www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Two books on St. Maximus

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I would like to present on this forum two recently published books on or by St. Maximus Confessor. The first is published by Ignatius Press, and is by Hans Urs Van Balthasar: the long-awaited translation of his book, "Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe according to Maximus the Confessor." The second is a collection of the saint's writings entitled "On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ", put out by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press.

For those new to the thought of St. Maximus, he was a sixth century monk crucial to the defence of the two wills in Christ against the heresy of Monothelitism. His defense of Orthodoxy was enshrined in the Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 681, confirming him as one of the greatest theologians and martyrs (he died in exile, having had his right hand and tounge cut off for speaking against the Emperor's compromise of the Orthodox Faith) that the Church has ever produced.
These two books deal in particular with Maximus as a "cosmic" or symphonic theologian. As we live in a world that so separates religion and Faith from everyday life, and particularily from scientific knowledge (and knowledge in general), it is refreshing to read about someone who made no such distinctions. For St. Maximus, Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word of God made flesh, was the whole Truth, and the cause and end toward which all things propel themselves.
" The very same Logos is therefore, through his infinite superiority, ineffable and inconceivable in himself and exalted above all creation and beyond the distictions and divisions that are valid and recognized in it; he is similarly revealed and multiplied in all things that have their origin in him, with the degree of beauty appropriate to each being, and so he sums up all things in himself." - St. Maximus, the Ambigua quoted on p. 131 of Cosmic Liturgy.
For St. Maximus, the cosmic drama does not "star" Jesus Christ, it is Jesus Christ. In this, the doctrine of the two wills come into play. For all things were created to be deified (theosis), but without a fundamental change to their ontological integrity. Christ took on human flesh as man, and totally man, without this nature being absorbed into or confused with the divine nature of the Logos. This is the key to Christian deification (as opposed to the Hindu concepts or other pantheisitic systems): man is not absorbed into divinity but the play between Created and Uncreated, the Limited and the Unlimited, the Infinite and the Finite, becomes in the end, a Cosmic Liturgy that frames the whole history of existence.
"[Christ] unites created nature to uncreated nature in love- O miracle of God's tender kindness toward us!- and reveals that both, through the relationship of grace, are now but one singal reality. The whole world now inheres, as a totality, in the whole of God, and becomes everything that God is, except for the identity of his nature; in place of itself, it now receives the totality of God." Questiones ad Thalassium quoted on p. 274 in Cosmic Liturgy.
I have finished more than half of Cosmic Liturgy, and must say it is a very good book in spite of some flaws. It has some gems from untranslated writings from St. Maximus, as you have seen above, and it is one of the few books I have "dog-eared." However, Von Balthasar is not an Eastern theologian, and for me he is a questionable author, and it shows in his sometimes arbitrary disintinctions between "Eastern and Western" thought. (One likes to think of the radical left post-colonial studies critiques: he is an outsider looking in who doesn't quite get the subject he's studying.) Also, on should be forewarned about his chapters on the definitions of "hypostasis", "hyparxis", "ousia", etc., that for me drag on interminably. Also, his attempts to compare and contrast St. Maximus with Hegel, and other modrn philosophers also made me somewhat uncomfortable. Finally, and most importantly, I am not convinced that St. Maximus is a "bridge between East and West". Even though he lived many years in North Africa and Rome, for me, he is still thouroughly an EASTERN Father of the Church.
As for the other book, I have not delved into it yet, yet since it is really just a compiliation of his writings, you can expect the best!
For me. St. Maximus is perhaps the greatest hope for any Christian revival in modern thought. The Western Church has shown itself to be theologically stale, often subservient to a liberal scientific rationalism it helped to create. In Maximus, we see a total Christianity, one that permeates the crevices and cracks of everyday life. This is probably what most has led me into the Eastern Church, and these two books hopefully will propagate this much needed vision. For Maximus, as it should be for us as Orthodox and Christians, the mystery of a sunset over the ocean, of a child laughing, of the stars that light up the firmament, the mystery of all things, is not an arbitrarily put together goo of atoms. What we are seeing, what we feel, what astounds us beyond words... is the mystery of Christ.

