God, Hierarchy, and Power

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley M. Purpura
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Spiritual Leadership ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Dionysius The Areopagite ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

What are the religious justifications for the historical development and maintenance of hierarchy as the model of ecclesiastical organization in Orthodox Christianity? Beginning with its Christian coinage by Dionysius the Areopagite in the early sixth century, this book explores the theological development of ecclesiastical “hierarchy” in Byzantium. By presenting case studies of historically disparate Byzantine theologians who draw upon Dionysius’s hierarchic conception and engage it theoretically, liturgically, and pragmatically—Maximus the Confessor, Niketas Stethatos, and Nicholas Cabasilas—this book suggests a common tradition of constructing authentic ecclesiastical hierarchy as foremost that which communicates divinity. It is by this conception that each author is able to affirm the divinizing potential of church order and sacramental validity even while negating the authority of those that may fail to function in a divinely imitative way. For all four Byzantine authors, including Dionysius, this interpretation of hierarchy relies on an underlying assumption that only divine power is believed to be authentic and only divinely reflective authority is legitimate. The authors suggest that true power is recognized paradoxically by humble service and kenotic self-giving. Constructing power, authority, and hierarchy in these ways has resonances in other genres within the tradition of Orthodox Christianity. The theological trajectory posited by the study of the four Byzantine authors reshapes several issues of spiritual leadership and ecclesial organization within contemporary Orthodoxy, provides insight for historians, and prompts rethinking the ways both secular and religious power are understood by modern theorists.

Introduction: Challenge of Hierarchy for Orthodoxy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley M. Purpura
Keyword(s):  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Power Theory ◽  
Dionysius The Areopagite ◽  
Situational Contexts ◽  
Orthodox Theology ◽  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Historical Periods

This chapter introduces the question of “Why hierarchy?” The importance of answering this question is contextualized in relation to the ways Orthodox Christianity has historically addressed issues of ecclesiastical inclusion, exclusion, and power dynamics. After briefly introducing the Byzantine origins and theological development of the term “hierarchy,” this chapter acquaints the reader with the four main subjects of the book: Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Niketas Stethatos, and Nicholas Cabasilas. Although these authors span different historical periods and situational contexts they share common consideration of hierarchy in theoretical, liturgical, and practical contexts. This chapter suggest that reading the ways these authors develop and navigate ecclesiastical hierarchies in their own writings and lives can help develop an Orthodox theology of power which has resonances with modern developments in power theory and illumines present-day Christian concerns. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the insights to be gained from critically examining “hierarchy” have significance for rethinking contemporary ecclesiastical challenges and the historical understanding of ecclesiastical identities.

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.

Anglican Inter-Faith Relations from 1910 to the Twenty-First Century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hedges
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter explores the development of Anglican inter-faith relations since 1910 which has been shaped by a number of factors including: the ecumenical context, changing dynamics within the global Communion, globalization issues, and moves from mission to dialogue. The chapter begins with a historical overview and traces developments in key Anglican Communion texts and meetings, especially in recent times the Lambeth Conferences of 1988, 1998, and 2008. The ecumenical context which has shaped thought on inter-faith relations in this period is also given strong attention. The chapter concludes with two case studies. The first explores relations with Buddhism in the Sri Lankan context, while the second looks at relations with Islam focusing on the Middle East. While charting some general trends, it is noted that very different dynamics and varying standpoints exist in Anglican attitudes on inter-faith relations and have been part of the historical development throughout the period surveyed.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Matthew D. O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Colonial Mexico ◽  
Historical Case ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the analysis of time experience and futuremaking through historical case studies in colonial Mexico. Colonial Mexico developed a culture of innovation, human aspiration, and futuremaking that was subsequently forgotten in part because it did not fit with later definitions of modernity and innovation as secular phenomena and things untethered to the past or tradition. This choice of historical method and topics is driven by a desire to step outside some of the dominant paradigms in the study of Latin America and colonialism in general. Examining the relationship between past, present, and future offers a way to reconsider Mexico's colonial era, its subsequent historical development, and how people have understood that history.

scholarly journals St Maximus the confessor’s teaching on movement

2013 ◽  
pp. 33-48
Author(s):  
Vladimir Cvetkovic
Keyword(s):  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Dionysius The Areopagite ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Cappadocian Fathers ◽  
Maximus The Confessor ◽  
Supreme Being

The article aims to present how the Byzantine scholar St Maximus the Confessor perceived the notion of movement (kinesis). St Maximus exposed his teaching on movement in the course of his refutation of Origenism, which regarded the movement of created beings away from God as the cause of breaking the original unity that existed between the Creation and the Creator. By reversing Origen?s triad ?rest? - ?movement? - ?becoming? into the triad ?becoming? - ?movement? - ?rest?, St Maximus viewed the movement toward God as the sole goal of created beings, finding in the supreme being the repose of their own movement. In addition to the cosmological view of the movement, St Maximus developed a psychological and an ontological view on movement, relying on previous Christian tradition. By transforming and adapting Aristotelian and Neoplatonic notions to the basic principles of Christian metaphysics, St Maximus creates a new Christian philosophy of movement which he supported primarily with the views of the Cappadocian Fathers and Dionysius the Areopagite.

