby becomes our reality, which we receive through grace. Someone who adheres to the meanings of words as employed in the language of philosophy might thus conclude that without the grace that enlightens us and gives us the science of ontology we ourselves cannot even exist, so that all people not so illuminated, and all beings devoid of rationality, simply do not in fact do so. Those highly abstract interpretations of Maximus – examples of which have been adduced above – are in actuality much more complex. As in the case of 15 D. Skliris, ‘Syn-odical Ontology’ (2018). I discuss here only some ideas put forward by Skliris on pages 100-8. All quoted passages figure on page 108. 16 Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford, 2002-20), s.v. ‘ontology’, notes a first instance of occurrence of the word ‘ontologia’ in Latin in the Lexicon philosophicum by Rudolf Göckel, published in 1613 (Frankfurt), on page 16, s.v. ‘Abstractio materiae’ (‘ὀντολογία est philosophia de ente’). Göckel adopted the term, however, most probably from Jacob Lorhard, who used it in Latin in his Ogdoas scholastica continens diagraphen typicam atrium (St. Gallen, 1606) in the ‘Diagraph of Metaphysic or Ontology’ (the last part of his work, with pages numbered separately in each part; cf. also the manuscript translation of this part of Lorhard’s textbook by Sara L. Uckelman at https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/668/1/X-2008-04.text.pdf).

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every abstract conceptual construct, the meaning of any such interpretation will inevitably be difficult to grasp unless it is elaborated from scratch, starting with very detailed exemplifications, or firmly rooted by the author in a conceptual tradition. Nothing like this is offered to the reader, even though the basic meanings of terms such as ‘distance’, ‘mode’, ‘circumscribe’, ‘division’, ‘identity’, ‘ontology’, ‘intensity’, seem to have been modified by Maximian commentators. It appears that a kind of private language is being created, rife with potentialities for contradictory conclusions. Mitralexis seems to be aware of this peculiarity of his way of expressing his ideas, and attributes it to the very source he is commenting on: As it seems, the ‘fullness that is never fulfilled’ and similar formulations are not merely patristic rhetorical topoi of apophaticism, but indicative of a pronounced and distinct mentality permeating the totality of patristic preciseness. Their formulations are not meant to inspire awe in their apparent contradictory vagueness, but to function as concise signifiers of syntheses that are, by their very nature, beyond the coordinates of language. In the context of this semantic extremity, these formulations succeed in signifying reality, the price of which is the emptying of the signifier itself from any literal meaning.17

The basic problem with this attitude towards Patristic texts consists in its claiming on the one hand that those texts, and especially the works of Maximus, convey a philosophy, and on the other that this philosophy cannot, or even should not, be expressed in a language that is intersubjectively graspable. The term ‘philosophy’, used in technical contexts, points to an exercising of reason – be it discursive or intuitive – that aims at revealing, if not the very nature and structure of the reality we live in, then at least our relationship to this reality. Even a purely intuitive or sceptical approach is one that is being offered, essentially, as a putative answer to questions we pose about this relationship. As such, responses of this sort are meant to be understandable to those who wish to undertake a similar intellectual effort, or follow the path, that has led a given author to the intuitions expressed in their writing. Claiming that a philosophical author puts forward a synthesis which is ‘beyond the coordinates of language’ amounts to denying any potential meaning to this author’s words. Claiming that the signifier has been emptied from literal meaning amounts to suggesting that those to whom the signifier is addressed are deprived of any reference point through which they might reach the new higher meaning. If the contradictory formulations ‘succeed in signifying reality’, this success can be measured only by the author of the message, and not by its potential addressees. Philosophical activity becomes a form of soliloquy. In fact, any commentary whatsoever on such work should be impossible. In this way, the question we are faced with when examining Maximian commentaries becomes the issue of the very nature of Maximus’ work itself. We are invited to treat it as expressing important philosophical ideas. Torstein 17

S. Mitralexis, Ever-Moving Repose (2017), 174.

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Tollefsen says that ‘[i]f St Augustine is a philosopher, if Bonaventure is a philosopher, yes, if Plotinus is a philosopher, Maximus is as well’.18 However, consistency can hardly be denied to any of those authors. Plotinus is a master of critical deliberation, finding numerous inconsistencies even in Aristotle and constructing his own solutions, such as his theory of genera in Treatises 42-4, according to an overriding criterion of conceptual consistency. On the other hand, Maximus’ philosophical stance, as viewed by Tollefsen and by Mitralexis, hardly resembles the attitude of Plotinus. In the case of the former, consistency is simply presupposed by the commentator, rather than being shown to be present in the form of a guiding thread underpinning the lengthy and detailed deliberations. In the latter instance, it is ultimately dismissed, as a higher meaning is supposed to emerge in and from the inconsistencies themselves. A recent study of Maximus’ theory of logoi even goes a step further: Jordan Daniel Wood concludes his inquiry by attributing to Maximus the status of a spiritual master of truth, ‘for he more than any knew that only in the Word Incarnate, finite, dead, and resurrected, can we know “the right model for the world”’.19 While he admits that his ‘guiding question ha[d] been a classically systematic one’, he ascribes to Maximus a kind of mystical pantheism: Creation does not complete the divine nature, but the most profound logos of the divine nature – utterly dark to our gaze – is to exceed itself in becoming identical in person to what God is not by nature. It is of the very nature of God to become creaturely precisely because he is no creature. Not crude pantheism – for his infinite nature precedes and exceeds every created nature, even Being itself. But neither a crude ‘creationism’ – for His infinite nature proves most transcendent when He becomes hypostatically identical to every created nature, even Being itself.

In this brief declaration, Wood seems to turn inconsistency into a systemic feature of Maximus’ thought. The statement that the nature of God is to become creaturely for the very reason that God is not a creature can serve as a basis for all kinds of contradictory conclusions. It affirms the principle: ‘It is in the nature of the Divine nature to become what it is not’. All the realities we can conceive of thereby count as results of this self-negation on the part of God: either they inherit the self-negating character of the divine nature, and can create by negating themselves, or they have been deprived of this nature in a selfnegating act of God, through which He also deprived Himself of his creative power. If so, then their very existence, qua its being rooted in that negated divine nature, is negated by their creation. Nothing that they are, as a matter of fact, exists.

18

T.T. Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology (2008), 7. Jordan Daniel Wood, ‘Creation is Incarnation: The Metaphysical Peculiarity of the Logoi in Maximus Confessor’, Modern Theology 34 (2018), 102. Subsequent quotations from Wood can be found on pages 99 and 100. 19

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The interpretation offered by Wood makes sense only when treated as a truly spiritual insight into what we call ‘nature’, for lack of a better word; but, as a matter of fact, this is not a nature at all, for God has no nature that binds Him. Since all logic relies on recognising the necessities of nature, or at least the necessities of the nature of our speaking about the world, ordinary logic does not apply to God. In such a case, however, the metaphysics of logoi and incarnation which Wood ascribes to Maximus does not belong to the domain of philosophy, for it requires us to abandon the exercise of reason. (It must be emphasised, though, that Wood never says he is offering a philosophical commentary, or ascribes any kind of philosophical stance to Maximus.) In a strange turn of argument, the systematic approach to Maximus the Confessor initiated by von Balthasar leads, on the one hand, to an ascription of various sorts of philosophical view to Maximus – ones which are reconstructed according to a governing criterion of consistency, even as the scattered and fragmentary character of Maximus’ remarks possessing philosophical import is recognised. On the other hand, the very same approach leads not only to philosophical formulations being directly attributed to Maximus, or constructed on the basis of his statements, that can be easily interpreted as contradictory, but also to the affirmation of contradiction itself as an organising principle of Maximian utterances. When Wood affirms that through Maximus we can know ‘the right model for the world’, he is quoting von Balthasar.20 Yet the model that Wood proposes is, most probably, quite remote from what von Balthasar himself was hoping to find in Maximus when, just one page earlier, he asserted that ‘[i]n the sphere of a Christian philosophy of person and existence, the clarity of the Greek grasp of the world of being was to find its final fulfillment’. The mystical theory that Wood attributes to Maximus is neither clear nor philosophical, for in order to be philosophical, it would have to be somehow graspable by reason. The conclusion that ought to be drawn from this brief inquiry into the strange adventures of Maximian scholarship over the last eighty years should not consist, however, in denying the status of philosophy or rationality to Maximus’ works. The presupposition adopted by von Balthasar, and not questioned directly by commentators, consisted in assuming that Maximus’ claims, no matter when and in what context they were expressed, had to be consistent. Rather than wondering about what kind of simple or higher, rational or mystical, philosophy Maximus was engaged in delineating in his works, we should probably just ask the following simple methodological question: do Maximus’ works themselves allow us to be confident about the applicability of this principle when actually interpreting them? Are we permitted, on the basis of the texts themselves, to tax them with the postulate that insists that they express a

20

H.U. von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy (2003), 66.

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kind of deep consistency – one possibly so profound that only contradiction can express it? The question may initially seem strange. We do not approach any major thinker with suspicions about their consistency. When we encounter contradictions, we point them out, but we do not as a rule set out in pursuit of them. A study of Aristotle or Plato may of course reveal them, where these testify in turn to real problems with conceptualising, for instance, the human soul, conceived of both as the organising principle of bodily activities and the centre of purely intellectual cognition. However, commentators do not generally ask whether they should abandon the quest for consistency per se. As a matter of fact, the case of Maximus is not, I think, particularly different. I myself am only suggesting posing the question of consistency because the quest for this has brought about commentaries that are inconsistent and, in effect, seek to defend inconsistency. A student of Plato or Aristotle will not encounter such divergent views as commentators of Maximus ascribe to their protagonist – e.g. in relation to his theory of logoi. For instance, Melchisedec Törönen assigns to these the status of formal paradigms of a Neoplatonic kind,21 whereas Eric Perl sees in them intellectual principles of the sort defined by Proclus.22 Tollefsen accounts for the logoi in terms of ‘Christian exemplarism’, while also allowing for potential Stoic sources, pointing to differences between the Neoplatonists, especially where Proclus is concerned, and linking the logoi with Divine energies.23 Adopting a historical approach, David Bradshaw examines the Patristic conception of logoi in terms of its roots and developments in Stoicism and Philo, as well as its redefinitions in Origen, Evagrius and Pseudo-Dionysius, and finds in the logoi of Maximus a modification and unification of the tradition. Such logoi ‘are the articulated content of the Logos, His manifestation within the created world; thus they are uncreated but have a content that is determined by God’s creative intent’.24 Mitralexis discerns in them a manifestation and disclosure of God visible in his energies – with them being, in and of themselves, uncreated and identical to God.25 The very fact that it has been possible to reach such different conclusions regarding the key issue of Maximus’ doctrine surely calls for an examination of whether Maximus intended to propose a consistent account of such matters as divine logoi. Tackling the problem of consistency in Maximus by engaging with a topic as difficult as the theory of logoi seems, however, somewhat premature to me. 21

M. Törönen, Union and Distinction (2007), 128-35. Cf. in particular E.D. Perl, ‘Methexis’ (1991), 128-30. 23 T.T. Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology (2008), 64-91. 24 David Bradshaw, ‘The Logoi of Beings in Greek Patristic Thought’, in John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz (eds), Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation, Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought (New York, 2013), 9-22. Quotation from p. 19. 25 S. Mitralexis, Ever-Moving Repose (2017), 80-7. 22

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In what follows, I shall therefore propose a less ambitious analysis, focused on one particularly important yet brief passage, in which the issue of consistency – construed either as actually present or as something just aimed for by Maximus – can be examined with more clarity than would be possible were we to be dealing with a large body of texts devoted to the logoi. In this way, rather than examining the general issue of consistency with respect to Maximian theory, I hope to be able to observe the nature of the consistency that actually shows up as peculiar to his writing. Philosophical Consistency in Maximus’ Account of the Expansion and Contraction of Genera and Species The passage to which I now wish to turn the reader’s attention is a brief but very frequently cited one from Chapter 37 of the 10th Ambiguum. The text, consisting just of the two paragraphs 10.89-90 (PG 91, 1177B-1180A) in Nicolas Constas’ already standard edition,26 is usually adduced as one of the main elements of Maximus’ theory of reality. Maximus describes there the process in which genera and species come to be generated, and in which they also return to their source. The broad overall logic of the lengthy Ambiguum 10 unfolds via an extended series of associative links between passages in which Maximus explores, from various angles, the main theme of the Ambiguum: namely, the issue of the contemplation of physical reality from which commences the ascension to God. The discussion of the movement of a ‘so-called substance’ offers an example of the contemplation of nature leading to an acknowledgement that ‘[w]hat has been begun in respect of generation of being, in no way can be without beginning’ (10.90.19-20). The word-play occurring between ἠργμένον, the passive perfect participle of ἄρχω, and ἄναρχον, emphasises the fact that the beginning of being is also its principle, and as such is never abandoned during the process of generation. Created reality testifies through its very being to its relationship to the ultimate principle. Qua being dependent on this principle, it seems to always refer to what gave it its being. The internal logic of this passage progresses somewhat differently, though. Maximus does not start from the creative act of God, but from the very substance of all things, ἡ ἁπλῶς λεγομένη “οὐσία”. This ‘substance spoken of as absolute’, without any further characterisation, appears to be common to all beings at least in one respect: the very substance of those beings ‘has been moved and moves’, κεκίνηται καὶ κινεῖται. The movement occurs no matter 26

Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua ad Iohannem, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, ed. and trans. Nicholas P. Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28-9 (Cambridge, MA, London, 2014), hereafter AI. All translations of Greek passages, if not credited, are mine.

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whether beings themselves are in movement or not: it pertains to the substance not only of those beings that are ‘in generation and corruption’, but also to the substance of ‘all beings’. The movement pertains not to substance as such, but to ‘logos and tropos’, and occurs ‘as expansion and contraction’, κατὰ διαστολὴν καὶ συστολήν. All this is conveyed in just the highly consequential first sentence of the passage (10.89.1-5). What Maximus is asserting here implies that there is a kind of substance common to all beings, and that this substance is in movement even if particular beings do not undergo a change of kind leading to generation and destruction. This underlying movement occurs in respect of the very logos and tropos of things. The latter, whatever they are, seem to be kinds of immanent principle of reality. After all, were it to be otherwise, were the logos to be considered, at least in this particular passage, uncreated divine intention, we would have to assume that this intention is moved together with and due to immanent changes of substance. If the manner in which the substance of beings moves in changing its logos and tropos is one of ‘expansion and contraction’, it is impossible to assume that the change does not occur within the substance, even if ‘expansion’ and ‘contraction’ are considered merely metaphorical terms. Even if the change pertaining to the logos and tropos of a substance is only metaphorically physical, this metaphor will imply that the change pertains to substance as such, and not its external principles. What expands and contracts stays the same, yet alters within. The ensuing sentences ascribe this inner alteration to the entire body of reality. The substance of all beings moves and expands downwards ‘from a most generic genus through more general genera to species’, ‘advancing so far as the most specific species’. The process follows and is animated by the natural divisions of substance: the species into which the substance divides are the species by which and into which the substance is divided by nature, τὰ εἴδη, δι’ ὧν καὶ εἰς ἃ διαιρεῖσθαι πέφυκε. In this process, the substance encounters its lower limit, as it ‘circumscribes its being with relation to what is below’, τὸ εἶναι αὐτῆς πρὸς τὰ κάτω περιγράφουσα (89.5-9). The reverse process of ‘gathering’ towards the largest genus, in which substance is contracted, establishes ‘the upper boundary of its being’, πρὸς τὸ ἄνω τὸ εἶναι αὐτῆς ὁρίζουσα (9-12). In a way, the process amounts to the self-discovery of one substance, through a kind of actualisation not so much of potentialities of substance, but of inner divisions present in it before the process started. As a result of the process, the substance is ‘circumscribed from both sides, […] from above and from below’, and ‘shows itself as having beginning and end, not at all capable of having accepted into itself the logos of infinity’.27 The beginning and the end of the movement are, at another time, inner limitations of the substance of πρὸς τὸ ἄνω τὸ εἶναι αὐτῆς ὁρίζουσα, καὶ λοιπὸν διχόθεν περιγραφομένη, ἄνωθέν τε λέγω καὶ κάτωθεν, ἀρχὴν καὶ τέλος ἔχουσα δείκνυται, τὸν τῆς ἀπειρίας οὐδ’ ὅλως ἐπιδέξασθαι δυναμένη λόγον, AI 10.89.12-5. 27

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all beings. Substance does not need any external principle to find them. Neither does it need such a principle to move and generate all the genera and species of things. That it presents itself as containing its principles and ends within itself is a fact that in and of itself comes accompanied by the claim that the substance of beings is finite. In the next paragraph, Maximus applies a very similar logic to quantity. Thus, as before, not only does the quantity of things that are subject to generation and destruction move, but also ‘all quantity and quantity of all things’, καὶ ἡ πᾶσα καὶ πάντων [ποσότης]. The difference consists in the fact that the all-encompassing quantitative movement pertains to the ‘logos of relaxation and straining’, τῷ κατ’ ἄνεσιν καὶ ἐπίτασιν λόγῳ, while movement in respect of ‘increase and diminution’ seems particular to things that are generated and destroyed. The result, however, does not differ from movement of substance: quantity, as it moves, is circumscribed while producing species ‘through local differentiations [that take place] according to expansion’, ταῖς κατὰ μέρος διαφοραῖς κατὰ διαστολὴν εἰδοποιουμένη περιγράφεται. As with substance, it does not ‘pour itself into infinity’, but unlike substance, to some extent, it ‘retrogrades, resolving that which concerns those [differences], but not the con-natural species’ (10.90.1-8). While substance truly destroys lower species, when ‘gathering’ towards the larger genus, the retrograde movement of quantity does not resolve the ‘con-natural species’. One may surmise that quantity is a kind of epiphenomenon of substance: while substance looks like a reality that moves and discovers its inner differentiations, creating and destroying beings, quantity follows and establishes a more permanent parallel order of genera. An analogous process is supposed to pertain to quality: Similarly also quality – not only [quality] which is moved in generation and corruption according to alteration, but all [quality] and [quality] of everything, moved by the reversible and dissoluble [element] of difference that applies to it, admits of dilatation and contraction. (AI 10.90.8-12)

Strangely, however, quality does not move itself, but is rather moved. What it is moved by is difference, or differences’ ‘reversible and dissoluble element’ (τὸ τρεπτὸν καὶ σκεδαστὸν τῆς διαφορᾶς). Whatever this ‘element’ is would appear to be the source of the alteration in quality that leads to the generation and corruption of things, or to minor changes in them. As they change, however, it seems that no new genera or species are created, even as dilatation and contraction, a supposedly quantitative change, takes place. Here ends the detailed account of changes within the world that occur ‘according to dilatation and contraction’. The internal logic of this brief philosophical excursion within the larger body of the Ambiguum deserves a few comments, so that we can see Maximus’ conclusion, drawn from that account, in its proper context. That logic is without a doubt neither Platonic nor Aristotelian.

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Genera and species in Plato are by themselves immutable. This is not negated by Plato’s accounts of somewhat similar processes: the process described in Timaeus in which lower forms are established by the Lesser Gods, when they emulate the structure of the ‘Eternal Living Being’, ‘of which the other living beings are parts, as unities and as genera’ (30c5-6), or the process in which lower forms are discovered as natural divisions within higher forms, delineated in the Philebus (16c5-18d2), has a logical character. There is no continuous movement from top to bottom and, undoubtedly, there cannot be movement from bottom to top. Rather, differences are found to exist by virtue of being naturally admissible and enabled by the structure of higher forms. Neither can the ontological structure of the Universe be considered dynamic in Aristotle: his entire On the Heavens considers the all-encompassing order of things, which includes only one heaven and a limited number of elements, such as are required by nature and cannot be altered. Neither are we shown a Porphyrian interpretation of Aristotle’s categories. The so-called Porphyrian tree is logical in nature. All of Porphyry’s discussions in the Isagoge pertain, as he makes very clear, to the order of predication (Isagoge 4.16-5.9). The order of genera and species reflects the order of similarities and differences that are recognised in the reality we speak about.28 No generation of genera and species occurs in Neoplatonic logic. Quantitative changes certainly cannot create new genera. As a matter of fact, Porphyry himself identifies the source of ideas very similar to those that Maximus presents in the passage, though they are ones he himself does not endorse: But how can one say anything clear about these matters, when there have been so many different schools of thought about them? For some have claimed that all states of matter and qualified entities become more and less intense, since matter itself admits of a more and less. Some Platonists have taken this view. Others have held that some states and the ⟨entities capable of having the state⟩ that are qualified by them do not admit of a more and less, as is the case with the virtues and persons who are qualified by them, while other states and qualified entities do admit of intensification and relaxation, as is the case with all intermediate arts and intermediate qualities, and the persons who are qualified by them. The Stoics held this view.29

A similar relationship between ἐπίτασις and ἄνεσις is attributed to the Stoics by Simplicius in the Commentary to Aristotle’s Categories (237.25-238.32 = SVF 2.393),30 as pertinent to hexeis, Stoic ‘tenors’, and διαθέσεις – i.e. Stoic 28 Porphyry, In Aristotelis Categorias expositio per interrogationem et responsionem, in Porphyrii Isagoge et in Aristotelis Categorias commentarium, ed. Adolf Busse, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 4/1 (Berlin, 1887), 58.6-15, 70.29-33, 71.11-4, 9-26. 29 Ibid. 137.25-8.5 = SVF 3.525. Translation in: Porphyry, On Aristotle’s Categories, trans. Steven K. Strange, Ancient Commentators on Aristotle (London, Ithaca, 1992), 152. 30 Cited according to the edition: Simplicius, In Aristotelis Categorias commentarium, ed. Karl Kalbfleisch, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca 8 (Berlin, 1907). Hereafter In Cat.

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‘characters’, to use the terminology of Anthony A. Long and David Sedley, as defined in their Hellenistic Philosophers.31 Intensity is that which characterises a tenor and makes it into such and such a disposition: this is how virtue is defined. Simplicius himself allows for lesser and greater intensity in matter (In Cat. 232.9-11), or in some qualities (235.3-25), but insists that this does not result in the creation of any specific differentia. He revisits the issue in 284.28291.18, where he considers multiple stances and addresses inconsistencies in and divergences between Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus, including the Stoics in the discussion, too. Finally, he claims that more or less is possible in respect of qualities, because they ‘pertain to similarity’: such differences in quality are instances of supervenient participation, added to the main participation. Dexippus and Ammonius, in turn, allow intensification and relaxation in accidents of substances only.32 Emergence of essential or meaningful differences via intensification and relaxation seems particular to Stoic philosophy. Contraction and expansion, διαστολή and συστολή, is a pairing known, in turn, mainly from medical literature. It is very frequently present in medical texts going back as far as the 3rd century BC. It is used in the definition and description of pulse. Galen ascribes the definition to the disciples of Erasistratus.33 John Philoponus is also acquainted with the pairing, as being explanatory of the movement of inner breath (πνεῦμα) in the soul in and through the nerves.34 He also views contraction and expansion as being a feature of threedimensional beings. However, he rejects the thought that bodies are generated or corrupted through this process.35 Meanwhile, in the passage discussed above, Maximus appears to affirm quite the opposite. Other instances of the pairing of διαστολή and συστολή in extant texts, though not plentiful, are still of great interest to us. The mechanism of contraction and diffusion (διάχυσις) or lessening (ταπείνωσις) was, apparently, employed by Zeno to explain emotions (SVF 1.209). While Chrysippus rejected the idea that emotions consist in such movements of the soul, and defined them as erroneous judgments (SVF 3.461), he did link ‘characters’ or ‘dispositions’ (διαθέσεις) of the soul, such as distress, and their impulse (ὁρμή), to relaxation of contraction (ἀνίεσθαι ἡ συστολή) of the soul, where this is rooted in erroneous opinions (SVF 3.466, in part. 11-18 = p. 117, 26-37 von Armin). Furthermore, Chrysippus seemed to associate density and the natural capacity to expand (διαστέλλεσθαι) with the fiery element, seeking to explain pulse in these terms (Erasistratus fr 206 Garolafo). 31

L&S, 986. Dexippus, In Aristotelis categorias commentarium 48.14; Ammonius, In Porphyrii Isagogen sive quinque voces 98.1-12. 33 Galen, De differentia pulsuum 759.19-760.12 = Erasistratus fr 205 Garolafo. 34 John Philoponus, De aeternitate mundi 288.8-11. 35 Ibid. 424.12-23. 32

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The connecting up of expansion and contraction with actual change and inner movement of the soul appears, therefore, to be of medical origin. Its association with movement of the breath of the fiery element, with increase and decrease in tension, and with the bodily changes accompanying emotions, seems, however, particular to the Stoics. The claim in the passage of the Ambigua analysed here extends this mechanism to the entire finite universe, paralleling expansion and contraction with ἐπίτασις and ἄνεσις, qualitative intensification and relaxation. That someone did make a similar general claim, explaining generation and corruption of physical bodies through expansion and contraction, seems plausible, given that Philoponus did in fact devote a few lines to its rejection. Yet whether the Stoics actually held such a belief, which would have had to pair their cosmological and logical accounts with one another, is not clear. They considered logic and physics to be two separate domains of knowledge, with two separate sets of technical terms, and there are very few extant texts explaining how the two sets of terms were related one to the other. The science of genera of reality, such as substrate, common and peculiar quality, being disposed (πῶς ἔχον), and being relatively disposed (πρός τι πῶς ἔχον), belongs to logic. The science of matter, its movement, tensions, tenors, dispositions, and possibly also contraction and relaxation, belong to physics. The complex, qualitatively different world we know is codified in logic, and explained as a reality made up of impressions, conceptions, and the meanings of linguistic expressions derived from these. The world we actually live in is, however, the monistic reality of an animate body, whose various tensions and tensile states are perceived by us as actual objects. How the pluralistic world, such as we know it, relates to the monistic reality, such as it is, is not, however, explained in the accounts that have survived. The passage of Simplicius’ Commentary to Aristotle’s Categories mentioned above (237.25-238.32 = SVF 2.393 ≈ L&S 47S), in which he discusses the qualitative differences resulting from intensification and relaxation and links qualities to different tensile states of matter, paralleling tenors with common qualities and allowing for changes in tenor and quality, offers, as a matter of fact, the only extant link between the worlds of physics and logic. The brief passage in Maximus’ Ambiguum 10.88-9 may be read as completing this lacuna. The motion of one unqualified substance of the universe is both immanent and external to it. Stoic substance, if viewed as whole, is one and self-animate, but can also be seen as the union of two principles: passive unqualified substance (ἄποιος οὐσία), identical with matter (ὕλη), and active logos (λόγος), which is also god (θεός) (SVF 2.300, cf. L&S section 44). The passage in the Ambigua says that the motion of this substance does create genera and species, but their emergence does not end movement. Apparently, there are natural divisions within one substance, which it explores as it moves in respect of logos, or by logos, τῷ κατὰ διαστολὴν καὶ συστολὴν λόγῳ. If we consider τε καὶ τρόπῳ in AI 10.89.4-5 as a Maximian addition to a passage of

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Stoic origin, we can view what is said in this passage as a consistent development of Stoic statements concerning the differentiation of things within one single material self-moving and divine reality. Differences internal to this unified material may only be conceived of as a kind of breach in continuity, even if they issue from a differentiation in tension between the active and the passive. A differentiation in tension should be manifested, in turn, in expansions and contractions. Nevertheless, such expansions and contractions will not be permanent. Furthermore, the finite material universe (cf., e.g. SVF 2.505) of the Stoics will, in the course of this process, find its limits. It would appear that the parallel between qualitative change and genera and alteration of one substance is established through the intermediary of quantity. In AI 10.[37.]89-90, this last, rarely spoken of by the Stoics themselves, becomes a bridge between a monistic physical reality and the pluralistic reality of the world as we know and speak of it. Quantitative change in itself parallels the movement of expansion and contraction, as well as that of intensification and relaxation. The latter is deemed to produce generation and corruption, and is identified with alteration – as though what we consider to be destruction consisted only in qualitative change. Qualitative changes are supposed to follow those pertaining to quantity. However, genera that have emerged during this process can persist. One can interpret these claims as explaining qualitative change through its quantitative namesake. While the one real subject of changes persists, and simply returns to its initial state, its quantitative changes produce what we think of as generation and destruction. As a matter of fact, then, those changes are merely alterations. Genera and species that emerge in this process are temporary discontinuities, reflecting what are in truth natural internal divisions within one continuous material reality. Yet they are not unreal: while differences are abolished in the ‘gathering’ of a substance, con-natural, possibly continuous differentiation persists in the created world. The entire passage can be consistently interpreted in this way if we assume that, indeed, the text of AI 10.89-90 is rooted in the Stoic world-view, and that the one expanding and contracting substance under discussion in this text is material in character, and has its principles contained in itself. Yet this interpretation will not sound Maximian to any scholar familiar with his views. As the reader will hopefully recall, I have been delaying any discussion of Maximus’ own conclusion within the passage until after its inner logic has been revealed. That conclusion is not a lengthy one: Thus, no one who thinks sanely could say that what emerged naturally through the logos and activity of dissolution and gathering is completely motionless. If thus not motionless, neither [is it] without principle, and if not without principle, manifestly also not ungenerated – but as he knows that what moves began from movement, so he realizes that what is generated received its beginning from the generation that concerned being, taking its being and movement from the only and sole one who is not generated and unmoved. (AI 10.90.13-20)

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This claim of Maximus does not follow from what was said in the preceding lines, no matter whether those lines are interpreted in line with a Stoic rationale, or – as Eric Perl does – as a broad metaphorical description of how genera and species relate to one another in a kind of participatory Proclinian movement of remaining, procession, and reversion.36 This is because the rationale of the passage assumes that the movement of substance, quantity and quality is immanent, and so are its principles. Maximus concludes that all things that are in motion have taken their being from an external motionless principle. The conclusion is based on the assumption that there must be a beginning to motion, and it amounts to a logical fallacy, for the assumption does not differ, as a matter of fact, from what is concluded. The entire argument appears to offer an instance of petitio principii – unless, that is, it is read as merely affirming the idea that everything in motion is required to be moved by something, and as pointing to some external and motionless source of motion. Nevertheless, none of the preceding lines from this passage in Ambiguum 10 can be regarded as lending any support to such a claim, as they all rely on a view to the effect that motion of ‘unqualified substance’ has an immanent cause. It appears that Maximus is borrowing a Stoic passage and using it not as an argumentative claim, but rather as an illustration. The only meaning that would seem to be attributable to the passage is that it affirms our reality as such to be in constant motion in all respects. The learned philosophical language confirming that fact seems proof enough for Maximus when it comes to his seeking to justify his own claim. What this rhetorical style of arguing means, and how it should be interpreted, are matters I shall discuss after having turned the reader’s attention to the issue of Maximus’ reliance on various philosophical sources. From Multiple Voices to Multiple Consistency In the first chapter of his Ever-Moving Repose, Mitralexis recognises that ‘Maximus does not consider his work to be original; he does not assume to construct a new, original philosophical or theological synthesis’.37 Yet, as Maximus analyses, annotates, clarifies, and restates ‘truths that have already been articulated’, a synthesis does seem to emerge. Mitralexis, just like most contemporary commentators, considers this synthesis to be internally consistent, even if he recognises the multiplicity of its sources. It has to be acknowledged that unearthing those sources is not an easy task. While some authors are explicitly mentioned by Maximus when he quotes them, in other cases we need to point out the parallels ourselves. Maximus 36 37

E.D. Perl, ‘Methexis’ (1991), 126. S. Mitralexis, Ever-Moving Repose (2017), 9.

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usually refers by name to Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great and Pseudo-Dionysius. Close textual parallels have also been established between some passages in Maximus and Nemesius of Emesa (as in AI 10.100, paraphrasing Nemesius’ De natura hominis 43.130.12-8). At the same time, a set of very close parallels between Maximus and Evagrius has been revealed by István Perczel,38 while the dependence of Maximus’ Mystagogy on PseudoMacarius has been argued for in detail by Christian Boudignon.39 I have myself have found some minor parallels of this kind: in Epistle 15 (557D9-15), Maximus seems to paraphrase and combine various definitions of hypostasis offered by Leontius of Jerusalem in Contra Nestorianos (1529CD). The famous definition of substance in Opusculum 26,40 in which we read that ‘substance […] according to Fathers, is a natural entity pertinent to many which differ in hypostasis’, appears to replace the notion of common nature, present in a similar account in Epistle 15 (PG 91, 545A1-7), with the concept of φυσικὴ ὀντότης, which, according to the testimony of John of Damascus, figured in the definition of substance of Irenaeus.41 Alongside such evident textual parallels, more remote similarities have been suggested. As was pointed out above, Maximian inspirations can be sought even in Proclus. Scholars have also determined other philosophers, such as John Philoponus42 or Aristotle, to be Maximus’ sources, or the objects of his criticism. Meanwhile, Mitralexis, in Ever-Moving Repose, identifies similarities between Maximus’ discussion of time and the theory of time and motion in Aristotle, while I myself have just been pointing, in the above considerations, to a Stoic rationale within one of the key passages of Maximus’ work. I suppose it is possible to read as Stoic some other passages of his Ambigua. In Ambiguum 17.3.1-9, we find a discussion of the relationship between beings expressed in terms of bodies – to which, apparently, further determinations are added. Physical elements are mentioned there as first among such determinations, with further determinations supervening on them. In the ensuing lines of the very same paragraph, Maximus abandons, however, any logic of determinations of 38 István Perczel, ‘St Maximus on the Lord’s Prayer: An Inquiry into His Relationship to the Origenist Tradition’, in A. Lévy, The Architecture of the Cosmos (2015), 221-78. 39 Christian Boudignon, ‘Pseudo-Macarius as Source of the Mystagogy of Maximus the Confessor’, in A. Lévy, The Architecture of the Cosmos (2015), 39-50. 40 Maximus the Confessor, Ex quaestionibus a Theodoro monacho illi propositis, ed. François Combefis, PG 91, 276A. Hereafter cited as ThPol26. A new edition of this text has been offered by Bram Roosen, resulting in a division of the text into two opuscula. The passage in question figures in Fragmenta duo e Quaestionibus a Theodosio Gangrensi Maximo Confessori propositis, in Bram Roosen, ‘Epifanovitch Revisited: (Pseudo-)Maximi Confessoris Opuscula varia; A Critical Edition with Extensive Notes on Manuscript Tradition and Authenticity’ (PhD diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2001), 743-4. 41 John of Damascus, De duabus in Christo voluntatibus 28.1-6 = Iraeneus, fr 5.477. 42 Timur Shchukin, ‘Matter as a Universal: John Philoponus and Maximus the Confessor on the Eternity of the World’, Scrinium 13 (2017), 361-82.