Glory forever!

Arturo, a sinner

Glory to Jesus Christ!
Glory to Him Forever!

Dear All,

Earlier this year I read Vladimir Lossky's "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church." In this book he mentions St. Maximus the Confessor teaching that had Adam not fallen in the garden that he would have re-united the cosmos in himself, therefore Christ would not have been made man. In other words, Christ did what Adam was supposed to have done himself. This is why Christ is called the "Second Adam." What are your perspectives on that? I found it very interesting that the role of Adam was meant to be a sort of savior. At least that is how I interpreted it.

A sinner,

Adam

I'd like to comment on Arturo's comment here. It is not directed to Arturo directly or personally. Rather, I'd like to use it as a way to comment on a more general "Eastern" trait that I find commonly expressed on Eastern/Orthodox discussion groups and to offer some tentative thoughts on proper ways to read the Fathers.

There are many ways to read one of the Fathers of the Church.

First, one can read him historically, using all the critical tools available to the secular trained historian. The historian will attempt to situate the specific father, here Maximus, in his culture and time and seek to understand what Maximus intended when he wrote what he wrote. An historian can read Holy Scripture in precisely the same way. What did Paul intend when he wrote his letter to the Romans, etc. The historian, of course, faces many difficulties with many parts of the Bible, as we often do not know who the authors were and we know that the texts have been redacted over a long period of time, etc. But the bottom line is, whether it's Maximus, Paul, or Herodotus, we treat their writings as any other ancient artifact.

So when faced with one person's reading of Maximus, in this case, von Balthasar, the only real question is, Has von Balthasar read and interpreted Maximus in a sound, scholarly way? Whether von Balthasar is Eastern, Western, or Buddhist really does not matter. All that matters is how good a historian Balthasar is. Of course, if my object of study is "Eastern," as Maximus is, it might make my reading easier if I also share a similar worldview; but this is not an insurmountable stumbling block.

Moreover, my being self-identified as "Eastern" may well be itself a stumbling block to a historical reading of Maximus. We cannot assume that Maximus's "Eastern" worldview of the 7th century is anything like my "Eastern" worldview of the 21st century. Thirteen hundred years have passed and communities and worldviews change. Eastern Orthodoxy is not identical to the Christianity of the 7th century. For one thing, Maximus belonged to an undivided Church and did not understand himself as a specifically "Eastern" Christian. But that is not true today. Eastern Christianity has quite explicitly defined itself over against Western Christianity. Its identity has been profoundly impacted by the schism. (The same is of course true for Catholicism.) That in itself is going to affect how an Eastern Christian reads the Fathers.

For another thing, Orthodoxy continued to develop theologically after the 7th century. The theology of Gregory Palamas has acquired a special hermeneutical significance for many Orthodox writers. We see this expressed particularly, for example, in how they read the Cappadocian Fathers. It can be very difficult to read Gregory of Nyssa or Basil in their own terms for someone who is deeply informed and shaped by Palamas. A good historical reading will therefore require the historian to be critical about his own beliefs and convictions so that he can read Maximus as Maximus.

So when I hear someone slight von Balthasar's reading of Maximus because he is a Westerner, I give no creedence whatsoever to such a comment. Von Balthasar was one of the most brilliant theological minds of the 21st century. Maybe his reading of Maximus (or whomever) needs to be corrected at various points (or maybe not); but I do trust him to present an interesting and faithful interpretation of Maximus. Von Balthasar is probably one of the few minds of the past fifty years who was brilliant enough to penetrate Maximus in real depth.

A caveat must also be given about what "Western" means in this context. If Western means modernity or post-modernity or whatever, then there are few of us, whether Catholic or Orthodox, who are not Western. Even if one is in conscious or unconscious rebellion against modernity, one is still modern. There's no way any of us can pretend to be pre-modern.

