scholarly journals Some Notes on “playing Logos” in Ambiguum 71 of St Maximus the Confessor

Scrinium ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dmitry Kurdybaylo
Keyword(s):  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Third ◽  
Single Structure ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius

Abstract In the Ambigua to John 71, Maximus the Confessor discusses a passage of Gregory Nazianzen describing divine Logos that “plays in all kinds of forms.” The article emphasises four main approaches of the Ambiguum 71 to ‘acquit’ the image of ‘playful’ God. Firstly, St Maximus involves the hyperbolic language of Pseudo-Dionysius to indicate the superiority of divine ‘game’ over any kind of prudency or playfulness. Secondly, God’s playing can be discovered in His providence towards the sensible creations. The third step introduces all the material world as a God’s plaything, which can nevertheless be an object of natural contemplation. The fourth approach is merely moral, and its pathetic language conceals tensions between St Maximus’ and St Gregory’s patterns of thinking. Finally, all four parts are linked in a single structure derived from the triad “practical philosophy – natural contemplation – mystical theology,” which was often used by St Maximus.

Mystical Theology of St. Simeon New Theologian

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk
Keyword(s):  
Present Contribution ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

The article deals with the problem of the divine light in the mystical works of St Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) in the context of the Eastern Christian ascetical tradition. The author focuses on the passages referring to the divine light in the works of Evagrios Pontikos, St Isaac the Syrian, St Maximus the Confessor, and in the Makarian corpus. As is shown in the present contribution, none of these authors created a fully-developed theory of the vision of the divine light. Being close to these writers in many ideas, St Symeon was generally independent of any of them in his treatment of the theme of vision of light, always basing himself primarily upon his own experience.

Mystical Theology and the Exegesis of Transfiguration in St. Maximus the Confessor

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-176
Author(s):  
Григорий Исаакович Беневич ◽  
Дмитрий Александрович Черноглазов
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
The One ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

В статье рассматриваются толкования прп. Максимом Исповедником события Преображения Господня, которые сопоставляются с его учением о мистическом богословии. Доказывается, что Преображение созерцается прп. Максимом как своего рода «эйдос» или парадигма мистического богословия. Проводится сравнение некоторых ключевых понятий мистического богословия прп. Максима, с одной стороны, с «Ареопагитиками», а с другой - с учением свт. Григория Паламы. Сохраняя верность основным моментам учения «Ареопагитик», прп. Максим придаёт ему более отчетливое христологическое и опытно-антропологическое истолкование. Что касается учения свт. Григория Паламы, то, несмотря на некоторые отличия в терминологии (особенно понимания апофатики), экзегеза Преображения прп. Максима и его учение о мистическом богословии в целом могут быть согласованы с основными положениями Паламы. При этом необходимо помнить, что прп. Максим отвечал на иные вопросы, природа и характер восприятия Фаворского света не были в центре его внимания. The article discusses Maximus the Confessor’s interpretations of the Transfiguration of the Lord, which are compared to his doctrine of mystical theology. It proves that Transfiguration was contemplated by Maximus to be a kind of paradigm of mystical theology. A comparison of some key concepts of Maximus’s mystical theology is made, on the one hand, with that of the Corpus Areopagiticum, and on the other - with the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas. Remaining loyal to the main points of the teachings of the Areopagite, Maxim gave them a clearer Christological and experimental anthropological interpretation. As for the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, despite some differences in terminology, (especially the understanding of apophaticism), Maximus’s exegesis of the Transfiguration and his doctrine of mystical theology as a whole can be reconciled with the main provisions of Palamas. At the same time, it is necessary to remember that Maximus answered other questions, the nature and character of the perception of the light of Thabor was not at the centre of his discussion.

