Ever-Moving Repose

A Contemporary Reading of Maximus the Confessor's Theory of Time

Mitralexis

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532607042
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Sotiris Mitralexis offers a contemporary look at Maximus the Confessor's (580-662 CE) understanding of temporality, logoi, and deification, through the perspective of contemporary philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras, as well as John Zizioulas and Nicholas Loudovikos. Mitralexis argues that Maximus possesses both a unique theological ontology and a unique threefold theory of temporality: time, the Aeon, and the radical transformation of temporality and motion in an ever-moving repose. With these three distinct modes of temporality, a Maximian theory of time can be reconstructed, which can be approached via his teaching on the logoi and deification. In this theory, time is not merely measuring ontological motion, but is more particularly measuring a relationship, the consummation of which effects the transformation of time into a dimensionless present devoid of temporal, spatial, and generally ontological distance--thereby manifesting a perfect communion-in-otherness. In examining Maximian temporality, the book is not focusing on only one aspect of Maximus' comprehensive Weltanschauung, but looks at the Maximian vision as a whole through the lens of temporality and motion.

PART I

Introducing Maximus the Confessor —and Our Contemporary Perspective

Chapter one

Maximus the Confessor

Maximus’ Life

The presence of Maximus the Confessor in the history of the Christian church and of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, and as such in the overall history of ideas, is truly unique. Living the life of a simple monk (not merely without the episcopal powers of a bishop or a prominent rank in the church, but probably even without the priesthood) and facing rejection, persecution, exile, and martyrdom, his name was restored in the consciousness of the empire and the doctrine of the church only after his death, and he changed both empire and church for ever. And now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, his work and history are receiving an explosion of interest from scholars.

Currently, there is a heated scholarly debate concerning the details of Maximus’ early life, and the state of the question is quite controversial1—as such, I will not enter into details. A tenth-century hagiographic Greek Vita (PG90, 58–109) and a seventh-century slanderous Syriac document (see Brock, “An Early Syriac Life,” written by a certain George of Reshaina, a Monothelite and enemy of Maximus, and bearing the pronounced title “The history concerning the wicked Maximus of Palestine who blasphemed against his Creator, and whose tongue was cut out”) are, among other lesser material, the main—and contradictory—sources on the Confessor’s life. While it is true that currently, and in a rapidly changing and evolving scholarship, the pendulum swings more to the slanderous and earlier Syriac life (as Sebastian Brock has entitled this document, which is by no means a proper vita) rather than the later hagiographic Greek life, one can be rightly concerned with the relative enthusiasm with which the Syriac life is embraced, due to it allegedly providing solutions to problems that the Greek life cannot resolve. The Syriac document has its own considerable problems, paradoxes, contradictions, and inconsistencies, which may not merit a wholly unreserved enthusiasm for its basic premises2—the same, though, is true of the later Greek Vita.3

Maximus seems to have been born in 580 AD, either in Constantinople4 or in Palestine. It is quite probable Maximus had studied the works of Plato and Aristotle in the course of his education, as well as the works of their commentators, either in the original or through Christian sources like, for example, florilegia. His extensive knowledge of Aristotle’s works (in the form in which they were delivered to the society of Constantinople) and the profound influence that they exerted on him in articulating his philosophical and theological language is evident in his later works, as we will see, and decisively shaped the way in which he would raise and answer questions and attempt hermeneutic approaches concerning the universe, philosophy, and his ecclesial faith. While he was a monk—in a number of different monastic establishments; his life was one of extensive travelling—he gradually developed an intense anti-heresy activity, against Monoenergism at first and subsequently against Monothelitism.5 His struggle against the heresies of Monothelitism and Monoenergism would last throughout his life and would be the cause of his exile and martyrdom,6 while it would also be his primary contribution to the ecclesiastical history of the undivided Christian church.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 had pronounced the “Chalcedonian Definition,” the doctrine according to which Jesus Christ has a complete human nature/substance and a complete divine nature/substance (οὐσία/φύσις) realized in one single person/hypostasis (πρόσωπον/ὑπόστασις). According to this terminology, hypostasis (the person) is the specific, actually existing realization of the substance (i.e., nature), and in this case the singular person of Christ is the realization of his two natures. The Council of Chalcedon condemned Monophysitism (Miaphysitism), the notion of a single nature in Christ, either his divine nature or a synthesis of divine and human nature respectively, as heretical.