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bodies similar to that which we analysed in the earlier section here, while trying to clarify his statement by appealing to an account of rules of predication. In Ambiguum 21, especially Sections 5 and 7, we are presented with a theory of cardinal virtues, which are defined as different ἕξεις of πνεῦμα ζωῆς. Justice is described as a ἕξις that ‘generates all logoi that are in beings’, γεννητικὴ πάντων τῶν ἐν τοῖς οὖσι λόγων (AI 21.5.27). Taking into consideration the fact that those logoi are immanent, and generated by the ‘pneuma of life’ present in virtue rather than by God himself, a Stoic interpretation of all of the terms employed by Maximus in this definition cannot be excluded. While the presence of Stoic elements in Maximus has not been given much attention by scholars, one should not be especially surprised to encounter Stoic overtones in the Ambigua ad Iohannem. Maximus does mention, among his inspirations in the Ambigua, ‘those around Pantaenus’ – alongside Dionysius – as the thinkers who identified the divine logoi with God’s willings, θεῖα θελήματα. His acquaintance with Pantaenus seems, however, to have been indirect: he does not mention any text by him, but accords him the title of ‘Professor of the Great Clement’. It appears that he learned about Pantaenus’ views from a lost work, possibly written by the latter himself (AI 7.24.4). Apart from this, we know very little about this figure, except for the fact that alongside being the teacher of Clement, he was also considered Stoic.43 Maximus’ statement in AI 7.24 constitutes the only direct testimony concerning Pantaenus’ teaching. It is possible, therefore, that other passages in AI also show Pantaenus’ influence. However, determining to what extent a passage is Stoic in nature may be very difficult. Among other things, claims such as those made in AI 10.89-90, or such detailed ethical definitions as those in AI 21.5, are rare in extant fragments and testimonies connected with the Stoics. Separating out Stoic material from, e.g., a Neoplatonic account of predication, and from Maximus’ own ideas, would prove a very tedious task. I am highlighting this difficulty because of the fact that in an earlier section I used the principle of consistency in order to distinguish between two rationales: the internal logic of AI 10.89-90 and the logic of the conclusion offered by Maximus. On closer analysis, what has emerged is that the consistency of the entire section has been put in question. It should be noted, though, that Maximus’ theological claim put forward in this passage has not suffered in consequence. Maximus was looking for an illustration of the idea that the world, as we perceive it, points to its Creator. This idea, as I wrote above, is explored in the entirety of Ambiguum 10, in which Maximus attempts to show the path of natural contemplation. The Stoic claim that all material things are in motion was introduced, together with its internal rationale, as an exemplification of the

43 Martin Heimgartner, ‘Pantaenus’, in Hubert Cancik et al. (eds), Brill’s New Pauly, New Pauly Online (2006).

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contingency of all created things. The fact that this claim involved a materialist and immanentist logic is neglected in Maximus’ conclusion. This very passage, however, has been widely commented on by numerous scholars, some of whom were mentioned in the first section of this article. Expansion and contraction of genera are considered to be among the core Maximian doctrines. The view that all reality, both intellectual and material, moves, has been debated in much detail. As a result, elements of a peculiarly Stoic consistency have been introduced into the logic of immutable Platonic genera, or the Porphyrian theory of predication. The Porphyrian tree has become the moving structure of reality, which is thereby both one and many, both stable and moving, even possibly both universal and particular, both divine and created. Similarly, an entire theory of ‘specific universals’ has been attributed to Maximus by Christophe Erismann on the basis of the definition of substance in ThPol26. A single phrase, borrowed from Irenaeus and blended into a definition of Cappadocian origin, has given birth to complex speculation, this only being possible because Maximus fused a logical with an ontological definition of substance – probably hoping to do justice to various Patristic intuitions. Consistency in philosophical accounts of reality emerges as basic intuitions about what makes things real or statements true, or establishes human peculiarity, are developed within a given theoretical approach. It is not achieved merely by avoiding contradiction. A consistent account, or explanation, is a set of considerations that do not stray from the most important intuitions of their author, while also trying to develop these intuitions with specific reference to each new issue discussed by that same writer or thinker. The data furnished by whatever kind of experience is considered paradigmatic by an author – be it our sensuous experience of the world around us, our experience of a formal reality encountered in abstract arguments, or our inner experience of being human – is brought into the whole and internally consistent body of a given philosophy. In Ancient thought, consistency is about being faithful to what has been recognised and discovered to be the ἀρχή or the ultimate cause of the world. If elements of different philosophical origin are used in such a work, and if the aim of this work is not to offer a systematic account of reality, then those pieces will carry within them their own consistencies. Drawing as it does on so many sources, Maximus’ work must inevitably contain, and sometimes even preserve, elements of all those consistencies. Maximus, clearly, was not worried about this fact. As he clearly states in AI 71.2.13-9, what he hopes for is cognitive faith, πίστις γνωστική. In AI 17.10, when drafting a complex picture of reality in which ‘contraries, relative to our bodies’ constitute ‘an entwinement that occurs according to blending (κρᾶσις) through composition’ (17.8.8-9), and in which bodies are ‘carried’ and ‘engendered’ by pre-existent logoi (11-6), he does this only to affirm that the entirety of this intertwined bodily reality, described in unmistakably Stoic terms, cannot, as a matter of fact, be known. In the context of a broad theological vision

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of the dependence of all things on God, the internal consistencies of the various ideas he makes use of simply do not matter. They illustrate his principal views by expressing, in various ways, the futility of human efforts to understand reality. Yet they are the only language that can be employed to utter Maximus’ deepest intuition: that all things can ultimately only be known from God’s perspective. Nevertheless, the internal consistencies of the theoretical snippets Maximus avails himself of do persist in his work. They can be recovered, much as we have tried to recover a lost piece of Stoic doctrine, possibly of the sort put forward by Pantaenus. Together, they create a multiplicity of human voices through which Maximus tries to talk about things divine, having to suspend, as he does at the outset of Ambigua ad Iohannem, ‘the highest and negative theology of the Logos’ (7.20.1-2). If he had wished to obey its rules, he would not have been able to emulate the divine point of view, for God’s point of view is not directly accessible to humans in this world. He allows, therefore, a multiplicity of consistencies, a true poly-consistency of human approaches. This poly-consistency can exist within his work so long as the philosophical intuitions that animate each particular consistency are not explored for themselves. I am afraid, however, that many Maximian scholars have become entangled in their efforts to offer a consistent picture of ‘Maximus’ philosophy’. Each clarification of inconsistent passages that does not address the inconsistency as such, cannot but end up postulating complex conceptual solutions through which the inconsistency is ostensibly circumvented. In particular, when Stoic materialist conceptions are taken literally and fused with Platonic or Neoplatonic intuitions, as well as with Maximus’ own ideas such as the ‘identity in logos, difference in tropos’, commentaries become less clear than Maximus’ text itself. It should be acknowledged, though, that many of the commentaries criticised in the first section of this article attempt to preserve, or translate into modern language, a very specific Maximian intuition: that the world, in its inner structure, speaks about God and points to God. The world of modern science is in this respect void of divinity. Necessities and contingencies create, in the contemporary account, a vision of an autonomous self-explanatory reality, in which impersonal mathematics and physics blend with the theoretical picture they give rise to into one. The theory of logoi, preserving – especially in Ambigua ad Iohannnem, on which I have focused in this article – elements of Stoic immanentism, has the advantage of describing the divine as something present in, and responsible for animating, the world. Maximus’ reinterpretation also makes those logoi divine eternal intentions, present mystically rather than physically in created reality. As such, though, it expresses a truth of a theological kind. We cannot offer a physical explanation of how bodily beings develop while to an extent preserving their identities in terms of divine logoi. The Stoics did postulate immanent logoi in order to elucidate actual processes observed in reality. Equally, the laws of physics have been postulated, starting from

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Newton’s laws of motion. And modern mathematical laws, however impersonal they may be, have one specific advantage: they allow us to predict phenomena with extreme precision. By contrast, we cannot say this about Maximus’ theory of logoi. Because of this, we should discern in Maximus’ poly-consistency that which is also quite apparent in his theory of logoi: namely, an expression of hope rather than a theory. We can hope for an account of reality which points to God, just as he did, when creating a vision out of multiple sources. On the other hand, if we perceive in Maximus’ effort a philosophically consistent theory, we shall lose this hope of viewing the world from a divine perspective, and may also, for instance, end up treating the elements of Stoic immanentism present in his work literally, interpreting him instead as some kind of pantheistic gnostic. It is to this danger, but also to the hope that Maximus’ works offer, that I have sought to direct readers in the present article.

The Notions of the Person and the Individual in Light of the Question of the Individuality of Christ in Saint Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662) Dionysios SKLIRIS, Athens, Greece

ABSTRACT The study of the terms πρόσωπον and ἄτομον in the thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor is very interesting for its own sake even apart from the modern debate on Personalism. The most significant relevant passage is arguably found in the Opusculum 16, where Saint Maximus explains why Christ is not an individual. In this article I try to follow closely Saint Maximus’ argument with the help of some valuable insights by contemporary scholars on the relation between the person and other significant notions such as the image (εἰκών), the logos and the activity (ἐνέργεια). After having observed such insights, we shall examine more closely the notion of the individual and the neutral metaphysical character that it has in Patristic literature in contrast to the deep existential, ethical and soteriological connotations of the term γνώμη.

A debate on the notions of person and individual in the thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662 AD) has become very acute after the so-called ‘personalist’ interpretation of Saint Maximus by Roman Catholic scholars in the 1970s and in the 1980s1 and the critique it had received,2 as well as the work of ‘personalist’ Orthodox thinkers3 and the recent relevant critique 1 See, for example, Alain Riou, Le Monde et l’Église selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris, 1973); Jean-Miguel Garrigues, Maxime le Confesseur. La charité, avenir divin de l’homme, Théologie Historique 38 (Paris, 1976); François-Marie Léthel, Théologie de l’Agonie du Christ. La liberté humaine du Fils de Dieu et son importance sotériologique mises en lumière par saint Maxime le Confesseur (Paris, 1979); Felix Heinzer, Gottes Sohn als Mensch. Die Struktur des Menschseins Christi bei Maximus Confessor, Paradosis 26 (Freiburg, 1980); Piere Piret, Le Christ et la Trinité selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris, 1983). 2 See, for example, Marcel Doucet, ‘Vues récentes sur les «métamorphoses» de la pensée de Saint Maxime le Confesseur’, Science et Esprit 31 (1979), 268-302; id., ‘Est-ce que le Monothélisme a fait autant d’illustres victimes? Réflexions sur un ouvrage de F.-M. Léthel’, Science et Esprit 35 (1983), 53-83; id., ‘La volonté humaine du Christ, spécialement en son Agonie. Maxime le Confesseur, interprète de l’Écriture’, Science et Esprit 37 (1985), 123-59; Jean-Claude Larchet, La Divinisation de l’Homme selon Saint Maxime le Confesseur, Cogitatio Fidei 194 (Paris, 1996). 3 See, for example, Christos Yannaras, De l’absence et de l’inconnaissance de Dieu (Paris, 1971); id., Person and Eros (Brookline, MA, 2007); John Zizioulas, L’Être Ecclésial (Geneva, Paris, 1981); id., Being As Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (London,

Studia Patristica CXXI, 29-41. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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to them.4 In this article I will try to examine this subject in the light of the question of the individuality and universality of the human nature of Christ, since in Maximian thought there is a very profound relation between Christology and anthropology, as I will endeavor to show. The most crucial passage in this respect is found in the Opusculum 16 (PG 91,201C-204A), a work of the later period of Saint Maximus’ thought, when he has engaged in the polemics against Monoenergism and Monothelitism. It has to be quoted at length in order to observe the subtlety of Saint Maximus’ formulations: Τίνι δὲ δῆλον οὐκ ἔστιν, ὡς ἐπὶ μὲν οὐσίας καὶ φύσεως τῆς αὐτῆς, διαφορὰν ὑπάρξεως ἢ φυσικῆς ἐνεργείας, οὐκ ἔστιν ἰδεῖν; Οὐδεμία γὰρ πρὸς ἑαυτὴν διαφέρει· τοῦτο γάρ πως ἀμήχανον. Ἐν ἀτόμῳ δὲ καὶ προσώπῳ πάντῃ τε καὶ πάντως, εἴπερ σύνθετον· καὶ διαφόρους τε γὰρ φύσεις, τὰς ἐξ ὧν συνέστηκεν, καθορῶμεν καὶ τὰς φυσικὰς κινήσεις, αἷς ἐνεργοῦν κατὰ φύσιν γνωρίζεται, τὴν οἰκείαν πιστούμενος ὕπαρξιν, καὶ ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο τὰ ἐξ ὧν ἐστι, διὰ τῆς κατ’ ἄλλο καὶ ἄλλο φυσικῆς ἐνεργείας πραγματικῶς παριστᾷ, δι’ οὗ τοῦ πρὸς αὐτό, φημὶ δὲ τὸ ἄτομον, ἀποσκοποῦντος, καὶ τὰς φύσεις ἑκοντὶ παρατρέχοντος, διὰ τὸ τὰς φυσικὰς ἀνελεῖν ἐνεργείας, τὴν καταδρομὴν, οὐ μᾶλλον ἐν τούτῳ βαροῦσαν, ἢ συνεργοῦσαν εὑρίσκομεν. Εἰ γὰρ οὐκ εἰς μίαν φυσικὴν τὸ ἄτομον περικλείεται πάντως ἐνέργειαν, ὥσπερ οὖν οὐδὲ φύσιν· τίς γὰρ ὁ λέγων, ἢ παραστῆσαι δυνάμενος; δῆλον ὡς ταῖς κατ’ αὐτὸ φύσεσιν ἤγουν οὐσίαις, ἰσαρίθμους ἔχει τὰς οὐσιώδεις κινήσεις, καὶ οὐδεὶς ἀντερεῖ. Καὶ παρῶ λέγειν ὡς οὐδὲ ἄτομον κυρίως τὸ κατὰ Χριστὸν σύνθετον λέγεται πρόσωπον. Οὐ γὰρ σχέσιν ἔχει πρὸς τὴν ἐκ τοῦ γενικωτάτου γένους διὰ τῶν ὑπάλληλα καθιεμένην γενῶν πρὸς τὸ εἰδικώτατον εἶδος διαίρεσιν, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τὴν οἰκείαν πρόοδον περιγράφουσαν. Ὅθεν διὰ τοῦτο κατὰ τὸν σοφώτατον Κύριλλον, τὸ Χριστὸς ὄνομα οὔτε ὅρου δύναμιν ἔχει· οὐδὲ γὰρ εἶδός ἐστι πολλῶν ἀριθμῷ διαφερόντων κατηγορούμενον, οὔτε μὴν τὴν τινὸς οὐσίαν δηλοῖ. Οὐδὲ γὰρ ἄτομόν ἐστι, πρὸς εἶδος ἢ γένος ἀναγόμενον, ἢ κατ᾿ οὐσίαν ὑπὸ τούτων περιγραφόμενον· ἀλλ᾿ ὑπόστασις σύνθετος, τὴν φυσικὴν τῶν ἄκρων διαίρεσιν ἐν ἑαυτῇ κατ᾿ ἄκρον ταυτίζουσα, καὶ εἰς ἓν ἄγουσα τῇ τῶν οἰκείων ἑνώσει μερῶν. To whom is it not obvious that it is not possible to observe a difference of existence or of natural activity in the same nature and essence? For no nature or essence is different from itself; this would be in any case impossible. On the contrary, the difference is always and in every way manifest in the individual and in the person, if it is composite; and we observe the different natures out of which He [the Christ] is composed and the natural movements, through which He is known to act by nature, confirming His own 1985); id., Communion & Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London, New York, 2006). 4 See, for example, Verna Harrison, ‘Yannaras on Person and Nature’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 33 (1989), 287-98; ead., ‘Zizioulas on Communion and Otherness’, St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 42 (1998), 273-300; André De Halleux, Patrologie et œcumenisme: Recueil d’études, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 93 (Louvain, 1990), 218-41; Lucian Turcescu, ‘«Person» versus «individual» and other modern misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa’, Modern Theology 18/4 (2002), 97-109; Jean-Claude Larchet, Personne et nature. La Trinité – Le Christ – L’homme (Paris, 2011).

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existence, and He manifests as real the one and the other out of which He is constituted through the natural activity according to the one and the other; for this reason, if someone contemplates it, – I mean the individual –, willingly not focusing on the natures, by eliminating the natural activities, we find that the argument is more strengthened than refuted. For if the individual is not restricted in one natural activity in every case, as it is equally not restricted in one nature, who could possibly say that or prove that? It is evident that it has a number of essential movements that is equal to the number of natures or essences that we find in it; and nobody can deny that. And I omit to say that, properly speaking, the composite person of Christ cannot be called an individual. Because it does not have a relation with the division that descends from the most general genus through the subaltern genera to the most specific species, thus circumscribing in it its proper procession. It is for this reason that according to the wise Cyril the name ‘Christ’ does not have the power of a definition; because it is not a species that could be predicated of many beings that differ in number, and it does not signify the essence of something either. And it is not an individual that is reducible to a species or to a genus or something that is circumscribable by them according to essence; but it is a composite hypostasis that identifies in itself in an extreme way the natural division of the extremes and brings them in one through the union of its proper parts.

The passage is quite revealing about how Saint Maximus understands the notions of hypostasis, person and individual. It is true that he does not try to establish an opposition between the person and the individual. He makes however a clear distinction between the two. One could resume the stages of the process of his thought in the following way: i) In the first place, Saint Maximus wants to show that in the same nature or essence, there can be no difference of operation (ἐνέργεια) or existence, because no nature or essence can be different in relation to itself. Therefore, if there is a difference in the operation (ἐνέργεια), this means that there are obviously two operations that are referring to two natures. In other words, there is a composite person or individual. It is therefore in the composite individual or person that one can remark the difference of operation or rather the existence of two different operations. The priority of Saint Maximus is to show that if there is a difference of operation, this means that there are two operations and, therefore, two natures, and, inversely, if there are two natures in one composite individual or person, this means that there are two operations. The opponent that Saint Maximus tries to refute here is obviously Monoenergism. ii) In a second place, Saint Maximus wishes to make a precision in order to avoid a misunderstanding. It is true that this precision is not his priority in this context, but he wants to make it nevertheless. It is introduced by the expression καὶ παρῶ λέγειν ὡς (‘and I omit to say that’). This means that it is a precision of secondary value, which however is not after all neglected by Saint Maximus, since he is dedicating several propositions to it. One could equally claim that such precisions that are not the first concern of an author reveal better his intimate way of thinking, since they are spontaneous and not driven by the need

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of anti-heretical polemics. This precision is that Christ is a composite person (PG 91, 201D), as well as a composite hypostasis (204A), but He is not an individual, properly speaking (οὐδὲ ἄτομον κυρίως τὸ κατὰ Χριστὸν σύνθετον λέγεται πρόσωπον). By explaining why Christ is not an individual, Saint Maximus lets us understand how he understands the individual, namely as the result of a division that proceeds from the most general genus to the most specific species. iii) Saint Maximus explains that the name of ‘Christ’ does not designate a species nor an essence or other definable entity (ὅρος). By the latter, one understands the definition of a generality that would put logical limits to a plurality of subjects. Christ is, however, a composite hypostasis, since He unites in Himself the division of his extreme ‘constituents’, namely Divinity and humanity. One could thus conclude that in Saint Maximus the notion of the hypostasis is characterized by the fact that it can synthesize between heterogeneous elements. The passage thus shows that even though the notions of the person and the individual can coincide in the same being, especially in a created human being, they are not identical. The term ἄτομον (individual) might mean the independent existence, the self-subsistent being, a meaning that is very similar to the one of hypostasis (ὑπόστασις). But its main characteristic is that the ἄτομον is the last product in a logical and metaphysical hierarchy, starting from the most general genus and proceeding to the subaltern genera and species until the most specific species. The term πρόσωπον (person) is closely linked to that of hypostasis and individual, but it rather answers the question of personal identity, always referring to a ‘who’ (τίς). The πρόσωπον is rather linked to hypostases that can bear a name due to their having intellect (νοερόν) and self-determination of movement (αὐτεξούσιον). According to the analysis of Georgi Kapriev,5 the individual (ἄτομον) is a category of essence that results from the distinction between genus and species. In other words, it is a category that belongs to the order of nature and not to that of hypostasis. It constitutes the ultimate particularity which bears a common nature and which cannot suffer a further destruction or reduction without losing this character of bearer of a common nature. The individual is rather linked to the universality of the species and the genus reflecting the aspects of this community and not to an absolute unicity such as a hypostasis. However, it does not have the negative modern connotations of egoism or isolation.6 The 5 Georgi Kapriev, ‘The conceptual apparatus of Maximus the Confessor and contemporary anthropology’, in Sotiris Mitralexis, Georgios Steiris, Marcin Podbielski and Sebastian Lalla (eds), Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher (Eugene, OR, 2017), 166-92. 6 Ibid. 172-3: ‘The difference between “individual” and “hypostasis” cannot be expressed, however, by means of dialectic criteria such as “closedness-openness” or “egotism-love”. There is

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person is considered as a synonym of hypostasis after the tradition that was formed before Maximus. However, hypostasis means a possibility to be distinguished from other hypostases not only by number, but also by the capacity of self-subsistence. The notion of hypostasis thus comprises two aspects: i) The possibility of self-constitution in a way of separation from other hypostases; ii) The fact that it is a substance comprising properties that differentiate it from other hypostases of the same species not only by number, but also because of the attribution to it of different properties. The latter make an individual of a species different from the other individuals of the same species. Hypostasis thus signifies the absolute separated particularity (καθ᾽ ἕκαστον).7 It is to be noted that in the Maximian corpus the notion of hypostasis is much more frequent than that of person or of individual, as Jean-Claude Larchet remarks in a very systematic article about this question.8 Hypostasis designates a concrete being that is distinguished from other concrete beings through the particular properties that it synthesizes. Hypostasis thus has two opposite roles, namely one of distinguishing (without necessarily dividing) and one of synthesis.9 However, these seemingly opposite roles are in fact complementary: it is thanks to the ontological coherence offered by hypostasis that one being can differentiate itself from its surroundings and to integrate heterogeneous elements inside it. Hypostasis thus means this possibility of self-subsistence by synthesizing one’s own elements and by differentiating oneself from others. According to Kapriev, even though the notions of person and of hypostasis are very close, one must not forget that only rational beings (God, angels and humans) are persons, whereas the notion of hypostasis is referring to any being that can have a substance with unique properties acquiring self-subsistence. While hypostasis signifies the aspect of self-subsistence, person signifies the possibility to enter in relation or to act as a representative of other persons.10 no any good reason to claim that the atom/individual is by definition non-relational or that it carries any negative connotations, such as, for example, some of the connotations used in anthropology referring to the isolation of human being from other human beings, or from any other creature in general… Ιt is a single particular being from the point of view of its natural valence which is commonly valid for its genus. An individual cannot seek to become a hypostasis or to be established as a hypostasis because, by definition, it reflects aspects of what is universal and commonly valid within the singular and the particular, whose uniqueness is expressed by the term “hypostasis”’. 7 Ibid. 175. 8 Jean-Claude Larchet, ‘Hypostase, personne et individu selon saint Maxime le Confesseur’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 109 (2014), 35-63. 9 Ibid. 62. 10 See G. Kapriev, ‘The conceptual apparatus’ (2017), 176: ‘It should be pointed out however that the close connection between the concepts should not erase the distinction that is based on the fact that while it is only rational beings (God, angels, man) that could have a prosopon or person, the hypostasis is associated with every single thing or being that is self-subsisting, has a nature and unique properties. In his specific analyzes Maximus has obviously taken into account that particular difference … The focus of the term “hypostasis” is on the individual self-determined existence, while “person” rather refers to the specific actions associated with the personal

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Kapriev remarks that the Maximian notions are philosophical expressions of the biblical commandment ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ (Lev. 19:18): the possibility of relation thanks to personhood is founded on the possibility of internal ontological coherence that is due to hypostasis. Can the term πρόσωπον be applied to animals? However, the crucial question is whether Saint Maximus ascribed personhood only to human beings or if he extended it to animals as well. There is a general impression, possibly because of modern preconceptions about personhood, that the term πρόσωπον is only applied to God, to humans and to angels, but not to animals. However, Jean-Claude Larchet presents two passages where Maximus arguably does use the term πρόσωπον for animals.11 Firstly, in Letter 13 (PG 91, 517D) Maximus wants to prove that Christ is a composite hypostasis and not a composite nature. In order to accomplish that he first tries to demonstrate that the name of Christ can refer neither to a general nature nor to a singular one. In trying to show the latter, Saint Maximus responds to the ‘argument of the phoenix’, namely to the position that there can be a nature comprising one sole instantiation, as was arguably the case with the mythological animal. Maximus’ position is that such a nature like the phoenix cannot exist in reality and even if it did, the phoenix would not really be the unique instantiation of a nature. If one examines this passage carefully, one will see that the term πρόσωπον is employed in the beginning when Maximus makes the general statement that ‘in general, one nature is never circumscribed in one sole person (ἑνὶ προσώπῳ)’. This is his own position and not that of his adversaries. It is a position that is rather referring to Christ, but also has a general ontological character. When, afterwards, Saint Maximus is particularly referring to the case of the phoenix that is proposed by his hypothetical adversaries, he uses the term ὑπόστασις twice, while abstaining from using the term πρόσωπον again. This refraining could be seen as revealing the Confessor’s general tendency. The second passage evoked by Larchet is however more significant. In Letter 15 (PG 91, 549C) Saint Maximus writes: ‘the beings that are united according to one sole and the same nature or essence are distinguished between them according to the hypostases, that is the persons (ταῖς ὑποστάσεσιν, ἤγουν προσώποις), as is the case with angels, with humans and with all the creatures properties in terms of their relational aspects with respect to others. It is therefore possible for a person to represent or act instead of others, while it is impossible to think of hypostases in the same way. In this sense, “person” means the ability of a hypostasis to un-spontaneously enter into relationships and relate to the other hypostases which are involved in those relations’. 11 J.-C. Larchet, ‘Hypostase, personne et individu’ (2014).

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that are considered in a species or in a genus. For one angel is distinguished from another, one man is distinguished from another, one ox is distinguished from another, one dog is distinguished from another according to the hypostasis and not according to nature and essence’. This passage seems to demonstrate the position of Jean-Claude Larchet that the term πρόσωπον can be applied to animals as well. However, I would like to remark that here also the term πρόσωπον is used before the evocation of the example of the angels and the humans, whereas it is only the term ὑπόστασις that is used after the evocation of the example of the oxen and the dogs. It seems that Saint Maximus is hesitant to use again the term πρόσωπον after having spoken about such animals. What is interesting for the purpose of this research is not a complete equation or opposition between the different terms, but rather to investigate their more subtle nuances. I think that this hesitation of Saint Maximus is revealing about a subtle difference in the nuance of the terms, even though they seem to be synonymous in the created realm as J.-C. Larchet has pointed out. The relation between the person and the activity In what concerns such differences in the nuance of the terms, an analysis by Marcin Podbielsky can offer some very valuable insights.12 Following an analytic approach, Podbielsky examines the use of the term πρόσωπον on the one hand in Christology and Trinitarian Theology, and, on the other, in contexts where the term πρόσωπον could mean ‘face’ or ‘surface’. It is to be noted that the term πρόσωπον appears frequently in the context of a refutation of heresies such as Sabellianism and Nestorianism, while something similar is not the case with that of hypostasis. The difference between persons emerges through their different mode of activity or actualization (τρόπος τῆς ἐνεργείας) where the term tropos acquires an ethical sense. Personality thus becomes an ethical reality founded on choice and on the way one modifies her substance so that the latter be not only a ‘what’ (τί), but the ‘what’ of ‘someone’ (τίς). By being connected to the ethical tropos, the person acquires the sense of a ‘character’. But Saint Maximus inherits from the Septuagint and its patristic commentaries the meaning of the πρόσωπον as a ‘face’ (of men or even of God), a ‘surface’ or a ‘representation’. In this last sense, it can also mean the exterior manifestation of the soul or the exterior manifestation of a disposition through which God or the Christ is incarnated in the modes of life of humans. The πρόσωπον thus means the exterior persona that expresses the inner life. This sense of the πρόσωπον as a manifestation of the self is linked to the divine image. According to Podbielski, Maximus insists on the way through which we are letting God 12 Marcin Podbielski, ‘The Face of the Soul, the Face of God. Maximus the Confessor and Prosopon’, Forum Philosophicum 19 (2014), 107-44.

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shape in us the πρόσωπον Χριστοῦ through His logoi and energies.13 This analytical approach as well as the effort to evaluate all the different sources of the Maximian notions helps us discern all their subtle nuances. Even though Saint Maximus does not explicitly define the person as a human particularity that differentiates man from animals in a modern personalist way, the use of the term πρόσωπον in order to signify the face, the representation and the ethical mode of activity seems to refer to the divine image in man. In what concerns the hypostasis, it could be conceived as a double movement of internal self-constitution that runs in tandem with the integration of heterogeneous elements and the differentiation from other hypostases. It is in this sense that one could speak of a certain contemplation of the individual in a hypostasis, namely a contemplation of the ensemble of properties in the act that makes them subsist in a concrete being. In the same sense, one could speak of a contemplation of the person in the hypostasis, namely in that of a consideration of elements, such as the face, the name or the ethical expression in their ontological grounding. At this point it would be very fruitful to add an insight offered by Torstein Tollefsen. Tollefsen has linked the Maximian notion of the personal hypostasis to the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality (δύναμις) and activity or actualization (ἐνέργεια).14 He thinks that according to Saint Maximus, a human being is a personal hypostasis when she assumes her human essence and its potentiality in a way that allows her to have an activity that belongs to her as ‘someone’ (τίς). In other words, in order to be a personal hypostasis, a being has to be someone (τίς) who gives shape to a certain mode of activity. This means that the personal hypostasis functions as a principle of appropriation.15 Tollefsen agrees with scholars such as Andrew Louth16 and Melchisedek Törönen17 that in the Maximian period there is no opposition between a personal hypostasis and an individual in the modern personalist sense, but at the same time he tries to examine some more profound semantical nuances of hypostasis. Tollefsen’s contribution is very valuable, because it helps us understand better what happens in Christology if one decides to extend this understanding to it. One could argue that Christ is a hypostasis in the sense that He assumes the human nature, potentiality and activity while at the same 13

Ibid. 138-9. Torstein Tollefsen, ‘St Maximus’ concept of a human hypostasis’, in Maxim Vasiljević (ed.), Knowing the purpose of creation through the Resurrection. Proceedings of the Symposium on St Maximus the Confessor. Belgrade, October 18-21, 2012 (Alhambra, CA, Belgrade, 2013), 122. 15 Ibid. 122. 16 See Andrew Louth, St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2002), 47-53. 17 Melchisedek Törönen, Union and Distinction in the Thought of St Maximus the Confessor, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2007), 55-9. 14

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time forming a particular mode of human activity which is bearing the ‘mark’ (τύπωσις) of His personal hypostatic identity (τίς). It is mostly in Christology that we witness the personal hypostasis as a principle of appropriation, as the core of Maximian Christology lies in the assumption of the human nature and activity by Christ. One more significant contribution by Tollefsen is the connection between the personal hypostasis and the logos as divine intention.18 Being a person is thus a gift one receives from God, whereas what one achieves herself (in dialogue with God) is the form of the mode of one’s activity. A similar point was made by Grigory Benevich when he underlines the connection between hypostasis and logos which means that hypostasis exceeds its properties. This is particularly manifest in Christology where Christ does have human properties without however being a human hypostasis.19 The latter means that one cannot define the person from its properties or from free acts isolated from the perspective of its logos. For Benevich, the fact that there is a divine logos for each personal hypostasis entails an eschatological character, namely the fact that the truth of the personal hypostasis is only revealed in the eschaton. Is Christ an individual? After having observed these significant insights of contemporary scholars, we can return to the question put by the Opusculum 16, namely why Christ is not an individual. One could argue that there are at least four reasons for which Christ is not an individual: i) The reason given explicitly in the passage, namely that Christ qua Christ, that is as a composite hypostasis, is not an individual that is subordinated to species and genera. There is no species or genus that would comprise Christ as a composite hypostasis. Besides, the name ‘Christ’ does not designate a species or genus. ii) This composite hypostasis of Christ does not comprise a human individual. For Maximus, affirming the contrary would be tantamount to Nestorianism. As Jean-Claude Larchet notes in his ‘Introduction’ to the Opuscula when he comments this same passage, ‘Maximus is here referring to Saint Cyril. The idea that Christ did not assume an individual man belongs to the Alexandrian Christology which is opposing the Antiochian one in this respect. This means that for Saint Maximus, Christ did not assume a human nature that was already individuated and that in Christ the human soul and body are not synthesized by a human hypostasis, as is the case with other humans. Christ is deprived of a human hypostasis in the same way that He is deprived of a human individual. In Him, it is the divine hypostasis 18

T. Tollefsen, ‘St Maximus’ concept of a human hypostasis’ (2013), 124. Grigory Benevich, ‘God’s Logoi and Human Personhood in St Maximus the Confessor’, Studi sull’Oriente Cristiano 13 (2009), 137-52, 151. 19

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that is the principle of both the individuation of the human nature (or, more precisely, of the traits / properties that allow Christ to be differentiated from other humans) and the synthesis of soul and body that give them their identity.’20 iii) This has important soteriological consequences, since the fact that Christ did not assume a human individual means that He can recapitulate the fullness of human nature in order to save it.21 The position of Saint Maximus is very subtle: On the one hand, the human nature of Christ is not abstract, since that would imply Docetism. On the other, the individual properties of Christ (ἰδιώματα) do not turn His human nature into a complete human individual, since that would imply Nestorianism. But the most particular trait of Maximian Christology is that Christ does not have a gnomic will. The lack of both gnomic will and full individuality in Christ (these are two different but interlinked questions) entail that Christ’s human nature could be considered as both individualized and universal. It is individualized in the sense that it has particular properties (ἰδιώματα). And it is universal in the existential and soteriological sense that it does not have the lapsarian mode of division of human nature that is connected to the gnomic will and the sexual reproduction of humanity. As Jean-Claude Larchet remarks, the composite personal hypostasis of Christ is the same personal hypostasis with that of the Son. In other words, there is no difference in the personal hypostasis before and after the Incarnation. This means that Maximian Christology is fundamentally an Alexandrian and Neo-Chalcedonian one making a strong point against Nestorianism. But this equally means that Christ is the ‘pre-eternal’ hypostasis of the Word, whereas He is not at all an individual. There are many different reasons for the latter. In the first place, Divinity is an absolutely simple reality that does not comprise genera, species and individuals, as is the case with created reality. For Saint Maximus, this absolute divine simplicity excludes the reality of the individual in the Trinity in the same sense that it excludes the reality of the genera and the species. On the other hand, this absolutely simple ‘reality’ of the divine essence can ‘coexist’ with the three personal hypostases, without the latter threatening its simplicity, according to the traditional Cappadocian view. But it cannot coexist with three individuals. The attribution of individuality to the pre-eternal Son or even to the hypostasis of the incarnated Son (which is after all the same hypostasis) would threaten divine simplicity. In this Maximus’ line of thought is probably different than that of Saint John of Damascus. 20 Jean-Claude Larchet, ‘Introduction’, in Saint Maxime le Confesseur, Opuscules théologiques et polémiques, trans. Emmanuel Ponsoye (Paris, 1998), 66. 21 Ibid. 66. For a different approach see Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ. Person, Nature and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2004), 103.

