Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

208 NOTES
Faith 13 (Kotter [1973], 37). This definition of place ultimately derives
from Aristotle, Physics IV.4.
101 Maximus here and elsewhere (e.g. in sections 5 and 40) seems to use the
third person singular imperfect of ‘to be’ (ên) in an absolute way to mean
‘exists eternally’. I do not think this is a Neoplatonic usage— Plotinus
regards eternity (let alone the One) as being beyond past and future
tense, and characterized by an absolute use of the present tense (see
Enneads III.7.3.34–6). It is, perhaps, a Christian usage, derived from
John 1:1 (En archêi ên ho logos): Cyril of Alexandria, in his Commentary
on St John’s Gospel, comments that ‘Used of God, the word “was”
introduces the meaning of his absolute eternity, his being older than
any temporal beginning, and removes the thought that he might be
made’ (Book 1, c.7, on John 1:6f.: Pusey [1872], I.91, II. 5–8). It is also
found in the scholia on the Corpus Areopagiticum, ascribed to Maximus
(many of which are, however, by John of Scythopolis): on Divine Names
5.8 (which explains how tenses apply to God), we read: ‘“He was”, and
what is understood to be included in this, agrees with nothing else than
God, because “he was”, considered as anterior to every beginning’ (PG 4.
328A8–11), which is very close to Cyril, but not actually a citation: see
also 316BC where the use of ên is justified specifically in relation to
John 1:1, though it is not explained there what it means.
102 Cf. Denys the Areopagite, Divine Names V.8:824A.
103 From here to the end of the section Maximus engages in a complicated
argument against the possibility of uncreated matter which, he argues,
would possess being from itself, but not form: out of which he constructs
a reductio ad absurdum.
104 See n. 101, above.
105 This way of speaking of an ultimate unity (the monad) and an ultimate
duality (the dyad), according to Maximus derived from the monad, goes
back to Pythagoras, and was current in Neoplatonic circles (influenced,
as they were, by the second-century revival of Pythagoreanism).
106 The text in Migne marks no division here. This is taken from Eriugena’s
version.
107 For this triad (ousia, dynamis, energeia) of Neoplatonic inspiration, see:
lamblichus, On the Mysteries of Egypt II.1; Proclus, Elements of
Theology 169; Denys the Areopagite, Celestial Hierarchy XI.2, Divine
Names IV.1, 23. See also Sherwood (1955a), 103–16.
108 Denys the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, 13.3. I have assimilated
the text given in Migne to the text of the new critical edition: Suchla
(1990), 229.
109 See Denys the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, 4.4 (Suchla [1990], 148,
l.15): ‘as each to its own goal’ is, in fact, an exact citation.
110 The material in this section is mainly drawn from Nemesius, On human
nature 42–4. John Damascene also draws on these chapters from
Nemesius (apparently quite independently of Maximus) in his
discussion of providence in Exposition of the Faith 43.