Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

MAXIMUS’ SPIRITUAL THEOLOGY 43
ASCETICISM AND DOGMA
So far I have drawn Maximus’ ascetical theology entirely from his
early works, especially his Centuries on Love and his Centuries on
Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation. How is this carried over in
his later writings, when his principal concerns become more
theological? In essence what happens is that, whereas his ascetical
theology is set firmly against a theological background (as we have
seen), his dogmatic and philosophical theology presupposes an ascetic
formation. This is explicit in the lengthy discussion of the Monothelite
heresy contained in Opusc. 7, which begins with a summary of
ascetical theology as the basis of the Deacon Marinus’ acuity in
theological matters. But the interweaving of dogmatic or philosophical
with the ascetic is something that is all-pervading and often implicit.
It is in fact hard to characterize the kind of theology we find in
writings such as the Books of Difficulties and the Questions to
Thalassius—a genre that became typical of Byzantine theology, both
Photius’ Amphilochia and Michael Psellus’ theological treatises often
taking a similar form, that of commentary on difficult passages in the
Fathers, especially St Gregory the Theologian. It moves from
philosophical matters to issues of strictly dogmatic theology (for
instance, the doctrine of the Trinity, or Christology) to what one might
call architectonic themes (for instance, in Maximus, the mutual
implication of written law and natural law, the visible realm and the
spiritual realm, life in the world and the life of contemplation—all
reflected in the microcosmic reality of the human person, and
transfigured in the divine-human reality of Christ) to questions of
ascetic theology, with no sense that they are separate, but instead
illustrating how they mutually coinhere. But having said that, one
must add that for Maximus, into whatever realms of speculation his
intellect roams, ascetic theology remains fundamental. For instance,
in the longest and most fascinating of the Difficulties, the tenth
(translated below), what initially makes the passage from Gregory’s
sermon a difficulty is that it seems to envisage an ascent to God by
means of ‘reason and contemplation’—simply. Union with God by the
ascent of the intellect in contemplation seems to ignore ascetic struggle
—praktikê—altogether. Maximus develops his response by lighting on
the ‘cloud or veil’ that Gregory says the intellect passes through as it
ascends to union with God. This, he says, is an allusion to the stage of
ascetic struggle, the period when the intellect is veiled or darkened,
and needs purification by means of the reordering of the passions and
the formation of virtues. Whatever flights of speculation Maximus
rises to in the rest of the Difficulty, their basis is the absolute