Tag: Catholic Theology

Uncategorized

Maximus the Confessor on Deification in His Two Hundred Chapters on Theology

Alex Renner

–

Maximus the Confessor is quickly becoming one of my favorite historical theologians. His characteristic Christocentrism, his healthy balance of apophatic and kataphatic theology, and his descriptions of the Christian life all lift up the soul to heights of love and peace which few contemporary Christian paperbacks have the ability to do. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s insistence, in his famous preface to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation, that, nine times out of ten it is the time-tested, ancient theological treatises which offer more spiritual encouragement than anything coming out in print today (with a few exceptions). I find the same to be true when reading Maximus; you can tell the man loved God, loved people, and found much growth in the contemplation of divine things. I myself benefit by allowing my soul to be lifted up by his theological movements.

When my wife and I were perusing the humungous Oxford book store, Blackwells, I came across a Patristics section which took up most of my time that day. While there, I purchased SVS Press’s copy of Maximus’s Two Hundred Chapters on Theology. It is turning out, in only the first few pages, to be enormously rich and spiritually and theologically precious to me. There is much gold to be dug up, here.

Maximus begins his work by setting up a few guard rails about God’s absolute otherness, using terms I have only ever read Dionysius use (i.e., “super-substantial” and “absolutely above/beyond essence or substance”). He then goes on to describe the inner life of the one whose spiritual/thought life is continually disciplined to draw itself up to God:

“1.13 He who has dazzled the intellect with divine thoughts, and has accustomed his rationality unceasingly to celebrate the creator with divine hymns, and has hallowed his sensory perception with unadulterated mental representations – such a one has added to the natural beauty in accordance with the image, the deliberate good in accordance with the likeness.”[1]

You can see here the patristic conception of image/likeness in Maximus, as well as a definition of deification as a mystical union or sharing, an unutterable love-relationship which God and Man continually keep up with one another (based on both God’s and Man’s dual initiative). Reading 1.13 reminded me of a similar statement of Maximus’s in his Ambiguum, where his explanation of mystical union revolves around something like the idea of being fully encompassed by the Other. To Maximus, our union with Christ is a full-encompassing, where, though we keep our essential humanity intact, we are known and are seeking to be more known only in line with those characteristics and particularities as filtered through God’s gifting of them. In other words, we refuse to be known or encompassed apart from our own total-identification and encompassing by Christ. Glorious.

Three “chapters” later, Maximus illustrates a provocative picture of salvation which further attempts an elucidation of deification. He writes,

“And he who has been purified, is illuminated; and he who has been illuminated is made worthy to lie with the bridegroom Word in the chamber of the mysteries.”[2]

Maximus chooses to relate our union with God to the sexual union which a husband and wife share on their wedding night. He caveats that image, though, with the “mysteries” as the place wherein that sexual union takes place. Now, by “mysteries” he means the sacraments of the Church: the Eucharist and Baptism. So, the sacramental mysteries are the means through which God unites himself, continually, to his people. Without a consistent participation on the part of the Bride (the Church) in the mysteries (the Eucharist), the Bride and Groom (the Word, Christ) are not in full union and their relationship is not initiated or brought to completion. Again, glorious.

In case you thought Maximus the Pelagian, however, he insists, later on in the first forty or so chapters, that:

“1.31 Never can a soul reach out towards the knowledge of God if God himself does not, having condescended, lay hold of it and lead it up to himself. For a human mind is not strong enough to ascend such a distance – as if to seize for its part some divine illumination, if God himself did not draw it upward, as far as is possible for a human mind to be drawn upward, and enlighten it with divine radiances.”[3]

Such union, mediated to the Bride in the mysteries, is more rightly said to be initiated and brought to its end by the Groom, i.e., Christ. It is Christ who reaches toward the Christian and pulls him up to union with Himself. Christ gets the credit and the glory for the Triune work he completes in us, using the mysteries, to do such work.

Amen, amen, and amen!

For those who want a deep spiritual nourishment beyond the steady flow of contemporary, popular Christian literature (much of which misses the point), turn to the ancient fathers for the golden honey of biblical wisdom. Turn to the Tradition, and be satiated.

[1] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 51.

[2] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 53.

[3] St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (Yonkers, NY: SVS Press, 2015), 61.

Uncategorized

Dionysius the Areopagite on the Most Holy Trinity

Alex Renner

–

St. Dionysius the Areopagite, also known as “Pseudo-Dionysius” in more scholarly circles due to the fact that he was almost definitely not the Dionysius mentioned in Scripture as the disciple of the Apostle Paul, is a Christian theologian who garnered massive subsequent theological influence in both Western and Eastern theology. His treatise On the Divine Names is a meditative Trinitarian exposition on the central doctrine of the Christian faith, the Trinity. While the language Dionysius uses to describe human participation in the Triune God can be, at times, oddly-phrased, his theologizing stands as a cornerstone of later theological thinking and by itself serves to bring the reading Christian into further contemplative union with his God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit.

