Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

MAXIMUS’ SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY 37
the principles in accordance with which everything in the cosmos was
created through the Word of God, the Logos. In the fallen world they
are no longer clear to us: we tend not to see God’s meaning in the
world and all its parts, rather we tend to see the world in relation to
ourselves and read into it our meaning. As a result the world becomes
an arena for human conflict, for we all see it differently, in a way that
is focused on separated selves. To see the logoi of the natural order is
to see it as it is and to be freed from our private prejudices, which are
rooted in the disorder created in our hearts by the passions. It is also
to understand the providence and judgment of God, as Evagrius puts
it, that is to understand how God has constituted the cosmos as a kind
of arena in which fallen souls learn how to turn back their attention to
God. In this state of natural contemplation the mind begins to ‘see its
own radiance’, 8 begins to be aware of its own contemplative powers.
From this point on, the soul can progress to the final stage of
contemplation of God, of theologia. This is the realm of prayer, which
Evagrius regards as a state rather than an activity, not so much
something you do as something you are. In this state the soul recovers
its true nature: ‘the state of prayer is an impassible habit which
snatches up the soul that loves wisdom to the intellectual heights by a
most sublime love’. 9
THE TRANSFORMATION OF EVAGRIUS
Such, very roughly sketched, is the Evagrian pattern to which
Maximus is deeply indebted. But it is not present in Maximus’
writings unchanged. To begin with, behind Evagrius’ teaching on
prayer and ascetic struggle there lay his ‘Origenist’ metaphysic, with
which Maximus profoundly disagreed, and of which he was
its greatest critic. But he was a critic with great sympathy for what he
criticized, and extremely anxious not to throw out the baby with the
bath-water. At the level of ascetic theology, Maximus is able to
preserve most of what Evagrius taught, and he does. But he thinks it
through again, and though many of the concepts and terms he uses
are clearly Evagrian, what is expressed is no less distinctively
Maximian. Thinking it through again partly means weaving into the
Evagrian material themes from other traditions, especially that which
stems from Denys the Areopagite, but also themes from the Macarian
Homilies and from Diadochus of Photikê. But more deeply still,
Maximus’ rethinking of Evagrian categories is manifest in the
somewhat different spirit that emerges as he develops his ascetic
theology.