On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios

by Maximus the Confessor

Publisher:

Catholic University of America

, 2018

Overview

Maximos the Confessor (ca. 580–662) is now widely recognized as one of the greatest theological thinkers, not simply in the entire canon of Greek patristic literature, but in the Christian tradition as a whole. A peripatetic monk and prolific writer, his penetrating theological vision found expression in an unparalleled synthesis of biblical exegesis, ascetic spirituality, patristic theology, and Greek philosophy, which is as remarkable for its conceptual sophistication as for its labyrinthine style of composition. On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture, presented here for the first time in a complete English translation (including the 465 scholia), contains Maximos’s virtuosic theological interpretations of 65 difficult passages from the Old and New Testaments. Because of its great length, along with its linguistic and conceptual difficulty, the work as a whole has been largely neglected. Yet alongside the Ambigua to John, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios deserves to be ranked as the Confessor’s greatest work and one of the most important patristic treatises on the interpretation of Scripture, combining the interconnected traditions of monastic devotion to the Bible, the biblical exegesis of Origen, the sophisticated symbolic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, and the rich spiritual anthropology of Greek Christian asceticism inspired by the Cappadocian Fathers.

Contents

Top Highlights

“On the one hand, there is relative knowledge based only on reasoning and concepts, and lacking the actual perception of what is known through experience, and it is this knowledge that we use to order our affairs in this present life. On the other hand, there is knowledge that is true and properly so called, which is gained only by actual experience—without reasoning and concepts—and provides, by grace through participation, a whole perception of the One who is known.” (Pages 429–430)

“evil is nothing other than a deficiency of the activity of innate natural powers with respect to their proper goal.³⁶” (Page 82)

“When we take care to honor reason and live according to it, we become expert tamers of all the evil passions.” (Page 71)

“Thus the more that man was preoccupied with knowledge of visible things solely according to the senses, the more he bound himself to the ignorance of God; and the more he tightened the bond of this ignorance, the more he attached himself to the experience of the sensual enjoyment of the material objects of knowledge in which he was indulging; and the more he took his fill of this enjoyment, the more he inflamed the passionate desire of self-love⁴³ that comes from it; and the more he deliberately pursued the passionate desire of self-love, the more he contrived multiple ways to sustain his pleasure, which is the offspring and goal of self-love.” (Pages 83–84)

“I am speaking of the hidden reason that nature—essentially and independently of any learning—possesses by its inner character, which it has received for the unerring examination of beings and for the true comprehension of their inner principles. Once this reason has been well formed by means of the virtues, the Holy Spirit of God naturally becomes its intimate companion, and fashions it into a divine image, according to the likeness of the Spirit’s own beauty,⁷ so that by grace it lacks nothing of the attributes that belong to the Divinity by nature.” (Page 70)

Product Details

• Title: On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios
• Author: Maximus the Confessor
• Series: The Fathers of the Church
• Volume: 136
• Publisher: Catholic University of America
• Print Publication Date: 2018
• Logos Release Date: 2018
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Bible › Criticism, interpretation, etc.--Early works to 1800
• ISBNs: 9780813230313, 0813230314
• Resource ID: LLS:DFFCLTSSCTHLSSS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T19:35:11Z

About Maximus the Confessor

Maximus the Confessor (also known as Maximus the Theologian and Maximus of Constantinople) (c. 580 – 13 August 662) was a Christian monk, theologian, and scholar. In his early life, he was a civil servant, and an aide to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. However, he gave up this life in the political sphere to enter into the monastic life. After moving to Carthage, Maximus studied several Neo-Platonist writers and became a prominent author.