The second chapter, subtitled “Letter to Titus: Concerning common and distinctive theology, and what is the Divine Union and distinction” is uniquely worshipful, and offers us some theological meat to chew on. A feature of Dionysius’s theological vocabulary here which most excites reverence for his project in me is the frequent use he makes of what I call “super” terms. Since, for Dionysius (and the rest of the Christian Tradition), God is “beyond being” – i.e., beyond existence and non-existence, being and non-being – God can therefore rightly be called “superessential” or “supersubstantial.” God is “super essential,” then, because he is “above essence” or “substance-above-substance.” Substances or essences for Dionysius constitutes all that exists in the creaturely realm, i.e., everything that is not God; since God is not a creature and therefore not a part of the “substantial” or “essential realm,” he is therefore “super substantial.” I have yet to hear a contemporary theologian use such a term, but I believe terms like these – which make quick work of the Creator-creature distinction once its meaning is explicated – can help explain in concise ways God’s wholly otherness.

Before beginning his explication of the Trinitarian-ontological relations, he prefaces in section II,

“By taking thence the Divine revelations, as a most excellent canon of truth, we strive the guard the things lying there, in their native simplicity and integrity and identity – being ourselves guarded in our guard of the Oracles [Scriptures], and from these receiving strength to guard those who guard them.”[1]

By thus beginning, Dionysius tells his readers that the Trinitarian dogma he will then go on to describe has their foundation and source in the “Oracles” themselves. The Trinity and the Bible are inseparable.

In case anyone thought he only relied on an individualistic reading of the Oracles, he begins his explication in section IV by writing that his chronicles function within the Tradition which he inherited, stating,

“The sacred instructors of our theological tradition call the ‘Divine Unions’ the hidden and unrevealed sublimities of the super-unutterable and super-unknown Isolation; but the ‘distinctions,’ the goodly progressions and manifestations of the Godhead; and, following the sacred Oracles, they mention also properties of the aforesaid ‘Union’; and again of the distinction, that there are certain specific unions and distinctions… there is kindred and common to the One-springing Triad… the Oneness above source of one.”[2]

There is such richness packed into this portion I couldn’t possibly cover it all, but his theological vocabulary continues to arrest me. The Triune being, he argues from the Tradition, is “constituted” by a “super-unknown Isolation” and also by “goodly progressions and manifestations of the Godhead.” Translated into later Trinitarian parlance, God is Father who generates forth the Son and spirates the Spirit. The monarchy of God, i.e., the Father, is the “One” who is “springing” within that life of the “Triad”; but that springing forth is a “Oneness above source of one,” i.e., in unutterable and unspeakable (apophatic) generation within God’s ontology.

He clarifies in section V:

“But there is a distinction in the superessential nomenclature of God, not only that which I have mentioned, namely, that each of the One-springing Persons is fixed in the union itself, unmingled and unconfused; but also that the properties of the superessential Divine Production are not convertible in regard to one another. The Father is sole Fountain of the superessential Deity, since the Father is not Son, nor the Son, Father; since the hymns reverently guard their own characteristics for each of the supremely Divine Persons.”[3]

Let us not forget the distinctions within the Godhead, Dionysius reminds us. The Father does not stand alone as a unitary monad without inner distinction, but is eternally the Father-issuing-forth-both-Son-and-Spirit; neither the divine ontology nor any of the Christian theological pronouncements makes any sense without such inner-life distinctions between Father, Son, and Spirit. The Christian faith rests on such distinctions. “How these things are,” though, Dionysius says, “is neither possible to say, nor to conceive.”[4] Don’t think about it; shut up and worship the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit!

Dionysius finishes his second chapter by clarifying one final point: that though the Names of God exclusively apply to each “distinct” – a word I hesitate to use – Divine Person, the attributes of divinity can be rightly said to apply to each: Father, Son, and Spirit. He writes,

“These, the mutual and common distinctions, or rather the goodly progressions of the whole Deity, we will endeavor to the best of our ability to celebrate from the Names of God, which make them known in the Oracles;-first, having laid down, as we have said, that every beneficent Name of God, to whichever of the supremely Divine Persons it may be applied, is to be understood with reference to the whole Supremely Divine wholeness unreservedly.”[5]

Glory be to our Triune, unity-in-diversity God for all His manifold graces.

[1] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 12.

[2] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 13. 

[3] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 14. 

[4] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 16.

[5] Dionysius the Areopagite, The Collective Works: St. Dionysius the Areopagite, Trans. Rev. John Parker (Neptic Fathers Publications, 2023), 19.