Maximus Confessor Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

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- History, Ancient History, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion

The article is the attempt of researching Maximus Confessor's Ambigua 41 in terms of contemplation in a hesychast practice. The meaning of five divisions and a way of their overcoming by the person is investigated as steps of mystical... more

- by Victor Neovitos
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- Plato, Plotinus, Hesychasm, Maximus Confessor

David Bradshaw's impressive study in Palamism: "Aristotle East and West" resulted in a supplementary study in 2013 ("Divine Essence and Divine Energies). Here we critique and offer friendly challenges to doctors: Athanasopoulos, Levy, Loudovikos, Milbank and Bradshaw.
Bradshaw's original book presents a "provisional" history of the essence-energies distinction in East and West. His most recent contribution (2013) seeks to solidify this provisional history...but perhaps you did not know...
(1.) The History of the Reception of Augustine is colored through the lens of the Damascene in Bonaventure and post-Palamas Orthodox theologians;
(2.) Bonaventure and Scotus cite the same sources as Gregory Palamas in their essence-energies distinction (Nazianzen, Maximus, Damascene); hence, a proto-Orthodox and proto-Palamite metaphysics follow;
(3.) 4 Thomists at the Council of Ferrara-Florence called for the Synod to condemn Palamas;
(4.) 16-18th century thomistic theology also condemned Palamism;
(5.) Mark of Ephesus took Palamism and combined it with Augustine in a manner parallel to Bonaventure and Scotus;
(6.) For that reason, it is no surprise that Mark of Ephesus' successor, Gennadius Scholarius, cites explicitly Bonaventure and scotistic theologians with approval.
(7.) Current Byzantine and Latin "histories" of the essence-energy distinction are nowhere near complete in light of Franciscan theology, which happened to agree with Palamas at Ferrara (1437).
CONCLUSION: Should our thesis prove convincing, it will serve to call into question a good deal of historical theology on the question of the Palamite school and its relation to Latin theology until present. Furthermore, we desire to underline legitimately established Latin theologies that are far more reconcilable to Palamism than Thomism.

- by Christiaan Kappes and +1
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- Late Antique and Byzantine History, Radical Orthodoxy (Theology), Orthodox Theology, Aquinas

Abstract
In this paper we are going to expose the meaning of the word perichoresis and the role that it had in trinitarian and christological theology of Cappadocian fathers, pseudo- Cyril of Alexandria, Leontius Byzantius and Maximus the Confessor. Perichoresis is a Greek term used to describe the triune relationship between each person of the Godhead. It can be defined as co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration. The relationship of the Triune God is intensified by the relationship of perichoresis. This indwelling expresses and realizes fellowship between the Father and the Son. Lossky asserts that Origen was the first to formulate the doctrine which was later to be called perichoretic, or the doctrine of the ‘communication of idioms’. The first father who used the noun perichoresis was Gregory Nazianzus, one of the Cappadocian fathers. He used the term when he was speaking about the relation between the natures of Christ, divine and human. Another Cappadocian father, Gregory of Nyssa does not use the noun but only the verb perichoreo in order to show the Son’s eternal existence. Cyril of Alexandria (pseudo- Cyril) applied περιχώρησις in a trinitarian sense to the idea of co-inherence. He saw two causes of divine unity: the identity of essence and the mutual perichoresis presupposing their threenes. He applied περιχώρησις in a trinitarian sense to the idea of co-inherence. The special contribution of Leontius Byzantius consisted in the clarification of the concept of enhypostasia, according to which the human nature of Christ is fully personal (enhypostatic) by being manifested within the hypostasis of the incarnated Christ, without this hypostasis being an expression of a single nature. Another father, Maximus used the same word perichoresis maintained that the human nature of Christ reciprocates with the divine nature of Christ. The confessor maintained that the human nature of Christ reciprocates with the divine nature of Christ. So in fathers’ teaching had to analyze that the fundamental basis of the Trinitarian perichoresis is the one essence of the three persons in God and on the other had the term is also applied to the close union of the two natures in Christ. Although the power that unites the two natures proceeds exclusively from Christ's divinity, the result is a most intimate coalescence. The Godhead, which itself is impenetrable, penetrates the humanity, which is thereby deified without ceasing to be perfectly human.
Keywords
Perichoresis, Godhead, Two Natures of Christ, Cappadocian Fathers, Cyril of Alexandria, Leontius Byzantius, Maximus the Confessor