Second, we can read the Father as a voice, however fallible, of the Holy Spirit inspiring and teaching the Church. Here the same historical tools will also be used; but they will also be recognized as insufficient in themselves. Now it is important that the interpreter be a member of the community of the Holy Spirit, for the same Spirit who inspired Maximus must also inspire and guide our contemporary reading of Maximus.

And so now the question becomes, Where does the Holy Spirit reside? If I'm a Byzantine Christian, in communion with the bishop of Rome, then I'm going to have to give initial preference to the interpretations offered by those who are in communion with the bishop of Rome. And if I'm Orthodox, I'll give initial preference to those who are in communion with the Patriarch of Constantinople (or whoever).

This is analogous to a truly theological/spiritual reading of Holy Scripture. When I read Scripture "Christianly" I do not read it merely as historical document. I read it as one book authored by the Holy Spirit whose audience is the Church of all times and all places.

And so, just as we read the Apostle Paul in conversation with all of Scripture, so we will need to read Maximus in conversation with all of the Fathers. What this means for our interpretation of Maximus I do not know.

Anyway, some random thoughts ...

I agree with your analysis Father. Here is a short statement by Jaroslav Pelikan regarding Von Balthasar's treatment of St. Maximos:

�The spirituality of Maximus is pithily summarized in what is probably the most profound scholarly book ever written about Maximus, Cosmic Liturgy, by Hans Urs von Balthasar.�

�Jaroslav Pelikan, Author, Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings

I have read statements from others claiming that "Cosmic Liturgy" was an important milestone and breakthrough in the study of St. Maximos. I ordered the book and look forward to reading it.

In Christ,
Anthony

Glory to Jesus Christ!

In response to a well-directed criticism, I will respond a bit to why I said that Von Balthasar seems to be an outsider looking in. I am no theologian, and I don't pretend to be. But I have picked up some things along the way in my short life, so I will just comment on these. One of the major premises of Von Balthasr's book is to prove he is a bridge between the East and the West. But I found it difficult to read in the text what precisely what Von Balthasr means by "West". Does he mean the more legalistic view of salvation, more the focus of salvation history on the "justitia" of the sinner and the ransoming of the sinnner from guilt? I am not quite sure. I don't find the argument convincing. What he means by East is very clear. Apparantly, East would be more charactaristic of an Origen or Evagrius Ponticus, the theory that matter is a punishment from the fall from the original Monad and its return to that Monad... in the end, pantheism similar to the Buddhist or Hindu system. It is a good point to say that in the seventh century, there were no Eastern and Western church... there was one church. Thus, maybe my distrust of Von Balthasar as a Western theologian is unfounded, but I never found out in the book why he feels St.Maximus was such a link between East and West. Apparantly, St. Maximus didn't even seem to know about (if he did, he didn't write about him) St. Augustine, who is the five ton elephant of Western Patrology (St. Thomas Aquinas uses Augustine more than any other Father in the Summa Theologica, often as an argument of authority.)
I guess my real problem with these authors (von Balthsar, Rahner, Congar, etc.) comes from my hiatus with the SSPX. Too often, these authors seemed to investigate the past with an agenda, and much of the time that agenda had something to do with the rejection of Thomistic realism in favor of Kantian subjectivism or Hegel's dialectical idealism, or the rejection of conepts that have been developed in the Western Church over the nature of the Church, salvation, etc. When Von Balthasar cites a text of Hegel or some other modern philosopher in his text, perhaps he is only giving a modern reader some ideological marker to go by, but I only think to myself "What the heck does Hegel have to do with a Father of the Church?" Hegel's philosophy is incompatible with the Christian religion: Truth does not evolve from error in some dialectical process. So why even bring up the comparison? Insofar as many of these 20th century Catholic authors even hint at a replacement of a philosophy of being with a philosophy of becoming, I cannot but help but feel uncomfortable. I cannot help but feel that there is some sort of grand agenda behind this, a sort of dialogue with subjectivist philosophy that I feel can only have disasterous results.
In the end, however, my recommendation still stands. As a synthesizer of Maximus' thought, he succeeds very well, and cannot be accused in my opinion of distorting what Maximus thought. The books is loaded with texts from Maximus' own writings, and these by themselves are worth far more than the price of the book.
A personal note before signing off. Picture a dreamy eyed seminarian in full, pre-Vatican II cassock looking out into the cloister of his seminary with a book open to the text of St. Maximus' "Mystagogia". "Everything makes more sense now," he says to himself. "The secret of all things is Christ!!!" I don't care in the end, if I am right or wrong in my distrust of Von Ballthasar, but please.... READ THIS BOOK!!!!!!
It can change your life. I never really felt that I was fully a Christian until I read three authors: St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Symeon the New Theologian, and St. Maximus Confessor, the theologian of the Christian cosmos. No matter how Western or confused he might have been, Von Balthasar did a great service to the Universal Church in this book, "Cosmic Liturgy."

