The Dialectics and Therapeutics of Desire in Maximus the Confessor
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Maximus the Confessor’s Ambiguum 7 has long been considered the anchor of a substantial refutation of Origenist cosmology and teleology, with Maximus still seeking to rehabilitate the ascetical “gospel” of Origen. Yet in commenting on Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 14 in Ambiguum 7, Maximus acknowledges that Gregory is dealing less with the scheme of human origins per se than with the miseries attending life in the body, which opens up the whole question of how embodied, passible human existence is the frontier of human salvation and deification. I argue that for Maximus human desire in all its cosmological and psychosomatic complexity—both as a register of creaturely passibility and affectivity, and as integral to the definition of human volition and freedom—is central to the subtle dialectic of activity and passivity in the creaturely transitus to deification. The morally malleable character of desire and the passions, and their ambiguous but ultimately purposive status within the economy of human transformation, decisively manifest the divine resourcefulness in fulfilling the mystery of deification—especially in view of Christ’s use of human passibility in inaugurating the new eschatological “mode” (tropos) of human nature. In his engagement of Gregory of Nyssa, in particular, Maximus develops a sophisticated dialectics and therapeutics of desire that integrates important perspectives of the Confessor’s anthropology, christology, eschatology, and asceticism.
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15)
Ibid., p. 179.
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18)
See Renczes, Agir de Dieu et liberté de l’homme, pp. 50-60, 143-4, 146-7, 365-8.
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21)
Ibid., p. 187.
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32)
On this polemic, see Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua, pp. 181-204.
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64)
On this theme, see Paul Blowers, “Bodily Inequality, Material Chaos, and the Ethics of Equalization in Maximus the Confessor,” Studia Patristica 42 (Leuven: Peeters Press, 2006), pp. 51-6.
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68)
Catherine Osborne, Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 52-70.
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94)
See ibid., p. 424.
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98)
On this principle see Larchet, La divinisation de l’homme, pp. 572-93.
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109)
Laird, “The Education of Desire,” pp. 77-89; id., Gregory of Nyssa and the Grasp of Faith, pp. 63-107; id., “The Fountain of His Lips: Desire and Divine Union in Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs,” Spiritus 7 (2007), pp. 40-57.
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110)
Cf. Verna Harrison, “Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies 41 (1990), pp. 441-71; ead., “A Gender Reversal in Gregory of Nyssa’s First Homily on the Song of Songs,” Studia Patristica 27 (1993), pp. 34-8; ead., “Gender, Generation and Virginity in Cappadocian Theology,” Journal of Theological Studies 47 (1996), pp. 38-68; Sarah Coakley, “Creaturehood before God: Male and Female,” Theology 93 (1990), pp. 343-53, reprinted in her Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 109-29; ead., “The Eschatological Body: Gender, Transformation and God,” Modern Theology 16 (2002), pp. 61-73, reprinted in Powers and Submissions, pp. 153-67; Morwenna Ludlow, Gregory of Nyssa: Ancient and (Post)modern, pp. 175-201.
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128)
Stephen Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1978), pp. 250, 278-9; see also Blowers, “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Concept of ‘Perpetual Progress,’” pp. 164-5.
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The Dialectics and Therapeutics of Desire in Maximus the Confessor
In: Vigiliae ChristianaeSearch for other papers by Paul M. Blowers in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Maximus the Confessor’s Ambiguum 7 has long been considered the anchor of a substantial refutation of Origenist cosmology and teleology, with Maximus still seeking to rehabilitate the ascetical “gospel” of Origen. Yet in commenting on Gregory Nazianzen’s Oration 14 in Ambiguum 7, Maximus acknowledges that Gregory is dealing less with the scheme of human origins per se than with the miseries attending life in the body, which opens up the whole question of how embodied, passible human existence is the frontier of human salvation and deification. I argue that for Maximus human desire in all its cosmological and psychosomatic complexity—both as a register of creaturely passibility and affectivity, and as integral to the definition of human volition and freedom—is central to the subtle dialectic of activity and passivity in the creaturely transitus to deification. The morally malleable character of desire and the passions, and their ambiguous but ultimately purposive status within the economy of human transformation, decisively manifest the divine resourcefulness in fulfilling the mystery of deification—especially in view of Christ’s use of human passibility in inaugurating the new eschatological “mode” (tropos) of human nature. In his engagement of Gregory of Nyssa, in particular, Maximus develops a sophisticated dialectics and therapeutics of desire that integrates important perspectives of the Confessor’s anthropology, christology, eschatology, and asceticism.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 416 | 139 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 99 | 8 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 130 | 9 | 0 |
