scholarly journals «One Energeia» in Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on John 6, 53)

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-139
Author(s):  
Ханс Лоон ван ◽  
Феодор Юлаев
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Cyril Of Alexandria ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The One ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

В настоящей статье анализируется одно выражение свт. Кирилла Александрийского (ок. 378-444). В своём «Толковании на Евангелие от Иоанна» (Ин. 6, 53) святитель, объясняя действие Евхаристии через сравнение с воскрешением дочери Иаира (Лк. 8, 53-54) посредством повеления Христа и протягивания Его руки, называет животворящую ἐνέργεια одной и сродной. В VII в. это место было введено моноэнергистами для доказательства того, что во Христе есть только одна ἐνέργεια. В статье сначала рассматривается, какое значение придавалось выражению «одна и сродная ἐνέργεια» различными поборниками моноэнергизма, прп. Максимом Исповедником (579/580-662), а также несколькими богословами Нового времени. После этого исследуется, что именно подразумевал сам свт. Кирилл, когда писал этот фрагмент. Автор приходит к выводу, что одна ἐνέργεια - это божественная ἐνέργεια, которая действует как через повеление, так и через прикосновение. Это не синтез божественной и человеческой энергий. Человеческая ἐνέργεια не упоминается в этом контексте, но из других мест становится ясным, что, согласно свт. Кириллу, Христос имеет также и человеческую ἐνέργεια. This article analyzes one expression of St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378-444). In his Commentary on John 6, 53, the archbishop elucidates the working of the Eucharist by comparing it with the raising of Jairus’s daughter through Christ’s command and the stretching of his hand. In this context St. Cyril calls the life-giving ἐνέργεια one and cognate. In the seventh century, this passage was adduced by the Monoenergists to argue that in Christ there was only one ἐνέργεια. In this article, at first it is studied what meaning was given to the phrase “one and cognate ἐνέργεια” by various Monoenergist protagonists, by Maximus the Confessor (579/80-662), and also by a few modern theologians. After that the author investigates what St. Cyril himself will have had in mind when he wrote this passage. He comes to the conclusion that the one ἐνέργεια is the divine ἐνέργεια, which is at work both through the command and through the touch. It is not a synthesis of the divine and human ἐνέργειαι. The human ἐνέργεια is not mentioned in this context, but from other passages it is made clear that according to St. Cyril, Christ also had a human ἐνέργεια.

scholarly journals Preserving the whole theological system: Maximus the Confessor’s dyothelitism as a bulwark for trinitarian theology, christology, and soteriology

Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 479-500
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Cyril Of Alexandria ◽  
The One

This paper examines Maximus the Confessor’s thought concerning the pressing urgency of his day, namely, the threat posed by monothelitism and monenergism. What were the theological stakes, as he saw them, for orthodoxy that prompted such stark resistance to imperial attempts at a doctrinal compromise? The paper focuses first on the mode of union in the Incarnation and the manner of the assump­tion of the human nature, including a human will and a human operation. Maximus also manages to rescue orthodoxy’s fathers, especially Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria, and Dionysius and from his opponents’ interpretations of various ¢por…ai. The second section considers Maximus’s presentation of the synthetic heterodoxy and its inevitable result, namely that one composite will in Jesus Christ – in isolating Christ from the Godhead on the one hand and from true humanity on the other – ultimately destroys all of theology. How can Christ save or divinize man if he is no longer like man? He cannot, says Maximus. Instead, Christ would become a sort of tertium quid, neither God nor man, in one movement unraveling Trinitarian theology, Christology, and soteriology. The concluding section briefly considers the immediate impact of Maximus from his martyrdom, including the matter of Constantinople III’s strange failure to mention Maximus in the conciliar text. Finally, this section explores Maximus in our own time, especially how the theology that developed in the seventh century through Maximus is a sort of an­swer to some of the difficulties of post-Enlightenment modernity.

scholarly journals Love in Dionysius the Areopagite and St Maximus the Confessor

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Andrew Louth
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Dionysius The Areopagite ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Cappadocian Fathers ◽  
Psychic Energy ◽  
The One ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

Love (erōs, agapē) is a fundamental category in the sixth-century Dionysius the Areopagite and the seventh-century Maximus the Confessor, the latter being confessedly dependant on the former, and both formative for the later Byzantine tradition. Both are indebted to earlier thinkers, both pagan thinkers such as Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus, and Christian thinkers such as Origen and the Cappadocian Fathers. Dionysius’s teaching on love presents a fundamentally metaphysical account, with cosmic entailments. He assimilates the two Greek words for love, erōs and agapē, seeing them both as manifestations of beauty and responses to beauty, and using them more or less interchangeably for the ecstatic love of God for the cosmos and the love that underlies the creatures’ return to union, to the One. Maximus shares Dionysius’s sense of love as metaphysical and cosmic, but his teaching is much more practical, and presents love as something that can be attained by the Christian or monk, though it requires genuine ascetic struggle. He makes more of a distinction between erōs and agapē than Dionysius, seeing erōs as perfecting the soul’s desire, while agapē perfects the soul’s thumos, psychic energy. Maximus’s understanding of the interrelated psychological makeup of the soul, influenced by Evagrius, though with its own characteristic emphases, also underlies his sense of what is meant by the restoration of the cosmos.