Glory forever,

Arturo

This is an interesting discussion. I finished a graduate course on Maximus last winter under Fr. Pavlos Koumarianos, who came here to the Sheptytsky Institute to offer it. (Fr. Pavlos is a priest of the Greek Orthodox Church and holds two doctorates--one from the PIO in Rome where he studied under Taft, and another from Athens, where he studied under Zizoulas. He is an excellent professor and if anyone is in the Toronto-Ottawa-Quebec areas, try and take courses from him. He teaches here, the GO seminary in Toronto, and I believe also part-time in Quebec. He is finishing up a chunk of research on Maximus and will shortly be publishing some stuff.)

Anyway, we studied Maximus in depth--or as much as 3 hours a week for a dozen weeks allows one to penetrate a man whose writings in the original Greek gave no end of headaches even to those who spoke the language and were his contemporaries.

I read von Balthasar's book in the original French, and must say that it is quite good as one of the first books to introduce Maximus to a Western audience in a modern language.

I am a great fan of von Balthasar in many respects, and in my own research paper on MC this semester I began by discussing von B's famous 1937 essay "Patristik, Scholastik, Und Wir," translated into English in 1997 as "The Fathers, the Scholastics and Ourselves." It is lengthy but brilliant, and, I think, should be mandatory reading for everyone who wants to argue that all problems of the Church can be solved by a return to [insert your Golden Age of choice here] the Fathers, the pre-Reformation era, pre-Niconian reforms--whatever. (Alexander Schmemann had similar scorn for people attempting to posit a patristic revival without understanding what that would entail or how impossible it was.) So, I asked, in light of von B, how can one approach MC today, across such radically different cultural and theological chasms? The answer to that is provided in the disarmingly simple message of the life and work of this most complex and abstruse of Byzantine theologians: by becoming transfigured by the uncreated Taboric light in order to become men of prayer, virtue, and "theology," as he defines it thus in his *Difficulty 10*:

"For I think that the divinely-fitting events that took place on the mount at the Transfiguration secretly indicate two universal modes of theology: that is, that which is pre-eminent and simple and uncaused, and through sole and complete denial truly affirms the divine, and fittingly and solemnly exalts its transcendence through speechlessness, and then that which follows this and is composite, and from what has been caused magnificently sketches out…through affirmation."

Much more could be said, but let me note only that Maximus scholarship has taken off in the last dozen years, led in many ways by people like Andrew Louth, whose book on Maximus is the first serious English treatment of him in a long time; it also provides translations of hitherto inaccessible works of his. For an overview of recent works, see Andrew Louth, “Recent Research on St. Maximus the Confessor: A Survey,” *St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly* vol. 42 no. 1 (1998): 67-84. Louth's own book is *Maximus the Confessor* published in 1996 by Routledge out of London and New York.

Aidan Nichols, the excellent English Dominican theologian, also provides a good introduction to MC in his *Byzantine Gospel*.

Adam, those are some good points about Von Balthazar. I think if he is looking in from the "outside", he has a better grasp theologically of Maximos than several Orthodox writers I have read looking at him from the "inside". And I will also second your accolades for Aidan Nichols as well. It is a very good piece on Maximos in his introduction to the "Byzantine Gospel".

