Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

64 INTRODUCTION
original equality as, through the Word of God, they again
contemplated with all their powers the one God. ‘For the end,’ as
Origen repeatedly stated, ‘is always like the beginning.’ 8
MAXIMUS’ CORRECTION OF ORIGENISM
As we have seen, Origenism retained its following among the more
intellectual Greek monks, despite the condemnations of the sixth
century, and much of Maximus’ effort in his earlier Ambigua is
directed to meeting the challenge of this kind of cosmic theology.
Ultimately, Maximus’ response is to develop a more adequate cosmic
theology of his own, or rather to draw out of the riches of the Orthodox
theological tradition the true cosmic theology that Origenism had
distorted. There are several strands in Maximus’ thinking here. Some
are quite technical and philosophical: Origenism is wrong, in part,
because it has an inaccurate analysis of the way things are. Here
Maximus corrects, but often (indeed usually) corrects very gently: he
retains much of the language and concepts of Origenism but corrects
it by thinking it through again. He draws the Origenist monks into his
way of thinking, he does not simply refute their ideas. And perhaps
the deepest reason for this is that Maximus shares many of the
concerns of Origenist monks: like them he sees the cosmos as an
environment of God’s loving care, his providence, so that to return to
unity and contemplation is to fulfil the nature of rational creatures
within the cosmos. Like them, he thinks that understanding —
philosophical understanding—matters. But unlike them (perhaps: we
have no very clear idea about these ‘Origenist’ monks9 ), he rejects
their intellectualism and develops an understanding of the cosmos to
which the Incarnate Word is central.
Much has been written on Maximus’ correction of Origenism. Here I
shall only sketch in a few important points: precisely because of the
care Maximus takes in rethinking Origenism a full understanding of
what he achieved would demand a detailed analysis that would be out
of place in such an introduction as this. 10 But perhaps the most
fundamental revision Maximus demanded of the Origenist cosmology
concerned its conviction that originally there had been a state of
perfection, of rest, from which the rational beings fell (and to which
they would eventually be restored). This could be stated concisely as a
triad: becoming-rest-movement. Rational beings become (that is, come
to be), they first enjoyed a state of rest and contemplation, they fell
and initiated movement. For Maximus this triad has to be replaced by
another: becoming-movement-rest. This, for Maximus, much more
accurately captures the condition of created beings. First, they come to
be. This is itself a change, a form of movement, so becoming