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Jean-Claude Larchet concludes with the following remark: ‘The ‘composite hypostasis’ of Christ constitutes a special case. Apart from this special case, the notions of person and individual can have the same connotations with that of the hypostasis.’22 This proposition is correct, but it does not render full justice to the theological profundity of the question. It is true that apart from the ‘special case’ of Christ, that is in created reality, the person, the hypostasis and the individual can ‘have the same connotations’, as Larchet would put it. But Christ should not be viewed only as a sui generis exception that proves the rule. On the contrary, Christ is the One who reveals Divinity, being the true man. The fact that Christ is not an individual reveals that, according to Saint Maximus at least, the three Divine Persons are also not individuals. For Saint Maximus the unity, simplicity and communion of the Trinity is so profound that there can be no room in it either for gnomic division or even for the sheer logical and metaphysical division of the individual. The mode of existence (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως) conceived by Saint Maximus is thus something different than individuality, its difference lying in the fact that it can coexist with the absolute simplicity of the divine logos of the ‘essence’ (λόγος τῆς οὐσίας). On the contrary, the individual is a mode which implies a logical division that is not applicable to the Trinity. By attributing explicitly the character of person and hypostasis to Christ, while denying that of the individual, Saint Maximus implies that this character of the personal hypostasis is compatible with simplicity in a way that is not true for that of the individual. There are some soteriological consequences in this. The fact that Christ is not a divine individual is linked to the fact that He is not a human individual. It means that He can recapitulate and divinize the human nature in its universality. It is true that the term ἄτομον is neutral in the work of Saint Maximus and does not have the negative connotations that the term γνώμη might have in some contexts. There is however a certain soteriological meaning also in the fact that Christ is not an individual. At the same time, Saint Maximus’ view is not a ‘personalist’ one in the extreme modern version of the term, since in his soteriology human persons are not invited to ‘abandon’ or to ‘escape from’ their individuality in their ascetic struggle that leads to the path of divinization. The individual is a reality that pertains to the created world and human beings can be saved only as individuals. In Saint Maximus’ thought, the negative connotations are restricted solely to the ‘gnomic will’ (γνώμη), which is ‘voluntarily surrendered’23 to God in the eschatological life. According to Jean-Claude Larchet, in the thought of Saint Maximus what establishes a real division and opposition between different beings is not individuality per se (ἄτομον), but only the γνώμη, which results from a particular disposition of the human 22

J.-C. Larchet, ‘Introduction’ (1998), 62. Maximos the Confessor. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers. Volume I, ed. Nicholas Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28 (Cambridge, MA, London, 2014), 91 (PG 91, 1076B-C). 23

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hypostasis or person.24 But the γνώμη is a wider ethical and existential notion and not merely a logical or an ontological one like that of the individual.25 It is true that the term γνώμη is much more relevant to the modern debate about the psychological break of the individual from its surroundings. The term γνώμη designates a real existential break and rupture (ῥῆγμα), while the term ἄτομον is rather neutral from an ethical or existential point of view. For this reason, any consideration of the relation between person and individual that does not take into account the ethical and existential implications of the gnomic will is necessarily incomplete. In this sense it would not be accurate to only state that Christ is a particular or ‘sui generis’ case and leave it at that. Christology is revealing about both theological and anthropological truths even though the two do not absolutely coincide. Human beings exist necessarily as individuals and have to assume their gnomic will. They are saved as individuals but are invited to surrender their gnomic will to God in an eschatological perspective. But this path of divinization, which absolutely respects the created nature including its necessary individuality, is made possible only because Christ is Himself not an individual.

Conclusions In summing up some points that one can make after having observed the Opusculum 16 as well as the relevant debate between contemporary scholars: Christ is a person and a hypostasis, but He is not an individual. This is so for the following reasons: i) As Son the Logos, i.e. as a divine personal hypostasis He is not an individual, because there is no logical hierarchy of genera and species in the Trinity. ii) As a result of the hypostatic synthesis, that is as ‘Christ’, He is also not an individual, because there is no species or genus of Christ; Christ as a result of the union is an absolutely unique case. iii) But Christ is not an individual also as a man, because the latter would entail Nestorianism. Even though Christ does have properties (ἰδιώματα), these properties are not sufficient for Him to be characterized as an individual. After these considerations, one can make the following remarks. In Theology and Christology there is a theory of person and of hypostasis but not one of the individual. In anthropology all three notions can be applied. Animals are hypostases and individuals and possibly even πρόσωπα, even though I think Saint Maximus is reluctant to affirm the latter, as I have noted. There is thus a difference in the semantic nuance of the terms, which should be studied for its own sake and not only in the context of a Personalist or anti-Personalist modern 24 25

Letter 2; PG 91, 396C-D, 400C-D. J.-C. Larchet, ‘Hypostase, personne et individu’ (2014), 59.

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reading. What is certain is that when Maximus affirms that Christ is not an individual, this does not entail a depreciation of the term ἄτομον. The only term where such exclusion entails indeed such existential, ontological and soteriological consequences is the term γνώμη. For this reason every debate which would wish to bring the thought of Saint Maximus in relation to Modern or Post-modern issues should rather focus on the notion of the γνώμη instead of that of the ἄτομον.

‘Christ is not an Individual’: The Meaning and Reception of an Early Byzantine Christological Argument Alexis TORRANCE, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

ABSTRACT In their respective defenses of dyophysite Christology, both Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus repeatedly reject the concept of Christ as a single ‘mixed’ nature of God and man. In doing so, they deploy an interesting argument whereby Christ was not properly speaking an ‘individual’ stemming from a common genus (like ‘Christness’). This argument will first be examined in its own right before turning to its reception and re-working in modern Orthodox theology, particularly the personalist (and anti-individualist) thought of John Zizioulas. The negative reaction to Zizioulas’ appropriation of this idea, exemplified in the work of Jean-Claude Larchet, will likewise be summarized. In the final section, an alternative view of the potential theological relevance of the argument that ‘Christ is not an individual’ will be offered, one that is not so much related to the person vs individual debate as to the ongoing discussion of the concept of ‘Godmanhood’ or ‘divine-humanity’ espoused by Vladimir Soloviev and developed in the early twentieth century by Sergius Bulgakov. In conclusion, it is argued that if one wishes to find a contemporary theological application for the early Byzantine rebuttal of Christ’s ‘individuality’, it would be more natural to link it with an argument avant la lettre against the notion of an overarching concept of ‘Godmanhood’ of which Christ is the individual instantiation, rather than as a developed commentary on the notion of the person/hypostasis in opposition to that of the individual.

The Christology of Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus was, as is well known, formative for the subsequent Byzantine theological tradition. Maximus’ strong dyophysite defense of Christ’s two natural wills and energies (divine and human), taken up in turn by John of Damascus, was to become a linchpin of orthodoxy, a necessary corollary of the Chalcedonian Definition, and thus an article of faith. In the midst of their respective articulations of the doctrine of Christ as one person or hypostasis in two natures, written most especially but not exclusively against the threat of miaphysite or single nature Christology, a host of issues were addressed that are seldom discussed at any great length in the scholarly literature. One such issue is the question of Christ as an atomon or ‘individual’. I wish in the first part of my article to outline Maximus’ and John of Damascus’ logic for their shared argument that Christ

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cannot properly be called an ‘individual’. Having done this, I will turn to the interesting reception of this argument in modern Orthodox personalist theology, specifically the thought of John Zizioulas, together with the rejection of Zizioulas’ alleged misappropriation of the argument for his own ends. While agreeing that in context Maximus and John of Damascus are not giving a clear and straightforward mandate to Zizioulas’ personalism, I want to show that their position nevertheless still has important resonances for another popular theme in modern Orthodox theology, namely Godmanhood or Divine-Humanity. Christ is not an individual The argument that Christ is not an atomon or individual occurs most directly in Maximus’ Opusculum 16 and his Epistle 13, and John of Damascus’ Expositio Fidei 47 (Book 3.3), but it is connected with another argument that runs through the Christological writings of these two figures, namely that Christ is not a single mixed or compound nature (a form of miaphysitism). How, then, does the argument work? Maximus writes in Opusculum 16 as follows: I refrain from saying that the composite person of Christ is properly speaking an individual, for it has no relationship with the division descending from the most general genus via the subordinate species towards the most specific/individuated form, and the specific/ individuated form circumscribes the proper process of the individual. Thus, according to the wise Cyril, for this reason the name of Christ has no value of definition, for it is not a form predicated of entities differentiated by number, nor certainly does it designate the essence of something. Nor is it an individual reducible to a species or a genus, neither is it easily defined by them according to essence; but [‘Christ’ designates] a composite hypostasis ‘identifying’ in itself, ‘at its height’, the natural separation of extremes, bringing them into unity by the union of its proper parts.1

When Maximus disavows the term atomon or ‘individual’ for Christ, he is taking the term in its strict philosophical sense as articulated by Aristotle and codified in the Porphyrean tree, whereby the individual is the concrete instantiation of a more general genus or species, that is, of an underlying essence or nature. Thus a specific labrador would be an individual of the species dog and of the still more general genus mammal, and Paul would be an individual of the human species or human nature, etc. But when it comes to Christ, precisely because he bears in his person two incommensurable natures (divine and human), and is thereby a ‘composite’ hypostasis, he cannot strictly speaking be an atomon or individual. If he were, there would need to be a single underlying species or nature of Christness of which he was the instantiation, which there is not. 1

Maximus, Opusculum 16 (PG 91, 201D-204A).

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Maximus elaborates on this idea in Epistle 12, when he writes: The name ‘Christ’ is not there to signify an essence, that is to say a nature as a genus of a series of multiple individuals differentiated by hypostasis, as the blessed Cyril said in his scholia: ‘This name of Christ does not have a value of definition nor does it show the essence of a certain [kind]; it is [the name] of the hypostasis of the Word understood as having assumed a noetic soul’. Neither does the human being have a single nature [made] of a soul and a body; it is the name of a specific genus in relation to the others by the difference of constitution separating him and likewise affirmed of the individuals it encompasses.2

As Jean-Claude Larchet has pointed out, Maximus’ near interchangeable use of ‘individual’ and ‘hypostasis’ in this passage is telling. What he is trying to get at above all with this argument is that Christ is not one essence or nature but two, and as such is a) utterly unique and unrepeatable, and b) not subject to the ordinary flow of Aristotelian logic (even if Aristotelian categories are routinely employed to aid in expounding the matter). He clarifies the issue further in his subsequent Epistle 13: May they show us that the composite hypostasis of Christ depends upon a composite nature, thereby sanctioning some contemporary factions [i.e. the miaphysites], and may they reproach then [our error] with good reason. As long as they cannot do this, they build their opinions on shifting sands. For he who endeavors to subject Christ to these absurdities because he is a composite hypostasis – something we too recognize with piety – errs greatly from the path leading to the truth, or to put it better, from truth itself. For this is the great and venerable mystery of Christ. He does not, like an individual, have a general nature, like a species; nor, certainly, is he this genus himself or the species for the individuals naturally emerging from him. Just as he does not fit into any of these rules mentioned, so too the coming together [of parts] in the case of composite [beings] is in no wise comparable or similar to the coming together of the Word of God with the flesh.3

That is, the hypostatic union is not at all equivalent to the unity of the disparate natures of soul and body that make up a human being. Here we see clearly that Maximus’ target when making his argument is miaphysite Christology, to which he opposes a strong dyophysitism that necessitates a re-tooling and re-working of traditional philosophical norms, or in the case of atomon, prompts their outright rejection. It should be stressed that even while accepting the term ‘hypostasis’ to describe Christ in this scenario, he is nonetheless careful to re-work it consistently as composite or synthetic hypostasis (that is, a hypostasis bearing two natures, divine and human). Without this qualification, Maximus’ juxtaposition of hypostasis and individual would not be readily comprehensible to his readers, especially since (as demonstrated at length by 2 3

Maximus, Ep. 12 (PG 91, 488AB). Maximus, Ep. 13 (PG 91, 528D-529A).

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Larchet), Maximus is in other contexts quite comfortable equating the terms hypostasis and atomon. When we come to John of Damascus, his use of this argument is brief but notable. Once again, in reacting to miaphysite Christology, John of Damascus writes that ‘our Lord Jesus Christ is not a common species (κοινὸν εἶδος)’. In a passage immediately following, omitted in Kotter’s edition but found in some witnesses and significant at least for our understanding of the Damascene’s reception, this argument is elaborated in terms strongly reminiscent of Maximus. Since Christ is perfect God and perfect man, the text explains, he cannot be called an atomon in any strict sense. Although a human being is indeed a composite formed of soul and body, these together belong to a common human nature and thus the human being can properly be named ‘an individual’, whereas when we speak of Christ as composite, we are referring again to two incommensurable natures, and thus the term atomon is not applicable. There is no underlying species, the text says, of ‘Christness’ (εἶδος Χριστότητος) of which Christ is the instantiation.4 He is absolutely sui generis, not simply as bare hypostasis, but as composite or synthetic hypostasis. The Modern Orthodox Reading The notion that Christ is not an individual has been taken up from Maximus by the contemporary Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas and some of his followers, notably Dionysios Skliris.5 What is perceived in the early Byzantine argument is a strong ratification in the sources of the modern personalist opposition between an individual and a hypostasis/person, where an individual is linked to the self-sufficient atomization of nature and the hypostasis/person is connected with, and constituted through, something beyond or transcendent to nature, namely loving communion with the Other. Thus Zizioulas can say, using Maximus’ argument as his cue, that atomon differs fundamentally from hypostasis and prosopon ‘because it falls under the category of nature’.6 For Zizioulas the individual’s only alliance with the concept of hypostasis or person is the fact that both terms indicate particularity and indivisibility, but ultimately, they are at odds. This position is an interesting one in its own right, and reflects Zizioulas’ extensive theological work elsewhere centred on the notion of personhood. It is 4

John of Damascus, Expositio Fidei 47 [3.3] (PG 94, 993A). See especially J. Zizioulas, ‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St. Maximus the Confessor’, in Maxim Vasiljevic (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection. Proceedings of the Symposium on St. Maximus the Confessor (Alhambra, CA, 2013), 85-113 and D. Skliris, ‘“Hypostasis,” “Person,” “Individual,” “Mode”: A Comparison between the Terms that Denote Concrete Being in St Maximus’ Theology’, in ibid., 437-50. 6 J. Zizioulas, ‘Person and Nature’ (2013), 91. 5

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also a creative reading of this particular Christological argument that should not be dismissed out of hand. After all, both Maximus and John of Damascus do indeed make the claim that Christ is not an individual but a person, and the question of nature is part of the explanation. For all of Larchet’s careful collation of texts showing the overall fluidity and even interchangeability of Maximus the Confessor’s use of the terms hypostasis, prosopon, and atomon, distinct preferences depending on the context do remain. Thus while John of Damascus can apply the term atomon or ‘individual’ to the members of the Trinity, Maximus avoids it. The significance of this can easily be overblown, but that does not make it entirely insignificant. Larchet’s critique of Zizioulas and Skliris strikes me as too heavy-handed even if his basic criticism stands, namely that extracting an involved personalist theory from Maximus on the basis of one rather specific use of the term atomon is fraught with danger. While Skliris can contend that in Maximus the term hypostasis describes ‘synthesis’ (of natures) whereas atomon/individual describes ‘analysis’ (of natural beings) – thus making him a bastion to personalist thought – there is actually no overall consistency in the Maximian corpus on this point to back this up. What I suggest needs to happen is that less stress must be placed on the artillery of terms used by the sources to convey beings in their specificity (hypostasis, prosopon, atomon, etc.), and more attention must instead be paid to the meaning of the larger passages of which these terms form a somewhat malleable part. When we do this, I suggest that the sources can both speak clearly for themselves while also offering opportunities for faithful yet creative appropriation in the arena of modern theology. Christ is not an individual: an alternative reception The reading by Zizioulas and others of Maximus and John of Damascus’ anti-miaphysite argument that Christ is not an individual is innovative and can even prove rather attractive. The fundamental question that this reading raises, however, has not so much to do with the issue of using and defining terms like atomon and hypostasis (important as this is), as with the repeated insistence that Maximus is first and foremost presupposing thereby a form of tension, juxtaposition, or even opposition between the category of hypostasis and the category of nature. True, an implication of Maximus (and the Damascene’s) argument could be to highlight the irreducibility of the category of hypostasis to that of nature, but one has to approach the argument with something of a preconceived personalist framework in order to see this at the outset as the chief message. If anything, the integrity of the category of nature is what is being defended, since the point of the argument is to insist that Christ possesses two perfect, undivided but also unconfused natures, divine and human, which would be impossible if he was an individual instantiation of a mixed and

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underlying divine-human nature. This integrity of nature is also implied in the constant qualification of Christ’s hypostasis as ‘composite’ or synthetic, combining and thus being ‘composed’ of two natures. Again, I do not think the personalist reading of Maximus’ and the Damascene’s argument that Christ is not an individual is necessarily outside the bounds of exegesis that is creative but also faithful, but it requires a corrective from, or at least a clear acknowledgement of, the pro-dyophysite and anti-miaphystie concerns motivating them both. They are primarily interested in safeguarding Christ’s two natures: the issue of understanding hypostasis as in opposition to atomon can only tentatively and at best come as a secondary corollary emerging from this. The hypostasis versus atomon opposition suggested by Zizioulas and others also faces immediate but relatively unacknowledged difficulties when transposed out of its Christological context to include all human beings. Neither Maximus nor the Damascene make that leap directly, since on the surface it would imply that human hypostases can subsist in more than one nature. While they both have a strong theory of deification – of human beings becoming divine whilst remaining human – it is not a theory of hypostatic union, but union by grace. This key issue must be tackled if the personalist argument is to be rendered more convincing. To conclude, however, I would like to suggest a different and more fruitful lens through which to read this late patristic argument that Christ is not an individual, one which remains close to the argument itself and has direct bearing, moreover, on a key theme in modern Orthodox theology since the nineteenth century. When Maximus and John of Damascus declare that Christ is not an individual, that is, the product of individuation from a more general nature, substrate, or species, they are declaring that there is no such thing as an underlying nature beyond Christ that combines divinity and humanity and of which he would be an individual instantiation. There is no such thing, in other words, as Godmanhood or Divine-Humanity, a concept coined and developed in earnest by the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Soloviev in the second half of the nineteenth century, and taken up by many others since, especially in the work of the Eastern Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov (whose great trilogy is entitled On Divine-Humanity). The notion of Godmanhood, of a reality underlying Christ that is simultaneously divine and human and of which he is the ultimate instantiation, is categorically and openly rejected by the argument explicit in Maximus and implicit in the Damascene that Christ is not an individual. There is only the God-man Christ himself, whose composite hypostasis simultaneously contains the fullness of the incommensurable uncreated divine nature and created human nature. If we were to speak of Godmanhood, it could only be in terms of the God-man Christ as root and source of the deification of others, but even there the concept might conjure up the idea of an inherent continuum between divinity and humanity that Maximus and the Damascene are at pains to preclude. I submit, then, that the statement ‘Christ is not an

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individual’, made in an anti-miaphysite context, does not immediately or without qualification tell us a great deal about the notion of hypostasis or personhood as such in either Maximus or the Damascene. It does, however, point to a theological position of continuing relevance to modern Orthodox thought by unambiguously making the claim that Christ the unique God-man is not the product of, nor in any way derived from, an underlying substrate of Godmanhood or Divine-Humanity.

The Concepts of Sin and Sinlessness in St Maximus the Confessor Demetrios BATHRELLOS, Athens, Greece

ABSTRACT Maximus’ theological system is a system of both dogmatics and asceticism. The concepts of sin and sinlessness occupy a key place in it and are applied to both anthropology and Christology. This article will investigate what Maximus means by these and other similar terms. It will locate the discussion within Maximus’ anthropology and Christology. It will argue, inter alia, that Maximus attributes to the word ‘sin’ a threefold meaning. First, sin is a sinful choice. Second, it is a state, resulting from the Fall. Third, ‘sin’ may denote even the condition of corruptibility and mortality of postlapsarian humanity, although in this case it is not sin properly speaking, for it is natural, innocent and blameless. Finally, the article will expand on the sinlessness of Christ and on how this sheds light upon the dialectic between sin and sinlessless in Christian life.

St Maximus the Confessor has left us a rich theology in which dogma and ascetic life are interrelated. Sin and sinlessness concerned him not only as a monk but also as an articulate theologian, who developed and defended Chalcedonian Christology in the face of anti-Chalcedonian objections and the monothelite challenge. His treatment of the concepts of sin and sinlessness runs through several of his works, from earlier ones to his latest anti-monothelite treatises. In what follows I will examine some of Maximus’ more important writings dealing with this issue in an attempt to cast light on diverse meanings of the aforementioned terms, which in turn will clarify crucial aspects of Maximus’ theology.1

1

For a helpful treatment of some issues relevant to the subject matter of this article, see JeanClaude Larchet, Maxime le Confesseur, médiateur entre l’Orient et l’Occident (Paris, 1998), 77-124. See also id., ‘Ancestral Guilt According to St Maximus the Confessor: A Bridge between Eastern and Western Conceptions’, Sobornost 20 (1998), 26-48; John Boojamra, ‘Original Sin According to St Maximus the Confessor’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 20 (1976), 19-30; Daniel Haynes, ‘The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam: St Augustine and St Maximus the Confessor on the Doctrine of Original Sin’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 55 (2011), 293-317.

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The Responses to Thalassius 42 Maximus deals with the concept of sin in responding to a question addressed to him by Thalassius: How is it that we are said to commit sin and to know that we have sinned, while the Lord is said to have become sin without knowing sin? And how is sinning, and knowing that one has sinned, not a graver offense than sinning and not knowing it? For it says: He who did not know sin, was made sin for us.2

In responding to this question, Maximus differentiates between two types of sin. The first is caused by our free choice (προαίρεσις) whereas the second is characteristic of our fallen nature. The former is blameworthy (εὐδιάβλητος or διαβεβλημένη), whereas the latter is blameless (ἀδιάβλητος).3 So, ‘the first was a sin of free choice, which voluntarily abandoned the good, but the second was of nature, which involuntarily and as a consequence of free choice lost its immortality’.4 For Maximus, our Lord assumed the blameless passibility of our nature but his free choice (προαίρεσις) remained incorruptible.5 Therefore, ‘the Lord […] did not know my sin, that is, the turning away of my free will’ (προαίρεσις) but ‘he assumed the corruption of nature which came about through the turning away of my free choice’ (προαίρεσις)’.6 So, ‘the Lord […] for my sake became “sin” in terms of passibility, corruption, and mortality’.7 A little later Maximus would call this kind of ‘sin’ ‘natural sin’ (φυσικὴν ἁμαρτίαν).8 The two concepts of sin employed by Maximus in this text are very different from each other. The first is sin properly speaking. It consists in Adam’s sinful choice to disobey God, which brought about his condemnation. The second is 2 PG 90, 405B and Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. Carl Laga and Carlos Steel, CChr.SG 7 (Turnhout, 1980), 42.2-6; I use the translation of Fr Maximos Constas, St. Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios (Washington, DC, 2018), 241. The implied biblical verse is 2Cor. 5:21: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin’ (or ‘a sin offering’) (NIV). The Responses to Thalassius were written before ca. 633/4; see Marek Jankowiak and Phil Booth, ‘A New Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor’, in Pauline Allen and Brownwen Neil (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2015), 19-83, 29. 3 PG 90, 405B-C; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 42.9-16. 4 PG 90, 405C; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 42.16-8; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 241. 5 PG 90, 405C-D; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 42.18-22. 6 PG 90, 408A Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 42.35-6 and 38-9; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 242. 7 PG 90, 408C; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 42.65-7; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 243. 8 PG 90, 408D; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 42.69.

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the natural corruptibility of human nature after the Fall, which results in death. The latter is a result of the former and whereas the former is blameworthy, the latter is blameless. By calling the latter ‘sin’, Maximus stretches the concept of sin beyond its limits. There can hardly be a natural and blameless sin. The corruptibility and mortality of our nature cannot be called ‘sin’ in a literal sense. It is rather a sinless and blameless consequence of sin. However, by calling it ‘sin’ Maximus is able to interpret 2Cor. 5:21 without violating the dogma of the sinlessness of Christ. The Responses to Thalassius 21 Maximus deals with the same issue in Thalassius 21. Once again the context is Christological. Here Maximus does not speak of two concepts of sin, as before, but rather distinguishes between corruption (φθορά) and sin (ἁμαρτία). He draws a distinction between coming to being (γένεσις) and birth (γέννησις). For Maximus, Adam’s genesis was not subject to either corruption or sin. But after the Fall, man is marked by both.9 However, in his human genesis (γένεσις) Christ had only the sinlessness (ἀναμάρτητον) of Adam but not his incorruption (ἀφθαρσία). And whereas fallen man’s birth is marked by both passibility (παθητόν) and sin (ἁμαρτία), Christ’s birth is marked only by passibility (παθητόν), not by sin (ἁμαρτία).10 We may infer that in this passage sin (ἁμαρτία) and sinlessness (ἀναμάρτητον) refer to a state and not to an act. Maximus’ claim that Adam’s genesis was sinless cannot be related to an action of his, since no one comes into being by an action of his own. Maximus puts it like this: ‘The first man, having received his being from God […] was, according to his creaturely origin, free from corruption (φθορά) and sin (ἁμαρτία) – for neither corruption nor sin was created together with him’.11 So, sin here refers to a state, much as corruption does, and not to an action (or an act of will) on the part of the first man. The same is implied by what Maximus writes a little later, namely that after the Fall ‘[…] no one is sinless (ἀναμάρτητος), for all are subject by nature to the law of birth, introduced after man’s creaturely origin in consequence of his sin’.12 So, Adam’s sinful act 9 PG 90, 312B-C; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.5-14. 10 PG 90, 313B; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.36-42. 11 PG 90, 312B; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.9-12; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 143-4. 12 PG 90, 312C-313A; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.16-8; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 144. In this context, sin cannot mean corruption, as in Thalassius 42.

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brought about a ‘law of birth’, on account of which no one is sinless. In the light of such claims, we may say that in addition to the two previous meanings of sin, which are relevant to either a sinful choice or the natural corruption that comes as a result of it, we now come across a third meaning, that is to say sin as state. Man is born into a state not only of natural corruption but also of sin. To sum up, Maximus attributes to the word ‘sin’ a threefold meaning. First, sin is a sinful choice. Second, it is a state, resulting from the Fall. Third, ‘sin’ may denote even the condition of corruptibility and mortality of postlapsarian humanity, although in this case it is not sin properly speaking, for it is natural, innocent and blameless. Even Christ was marked by it. This is relevant to an additional interplay of meanings that is worthy of note. In Ambigua 42 Maximus makes use of the word ἁμαρτητικόν.13 This may be translated either as ‘sinful’, or ‘relevant to sin’ or, as Constas translates it, ‘proclivity to sin’.14 The difficulty in translating the term points once again to the sinful state of man after the Fall, where the postlapsarian proclivity to sin is already a sinful proclivity. But let us return to natural passibility, to which both Thalassius 42 and Thalassius 21 refer. The fact that Maximus in Thalassius 21 uses the world φθορά, corruption, in connection with this passibility indicates that this is a blameless natural corruption, connected with our postlapsarian mortality. But why Maximus in Thalassius 42 calls it sin? We suggested earlier a dogmatic reason for doing this: Maximus wishes to interpret 2Cor. 5:21 without undermining the dogma of the sinlessness of Christ. An additional reason may be that natural corruption came as a result of sin, and, therefore, in this respect it may be called ‘sinful’. But I think that there may be also a third reason for calling corruption (φθορά) sin (ἁμαρτία). This has to do with the fact that often it is precisely through passibility that man is tempted and led to sin. This is stated in a lengthy passage in Thalassius 21: The more human nature hastened to propagate itself through the process of birth, the more tightly it bound itself to the law of sin (τῷ νόμῳ τῆς ἁμαρτίας), insofar as nature’s very passibility reactivated the transgression within it. For in possessing, by virtue of its natural, contingent condition, the increase of sin within its very passibility, human nature came to possess the activities of all the opposing powers, principalities, and authorities – on account of the universal sin (γενικὴν ἁμαρτίαν) inherent in human passibility – operating through unnatural passions concealed under the guise of the natural passions. Through the unnatural passions, and by exploiting nature’s passibility, every evil power is actively at work, driving the inclination of the will (γνώμη) by means of the natural passions into the corruption of unnatural passions.15 13 Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, The Ambigua, II, ed. and trans. Nicholas Constas (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 126. 14 The Ambigua, II, ed. and trans. N. Constas (2014), 127. The Ambigua to John were written ‘early (before ca. 633/4), perhaps ca. 628?’; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 29. 15 PG 90, 313A-B; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.24-35; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 144.

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There are a few things worthy of note in this passage. First, the expression ‘law of sin’. This is a well-known Pauline expression (Rom. 7:23), which in Maximus, as in Paul, refers to human nature’s enslavement to sin in its postlapsarian condition. Another interesting expression is the expression ‘universal sin’ (γενικὴ ἁμαρτία), which apparently indicates the universality of sin. Furthermore, the passage states that sin increases through the passibility (παθητόν) of human nature. Moreover, Maximus claims that the unnatural passions (τὰ παρὰ φύσιν πάθη) are concealed under the guise of the natural ones. Finally, he argues that the evil powers drive ‘the inclination of the will by means of the natural passions into the corruption of unnatural passions’. So, the point is this: in the context of the law of sin, the evil powers operate through the natural passions, in order to incline the will towards the unnatural ones. As Maximus argues in Thalassius 55, man is tempted through the sinless and blameless passions and may thus become ‘a captive slave of the blameworthy and unnatural passions’.16 Perhaps an example will suffice here. Hunger is a natural and blameless passion. But through it the evil powers drive man’s will towards an unnatural, that is to say, a sinful passion, which, in this case, is the passion of gluttony.17 Therefore, through a natural passion man may be voluntarily led to an unnatural one. There is an obvious link between corruption and sin. However, it is not only the evil powers that work through the natural passions. After the Fall human nature itself is inclined to evil. As Maximus writes in Thalassius 21, after and because of the Fall ‘man’s power of choice (γνώμη) inclines towards wicked pleasure (πονηρὰν ἡδονήν)’.18 Therefore, the evil powers take advantage of both man’s postlapsarian passibility and inclination towards sinful pleasure, in order to make us turn voluntarily towards sinful passions. In addition, passibility is associated not only with pleasure, but also with pain. In the latter case, man’s will (γνώμη) is ill-inclined to pain, because of cowardice (δειλία).19 Maximus implies that the latter may be as sinful as the former and equally subject to the evil powers working through it.20 All these function under the ‘law of sin’, to which Maximus refers in this work. This is a condition that involves man’s postlapsarian state, his natural and unnatural passions, his mortality, and his will – all subject to enticements, temptations, and trials effected by the demonic powers. 16 PG 90, 541B; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 55.136-8; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 360. 17 On this, see M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 360, n. 19. 18 PG 90, 316A; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.67-9; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 146. 19 PG 90, 316B; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.81-3; M. Constas, The Responses to Thalassios (2018), 147. 20 PG 90, 316B-C; Maximi confessoris quaestiones ad Thalassium, I, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel (1983), 21.86-107.

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Ambigua 4 Some of the above considerations are also taken on in Ambigua 4. Here Christ is characterized as ‘by nature sinless’.21 This indicates two things. First, that, as said earlier, sin is relevant not only to will but also to nature. Second, that this ‘natural sinlessness’ does not imply lack of natural passions, for Maximus argues that Christ clothed himself ‘in our nature together with our nature’s condition of passibility (παθητόν)’.22 So, Christ is both passible by nature23 and sinless by nature. This means that he has the blameless passions,24 but not the blameworthy ones. Moreover, Maximus, in the same work, associates sin with a disposition of our will that is unnatural or ‘against nature’ (παρὰ φύσιν). This is how he puts it: […] the law of sin […], whose power over us lies in the unnatural [παρὰ φύσιν] disposition (διάθεσις) of our will, establishing, in lesser or greater degrees, an impassioned state (ἐμπάθειαν) within the passible condition of our nature.25

This same passage points to the fundamental opposition of a sinful will to nature, properly understood in its God-created goodness. A sinful will is ‘against nature’. Maximus says more about this in his Expositio orationis dominicae. There, he claims that the will (γνώμη) should not move against the logos of nature.26 This implies that the logos of nature is sinless. As Maximus puts it elsewhere, ‘a blameworthy passion is a movement of the soul contrary to nature (παρὰ φύσιν)’.27 And elsewhere again he claims that there is no logos of sin in any being.28 Sin does not belong to nature.29 For Maximus, what is natural is not the passions but the virtues.30 21 Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, The Ambigua, I, ed. and trans. Nicholas Constas (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 22. The Ambigua to Thomas were written in ‘634 or shortly after’; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 45. 22 The Ambigua, I, ed. and trans. N. Constas (2014), 22; translation on 23. 23 The Ambigua, I, ed. and trans. N. Constas (2014), 24; translation on 25. 24 The Ambigua, I, ed. and trans. N. Constas (2014), 24; translation on 25. 25 The Ambigua, I, ed. and trans. N. Constas (2014), 24; translation on 25. 26 Expositio orationis dominicae, PG 90, 880A; Maximi confessoris opuscula exegetica duo, ed. Peter van Deun, CChr.SG 23 (Turnhout, 1991), 150-2. This work was written before ca. 636; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 30. 27 Car. 1:35, PG 90, 968A and Massimo confessore, Capitoli sulla carita, ed. Aldo CeresaGastaldo (Rome, 1963); italics added. For the translation, see Polycarp Sherwood (trans. and annot.), St. Maximus the Confessor, The Ascetic Life, The Four Centuries on Charity (New York, 1955), 141. See also Maximus’ Epistle 4, PG 91, 413A-B. 28 Opuscula Theologica et Polemica, 1, PG 91, 32B and 36B. This work was written in ca. 64346; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 49. 29 Opuscula Theologica et Polemica, 8, PG 91, 93A. This work was written in ‘ca. 640-41?’; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 60. 30 Disputation with Pyrrhus, PG 91, 309B. This work may have been produced in July 645; see Polycarp Sherwood, O.S.B., An Annotated Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor,

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However, the actual state of our fallen nature is sinful. Maximus tells us more about this in his anti-monothelite works. Maximus’ anti-monothelite works In his anti-monothelite works Maximus took up some of the issues referred to earlier, but also introduced some new ones. For example, in one of these works Maximus used the phrase ‘ancestral sin’ (προπατορικὴ ἁμαρτία) when called to comment on the Roman claim that ‘the Lord qua man was without the ancestral sin’, with which he fully agreed.31 However, he did not say much about this, as he considered the point obvious and hence any defense of the Roman claim superfluous. But we may assume with good reason that by ‘ancestral sin’ Maximus implied the sinful state that marks fallen humanity. This is in agreement with Maximus’ understanding of sin not only as a choice and an act but also as a state, which he repeats time and again in his anti-monothelite works.32 In one of these works, for example, he takes on another Roman phrase, this time from Pope Honorius, according to which the Son of God did not assume ‘the flesh that was corrupted by sin and which would wage war against the law of his mind’.33 This statement casts light on Maximus’ understanding of ‘ancestral sin’ as the sinful state of postlapsarian humanity and, apparently, Maximus is here again in full agreement with the Roman claim. But let us now move on and see how Maximus treats sin in connection with the will in these works.34 As is well known, Maximus excludes from Christ both a proairesis and a gnome or else a proairetikon and a gnomikon will. For Maximus, to have a proairesis implies the possibility to move in an unnatural, that is to say, sinful, manner, which is a great blasphemy when applied to Christ.35 Proairesis implies the possibility of moving towards either good or Studia Anselmiana 30 (Rome, 1952), 53. According to Noret, it was written in 655 or even later; see Jacques Noret, ‘La rédaction de la Disputatio cum Pyrrho (CPG 7698) de saint Maxime le Confesseur serait-elle postérieure à 655?’, Analecta Bollandiana 117 (1999), 291-6. 31 Opuscula Theologica and Polemica, 10, PG 91, 136A-B. This work was written in ‘ca. 643-46, perhaps June-July 643’; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 49. 32 See, for instance, Opuscula Theologica and Polemica, 1, PG 91, 32B and 36B; 7, ibid. 73C-D; 8, ibid. 93A; 9, ibid. 120B and 128C; 16, ibid. 196B; 19, ibid. 221B-C. Opusculum 7 was written in ‘ca. 640-41?’; Opusculum 9 in ‘late 645 or 646’; Opusculum 16 ‘probably [in] ca. 640-42, perhaps 642’; and Opusculum 19 ‘post-ca. 643’; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 47, 64, 57, and 50 respectively. 33 Opuscula Theologica and Polemica, 20, PG 91, 241A; this Opusculum was written in 641; see M. Jankowiak and P. Booth, ‘A New Date-List’ (2015), 48. 34 For a recent and philosophically nuanced treatment of Maximus’ understanding of the will, see David Bradshaw, ‘Maximus the Confessor on the Will’, in Daniel Haynes (ed.), A Saint for East and West: Maximus the Confessor’s Contribution to Eastern and Western Christian Theology (Eugene, OR, 2019), 102-14. 35 Opuscula Theologica and Polemica, 1, PG 91, 29B.