Two Hundred Years of Debate

2019 ◽  
pp. 332-374
Author(s):  
Richard Stoneman
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Heterogeneous Group ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Present Discussion ◽  
Indian Thought ◽  
Personal Interactions ◽  
Speculative Thought

The Greeks' evident fascination with the Indian “philosophers” they encountered reflects the fact that both peoples had a strong tradition of speculative thought. Though it takes the present discussion outside the chronological limits of the fourth to second centuries BCE, it is impossible to assess the interactions of Indian and Greek thinkers in the period without considering the possible antecedents from the sixth century BCE, and, to some extent, the later echoes of Indian ideas in Neo-Platonism. Accordingly, this chapter consists of a series of case studies, either of possible philosophical common ground, or of known personal interactions of Greeks with Indian thought. They are a heterogeneous group, but the cumulative effect will be a nuanced view of the Greek experience of Indian thought.

Thearchical Power in Theory and Practice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley M. Purpura
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Ecclesiastical Administration ◽  
Power And Authority

This chapter offers a cumulative reflective analysis of power as indicated by the Byzantines to identify authentic power with divinity, describe this divine power as paradoxical in nature, and construct hierarchy as the appropriate means of mediating and participating in true power. The four authors suggest that giving priority to divinely originated (thearchical) power—rather than providing an additional over-idealized framework of ecclesiastical administration—provides a foundation for rereading the power dynamics of Orthodox Christianity. The synthesis offered in this chapter suggests that the hierarchical discontinuities between ideology and practice are paradoxically complicated and ameliorated when hierarchy is constructed as the only means of mediating divine power. The Byzantine theologians suggest that authentic hierarchy mediates, produces, and ascribes power to its participants in a way that is believed to be uniquely communicative of, and conducive to, divine similitude. This conception of hierarchy, power, and authority poses challenges for contemporary power theorists and historians as well as theologians.

Constructing the Apostolic Past: The Case of Dionysius the Areopagite

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 42-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Louth
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
Dionysius The Areopagite ◽  
Mystical Theology

Somewhere around the 620s, there began to appear in the Byzantine world references to works allegedly by Dionysius the Areopagite, that is, the judge of the court of the Areopagus converted by Paul the apostle according to the account in Acts 17. The corpus of works consisted of two works, on the heavenly and earthly church respectively, theCelestial Hierarchyand theEcclesiastical Hierarchy;a treatise called theDivine Names; a short treatise called theMystical Theology;and ten letters, addressed to various people, arranged hierarchically, from a monk called Gaius, through lesser clergy, bishops (or ‘hierarchs’) such as Polycarp and Titus, to the apostle John. Although they were initially cited by Monophysite theologians who rejected the Council of Chalcedon, there was little resistance to the acceptance of this body of texts; gradually in the course of the sixth century these works came to be regarded as genuinely belonging to the apostolic period.

scholarly journals Toward the philosophy of creation: Maximus the confessor

2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 127-155
Author(s):  
Vladimir Cvetkovic
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
The Core ◽  
Dionysius The Areopagite ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Philosophical Argumentation ◽  
Doctrine Of Creation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Maximus The Confessor

The article aims to present the philosophical argumentation in favor of the Christian idea of the creation of the world exposed in the work of the seventh century author Maximus the Confessor. Maximus the Confessor developed his doctrine of creation on the basis of the philosophical arguments of his Christian predecessors, above all, Gregory of Nyssa, Nemesius of Emesa and Dionysius the Areopagite. The core of Maximus? argumentation on the creation of the world is similar to the position of the Alexandrian philosopher John Philoponus (6th century), but it is additionally enriched with ideas deriving from the works of the aforementioned Christian authors. Some of the ideas that form the scaffolding of Maximus? doctrine of creation are: the fivefold division of beings, which has its climax in the division between the created and uncreated nature, the movement of creatures towards God, who alone is the true goal of their movement, the eternal existence of the world in logoi as expressions of divine will, God?s providential care not only for the universal but also for the individual beings and the deification of the entire created world as the initial purpose of creation. Maximus? views on creation are conveyed in a language that combines Aristotelian, Stoic and Neoplatonist philosophical vocabulary.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document