Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

MAXIMUS’ SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY 35
what is being discussed is something that takes place in the life of any
Christian who strives to be faithful to his baptism (we have already
noticed that one of his profoundest spiritual treatises, his second
letter, translated below, was written for a courtier). Maximus himself
often makes explicit that the Christian life is something that has its
foundation in baptism (something not always emphasized by other
monastic writers, for instance Evagrius himself). So he says in his
first Century on Theology and the Incarnation: ‘Baptized in Christ
through the Spirit we receive the first incorruption according to the
flesh. Keeping this original incorruption spotless by giving ourselves
to good works and by dying to our own will, we await the final
incorruption bestowed by Christ in the Spirit’ (CT I.87). What is built
on the foundation laid by baptism is something worked out by
Maximus using all the resources of ascetical theology available to
him. (In this emphasis on baptism he reveals his affinity with
Diadochus of Photikê.)
THE INFLUENCE OF EVAGRIUS
What were these resources? Principally the works of Evagrius and
those who followed him. There Maximus found a pattern for the
stages of the spiritual life. For Evagrius sees the Christian life as
passing through three stages. First there is the stage he calls
praktikê, the term that classical philosophers had coined for the active
life of engagement in the world in contrast to theôrêtikê, used to
designate a life of intellectual activity (contemplation). Praktikê,
however, for Evagrius does not mean life in the world, rather it refers
to the initial stage of the spiritual life which is characterized by effort
or activity, the effort of striving to follow the commandments and
cultivate virtues, and of struggling against temptation—in the
translations that follow, I have usually translated it ‘ascetic struggle’.
Evagrius has a great deal to say about this stage of praktikê: ithas,
indeed, been remarked that Evagrius’ ability is especially ‘in the field
of practical piety’. 3 It is what Evagrius has to say on praktikê that was
preserved in the original Greek (his more daring speculations survive
only in Syriac), and it is on this that Maximus drew most heavily
(though he was well aware of Evagrius’ speculative theology, and in
his writings attempts to provide a metaphysical background to his
ascetic theology more consonant with Christian orthodoxy). 4 The stage
of praktikê is followed by that of natural contemplation (physikê, the
Greek for ‘natural’): this is the beginning of contemplation, in which
the purified mind is able to contemplate the natural order and
understand its inner structure. This is followed by the final stage,
that of theology, understood in the usual patristic sense, not as some