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evil.36 Therefore, if Christ had such a will, he would not be passionless (ἀπαθής) but in control of sinful passions (ἐγκρατής).37 Maximus moves a step further. He maintains that, since Christ was not a mere man, his human natural will was not a mere (ψιλόν) human natural will, like ours, either. By contrast, it was wholly deified (κατάκρον θεωθέν), on account of the hypostatic union. Maximus claims that sinlessness (τὸ ἀναμάρτητον), strictly speaking, applies exclusively to this state of deification.38 Therefore, Christ’s human will, which is both sinless and unable to sin, as we saw earlier, is also wholly deified, which means wholly sinless. From the above it seems that for Maximus sinlessness in its perfect form excludes not only the reality but also the potentiality of sinning. Conclusions Maximus has a very rich and nuanced concept of sin. He engages with this concept in the context of both his ascetic theology and his Christology. Sin, for Maximus, is both a state and a voluntary act. All humans are implicated in it, apart from Christ. Maximus’ view on this matter is at odds with the modern theory that Christ had a fallen, sinful human nature, but was sinless because he never committed any sinful act.39 Equally nuanced is Maximus’ concept of sinlessness. For Maximus, sinless in the full sense of the word is he who first, does not have any sinful, blameworthy passions; second, does not commit sinful acts; and third, is deified and unable to sin. All this applies to Christ alone. There is also a fourth, non-literal sense of being sinless, according to which sinless is he who on top of the above is also free from natural corruption, as Christ was after the Resurrection. Given all this, we may say that, whereas sin is a reality of this world, sinlessness, in its full and perfect sense, is a characteristic of the age to come. Christ, the eschatos Adam, is free from ontological, actual, and potential sin, and thus may and should function as an archetype for all Christians to follow and imitate.40

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Opuscula Theologica and Polemica, 1, PG 91, 33A. Opuscula Theologica and Polemica, 1, PG 91, 28D. 38 Opuscula Theologica and Polemica, 20, PG 91, 236D. 39 For more on this, see Demetrios Bathrellos, ‘True God and True Man: St Maximus the Confessor on the Sinless Humanity of Christ’, Sobornost 41 (2019), 9-17. 40 For a recent analysis of imitatio Christi in Maximus, see Timothy Kallistos (Ware), ‘The Imitation of Christ according to Saint Maximus the Confessor’, in D. Haynes (ed.), A Saint for East and West (2019), 69-84. 37

Self-Determination and the Question of Subjectivity: Moral Selfhood in Maximus the Confessor Demetrios HARPER, Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, New Hartford, NY, USA

ABSTRACT This article seeks to interpret the conceptual mechanisms that give rise to Maximus the Confessor’s understanding of self-determination, examining them through the lens of contemporary philosophical discourse concerning the origin of the categories of autonomy and heteronomy. Although the term αὐτεξούσιον is sometimes translated as ‘autonomy’, many contemporary scholars have argued persuasively that the philosophers and theologians of the pre-Renaissance world who employ the term do not have the same anthropological presuppositions that inform the contemporary understanding of the concept. Christopher Gill, Alasdair McIntyre, and Charles Taylor, et al., concur that the notion of an autonomous ‘self’ arises in the wake of the Enlightenment and especially Kantian approaches to moral psychology. Post-enlightenment autonomy is dependent in turn upon the invention of subjectivity, which is inaugurated by René Descartes’s formulation of the Cartesian ‘ego’. As Gill argues in his two massive treatises, the diverse philosophical approaches in the pre-Renaissance world, mutatis mutandis, possess a common notion of selfhood, regarding an individual not as a distinct subject or ‘I’ but rather as an ‘objective participant’ in a larger human community. While Gill’s arguments appear to stand on firm ground in relation to pagan sources, his otherwise superb analysis largely ignores the Christian tradition and especially influential Greek patristic sources like Maximus the Confessor. In an effort to address this gap, this paper shall consider the principles of moral psychology that underlie Maximus the Confessor’s approach to self-determination, examining them in light of Gill’s subjective/objective dichotomy.

The genealogy of the modern western notion of self-determination and the concepts of selfhood that presuppose it remain topics of debate within the larger plain of intellectual and philosophical history. Despite a prolific output of scholarship on the subject, with the exception of those working in historical theology, the majority of intellectual historians have yet to acknowledge the relevance of the anthropological and moral contributions of late-antique and Byzantine Christian writers to the foundations of western philosophy.1 Indeed, many still relegate them to the status of mere footnotes to the western philosophical canon 1

Some notable exceptions are Richard Sorabji’s work Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation (Oxford, 2000), and Michael Frede, A Free Will: Origins of the Notion in Ancient Thought (Berkeley, 2011).

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or pass over them altogether. A notable example is Charles Taylor, who begins his genealogy with Plato and moves in rapid succession to Augustine and then on to Descartes, leaving Greek Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and even the Western Middle Ages virtually untouched.2 Another example is Christopher Gill, who follows the landmark studies of the above-mentioned Charles Taylor and the groundbreaking philosophical works of Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, arguing that the thinkers of the pre-Renaissance world do not have the same anthropological presuppositions that inform the contemporary understanding of the concept moral autonomy.3 Although the ancient Greek term αὐτεξούσιον is frequently translated as ‘autonomy’,4 Gill, et al., argue that the notion of an autonomous ‘self’ arises in the wake of the Enlightenment and especially Kantian approaches to moral psychology, which is itself dependent upon the invention of subjectivity in the form of an inner-directed Cartesian ‘ego’.5 While Gill’s arguments are persuasive on their own terms and hold up well against the dissenting voices of scholars like Charles Kahn, A.A. Long, or Richard Sorabji,6 his conclusions are based almost entirely upon the pagan voices of antiquity and the Greco-Roman world. His otherwise excellent analysis stops short of examining the Christian tradition and the influential Greek patristic sources, passing over thinkers like the celebrated monk, Maximus the Confessor. As a small step towards rectifying this particular gap in the effort to understand the development of western moral anthropology, the following shall briefly evaluate Maximus the Confessor’s views of self-determination and moral anthropology in light of Gill’s own criteria, considering, in particular, whether or not his term ‘objective participant’ adequately encompasses Maximus’ approaches to moral selfhood. Let us, first, briefly consider Gill’s outline of the Greco-Roman pagan self and the criteria that support it. Gill uses Kathleen Wilke’s criticism of postCartesian selfhood – which is best represented in her monograph Real People – as his point of departure, setting in relief the rather different way in which the Greco-Roman world, broadly construed, conceived of selfhood.7 Gill reminds 2

Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA, 1989). Christopher Gill, The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought (Oxford, New York, 2006) and Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy: The Self in Dialogue (Oxford, New York, 1996); Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 1st ed. (Notre Dame, 1988) and After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (London, 1985). 4 See, for example, the translation Nemesius: On the Nature of Man, ed. and trans. R.W. Sharples and P.J. van der Eijk (Liverpool, 2008), 194-7. 5 C. Gill, Personality (1996), 1-18. 6 C. Gill, The Structured Self (2006), 3-29, 328-44; Charles Kahn, ‘Discovering the Will: From Homer to Augustine’, in J.M. Dillon and A.A. Long (eds), The Question of Eclecticism: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy (Berkeley, 1988); A.A. Long, ‘Representation and the Self in Stoicism’, in id., Stoic Studies (Cambridge, 1996), 264-85. See also Richard Sorabji, ‘Soul and Self in Ancient Philosophy’, in J. Crabbe (ed.), From Soul to Self, Wolfson Lectures (London, 1999), 8-32. 7 C. Gill, Personality (1996), 6-7; Kathleen V. Wilkes, Real People: Personal Identity without Thought Experiments (Oxford, 1988). 3

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his readers that the majority of modern western thought bases its anthropological assumptions upon an ‘I-centered’ approach to the human mind, which finds its expression par excellence in René Descartes’s famous aphorism cogito ergo sum. Gill summarizes Wilke’s objections to the Cartesian approach as follows: 1) Cartesian and post-Cartesian models of personhood grant a ‘privileged status’ to the concept of a human subject as the primary center of self-consciousness; 2) This privileged status of the human subject is extended to his/ her ‘first-personal’ perspective, to his/her subjective account of human psychology.8 Conversely, and relying upon Wilke’s categorizations, Greco-Roman models of human selfhood are best seen in light of a third-personal or ‘objective’ perspective, rejecting the epistemological privilege of a central human subject.9 As Gill goes on to explain, this older Hellenic and, later, Greco-Roman model assumes an equivalency or interchangeability of the first-personal and third-personal perspectives, thereby rendering the human being a ‘portion’ or ‘participant’ in the larger reality of human nature.10 In effect, the ancient Hellenes and Romans did not have an early rendition of what we would now refer to as ‘subjectivity’, or at least not a version that would be recognizable to them. Though certainly synthesized in different ways, Gill argues that this objective view of the self remains a constant from ancient Hellenic thought through the Greco-Roman period.11 This notion of selfhood, in turn, contributes to a moral ‘self in dialogue’12 – thereby echoing Charles Taylor13 – and to the cultivation of an ethical life that relies upon communal discourse and interaction. Whereas standard post-Enlightenment views of morality exemplified in the likes of Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mill identify moral life with self-legislated and internal autonomous judgments, ancient Hellenic and Greco-Roman philosophers regarded the ethical life of a human being, as Gill avers, as being ‘expressed in whole-hearted engagement with an interpersonal and communal role and in debate about the proper form such a role should take’.14 Seeking to defend the generic claim that Maximus reflects some version of Gill’s Greco-Roman ‘self in dialogue’ would be to repeat a truism and add little to workshop intended to tease out nuances in the Confessor’s thought. Consequently, in what follows, I shall test the deeper assertions of Gill’s thesis in light of the Maximian corpus: that is, a) does Gill’s term ‘objective participant’ and the nuances thereof properly define the Confessor’s notion of moral selfhood and b) is it valid for Gill to claim that the Cartesian ego is primarily or even exclusively responsible for what we now call subjectivity and the consequent 8

Ibid. Ibid. 10 Ibid. 7-14. 11 See C. Gill, The Structured Self (2006), xiii-xxii. 12 C. Gill, Personality (1996), 12-5. 13 C. Taylor, Sources (1989), 25-52. 14 C. Gill, Personality (1996), 12. 9

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emergence of the autonomous self? In order to evaluate this two-fold question, let us begin by considering what is arguably the most autonomous aspect of Maximian anthropology: the ‘faculty’ of gnōmē (γνώμη). As all good students of Maximus the Confessor know, in one of Maximus’ somewhat later works, specifically his Opusculum 1, we find a succinct and categorical description of will, its faculties, and the volitional process as a whole.15 Prominent amongst Maximus’ extended list of volitional features is gnōmē, which, as Paul Blowers has observed, does not constitute a stage of willing as such.16 Rather, Maximus defines it as an appetite that is immediately adjacent to the volitional process and which informs it.17 Maximus begins his brief description of gnōmē by distinguishing it from ‘rational choice’ or προαίρεσις, which, as the Confessor states earlier in the text, ‘is the discursive appetite in relation to those things that are contingent upon us’.18 Gnōmē, by contrast, is the ‘deeply ingrained appetite’ that underlies and gives rise to rational choice, or, more precisely, it is ‘the disposition concerning things upon which we appetitively deliberate that are contingent upon us’.19 As Maximus goes on to explain, a gnomic disposition occurs as a synthetic result of deliberation concerning realities that are contingent upon us as rational agents and a final ‘judgment’ concerning a possible action.20 Interestingly enough, earlier in the Opusculum, Maximus says precisely the same thing concerning prohairesis, arguing that it constitutes a convergence, a σύνοδος of deliberation (βουλή) and judgment (κρίσις).21 Nevertheless, although they are closely related, Maximus insists on making a distinction between prohairesis and gnōmē, implying that the former draws upon and ‘actualizes’ as a result of the latter. ‘Gnōmē’, Maximus declares, ‘in relation to prohairesis possesses the principle (λόγος) of habit (ἕξις) unto actuality (ἐνέργεια)’.22 In using the term hexis here and the Aristotelian nuances associated with it, the Confessor wishes to emphasize that the process of ‘free choice’ does not arise simply from a spontaneous response to a phenomenon but is dependent in part upon a habitual disposition, which itself has been diachronically formed as a result of past and present deliberation and judgment; it is therefore akin to ethos or character, functioning according to the rhythm of each human agent and based upon his or her particular processes of deliberation and judgment. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, gnōmē both according to its ancient and modern definitions 15

Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum 1, ed. J.P Migne, PG 91, 12C-21C. Paul Blowers, Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford, 2016), 161. 17 Ibid. 18 Maximus, Opusculum 1, PG 91, 16BC, 17C. 19 Ibid. PG 91, 17C. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. PG 91, 13A. 22 Ibid. PG 91, 17C. 16

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also indicates ‘opinion,’ which, on its own terms, would appear to suggest an autonomous and private locus of moral determination. It is common knowledge in Maximian studies that the Confessor’s eventual rejection of gnomic attributes in the person of Christ – the discussion of which is outside the scope of this article – is due in no small part to the fact that deliberation and the diachronic development of moral epistemology is implied by gnōmē.23 Christ, as the Incarnate Logos, possesses of himself the logoi of all being and knows all the universals and particulars of human nature.24 Consequently, Christ’s natural human will responds according to what are ultimately his own primordial divine determinations for nature and its ultimate good without having to undergo a prohairetic and deliberative process.25 Indeed, in Maximus’ view, he constitutes both a natural and moral telos in himself.26 But human beings, although possessing a will that is naturally inclined to the good, do not have innate knowledge of the universal good or kata fusin existence. The pursuit of the good and ontological wholeness, therefore, demands an individual search, a ζήτησις, which occurs via personal deliberation, judgment, and the establishment of a gnomic disposition.27 As Maximus implies in Opusculum 1, creaturely gnōmē endures in some sense even into the eternal age. ‘It is impossible’, he says, ἀδύνατον, for there to be one gnōmē between God and his saints in the age to come.28 Consequently, gnōmē indicates an inextinguishable feature of created rational beings that the divine will refrains from dissolving, even at the eschata of all creation. Does Maximus’ view of gnōmē in Opusculum 1, therefore, signal the presence of an autonomous self, of a ‘first-personal’ subjectivity? Although Maximus indeed implies that gnōmē will endure unto the eschata, he gives no indication that it will be private or individual. The gnomic dichotomy that Maximus establishes is not between human agents but rather between the created ‘choir of saints’, to use the Confessor’s words, and the uncreated Trinity.29 In short, the Confessor implies that eschatological humans will possess a collective gnōmē, which, despite being distinct from the volitional disposition of the Trinity, shall be common in disposition and exist in concert with that of the divine. It is 23

The Confessor himself confirms this in the Disputatio cum Pyrrho, PG 91, 308D. See Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2004), 150-1. 24 See, for example, Ambiguum 7.24. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, ed. and trans. Maximos Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28 (Cambridge, MA, 2014), I 106-8; Ambiguum 42.13. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, ed. and trans. Maximos Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 29 (Cambridge, MA, 2014), II 144-6. 25 See Demetrios Harper, The Analogy of Love: St. Maximus the Confessor and the Foundations of Ethics (Yonkers, 2019), 164-70. 26 Ibid. 170-3. 27 Maximus, Opusculum 1, PG 91, 16B. 28 Ibid. PG 91, 25CD. 29 Ibid.

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important to note that this brief mention of eschatological gnōmē takes place within the context of Maximus’ argument for the enduring distinctiveness of each human will and their ongoing and voluntary response to the divine.30 Nevertheless, while individual human wills retain their distinctive quality, the Confessor argues that they are united in their gnomic disposition, in their oneness of opinion, and therefore in their response and participation in the divine. This point is strengthened by the Maximus’ description of the disparate instances of human intentionality brought into a σύμβασις, a ‘convergence’ of wills, and united with the benevolent will of the divine through a common desideratum or, in the words of the Confessor, a collective θεληθέν.31 When viewed through the lens of these later passages, it becomes evident that the interior or apparently subjective features of gnōmē expressed earlier on in the Opusculum, as well as other works in the Maximian corpus, are accidental in relation to what is ultimately the objective nature of ideal moral selfhood. Or, better, they fill a provisional purpose in service of humanity’s higher moral end. Opusculum 1’s description of distinct yet collectively united human wills, joined in their unwavering disposition towards a heteronomous, i.e. divine, determination,32 arguably, comes exceedingly close to Gill’s definition of moral selfhood as ‘objective participation’. Moreover, in light of his views in Opusculum 1, it seems that Maximus’ ethical ideal does not leave space for the notion of a ‘privileged subjective’ center of consciousness or of the presence of an autonomous self. The claims of Gill, et al., regarding the invention of subjectivity and autonomy would seem to hold, at least insofar as Maximus’ ideal moral self is manifested in Opusculum 1. Indeed, his approach harmonizes with, though it is not identical to, the pagan voices of the Greco-Roman tradition. It is not difficult to buttress this thesis in light of Maximus’ other works. While the Confessor demonstrates a terminological shift in his Christology with reference to his use of gnōmē and gnomic in his Christology, there seems to be a measure of constancy in his use of the concept in relation to anthropology. In turning to his second Epistle, one of his earlier works, we find an even clearer rendition of gnomic singularity. Rhapsodizing concerning the repudiation of self-love and the cultivation of the pan-virtue of agape, the Confessor describes the ideal moral state as one in which the human agent ‘frees him [or herself] from thoughts and properties to which he [or she] is privately inclined’ (or in Greek, τῷ χωρισμῷ τῶν ἰδικώς κατὰ τὴν γνώμην ἐπ’ αὐτῷ νοουμένων λόγων τε καὶ ἰδιωμάτων).33 In short, the attainment of ideal moral selfhood involves, yet again, the eventual renunciation of individual and distinctive gnōmē and, 30

Ibid. PG 91, 25ABC. Ibid. PG 91, 25AB. 32 Here, Maximus expresses it as θεῖος σκοπός. Ibid. PG 91, 25A. 33 Letter 2: On Love. Maximus the Confessor, ed. and trans. Andrew Louth, The Early Church Fathers (Abingdon, 1996), 88; Epistolae, PG 91, 400A. 31

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to use modern nomenclature, the repudiation of all functional aspects of an autonomous self. In its stead, as the Confessor goes on to say, human agents reach a state of ‘singularity of disposition (γνώμη) and nature (φύσις)’.34 This, of course, is famously echoed in the seventh Ambiguum, where Maximus argues that our response to the divine does not abrogate our self-determination, our αὐτεξούσιον, but that it involves effacement of gnomic individuality, a ‘gnomic surrender’ or γνωμικὴ ἐκχώρησις.35 In voluntarily setting aside private inclination and the accompanying directedness of self-love, a human agent passes from a state of interiority and subjective moral determination to one of objective participation in a larger community of nature. This movement does not efface human agents’ self-determination, but rather puts it in service to objective participation in the natural human collective, imitating and dialoguing (διαλεχθεῖς) with the universal and divinely-given law of nature, to use Maximus’ terminology from the Ad Thalassium.36 To reiterate the conclusion of the foregoing discussion, Maximus’ ‘human ideal’ – an expression that is borrowed Alexis Torrance37 – corroborates the claims of Christopher Gill and company, reflecting an approach that corresponds to Gill’s descriptive term ‘objective participant’. However, as the reader might have noticed, the analysis put forth thus far has generally excluded any discussion of the non-ideal and improperly functioning moral self. What can be said of human agency in Confessor’s corpus when it functions contrary to the ideal, that is, according to its fallen, or, in the Maximian idiom, para fusin state? Does it still fulfill the criteria for ‘objective participation’? In the aforementioned Epistle 2, Maximus vividly describes the inverse function of the moral self and the ensuing post-lapsarian state following humanity’s assent to diabolical temptation: ‘For the cunning devil at the beginning contrived by guile to attack humankind through his self-love (φιλαυτία), [separating] us in our inclinations (κατὰ γνώμην) from God and from one another … he has divided nature at the level of mode of existence (κατὰ τὸν τρόπον), fragmenting it into a multitude of opinions (δόξαι) and imaginations (φαντασίαι)’.38 Maximus’ reference here to one gnōmē between God and humanity notwithstanding – which he would later alter – what emerges in this passage is a description of individual existence that comes exceedingly close to Gill’s description of subjectivity and an autonomous self. Cut loose from the moorings of a common gnomic disposition or inclination, human beings came to exist according their private opinions (δόξαι) and even, more pertinently, through their own 34

Episotlae, PG 91, 400B. Ambiguum 7.12 (2014), I 90. 36 Cf. Quaestiones ad Thalassium I 54.164, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel, CChr.SG 7 (Turnhout, 1980). 37 I refer here to Torrance’s monograph Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology: Attaining the Fullness of Christ (Oxford, 2020). 38 Letter 2, 87; PG 91, 396D. 35

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imaginings (φαντασίαι). The Confessor’s use of the term ‘imagining’ in particular suggests disparate views of reality, thereby implying not only that nature fragmented on a modal level but also that human knowledge itself lost its exterior, objective point of reference. As the Confessor reaffirms in the same work, a mode of ideal moral selfhood means that we ‘choose’ (προαιρούμεθα) according to a gnomic disposition that is informed by the divinely-determined logos of nature, according to an external and heteronomous ‘law’.39 Conversely, in its fallen state, the human loses contact with the criteria for moral selfhood, and in his or her state of ignorance, embraces him or herself as the criterion of truth, a mode of existence that the Confessor defines as filautia.40 Humanity’s interior reality becomes the new epistemological ground. Inevitably, then, a human agent is obliged to rely upon his or her own interior precepts of human action and, given Maximus’ comment about ‘imaginings’, the creation of new and internally-derived intelligibles with which to interpret the sensible world. In short, the loss of a gnomic disposition that is steadily fixed upon the constancy of the logos of nature would appear, in the view of the Confessor, to lead to the creation of something that indeed resembles an autonomous ‘subject’ with a ‘privileged first-personal perspective’. In conclusion, Maximus the Confessor articulates a mode of ideal moral selfhood that fulfills Christopher Gill’s criteria for the self as an ‘objective participant’, thereby demonstrating a fundamental harmony with the pagan philosophical tradition. Human nature in its various instances is furnished with the capacity for distinctive determinations and voluntary action, but the moral and existential maturation of the human being requires a diachronic movement towards a common exterior desideratum, and participation in a volitional nexus of moral co-governance that imitates the Archimedean point that is the divine law. Nevertheless, the inverse of this movement and the interior life of private opinion and imagination that defines Maximus’ description of post-lapsarian humanity, in my view, are strongly reminiscent of Gill’s definition of subjectivity and the consequent autonomous self. In short, the texts of the Confessor arguably manifest a description of subjectivity centuries prior to the Cartesian ego, albeit presented as a function of fallen and less-than-ideal humanity. To translate his views into the combined idioms of Charles Taylor and Christopher Gill, the maturation of moral selfhood therefore depends upon a passage from existence as a detached self and its corollary autonomous function to a state of objective participation and co-determination.

39 40

Ibid. 86-7; PG 91, 396CD. Ibid. 87; PG 91, 397AB.

Soul According to St Maximus the Confessor: Entity or Person? Aleksandar DJAKOVAC, Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade, Serbia

ABSTRACT This article aims to demonstrate that there are two lines of the argument regarding the soul in Maximus the Confessor, which derive from the Neoplatonic tradition and the tradition of the Cappadocian Fathers respectively. The article argues that by relying on the Neoplatonic tradition, Maximus perceives the soul as an entity. This claim is substantiated with the passages in Maximus’ works in which he understands the soul as incorporeal, in the manner of Plotinus, and as self-substantial (authupostatos), in the manner of Proclus. The article argues further that Maximus’ understanding of the soul is also shaped by the Cappadocian conception of the person. Finally, the article analyzes Maximus’ not so successful attempt to reconcile these two opposing views on the soul.

The concept of the soul has a very complex history of development in antiquity.1 The Christian reception of this term is further complicated by attempts to integrate it into the biblical tradition.2 Although this issue is occasionally actualised in contemporary Christian theology, it was especially the work of Oscar Cullmann that brought it to the fore in the middle of the last century.3 Although the understanding of the soul is central to Christian anthropology, it has not been fully resolved in the patristic period. Many doubts remained, and the teaching of St Maximus the Confessor on this issue only confirms this conclusion. In his works, we find an intertwining of different traditions, which is not unexpected. However, in this article, I do not intend primarily to identify and analyse these influences but to point to some inconsistencies that may help shed light on the general context of St Maximus’ theology.

1

An older but very useful study provides an excellent general introduction to this issue. See Erwin Rohde, Psyche: the Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among Ancient Greeks (Chicago, 1987). 2 The purpose of this article does not allow me to address this issue in more detail. A brief but useful overview can be found in Kevin Corrigan, Evagrius and Gregory: Mind, Soul and Body in the 4th Century (Farnham, 2015), 37-9. 3 Oscar Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament (New York, 1958).

Studia Patristica CXXI, 67-81. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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I would like to stress that the doctrine of the soul is not established in early Christianity.4 As we read in Dialogue with Heracleides, Origen was forced to explain to the assembled bishops the teaching on the soul, which was unknown to them.5 St Gregory of Nyssa tried to reconcile the Christian and Platonic understanding of the soul, avoiding the trap of supporting the idea about preexistence of the soul. According to his testimony, in his time, there were many different understandings about the nature of the soul.6 At the time of St Maximus, the doctrine of the soul was considered a part of the Christian tradition, although the fact that it was not mentioned in the Creed shows that it did not occupy a central place. After Origen was condemned in 553,7 people who completely denied the immortality of the soul appeared in anti-Origenist circles.8 As Benevich observes, Maximus responds to the teaching according to which ‘the soul receives its ability to think and to reason from the body, and without it, as these people say, it cannot have it’.9 This teaching implies a materialistic conception of the soul, rooted in Aristotelianism. The consequence of this teaching is the understanding according to which the soul sleeps in the period after death until the resurrection. Thus, the soul is reduced to the function of the body. Maximus rejects such materialistic anthropology and eschatology.10 It seems that the Benevich’ thesis about Maximus and his opposition to antiOrigenism is potentially fruitful and may provide a basis for elucidation of various problems arousing from his works. About the intellectual atmosphere of anti-Origenism that was intensified by the studies of medicine and psychology, Nicholas Consts writes: These studies increasingly acknowledged the mind’s close interaction with and dependence on the body, as could be observed, for example, when a severe blow to the head 4 For a brief overview see Sophie Cartwright, ‘Soul and Body in Early Christianity’, in A. Marmodoro and S. Cartwright (eds), A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2018), 173-90. 5 Origène, Dialogus cum Heraclide. Entretien avec Héraclide, ed. J. Scherer, SC 67 (Paris, 1960), 102.19-2. 6 De anima et resurrectione, GNO III/3, ed. J. Kenneth Downing (Leiden, 1958), 6.3-5. 7 This topic has been much discussed. See, for example, Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Boston, 2013), 72438. 8 It is not without significance that at that time Eustratios of Constantinople (after 582) wrote a polemical work entitled A Refutation of Those Who Say That the Souls of the Dead Are Not Active and Receive No Benefit from the Prayers and Sacrifices Made for Them to God. For details see Matthew Dal Santo, Debating the Saints’ Cults in the Age of Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2012), 21-83. 9 Ep. 7 (PG 91, 437A). English translation: Grigory Benevich, ‘Maximus the Confessor’s polemics against anti-Origenism, Epistulae 6 and 7 as a context for the Ambigua ad Iohannem’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 104 (2009), 5-15. 10 Vladimir Cvetkovic, ‘Maximus the Confessor’s Reading of Origen between Origenism and Anti-Origenism’, in Anders-Christian Jacobsen (ed.), Origeniana Undecima: Origen and Origenism in the History of Western Tradition (Leuven, 2016), 747-58.

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resulted in the loss of memory or in the cessation of movement, a materialist turn that contradicted the church’s teaching on the nature of the soul and made nonsense of its institutional alliance with the dead.11

But, it was not just the issue of materialistic anthropology, eschatology, and materiality of the soul which prompted St Maximus to react. We have to inquire why St Maximus became involved in this kind of discussion and what was the real problem for him. In my opinion, the real reason lies on a deeper ontological plane.12 We could easily interpret Maximus’ views in the context of the dispute between Biblical and Neoplatonic positions, or Origenism and Anti-Origenism disagreement, and this is because he preserves traditional conceptual constructions with their specific semantic definitions. He relatively rarely builds new conceptual structures, being much more inclined to incorporate the old, classical statements (philosophical, biblical, or statements of the Fathers) into his specific theological context. Thus, determining the soul, he says: That the soul lies between God and the matter, with the potentialities to be united to either – I mean the intellect’s potential for union with God, and sense perception’s potential to unite with the matter.13

Here we may observe a strong echo of Neoplatonic doctrine of the soul as an intermediary entity in the hierarchy of beings. The teaching of the Cappadocian Fathers and St Maximus about personality and hypostasis have been problematised by several contemporary scholars, but for this article, I will stick to the conclusions drawn by John Zizioulas and Vladimir Cvetkovic.14 I would particularly emphasize Maximus specific understanding 11 Nicholas Constas, ‘An Apology for the Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity: Eustratius Presbyter of Constantinople, On the State of Souls after Death (CPG 7522)’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002), 267-85, 270. 12 Maximus ‘ontology’ should be understood in terms of participating in existence. In this way, both anthropological and ethical facts become relevant to the ontological status of being. On the ontological foundation of virtues, see for example Emma Brown Dewhurst, ‘The Ontology of Virtue as Participation in Divine Love in the Works of St. Maximus the Confessor’, Forum Philosophicum 20 (2015), 157-69. 13 Amb. 10 (PG 91, 1193D). All English translation of Ambigua is from Nicholas Constas, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers (Cambridge, 2014). 14 Zizioulas deals with this topic in many papers, but here I will point to only one study where he gives definitive clarifications and answers to his critics: John Zizioulas, ‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St. Maximus the Confessor’, in Maxim Vasiljevic (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection. Proceedings of the Symposium on St. Maximus the Confessor (Alhambra, CA, 2013), 85-113; Vladimir Cvetkovic, ‘The Oneness of God as Unity of Persons in the Thought of St Maximus the Confessor’, in Sotiris Mitralexis, Georgios Steiris, Marcin Podbielski and Sebastian Lalla (eds), Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher (Eugene, OR, 2017), 304-15, especially 308. See also: Aleksandar Djakovac, ‘Τρόπος ὑπάρξεως bei den Kappadokischen Vätern und bei St. Maximus Confessor’, in Bogoljub Sijakovic (ed.), Durch den Glauben denken. Aufsätze aus der serbischen Theologie heute (Belgrad, 2017), 119-27. For

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of ontology in the context of eschatological realisation of the truth of being, which defines his ontology as dynamic. The dynamics of the ontology of St. Maximus is based on the idea of History as the History of salvation, the History in which God incarnates, the History that represents the ongoing process of creation. Therefore, his ontology is also iconic, since the truth of the world is only eschatologically revealed.15 Dionysios Skliris emphasises that ‘Maximus’ view of History is dynamical’ and that for him ‘History is not just a static field for domination by structures that come from outside of History’.16 Still, Maximus did not always remain true to his fundamental ontological position. At times, he sought to recontextualise elements of tradition belonging to a different, static ontological model. In these attempts, he is only partly successful. The question, then, is whether Maximus’ insistence on understanding the soul as immaterial and immortal is an expression of his Origenism, his reaction to extreme anti-Origenism, or something else? Is the immortality of the soul based on its natural properties or participation in the divine? If participation is involved, what is the nature of that participation? The question of human unity and the role of the body in salvation are also raised. Is the body merely a ‘supplement’ to the soul, or is it part of the essential definition of the human being? In this sense, it is necessary to consider whether the soul is, according to St. Maximus, a separate and self-sufficient entity that could be identified with hypostasis/person? Developing his thought based on Chalcedonian Christology, St Maximus considered the anthropological truth of the human being and the eschatological truth of the world in the light of hypostatic unity with the Logos.17 This means that humanity possesses the capacity for hypostatic union with God, which is the intrinsic property that determines the Imago Dei. This capacity is reflected in the ecstatic potential of created nature, which is therefore understood in the context of a dynamic ontology.18 an alternative reading of Saint Maximus, see Marcin Podbielski, ‘The Face of the Soul, the Face of God: Maximus the Confessor and πρόσωπον’, in Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher (2017), 193-228. 15 Aleksandar Djakovac, ‘Iconic Ontology of St. Maximus the Confessor’, in Dumitru A. Vanca, Mark J. Cherry and Alin Albu (eds), Ars Liturgica: From the Image of Glory to the Images of the Idols of Modernity (Alba Iulia, 2017), 57-68. 16 Dionysios Skliris, ‘Syn-odical Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Proposition for Ontology, within History and in the Eschaton’, in Sotiris Mitralexis and Marcin Podbielski (eds), Christian and Islamic Philosophies of Time (Wilmington, 2018), 85-117, 99. 17 Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic age to Chalcedon (AD 451) (London, 1975), 549. 18 Loudovikos correctly notes that this ability is Christocentric, and suggest that ‘the utmost manifestation of God’s reciprocal analogical ἔκστασις is Christ himself since he represents the ontological consummation of the dialogical/analogical ecstatic syn-energy out of mutual love between God and man’, Nicholas Loudovikos, ‘Analogical Ecstasis: Maximus the Confessor, Plotinus, Heidegger and Lacan’, in Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher (2017), 241-54, 244.

