Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

212 NOTES
7 By which Maximus seems to mean what was from the beginning and
what will be at the end.
8 This is the subject of the lines in Gregory’s poem that immediately
precede those discussed in this Difficulty.
9 See Luke 16.26.
10 Gregory Nazianzen, Sermon 41.12 [on Holy Pentecost] (PG 36:445).
11 Denys the Areopagite, Divine Names 4.12 (712AB). Note that Maximus
interprets this passage of the Incarnation. In a recent book, Catherine
Osborne has argued—correctly it seems to me—that this is a
misinterpretation of the Areopagite (Osborne [1994], 195–200). It is
interesting that such a Christological interpretation is found so early.
12 ‘Play’, then, seems to take the place in the Evagrian scheme of ascetic
struggle, leading, as it does, to natural contemplation, and finally to
theology.
13 Gregory Nazianzen, Sermon 7.19 [on the death of his brother Caesarius]
(PG 35:777).
DIFFICULTY 1
1 Gregory Nazianzen, Sermon 29.2 (PG 36.76). Also commented on in
Amb. 23 (1257C–1261C), and alluded to in Amb. 10.43, above.
2 In fact, the third.
3 Idem. Sermon 23.8 (PG 35.1160). This could be punctuated to read: ‘The
monad is moved because of its wealth and the dyad is superseded (that
is, [the monad, presumably, passes] beyond matter and form, out of
which bodies are made). The triad is defined on account of its
perfection.’
4 Gregory Nazianzen, Sermon 40.5 [on baptism] (PG 36.364).
5 The temptation to translate enhypostatos (here and elsewhere) as
‘existing in persons’ (or ‘existing as persons’), under the influence of the
once-popular theory of ‘enhypostasia’, should probably be resisted:
enhypostatos is best taken as the opposite of anhypostatos in its basic
meaning of ‘non-existent’ (pace Lampe [1961] s.v. enhypostatos, B.2).
This was argued by B.E.Daley, in relation to Leontius of Byzantium, to
whom, since Loofs, the doctrine of ‘enhypostasia’ has been ascribed, in a
paper at the Ninth International Conference on Patristic Studies (1979),
that has never been published. I am grateful to the author for a copy of
it, which is summarized in Grillmeier (1989), 204–8. Maximus certainly,
however, intends a play on words between the monad as enhypostatos
ontotês homoousiou Triados and the triad as enousios hyparxis
trishypostatou monados (see chapter 4 of the Introduction).
6 Another play on words: the tri-hypostatic triad is monad, because it is
(from the verb that provides ousia, ‘substance or essence’), and the onesubstance
monad is triad, because it subsists (from the verb that
provides hypostasis, ‘person’).
7 ‘Mode’: tropos. There is an allusion here to the Cappadocian Definition
of person (hypostasis) as ‘mode of existence’ (tropos tês hyparxeôs).