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.

scholarly journals Naming and nurturing reality from a heart renewed by grace

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fritz W. De Wet
Keyword(s):  
Theological Reflection ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The One ◽  
Creative Forces

This contribution investigates the unbearable tension between the homiletical act of naming reality (with the promise of exposing, challenging and/or triggering creative forces in it) on the one hand, and neglecting this same reality on the other hand, thereby causing it to return to an ignored, unchallenged and degenerated state. The author focuses on tension fields that are generated when preachers embark on the activity of naming realities in their proximate contexts and how they position, withdraw or distance themselves in a certain way when problematic elements (for instance the glaring and seemingly unbridgeable inequality in the situation of Dalits) are opened up by the act of naming. By means of a theological reflection on the renewal of the heart by God’s act of grace in Christ, the author attempts to identify key markers for a homiletic theory that will be able to link the act of naming reality with the act of nurturing (rather than neglecting) this named reality.

scholarly journals Christ has Broken the Barrier Between Nations (Eph. 2:11-22): Challenge to Nigerian Christians As Peace Initiators

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Ikechukwu Ezeogamba ◽  
Francis Chuks Madukasi
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Library Research ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Church

The fundamental difference between the Jews and Gentiles is circumcision. This fact introduced a serious barrier between them. This is to the extent that they could not mingle or relate cordially. Thus, their relationship was like the one that exists between lepers and the healthy. Hence, Gentiles were excluded from membership of Israel, aliens with no part in the covenants of the fatherhood. Christ is the unifying force between the circumcised and the uncircumcised. With his blood, he absolved the Gentiles of all that used to distance them and made the circumcised to know that he is the end of the Law (Rom 10:4). Thus, through his blood he destroyed the hostility that used to be between them. Vv 19-22 expresses the value of this newly founded unity in Christ. Despite the above, there is still divisions in the Church today, hence, absence of peace in Christendom. This article therefore answers why it is so. It aims at showing that rivalry that exists among believers, exposes their insincerity and hypocrisy. It argues that if all Christians understand the mind of Christ in destroying the barrier that existed between nations (Gentiles and Jews), then the whole Christendom would have remained peaceful and truly under one head. Unless this happens, there will be no end to sectarianism, tribalism, and nepotism among Christian believers in Nigeria. The outcome of this article will be significant to all Christians. The method will be exegetical analysis of Ephesians 2:11-22 and Library research.

scholarly journals Dialogue with The Master: Early Shī‘a Encounters with Akbarīan Mysticism

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-178
Author(s):  
Leila Chamankhah
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Lively Discussion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ibn Arabi ◽  
The One

Muḥy al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī’s theoretical mysticism has been the subject of lively discussion among Iranian Sufis since they first encountered it in the seventh century. ‘Abdul Razzāq Kāshānī was the pioneer and forerunner of the debate, followed by reading and interpreting al-Shaykh al-Akbar’s key texts, particularly Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam (Bezels of Wisdom) by future generations of Shī‘ī scholars. Along with commentaries and glosses on his works, every element of ibn ‘Arabī’s mysticism, from his theory of the oneness of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd) to his doctrines of nubuwwa, wilāya, and khatm al-wilāya, was accepted by his Shī‘ī peers, incorporated into their context and adjusted to Shī‘a doctrinal platform. This process of internalization and amalgamation was so complete that after seven centuries, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between Ibn ‘Arabī’s theory of waḥdat al-wujūd, or his doctrines of wilāya and khatm al-wilāya and those of his Shī‘ī readers. To have a clearer picture of the philosophical and mystical activities and interests of Shī‘ī scholars in Iran under Ilkhanids (1256-1353), I examined the intellectual and historical contexts of seventh century Iran. The findings of my research are indicative of the contribution of mystics such as ‘Abdul Razzāq Kāshānī to both the school of Ibn ‘Arabī in general and of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī in particular on the one hand, and to the correlation between Sufism and Shī‘īsm on the other. What I call the ‘Shī‘ītization of Akbarīan Mysticism’ started with Kāshānī and can be regarded as a new chapter in the history of Iranian Sufism.