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The immateriality of the soul, on which St Maximus insists, refers precisely to this dynamism. The soul does not represent an objective reality, to which it would be reduced if the teaching of its materiality was accepted. The soul primarily denotes dynamic and relational potentiality, which is why it cannot be concretised in the way of static objectivity, which led to the understanding of radical and superficial anti-Origenism. Maximus’ unwillingness to accept a materialist eschatology should be understood in this sense. This does not mean that for St Maximus matter as such is unsuitable for the hypostatic mode of existence or deification. The point is that insisting on strict materiality diminishes the dynamic potential of creation that Maximus wants to emphasize. Creation cannot be understood simply as what it is by itself. The change of the mode of the existence of nature through its permanent union and identification with the Logos shows creation in every expression, even the material one, as a dynamic reality whose existence cannot be grounded in any kind of natural constant. As a hypostatic principle,19 the soul cannot be reduced to the materiality, but it does not represent an absolute anthropological principle either: ‘In this state, only God shines forth through body and soul when their natural features are transcended in overwhelming glory’.20 This statement means that God manifests Himself only through Incarnation, whereby man cannot be reduced to the body, nor the soul. Explaining how the body is ‘cloud’ and ‘veil’ according to St Gregory the Theologian, St Maximus says that Gregory believes that every human mind has drifted from its natural movement, and now it moves following passions, having nowhere else to go because it has strayed from the path to God. Because of that, he says, ‘he divided the flesh into passion and sensation’ (καὶ διεῖλε τὴν σάρκα εἰς πάθος καὶ αἴσθησιν) describing both parts of the ensouled flesh as a ‘cloud’ and a ‘veil’.21 Maximus equates bodily passion with a ‘cloud’ covering the mind that represents governing faculty (τῷ ἡγεμονικῷ τῆς ψυχῆς) and deception of the senses with a ‘veil’. Here we see an interesting twist. It is not the body as such that is understood as ‘cloud’ and ‘veil’, but it is such because of a misdirected movement of the mind. Misdirected movement is a kind of mind’s staticity or immobility. So Maximus can speak about ‘non-movement of anger and desire toward the things against nature’ – παρὰ φύσιν ἀκινησία.22 As is known, immobility in Maximus otherwise has a positive meaning. The 19 Thunberg correctly emphasises the personalistic character of salvation. Man ‘should receive Him as a substitute for his own ego, being compensated by the gift of God alone, through his ascension in Christ’. See Lars Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos: The Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor (New York, 1985), 89. 20 Th.oec 2.88 (PG 90, 1168B). English translation: George Berthold, Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (Mahwah, NJ, 1985), 167. 21 Amb. 10 (PG 91, 1112A). 22 Quest. 191, Maximi Confessoris, Quaestiones et Dubia, ed. J.D. Declerck, CChr.SG 10 (Turnhout, 1982), 134.

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Deity is immobile, and the immobility of the created nature represents its full eschatological realisation. However, just as movement can be παρὰ φύσιν, so can immobility. Since it does not represent a movement toward God, such a movement can be understood as a ‘tapping in the dark’. Answering the question, ‘if God sent Moses into Egypt, why was the angel of God seeking to kill him?’, Maximus explains that ‘neither was the divine angel harsh when he warned Moses of the death that would befall him by his stopping and staggering on the way of the virtues (κατὰ τὴν τῶν ἀρετῶν ὁδὸν στάσεως συμβάντα θάνατον), a death that was perhaps provoked by Moses’s weakness on the road of the virtues’.23 Maximus clearly emphasises that such immobility represents the immobility of death. It occurs because a human being is willingly moved from God instead of towards Him. This movement led to the division of the body into passions and senses, that is, made it hypostatically motionless. The movement that creatures have when they are not moving towards God is a negation of their hypostasis and of the nature that belongs to it. A similar intention is perceivable in the Seventh Letter, where St Maximus strives to prove that the soul exists even after bodily death. Such a view can be interpreted in the context of an objectified static ontology if the immortality of the soul is based on what it is by nature, or based on the principle of its functioning. It is not crucial whether this immortality is based on the will of God or on what the soul is per se since the result is the same. But in the context of Maximus’ understanding and development of Chalcedonian Christology, with its emphasis on the hypostatic unity of God and creation,24 all these issues take on a different meaning. The immortality of the soul after bodily death is no longer necessarily reduced solely to a change in the form of an objectively given existence, nor an extension of life as a dematerialised existence. Maximus’ ‘Origenism’ and ‘anti-Origenism’ are based on completely different ontological conceptions from their simplistic interpretations in the Maximian era. Therefore, it may be more accurate to speak of Maximus overcoming the Origenist and anti-Origenist conceptions than of their acceptance or rejection.25 23 Q. Thal. 17, Maximi Confessoris, Questiones ad Thalassium, ed. C. Laga and C. Steel, CChr.SG 7 (Turnhout, 1980), 115,70-2. About the importance of this quotation for understanding Maximus teaching of perpetual progress, see Paul M. Blowers, ‘Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Concept of “Perpetual Progress”’, Vigiliae Christianae 46.2 (1992), 151-71, 155. 24 See, for example, Q.Thal 22.2 (CChr.SG 7, 137): ‘And this plan was for Him to be mingled (ἐγκραθῆναι), without change, with human nature through a true union according to hypostasis, uniting human nature, without alteration (ἀναλλοιώτως), to Himself, so that He would become man – in a manner known to Him – and at the same time make man God through union with Himself’. English translation: Maximos Constas, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios (Washington, DC, 2018). 25 Of course, it must bear in mind that Maximus’ criticism is often directed against the Origenists rather than against Origen himself. See Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope?, Volume 1: Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich (Eugene, 2019), 177.

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The question of the ontological significance of the teaching on the soul in the context of Christian soteriology has never been fully resolved. It is no coincidence that Basil the Great avoided this issue, while Gregory of Nyssa tried to find a solution, but with limited success.26 Platonist-oriented thinkers had a clear position, which could hardly be reconciled with Christian teaching on the first-class ontological significance of the incarnation. In Nemesius De natura hominis, we find the formulation that ‘everything that has a bodily, and thus temporal origin is perishable and mortal’.27 Nemesius believes that a being cannot be incorporeal and temporal at the same time, which leads him to the conclusion that the soul must precede the body, as Krausmüller observes.28 Aeneas of Gaza held that the eternal existence is a gift of God and that nature is a gift (καὶ τὸ δῶρον φύσις ἦν). Krausmüller believes that the problem here is with the view that mortality is a normal state of creation. However, the teaching about natural decay is present in the writings of earlier fathers, such as St. Athanasius.29 The problem is that if we claim that immortality is a property of nature, even as a God’s gift, this questions the ontological meaning of incarnation, since the salvation of creation could have been based on God’s arbitrary decision. St. Maximus continues this tradition of thinking. In his Sixth Letter, St Maximus argues against those who taught that the soul is carnal.30 Maximus’ first argument is that if the body is inherently immobile, then the soul, if it is bodily, must remain immobile. And so, one could go to infinity until one reaches the incorporeal which is the principle of bodily movement. We can ask why is it necessary for the principle of motion to be incorporeal and why it is not conceivable for Maximus that something bodily should be that principle? It seems that Maximus – probably through Nemesius – accepted Plotinus teaching on this point. Plotinus states that ‘all body-nature lacks permanence, is a thing of 26

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (San Francisco, 1995), 20; Alfred Norris, Manhood and Christ. A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford, 1963), 28. 27 De natura hominis 30, 22-3. English translation: Philip Van Der Eijk and R.W. Sharples, Nemesius. On the Nature of Man (Liverpool, 2008), 69. 28 Dirk Krausmüller, ‘Faith and Reason in Late Antiquity: The Perishability Axiom and Its Impact on Christian Views about the Origin and Nature of the Soul’, in M. Elkaisy-Friemuth and J.M. Dillon (eds), The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul. Reflections of Platonic Psychology in the Monotheistic Religions (Boston, 2009), 47-76, 50. 29 Contra Gentes 41: ‘For the nature of created things, having come into being from nothing, is unstable, and is weak and mortal when considered by itself’ (τῶν μὲν γὰρ γενητῶν ἐστιν ἡ φύσις, ἅτε δὴ ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων ὑποστᾶσα, ῥευστή τις καὶ ἀσθενὴς καὶ θνητὴ καθ’ ἑαυτὴν συγκρινομένη τυγχάνει), Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford, 1971), 112-3. 30 Interestingly, Maximus emphasises at the beginning of this letter that this is his opinion and that he refers neither to the Scripture nor the Fathers. At the end of the letter, he again points out that what is written is his opinion, not an expression of faith. Such restraint suggests that Maximus was aware that his position was problematic.

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flux’.31 It is clear, he says, that ‘bodies themselves exercise such efficiency by means of the incorporeal powers operating in them’. The soul is the ‘“principle of motion”, providing motion to all other things, while is itself moved by itself, bestowing life on the ensouled body’.32 Plotinus also claims that it is the soul that gives the body the life it possesses ‘on its own’. ‘For indeed it is not the case that everything enjoys a life sourced from outside – that would lead to an infinite regress…’ Maximus seems to accept and repeats Plotinus’ argument. However, we may ask whether, by following Plotinus, we can ascertain the natural immortality of the soul in the same way? Maximus, of course, does not reach such a conclusion. St Maximus places Plotinus’ argumentation, with which there is a clear parallel, into a different context. For him, what is corporeal is static, since its properties make it permanent. The fluid constancy or immobility of the somatic can – paradoxically – be understood as a form of immobility. This immobility is quite different from the divine immobility, which is always non-diastemic and does not imply distance and separation.33 At the same time, this resting is also a special kind of movement, which is based on the hypostatic/personal mode of God’s existence. Thus, we can determine the difference. The divine movement is hypostatic and non-diastemic, while the movement of the material or corporeal is impersonal and based on distance and separation. Thus, the divine movement can be equated with rest in the sense that it is non-diastemic. The resting of the material, on the other hand, constitutes death, unless transcended into a divine mode of existence that is hypostatic and undivided. Therefore the personal or hypostatic principle cannot be reduced to the material or the somatic. Because quantity and quality would be peculiar to him, ‘the (soul) by form would be locked within strict limits’ (ὡς ἀναγκαίοις διειλημένη πέρασιν).34 Thus the soul would become static as it would be devoid of ecstasy. The eschatological rest that the creation is to attain is therefore ever-moving and ecstatic. Sotiris Mitralexis successfully defines στάσις ἀεικίνητος as a radical transformation of temporality and motion in the ever-moving repose.35 In this way the soul for St Maximus represents the ability of the hypostatic union with Logos. This is why the soul must be incorporeal so that her dynamism would be ecstatic and potentially free from the constraints of the created nature that moves within the necessary division. 31 Enn. IV 8, 45. English translation, Plotinus: The Enneads. Translated by Stephen MacKenna. Revised by B.S. Page (London, 1957), 349. 32 Enn. IV 7, 9, 2-8. 33 On the development of the notion of diastema in Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus see Vladimir Cvetkovic, ‘The Concepts of Time and Eternity from Plato to Saint Maximus the Confessor’, Crkvene studije 1 (2004), 54-70. 34 Ep. 6 (PG 91, 425C). 35 Sotiris Mitralexis, Ever-Moving Repose: A Contemporary Reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time (Cambridge, 2017), xviii.

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St. Maximus has exactly that in mind when he says: If all contraction (συστολή) and expansion (διαστολή) and division (τομή) are characteristics of the corporeal, then all that is free from contraction, expansion, and division is always incorporeal (Ἔτι, εἰ πᾶσα συστολὴ καὶ διαστολὴ καὶ τομὴ τῶν σωμάτων ἐστί· τὸ δὲ πάσης συστολῆς καὶ διαστολῆς καὶ τῆς οἱασοῦν τομῆς ἐλεύθερον).36

The soul, as the hypostatic, dynamic and ecstatic principle – by which nature is endowed to be free to move and participate hypostatically in God – to be able to change its mode of existence, cannot be reduced to simple force or property. In other words, the soul cannot be reduced to a static and objective way of being. According to St Maximus, ‘if that which ensouled the soul is force or property, then the life-giving and moving essence is without its own will and non-existent’ (ζωοποιητικόν τε καὶ κινητικόν, τὸ ἀκούσιον ἔσται καὶ ἀνυπόστατον).37 Maximus did not accidentally use the neo-Chalcedonian term ἀνυπόστατον, which indicates non-existence but also defines existence as hypostatic.38 The existence of created beings depends on their hypostatic communion with God, which is made possible by incarnation. For this reason, passions are a false way of being, since they constitute a false hypostasis or parahypostasis (παραυπόστασις),39 which is identified with non-existence. The created nature moves, and if its motion is parahypostatic, it misses the mark and fails to realise itself, since it bases its existence on something that does not exist. Maximus insists on the immateriality of the soul because existence cannot be reduced to the possession of some qualities, since ‘it is quite different from what something is and what it has’ (πολὺ διαφέρειν τοῦ ἔχειν τὸ εἶναι).40 This distinction in St Maximus thought springs from his ontology, which is based on the Cappadocian-Chalcedonian Christology.41 Existence is identified with dynamic and hypostatic participation in God, not with certain natural attributes. 36

Ep. 6 (PG 91, 428A). Ep. 6 (PG 91, 428B). 38 It is quite legitimate to understand ἐνυπόστατος ‘not in the sense of personal existence or existence in person, but simply as existence or existent, that is opposed to ἀνυπόστατος’, V. Cvetkovic, The Oneness of God (2004), 312. But on the other hand, I do not consider it justified to reduce the meaning of this term in St. Maximus. I agree with von Balthasar who concludes that term ἐνυπόστατος ‘could, at that period, signify both the reality of nature and that of person’. When it comes to the use of this term in Maximus, Balthasar considers that ἐνυπόστατος ‘has a twofold sense: it designates both the utterly personalized manner in which God’s being exists and how the being of the Divine Persons is rooted in the being of God’. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco, 2003), 232. 39 Q.Thal 51 (CChr.SG 7, 405.186). 40 Ep. 6 (PG 91, 428C). 41 Tollefsen provides a brief but convincing analysis of Maximus’ understanding of the hypostasis, with a critique of Törönen’s position. See Torstein Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2012), 126-30; Melchisedec Törönen, Union and Distinction in the Thought of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2007). 37

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In addition to having a cause of its existence, creation also exists by participation. ‘Caused by the cause itself, and what participates from what it participates in, or existent by the cause of existence’ (ἀλλ᾿ ὡς πρὸς αἴτιον αἰτιατόν, ἤ μέτοχον πρὸς μετεχόμενον, ἢ ὕπαρξιν πρὸς αἰτίαν.42 As Maximus opponents, extreme anti-origenists argued that the soul must be corporeal since only God is incorporeal he emphasises that, ‘what has a cause is not connected to the cause by being consubstantial to it, but by being homonymous to it (ὁμονύμως) and by participation, while by nature they are entirely different’ (Οὐδέ συγκριτικῶς ἢ συνωνύμως, ὡς ἐπὶ τῶν ὁμοουσίων· ἀλλ᾿ ὁμονύμως, καὶ οἷον εἰπεῖν μεθεκτῶς· τῶν πραγμάτων κατὰ τὸ ἄπειρον ἀλλήλων τῇ φύσει διεστηκότων).43 Here, Maximus is fundamentally different from Plotinus, for whom the soul, besides being incorporeal and self-living, is self-caused too. Participation, according to Maximus, can only be hypostatical since this is the only way to explain the identity of the names (homonymy) which he mentions, along with the distinction between natures. The Christological parallel is clear. Just as in Christ human nature remains different from the divine, it is homonymous to it, since it belongs to one name – to one Person of the Son / Logos. In this way, by denying the corporeality of the soul, Maximus associated it to the person or hypostasis. This is precisely why we must view the soul as immaterial since the analogy which it seeks to establish would be otherwise impossible. In the Seventh Letter, St Maximus criticises the extreme materialistic notion that after the resurrection the bodies will be no different from the present, except that they will no longer die.44 This opposition to materialism may sound like a tendency towards the spiritualisation of matter, in the sense of NeoPlatonist Origenism. Maximus has shown in many places that he has no problem with seeing materiality and corporeality as something that will not only be saved but also as something necessary for salvation. Adam Cooper observes that the body is transforming since there is a ‘reciprocal correspondence between human deification, the divine incarnation, and the attendant corporeal revelatory implications’.45 St Maximus notices: ‘When it receives through this food eternal blessedness indwelling in it, it becomes God through participation in divine grace by itself ceasing from all activities of mind and sense and with them the natural activities of the body which become Godlike along with it in the participation of deification proper to it. In this state, only God shines forth through body and soul when their natural features are transcended in overwhelming glory’.46 42

Ep. 6 (PG 91, 429A). Ibid. 44 Ep. 6 (PG 91, 433A). 45 Adam G. Cooper, The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified (Oxford, 2005), 49. 46 Th.oec 2.88 (PG 90, 1165D-1168A). 43

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Maximus opposition to extreme materialism is based on his belief that human nature has been altered after the fall and thus likened to what he calls ‘living death’.47 The mortal mode of existence is not only dying as a cessation of life processes; in fact, it is comprised of the whole way of life-based on death and the wrong way in which creation tries to escape from death. In this sense, Maximus sees in the bodily functions, and above all in sexuality, the way by which death reigns over creation. According to St Maximus, if we believe that the soul continues to live, then it certainly moves. ‘For all life of those who have come to be is shown to be in movement’ (Πᾶσα γὰρ ζωὴ τῶν γενητῶν, ἐν κινήσει δείκνυται).48 This equation of life with the movement in St Maximus’ writings is very significant as a confirmation of his dynamic ontology. Life itself is identified with the movement, not only in the sense that it possesses movement as property but in the sense that it is moving. Because of this, life is expressed or manifested by movement. That movement is ‘not through ascription nor in an accidental manner, in circles or in a straight line but intellectually and rationally’.49 In St Maximus’ work, one can distinguish between two types of movement. One is related to the material element of created beings, and it is the movement that will be transcended, being diastimical and implying the division of beings. The movement of the soul is different because it is hypostatic. But to be truly hypostatic, such movement must be deified. In first Scholia on Ad Thalasium 13, we read: ‘From beings, he says, we know the Divine Cause of beings; from the differences between beings we learn about the enhypostatic Wisdom of being; and from the natural movement of beings we discern the enhypostatic Life of being, which is the Life-creating Power of beings, that is, the Holy Spirit’.50 We observe an issue here. On the one hand, St Maximus, being faithful to tradition, does not fail to emphasise the importance of the body for salvation, nor the fact that man is a unique being that cannot be reduced to the soul. In this sense, in Maximus’ writings, we will find no Origenist mythology or any negation of the material. The soul represents hypostatic properties. However, a problem arises when Maximus claims that the soul is αὐθυπόστατος, i.e., that it is self-existent. ‘The soul is either reasonable and intelligent by itself, or thanks to the body. And if it is reasonable and intelligent by itself or by its essence, then it is always self-existent’ (ἡ ψυχή, ἤ δι᾿ ἑαυτήν ἐστι λογική τε καὶ νοερά, ἤ διὰ τὸ σῶμα. Καὶ εἰ μέν δι᾿ ἑαυτήν, ἤτοι τὴν ἑαυτῆς οὐσίαν ἐστὶ λογική τε καὶ νοερά, καὶ αὐθυπόστατος, πάντως ἐστίν).51 Does this 47

Amb. 10 (PG 91, 1156A). Ep. 7 (PG 91, 436C 3-4). 49 Ep. 7 (PG 91, 436C). English translation: Dirk Krausmüller, ‘Does the Flesh Possess Hypostatic Idioms, and If So, Why is it Then Not a Separate Hypostasis?’, Scrinum 15 (2019), 193-210. 50 Q.Thal 13, Sh. 1 (CChr.SG 7, 97). 51 Ep. 7 (PG 91, 436D). 48

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mean that he is giving up on understanding the soul as a hypostasis or as a hypostatic potential? Maximus is clear: ‘If (the soul) is not self-existing, then it obviously does not exist’ (Εἰ δὲ αὐθυπόστατος οὐκ ἔστιν).52 This term indicates that the soul is not to be understood in the sense of Aristotelian entelechy. By claiming that the soul is self-existent (αὐθυπόστατος), Maximus does not want to say that it is independent of God as Creator. He wants to determine its independence concerning the body.53 He wants to show that the soul exists as a separate entity because otherwise, we could not say that it exists at all since it would be identified with the body. It is possible here to determine the similarities between Maximus and Proclus. Proclus claims that the soul is self-moving (αὐτοκίνητος), self-living (αὐτόζωος), and self-existent (αὐθυπόστατος). Here is how the Proclus defines selfexistence of the soul: For if it has an origin, qua originated it will be in itself incomplete and need the perfective operation of another, whereas qua self-produced it is complete and self-sufficient. For all that has an origin is perfected by another, which brings into being that which as yet is not, since coming-to-be is a process leading from incompleteness to the opposite completeness.54

Everything that is self-possessing, it is imperishable (46), indivisible and unique (47) and ultimately eternal (49): Each thing is held together and conserved so long as it is linked with a principle which contains and conserves it. But the self-constituted, being its own cause, never deserts its cause since it never deserts itself. Therefore all that is self-constituted is imperishable.

As Rigs observed, the soul for Proclus represents ‘a source of individual identity and uniqueness of the body it uses as a medium’.55 On the other hand, the soul and body represent two separate entities that are only temporarily united. For Maximus, on the contrary, the soul and body are inseparable since they belong to the same being. Nevertheless, Maximus partially adopted Proclus, and thus the Neo-Platonic position, attributing to the soul self-existence, thereby seeking to determine the possibility of its independent existence concerning the body.

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Ep. 7 (PG 91, 437A). Bieler suggests that in this way ‘Maximus makes a substantial distinction between the soul and the body’. See Jonathan Bieler, Der Einheitsbegriff als Kohärenzprinzip bei Maximus Confessor: Eine Studie zur Ps-Dionysius-Rezeption, triplex via und analogem Weltbild bei Maximus Confessor (Leiden, 2019), 149. 54 Elementa theologica 45. English translation: E.R. Doods, Proclus, The Elements of Theology. A Revised Text with Translation, Introduction, and Commentary (Oxford, 1963). 55 Timothy Riggs, ‘In Search of the Good. The Role of Recognition in Proclus and Maximus the Confessor’, Open Theology 2 (2016), 457-70, 460-1. 53

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For St Maximus, the soul represents the actualisation of the body and his sensory observations. ‘Soul, gently guiding them into actualization through the perceptions of the inner principles of beings … since, according to a certain mystical principle, every sense along with its respective organ has been given primordially and naturally an analogous power of the soul’.56 ‘For just as the flesh was swallowed up by corruption as a result of sin, and likewise the soul by the flesh (since it is known only through the activities of the body), and the knowledge of God by the soul’s complete ignorance (to the point of not even knowing whether or not God exists), so too, in the time of the resurrection – when the Holy Spirit will restore the correct order, for the sake of the God who became flesh – the flesh will be spiritually swallowed up by the soul, and the soul by God’ (καταποθήσεται ἡ σὰρξ ὑπὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἐν πνεύματι, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ).57 This absorption should not be understood as a conversion of one to another, nor as a negation of the body. Maximus strongly emphasised that the unity of body and soul constitute human being: For after the death of the body, the soul is not called “soul” in an unqualified way, but the soul of a man, indeed the soul of a particular human being, for even after the body, it possesses, as its form, the whole human being, which is predicated of it by its relation as a part to the whole. The same holds in the case of the body.58

Maximus says as von Balthasar observes, that ‘Christ sits at the right hand of God the Father, along with his body’.59 That is the model of our hope, and ‘we will not accept any abandonment of our bodies, however, it is brought about’.60 Maximus talks about the importance of the body and its eschatological preservation.61 What Maximus wants to say when he is talking about the absorption of the body by the soul is that it obtains a different way of being, a mode of existence that Maximus defines as spiritual, and which is the mode of existence of the future age. According to St Maximus, ‘All that is ours will be revealed under the aspect of the future by the divine grace of the resurrection’ (πάντα κατὰ τὸ μέλλον δείξει τὰ ἡμέτερα ἡ θεοπρεπὴς τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις).62 In Mystagogy, Maximus writes that ‘the body will become like the soul and sensible things like intelligible things in dignity and glory, for the unique divine power will manifest itself in all things in a vivid and active presence proportioned to each one, and will by itself preserve unbroken for endless ages the bond of unity’.63 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Amb. 21 (PG 91, 1248B). Amb. 21 (PG 91, 1252A). Amb. 7 (PG 91, 1101B). H.U. von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy (2003), 175. Amb. 42 (PG 91, 1324CD). See Q.Thal. 61 (CChr.SG 22, 93). Amb. 21 (PG 91, 1252A). Myst. 7. English translation: G. Berthold, Maximus Confessor (1985), 197.

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The soul represents the way of being, it is the hypostasis of the body, in the same way that is enhypostasised in Christ, so that it becomes the Lord Himself. Christophe Erismann concludes correctly that ‘the concept of enhypostaton seems to provide Maximus with an understanding of immanence for essential entities’.64 Just as the natural difference between the soul and the body is not lost, the same is with the difference between the one who is enhypostasised and the one who hypostases. Hypostasizing concerns the mode of existence, and it is the mode of the union that is, in harmony with the Chalcedonian Christology that Maximus follows, the only way of uniting different natures without mixing or losing them. In Ep. 13, Maximus states that Every whole, and especially when it is seen to be from different (sc. things) according to composition, monadically preserves the identity of its hypostasis (τῆς οἰκείας ὑποστάσεως μοναδικῶς φυλάττουσα τὴν ταυτότητα), while having in an unmixed fashion the difference of its parts from one another, according to which it preserves without adulteration the substantial account of one part as compared with other.65

Krausmuller believes that Maximus did not explain ‘why a “whole” should not be divisible into its parts?’66 The answer is that for Maximus, it is the hypostasis that represents identity (ταὐτότης). However, we should remember that Maximus understands identity in a relational rather than a substantive way.67 From our analysis, we can conclude that for Maximus the soul represents the manifestation of a dynamic ontological principle. But he strives to stay true to the classic patristic statements read in the Platonic key, where the soul is designated as a kind of special semi-material entity. On the other hand, St. Maximus tries to put this conception in a new, Christological and eschatological context. He is not entirely successful in this. The Platonic explanation is not consistently derived, for Maximus does not draw the conclusion that naturally follows, which is that the soul, after all, is uncreated. On the other hand, the soul also appears as hypostatic potentiality. In this sense we could claim that the soul, to a certain extent, is identified with the hypostasis, that is, with the person. For St Maximus, the incarnation is the foundation of existence. He views the human being as unity. The soul is always only the part of the whole which is called the human. The soul is understood as one part of the human nature, and 64

Christophe Erismann, ‘A Logician for East and West. Maximus the Confessor on Universals’, in Daniel Haynes (ed.), A Saint for East and West: Maximus the Confessor’s Contribution to Eastern and Western Christian Theology (Eugene, 2019), 50-68, 63. 65 Ep. 13 (PG 91, 521C4-9). English translation: D. Krausmüller, ‘Does the Flesh Possess Hypostatic Idioms’ (2019), 193-210. 66 D. Krausmüller, ‘Does the Flesh Possess Hypostatic Idioms’ (2019), 205. 67 For a more precise definition of the term ταὐτότης see H.U. von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy (2003), 234-5.

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as an entity that transcends the body in its importance, though not completely separable from it. On the other hand, the soul is objectively conceivable without the body, since the soul can function even after bodily death. The soteriological function of the soul is to be a kind of mediator, to absorb the material which in the end is to become soul-like. This gradual soteriology is caused precisely by Maximus acceptance of the concept of the soul as a self-existing entity. This latter view is also the most problematic. For if the soul is understood as an entity in its full ontological meaning – since it is allegedly self-existing – then duality is unjustifiably introduced into creation. In spite of Maximus’ effort to show the opposite, the material, that is, the corporeal is nevertheless reduced to something secondary, while the soul itself approaches the divine too closely. Understood as an entity, the soul loses its dynamic character and ecstatic–hypostatic potentiality, so we again return to a static ontology that can hardly fit into Maximus’ general ontological standpoint. Maximus’ attempt to synthesise Biblical and Platonic heritage is only partially successful. He failed to overcome the antinomies of this synthesis, as is obvious from his teaching on the soul. As a great theologian, on the other hand, he left the possibility for a creative interpretation of his heritage, precisely by avoiding to draw any definitive conclusions from his initial assumptions.

The Relationship between the Logos of Well-Being and Mode of Existence in Maximus the Confessor* Vladimir CVETKOVIC, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between the notions of ‘logos of well-being’ and the ‘mode of existence’ in Maximus the Confessor. In pursuing this goal the article addresses the problem of how to understand the logos of well-being, which defines the mode of existence on the one hand and how losely it is bound to the logos of nature on the other hand. Although it is possible to contrast the mode of existence to the logoi embedded in its nature, the question arises as to how one’s mode of existence can be established by acting in accordance with the logos of the individual being as well as universal logoi. In answering this question, I intend to interpret certain scenes from the science-fiction film Annihilation as the backdrop against which the relationship between the logos of well-being and the mode of existence will be portrayed. I will first draw a parallel between Maximus’ expression ‘assimilation of particulars to universals’ and examples of individual beings as a combination of different species and genera that appear in the film. Secondly, I will attempt to demonstrate the uniqueness of the mode of existence by analysing the hypothetical existence of two individual beings that share the same logos of nature and the mode of existence. Thirdly, I will argue that the dispassionate relationship between beings defines one’s mode of existence that in return activate the logoi of one’s nature. The result of this investigation is to demonstrate that by acting in accordance with the logos of well-being, the human being establishes its own mode of existence – one that is always in compliance with the divine will.

In the recent science-fiction film Annihilation by Alex Garland, made on the basis of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel of the same name, the main characters embark on an expedition to explore a mysterious quarantined zone of mutating plants and animals referred to as area X. The five women involved in the expedition experience forgetfulness, a sense of time loss, and a blurred vision of sky, water and trees colours. By advancing further into the mysterious zone, they encounter countless mutations of flora and fauna. Everything that comes in touch with another being seems to receive the essential characteristics or forms of this other being. These mutations happen not only within the confines of animal * This article was written with the support of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, according to the Agreement on the realisation and financing of scientific research for 2021.

Studia Patristica CXXI, 83-94. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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and botanic species, which result in forms like an albino alligator with many rows of shark-like teeth or plants with different kind of blossoms on the same branch, but they occur also between different genera. Thus, trees appear in human-like form, deer are wearing flowered tree branches instead of horns, and minerals acquire a tree-like form. Before the zone is dissolved in the process of annihilation, some of the characters duplicate into perfect replicas of themselves, who mimic their moves and gestures. Finally, in the concluding sequence the main surviving character encounters the replica of her dead husband. The film is considered by critics as too intellectual to reach a broader audience, but it may be quite useful for our analysis. These introductory remarks have the purpose to introduce us into the topic of the relationship between the notions of ‘logos of well-being’ and the ‘mode of existence’ in Maximus the Confessor, because the aforementioned mysterious mutations will serve as the backdrop against which this relationship will be portrayed. Before we embark on this task it might be pertinent to familiarize ourselves with the two major notions of our analysis, namely the terms ‘logos of well-being’ and ‘mode of existence’. One of the pinnacles of Maximus’ theology is his theory of logoi and much ink has been spilled in the discussion of this topic. The prevailing scholarly tendency is to consider that the logoi represent the wills of God for creation and the principles according to which God creates the world.1 Maximus speaks of a general logos of being, of the logoi for genera and species, as well as of the logoi for each individual being.2 Moreover, he classifies usually the logoi into triads. Thus, we have a triad of the logoi of essence, of providence and of judgement,3 as well as a triad of the logoi of being, of well-being and of eternal well-being.4 The logoi pertain sometimes to being, to the nature or essence of things and sometimes they relate to the human will. For instance, in the triad being – well-being – eternal well-being, the logos of being and the logos of eternal being are granted to human essence, while the logos of well-being relates to the human will.5 The logos of well-being may be considered as the divine will or divine principle, which pertains to the proper way of using the human will. 1

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley, A Communio Book (San Francisco, 2003), 66; Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor, The Early Church Fathers (London, New York, 1996), 36-7; Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor, OECS (Oxford, New York, 2008), 66. 2 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua ad Iohannem (AI) 10.37 [1:288-9], cited here and hereafter according to edition Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, ed. and trans. Nicholas P. Constas, vol. 1, Ambigua to Thomas; Ambigua to John 1–22, vol. 2, Ambigua to John 23–71, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28-9 (Cambridge, MA, London, 2014).Volume and page numbers are shown in brackets. 3 Maximus the Confessor, AI 32.3 [2:54-5]. 4 Maximus the Confessor, Capita de caritate (hereafter CChar) 3.24, cited here and hereafter according to the edition Maximus the Confessor, Capitoli sulla carità, ed. Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Verba Seniorum N.S. (Roma, 1963). 5 Maximus the Confessor, CChar 3.24-5.