- by EIRINI ARTEMI
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- Perichoresis, Maximus Confessor, Cappadocian Fathers, Perichoretic Participation

An important landmark in the search for the singular in the European intellectual tradition was Duns Scotus’ (+1308) introducing the term haecceitas (the form of individuality, “thisness”). As plausibly claimed by Theodore Kisiel, it is from the Scotian haecceitas that Martin Heidegger (who wrote on Scotus his Habilitationsschrift [1915]) got “the very first impulse” toward the articulation of the “primal reality of factic life experience,” to be then refurbished as Dasein. Perhaps not incidentally, on the other hand, a Modern Greek translation renders as ‘hypostasis’ the term ‘existence’ as used by Heidegger of Dasein. This paper attempts to show how the notion of ‘hypostasis’, as it emerged in the 4th century Orthodox theology, may be, indeed, viewed as an answer to a question which was articulated then only superficially but, if pursued deeper, might lead to the historically attested ideas of the person as self-consciousness and, further, Heidegger’s ‘Dasein’. The emergence of the concept of hypostasis thus is viewed as a step, albeit unrecognized as such, in the search for the singularity of the singular.
The paper proceeds by considering four approaches to construing singularity, selected as case studies from the widely understood “Greek” intellectual tradition: pre-Christian, Byzantine, and post-Christian:
1. Naturalistic: singularity as a concurrence of peculiarities (Porphyry).
2. Descriptive: singularity as the referent of an indication by means of a set of external characterizations (Basil the Great).
3. Existential-teleological: singularity as eternally pre-existing “logos” of God’s forethought (Maximus the Confessor).
4. Existential-phenomenological: singularity as one’s fate appropriated in its dynamic quality of an event (Martin Heidegger).
The first three approaches are shown to be question-begging. Those approaches having been rejected, the fourth one rejects staticity as a constitutive trait of singularity.

- by Arkadi Choufrine
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- Self and Identity, Personhood, Gregory of Nyssa, Byzantine Philosophy

A strange quotation from Clement of Alexandria's now lost Hypotyposeis, preserved in the Areopagite material within the writings of Maximus Confessor/John of Scythopolis, claims that Luke the Evangelist wrote the Jewish-Christian dialogue Jason and Papiscus. This information seems so fantastic that several scholars have attempted to explain away the attribution through the composition of various hypotheses. The most popular of these was published by Johannes Ernest Grabe in his Spicilegium SS Patrum in 1698. Despite being cited by scholars from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, Grabe's hypothesis has never been the subject of a detailed investigation. Two conclusions result from an investigation of his hypothesis: Grabe's claims of textual corruption are unfounded; and it seems clear that Clement actually did claim Lukan authorship for Jason and Papiscus.

- by Harry Tolley
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- Christianity, Gnosticism, Greek Language, New Testament
- by Lorenzo Perrone
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- Gnosticism, Patristics, Septuagint, Philo of Alexandria
- by Βασίλειος Μπετσάκος
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- Religion, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Aristotle

Theophanes of Nicaea (1315/20-1380/61) is a Byzantine philosopher and a polemist, whose biography remains enigmatic and whose works came relatively late into the focus of scientific research. He is a successor of Byzantine Palamism, due to which the study of his works has been predominantly concentrated on conceptual overlaps and discrepancies between his views and the philosophy of Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). The treatise on the Tabor light is the work, mostly representative of Theophanes’ positions on issues discussed in the Palamite controversy. Ioannis Polemis suggests that the text was probably written soon after the condemnation of Prochoros Cydones (1330-1369) at the Council summoned by the Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos (1330-1377/78) in 1368 in Constantinople. From the few fragments of a nowadays-lost work of Prochoros, quoted in the Tomos of the council, one infers that Theophanes’ purpose was to refute certain anti-Palamite arguments elaborated by Prochoros. Prochoros criticizes the view that the Light seen by Christ’s disciples on Tabor was uncreated. This notion is not an innovation of Palamas, but comes to the foreground by the defense of the spiritual praxis of Byzantine hesychasts and of the uncreated status of the light seen by some of them. The arguments of Prochoros probably instigated the elaboration of the treatises.

- by Ivan Christov
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- Theology, Byzantine Studies, Maximus the Confessor, Byzantine Philosophy