Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 69(1-4), 249-280. doi: 10.2143/JECS.69.1.3214959 © 2017 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved. ST. MAXImUs THE CONFEssor’s DIALEcTIc OF LOGOS, mODE AND END IN A POsTmODERN cONTEXT ITS IMPORTANCE TO A THEOLOGiCAL EVALUATiON OF RACE AND NATiONALiSM DiONYSiOS SKLiRiS * The demand for a contextual theology coincides with a multiple crisis, when we experience a crisis of our self-understanding and of our traditional views in many Orthodox countries (such as Greece, to take one characteristic example), but also a crisis of global capitalism as it has evolved in late post- modernity. But it is exactly this dual character of the recent crisis that could prove theologically fertile if we achieve a dialogue from inside our impasses. In such a dialogue, theology would no longer propose ready-made answers with a lofty attitude, but it would share the common puzzlement. We shall therefore examine the question of race and nationalism in their contemporary fluidity in an encounter with the Orthodox patristic tradition. We will focus on two points of the latter. On the one hand, on the Chalce- donian theology of distinction and division.1 And, on the other, on a dialec- tic between logos, mode and end that is inspired by the theology of Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662).2 Our choice is based mainly on two factors: i) Maximus incorporated elements of the previous tradition in his thought – for example, Cappadocian Trinitarian theology, Gregory of Nyssa’s anthropol- ogy, an Antiochian emphasis on historicity, and Alexandrian contemplative * Université Paris-Sorbonne. 1 For the theological significance of the terms diaphora or diakrisis (distinction) and diaire- sis (division), see John Zizioulas, Communion & Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (London and New York, 2006), pp. 40f. 2 We have presented this dialectic in a general way in Dionysios Skliris, ‘To aitēma tēs istorikotētas kai ē dialektikē logu, tropu kai telus stē skepsē tu agiu Maximu tu Omologētē’ (The demand for historicity and the dialectic of logos, tropos and end in the thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor), Synaxi, 126 (2013), pp. 21-30. We are trying here to extend this problematic and apply it to the question of race and nationalism. 250 DiONYSiOS SKLiRiS philosophy, and ii) Maximus thematizes a crisis – namely, the collapse of Byzantine ecumene under Persian and finally Arab invasions. The concern for historicity takes the form of a peculiar dialectical thought on History and anthropology. We therefore think that Maximus’s thematization of crisis might be fertile in the context of the postmodern crisis of our times.3 This dialectic has three poles: logos, mode and end. Logos or reason is a will of God for the creature.4 It could therefore be considered as uncreated and as distinguished from the being itself of which it constitutes the reason.5 Inside time, natural beings in themselves have a nature that is not perfectly completed from the outset, but is quite fluid.6 The created nature in itself is 3 The importance of Maximus to a Theology of History is also highlighted by J. Kameron Carter, who considers him as an “anticolonialist intellectual” avant la lettre, see J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford, 2008). 4 Maximus draws the identification of the divine logoi with the divine will from ps.- Dionysius the Areopagite. See Questions to Thalassius, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca (from now on: Thal. and CCSG respectively) 7,95,8 and Ambigua to John (from now on: Amb.) 7,24; Nicholas Constas, ed., Maximos the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua Volume I, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 28 (Cambridge/MA, and London, 2014), pp. 106-108, where he is also referring to the cycle of Pantaenus. Logos therefore constitutes the divine will for a created being. This also means that it is the reason for the latter’s existence, its raison d’être. But there is a clear distinction between a being itself and its logos. The logos is divine and can therefore be considered as uncreated. The being is created and in itself mutable. 5 For an interpretation of logoi as uncreated, see Vasilios Karayiannis, Maxime le Confesseur: Essence et Energies de Dieu, Théologie historique, 93 (Paris, 1993), pp. 113-114, 219-222. This interpretation is based mostly on Amb. 7,15-24, see Constas, Maximos the Confessor I, pp. 94-108. 