Dear Friends,

The issue raised by Fr. Kimel is an interesting one - namely, whether an historian's own religious views have a direct or indirect impact on his or her analysis of someone like St Maximos.

And the matter is capable of debate.

Sociologically, for me there is no question that one's religious beliefs and biases do indeed impact on one's historical analysis.

The idea that historians or others may comment "objectively" and "scientifically" bias-free is, itself, a liberal perspective.

Some Orthodox writers even maintain that Grace itself is needed to understand the Fathers properly and if one is cut off from the Orthodox Church - we get the picture . . .

People who used to visit the Optina Elders for advice did so not with the view to seeking out intellectual insights.

They were after spiritual advice and so prepared to meet them by prayer and the reception of the Holy Mysteries.

I am also beginning to have a slight problem with Fr. Kimel assuming that his Western a prioris are correct and universal and in his presuming to want to teach "us Easterners" about the error of our ways in this respect.

Nothing personal, Father!

Alex

And my dear Alex, you can't get off so easy. What Western a priori's did you have in mind specifically and what are you proposing as their substitute?

BTW, I also agree with you that no interpretation is value-free and neutral. But surely it's a nice goal to try to understand a subject on its own terms, rather than just uncritically imposing one's own views, would you not agree? But perhaps you do not agree, as that is a very Western way of looking at things, isn't it?

It's so easy to bash Western consciousness--I have been known to do it myself on occasion. But what is much less easy is to do is any serious thinking and reflection independently of "Western" rationality.

What I do find curious, though, is why a Byzantine Catholic would want to insist so strongly on an East/West dichotomy in thought and theology. If we belong to the one Church and have been reborn in the one Spirit, then all such dichotomies have ultimately been transcended in Christ. Surely it is more important to be Christian and catholic is the true sense of the word than to be Eastern, Western, Latin, Byzantine, or whatever. Of course, our faith will always be enfleshed in one of these ways, but that is only of penultimate importance.

Bless me a sinner, Father Kimel!

Well, thank you for not taking this personally!

My membership in the universal Church of Christ is maintained through my membership in my own Particular Church.

And the East does indeed have different theological perspectives than the West - it differs on every single point from the West, as a matter of fact.

The ideal of complete unity in theological outlook exists only mentally.

Our unity is based on communion as such, not on a kind of "universality" of approach that is common to us all.

There is no such universality.

That is yet another difference between Western and Eastern Christians.

Have a great day!

Alex

Alex, surely you can do better than that!

Of course you belong to a particular church. So do I. And yes, there are differences between Eastern and Western churches. And there are differences between Oriental and Byzantine churches. And there are differences between Byzantine Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.... That and $2.25 will get us a cup of coffee at Starbucks.

So what are all of these terrible Western a priori's I'm so guilty of?

Or is it simply a matter that I refuse to accept some kind of insurmountable difference of consciousness between Eastern and Western Christians?

Bless me a sinner, Father Kimel!

Yes!

I'm not in your theological class, Father, I'm a simple layman.

To me, I've outlined what I see as the differences in our perspectives, and if I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but I just can't match wits with you!

You are fighting with an unarmed man here in that respect!

I'm going on sabbatical for a while to do some writing when I'll have time to consider your points.

If I come up with anything that is better than what I wrote above, I'll let you know!

Alex

Unarmed?! Not likely, my friend.

Bless me a sinner, Father!

In that case, I'm at MY wits' end!

Alex

I agree with everything you say, and then some.

Question: Do you feel you understand Maximus� Trinitarian model of creation?

Do you know where it comes from?

Have you followed it back to Alexandria?


(this further note is written a half hour later) - now that I know you - I withdraw the question. (and laughter can be heard in the library halls).

May the angels be so kind as to coincidentally remind you to mention me, just once, in your head during Mass. A simple "Do not forget Ray" would be appreciated.

-ray