After Chalcedon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. Daley, SJ
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Third ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
Perceived Impact ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Severus Of Antioch

The Council of Chalcedon’s definition of the terms in which Nicene orthodoxy should conceive of Christ’s person remained controversial. Leontius of Byzantium argued for the correctness of the Council’s formulation, especially against the arguments of Severus of Antioch, but suggested that more than academic issues were at stake: the debate concerned the lived, permanently dialectical unity between God and humanity. In the mid-seventh century, imperially sponsored efforts to lessen the perceived impact of Chalcedonian language by stressing that Christ’s two natures were activated by “a single, theandric energy,” also remained without effect: largely because of the monk Maximus “the Confessor”, who argued that two complete spheres of activity and two wills remained evident in Christ’s life. Maximus’s position was ratified at the Lateran Synod and at the Third Council of Constantinople. The eighth-century Palestinian monk John of Damascus incorporated these arguments into his own influential synthesis of orthodox theology.

Note per l’attribuzione a Massimo il Confessore di parte degli Scholia al Corpus Dionysiacum

Augustinianum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-262
Author(s):  
Alberto Nigra ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius ◽  
Latin Version

This article intends to provide a further contribution to the attribution of the Greek Scholia on the Corpus Dionysiacum by examining the Latin version by Anastasius Bibliothecarius. In particular, some Latin manuscripts have recently been identified, which retain many of the critical signs used by Anastasius in order to mark the scholia dating back to Maximus the Confessor. The collation of these cruces not only allows us to identify the contribution of Maximus as a scholiast of the Corpus Dionysiacum, but also to ascertain further the work of John of Scythopolis and to point out a possible way to research the contribution of other commentators of Pseudo-Dionysius.

À Denys: Tracing Jean-Luc Marion’s Dionysian Hermeneutics

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 307-338
Author(s):  
J. Leavitt Pearl ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Center Stage ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Distinct Portion ◽  
Mystical Theology ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius

Since his 1977 The Idol and Distance (L’idole et la distance), Jean-Luc Marion has almost continually drawn upon the work of the 5th-6th century Christian mystic Pseudo-Denys the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), not only within his explicitly theological considerations, but throughout his Cartesian and phenomenological work as well. The present essay maps out the influence of Denys upon Marion’s thinking, organizing Marion’s career into a three-part periodization, each of which corresponds to a distinct portion of the Dionysian corpus—in Marion’s work of the seventies the Celestial Hierarchy and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy are foregrounded, in the eighties this emphasis is shifted to the The Divine Names, and in the nineties The Mystical Theology takes center stage. Insofar as these emphases directly correlate to the unique tasks that Marion has set himself in each of these various periods, Dionysius is revealed as a hermeneutical key, unlocking and clarifying crucial aspects of Marion’s theologically-inflected phenomenology.

scholarly journals “New Materialism” in Sociology: Ontological Consequences

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-62
Author(s):  
Tapdyg Kh. Kerimov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Constructivism ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Social Content ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Third ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
Nature And Society

The aim of this article is to provide a critical account for the ontological consequences of “new materialism” in sociology. The author explicates the context of the emergence of “new materialism”. In juxtaposition of materialism in mainstream sociology and social constructivism, “new materialism” significantly extends the sphere of materialistic analysis. It looks at the matter not as a pure container of the form, a pure passivity, but is rewarded with the features of energetism, vitalism and generative capacities. The author discloses the content of “new materialism” through reference to its three requirements: the processuality, eventfulness of the material world; the single nature-culture continuum; the extension of the capacity to act to non-human objects. In sum, all these requirements provide presuppositions for the “flat ontology” of assemblages that is opposed to mainstream sociology. The latter, with its principles of essentialism, reductionism and deontology of objects, postulates the existence of autonomous and self-sufficient sociality. In contrast, in new materialistic ontology none of the substances can be taken as an essence of the social, which entails the affirmation of the heterogeneity and multiplicity of the social. Heterogeneous assemblages appear as a primary ontological unit. Erosion of the social, its ontological devaluation as a separate sphere of reality, leads to the fact that notions of the social and social ontology become problematic. The article reveals ontological dead ends in the identification of assemblages and in the description of their social and materialistic content. The possibility of assemblage identification shows that ontologization of multiplicity can be only a new version of essentialism. The argument of the article is that there are three interpretations of assemblages, distinguished in terms of their material and social content. The first one allows the existence of matter out of social forms, but denies the possibility of its cognition and thus restores the dualism of matter-in-itself and matter-for-ourselves, of nature and society. The second one denies the existence of matter out of social forms, but thus becomes anthropocentric, which contradicts to the initial requirements of “new materialism”. The third interpretation is based on the idea of the independence of matter from social forms, but in such a version “new materialism” does not differ from mainstream sociology. The ontological dead ends of the “new materialism” bare the alternative between the disciplinary and post-disciplinary identities of sociology in the situation of a dynamic and relational social reality.

