The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor
Overview
St. Maximus the Confessor (580–662), was a major Byzantine thinker, a theologian and philosopher. He developed a philosophical theology in which the doctrine of God, creation, the cosmic order, and salvation is integrated in a unified conception of reality. Christ, the divine Logos, is the center of the principles (the logoi) according to which the cosmos is created, and in accordance with which it shall convert to its divine source. Torstein Tollefsen treats Maximus’ thought from a philosophical point of view, and discusses similar thought patterns in pagan Neoplatonism. The study focuses on Maximus’ doctrine of creation, in which he denies the possibility of eternal coexistence of uncreated divinity and created and limited being. Tollefsen shows that by the logoi God institutes an ordered cosmos in which separate entities of different species are ontologically interrelated, with man as the center of the created world. The book also investigates Maximus’ teaching of God’s activities or energies, and shows how participation in these energies is conceived according to the divine principles of the logoi. An extensive discussion of the complex topic of participation is provided.
Top Highlights
“All of God’s activity has one single purpose, viz. to unite the world to Himself. Maximus asserts that the creation and ordering of the world is an embodiment (ἐνσωμάτωσις) of the Logos:1 ‘Always and in all God’s Logos and God wills to effect the mystery of His own embodiment.’ The Logos is embodied in the world by certain logoi that come from Him. These logoi of beings are a kind of divine Ideas which, taken together, constitute the divine plan for the created cosmos. On the basis of this plan, as it is actualized in a world consisting of intelligible and sensible beings, the foundation is laid for a cosmic conversion (ἐπιστροφή) to God. The logoi belong to the Logos and this Logos/logoi-conception is, then, the backbone of Maximus’ world-view.” (Page 2)
“St Maximus saw clearly that according to Christian doctrine the world and God should both exist and be thought of in togetherness with and distinction from each other, but without confusion and without separation.” (Page 200)
“The key to St Maximus’ cosmology is his idea of the mystery of Christ.” (Page 64)
“The ‘self’ (αὐτός) of this self-consciousness, however, must be the divine self of the Logos, and not the human self. The divine self has appropriated a particular human nature with all the human powers and all the categorical limitations which congrue on this nature as appropriated by the hypostasis, and united Himself hypostatically with it. He is man then, and His humanity is concretely His own. But there is only one self that would say about His divine as well as His human properties: I am these things, they belong to me.” (Page 131)
- Title: The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor
- Author: Torstein Theodor Tollefsen
- Series: Oxford Early Christian Studies
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2008
- Logos Release Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Maximus, Confessor, Saint, ca. 580-662; Metaphysics; Cosmology
- ISBNs: 9780199237142, 019923714X
- Resource ID: LLS:CHRSTCNTRCCNFSS
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T19:20:43Z