6 We could have here a very interesting encounter between Maximus’s thought and some tendencies of postmodern thought on nature. There is a certain ‘antiessentialism’ in Maxi- mus, in the sense that nature is not completed in its origin, see Nikolaos Loudovikos, Ē Kleistē Pneymatikotēta kai to Noēma tu Eautu: O mystikismos tēs ischyos kai ē alētheia fyseōs kai prosōpu (Closed Spirituality and the Meaning of Self: The mysticism of power and the truth of person and nature) (Athens, 1999), pp. 191, 281. This reminds us more of a postmodern or post-structuralist type of antiessentialism than a modernist or existentialist one. We would define the two types (with a certain danger of oversimplifying) thus: in an existentialist or modernist type of antiessentialism, nature is considered as something given (either in a biological or a cultural way), which is then opposed or transcended by man (as a person or a consciousness or an ecstatic existence, etc). In contrast, in a postmodern or post-structuralist type of antiessentialism, there is no such given nature in the first place. Nature is considered as a linguistic, social or cultural construction. Therefore, there is no need for transcendence but simply for denunciation. Of course, this distinction is not as simple as that. The existentialist notion of facticity might include social and linguistic ST. MAXiMUS THE CONFESSOR’S DiALECTiC OF LOGOS, MODE AND END 251 therefore distinguished from its divine logos. Logos has a triple character: i) protological, because it exists ‘before’ or rather ‘outside’ creation in time as a divine will for one being. ii) teleological, because it constitutes the goal of its nature, and iii) eschatological, because this goal has a radical disconti- nuity in relation to nature and its potentialities, contrary to Aristotelian or other teleologies. Among the three, there is a contrast that is nonetheless sublated for the sake of eminent syntheses.7 The mode (tropos)8 consists in the historical activations of nature due to human personal hypostases. There constructions. Nonetheless, there is a shift of emphasis from transcendence of nature to its denunciation. We can observe this in feminism. In previous contexts, the emphasis was that a ‘woman’ should transcend her condition as ‘woman’, either biological or cultural. In a postmodern context, the emphasis is on the denunciation of linguistic and cultural constructions of ‘womanhood’ at the level of signifiers. Therefore, a subject that is defined as ‘woman’ could either engage in a deconstruction of the phallogocentric dualism of ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’, or negotiate ‘her’ identity inside a gender continuum, where arbitrary boundaries are no longer considered as definite. In such a postmodern context, it would be very fertile to engage in a new reading of Maximus’s antiessentialism, especially the distinction between nature and its logos. Created nature is not given in the beginning. It is very fluid and in itself is perishable and mortal. Only the logos is given and only as a ‘sign-post’ to the eschatological perspective. Besides, the logos is very cryptic inside His- tory, stirring man to find it through the chaos and the ambivalence of empirical data. Consequently, Maximus’s antiessentialism would no longer mean the transcendence of a given protological nature, but a dialectical relation with its logos. What is more, man has his own created logos as an image of God. But, inside History, it is possible that human- created logoi become independent in an idolatrous way. Then, antiessentialism would mean tropoi (novel modes) that would undermine the self-sufficiency of idolatrous created logoi or even of exeis (‘fallen’ modes that have turned into sinful habits of nature). This sort of antiessentialism is inspired by the dynamic divine logoi and their eschatological perspective. In such a sense, we consider that an actualization of Maximus in the context of postmodern antiessentialism is possible and indeed very fertile. 7 For the theological importance of the distinction between the logoi and the creatures that they determine see Nikolaos Loudovikos, Theopoiia: Ē metaneōterikē theologikē aporia, Theopoiia: The Postmodern Theological Quest (Athens, 2007), pp. 20-21. 8 In Trinitarian theology, the duality logos- tropos means a distinction between the logos of nature and the modes of existence. That is, logos refers to catholicity (which is nonethe- less ‘situated’ in the Son as the Logos par excellence) and tropos to a hypostatic mode of existence that is determined by the Inascibility of the Father, the Filiality of the Son, and the Ekporeusis of the Spirit. Nevertheless, when the concept of tropos is transferred to christology and anthropology, it acquires a broader meaning and can denote historical modalities that differ from the hypostatic mode of existence, but are usually its conse- quences, see Jean-Claude Larchet, La Divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confes- seur, Cogitatio fidei, 194 (Paris, 1996), pp. 141-151. Maximus explains how he under- stands the notion of tropos mainly in Amb. 42, 26-29, see Nicholas Constas, ed., Maximos 252 DiONYSiOS SKLiRiS is a dialogue between God and man, where God proposes a logos for nature,9 man responds with his own created logos resulting in a mode of nature, and God can respond again with new miraculous modes.10 Maximus is using the duality logos-tropos as a conceptual tool to achieve a synthesis between a Hellenic and a Judaistic demand.