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The term ‘mode of existence’ is always contrasted to the term ‘logos of nature’. According to Maximus, the mode of existence refers always to the way in which a human being may use his essential and natural qualities.6 Therefore, for Maximus the nature or the logos of nature points to something, for example to being a man, or to being a human being, while the mode or tropos of existence to someone, for example to Peter or Paul. All human beings share one and the same human nature, while the unique way to live out their nature constitutes their mode of existence,7 which being dependent on human activities is always changeable.8 Maximus states that one is illumined first by the principle of being, and then by the mode of its existence.9 This means that one will first learn that Maria or Peter are human beings, before learning on the basis of their activities their mode of existence as Maria or Peter. What we are is common to all human beings and therefore easily graspable, while the way we are is unique to each member of the human species and therefore the knowledge of it is more difficult to acquire. Nature is contrasted to the mode of existence, because nature, including the natural human will is simply given whereas the mode of existence of the specific person is acquired by a person through actions, or the way in which s/he will use her or his own will. The crucial link between the logos of nature and the mode of existence is well-being because of two reasons. On the one hand well-being possesses the actualization of the natural potential by inclination of the will, which defines the mode of existence. On the other hand this potential of well-being is rooted in nature, and therefore closely bound to the logos of nature.10 The question is how does well-being work on the level of the logoi of nature, and how does it work on the level of tropos or existence? Maximus claims that God works providentially to bring about the assimilation of particulars to universals through the movement of the particulars toward the well-being. Thus, the result of divine providence is a reciprocal unity of the particulars to each other, as well as the unity of the whole universe, ‘in an identity of movement’.11 How does one have to understand ‘the assimilation of particulars to universals’ in the context of the movement of particulars toward well-being? Each particular being, according to Maximus has its individual logos. Apart, from having its individual logos the particular being shares with other beings more generic logoi, that is, 6

A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (1996), 57. Ibid. 58. 8 Maximus the Confessor, Ad Marinum Cypri presbyterum (Opuscula theologica et polemica 10), PG 91, 137A. 9 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua ad Thomam (hereafter AT) 1.4 [1:10-1] cited, so as are AI, according to the edition of N. Constas, Difficulties in the Church Fathers (2014). 10 Maximus the Confessor, AI 65.2 [2:277]. 11 Maximus the Confessor, Quaestiones ad Thalassium (hereafter QThal) 2.2 [97-8], cited here and hereafter according to the English translation Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios, trans. Maximos [Nicholas] Constas, FC 136 (Washington, DC, 2018). Pages of translation are shown in brackets. 7

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the logoi of specific species, species, generic genera and the most generic genus.12 This means that particular human beings, such as Maria or Peter, have their individual logos of being, through which they are willed and preordained by God and through which they are brought to existence. Each particular human being has, apart from the individual logos of being, the logos of specific species, which in the case of human beings pertains to humanity.13 Individual human beings have also the common logos of species, by which they are brought into being as part of animate nature. As individuals, Maria or Peter participate also in the logos of generic genera which is common to all corporeal nature. Finally, every particular human being, every animal, plant or mineral, as well as every angelic nature shares one and common logos of the most generic genus. The identity of movement of all individual human beings consists in their assimilation to universals. This means that apart from complying with their particular logos of being, particular human beings, such as Peter or Maria, have to discover the unity with other forms of life by abiding to more universal logoi. They discover the unity with other human beings in one specific species by complying to the logos of specific species. The unity of particular human beings with other animate nature is achieved by adhering to the logos of species. Human individuals are further united with all corporeal nature in the logos of generic genera. Finally, all created nature shares one and the same logos of the most generic genus, and by belonging to one and the same created nature, each particular human being is connected with other created beings and with God as the Creator of all. In order to indicate what these unities are not, I will return to the examples from the above mentioned film Annihilation. There are three different sets of examples that I intend to tackle. The first set pertains to beings that are results of a certain form of crossbreeding. The second set relates to the existence of a particular animal or of human individuals in doublets and I intend to analyse the relationship between these particular individuals and their doublets or their replicas. Finally, I will focus on the relationship between a particular human being and the replica of his / her spouse. I will analyse all three cases from the perspective of Maximus’ distinction between the logos of being and the mode of existence. Cross-breeding I have mentioned above that the authors of the film portray certain individual beings as a combination of existing species. Thus, an albino alligator with many rows of shark-like teeth is a combination of reptiles and fishes, or specifically 12

Maximus the Confessor, AI 10.(37.)89 [1:288-9]. Vladimir Cvetkovic, ‘Logoi, Porphyrian Tree, and Maximus the Confessor’s Rethinking of Aristotelian Logic’, in Mikonja Knežević (ed.), Aristotle in Byzantium (Alhambra, CA, 2020), 152-5. 13

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of a crocodile and a shark, while a plant with different kinds of blossoms is a combination of two or more specific species of flowers. These animals or plants may be considered as hybrids created through cross-breeding. The most known example of cross-breeding, referred to by a number of philosophers,14 is a mule as a hybrid between a horse and a donkey. By being only the results of mating between horses and donkeys, mules do not exist as a separate species and they represent a certain natural anomaly. The cross-bread animals as a combination of specific species that appear in the film may be regarded also as a certain anomaly. However, the film’s authors do not only invent the creatures that are a combination of two or more specific species, but they also design particular creatures or entities that are the results of the unities among species or genera, such as trees in human-like shape or minerals in tree-like form and deer with flower branches instead of horns. Here the inanimate nature receives the form of animate nature, or two different species appear as united in a particular creature. The most striking example of this cross-bred form between different genera, is a female character Josie, who is transformed into a tree. All these cases refer to a certain assimilation of particulars to universals, but it is questionable whether Maximus understands, similarly to the film’s authors, the assimilation of particulars to universals as a form of hybrid nature constituted as the combination between several species or genera. As Maximus rejects Monophysitism on the Christological level, one may assume that he rejects also Monophysitism on anthropological or more broadly on the creaturely level. Monophysitism is known as the teaching, which propagates that Christ, who exists in one hypostasis, has also one single nature as the mixture of two natures, one human and one divine.15 If Christ would exist as a mixture of two natures, one divine and one single, then he would have neither divine, nor human nature, but a third one. For Maximus, both divine and human nature subsists in Christ by means of a hypostatical union,16 and not by means of union by mixture. One may also say that Maximus rejects the creaturely Monophysitism as the doctrine that ascribes to one hypostasis only one single nature. Maximus claims that the human soul and the body as being of different natures are successfully united in a single human hypostasis.17 14

Aristotle, De anima 425a5. Maximus the Confessor, De duabus Christi naturis (Opuscula theologica et polemica 13), PG 91, 145B. 16 Maximus the Confessor, Variae definitiones (Opuscula theologica et polemica 14), PG 91, 152A. 17 Maximus the Confessor, Mystagogia 5.285-93 [19-20]. Cited according to the edition: Maximus the Confessor, Maximi Confessoris Mystagogia: una cum latina interpretatione Anastasii bibliothecarii, ed. Christian Boudignon, CChr.SG 69 (Turnhout, 2011). Page references of the edition are shown in brackets. English translation of George C. Berthold in Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings, trans. George C. Berthold, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Irénée-Henri Dalmais, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, Mahwah, Toronto, 1985), 190. 15

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Moreover, Maximus argues that Christ united two modes of existence, along with the unimpaired logoi of being in his hypostasis.18 This means that he preserved his human nature unimpaired in the union with the divine nature, but he changed the mode of existence of human nature. Therefore, Maximus maintains that the innovation takes place in relation to the mode of existence and not in relation to the logos of nature.19 In regard with the creatures that appear in the film, the innovation took place in relation to nature, because two or more species or genera are combined into one, and this innovation resulted in the destruction of their particular natures, because their logoi of being are ignored. Can one imagine Maximus’ view of the assimilation of particulars to universals in the way of the innovative nature presented by the film’s authors? For Maximus, the state of well-being is achieved by the unification of the voluntary impulse of the particulars with the naturally more general principle of a rational being.20 The voluntary impulse characterizes the individual logos of being, while the more general principles pertain to the logoi of specific species, species, generic genera and most generic genus. Well-being is therefore attained when the individual human being acknowledges identity with: (a) other human beings in the logos of human nature, (b) with animals in the logos of animate nature, (c) with plants, inanimate objects, planets and stars in the logos of corporeal nature, (d) with angels and other incorporeal substances in the logos of created nature and finally (e) with the divine uncreated nature in the Logos of God. The identity with the divine nature is the final goal of every particular human being and all its identifications with the logoi of universals serve this final purpose. Therefore, Maximus does not speak of identity of natures, but about the identity of movement that will bring all beings and the whole universe into union with God and among themselves.21 This process, that leads each particular human being into identity with different levels of nature, may be considered as well-being. Maximus defines the principle of well-being as the natural implication that God is the end towards which every human being voluntarily hastens.22 Therefore, for Maximus the mode of well-being equally refers both to the preservation of being on the level of essence and to the acquirement of the mode of existence in the form of divine grace. The final union of every being with God is considered to be the mode of eternal wellbeing in which the mode of well-being becomes immutable by virtue of the being’s union with God,23 as well as the process of an ongoing transformation of those beings who possess a beginning and an end by nature in contradistinction from those who are without beginning or end by grace.24 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Maximus Maximus Maximus Ibid. Maximus Maximus Maximus

the Confessor, AT 5.18 [1:48-9]. the Confessor, AI 42.26 [2:173]. the Confessor, QThal 2.2 [97-8]. the Confessor, QThal 59, scholion 4 [425]. the Confessor, QThal 60, scholion 1 [432-3]. the Confessor, QThal 59, scholion 4 [425].

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Doubleness or Duplicity: Animal and Human In one of the sequences of the aforementioned film, two identical deer appear with flower branches instead of horns and with identical movements. As Maximus maintains that the final union will be achieved when the inclination of particulars does not differ from the inclinations of universals,25 is it possible to understand the identity of existence and the identity of movements of the two deer as part of the universal inclination towards the final union? According to Maximus, every number according to its logos neither divides nor is divided nor produces division or union.26 In this case the duplicity indicates a distinction in number but not a division between the two identical animals. Moreover, the deer as corporeal substance may communicate well-being only by being the object of contemplation.27 This means that the actions committed by corporeal substances, in our cases two identical deer, cannot lead to well-being. The only way two deer can communicate well-being is by becoming the object of contemplation. Only the strong bond between the subject of contemplation and the object of contemplation may secure the communication of well-being. There are many examples of the relationship between saints and animals from the Christian tradition, such as the cases of St John the Theologian and the eagle, St Gerasimos of the Jordan and the lion, and St Seraphim of Sarov and the bear. If it is considered from the aspect of number or of natural and motional identity, the duplicity of deer is not an obstacle to the final union with God. However, duplicity becomes an obstacle to the final union with God if it is taken as an object of contemplation. The strong bond between human beings, who apart from the corporeal have also an incorporeal nature, and the corporeal nature, in our case two identical deer, is impossible due to the separation between two identical animals that never decreases. The two animals have an identity of movement, but this identity of movement is not similar to human and angelic beings who move towards the final union with the Logos. Maximus refers to this process by using the metaphor of a circle’s centre and its radii, where the circle’s centre is God, while each particular human and angelic being travels on the radius from the circumference to the centre until it reaches the centre as the final union with God and other creatures.28 By moving on the radii of this circle towards the centre, they reduce the separation among them, until it finally disappears when they reach God. One may draw a parallel between God and human and angelic beings on the one hand, and human and animal beings on the other hand. Analogously to God, who serves as the centre for the intelligible creation, human beings serve as the centre for corporeal beings, which only through human beings can achieve their salvation. If two identical human or 25 26 27 28

Maximus Maximus Maximus Maximus

the the the the

Confessor, QThal 2.2 [98]. Confessor, Epistula 13, PG 91, 513A. Confessor, CChar 4.11-2. Confessor, AI 7.20 [1:100-3].

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angelic beings that have identity of movement towards God, and at the same time are separated by a distance, which never decreases, cannot reach God, then also two identical animals that have identity of movement in the physical world, and are separated by a physical distance that never diminishes, cannot have a strong bond with the subject of their contemplation. Thus, even if one of the two identical human or angelic being reaches the final union with God, the other will remain physically separated from it, because the closeness to God does not abolish the separation between them. Similarly, even if one of the two identical deer establishes a strong and a loving bond with a human being, the other identical deer will remain out of this personal relationship due to its separation not only from the identical other, but also from the human being. The problem of duplicity shows its gravity at the end of the aforementioned film, when the two main characters replicate. The leading characters of the film Annihilation are Kane and Lena, husband and wife. They entered the mysterious quarantined zone X at different times, and they both had to face their duplicates or their replicas. The characters have different approaches to their replicas. Kane cannot stand to live with his own replica and he commits suicide, while his replica continues to live a disoriented life. Lena, on the contrary, enters in combat with her replica and kills it. The most important conclusion drawn from the relations of these two persons with their replicas is that neither Lena nor Kane can stand to share their unique mode of existence with their other, even if those others are their perfect replicas. In order to preserve the uniqueness of their experiences of the past and the expectations from the future that constitute their own mode of existence,29 Kane chooses to kill himself, while Lena decides to kill her replica. Irrespective of the different solutions to their problem, both characters find something deeply disturbing in the existence of an identical other. What might be the potential objections of Maximus the Confessor to this duplicated uniqueness of person? One can approach the problem of duplicated uniqueness from two different perspectives. According to Maximus, every human being ‘comes to be “in” God through attentiveness, since he has not falsified the logos of being that preexists in God’.30 This means that every human is created according to the pre-existing logos of being, and every logos of being preexists only for one person. There are no two or more beings sharing one individual logos of being as a predetermined principle. From this point of view, it would be difficult to justify the existence of two, even identical persons who share one individual logos. The second issue pertains to the logos of well-being that also preexists in God for every human being, and by which every human being ‘moves’ in God.31 By adhering to its logos of wellbeing, every human being moves between two realities equally predetermined, 29 30 31

A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (1996), 57-8. Maximus the Confessor, AI 7.22 [1:104-5]. Ibid.

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their being by which they are in God, and their eternity by which they live in God.32 Well-being is thus an intermediate mode between being and eternal being, and it is exclusively defined by our inclination and motion.33 While every human being is unique by possessing one single logos of being, wellbeing and eternal being it is also unique by the way in which it relates to these logoi. Thus, if the particular human beings draws closely to their own predetermined logoi through natural motion, they receive either well-being by moving according to logoi by which they exist, or they receive ill-being by moving contrary to these logoi.34 The uniqueness of a human inclination and movement is even a higher kind of uniqueness of the human person, because the decision how to live her or his own nature is made freely by each individual person, and it is not already determined by God as it is the case with the logos of nature. The example of Lena and Kane show that the existence of their replicas would not be so disturbing for them, if these replicas would make their decisions freely. In this case Lena and Kane would share the logos of nature with their replicas, but not the mode of existence. Thus, they will preserve the uniqueness of their mode of existence, which is transparent through their inclinations and movement. However, Lena’s and Kane’s replicas imitate their movements and inclinations and this became unbearable for both characters. Kane makes the decision to end his life, in order to stop sharing his movement and inclinations with his replica. While Kane’s replica imitates Kane in every aspect, it does not try to commit suicide itself. By watching and not imitating Kane’s suicide, Kane’s replica displays a certain degree of independence from Kane’s decisions. The replica of Kane continues to exist in the world but lacking his own mode of existence he is totally disoriented. Contrary to Kane, Lena decides to kill her replica, but her determination and inclination to do this is also shared by her replica, who attempts to kill Lena in return. In the fight between Lena and her replica, Lena succeeds and kills her replica. In comparison with the double deer, who also possesses the identity of movement and inclinations that do not connect one with the other, the human characters are preoccupied with their replicas. The way out of this human condition is very radical, consisting in the annihilation either of one’s own self or of the self of the identical other. Both Lena and Kane succeed in their inclinations, while this cannot be said for their replicas. Although Kane’s replica exercises a certain degree of free will, or at least a sense of self-preservation, because it does not follow Kane in his suicidal act, its further life is disoriented. Lena’s replica is killed by Lena, because of a very short temporal distance between the movement of Lena and the movement of her replica. If this tiny moment of 32 33 34

Maximus the Confessor, AI 7.22 [1:104-5]; 10.12-3 [1:167-9]. Maximus the Confessor, AI 10.12-3 [1:167-9]. Maximus the Confessor, AI 42.15 [2:149].

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time would not exist, Lena and her replica would kill each other. Therefore, the film’s authors allow some level of uniqueness to their human characters. This is also evident in the case of Kane’s surviving replica, who continues to live Kane’s life, but without any previous inclinations. The fact that Kane’s replica does not know how to deal with Kane’s memory and past experiences affirms the uniqueness of personal memories and experiences. For both Maximus the Confessor and the film’s authors it would be difficult to imagine the existence of two individuals that apart from sharing the same individual logos of being, also share the same mode of existence. However, it would be possible according to Maximus’ theology to imagine a human character to deal with his or her replica without attempt to end his or her own existence or the existence of the replica. In other words if both suicide and homicide or replicacide is an expression of ill-being what would be the expression of well-being? Maximus does not elaborate the relationship between a human being and his replica, but he scrutinizes the relationship between those who share a common nature. According to Maximus the common nature is not an active but a passive element. Therefore, the mutual bond of love is an active principle that connects individual beings and reveals the commonality of their nature.35 The bond of love among individual human beings expresses both the commonality of their shared nature and the uniqueness of their modes of existence. In The Responses to Thalassios, Maximus states that the biblical command is ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, and not ‘consider your neighbour as yourself’.36 He explains that the act of considering your neighbour as yourself indicates the natural bond of sharing in being, whereas the love for your neighbour signifies providence that leads toward well-being.37 The love of human beings for God and others not only makes the shared human nature the basis for dialogue between those who share it, but it also sparks the divine providence that helps human being to attain well-being. When the modes of existence of individual beings are preserved in the constancy of the natural logoi, then those beings remain what they are and are meant to be by God and move to the state of well-being.38 Neither Kane nor Lena consider their replicas to be themselves, but they are a treat to and negation of their true beings and personality. The love for them would not be providentially rewarded by wellbeing, because instead of making their shared nature the basis for the dialogues of different modes of existence, the point of their connection will be the same nature and the same mode of existence, and this violates the divine plan. For Maximus, the union according to hypostasis was conceived in advance by Providence,39 and 35 36 37 38 39

Maximus Maximus Ibid. Maximus Maximus

the Confessor, QThal 64.32 [511-2]. the Confessor, QThal 64.32 [512]. the Confessor, AT 5.9 [1:40-1]; A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (1996), 53-4. the Confessor, QThal 60, scholion 1 [432-3].

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anything or anyone that is not conceived in advance, not even to exist as a replica, would not be united to the One. Therefore, if duplicity of individual logoi of being is not preconceived from eternity, it does not have a place in the fulfilment of the divine plane. Even if these logoi of nature are preconceived from eternity, they can be triggered only by the human movement and inclination toward other beings and God, that constitute the mode of existence and uniqueness of every being. However, the end of the film opens a new perspective that might coincide with Maximus’ theological vision, by bringing at least two distinct features in relation between human originals and their replicas. First, while dying in flames Lena’s replica approaches Kane’s charred corpse, which also bursts into flames. The fire spreads to all strange elements in zone X, and they all vanish in fire and dissolve in ashes. The only survivors from zone X are Lena and Kane’s replica who meet each other in the quarantined hospital in the film’s finale. Their meeting constitutes the second important element to which Maximus’ theology may be applied. They meet as complete strangers. Lena is assured by Kane’s replica that he is not her husband, while Kane’s replica asks Lena, whether she is Lena, obviously regaining some of Kane’s memory. In the final sequence after Lena confirms her identity, Kane’s replica hugs her. The film ends showing how their eyes glow. In spite of the fact that these scenes may be differently interpreted, I will attempt to offer an interpretation that is in concord with Maximus’ theological stance. One may notice that both Lena’s and Kane’s replicas move towards their original spouses. As it was said above, Kane’s and Lena’s replicas share both the individual logos of being and the mode of existence with Kane and Lena, which Kane and Lena see as a threat. However, in the last moment both replicas show a certain mode of existence independent from the mode of existence of Kane and Lena. Kane’s replica does not follow Kane in committing suicide, while Lena’s replica does not kill Lena in return. Although the originals and their replicas share the particular logoi of nature and, up to a certain point in time, the same mode of existence, the uniqueness of the replicas’ mode of existence emerges when they or their originals are facing death. The replicas show activity and will independent from their originals, and thus they express themselves as unique persons, with unique modes of existence.40 Although the originals and replicas share the same particular logos of nature, it is differently displayed, because, as Dionisios Skliris rightly remarks, the logos of nature does ‘not have autonomous value, but awaits a concrete tropos in order to be activated’.41 The replicas’ unique mode of existence is confirmed in their relationship with their originals’ spouses, with whom they have a caring relationship. 40

A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (1996), 55. Dionisios Skliris, ‘The Ontology of Mode in Maximus the Confessor. Consequences for a Theory of Gender’, in Sotiris Mitralexis (ed.), Mustard Seeds in the Public Square (Wilmington, DE, 2017), 39-60, 47. 41

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This brings us to Maximus’ famous doctrine about the five divisions in nature. According to Maximus, the last division that is introduced by God in creation is the division between male and female. On the way back to God, human beings reconcile all five divisions, beginning with the division between male and female. For Maximus the sexual division is overcome ‘by means of a supremely dispassionate condition of divine virtue’.42 By interpreting the behaviours of Kane’s and Lena’s replicas in accordance to this doctrine of Maximus, one may conclude that they choose the most dispassionate relationships to their spouses. First, by deciding not to follow their originals in suicidal and homicidal acts, replicas activate the right mode of existence for the common logos of being, that leads them to well-being. Second, by caring for the spouses of their originals, the replicas exercise dispassionate relationship that put them again on the road of well-being. Conclusion In conclusion, the relationship between the logos of well-being and the mode of existence in Maximus is defined by the assimilation of particulars to universals, which activates the logos of well-being. An attempt was made to demonstrate on the basis of several examples from the film Annihilation, that the assimilation of particulars to universals does not include the change of nature or the logoi of nature. By being a fierce opponent to Christological monophysitism, Maximus opposes also creaturely monophysitism, which refers to the mixture of different natures in one hypostasis. For Maximus nature and natural logoi are passive elements that can be triggered only by a proper mode of existence. The mode of existence is the unique way in which every human being lives out his or her own nature. The commonality of nature or universal logoi becomes a platform for each human being to exercise its own mode of existence through establishing the bond of love with other beings, with whom he or she shares the common nature of common universal logoi.

42

Maximus the Confessor, AI 41.3 [2:104-5].

Virtue, the Indwelling of the Word, and Incarnate Meaning: A Reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua 7 and 10 Matthew B. HALE, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA

ABSTRACT This article seeks an answer to an interpretive question: In Ambigua 7 and 10, how does Maximus understand the Word’s embodiment in virtue – and specifically in a virtuous manner of choosing, deciding, and acting – as communicative of the Word? As has been noted by many interpreters of Maximus, this indwelling of the Word in virtue is analogous to other modes of the embodiment of the Word, such as the Word’s embodiment in Scripture, the principles (λόγοι) of nature, and the historic incarnation of the Word as Jesus Christ. It is clear that this embodiment mediates not only the presence of the Word but also knowledge of the Word. Maximus suggests that the same is true for virtue. My thesis in this article is that, for Maximus, the indwelling of the Word effects a mode of virtuous choosing, deciding, and acting that participates in and communicates the Word, so that it can be said that the Christian incarnates a meaning that is like the meaning incarnate in Christ’s choosing, deciding, and acting. For Maximus, this virtue reflects Christ’s virtue in that one’s choosing, deciding, and acting accord with the principle of one’s nature (λόγος φύσεως) and so also with God’s intention. This virtue communicates: the Christian becomes a τύπος signifying Christ and God. This communicative element can be described as a kind of ‘incarnate meaning’, a term I have drawn from Bernard Lonergan. In this article, I shall attend to Ambigua 7 and 10, in which the indwelling of the Word in the human person and in virtue is discussed and integrated with several other major themes in Maximus’ thought. I have focused on places in these texts in which Maximus is explicit about or strongly implies an indwelling or embodiment of the Word, or Christ, in the human virtue or in human choosing, deciding, and acting. I shall try to make clear how these texts fit within the flow of Maximus’ argumentation, but I shall not provide an exposition of these texts as a whole. In the first part of the article, I shall summarize and interpret the key texts for this theme in Ambigua 7 and 10. I shall then summarize the central features of Maximus’ account of virtue as communicative of the Word. In the second part, I shall argue that Bernard Lonergan’s category of ‘incarnate meaning’ provides a tool for understanding Maximus’ emphasis on this way of living as, in some way, communicating Christ.

Studia Patristica CXXI, 95-107. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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Introduction For Maximus the Confessor,1 the process of divinization changes a human being’s mode of existing (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως), even as the principle of her nature remains stable (λόγος φύσεως) – how she exists changes but not what she is. We remain creatures and humans by nature, even as we are becoming gods by grace. This change in how we exist is concretely expressed in part by the manner of our free choosing (προαίρεσις), our deciding (γνώμῃ), and our activity (ἐνέργεια). The fact that someone chooses, decides, and acts is a function of what she is as human, but how he does so changes insofar as he participates in virtue, most especially love.2 This conversion to a new mode of existing in which a human participates in virtue is due to the indwelling (ἐνοικέω) of the Word,3 which becomes present in her and is, in some sense, embodied (ἐνσωματώσις) in her.4 As has been noted by many interpreters of Maximus, this indwelling of the Word in virtue is analogous to other modes of the embodiment of the Word, such as the Word’s embodiment in Scripture, the principles (λόγοι) of nature, and the historic incarnation of the Word as Jesus Christ.5 It is clear that this embodiment mediates not only the presence of the Word but also knowledge of the Word. Maximus suggests that the same is true for virtue. In short, virtue communicates the presence and knowledge of the Word in a manner similar to the biblical types of the Old Testament and perhaps also the sacramental mysteries.6 This article seeks an answer to an interpretive question: How does Maximus understand the Word’s embodiment in virtue – and specifically in a virtuous manner of choosing, deciding, and acting – as communicative of the Word? To put the question somewhat anachronistically, how does Maximus understand the Word’s embodiment in virtue as bearing meaning? My thesis in this article is that, for Maximus, the indwelling of the Word effects a mode of virtuous choosing, deciding, and acting that participates in and communicates the Word, so that it can be said that the Christian incarnates a meaning that is like the meaning incarnate in Christ’s choosing, deciding, and acting. For Maximus, this virtue reflects Christ’s virtue in that one’s choosing, deciding, and acting 1 My thanks to Susan Wessel and Mac Stewart for looking at drafts of this article and providing valuable comments. Remaining mistakes are, of course, mine alone. 2 Susan Wessel, Passion and Compassion in the Early Church (New York, 2016), 175-85. 3 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John, Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1144C). 4 Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1084B-D). 5 As Lars Thunberg points out, Maximus ‘refers to an incarnation in the virtues of the believers which is the consequence, in the field of sanctification, of the communication idiomatum and perichoresis which takes places in Christ’. Microcosm and Mediator: the Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2nd ed. (Peru, IL, 1995), 92. See also Adam G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified (Oxford, 2005), 117. 6 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John, Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1141B-C) in vol. I of On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: the Ambigua, trans. Maximos Constas (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 221.

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accord with the principle of one’s nature (λόγος φύσεως) and so also with God’s intention. This virtue communicates: the Christian becomes a τύπος signifying Christ and God. This communicative element can be described as a kind of ‘incarnate meaning’, a term I have drawn from Bernard Lonergan. For Lonergan, we communicate through our living, not only through our writing or speaking, such that the names of Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. do not just denote historical persons but evoke the meaning embedded in their lives. In Lonergan’s terms, there is an ‘incarnate meaning’ in human living and, for one whom the Word indwells, the meaning incarnate in one’s living is akin to the meaning incarnate in Christ’s living. In this article, I shall attend to Ambigua 7 and 10, in which the indwelling of the Word in the human person and in virtue is discussed and integrated with several other major themes in Maximus’ thought. I have focused on places in these texts in which Maximus is explicit about or strongly implies an indwelling or embodiment of the Word, or Christ, in the human virtue or in human choosing, deciding, and acting. I shall try to make clear how these texts fit within the flow of Maximus’ argumentation, but I shall not provide an exposition of these texts as a whole. In the first part of the article, I shall summarize and interpret the key texts for this theme in Ambigua 7 and 10. I shall then summarize the central features of Maximus’ account of virtue as communicative of the Word. In the second part, I shall argue that Bernard Lonergan’s category of ‘incarnate meaning’ provides a tool for understanding Maximus’ emphasis on this way of living as, in some way, communicating Christ. 1. The Indwelling of the Word and Virtue in the Ambigua 7 and 10 Ambigua 7 and 10 belong to a collection of Ambigua addressed to John, the archbishop of Cyzicus, where Maximus stayed for nearly eight years not long after he became a monk. This work was conceived while he was in Cyzicus, although Maximus did not complete it until sometime in the 630s, during his time in North Africa.7 These Ambigua belong to a traditional monastic genre aimed at resolving interpretive puzzles in scripture or in the writings of a church father, but Maximus was often quite creative in his responses, going far beyond the immediate interpretive demands. Maximus alludes to the theme of the Word’s embodiment in virtue as early as the prologue to this set of Ambigua. He writes to John of Cyzicus, 7 Jean-Claude Larchet, La divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur (Paris, 1996), 12-4. Jankowiak and Booth are less specific than Larchet in their dating; see Marek Jankowiak and Phil Booth, ‘The New Date-List of the Works of Maximus the Confessor’, in Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor (Oxford, 2015), 28-9.

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I was amazed by your virtue and praised the luminous and lofty example of your Christlike self-abnegation (τὸ παμφαὲς καὶ ὑψηλὸν τῆς κατ᾿ αὐτὴν χριστοπρεποῦς ὑμῶν πτωχείας). Indeed I was moved to praise the Lord Himself, who by and in your person is glorified in every possible way. For it is He who created you, and who, in a distinctly beautiful form, manifests (ἐκφαίνοντα) even unto me – though I am but a small, worthless, and unlearned man, utterly bereft of virtue and knowledge – the power to become worthy of Him by means of His attributes, a power which has been granted to you on account of your deeds themselves and the truth.8

Maximus lavishes praise on John in this passage, but he also articulates many elements of his understanding of the indwelling of the Word. John has attained a likeness to Christ that is manifest specifically in his virtue and in his selfabnegation, such that he manifests and thereby communicates Christ to others. He is more than a moral exemplar; Maximus also writes that Christ is glorified in him. John’s praiseworthy qualities are woven into Christ’s and evoke praise for Christ. Last, John manifests the possibility of greater likeness to Christ’s attributes. These elements – here couched in personal, warm language – are expressed at greater length in Ambigua 7 and 10. 1.1. Ambiguum 7 In Ambiguum 7, Maximus draws out the these themes with greater technical precision in the course of a lengthy refutation of the Origenists. Maximus’ central argument in this Ambiguum is that no creature – including human souls – ever had an original stability (στάσις) in God from which they fell away and were thereby set in motion (κίνησις). As some have put it, Maximus revises the Origenist cosmological sequence of γένεσις-στάσις- κίνησις in favor of γένεσις-κίνησις-στάσις.9 There was never a pre-existent state from which human souls cooled off and fell away. Rather, all creatures were in motion from the beginning and are moving toward a final, irreversible rest that lies at the end of time. For humans, this entails union with God in divinization. In the course of his refutation of this cosmology, Maximus’ doctrine of the λόγοι is central. But, more than that, his doctrine of the λόγοι provides the metaphysical foundation for his notion of the indwelling of Christ in the human person. For Maximus, the λόγοι are the divine intentions that are the constitutive principles of creatures, which both participate in and are the divine Λόγος.10 For each creature, there are distinguished a λόγος proper to the fact 8 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John, prologue (PG 91, 1064B) in vol. I of On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: the Ambigua, trans. Maximos Constas (Cambridge, MA, 2014), 65. 9 See Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (New York, 1996), 67; John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY, 1975), 132-3; Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ (Crestwood, NY, 2003), 24. 10 See Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1081B-C): … πολλοί λόγοι ὁ εἷς Λόγος ἐστὶ καὶ εἷς οἱ πολλοί… As Cooper has noted, for Maximus, ‘the whole intelligible-sensible

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of a creature’s existing (τοῦ εἰναι λόγον), a λόγος proper to the well-being of a creature (τοῦ εὖ εἶναι λόγον), and a λόγος of a creature’s eternal being (τοῦ ἀεὶ εἶναι λόγον).11 In other words, there is a divine intention for each creature’s existence, well-being, and eternal being, and this intention is and is in the divine Λόγος. This divine intention constitutes what a creature is, but it does not determine how it exists – the fact of being does not guarantee the actualization of well-being and eternal being. So, Maximus recognizes the difference between the constitutive principle of one’s nature (λόγος φύσεως) – the what – and the mode of its existence (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως), upon which the actualization of well-being and eternal well-being rests.12 The primary focus of Ambiguum 7, however, is anthropological not cosmological.13 Maximus’ discussion of the different λόγοι undergirds his description of the different ways in which the human being attains likeness to God and thus becomes – in Gregory of Nazianzus’ phrase14 – more truly a ‘portion of God’. Maximus argues that a human being can be called a ‘portion of God’ in three ways: First, she is a portion of God in that she exists through her participation in the λόγος of being. Second, she is a portion of God in that – through her incorporation into the church through baptism, her reception of the sacraments, and her growth in knowledge and virtue – she participates in the λόγος of her well-being. Last, as one who has ‘finished the course’, she participates in the λόγος of eternal being. All of these are indwellings of the Word, and each has, in Bernard Lonergan’s terms, the relationship of sublation to the previous indwelling – that is, each expands upon, encompasses, and transcends the previous one.15 The divinized person has reached her perfection by ‘honoring these λόγοι and acting in accordance with them’ and has thereby placed herself in God, just as God the Λόγος has placed Godself in human flesh. Maximus writes, And by this beautiful exchange, it renders God man by reason of the divinization of man, and man God by reason of the Incarnation of God. For the Logos of God (who is God) wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystery of His embodiment universe presents itself as a real medium for the self-manifestation of God without being coextensive with (God’s) being’, A.G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus the Confessor (2005), 18. 11 Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1084B). 12 See also Ambiguum 5 (PG 91, 1052B): … γινώσκοντες ὡς ἕτερος μὲν ὁ τοῦ εἶναι λόγος ἐστίν, ἕτερος δὲ ὁ τοῦ πῶς εἶναι τρόπος… As Mac Stewart pointed out to me, this distinction goes back at least to Basil of Caesarea, who discussed the transformation of the Christian by the Holy Spirit as one occurring in the ‘mode of existing’. See also Polycarp Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor: The Ascetic Life, The Four Centuries on Charity (New York, 1955), endnote 148 on page 224; and G.L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London, 1936), 245. 13 A.G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus the Confessor (2005), 65. 14 Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 14.7 (PG 35, 865C). 15 For Lonergan’s discussion of ‘sublation’, see Method in Theology, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 1973), 241. Lonergan contrasts this notion of ‘sublation’, which he attributes to Karl Rahner, with Hegel’s notion of Aufhebung.

