Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

44 INTRODUCTION
necessity of ascetic struggle, if we are to make any progress towards
God.
In this Difficulty, and elsewhere, there is another more general
difference from the presentation of ascetic theology found in the
earlier works. We have already noted that Evagrius, and following him
Maximus, develops a classification of the passions based on a broadly
Platonic analysis of the make-up of the human soul. At several points
in Difficulty 10, we find Maximus developing a quite elaborate
analysis of the soul, its manner of operation and its relation to the
body. He prefaces his extended treatment of the Transfiguration and
all that in the Old Testament foreshadowed that occasion with an
analysis of the way the soul operates (Amb. 10.2–3). Later on there is
a detailed analysis of the passionate part of the soul (Amb. 10.44).
Both these analyses are drawn, quite directly, from a work by
Nemesius, fourth-century Bishop of Emesa, called On human nature.
As we saw earlier, the point of such analysis is diagnostic: an
understanding of how the soul is affected by the passions will help in
overcoming, or sublimating, them. The source of this analysis in
Evagrius and the early Maximus is mainly a kind of practical wisdom
worked out by the Desert Fathers and their successors (though we
have already noticed some philosophical borrowing); in the Ambigua
(and also in several of the opuscula) such analysis is drawn from the
Greek philosophical tradition (especially from Nemesius, who seems
to have been something of a favourite with Maximus, and later with
St John Damascene). Such a drawing together of ascetic wisdom and
the inheritance of Classical and Hellenistic philosophy is also
something that, through Maximus, becomes characteristic of later
Byzantine theology.
Difficulty 10 presents the most extended discussion of Maximian
theology in a single treatise, covering as it does Trinitarian theology
and Christology, the doctrine of creation and providence, the
relationship between the two Testaments, the nature of the soul’s
ascent to God, and much else—all focused on the event of the
Transfiguration of Christ. 18 In focusing on the Transfiguration,
Maximus was picking up an already existing tradition in monastic
spirituality: it is already found in the Macarian Homilies, 19 and was
destined to become very important to the fourteenth-century
hesychasts. But it is found elsewhere in Maximus himself, in the
second of his Centuries on Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation. It
is perhaps worth quoting, as it provides a sketch of the central part of
Difficulty 10.
the Lord does not always appear in glory to all who stand
before Him. To beginners He appears in the form of a servant (cf.