Maximus the Confessor

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.

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.

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.

Report on the International Colloquium: Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher, held in Berlin, September 26-28, 2014, by the University of Athens and the Freie Universitat Berlin.

Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, 2018

published on-line https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/328670, 2024

Maximus thought and wrote in complex contexts. This chapter is about some of them which inspired and simultaneously forced him to react. A major context which is important for understanding Maximus’s work, was Neo-Chalcedonianism. There is a consensus among the scholars of Maximus that he was Neo-Chalcedonian. Indeed, he used Neo-Chalcedonian theological language and had his Christological interests largely focused on the Neo-Chalcedonian problematics. At the same time, Neo-Chalcedonianism was not only inspirational for him, but also forced him to react and to polemicise. My argument is that Maximus was a cautious Neo-Chalcedonian. Neo-Chalcedonianism was a mixed political-theological project initiated by emperor Justinian a century before Maximus. It aimed at reconciliation of the adversaries to the council of Chalcedon with the followers of the council. It had both ecclesial and political reasons. Unity of the Church was the ecclesial rationale of Neo-Chalcedonianism. Unity of the empire was its political expediency. The same expediences remained urgent in the time of Maximus, for his contemporary emperor Heraclius. Heraclius launched his own ecumenical project, Monothelitism, which was a continuation of Neo-Chalcedonianism. The issue of action of Christ (energeia) became pivotal in this project. It was borrowed from the theological agenda of Justinian’s Neo-Chalcedonianism. Maximus rejected the way, in which Heraclius and his court theologians handled this issue. This made him rethinking Neo-Chalcedoniansim and drawing for it new limits. Another feature of the Justinian’s Neo-Chalcedonianism was enthusiasm about the state’s engagement in theological matters. Maximus had to challenge this enthusiasm too, even though he had to pay for this with his own freedom and eventually his life. Maximus changed Neo-Chalcedonianism. He made it more theological and less political. He also drew new borders for it.

Some pretty serious philosophy and history from the post-Gnostic days, demonstrating to the world how a real Roman writer produces large books of teaching, not large letters of mumbo-jumbo a la Paul's quasi-sorcery.