John Philoponus and Maximus the Confessor at the Crossroads of Philosophical and Theological Thought in Late Antiquity*

Grigory Benevich Saint-Petersburg [email protected] JOHN PHILOPONUS AND MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR AT THE CROSSROADS OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT IN LATE ANTIQUITY* The article deals with the approaches to philosophy and to theology that were demonstrated by John Philoponus (6th AD) and by Maximus the Confessor (7th AD) during their lives. Periodization of their creative activity is given and some parallels in their lives are shown to exist in spite of all their diff erences. This comparison of their respective lives and approaches to some important themes of philosophy and theology allows clarifi cation of a character of appropriation and usage of philosophy during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Mid- dle Ages. Several similarities and diff erences in the teaching of these thinkers are examined. These include particularly the theory of logoi; Christological and Trinitarian teaching; some aspects of anthropol- ogy (body-soul relations and embryology); a itude to Neoplatonism. Philoponus’ “projects” on the Christianization of philosophy and the philosophisation of Christianity are compared to Maximus’s “project” on Christian philosophy with the teaching of deifi cation in its center. John Philoponus (c. AD. 490 to 570s) and Maximus the Confessor (c. AD. 580 – 13 August 662) are two of the most important Christian philosophers and thinkers of the fi rst half of the 6th and the fi rst half of the 7th century respectively in the Roman-Byzantine Empire. However, it was only in the second half of the 20th century that their heritage received a proper evaluation and that they are being systematically studied. Following the approach of Basil Lurié in his “History of the (*) I would like to express my gratitude to the program in Hellenic Stud- ies at Princeton University for its support of my research and to Professors Peter Brown and Christian Wildberg for their lively discussions on the fi rst dra of this article. 102 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 12:53:39AM via free access Grigory Benevich 103 Byzantine Philosophy”,1 I believe that it is most fruitful for the study of the history of philosophy in Byzantium during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages to compare some important issues in the teaching of these thinkers in their approaches to philosophy and theology. Such a comparison is justifi ed because Philoponus was one of the most outstanding philosophers and scholars who a empted the Christianization of Ancient Greek philosophy, while Maximus the Confessor is venerated as one the most important theologians of the 7th century who greatly infl uenced Late Byzantine theology. It is even more interesting to compare these two great fi gures if one bears in mind that, at the end of a life of active participation in Christological controversies, although in diff erent ways, each was marginalized by the prevailing ideologues. Philoponus was a thinker whose philosoph- ically grounded doctrine was treated as a heresy by the majority of his contemporaries. Maximus was persecuted and died as a confessor. In Philoponus, we meet an intellectual giant; whereas in Maximus we meet a saint, who also happened to be a philosopher. John Philoponus In modern scholarship a periodization of Philoponus’ life has been made by Koenraad Verrycken.2 He drew a sharp distinction between the purely philosophical (non-Christian) and the “Christian” periods of Philoponus’ biography. However, Clemens Scholten challenged Ver- rycken by expressing a unitary view of Piloponus’ creative activity.3 Verrycken defended his bipartite schema in his review of Scholten.4 Some of Verrycken’s ideas were also criticized by Christian Wildberg.5 However, Wildberg’s criticism was centered on Verrycken’s explana- tion of Philoponus’ transition from one period to another, not his peri- (1) See В. М. ЛУРЬЕ, История византийской философии. Формативный период (Санкт-Петербург: Axiôma, 2006) 211ff . (2) See K. Verrycken, The development of Philoponus’ thought and its chronology, in: R. R. K. Sorabji (ed.), Aristotle Transformed. The Ancient Com- mentators and Their Infl uence (London: Duckworth, 1990) 233–274. (3) See C. Scholten, Antike Naturphilosophie und christliche Kosmologie in der Schri “De Opifi cio Mundi” des Johannes Philoponos (Berlin—New York: Wal- ter de Gruyter, 1996) (PTS, 45) 125–132. (4) In: Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 41 (1998) 256–259. (5) See C. Wildberg, Impetus Theory and the Hermeneutics of Science in Simplicius and Philoponus, Hyperboreus 5 (1999) 107–124. Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 12:53:39AM via free access 104 Scrinium VΙI–VIII.1 (2011–2012). Ars Christiana odization itself. Radical criticism of Verrycken’s approach can be found in Leslie MacCoull’s articles.6 In this and in several other articles, (some of which I will touch upon below), MacCoull argued that from the be- ginning Philoponus was deeply rooted in the Monophysite branch of Christianity and had been pu ing philosophy at the service of Christi- anity. However, such a prominent Philoponus’ scholar as Richard Sor- abji recently noted that he was “not able to believe the strong part of her thesis, that from the start Monophysite activity was Philoponus’ main motivation”.7 In the present article I will not be able to deal with the details of this polemics, but I will try to clarify some of the relevant issues. Unlike Verrycken’s bipartite schema and MacCoull’s radically unitary vision I suggest a tripartite division of Philoponus’ work with some transitional stages. During Philoponus’ fi rst period he acted as a philosopher and scholar, a commentator on Aristotle and a pupil of the Neoplatonic philosopher Ammonius, (son of Hermeias and a pupil of Proclus). He was one of the most capable of Ammonius’ pupils, his assistant and an editor of his lectures. Throughout this fi rst period, Philoponus remained faith- ful to the general Neoplatonic teaching of the Alexandrian school.8 The next period of Philoponus’ creative activity, which is character- ized by his criticism of Aristotelian science and philosophy, can be dat- ed approximately from 529, when he published an extensive treatise “On the eternity of the world, against Proclus” (“De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum”).9 In this work he entered into polemics about the question of (6) See e.g. L. MacCoull, A new look at the career of John Philoponus, JECS 3 (1995) 269–279. (7) R. Sorabji, New Findings on Philoponus. Part 2 — Recent Studies, in: R. R. K. Sorabji (ed.), Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (Lon- don: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, 22010) (BICS, 103) 18. (8) See Verrycken, The development of Philoponus’ thought… 236–237. Scholten and MacCoull did not agree with Verrycken (see notes 3 and 6). In my article this issue does not play an important role (See note 24). (9) Most probably, Philoponus was working on this important and large treatise for a long time. His main commentaries on Aristotle were fi nished around 517, and twelve years passed before his polemics against Proclus ap- peared. For the chronology of Philoponus’ works see: R. Sorabji, John Philo- ponus, in: Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science..., 81. Edward Wa s believes that Philoponus started to write Contr. Procl. in 525 and it was a part of his competition for the chair of the head of the school with Olympiodorus, a pagan pupil of Ammonius. (See E. J. Watts, City and School in Late Antique Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 12:53:39AM via free access Grigory Benevich 105 the eternity of the world, both directly against Proclus (411–485), (that pillar of the Neoplatonic tradition), and indirectly against Ammonius (ca. 435–517). As the polemic in this work was specifi cally directed against a philosophical work, Philoponus’ argument in it was purely philosophical. Several citations from the Scripture that are to be found in this treatise clearly bear witness to the fact that he was a Christian at the time of writing. However, they do not serve him as decisive arguments. Indeed, Philoponus was following the rules of pure philosophical argumentation so strictly there that one might state that his quarrel with Proclus was on purely philosophical grounds, and Contr. Procl. shows no evidence of his Christianity. Such a view has been recently expressed by Lang and Macro,10 authors of a critical edition of Proclus’ “On the Eternity of the World”. They believed that Philoponus in his polemics followed the arguments of a Middle Platonist A icus, and that the whole Philoponus’ polemic against Proclus was nothing more than a continuation of internal philosophical quarrel between diff erent points of view, expressed by commentators on Plato. Although this view was rejected eff ectively by Michael Share who found seven quo- tations from the Christian Bible in this treatise,11 nevertheless I would have to agree with Lang and Macro that Philoponus’ arguments are purely philosophical. To a great extent Philoponus’ project was exegetical. He argued that Proclus misinterpreted Plato; although, he also contested some of Plato’s statements, pointing out that Plato was not divine.12 Howev- er, Christian views also underlie Philoponus’ polemics again Proclus. This is made clear, not so much by a few Scriptural citations, as by a comparison of Philoponus’ polemics with that of his Christian pre- decessors, — Aeneas of Gaza (d. c. 518), (seen in his dialogue “Theo- phrastus”) and Zacharias Scholasticus (c. 465 – a er 536), (seen in his Athens and Alexandria (Berkeley—Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2006) 244. (10) See H. S. Lang, A. D. Macro, introduction to: Proclus. On the Eternity of the World (de Aeternitate Mundi). Greek text with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary by H.

Load more