Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

NOTES 205
24 Providence and judgment are associated as a pair in Origenist theory.
See chapter 5 of the Introduction.
25 3 Kgd 19:9 ff.
26 Probably an echo of both the chariot in which Elijah ascends into heaven
in 4 Kgd 2:11, and of the chariot of the soul in Plato’s Phaedrus (246A–C).
27 Cf. 4 Kgd 2:1ff.
28 Probably commenting on 4 Kgd 1:9–12, but alluding also to 4 Kgd 6:15–
17.
29 Cf. 1 Kgd 1:9–20.
30 Cf. Lev. 14:33–42.
31 Cf. 3 Kgd 17:8–24.
32 Cf. Matt. 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36.
33 Cf. Isa. 53:2.
34 Cf. Psa. 44:3.
35 Cf. John 1:1.
36 Apophasis: Maximus introduces here the technical terms of apophatic
and cataphatic theology.
37 Cf. John 1:14.
38 This section develops the theme just introduced in the dual
interpretation of the radiant garments of the Transfigured Christ as
both Scriptures and creation.
39 The Evagrian triad of ascetic struggle (praktikê), natural contemplation
(physikê), and theology was related by Origen to a very similar
classification of the categories of philosophy in the prologue to his
Commentary on the Song of Songs: see Louth (1981), 57–8.
40 Cf. Denys the Areopagite, Ep. 9.1 (1105D).
41 Literally: in a Greek way. It is in contrast with the later ‘in a Jewish
way’: cf. St Paul’s contrast between Greeks/Gentiles and Jews,
especially in Rom. 1–3.
42 Cf. Phil. 3.19.
43 A metaphor for the Incarnation used by Gregory Nazianzen in Sermon
38.2 (PG 36:313B). Maximus devotes a Difficulty to Gregory’s use of the
term (suspected of Origenism?): Amb. 33:1285C–1288A, where the
Word’s expressing itself in letters and words is one of the
interpretations offered of the metaphor.
44 Cf. Gen. 39:11–12.
45 This is an important section in which Maximus reworks a fundamental
Evagrian theme. For Evagrius, the five modes of contemplation are: 1.
contemplation of the adorable and holy Trinity, 2. and 3. contemplation
of incorporeal and incorporeal beings, 4. and 5. contemplation of
judgment and providence (Centuries on Spiritual Knowledge I.27, in
Guillaumont [1958]). Maximus’ understanding is quite different. See
Thunberg (1965), 69–75 and Gersh (1978), 226–7.
46 I do not know where Maximus gets these five secret meanings (or
hidden logoi) from. They recall Plato’s ‘five greatest kinds’ (being, rest,
motion, sameness and difference: see Sophist 254D–255C), but are
evidently not the same.
47 One of the ‘Chalcedonian’ adverbs.