The Influence of Maximus the Confessor on Origen: A Verbatim Borrowing in the Mystagogy? (original) (raw)
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The work of Maximus the Confessor (580-662) presents the philosophical worldview of the Greek-speaking Christian tradition in its most fully developed form. It is comprehensive both in the extent to which it draws upon earlier authors-including Clement of Alexandria, Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers, Nemesius of Emesa, Evagrius of Pontus, Cyril of Alexandria, and Pseudo-Dionysius, among others-and in its far-ranging scope. Pride of place among the influences on Maximus must undoubtedly go to Pseudo-Dionysius. Like the Areopagite, Maximus regards 'good' as the preeminent divine name, and he welcomes the Platonic and Neoplatonic description of the Good as "beyond being" as appropriate to the Christian God. He is also like Pseudo-Dionysius in his vision of the cosmos as fundamentally theophanic, a manifestation of intelligible or spiritual reality in sensible form. However, Maximus is more explicit than Pseudo-Dionysius about the role of the divine will in creation, and he gives a more prominent role to the Incarnation as the central act by which the divine is made manifest. Accordingly, whereas Pseudo-Dionysius can be (and often has been) read as implicitly denying that God is a personal being, for Maximus the personal character of God is never in question.
Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher
The study of Maximus the Confessor’s thought has flourished in recent years: annual international conferences, publications and articles, new critical editions and translations mark a torrent of interest in the work and influence of the most sublime of the Byzantine Fathers. It has been repeatedly stated that the Confessor’s thought is of eminently philosophical interest, and his work has been approached from a philosophical point of view in a number of monographs. However, no dedicated collective scholarly engagement with Maximus the Confessor as a Philosopher has taken place – and this volume will attempt to start such a discussion. Apart from Maximus’ relevance and importance for philosophy in general, a second question arises: should towering figures of Byzantine philosophy like Maximus the Confessor be included in an overview of the European continent’s history of philosophy, or rather excluded from it – as happens today with most histories of European philosophy? Maximus’ historical presence challenges our understanding of what European philosophy is. In this volume, we begin to address these issues and to examine numerous aspects of Maximus’ philosophical ‘system’: the logoi doctrine, Maximus’ anthropology and the human will’s freedom, the theory of motion, his understanding of time and space etc. – thereby also stressing the interdisciplinary character of Maximian studies.
Maximus the Confessor as an alternative European philosopher
Is Maximus “European”? Is Maximus a “philosopher”? The two questions of our conference also entail the concomitant questions «what is Maximus’ contribution to Europe?» and “what is his contribution to philosophy?”. They might equally presuppose the questions “is Maximus something else than just a “Byzantine”?” and “is Maximus something else than just a theologian?”. These are not new questions and they have actually mobilized research in the last decades. It is to be reminded that Hans-Urs von Balthasar, who is considered to be a sort of “founder” of a new period of interest in Maximian scholarship, has regarded Maximus as a great European thinker who struggled against the “asianic” spirit and its despotism. He considered Maximus as a precursor of Hegel and he has linked him to the latter’s dialectical thought . Roman Catholic specialists from 1970 onwards have tried to interpret Maximus as a precursor of Thomas Aquinas. They have insisted on Maximus’ sojourn in the province of Africa, that is in the same places where Augustine of Hippo was active, as well as in Rome and they have highlighted Maximus’ conflict with the Byzantine state. Juan-Miguel Garrigues, in particular, has portrayed Maximus as a fugitive and a “refugee”, who was fleeing Persians and Arabs, but also, in a certain sense, struggling against Byzantines. In the experience of this clash with the world of Late Antiquity, Maximus has supposedly discovered historical contingency and formulated in his thought what has come to be a major problem of Western modernity. On the contrary, Orthodox scholars often consider Gregory Palamas as Maximus’ true heir . But for Orthodox scholars as well, the vindication of Maximus was related with all the important enjeux of European philosophy, both old and new. For example, Maximus’ theories on the person, logos and tropos were linked to the modernist philosophical program of existentialism, as well as with personalism. The idea was to promote Maximus as an alternative thinker of the person that is not in an occidental modernist sense, but in an alternative version that is nevertheless equally European . That was combined with an equal effort to regard Maximus as a more authentic continuator of Aristotle . In the last decades we witness an important turning to Maximus’ Psychology and a comparison with contemporary Psychology and Psychoanalysis, for example in its Lacanian version , or with other schools . All these bold interpretations have of course coexisted with patrological, philological and historical studies, feeding one another, and reaching the great interest in Maximus that we witness today.
