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Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

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PREFACE<br />

This volume is intended to provide an introduction to the theological<br />

thinking of Saint Maximus the Confessor. I stress ‘thinking’, rather<br />

than just ‘thought’, as there is already a host of introductions to his<br />

thought. Maximus himself provided such introductions—notably his<br />

Centuries on Love and his Centuries on Theology and the Incarnate<br />

Dispensation of the Son of God. In these works Maximus presents his<br />

thoughts in pithy form as a series of propositions, or at best brief<br />

paragraphs. They have been very popular, and both of them are<br />

available in two different English translations. More recently others<br />

have provided introductions to Maximus’ thought, or aspects of it:<br />

most famously and influentially, the great Swiss Catholic theologian,<br />

Hans Urs von Balthasar (Balthasar 1961, originally published in 1941).<br />

There is even an introduction to other people’s thinking about<br />

Maximus (Nichols 1993). But what has been lacking so far has been<br />

an introduction to Maximus’ thinking: and it is my hope that this book<br />

will help fill that gap. If it does, it will do that by providing, for the<br />

first time in English (or in many cases for any Western language save<br />

Latin and Romanian), translations of some of Maximus’ major<br />

theological treatises, drawn especially from his two collections of<br />

Ambigua, or Difficulties, in which Maximus does not simply present<br />

his conclusions, but displays a theological mind, drawing on Scripture<br />

and all that is meant in Orthodox <strong>Christian</strong>ity by Tradition—the<br />

Fathers, the Councils, spiritual experience—and bringing this to bear<br />

on our understanding of God’s engagement with humankind, an<br />

engagement summed up in his assuming humanity itself in the<br />

Incarnation and overcoming the brokenness of fallen humankind in<br />

his death and resurrection. But the contrast between Maximus in his<br />

major treatises and in his condensed summaries is not at all that<br />

between ‘theology’ and ‘spirituality’ (despite the fact that the<br />

condensed summaries found a place in that great compendium of<br />

Orthodox spirituality, the Philokalia of St Nikodimos of the Holy<br />

Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth), for, as we shall see, even in

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