Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

26 INTRODUCTION
struggle is the reconciling power of the love of God—the love of God that
is the eternal life of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and that
is manifest and reaches out to us in the assumption of a human life by
the Son in the Incarnation. This was beyond human understanding,
but not beyond human misunderstanding: and it was to protect
against human misunderstanding of what the Fathers called theology
(meaning the doctrine of the Trinity) and ‘economy’ (meaning God’s
dealing with humankind—pre-eminently in the Incarnation, but
including creation and revelation through Scripture and reconciling
activity in the Sacraments) that what we call the ‘theological tradition’
had been developed by the Fathers and the Councils.
The theological tradition that Maximus had received and sought to
interpret faithfully—and which, in the Monothelite controversy, he
played a decisive role in forming—was composed of several strands.
The most obvious—because so many of Maximus’ scholia directly deal
with passages from their writings—is the Cappadocian tradition, that
is the theological doctrine of the three fourth-century bishops from
Cappadocia—Basil of Caesarea, Basil’s long-standing friend, Gregory
of Nazianzus (though this was the episcopal see of his father: he was
Bishop of, successively, Sasima and briefly Constantinople), and
Basil’s younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa. It may be an
oversimplification to speak of the ‘Cappadocian Fathers’ (it is a
modern habit), but for Maximus what it means overwhelmingly is the
teaching of St Gregory of Nazianzus, ‘the Theologian’. 24 The evidence
of his engagement with the Theologian is mainly found in his
Difficulties. On the face of it, this is ambiguous evidence for Gregory’s
positive influence on Maximus: it is more directly evidence of the
difficulty Maximus found in interpreting him. What kind of difficulties
Maximus faced is too complex a question to go into here. 25 But some of
the more theological problems he had with Gregory can be stated
simply. Part of Maximus’ problem with Gregory was the problem of
‘Origenism’. Gregory, like many fourth-century theologians, had been
deeply influenced by Origen: in their youth, Basil and Gregory
Nazianzen had compiled a florilegium from Origen’s works, called the
Philokalia. It was precisely because of his authority as ‘the Theologian’
that Gregory was a favourite author among those monks inclined to
Origenism. Other problems had to do with his Christology: that we
shall come to soon. But the Cappadocian Fathers—or Gregory—did
provide answers as well as problems, not least their clarification of the
ontological language (language concerning being) to be used in
relation to God: they thus contributed towards the ‘Chalcedonian logic’
that Maximus brought to perfection. But Maximus was also indebted
to the youngest Cappadocian Father, St Gregory of Nyssa. This
Gregory was probably the most brilliant speculative thinker of the