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(Βούλεται γὰρ ἀεὶ καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν ὁ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγος καὶ Θεὸς τῆς αὐτοῦ ἐνσωματώσεως ἐνεργεῖσθαι τὸ μυστήριον.).16

In this passage, Maximus roots the theme of the indwelling of the Word both in his doctrine of the λόγοι but also in the theology of incarnation and divinization. For Maximus, the indwelling of the Word in the human person follows upon the Incarnation and anticipates a cosmic embodiment of the Word. There is, therefore, a mutual permeation of the Word and the human person in this indwelling – the Word is embodied in her and she is incorporated into the body of Christ. Maximus writes near the end of this Ambiguum: ‘Just as the soul unifies the body, (Christ) joined us to Himself and knit us together in the Spirit…’17 But this indwelling and incorporation do not change the principle of the human being – what she is remains. Maximus explains: ‘He showed us that this (incorporation into Christ and the Word’s indwelling in us is) why we were created, and that this was God’s good purpose concerning us from before the ages, a purpose which underwent no innovation in its essential principle (μὴ δεξάμενον καθ’ ὁτιοῦν κανισμὸν κατὰ τὸν ἴδιον λόγον), but rather was realized through the introduction of another, newer mode (καινοτέρου τρόπου)’.18 The sublation of the λόγος of being by the λόγος of well-being and the λόγος of eternal being transforms the mode, but does not destroy what a human is. Yet this very consistent emphasis on the integrity of one’s nature should not overshadow the difference that this indwelling makes: it is a new, changed way of existing in the world, even if this difference, which correlates with the development of perfect love, emerges very gradually over time.19 In this life, this new mode of existing is characterized in part by a particular manner of choosing, deciding, and acting. Virtue is a key element to this new mode of existing and participation in virtue is, in fact, participation in the Christ: ‘… the essence of every virtue is our Lord, Jesus Christ…’20 But, as outlined above, this virtuous mode of existing includes a certain way of willing and choosing. Maximus writes that the virtuous person, … freely and unfeignedly chooses to cultivate the natural seed of the Good (ὡς τὴν κατὰ φύσιν σπορὰν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ γνησίως κατὰ προαίρεσιν γεωργήσας) … In this he is a genuine advocate (συνήγορος) of God, since the goal of each thing is believed to be its beginning and end, for it is from the beginning that he received being and participation in what is naturally good, and it is by conforming to this beginning through the inclination of his will (γνώμῃ) and by free choice (προαιρέσει)…21 16 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John, Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1084B-D), trans. Constas (2014), 107. 17 Ibid. (PG 91, 1097B), trans. Constas (2014), 131. 18 Ibid. (PG 91, 1097B-1097C), trans. Constas (2014), 131-3. 19 S. Wessel, Passion and Compassion in the Early Church (2016), 192. 20 Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1081D), trans. Constas (2014), 103. 21 Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1081C-1084A), trans. Constas (2014), 103-5.

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Here Maximus characterizes this virtuous way of willing as oriented toward God as the beginning and the goal of everything. The virtuous person who wills in this way becomes a genuine συνήγορος, or advocate. The term, συνήγορος, has a broad meaning, and can simply mean something like a ‘supporter’. But it can also mean one who speaks or communicates on behalf of another,22 a meaning that could fit this passage well. As he makes clear a few sentences on, virtue reveals the beauty of the human nature made in God’s image and enhances likeness to God in addition to the image.23 Through this ever-increasing likeness of virtue, she moves toward her goal of conforming to her source and beginning, God. It is certainly not alien to Maximus’ thinking that the virtuous person is a συνήγορος of God precisely in that her virtue speaks of God. What does virtue communicate? Maximus provides a clue by affirming that Christ is the ultimate example of virtue. Maximus writes that our eschatological participation in God and victory over death come about through the Son ‘subjecting (ὑποτάσσειν) to the Father those who freely accept to be subjected (ὑποτάσσεσθαι) to Him…’24 He goes on to say … (T)his will take place because that which is within our power, I mean our free will (αὐτεξουσίου) – through which death made its entry among us, and confirmed at our expense the power of corruption – will have surrendered voluntarily (ἑκουσίως) and wholly to God, and perfectly subjected itself to His rule, by eliminating any wish (ἐθέλειν) that might contravene His will (θέλει). And this is precisely why the Savior, exemplifying in Himself our condition, says to the Father: Yet not as I will, but as thou wilt. And this is also why Saint Paul, as if he had denied himself (ἑαυτὸν ἀρνησάμενος) and was no longer conscious of his own life, said: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. (Gal. 2:20)25

Virtue as expressed in our free willing entails submission to the will of God in a manner akin to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. As Louth notes, Maximus conceives of the spiritual life as involving a kenosis that reflects Christ’s kenosis.26 It is, somewhat paradoxically, the voluntary elimination of any willing that contravenes God’s will. This submission to the will of God is exemplified perfectly by Christ, and the submission of Christians such as Paul echoes Christ’s self-denial and signifies the indwelling of Christ in them. The indwelling of the Word in virtue, therefore, communicates ‘suffering love’.27 22 See G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (London, 1961), 1327; Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (London, 1996), 1715. 23 Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1084A). 24 Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1076A), trans. Constas (2014), 89. 25 Ambiguum 7 (PG 91, 1076A-B), trans. Constas (2014), 89. 26 A. Louth, Maximus the Confessor (1996), 34. 27 A.G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus the Confessor (2005), 208. See also Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, 3rd ed., trans. Brian E. Daley, S.J. (San Francisco, 2003), 277-83; S. Wessel, Passion and Compassion in the Early Church (2016), 172-99.

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1.2. Ambiguum 10 Similar threads are again picked up in Ambiguum 10. In this very long Ambiguum, Maximus refutes the position that one should pursue ‘divine philosophy’ (τὴν κατὰ Θεὸν … φιλοσοφίαν) only through ‘reason’ (λόγῳ) and ‘contemplation’ (θεωρίᾳ), but without πρακτική,28 the stage of the spiritual life in which the human passions are purified and virtue becomes manifest – if not contained29 – in the body. Above all, πρακτική is a program of ‘gnomic reform’, and is inseparable from church life and participation in the sacraments.30 As with Ambiguum 7, the target appears to be the Origenists. Against this position, Maximus argues at some length that the pursuit of this divine philosophy, and the pursuit of virtue, is inseparable from πρακτική. As in Ambiguum 7, here the language of virtue intertwines with the theme of the indwelling of the Word, but there is also an expansion of the theme in this Ambiguum that clarifies some of the elements in Ambiguum 7 that I have outlined above. Relatively early in this long Ambiguum, Maximus speaks of five modes of contemplation, making clear the relevance of πρακτική and virtue throughout.31 The goal of these modes of contemplation is their unification in the contemplation of the principle causes of all beings, God,32 and indeed the human’s unification with the divine Word. He writes, Having been wholly united (ὅλοι … ἑνωθέντες) with the whole Word, within the limits of what their own inherent natural potency allows, as much as may be, they were imbued with His own qualities, so that, like the clearest of mirrors, they were now visible only as reflections of the undiminished form of God the Word, who gazes out from within them, for they possess the fullness of His divine characteristics (ὅλου τοῦ ἐνορῶντος Θεοῦ Λόγου τὸ εἶδος ἀπαραλείπτως διὰ τῶν θείων αὐτοῦ γνωρισμάτων φαινόμενον ἔχοντες), yet none of the original attributes (τῶν παλαιῶν χαρακτήρων) that naturally define human beings have been lost, for all things have simply yielded to what is better, like air – which in itself is not luminous – completely mixed with light.33

Here Maximus uses the language of being united with the Word, but it is clear that this union includes an indwelling, indeed the Word ‘gazes out from within them…’ In this union, the Word imbues the human being with the Word’s own γνωρισμάτων and χαρακτήρων, which the human being reflects as if she were a mirror. What she is does not change, just as what a mirror is does not change whatever it happens to reflect. Yet this is clearly a new way 28

Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1108A). See Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1108C). 30 P. Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor (1955), 81. 31 Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum to John, Ambiguum 10.19 (PG 91, 1133A-1137C). The five modes are: ‘being, motion, difference, mixture, and position (οὐσίαν, καὶ κίνησιν, καὶ διαφοράν, κρᾶσιν τε και θέσιν)’. Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1133A). 32 Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1137A). 33 Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1137B-C), trans. Constas (2014), 213. 29

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of existing, and the preponderance of visual metaphor in this passage suggests that this new way of existing is more purely significant of the divine Word. Maximus goes on to characterize the way to this union with the Word of God as a ‘cast(ing) aside’ (προϊέμενος) of ‘this present life and its desires for the sake of a better life…’34 in obedience to Christ’s saying that, ‘whoever loses his own life for my sake, will find it’ (Matt. 16:25). With the casting aside of this present life, comes the acquisition of the Word of God, who through virtue and knowledge penetrates to the division between soul and spirit, so that absolutely no part of his existence will remain without a share of His presence (καὶ μηδὲν τὸ παράπαν τῆς αὐτοῦ παρουσίας ἄμοιρον ἔχει), and thus he becomes without beginning or end, no longer bearing within himself the movement of life subject to time, which has a beginning and an end, and which is agitated by many passions, but possesses only the divine and eternal life of the Word dwelling within (ἐνοικήσαντος) him, which is in no way bounded by death.35

Here Maximus explicitly affirms the Word’s presence in the human being’s full existence and describes this presence with the participle form of ἐνοικέω – the Word indwells. As with the previous passage, there is an eschatological overtone to this passage, but Maximus does not say that this indwelling – or its effects – is restricted to the next age. Toward the end of this Ambiguum, Maximus writes more concretely about the manner of choosing, deciding, and acting proper to the indwelling of the Word, a manner characterized by love, which ‘holds a privileged place in the theology of Maximus’.36 Those who have received the divine Word turn away from the pleasures of this life and instead focus on the ‘highest attributes concerning God (περὶ θεοῦ λόγους) which are accessible to humans’, i.e. God’s goodness and love.37 Maximus goes on to describe God’s goodness and love as God’s movement to give being to existing things and ‘to grant them the grace of well-being (τὸ εὖ εἶναι χαρίσασθαι)…’38 The saints, understanding this about God, ‘modeled themselves’ (ἀπετύπωσαν) and by their ‘expert imitation’ (εὐμιμήτως) have taken on the ‘distinguishing characteristic – manifest through the virtues – of the hidden and invisible beauty of the divine magnificence’.39 Maximus characterizes this way of living in these ways: Thus they themselves became good, and lovers of both God and their fellow men, full of compassion and mercy, and were proved to possess one single disposition of love 34

Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1144C), trans. Constas (2014), 225. Ibid. 36 S. Wessel, Passion and Compassion in the Early Church (2016), 175. According to Sherwood, ‘… the true heart of Maximus’ doctrine is love’. P. Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor (1955), 91. 37 Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1204D), my translation. 38 Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1204D), trans. Constas (2014), 341. 39 Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1205A), trans. Constas (2014), 341. 35

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for the whole of mankind, by means of which they held fast, throughout the whole of their earthly life, to the ultimate form of virtue, by which I mean humility, which is a firm safeguard of all that is good … so they became impregnable to the temptations that besieged them…40

Goodness, love, compassion, mercy, humility, and stability in the face of temptation all characterize this way of choosing, deciding, acting, which are concretely enacted in this life. The indwelling of the Word effects in the human being the appropriation of the qualities of the divine Word – the Word’s love, humility, self-abnegation, the incarnate Word’s human submission to the will of God – but it also manifests, or communicates, the divine Word in a typological way. Contemplating on the story of Melchizedek in Genesis, Maximus describes the saint as an image of God and of Christ: Consistent with this principle, the great Melchizedek, having been imbued with divine virtue, was deemed worthy to become an image of Christ God (εἰκών … Χριστοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ) and His unutterable mysteries (τῶν ἀποῥῥήτῶν αὐτοῦ μυστηρίων), for in Him all the saints converge as to an archetype (ἀρχέτυπον), to the very cause of the manifestation of the Beautiful (τοῦ καλοῦ ἐμφάσεως) that is realized in each of them, and this is especially true of this saint, since he bears within himself more prefigurations (ὑποτυπώσεις) of Christ than all the rest.41

The language of archetype and prefiguration – as well as the invocation of the biblical Melchizedek – suggest that the indwelling of the Word, through virtue in this case, communicates through the human being in a manner akin to characters in scripture, who anticipate and signify Christ. Further, there may also be a sacramental element here. The saint becomes an image of Christ and His μυστηρίων. Maximus could mean μυστηρίων in a very broad way: the mysteries that pertain to the economy of salvation. However, because he is describing the human person as being indwelt by the divine Word and thereby communicative of Christ, it is not a stretch to interpret Maximus as intending a sacramental resonance here. 1.3. The Embodiment of the Word in Virtue: Some Central Features There are a few basic features to Maximus’ account of the indwelling of Christ and the virtuous choosing, deciding, and acting that correspond to this indwelling. I shall outline four: (1) The indwelling of Christ and the virtue proper to it are elaborated within a particular theological framework, in which the pillars are divinization, 40 41

Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1204D-1205B), trans. Constas (2014), 341-3. Ambiguum 10 (PG 91, 1141B-C), trans. Constas (2014), 221.

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incarnation, and Maximus’ doctrine of the λόγοι. He conceives of all creatures as being indwelt by the Word via the λόγοι of their being. But not all creatures actualize the λόγοι of their well-being or eternal being. The λόγοι of wellbeing is a sublational indwelling vis-à-vis the λόγοι of being, in which the human person enters the church and is incorporated into the body of Christ. Further, Christ is embodied in her through her participation in virtue and submission to the divine will. The end goal is the full embodiment of the Word in the human person and in the cosmos, and the human person’s participation by grace in what the Word is by nature. (2) The indwelling of the Word correlates with and causes the adoption of a virtuous way of choosing, deciding, and doing. It is characterized by love, humility, goodness, self-abnegation, beauty, among others. (3) This virtuous way of choosing, deciding, and acting is akin to Christ’s own choosing, deciding, and acting. Proper to the indwelling is a way of choosing, deciding, and acting that mirrors Christ and makes one a type of Christ, so that one shares in the Word’s characteristics and attributes. (4) The virtue proper to the indwelling of the Word is communicative of the Word, in a way similar to biblical types and perhaps the eucharist. This way of living is significant of the Word precisely through one’s embodied decisions and actions. 2. The Indwelling of the Word and Incarnate Meaning In broad outline, if not in every detail, much of what I have said so far has been recognized by previous interpreters of Maximus. But a question that remains is what Maximus intends when he describes the human person as a type of Christ, or an image of Christ’s ‘mysteries’. I have used the adjective, ‘communicative’, but only as a placeholder. Here I suggest that this communicative element can be clarified with reference to Bernard Lonergan’s notion of ‘incarnate meaning’, and this suggestion is the real contribution of this article. The foundational idea of incarnate meaning is that meaning is expressed in human living, not only human talking, writing, and art. Lonergan writes, in Insight: Not only is man capable of aesthetic liberation and artistic creativity, but his first work of art is his own living. The fair, the beautiful, the admirable is embodied by man in his own body and actions before it is given a still freer realization in painting and sculpture, in music and poetry.42

There is more to human art than what we find on the walls of a museum, in other words. Whether or not we are aware, our embodied qualities and actions are expressive. Playwrights and novelists recognize this well enough. Lonergan’s 42

B. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 5th ed. (Toronto, 1992), 210-1.

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insight about human living as expressive will later be thematized as ‘incarnate meaning’ in Method in Theology and other essays of the 1960s and 1970s. Lonergan’s discussion of ‘incarnate meaning’ in Method is rich but compact. He writes: Cor ad cor loquitur. Incarnate meaning combines all of at least many of the other carriers of meaning. It can be at once intersubjective, artistic, symbolic, linguistic. It is the meaning of a person, of his way of life, of his words, or of his deeds. It may be his meaning for just one other person, or for a small group, or for a whole national, or social, or cultural, or religious tradition. Such meaning may attach to a group achievement, to a Thermopylae or Marathon, to the Christian martyrs, to a glorious revolution. It may be transposed to a character or characters in a story or a play, to a Hamlet or Tartuffe or Don Juan. It may emanate from the whole personality and the total performance of an orator or a demagogue. Finally, as meaning can be incarnate, so too can the meaningless, the vacant, the empty, the vapid, the insipid, the dull.43

The category of incarnate meaning is quite expansive and includes just about everything a human individual does in her life. Moreover, there is meaning incarnate in groups and traditions, in collective achievements. There is also incarnate meaninglessness. Hannah Arendt’s famous Eichmann in Jerusalem is, more or less, her account of the meaninglessness, or ‘banality’, incarnate in Adolf Eichmann’s life.44 In other places, Lonergan connects ‘incarnate meaning’ more explicitly to holiness and to saints in conversation with the work of Georges Morel.45 In Lonergan’s reading, Morel considered the human being, especially her way of deciding and living, as symbol, and Morel drew this insight out in a long analysis of St John of the Cross. Lonergan related Morel’s work to his own, writing, ‘one can call (this category of symbol) incarnate meaning, namely, meaning in the sense of the meaning of a (human being’s) life, the meaning of a decisive gesture in a person’s life. The meaning resides in the person, in everything he has done leading up to this moment’. He goes on: ‘The meaning of one’s life – the meaning that one lives in one’s life and manifests in one’s activity – is what constitutes one as a (human being), as the (human being) that one is’.46 Through one’s living, holiness expresses a meaning. The meaning of one’s living constitutes and distinguishes each of us as the particular persons that we are.

43

B. Lonergan, Method in Theology (1973), 73. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, 2006). 45 Georges Morel, Le Sens de l’existence selon s. Jean de la Croix (Paris, 1960-1961). 46 Bernard Lonergan, ‘Time and Meaning’, in Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (eds), Philosophical and Theological Papers: 1958-1964 (Toronto, 1996), 101-2. 44

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In Ambigua 7 and 10, Maximus appears to be implicitly concerned with something like ‘incarnate meaning’, in his recognition and description of the communicative element of virtue. The indwelling of the Word in the human person entails a life of participation in virtue, and virtue is embodied concretely in our choosing and our actions. Virtue, moreover, expresses a meaning in a manner similar to biblical types and the ‘mysteries of Christ’. In Lonergan’s terms, Maximus sees the indwelling of the Word in the human being as involving the incarnating of a meaning that reflects the meaning incarnate in the life of the historical Jesus, a meaning that includes the acceptance of suffering, submission to the divine will, humility, and universal love. In sum, the indwelling of the Word corresponds to a participation in virtue whereby we assume the characteristics of the Word, characteristics which communicate the very meaning that Christ communicated in the meaning incarnate of his life, a meaning that can be summed up as, in Cooper’s phrase, ‘suffering love’.47 Conclusion In this article, I have provided a reading of Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua 7 and 10, with a focus on how he characterizes the indwelling of the Word in virtue as communicative. I have argued that the indwelling of the Word correlates to a particular virtuous manner of choosing, deciding, and acting characterized by love, humility, beauty, and so on. This virtue, moreover, correlates to that of Christ, and this virtue communicates the Word. I have suggested that one way of clarifying this communicative element is by reference to Bernard Lonergan’s notion of ‘incarnate meaning’. In my view, this clarifies to some degree the aspect of meaning, and its functioning, in the virtuous mode of existing described by Maximus. I have employed it for the purpose of interpretation, to make explicit what is implicit in Maximus, and I have only done so for a limited part of Maximus’ writings. A more expansive study of his writings will doubtless be more fruitful.

47

A.G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus the Confessor (2005), 208.

Ascetic Knowledge and Anagogical Knowing in Maximus the Confessor Eric LOPEZ, Life Pacific University, CA, USA

ABSTRACT In the post-Justinian era of the Byzantine Empire, Maximus the Confessor (580-662 CE), a Christian ascetic and theologian, sketched out his conception of Christian ascent. This article examines Maximus’ vision of Christian ascent with special attention to his understanding of knowledge and theological epistemology to demonstrate how his engagement with Origenist and Neoplatonic cosmologies led him to explore the nature of knowledge, union, and the intelligible function of the Logos. The intersection of these three areas defines not only what is knowable concerning God and creation but also what kind of knowledge is possible in each case. Entailed in his description is a rich set of terms that describe the phenomenological and psychological processes of human knowledge and deification. Correlative to Maximus’ conception of ascent is an ordered portrayal of the cosmos and the wisdom available from it. While accessible to all and commencing from various vantage points, ascent is nevertheless an ordered progression of one’s attention through kinds of knowledge and unknowing that governs the ascetic’s ability to understand Scripture, creation, liturgical acts, and God. This attention is not merely a pursuit of knowledge but rather a process that engenders a specific disposition toward God and creation which illuminates a proper understanding and engagement with all things. Consequently, knowledge is not the end goal to ascent but a necessary stage on the way to union. While there are limits to these processes, Maximus explains a means of transcending them as far as is possible.

Scope of the Investigation Maximus’ epistemology has been explored from various vantage points. As a result, the goal of this article is not to give a comprehensive account of Maximus’ understanding of knowing nor even to fully explore how it relates to numerous Late Antique authors writing either as theologians or philosophers. Rather, I will only briefly review earlier studies on aspects of Maximus’ epistemology. Additionally, space and time only allow the briefest review of Origenist and ‘Neoplatonic’ concepts related to epistemology within Late Antique philosophy. These reviews will help provide: 1) A general description of Maximus’ view of ascent and relevant epistemological concepts, and 2) Create a

Studia Patristica CXXI, 109-127. © Peeters Publishers, 2021.

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context for understanding why Maximus might write about the things that he did. In the latter part of the article, I will argue that Maximus’ epistemology is necessarily Trinitarian. Previous Literature on Maximus’ Epistemology Earlier scholars, Polycarp Sherwood and Hans Urs von Balthasar, described Maximus’ cataphatic and apophatic approach to theology found throughout his writing. Maximus, while affirming earlier tradition, nevertheless, highlights the progressive interplay of both approaches, how they condition each other and shape the intellect to honor God’s otherness yet entice the soul to yearn evermore for God. Von Balthasar underscored how Maximus’ attempts to preserve the transcendence of God meant, in his estimation, that God ultimately remains unknowable and unknown even within the incarnation.1 Sherwood disagreed with aspects of von Balthasar’s portrayal of Maximus.2 Nevertheless, they both affirmed the importance of both cataphatic and apophatic approaches in Maximus’ thought, how they shape the application of thought and language to God, and what one should expect in that process.3 However, one area – whether or not there are traces of the Trinity available for any intellect in creation – was controversial. Von Balthasar shut the door on this possibility, underscoring many places where Maximus states that what can be known of God through creation is that there is a God and that this God is one, but not how God is or that he is Triune.4 Sherwood rebutted that revelation must be given due consideration. Thus, Sherwood revised von Balthasar’s original findings stating that Maximus indeed says that those without revelation can only come to know that a God is and that he is one. Yet, once revelation has made God known as Triune, human beings can see triadic structures in creation including within the human soul.5 Von Balthasar also highlighted how Maximus interprets both Dionysius and Gregory in ways that attempt to revise Neoplatonic emanantism and the Origenist henad of rational beings. Sherwood’s studies fleshed out the latter by detailing Maximus’ revision of Origenism in his Ambigua ad Iohannem and used several sets of triadic terms as his basis. 1 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie: Das Weltbild Maximus’ des Bekenners, 2nd ed. (Einsiedeln, 1988), 74-109 = Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, translated by Brian Daley (San Francisco, 2003), 81-114 and Polycarp Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor: The Ascetic Life, The Four Centuries on Charity, Ancient Christian Writers 21 (Mahwah, NJ, 1955), 96-7. 2 In the Foreword to the second edition, von Balthasar describes Sherwood’s criticisms and his response, Cosmic Liturgy (2003), 23-8. 3 P. Sherwood, St. Maximus (1955), 29-35. 4 H.U. von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy (2003), 122-6. 5 P. Sherwood, St. Maximus (1955), 37-45.

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The base set were ousia, dunamis, and energeia which Sherwood described as sequential.6 In an often-overlooked work on early medieval philosophy, Sheldon-Williams places Maximus within a philosophical context and describes how his revision of Origenism depicts a triadic universe, specifically, one that is ‘no longer defined in the Plotinian and Procline terms of monê-proodos-epistrophê, but as Being, Power, and Act (οὐσία- δύναμις- ἐνέργεια)’.7 He believed this could be better described as Porphyrian and that Maximus’ overall vision could be applied to Deity ‘without a suggestion of emanationism and to created nature without denying it stability; to the intelligible or eternal world without making it co-eternal with God, and to the physical and contingent world without denying its immortality.’8 Sheldon-Williams also notes how Maximus’ articulation of reversion or redemption is shaped primarily by Christian authors while aspects of his doctrines of movement and created nature drew from Aristotelian and Neoplatonic sources. Additionally, Maximus’ conception of unconfused unity enabled him to address Procopius’ criticisms of Dionysian unity concluding, ‘For Maximus, it is not a brusque and violent contravention of the norms of nature, but the accomplishment of its perfection, at once an ekstasis and an ektasis.’9 Forty-three years later as Late Antiquity had been carved away from the Medieval era, Bradshaw in the Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity stressed even further the need to recognize Maximus’ theological orientation and the extent to which he drew upon the thought of earlier Christian theologians especially Dionysius.10 In his entry, Bradshaw focuses on Maximus’ ontology, deification, his conception of time and eternity, and his understanding of the will. The section on deification or ‘transformed humanity’ is framed by the question ‘How does one become capable of perceiving the intelligible in the sensible?’ He answers by explaining Maximus’ adaptation of the Platonic idea of humanity as microcosm, its connection to the incarnation, and how the existence made possible through Christ is appropriated to individuals. On the latter, he highlights Maximus’ thought on transforming the passions through the virtues and the concomitant transformation of the senses to see the logoi in creation which finally awakens the individual to the divine presence.11 6 This the basis of his work in The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism, Studia Anselmiana 36 (Rome, 1955). Maximus does revise aspects of Origenist teaching earlier in the Capita de caritate. 7 I.P. Sheldon-Williams, ‘Chapter 32 St. Maximus the Confessor’, in The Cambridge History of Later Greek & Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1967), 492. 8 Ibid. 493. 9 Ibid. 504-5. 10 David Bradshaw, ‘Chapter 44 Maximus the Confessor’, in The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2010), 813. 11 Ibid. 820-2.

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More recently, Nevena Dimitrova, who focused her doctoral research on Maximus’ understanding of human knowledge, explores aspects of what she terms his ‘gnoseology’ with latter Orthodox theology in the horizon. She focuses on the Confessor’s distinctive use of the terms hexis often translated ‘habit’, ‘state’, or ‘condition’, and gnomē. While at times the study struggles to see Maximus within his own milieu rather than in later Orthodox debates, it nevertheless draws out how Maximus uses these two terms to help shape his view of ascent and the critical role they play in his understanding of human cognition. Dimitrova explains, Hexis has three key connotations that contribute to its philosophical meaning: 1) possession/property, which is opposed to the notion of deprivation/deficiency (στέρησις); 2) a state of stability, which is opposed to the concept of a passing attitude (σχέσις), and 3) personal habit(s) acquired through experience or by disposition.12

Highlighting the term’s intermediate status between deprivation and something’s active use, Dimitrova shows how hexis is used to describe a sustained activity and resulting habitus. Maximus recognizes that this habitus is not a singular achievement which remains forever so. Instead, it requires a continual engagement of the will.13 Nevertheless, he believes that it can have lasting effects when combined with the experience of deification. Finally, Frederick D. Aquino engages Maximus in a constructive approach in several works that attempt to appropriate the Confessor through the rubric of virtue epistemology. In his 2017 work, Aquino helpfully reviews Maximus’ theological epistemology engaging the various relevant and shorter treatments scattered throughout Maximian scholarship. There are several areas that he highlights that are helpful for the purposes of this article. The first area is identifying Maximus’ stages of philosophical or ascetic life. Maximus is comfortable with both ways of describing it (See Cap. car. 4.47). He names three: practical philosophy, natural philosophy, and theological philosophy.14 The first 12 Nevena Dimitrova, Human Knowledge according to Saint Maximus the Confessor (Eugene, OR, 2016), 107 (see also 113). 13 Smilen Markov also points out the importance of the will in his ‘Wisdom as the Epistemological and Anthropological Concept in Byzantine Philosophy: Paradigms form Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor and Photius the Great’, Analogia 2.1 (2017), 111-24. 14 Frederick D. Aquino, ‘Maximus the Confessor’, in The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology, ed. William J. Abraham and Frederick D. Aquino (Oxford, 2017), 371. Maximus uses a variety of descriptions and they should be understood as a progressive set of stages. At times he will reduce it down to practical and contemplative stages or expand it depending on his emphases, yet the overall path is consistent. In the Liber asceticus (Lib. asc.), there is no direct reference to theōria. Nevertheless, the central theme of the book is to understand the skopos of the Incarnation which requires one of the characters to reflect on the incarnate Son’s life. Throughout the work the young man repeatedly admits his inability to understand or love properly. After a review Scripture and prayer this leads to contrition. Maximus’ other ascetic works will address theōria in more direct ways. See also Frederick D. Aquino, ‘The Philokalia and Regulative Virtue Epistemology: A Look at Maximus the Confessor’, in The Philokalia: A Classic Text of Orthodox

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stage entails the development of the virtues such as humility, self-control, apatheia, prudence, and love. These mold desire away from an impassioned interaction with earthly things and thoughts of those things, including one’s self, toward the goal of apatheia and a love of divine things.15 Maximus recognizes the fundamentally affective character of human life whether it is cast in terms of bodily or intellectual pursuits. So rather than destroy the passions, they must be redirected and purified into perfect love.16 The later stages involve contemplation of visible and invisible things, and finally deification. Consequently, an impassioned interaction with creation is not only what prevents perfect love, but also clouds one’s intellectual vision preventing the ascetic from seeing clearly and using things according to their proper purpose. Aquino notes several additional aspects of Maximus’ thought. Firstly, he highlights how Maximus’ stages of ascent reflect a synthetic unity of pratikē and theōria, knowledge and virtue. Maximus’ emphasis on the pursuit of virtue within ascetic formation, he states, forms ‘a positive orientation’ toward and ‘supports’ knowledge.17 All of these stages require elements of intellectual and practical engagement and, when successful, result in what Aquino calls ‘epistemic goods’ which he briefly lists as ‘contemplation of God in and through nature, illumination of divine truths, wisdom and perceptual knowledge of God’.18 He further observes that this unity is required for the Confessor and thus it ‘is a precondition for rendering philosophically honed judgements for perceiving correctly the divine in and through nature, and for participating in the life of God.’19 A final point I wish to draw out of Aquino’s account is his recognition of the central role of love in Maximus’ conception of virtue and knowledge. Aquino describes love as a ‘meta-virtue’, ‘facilitating virtue’ or ‘culmination of the virtues’ because of its place in the ascetic journey and because of the role it serves in supporting and driving the ascetic onward toward communion with God.20 Spirituality, ed. Brock Bingaman and Bradley Nassif (Oxford, 2012), 240-51 and ‘The Synthetic Unity of Virtue and Epistemic Goods in Maximus the Confessor’, Studies in Christian Ethics 26 (2013), 378-90. 15 F.D. Aquino, Maximus (2017), 371. I might add that for Maximus, apatheia is what allows human beings to love all equally otherwise their love is driven by selfish motives. See Cap. car. 1.25, 2.30 and Lib. asc. 6-9. 16 On the affective nature of humanity and how Maximus envisions its transformation in more detail see Paul M. Blowers, ‘Gentiles of the Soul: Maximus the Confessor on the Substructure and Transformation of the Human Passions’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 4 (1994), 57-85 and ‘The Dialectics and Therapeutics of Desire in Maximus the Confessor’, Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011), 435-51. 17 F.D. Aquino, Maximus (2017), 374. 18 Ibid. 369-70. 19 Ibid. 374. 20 Ibid. 377.

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Supplemental Reflection There are a couple of supplementary observations that I will add to the above review that will be helpful later in the article. In Capita de caritate (Cap. car.) and elsewhere, Maximus recognizes two kinds of perception: 1) sense perception and 2) spiritual or intellectual perception.21 The former progressing on to the latter and giving the mind proper judgement of both visible and invisible realities. The mind confronted with things (pragmata) thus has representations (noēmata) or thoughts (logismoi). These thoughts can be described as impassioned (empathēs) and compound (sunthetos) or without passion (apathēs) and bare (psilos).22 The former lead to the sinful use of things and then to false or partial knowledge and therefore also partial love of others and self-love. The latter lead to using things for their proper purpose, and then upon further contemplation to complete or true knowledge and impartial and perfect love.23 The correlative nature of passion and knowledge means that their pursuit must be anagogical if the ascetic is to be successful in deification. Secondly, the role of unknowing and negation in Maximus’ conception of anagogical knowing is important. For Maximus, it is essential to unlearn, unknow and transcend things just as it is to gain knowledge especially as it relates to the later stages of ascent. This is required because previous conceptions of things 21 Maximus, Cap. car. 3.24-26 in Massimo Confessore Capitoli sulla Carità, ed. Aldo CeresaGastaldo, Verba Seniorum 3 (Rome, 1963), 154 (VS 3). Maximus’ way of putting this is that human beings have an ousia that is logikē and noera. In Ambigua (Amb.) 10.1-6, Maximus distinguishes between the role of reason (logos) and the role of contemplation (theōria) or subdividing into a rational part and a contemplative part. In this case, logos ‘orders the body’s movements using the bridle of right thinking to restrain it from irrational impulses’, whereas contemplation ‘is the prudent adoption of what has been properly understood and judged, revealing, like a most radiate light, the truth itself by true knowledge’, (trans. Constas, 153). It is common to see the latter term translated ‘spiritual’ or ‘noetic’ in some instances within the Philokalia. This distinction between rational or logical and spiritual would clearly fit well with the definition Maximus gives above however noetic captures that it is still a human intellectual activity even though it is heavily influenced by its contact with the Holy Spirit. See also Cap. car. 3.27, 30; 4.3, 13 (VS 3, 156, 158, 194, 198) and Amb. 10.88.18-24 in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers the Ambigua of Maximos the Confessor, volume 1, ed. and trans. Nicholas Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28 (Cambridge, 2014), 284-6 (DOML 28). On this later passage, Maximus seems to align noera with gnōsis and logika with epistēmē which would suggest he sees gnōsis as superior to epistēmē. See also ad Thal. 59 which is discussed later. Finally, Amb. 21.7 makes this point most vividly where Maximus compares the powers of the senses to understand the sensible world and the powers of the soul to understand the world of virtues suggesting that the five senses are paradigmatic images of the power of the soul (paradeigmatikas tōn psuchikōn eikonas). Yet he does not valorize the one at the expense of the other, instead he gives a positive valuation of the visible world and the senses as an entry way to intellectual reflection leading to truth suggesting that ‘as if by letters, God the Word is legible to those with a sharp eye for the truth’ (trans. DOML 28, 431). 22 Maximus, Cap. car. 3.42-4 (VS 3, 162-4). 23 Maximus, Cap. car. 3.7,8, 39-43 (VS 3, 146, 162). Much of the entire century is dedicated to articulating kinds of thoughts, knowledge, and love. See also 4.57.

