St. Maximus the Confessor's "Questions and Doubts"
St. Maximus the Confessor's

Author: Saint Maximus the Confessor

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-08-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1501755358

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Despina D. Prassas's translation of the Quaestiones et Dubia presents for the first time in English one of the Confessor's most significant contributions to early Christian biblical interpretation. Maximus the Confessor (580–662) was a monk whose writings focused on ascetical interpretations of biblical and patristic works. For his refusal to accept the Monothelite position supported by Emperor Constans II, he was tried as a heretic, his right hand was cut off, and his tongue was cut out. In his work, Maximus the Confessor brings together the patristic exegetical aporiai tradition and the spiritual-pedagogical tradition of monastic questions and responses. The overarching theme is the importance of the ascetical life. For Maximus, askesis is a lifelong endeavor that consists of the struggle and discipline to maintain control over the passions. One engages in the ascetical life by taking part in both theoria (contemplation) and praxis (action). To convey this teaching, Maximus uses a number of pedagogical tools including allegory, etymology, number symbolism, and military terminology. Prassas provides a rich historical and contextual background in her introduction to help ground and familiarize the reader with this work.

The Ascetic Life
The Ascetic Life

Author: Saint Maximus (Confessor)

Publisher: Paulist Press

Published: 1955

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780809102587

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The Ascetic Life is a dialogue between a young novice and an old monk on how to achieve the Christian life. The Four Centuries is a collection of aphorisms.

The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor
The Oxford Handbook of Maximus the Confessor

Author: Pauline Allen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-03-26

Total Pages: 641

ISBN-13: 0191655252

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Maximus the Confessor (c.580-662) has become one of the most discussed figures in contemporary patristic studies. This is partly due to the relatively recent discovery and critical edition of his works in various genres, including On the Ascetic Life, Four Centuries on Charity, Two Centuries on Theology and the Incarnation, On the 'Our Father', two separate Books of Difficulties, addressed to John and to Thomas, Questions and Doubts, Questions to Thalassius, Mystagogy and the Short Theological and Polemical Works. The impact of these works reached far beyond the Greek East, with his involvement in the western resistance to imperial heresy, notably at the Lateran Synod in 649. Together with Pope Martin I (649-53 CE), Maximus the Confessor and his circle were the most vocal opponents of Constantinople's introduction of the doctrine of monothelitism. This dispute over the number of wills in Christ became a contest between the imperial government and church of Constantinople on the one hand, and the bishop of Rome in concert with eastern monks such as Maximus, John Moschus, and Sophronius, on the other, over the right to define orthodoxy. An understanding of the difficult relations between church and state in this troubled period at the close of Late Antiquity is necessary for a full appreciation of Maximus' contribution to this controversy. The editors of this volume aim to provide the political and historical background to Maximus' activities, as well as a summary of his achievements in the spheres of theology and philosophy, especially neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism.

On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture
On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture

Author: Saint Maximus (Confessor)

Publisher: CUA Press

Published: 2018-05-04

Total Pages: 607

ISBN-13: 0813230314

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Maximos the Confessor (ca. 580-662) is now widely recognized as one of the greatest theological thinkers, not simply in the entire canon of Greek patristic literature, but in the Christian tradition as a whole. A peripatetic monk and prolific writer, his penetrating theological vision found expression in an unparalleled synthesis of biblical exegesis, ascetic spirituality, patristic theology, and Greek philosophy, which is as remarkable for its conceptual sophistication as for its labyrinthine style of composition. On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture, presented here for the first time in a complete English translation (including the 465 scholia), contains Maximos’s virtuosic theological interpretations of sixty-five difficult passages from the Old and New Testaments. Because of its great length, along with its linguistic and conceptual difficulty, the work as a whole has been largely neglected. Yet alongside the Ambigua to John, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios deserves to be ranked as the Confessor’s greatest work and one of the most important patristic treatises on the interpretation of Scripture, combining the interconnected traditions of monastic devotion to the Bible, the biblical exegesis of Origen, the sophisticated symbolic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, and the rich spiritual anthropology of Greek Christian asceticism inspired by the Cappadocian Fathers.

Man and the Cosmos
Man and the Cosmos

Author: Lars Thunberg

Publisher: St Vladimirs Seminary Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9780881410198

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An introduction to the life and work of Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662), focusing on his thought concerning the cosmos, the nature of man and his relationship with God, christology, the liturgical and sacramental dimension, history and eschatology.

Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher
Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher

Author: Sotiris Mitralexis

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2017-09-18

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 1498295584

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The study of Maximus the Confessor’s thought has flourished in recent years: international conferences, publications and articles, new critical editions and translations mark a torrent of interest in the work and influence of perhaps the most sublime of the Byzantine Church Fathers. It has been repeatedly stated that the Confessor’s thought is of eminently philosophical interest. However, no dedicated collective scholarly engagement with Maximus the Confessor as a philosopher has taken place—and this volume attempts to start such a discussion. Apart from Maximus’ relevance and importance for philosophy in general, a second question arises: should towering figures of Byzantine philosophy like Maximus the Confessor be included in an overview of the European history of philosophy, or rather excluded from it—as is the case today with most histories of European philosophy? Maximus’ philosophy challenges our understanding of what European philosophy is. In this volume, we begin to address these issues and examine numerous aspects of Maximus’ philosophy—thereby also stressing the interdisciplinary character of Maximian studies. Contributors include: Fr. Maximos Constas, Justin Shaun Coyle, Vladimir Cvetković, Natalie Depraz, Demetrios Harper, Michael Harrington, Georgi Kapriev, Karolina Kochańczyk-Bonińska, Nicholas Loudovikos, Andrew Louth, John Panteleimon Manoussakis, Michail Mantzanas, Smilen Markov, Sotiris Mitralexis, Marcin Podbielski, Dionysios Skliris, Georgios Steiris, Stoyan Tanev, Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, Jordan Daniel Wood

Maximus Confessor
Maximus Confessor

Author: Saint Maximus (Confessor)

Publisher: Paulist Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780809126590

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This volume includes a translation of four spiritual treatises of Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662), plus an account of his trial. Included are The Four Hundred Chapters of Love, Commentary on the Lord's Prayer, Chapters on Knowledge, The Church's Mystagogy, and Trial of Maximus.

Maximus the Confessor
Maximus the Confessor

Author: Paul M. Blowers

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0199673942

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This study contextualizes the achievement of a strategically crucial figure in Byzantium's turbulent seventh century, the monk and theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662). Building on newer biographical research and a growing international body of scholarship, as well as on fresh examination of his diverse literary corpus, Paul Blowers develops a profile integrating the two principal initiatives of Maximus's career: first, his reinterpretation of the christocentric economy of creation and salvation as a framework for expounding the spiritual and ascetical life of monastic and non-monastic Christians; and second, his intensifying public involvement in the last phase of the ancient christological debates, the monothelete controversy, wherein Maximus helped lead an East-West coalition against Byzantine imperial attempts doctrinally to limit Jesus Christ to a single (divine) activity and will devoid of properly human volition. Blowers identifies what he terms Maximus's "cosmo-politeian" worldview, a contemplative and ascetical vision of the participation of all created beings in the novel politeia, or reordered existence, inaugurated by Christ's "new theandric energy". Maximus ultimately insinuated his teaching on the christoformity and cruciformity of the human vocation with his rigorous explication of the precise constitution of Christ's own composite person. In outlining this cosmo-politeian theory, Blowers additionally sets forth a "theo-dramatic" reading of Maximus, inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar, which depicts the motion of creation and history according to the christocentric "plot" or interplay of divine and creaturely freedoms. Blowers also amplifies how Maximus's cumulative achievement challenged imperial ideology in the seventh century--the repercussions of which cost him his life-and how it generated multiple recontextualizations in the later history of theology.

The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor
The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor

Author: Torstein Tollefsen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2008-08-07

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0191608068

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St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662), was a major Byzantine thinker, a theologian and philosopher. He developed a philosophical theology in which the doctrine of God, creation, the cosmic order, and salvation is integrated in a unified conception of reality. Christ, the divine Logos, is the centre of the principles (the logoi ) according to which the cosmos is created, and in accordance with which it shall convert to its divine source. Torstein Tollefsen treats Maximus' thought from a philosophical point of view, and discusses similar thought patterns in pagan Neoplatonism. The study focuses on Maximus' doctrine of creation, in which he denies the possibility of eternal coexistence of uncreated divinity and created and limited being. Tollefsen shows that by the logoi God institutes an ordered cosmos in which separate entities of different species are ontologically interrelated, with man as the centre of the created world. The book also investigates Maximus' teaching of God's activities or energies, and shows how participation in these energies is conceived according to the divine principles of the logoi. An extensive discussion of the complex topic of participation is provided.