Iamblichus on Divination

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter T. Struck
Keyword(s):  
Lower Order ◽  
The Other ◽  
Material World ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Cultural Form ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cognitive Power ◽  
The One

This chapter argues that Iamblichus draws a distinction between two opposed types of divination: on the one hand, ‘true’ or ‘divine’ or ‘authentic’ divination, which is anchored solely to divine power; on the other, ‘non-divine’ divination, which is enmeshed in the material world, attributable to lower-order human cognitive power, and akin to what modern observers would call human ‘intuition’. A closer look at the third book of Iamblichus’ De mysteriis not only reveals the philosopher’s particular reshaping of the powers of the divine in new and more remote ways, but also brings into sharper focus the fact that, before him, the notion of human intuition had been left without designation, being referred to under the large and robust Greek cultural form of divination.

The Practice of Hierarchy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Heron
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Social Organisation ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius ◽  
Internal Order

By disclosing the liturgical principle that articulates it, the third chapter advances a novel interpretation of what is arguably Christianity’s most important contribution to the theorisation of power. As the angelological tradition from Pseudo-Dionysius through to St. Thomas Aquinas clearly demonstrates, hierarchy is neither simply the expression of ordered relations of natural superiority, nor merely a form of objective social organisation, but a practice: a practice, moreover, that serves a distinctly soteriological function and whose elaboration thus constitutes a chapter of critical importance in the larger genealogy of governmentality. But because hierarchy is not only the practice of (internal) order, but also its (external) manifestation, its concept confirms the intimate yet unexpected link between government and glory which Agamben has sought to highlight.

Deification and Economics

2019 ◽  
pp. 140-173
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Economic Activity ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Material World ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
Human Economic Activity ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

Chapter 5 analyses Sergei Bulgakov’s The Philosophy of Economy (1912) in the context of the philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling and the theology of Maximus the Confessor. Bulgakov elaborates an original theory of human economic activity as the instrument by which the material world is divinized. The work is Bulgakov’s first attempt creatively to bring together categories from German metaphysical idealism with elements of Orthodox doctrine: here, the chapter argues, the doctrine of deification as participation in the divine. It is shown how Bulgakov’s deification narrative broadly conforms to the religious philosophy of late Schelling, including its elaboration of Sophia as the divine humanity in which all concrete humans participate. Maximus and the Greek patristic tradition is engaged to show how Bulgakov has assimilated important elements of deification doctrine, as well as how his attempted synthesis is ultimately expressed more in a Schellingian philosophical than an Orthodox theological idiom.

scholarly journals Christian Platonism and the Debate about Afterlife

Scrinium ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 242-260
Author(s):  
Dirk Krausmuller
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Christian Platonism ◽  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius

In the sixth and seventh centuries the belief in an active afterlife and its corollaries, the cult of the saints and the care of the dead, came under attack by a group of people who claimed that the souls could not function without their bodies. Some defenders of the traditional point of view sought to rebut this argument through recourse to the Platonic concept of the self-moved soul, which is not in need of the body. However, the fit between Platonism and traditional notions of the afterlife was not as complete as might first be thought. This article focuses on two Christian thinkers, John of Scythopolis and Maximus the Confessor, who were deeply influenced by Platonic ideas. In his Scholia on the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius John states clearly that after death the souls of ordinary human beings are inactive whereas the souls of the spiritual elite have entered the realm of eternal realities, which is entirely separate from this world. The case of Maximus is more complex. One of his letters is a spirited defence of the posthumous activity of the soul. However, in his spiritual writings he outlines a conceptual framework that shows a marked resemblance to the position of John of Scythopolis.


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