ARC Journal, 2016
In a recent work, I argued that the tendency to regard Origen as a Platonist while neglecting the all-important Aristotelian dimension of his thought has led to deeply entrenched misunderstandings with respect to Origen’s philosophical theology. Despite compelling textual evidence in its favour, commentators continue to ignore the thoroughly hylomorphic, Aristotelian character of Origen’s thought, interpreting it instead in terms of a “Platonic” soul/body dualism. As a result, Origen’s views concerning the eternity of the world, his repeated insistence upon the inseparability of soul and body, form and matter, crucial to a proper understanding of his philosophical and theological system, have been almost entirely overlooked. A contributing factor to this seemingly willful misreading of Origen, I argued, can be traced to what Cavadini identifies as a “hermeneutic of suspicion.” In this case, the latter refers to the pervasive mistrust within Origen scholarship towards Rufinus’ Latin translations of the works of Origen – in particular the De Principiis. This hermeneutic of suspicion stems largely from the editorial work of Koetschau (1913), who accused Rufinus of having systematically purged any allegedly ‘heretical’ elements from his translations of Origen’s Greek writings. In his critical edition of the De Principiis, Koetschau sets about “supplementing” the Latin text with Greek fragments taken from hostile sources, all the while treating them as unbiased, objective witnesses to Origen’s original meaning. Butterworth (1936), whose translation of the De Principiis remains the sole English language edition, both endorses and expands upon Koetschau’s flawed methodology. While a critical attitude towards Rufinus is wholly justified – he openly admits to having modified Origen’s text – a correspondingly critical attitude towards hostile witnesses such as Jerome and Justinian seems peculiarly lacking. One ill-fated consequence of this imbalance has been to dismiss the centrality of embodiment for Origen as merely a Rufinian modification. Yet, as I hope to show, this corporealism is so fundamental to Origen’s worldview that attributing it to a few lines pencilled in by Rufinus is entirely untenable. The fact that commentators continue to do so can only be explained by their tendency to see Origen as a Platonist in the crudest sense; namely, as a thinker whose system is constructed upon a radical soul/body dualism. By ignoring the Aristotelian, hylomorphic character of Origen’s thought which, in the case of the soul/body relation is not incompatible with Christian orthodoxy, Origen is seen as much more heterodox than he in fact needs to be. The longstanding hermeneutic of suspicion with respect to Rufinus’ Latin translations of Origen embedded in Koetschau’s critical edition, and Butterworth’s English translation of, the De Principiis has thus resulted in deeply entrenched (and deeply misleading) assumptions concerning Origen’s theological and philosophical views. In what follows, I intend not only to demonstrate how distorting this hermeneutic of suspicion has been with respect to Origen’s worldview, but further, to examine the roots of the hermeneutic of suspicion itself. I shall contend that the latter is in fact a unique expression of a much broader methodological bias that Peter Martens calls “the Hellenization of Christianity thesis”. This longstanding and notoriously contentious historiographical construct is most closely associated with Adolf von Harnack, who regarded “the spirit of Hellenism” as a corrosive force upon an originally pristine Christianity. As such, Harnack subscribes to an all too familiar Protestant historical narrative of decline – a narrative which, as Wedemeyer demonstrates in the case of Tantric Buddhism, extends to the study of Eastern religions as well. Within Christianity, this narrative serves the Protestant polemic against Catholicism, in which the latter is seen as the (pagan) corruption of an original, Apostolic Christianity. As Jonathan Z. Smith puts it, “the pursuit of the origins of Christian origins takes us back, persistently, to the same point: Protestant anti-Catholic apologetics.” Given that Origen is inextricably bound up with these origins, it comes as no surprise that the study of his work has been profoundly, and adversely, affected. By showing how the Hellenization of Christianity thesis informs the hermeneutic of suspicion, and how this has contributed to deeply misleading assumptions regarding Origen’s theology – particularly with respect to the soul/body relation –, I hope to contribute to a much-needed reappraisal of one of the most important and controversial figures in the history of Christian dogma.