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and God need to be revised in light of faith, creaturely existence, and love. In light of love because one must recognize even if only eventually that the Trinity as the goal of ascent is not creation and so while aspects of God can be contemplated (his providence, judgement, infinity, wisdom, goodness), ultimately all concepts and interaction, because they are derived from our experience within and as created beings, must be qualified or transcended.24 Thus even when the ascetic mind, purified and guided by the Spirit, has contemplated visible and invisible creation and attained some understanding of God’s activities, these also must be transcended by an active participation or experience (peira) with God.25 This prepares the mind for what Maximus variously calls mystical union, direct experience of God, mystical philosophy or mystical theology available through prayer, which in turn has further implications in developing and maintaining the habit of right discernment and love. Thirdly, love in Maximus’ ascetic vision is the refinement, perfection, and ordered arrangement of desire found in the various parts of the soul and thus is part of what unifies virtue and knowledge.26 Maximus uses a variety of words for desire, but the ultimate goal is that it is refined into agapē. Thus, in Cap. car., one sees a progression from desires, to kinds of love, to perfect love, which becomes a holy state and blessed passion.27 In Maximus’ earliest works the ascetic is given a clear definition of love, an example of love in God or the Son incarnate more specifically, and the goal of love – God or the Trinity. These serve as a plumb line of discerning and redirecting desire. Neither virtue or knowledge are of much worth in Maximus’ eyes if not accompanied by love and pursued for the purpose of love. Since God is love, the ascetic life can be seen as the pursuit of ascetic formation in which one realizes the indwelling presence of God and one’s place ‘in God’ understood as being a member of the Body of Christ.28 By way of summarizing these first two sections: for Maximus, various kinds of knowledge are possible and can be gained through the processes of both sense-perception and intellectual perception through reason and intellect. Yet 24

Maximus, Cap. car. 1.100, Amb. 34 (DOML 29, 64-6), ad Thal. Prol. 1.1-18 (CChr.SG 7, 17). In an often-quoted text from ad Thal. 60.63-93 (CChr.SG 22, 77, 79), Maximus makes the contrast between ‘relative knowledge’ (schetikē) and true or genuine (alēthinē) knowledge, the former is based on ‘reason’ (logos) and ‘concepts’ (noēmata). This relative knowledge based on reason, but not experience, is replaced by knowledge gained through direct or ‘active’ engagement. The context of this passage is deification and thus is experienced ‘by grace’ (kata charin). Additionally, the ‘concepts’ he speaks of are those gained through contemplation of creation; however, Maximus suggests that a similar dynamic is at play for all things that human beings seek to know. 26 Maximus uses the term diathesis in Cap. car. 1.1 but the proper reordering, redirecting and perfecting of desire corresponds to the parts of the soul that are brought to unity by reason through the practice of the virtues. 27 Maximus, Cap. car. 3.71 (VS 3, 176-8). 28 Maximus, Amb. 7.36-9 (DOML 28, 126-36). 25

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it is necessary that one undergo a process of purification through the pursuit of virtue which gradually transforms desire into love in order to have true knowledge. This is the case whether one seeks to understand created or divine realities. Yet, with the latter, there are limitations and those can only be overcome by grace and through releasing the attempt to know God in a discursive or propositional manner, utilizing the interplay of cataphatic and apophatic sensibilities, and simply experience his presence. In the remaining part of the paper, I do not seek to revise this picture significantly, but to give it texture and detail by addressing how Trinitarian theology or God as Trinity affects his understanding of epistemology. I argue that there are several ways that it does. Firstly, the very issue of epistemology is struck within Christian theology by the need to deal with God and specifically God as Trinity. This is still the case in Maximus’ day. Secondly, the Trinity, while the goal of Christian life, is also the means of that life and this can be seen from an epistemological perspective. Finally, true knowledge of created and divine realities according to Maximus, is only available when God is reflected upon and experienced as Triune. Christian and Neoplatonic Traditions A series of reflections commencing with Plato, engaged and expanded by Aristotle, and then by Plotinus and other Late Antique philosophers reveals the subtle and sustained attempt to solve the knotty issue of when one can say they have ‘knowledge’. As Gerson and others note, their notion of gnōsis or epistēmē is not true doxa, but requires a higher standard. Therefore, to say one has knowledge, must mean more than having true belief. It must be infallible, meaning one must be aware that one’s belief is true, not simply that it be so by accident or coincidence.29 Thus to have knowledge, one must be assimilated to or have some aspect of identity not with a thing’s material reality, but with its underlying immaterial and truer reality through Forms or intelligibles. This requires a 29 Lloyd Gerson, ‘Neoplatonic Epistemology: Knowledge, Truth and Intellection’, in The Routledge Handbook in Philosophy (New York, NY, 2014), 266-7. If Gerson is correct, then part of the ancient discussion of knowledge was an awareness of the Gettier Problem. Their solution would seem to be an appeal to an immaterial and divine process. In comparison to modern analyses of epistemology in which justified true belief has dominated, this attribute of ‘infallibility’ is akin to justification although perhaps ‘confirmation’ would be a more suitable term. Even if ‘justification’ were an appropriate term, it is significantly distinct since much modern discussions of knowledge tend to assume physicalism and thus justification is either only an internal mental state or internal processes in relation to external factors. The idea that human intellect is not only material but also immaterial (as part of the soul) and additionally is connected in some way to a divine Intellect makes justification in the Late Antique context more complex since it would seem to require the mind’s awareness that it’s interpretation of reality and belief aligns not only with reality but with the divine Intellect either by self-reversion and recollection or some other process.

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reversion of the self to itself and through itself to an eternal reality; to a knowledge already possessed in the human intellect through the hypostasis of Intellect. In one respect, this requires a level of self-reflection and another layer of intellection where the human mind must be aware of itself but also aware of its own processes of cognition. In another respect, this also requires that the human intellect have access to eternal truths in intelligibles or Forms in order to confirm that what is possessed is truly knowledge and not merely mental representations resulting from one’s own sense-perception, deduction, or induction that just happen to be true.30 For Plotinus, this meant that the human soul is linked to the hypostasis of Intellect through the higher part of the soul; what Gerson calls ‘the undescended intellect’ which in turn produces an identity between the knower and that which is known.31 Later Neo-platonic interpreters, while drawing on Plotinus and others, nevertheless abandon Plotinus’ ‘undescended intellect’, while still attempting to solve the same issue.32 True knowledge is self-knowledge because the human intellect already possesses knowledge through some kind of link with eternal Forms and therefore must recollect them. Ammonius, for example, attempts to appeal to the idea that the logoi are the human intellect’s pre-embodied experience with Forms and thus are obscured by our material embodiment. As Gerson notes, it is not clear what the logoi are, but they are not the Forms.33 A student of Ammonius and an author more proximate to Maximus is John Philoponus.34 It is clear that Philoponus follows Ammonius in stating that the logoi are not the Forms, even though the logoi of all things are in the soul. Rather the logoi are representations or exemplars that are actualized in the activity of understanding.35 Maximus has read Philoponus and counters his later 30 Armstrong describes this process as sense perception, deduction/induction to epistēmē which when verified with Forms or intelligibles of the undescended intellect become true gnōsis. See Arthur H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus: An Analytical and Historical Study (Cambridge, 1940), 109-20. 31 L. Gerson, ‘Neoplatonic Epistemology’ (2014), 269. In footnote 13, Gerson cites Enn. IV.4[22].14.16-22, IV.[6].4.41-5, IV.8[6].8 and IV.7[2].13 for the doctrine of the ‘undescended intellect’. In these sections, Plotinus does not seem to try to employ a consistent technical terminology. In IV.8[6].8 he contrasts the ‘upper’ (to anō) and ‘lower’ (to katō) parts of the soul. This upper part is what remains with the intelligibles and Intellect. 32 L. Gerson, ‘Neoplatonic Epistemology’ (2014), 272-8. 33 Ibid. 276. 34 I must thank here an unknown individual who, during the presentation of the paper, reminded me that Philoponus’ writings were a more proximate philosophical context for Maximus’ epistemology. 35 Philoponus, De intellectu 82.1-84.2 in Philoponus: On Aristotle on the Intellect (de Anima 3.4-8) ed. Richard Sorabji, trans. William Chartlon (London, 1991), 97-8. See Gerson’s assessment in ‘Neoplatonic Epistemology’ (2014), 276-7 and that of Frans A.J. de Hass, ‘Chapter 15: Intellect in Alexander of Aphrodisias and John Philoponus: Divine, Human or Both?’ in Philosophy of the Mind in Antiquity, ed. John E. Sisko, The History of the Philosophy of the Mind 1 (New York, 2018), 299-316.

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Trinitarian thought as early as Cap. car. but the Confessor’s concern is not to describe the internal dynamics of how the intellect gains understanding from the processes of perception and cognition over and against Plotinus’ undescended intellects. Rather the logoi are understood to reveal the telos and will of God in all things which are only truly ascertained in the anagogical pursuit of God and by discerning truth about creation for the purpose of deification.36 Philoponus also uses the logoi doctrine in arguments regarding creation yet, as Benevich notes, they are lacking in the ‘dynamic’ and ‘soteriological dimension’ found in Maximus.37 Thus, one could summarize that a common feature of the philosophical understanding of knowledge was that the ‘repository’ of knowledge was ultimately the eternal Forms mediated in some manner to the human intellect and the ‘mode’ of knowing was through self-reversion and recollection. Within Christian tradition, epistemological problems come to the fore in several ways but significantly in relation to knowledge of God and the language predicated of him. A key set of terms in this discussion are ousia, dunamis, and energeia. The attribution of this sequence to the divine persons was an important development in Pro-Nicene theology not only because it came to function as a way of affirming consubstantiality, but also because it addressed a thorny epistemological problem about how human beings can be said to know anything about God, especially if his ousia cannot be known.38 Thus, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the one God have the same ousia, dunamis, and energeia. Since this is a causal sequence and not simply sequential, and recognizing that one cannot directly apprehend God’s ousia, God can be known through his energeia upon which so many of the titles ascribed to him in Scripture are based. A similar logic concerning energeia is applied to affirming Christ as both human and divine. Gregory of Nazianzus begins this application, but exactly how it worked would remain a matter of dispute. Nevertheless, Maximus applies these terms, refined within Trinitarian debate, to monophysitism, monoenergism, and monothelitism. Here he asserts the will is a natural faculty or dunamis and if willing as an energeia flows from a dunamis which flows from an ousia then, following pro-Chalcedonian theology, Christ must have both human and divine activities and wills, while nevertheless remaining one person. There is, however, another arena where this terminology was significant in Christian theology over the centuries and for Maximus’ theology. During the 36 Maximus, Cap. car. 2.29 (VS 3, 104-6). On this passage see Gregory Benevich’s ‘Maximus Confessor’s Polemics against Tritheism and His Trinitarian Teaching’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 105 (2012), 515-610. 37 Gregory Benevich, ‘John Philoponus and Maximus the Confessor at the Crossroads of Philosophical and Theological Thought in Late Antiquity’, Scrinium VΙI-VIII.1 (2011-2012). Ars Christiana. In memoriam Michail F. Murianov (21.XI.192-6.VI.1995) (Piscataway, 2011-2), 102-30. 38 See Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford, 2006), especially Ch. 8, and Michel René Barnes, The Power of God: Δύναμις in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology (Washington, DC, 2001), especially Ch. 3.

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Origenist controversies of the sixth century, this sequence again became an area of special attention except with an additional term, gnosis, adjoined. This addition brought out more clearly the epistemological consequences of the sequence. In the context of the philosophical works of Late Antiquity, Origenism’s use of these terms could be understood as one solution to the problem of knowledge specifically knowledge of God. Origenist Cosmology For the Origenist, union or salvation means one must have access to an identity with God on the basis of ousia, dunamis, energeia, and gnōsis. The Word, who is the only unfallen intellect, makes this identity possible by becoming all things and reverting rational beings to a pre-fallen unity in the henad. If one is to have true gnōsis and be a true gnostic one must have access and identity with God. The Fifth Council rejected this cosmology on the basis that no created beings can be consubstantial with God. To assert that the intellects or souls of rational beings and the Word of God have an identity of ousia, dunamis, energeia, and gnōsis would infer as much. The Council reasserted the irreducible distinction between God and all levels of created being, but did not necessarily offer an alternative for unity and knowledge.39 Maximus’ solution or revision of this problematic is, like the Fifth Council, to reassert an irreducible distinction between rational beings – all of creation – and God. However, for his revision to be successful, he must find another route not only for how created beings interact, exist, and become united to God in deification, but also how it is that rational beings can know God at all. Additionally, it is not good enough to come to an understanding of God as one, simple, and beyond all things. One must arrive at the particularly Christian understanding of God as Triune. Furthermore, he must tackle how it is that human beings have a true knowledge of creation since only in relation to God can creation be properly understood. Maximus’ reassertion of this distinction in some ways makes his task more difficult than either the commentators of the Platonic traditions or the Origenist’s solutions, both of which pursued more fluid and hierarchical physical and metaphysical conceptions of reality. For Neo-Platonists and especially as later Platonists abandon Plotinus’ understanding of undescended intellects, this meant having to consistently add layers between the One and material existence to preserve the transcendence of the One, but nevertheless to articulate a means by which a real connection could be maintained. 39

See the canons of the Council of Constantinople 553 CE (ACO 4.1, 248-9, translated by Richard Price in The Acts of Constantinople 553, Vol. 2, Translated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool, 2009), 284-6.

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For Maximus, as for many Christian theologians, the irreducible distinction is absolute and so what must ensue after such a strong affirmation is an explanation that avoids the extremes of agnosticism and a Eunomian overconfidence as it relates to knowledge, but also pantheism or an impersonal God as it relates to union. If one can find a way to make the Incarnation the solution, it would be all the better and in fact the seeds of this solution already lay within the Biblical tradition and were picked up and advanced by Maximus’ predecessors. To summarize: in the previous sections, I have explored and elucidated the dynamics of Maximus’ epistemology by reviewing other authors and supplementing their work. I have also shown how Maximus’ engagement with ascetic theology in general and Origenism specifically has meant that the origin and goals of much of his reflection on epistemology is Trinitarian. Maximus stands within a long tradition of addressing epistemological issues because of the distinctive challenges of Trinitarian theology and again falls within a consistent tradition that called ascetics and theologians to be attentive to epistemological honesty and humility if one is to properly reach the goal of experiencing (knowing) the Triune God as love. I will focus the latter part of this article on showing how Maximus’ epistemology goes beyond being Trinitarian in its origins and goals, and argue that Maximus’ epistemology is Trinitarian because without the direct assistance, and activity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit true knowledge and deification is impossible. Additionally, the very cosmological dynamics and parameters within which rational beings know anything is Trinitarian and must be recognized as such for one to have true knowledge.

Maximus’ Trinitarian Epistemology I will begin by exploring a unique difficulty Maximus attempts to solve in a reading of 1 Peter in Quaestiones ad Thalassium (ad Thal.). In this scriptural aporia, Maximus is beset by the problem of explaining why – if God revealed something – someone would need to research and investigate it as the biblical author suggests. The underlying issue – does not revelation from God constitute a self-evident unit of knowledge that requires no human effort to explain or understand?40 40 Maximus, ad Thal. 59 (CChr.SG 22, 45-71). Blowers notes in his 1991 study on this passage how Maximus utilizes various forms of the verbs zēteō, ereunaō and the prefixed ekzēteō and exereunaō to revise aspects of Origenist cosmology and eschatology. Those words without the ‘ek’ or ‘ex’ prefix show the beginning of intellectual activity – searching or inquiring – while the prefixed verbs and nouns show progress. See Paul M. Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor: An Investigation of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity 7 (Norte Dame, 1991), 221-8. Maximus approaches this biblical text from two horizons: one is the process of ascent as it occurs within the human soul climaxing in its own deification and the second places this process in the context of the beginning and end of history.

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There are several aspects of this passage that are worth noting. Firstly, at the beginning of his exegesis and foreshadowing his revision of Origenist teaching in later sections, Maximus explains the contours of human rational and intellective capacities and its relation to ‘divine things’. For Maximus, ‘human nature has the essential powers (dunameis ousiōdōs) to search and inquire into divine things, [these powers] having been established in it by the Creator at its coming into being.’41 This is contrasted with revelations (apokalupseis) of divine things which are brought about by the ‘intervening power of the All-Holy Spirit’.42 The problem facing humanity is thus two-fold: through sin its natural powers have been distracted and fixed only on visible things and as a consequence it does not search and inquire for divine things or God himself.43 As a result, the All-Holy Spirit must, through grace, restore (apokatestēse) their intellective and rational power. Thus, this power is ‘purified by grace (katharan … dia tēs charitos) so they once again can search and inquire into divine things but also research and investigate them by means of the same grace of the Spirit.’44 Thus, for Maximus, part of the human dilemma surrounding knowledge of divine things is not simply that it is not self-initiated (revelation must be given by the All-Holy Spirit) but that the very powers that might search and inquired about them have been co-opted. In the next sections, Maximus explains that knowledge of mysteries cannot be the result of grace alone or human natural capacities alone. Successively nuancing his earlier exegesis, he lays out a picture of the cooperation of humanity’s natural capacities and activities with the Holy Spirit highlighting the receptivity of humanity, the redirection of their desire and the activity and gifts of the Spirit resulting in wisdom, knowledge, faith and ‘the manifestation of truth’.45 Trinitarian Assistance This last passage is indicative of Maximus overall picture of ascent and human life. For Maximus, knowledge ensues through a process of ascetic struggle and In both cases, the end result is a union with the Triune God portrayed as deification. As he does elsewhere, but with more attention to define the terms of the process, Maximus describes the end and beginning of human activity as the Triune God, who is the creator of all creatures and their goal. The progression is creation – movement – deification. He also asserts a kind of identity (tautotēs kat’ energeian) according to activity in deification by grace, but nevertheless rejects the identity of the henad with God at the end of history and cuts off any attempt to understand the text as a movement of minds who once had an identity with God. In sum, the Origenist picture captured by the phrase ‘the end is like the beginning’ is revised. 41 Maximus, ad Thal. 59.12-5 (CChr.SG 22, 45). 42 Ibid. 59.15-7 (CChr.SG 22, 45). 43 Ibid. 59.17-22 (CChr.SG 22, 45). 44 Ibid. 59.27-8 (CChr.SG 22, 45). 45 Ibid. 59.55-64 (CChr.SG 22, 47, 49). See also Myst. 5.411-21 (CChr.SG 69, 26-7).

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anagogical pursuits directed toward love of God, neighbor, and enemy. This process seeks to understand creation within the divine plan but also to engage creation and Scripture as revelatory and anagogical spaces that culminate in experiencing the Triune God. The Spirit’s role in this process cannot be understated and in fact is one aspect of his epistemology and ascetic theology that is overlooked. For Maximus, the seam of every transitionary step and every liminal space within ascent is filled by the Holy Spirit, who provides grace which is variously portrayed as his preserving, providential, productive, assisting, and permeating presence.46 For Maximus, the Spirit’s role is not just revelation, but awakens, reorders, and empowers responsiveness and receptivity to God’s activity in the human person and throughout creation. Yet it is not just the Spirit alone. The Spirit’s activity appropriates the work of the incarnate Word and also awakens the soul to the providence and judgement, the goodness and wisdom, and the unity and diversity that is to be found in creation and Scripture, directing it to these logoi which culminate in the Word himself and back to their Cause – the Father.47 For Maximus as for many of his predecessors, the incarnation is God’s condescension to humanity not just to forgive sins, but to reveal and make known the invisible God and, more specifically for Maximus, to make known God as Triune.48 Since each of the divine persons necessarily entails the other and since there is unity of divine activity, the incarnation is not just a revelation of the Son, but of the Father and Spirit. Maximus, in contrast to philosophical anthropologies, recognizes not only humanity as a microcosm but Christ as the paradigmatic microcosm who is a natural union of known and knower, God and creation, a union which is then made available to all by grace.49 Maximus again variously describes this union or the process of it as making the mind simple or uniform, becoming like God, becoming what God is by nature through grace, or participation in God by grace.50 Thus, the incarnation reveals and makes possible true knowledge of God and creation through the Spirit. Maximus moreover expands this by recognizing that each created thing contains logoi which constitute their nature but also inherently delimits their goal and purpose. Thus, as stated above, if one contemplates oneself or creation utilizing 46 Maximus, ad Thal. Prol. 29-34 (CChr.SG 7, 9, 11); 6 (CChr.SG 7, 69, 71), 32 (CChr.SG 7, 69); 15 (CChr.SG 7, 101, 103); 59 (CChr.SG 22, 45-71); Liber asc. 1.28-30 (CChr.SG 40, 5-7), 41.935-67 (CChr.SG 40, 111-5). 47 Maximus, Amb. 10 (DOML 28, 150-342), ad Thal. 15 (CChr.SG 7, 101, 103). 48 Maximus, Expositio orationis dominicae. 86-96 (CChr.SG 23, 31-2) (Exp. or. dom.). 49 Maximus, Amb. 10 (DOML 28, 150-342), 41 (DOML 29, 102-21) and Myst. 7.540-97 (CChr.SG 69, 33-6). For other areas where this concept and its inversion (makra occurs and a related literature see Doru Castache’s ‘Chapter 19: Mapping Reality within the Experience of Holiness’, in The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor, ed. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil (Oxford, 2015), 378-96. 50 Maximus, Cap. car. 3.97 (VS 3, 190), ad Thal. 8 (CChr.SG 7, 79, 81).

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the assistance and grace of the Spirit, one can perceive that the logoi are all contained in the Logos who seeks not only to draw the mind to unity with the Cause (the Father) but has drawn it toward others into the body of Christ and will, in the end, draw them to their eschatological goal.51 Since the Logos contains the logoi and the Spirit’s power permeates all things, the coherence and intelligibility of creation is dependent on the Logos and the Holy Spirit.52 The imaging of unconfused unity and unseparated distinction seen in the Trinity, Christ, the Church, and creation is thus one of the key truths that one must discover in ascetic pursuit.53 Furthermore, it is not only that these truths are present in creation but how they can be understood relative to God and his purposes that brings about true knowledge and perfect love. In his explanation of the incarnation and the logoi doctrine, Maximus revises an Origenist doctrine that suggested that the unfallen Mind or Word ontologically became all things to redeem all things. Maximus explains how the Word is in a sense determinative of all creation and incarnates himself in and through humanity when they align themselves with God’s purposes. While the divine is experienced as one divine ousia, dunamis, and energeia resulting in a unitive understanding, knowledge, and love of creation and God, the irreducible distinction between creation and God is maintained even in the incarnation. The Father, Son and Spirit are distinguishable in salvation history and within the process of ascent but cooperate in a unity of divine action and purpose. While participating in the ascetic life does not require pre-knowledge of its Triune reality, it is nevertheless that reality that the soul is awakened to, discovers, and is assisted by in its graced journey toward true knowledge and love. Maximus thus genuinely sees the Trinity not only as the beginning and end of the pursuit of virtue, knowledge, and love but also the means by which it is accomplished. Thus, one could say that for Maximus the repository of knowledge is Christ, who through the logoi, provides the epistemic breadcrumbs for ascetic inquiry. The purpose of self-reversion is to see Christ manifest in the human person and the mode of access is anagogical and by the Spirit. Yet how do human beings know that their perception is good, their knowledge true, and their love perfect? There are several dynamics that are necessary to explain before directly answering this question. The first is Maximus’ understanding of faith, the second is the indwelling presence of God, and the third is the aforementioned mystical experience. 51

Maximus, Cap. car. 2.69-72 (VS 3, 16-8), Amb. 7.25 (DOML 28, 108-10) and Amb. 10.2-6 (DOML 28, 151-8). 52 Maximus, ad Thal. 15 (CChr.SG 7, 101-3). 53 Maximus, Cap. car. 2.29-30 (VS 3, 104, 6). See also Mystagogia (Myst.) 1.129-206 (CChr.SG 69, 10-4), 23.839-82 (CChr.SG 69, 52-5); Exp. or. Dom. 440-67 (CChr.SG 23, 53-4); Capita theologica et oeconomica 2.1 in St Maximus the Confessor: Two Hundred Chapters on Theology, introduction, translation, notes, and bibliography by Luis Joshua Salés, Popular Patristics Series 53 (Yonkers, 2015), 104-6 (CTO).

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Maximus’ understanding of faith is laid out in scattered places, but these nevertheless give us the basic scaffolding for understanding its function. It is tempting at first to contrast two senses of pistis when Maximus explains the process of ascent; one understood as ‘the faith’ as expressed in creedal statements, and the other as trust in God. However, several texts make a hard contrast difficult. Instead, it is better to understand the latter as the means by which the former is made apparent from the logoi of creation and Scripture under guidance of the Spirit. For example, in ad Thal. 33, Maximus defines faith as an ‘inner good’ (endiatheton agathon) or ‘a true knowledge demonstrative of ineffable goods’ (gnōsin alēthē tōn aporrētōn agathōn apodeiktikēn).54 Key to this understanding is Hebrews 11:1 where the inner good corresponds to the ‘substance of things unseen’ and ‘true knowledge’ corresponds to the ‘conviction of things unseen’.55 Integrating these two phrases with one another shows how Maximus can distinguish different aspects of faith defined not only as a relational power uniting God and the human person, but also a kind of knowledge.56 At times, Maximus relates faith to the kingdom of God that is present but nevertheless not yet fully realized. Thus, much like love, knowledge, and perception, faith has not only a progressive feature related to ascetic formation but also an eschatological character. How exactly is faith a kind of knowledge according to Maximus? In an earlier work, the Cap. car., Maximus brings together a series of biblical phrases that clearly connect faith, the indwelling of Christ/Spirit, wisdom and knowledge. Several aspects from this set of sayings can be highlighted. First of all, grace takes precedence and as a result, through faith, Christ or the Holy Spirit dwell in the heart. Since in Christ ‘all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him’, these same treasures are also concealed in the human heart which are only made clear when ascent is pursued. When it is, Christ becomes visible and so do these epistemic treasures in him.57 As a result, the ascetic is, according to 4.77, illumined to the faith of the Holy Trinity, the incarnation, the nature of incorporeal existence, and the logoi of the beginning and consummation of the visible world, resurrection of the dead, eternal life, glory of the kingdom, and judgement.58 This list echoes not only basic creedal material but also the kinds of things he states throughout the Cap. car. that are learned through the process of the latter stages of ascent in which both Scripture and creation are contemplated. Thus, for Maximus, self-reflection, the practical life, 54 Maximus, ad Thal. 33.8-10 (CChr.SG 7, 229). Other key texts can be found in Ad Thalassium 6 (CChr.SG 7, 69, 71), 34 (CChr.SG 7, 235, 237). 55 Maximus, ad Thal. 33.6-8 (CChr.SG 7, 229). 56 Thus, he states later in the same response that faith is ‘a subsistent relational power (dunamis schetikē) or effective/active relationship (schesis drastikē) of an unmediated, perfect union, one beyond nature, of those who believe with the God in whom they have faith’, Maximus, ad Thal. 33.22-5 (CChr.SG 7, 229). 57 Maximus, Cap. car. 2.69-72 (VS 3, 126-8). See also CTO 2.40 (PPS 53, 134). 58 Maximus, Cap. car. 4.77 (VS 3, 228).

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and natural and theological contemplation are a matter of purification so that one’s faith (relational power) can be fully realized, and the ascetic can know, see and be illumined to an understanding of the faith (true knowledge) or more specifically the Word who makes clear the truth. Elsewhere this self-reflection or reversion is cast as the soul becoming bare, simple, or uniform (psilos, aplos/ aplotētos, henoeidē, monoeidē).59 Thus far I have shown how Maximus can say we have knowledge, but it is not quite in the same sense as Plotinus and other Platonic commentators envision it as infallible. One may well perceive things correctly, but how does one know that it is not just a matter of happenstance? While Maximus is not directly addressing the Neo-Platonic idea of infallibility, he is nevertheless concerned to show that one’s rational and intellectual perception is true. In this case, he focuses on the results of experiencing directly the very things the ascetic is seeking and the effect this has on the human person. Maximus touches on the importance of experience (piera) as both surpassing other kinds of knowledge and giving confirmation of right judgement or right discernment in several places, but often in relation to the experience of deification.60 In ad Thal. 6, for example, Maximus describes baptism as a twofold ‘mode of spiritual birth’.61 The first gives the grace of adoption entirely in power as a result of faith alone. The second birth remolds, transforms, or converts free choice when the ascetic responds to grace and pursues the divine likeness. As a result, Whoever has participated in this deification through cognizant experience is incapable of reverting from right discernment in truth, once one has achieved this in action, to something else besides, which only pretends to be the same discernment. It is like the eye which, once it has looked upon the Sun, cannot mistake it for the moon or any of the other stars in the heavens.62

In scattered places, Maximus will use several adjectives and adverbs to describe knowledge that is then intensified in Mystagogia. In isolated instances within Expositio in Psalmum LIX, Quaestiones et dubia, and Capita oeconomica et theologia, Maximus will use the term aptaistos to describe the kind of knowledge of visible and invisible realities resulting from deification.63 The use of the term increases in the Ambigua ad Iohannem and ad Thal.64 In Myst. 5, 59 Maximus, Myst. 5.430-6, 474-85 (CChr.SG 69, 27, 30), Cap. car. 3.97 (VS 3, 190). A similar portrayal of faith is provided in Myst. 5.390-421 (CChr.SG 69, 25-7). 60 For example, often cited is Myst. 5.285-506 (CChr.SG 69, 19-31). In ad Thal. 60.63-93 (CChr.SG 22, 77, 79), Maximus highlights how experience is a properly authentic (τὴν … κυρίως ἀληθινήν) knowledge that surpasses rational and conceptual knowledge. 61 Maximus, ad Thal. 6.8, 9 (CChr.SG 7, 69). 62 Ibid. 6.23-8 (CChr.SG 7, 69). Trans. Blowers & Wilkin (2003), 104. 63 Maximus, Expositio in Psalmum LIX (CChr.SG 23, 280-6), Qua. et dub. 137.16-8 (CChr. SG 10, 98), CTO 1.79 (De Sales, 89). 64 See for example, Maximus, ad Thal. 35.25-6 (CChr.SG 7, 239), 64.372-8 (CChr.SG 22, 209, 211), 65.775-8 (CChr.SG 22, 301) and Amb. 10.59.16 (DOML 28, 244), 10.63.11 (DOML 28, 254).

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the term appears again, but he uses it of both divine and human realities describing it as the ‘true understanding’ (hē alēthē … epistēmē) and the ‘limit’ or ‘end’ (peras) of ‘every philosophy of divinity according to Christians.’65 Maximus also adjoins a new term, alēstos, likely taken from Dionysius’ ‘unforgettable knowledge’ or ‘unforgetting knowledge’ (alēstos gnōsis).66 This phrase captures in two words what Maximus describes in the quote from ad Thal. 6 above. As in that case, this knowledge is the result not only of the use of reason and intellect to understand visible and invisible, human and divine realities, but is a result of the knower being deified. Thus, he states, ‘It is infallible knowledge because it genuinely enters into truth and produces a lasting experience of the divine.’67 In this case, Maximus applies the adjective not only to knowledge but to love and peace which find their fulfilment in God and which the soul transcends to experience the divine intimacy of Christ and his Bride.68 Maximus tends to use epistēmē as that kind of knowledge or understanding that is garnered through reason and intellective processes about visible and invisible realities where as gnōsis with adjectives such as ‘true’, ‘infallible’, or ‘unforgettable’ or sometimes epignōsis are terms that describe that knowledge/understanding matured through ascent and perfected through deification, resulting in a true understanding of all things. For Maximus, this does not mean that the deified knower knows everything that could possibly be known about created realities but rather understands their purpose and place relative to God and thus possesses a true account of them.69 Consequently, while Maximus uses terms that communicate a sense of infallibility in ways similar to those found in ancient philosophers, he is nevertheless interested in communicating the truthfulness and lasting character of the knowledge gained within the transforming nature of the divine-human relationship than in valorizing the ascetic’s personal sense of certitude. Taken all together, Maximus thus addresses the problematic of knowledge by assimilation or identity by four means. The first I have explored briefly through the way he envisions the nature of rational and intellectual creatures. The second is the incarnation which brings humanity and God together by nature. This leads to the third, which is the appropriation of the work of the incarnate Son to the baptized through God’s indwelling presence, itself a grace but available through faith by grace, giving the space within which human beings can pursue knowing. Through the process of ascent, the indwelling presence is 65

Maximus, Myst. 5.314-7 (CChr.SG 69, 21). Armstrong points out this possible connection with Divine Names 4.35, which I think is correct, in his translation On the Ecclesiastical Mystagogy: A Theological Vision of the Liturgy, Popular Patristics Series 59 (Yonkers, 2019), 59 and 60. 67 Maximus, Myst. 5.445-6 (CChr.SG 69, 28). 68 Ibid. 5.459-73 (CChr.SG 69, 29-30). Maximus quotes here both Eph. 5:32 and 1Cor. 6:17 (see also Eph. 5:31). 69 Ibid. 5.370-89 (CChr.SG 69, 24-5). See also ad Thal. Prol. 171-83 (CChr.SG 7, 27). 66

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seen and known within the ascetic through the Spirit. This leads those who are known to true understanding of creation, an awareness of the limits of their knowledge and its negation then to becoming like God by grace in deification, resulting in a habit of love and right discernment. Maximus does not understand this process as a one-off event, but as something that must be ceaselessly and actively engaged in, which accounts for his emphasis on active engagement and hexis. Nevertheless, while one may have true knowledge and right discernment, that does not mean the ascetic always chooses to act in alignment with it. As opposed to relying solely on a doctrine of the image of God or a doctrine of divine Intellect, Maximus posits an intersection of faith, grace, and human and divine interactivity. Conclusion In this investigation, I have attempted to briefly cover areas in previous literature that discussed Maximus’ epistemology. In light of his Late Antique context, we can see how Maximus addresses some common problems between pagan and Christian thinkers alike. Over and against the natural epistemology explored by Platonic commentators, Maximus proffers a natural and divine epistemology, focusing on the activity of the Spirit who awakens the human mind to its true purpose as a dwelling place of God and to the logoi of creation and Scripture which lead back to the Logos and finally to the Father as Cause. Whereas previously, Christian thinkers had recognized the epistemological challenges of understanding, approaching, and applying language to the Triune God, Maximus consciously draws attention to the way the Trinity also shapes, assists, and helps transcend these challenges to experience deification. For Maximus, while the plain reading of creation may reveal only that a God exists, this God is active in drawing humanity to himself and revealing himself as Triune. Likewise, God has structured and ordered the cosmos in such a way that to truly understand it, one must know God as Triune, see how it images the divine reality, and perceive it in relation to God’s purposes. This is by no means an exhaustive explanation of Maximus’ epistemology, but nevertheless highlights it’s Trinitarian character.

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