Large populations of Monophysites resided in the eastern boundaries of the Empire, and a new Christological dispute had begun to shake the Empire, different from Monophysitism as such. In an effort to bridge the Chalcedonian faith with Monophysite Christology, a new formulation started to surface according to which, whereas Christ’s person realizes two natures, his will (θέλησις) and his activity (ἐνέργεια/“energy”) are singular: Christ’s person does not possess two wills and activities, a divine and a human one.7 This dogmatic formulation was also attractive to the political leadership of the empire, since it offered the possibility to affiliate parts of the Monophysite populations or the populations with a “Monophysite substrate,” thereby reducing the doctrinal and, as such, political friction within the Empire. Maximus would gradually recognize in these Monothelite and Monoenergist formulations a crucial distortion of his faith, of the ecclesial body’s testimony and experience concerning the hypostasis of Christ, a confutation and annihilation of the Chalcedonian Definition “in the small print,” an indirect enforcement of Monophysite Christology.

The patriarch of Constantinople, Sergius I (610–38), introduced Monoenergism officially in an attempt to support Emperor Heraclius in his war against the Persians and in his political decision to promote the union between the two sides of the doctrinal dispute. Sergius promoted the position that Jesus Christ had two natures, one divine and one human, but one activity (ἐνέργεια) which is to be ascribed to his singular hypostasis. This position could satisfy the moderate Anti-Chalcedonians, which in turn could lead to their union with the Orthodox Catholic Church, a burning political challenge of the time. In 633 in Alexandria the restoration of the communion between the Orthodox and the anti-Chalcedonians, their unification, took place.

Patriarch Sergius issued the Psephos (Ψῆφος), a text confirmed by the synod of Constantinople,8 which prohibited any further discussion on Christ’s one or two activities and the adoption of a language that attributes two activities to Christ.9 Maximus did not express any objections at that point, but agreed cheerfully to the termination of a dispute that was the cause of much uproar in the life of the church.10 When Sophronius was enthroned as patriarch of Jerusalem in 634, he sent, as was customary, an encyclical with his profession of orthodoxy addressed to all the patriarchs in which, without explicitly attributing two activities to the Christ’s hypostasis, he essentially professed his Dyothelite faith and his serious objections to the Monoenergist stance towards Christology.11 The friction concerning the one or two activities of Christ continued to be evident, and after Sophronius’ death in 638 Emperor Heraclius issued an imperial decree, his Ecthesis (Ἔκθεσις), which is essentially an extension and repetition of Sergius’ Psephos under imperial auspices.12 Heraclius’ Ecthesis explicitly prohibits any discussion concerning Christ’s one or two activities while, instead of proclaiming one activity in Christ, one will is proclaimed (Monothelitism). The Ecthesis was supported by all five patriarchs (Pentarchy) of the time: Honorius of Rome, Sergius of Constantinople, Cyrus of Alexandria, Macedonius of Antioch, and Sergius, the new patriarch of Jerusalem. Sergius of Constantinople convened a synod to ecclesiastically validate the Ecthesis in the same year, while his successor and continuator, patriarch Pyrrhus (638–41, 654) repeated the same procedure soon after his enthronement.13

Maximus emerged as a strong opponent of the monothelite position. In 645, a public debate was organized in Carthage under the auspices of exarch Gregory between Maximus and Pyrrhus—the now-deposed, former...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: Introducing Maximus the Confessor —and Our Contemporary Perspective
• Part II: Maximus the Confessor’s Understanding of Motion and Temporality
• Concluding Remarks: Reconstructing Maximus the Confessor’s Theory of Time
• Bibliography