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Maximus the Confessor on the Structural Dynamics of Revelation

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Maximus the Confessor on the Structural Dynamics of Revelation MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR ON THE STRUCTURAL DYNAMICS OF REVELATION BY ADAM G. COOPER In the longest of Maximus' Ambigua addressed to his spiritual associate Bishop John of Cyzicus, we come across what has become in Maximian research a virtual locus classicus on the reciprocal relationship between divine incarnation and human deification: For [the Fathers] say that God and man are paradigms one of another: God is humanised to man through love for humankind to the extent that man, enabled through love, deifies himself to God; and man is caught up noeti- cally by God to what is unknown to the extent that he manifests God, who is invisible by nature, through the virtues.' Modern scholars have commented extensively on this distinctive tantum- quantum (,couo?icov-6,uov) formula,2 noting its linguistic roots in Gregory Nazianzen3 and conceptual roots in Athanasius' and Irenaeus.5 In Maximus' spiritual theology it expresses with especial clarity the directness of the reciprocity between divine incarnation and human deification-most par- ticularly, it should be noted, in the specific context not of the historic ' Amb.Io. 10 (PG 91.1113BC). Reading To ayvw6TOVwith Polycarp Sherwood (The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism', StudiaAnselmiana 36 (Rome: Herder, 1955), 144, fn 35) in place of 'to yv(o(YT6v.In my translation of sources in this paper, I have freely consulted existing translations and amended them where I have considered it appropriate. ' See, among others, Hans Urs von Balthasar, KosmischeLiturgie (Einsiedeln: ,Johannes- Verlag, 1961), 277-278;Lars Thunberg, Microcosmand Mediator-The 'I7teolqgicalAnthropology of Maximusthe Coqfessor(2nd edition, Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 31-32; _Jean-Claude Larchet, La divinisationde l'hommeselon saint Maximele Conjèsseur(Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1996), 376-382. 3 Or 29.19; 40.45. 4 De inc. 54. 5 Ad haer.3.19.1. 162 incarnation, but of the ascetic life of the Christian.6 The deification of the human person is directly proportionate to, and constituted by, the human- isation of the divine Word, who became incarnate historically in Christ. Deification takes place when the invisible God again takes on visible con- tours in the virtues, thereby becoming manifest in the world in an ongo- ing, escalating cycle of revelation. Love which on the divine side is enacted in the form of <p?(xv6pmn(a/ constitutes the essential ingredient that makes this transformative, unifying, and revelatory proccss possible. But my primary interest in starting with this passage is not so much to point out this reciprocity than to note its transformational, theophanouseffect upon the human body-an effect suggested by the words immediately fol- lowing. Just prior to this passage, Maximus had described the spiritual diabasis of the soul from sense through reason up to mind, through which the saints become united 'wholly' to God. Then in the words that follow, he makes passing reference to the impact of this process upon 'the nature of the body'. '[A]ccording to this philosophy,' he writes, 'the nature of the body is necessarily ennobled The person 'caught up' in the process of deification becomes in the ordered totality of his corporeal human nature-a composite unity of mind (voûç), reason (X6yog) and sense an agent of divine manifestation. It is this necessarily corporeal character and locus of divine theophany, one paralleled in scripture and cosmos, that I shall endeavour to explore further in this essay. In doing so, I wish to draw attention to the 'struc- tural dynamics' of Maximus' account of revelation, that is, the overall shape of revelation as a progressive and interactive movement and the corre- sponding role of the symbolic and the sensible. This is a theme we encounter elsewhere in his czuare, most notably in the great anti-Origenist work, Ambiguum 7,9 where, among other things, Maximus is at pains to demon- 6 Ep. 2 (PG 91.401AB);Amb.Io. 7 (PG 91.1084C);Amb.Io. 60 (PG 91.1385C);Amb.Th. 3 (PG 91.1040CD). ' In her important study Eros Unveiled:Plato and the Cod of Love(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), Catherine Osborne has demonstrated convincingly the association of <ptÀav8pro1tíaas it is understood by Origen and Dionysius the Areopagite with God's love exercised in the economy of the incarnation (164-200). Already in Origen she detects the presence of an 'inverse symmetry' between human assimilation to God through love and God's love for humankind (182), one that is not unlike the reciproc- ity involved in the tantum-quantumidea of Maximus. 8 Amb.Io.10 (PG 91.1113C; see also PG 91.1116D). 9 PG 91.1068D-1101 C. .
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