scholarly journals Martin Luther and Justification

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olli-Pekka Vainio
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Union With Christ ◽  
Good Works ◽  
Essential Question ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Media ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Well Function ◽  
The One

The doctrine of justification is an account of how God removes the guilt of the sinner and receives him or her back to communion with God. The essential question concerns how the tension between human sin and divine righteousness is resolved. Luther’s central claim is that faith alone justifies (that is, makes a person righteous in the eyes of God) the one who believes in Christ as a result of hearing the gospel. This faith affects the imputation of Christ’s righteousness that covers the sins of the believer. In contrast to medieval doctrines of justification, Luther argues that Christ himself, not love, is the form, or the essence, of faith. Love and good works are the necessary consequences of justification even if they are not necessary for justification. However, the inclination to love and perform good works is present in the believer through Christ, who is present in faith, but these characteristics do not as such, as renewed human qualities, have justifying power. Luther’s doctrine of justification cannot be classified with simplistic categories like “forensic” and “effective” (see the section “Review of the literature” below). Often these terms are used to refer to differing interpretations of justification. However, several recent traditions of scholarship perceive this categorical differentiation as simplistic and misleading. Instead, these terms may well function to designate different aspects of God’s salvific action. In the narrow sense, justification may refer to the forensic and judicial action of declaring the sinner free from his or her guilt. A broader sense would include themes and issues from other theological doctrines offering a holistic and effective account of the event of justification, in which the sinner believes in Christ, is united with Christ’s righteousness, and receives the Holy Spirit. Depending on the context, Luther may use both narrow and broad definitions of justification. Here Luther’s doctrine of justification is approached from a broader perspective. On the one hand, justification means imputation of Christ’s alien righteousness to the believer without merits. On the other hand, faith involves effective change in the believer that enables one to believe in the first place. This change is not meritorious because it is effected by Christ indwelling in the believer through faith. Thus, Christ gives two things to the sinner: gratia, that is, the forgiveness of sins, and donum, that is, Christ himself. The media through which Christ offers his mercy are the word and sacraments. Thus, Luther’s sacramental theology, Christology, and soteriology form a coherent whole. Because justification involves union with Christ, which means participation in Christ’s divine nature, Luther’s doctrine of justification has common elements with the idea of deification.

Presence and absence of προαίρεσις in Christ and saints according to Maximus the Confessor and parallels in Neoplatonism

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54
Author(s):  
Grigory Benevich
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Presence And Absence ◽  
Natural Will ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

Abstract The article shows that prior to the debate with the Monothelites, Maximus the Confessor followed the Christian tradition going back to Gregory of Nyssa in recognizing the presence of προαίρεσις in Christ and the saints. Later during the debate, Maximus declined to apply προαίρεσις to Christ and started to speak about the deactivation of προαίρεσις in the saints in the state of deification. Maximus was the first Orthodox author who distinguished deliberate choice (προαίρεσις) and natural will (θέλημα), and defended the presence of natural will in Christ according to His humanity. At the same time, the opposition of desire (βούλησις) and deliberate choice (προαίρεσις) can be found in some Neoplatonists, such as Iamblichus, Proclus, and Philoponus. Iamblichus and Proclus rejected the presence of προαίρεσις in the gods and god-like humans, admitting only the presence of βούλησις - the desire for the Good. Thus, the evolution of the doctrine of Maximus the Confessor, regarding the application of προαίρε- σις to Christ and the saints, finds a parallel doctrine (and even possibly a source) in Neoplatonism.

Scripture in the Christological Controversies

2019 ◽  
pp. 454-472
Author(s):  
Andrew Hofer, OP
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Cyril Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
In Christ

After its introduction on believing in Christ in accordance with Scripture, this chapter begins its treatment of biblical interpretation in the Christological controversies with methodological matters at stake in assessing early Christianity’s journey from biblical questions to scholastic answers. It then examines the era of the ancient ecumenical councils and select theologians of those times in their increasingly developed Christological scholasticism, with special attention to Christ’s suffering in their treatments of offering rules for reading Scripture rightly. Most influential is Cyril of Alexandria, whose exegetical arguments opposed Nestorius’ rejection of the Marian title Theotokos, a term symbolizing an exegetical method that seemed to Nestorius to insult God’s impassibility and that needed further clarification. It concludes by returning from John of Damascus’ intricate rules for biblical interpretation on Christ, after centuries of scholastic development, to the biblical questions that generated early Christian responses and continue to generate answers today.

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