Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

INTRODUCTION 53
theandric) activity’. According to all the manuscripts of the Corpus
Areopagiticum that we possess, this letter in fact refers to ‘a new
theandric activity’, and this is the reading Maximus knows and uses
as the basis for his exposition. But since all the Greek manuscripts of
the Dionysian writings go back to the edition prepared by John of
Scythopolis in the middle of the sixth century, and John was himself
anxious to present Denys as an orthodox Cyrilline Chalcedonian, the
authenticity of the Monophysite/Monenergist/Monothelite reading ‘one
theandric activity’ cannot be ruled out.
Amb. 5 consists of a lengthy paraphrase of Denys the Areopagite’s
fourth letter. In this letter Denys explains that in the Incarnation God
is called human, not as being the cause of humanity (which is the
ground of ‘cataphatic’ theology, in accordance with which God can be
called everything of which he is the cause, that is, everything that is),
but because ‘he is himself in his whole being truly a man’. Denys then
goes on to explain how in the Incarnation there is a comherence of
divine and human, so that Christ does human things divinely and
divine things humanly, and thus manifests ‘a certain new theandric
activity’. It is not difficult to suspect Denys’ language of deliberately
contradicting the Tome of Leo with its assertion that ‘each form
does what is proper to it in communion with the other’. It is hardly
surprising that those who rejected the Tome of Leo called in support of
their position this letter of Denys’. Maximus’ paraphrase is intended
to show that the fourth letter is entirely in accordance with
Chalcedonian orthodoxy. It is, however, Chalcedonian orthodoxy read
in the light of Cyril—Cyrilline Chalcedonianism. Nowhere is this more
apparent than in the interpretation of Jesus’ walking on the water—
listed by Leo as an example of an unequivocably divine activity—
where Maximus seems to be following Severus of Antioch (entirely
unwittingly, one imagines, given his habitual denunciation of the
Monophysite patriarch): ‘if then with unmoistened feet, which have
bodily bulk and the weight of matter, he traversed the wet and unstable
substance, walking on the sea as on a pavement, he shows through
this crossing that the natural energy of his own flesh is inseparable
from the power of his divinity’ (1049BC: and see my note ad loc.). For
the rest Maximus insists on the integrity of the human nature
assumed by the divine Person. He spells out, in accordance with the
Chalcedonian Definition, that the human nature of Christ included a
human soul, and was in every way like ours, save for sin. He also cites
his favourite Christological text from Gregory the Theologian about the
natures being ‘instituted afresh’, applying this first to the virginal
conception, and then to the new form that the activity of the Incarnate
One takes (his principal example being the walking on the water,
already mentioned). But even as he explains how, in the Incarnation,