A Language of Stone and Sky: Maximus and Augustine (Part Two)
Prolegomena: Justification and Scope[1]
Before
we peer through keyholes, it seems a small explanation for the scope of this
paper and its justification is in order.
Why these two, Maximus and Augustine?
It goes without saying that Augustine is perhaps the most influential
theologian in the West after Jesus and Paul,[2]
and thus his appearance may need little preface. We will see in a moment that given the reason
for his inclusion here, this is not entirely true. But first: why Maximus? Before the first publication of von
Balthasar’s Cosmic Liturgy,
scholarship had almost exclusively seen Maximus’ importance in fairly
restricted terms as the proponent of Dyothelitism, while his ascetical and
mystical works were seen as merely the work of a compiler, a “conscientious but
unimaginative drone.”[3] Though Jaroslav Pelikan’s advice, that “as
the example…of Maximus Confessor shows, it also deserves to be called a form of
doctrinal development when an era summarizes into a systematic whole the
doctrines that have developed in preceding centuries,”[4] is
itself suggestive, it comes off a little tame as a lasting testimony to
Maximus’ brilliance when compared to von Balthasar’s admittedly flowery prose:
Thinkers
of the class of Maximus Confessor are not simply trivial compilers or passive reservoirs;
they are creators, who can work, surely, with traditional material who also
know how to arrange the pieces according to their architectural design. What makes Maximus a genius is that he was
able to reach inside and open up to each other five or six intellectual worlds
that seemingly had lost all contact; he was able to bring out of each a light
that illumined all the rest, leading to new connections that gave rise, in
turn, to unexpected similarities and relationships.[5]
Maximus
is now seen by many to be a figure that stands at the apex of Eastern thought,
molding all that came before and casting a long shadow on all that followed
much in the same manner as Augustine did for the West. Thus the prestige, genius, and influence of
these figures stands as one layer of justification for their inclusion. This is even more so when the so-called
Cappadocian Fathers—especially the two Gregory’s—who always seem to find their
way into Maximus’ thoughts are themselves labeled by Pelikan elsewhere as
cumulatively the Eastern equivalent to Augustine.[6] Thus there is a sort of triple precedent of prestige
and influence to hold these two up for discussion then, for in a sense in doing
so one compares Maximus, Augustine, and the
Cappadocians.
There is more, however. The choice to compare a thinker from the
“East” and a thinker from the “West” was not without forethought, for these two
cardinal directions often stand by synecdoche for radically distinct ways of
doing theology. In fact because of an apparent
disconnect between the historical theology and systematic theology departments,
nearly the entirety of the last half-century of systematic theology working in
the so-called “Trinitarian renaissance” has labored under just such a
distorting idea.[7] Recently however, in what Sarah Coakley has
called a “third wave” of Trinitarian scholarship,[8]
there is a growing unrest shown by a small but powerful array of thinkers who have
become increasingly impatient with modern systematic presentations precisely because
of their shoddy historical scaffolding.[9] Though we will not enter in their specific
debates here, their attempts to show the theological affinity rather than
disassociation between East and West will in its own small way be carried
forward here constructively in the comparison of Maximus and Augustine. And though Brian Daley has noted “how much
St. Augustine may have influenced the theology of St. Maximus the Confessor is
an open question; the short answer is that we have virtually no direct evidence
that there was any influence at all,”[10]
we hope, much like Daley continues on to do in his essay,[11]
to show that there are innumerable and fascinating parallels in their
respective work.
Thus this work will proceed in a
manner that may appear backwards to those familiar with the chronological
developments: to demonstrate the two-wills doctrine as the “keyhole” that opens
upon the entire vista of theology we will start
with it, both to elaborate some of its details, but also to let it stand at
first in its sort of stark prima-facie esotericism. In the second section we will proceed to
Incarnation, which will obviously broaden our horizons and allow us to begin to
see how the two will’s are self isolated as a virtually self-contained problem
but related to the entire gamut of Christological and Trinitarian
discussion. Finally, in the last main
section, we will expand further to creation itself, to show how the two-wills
doctrine is thus connected to Christology, and how Christology orients and is
embedded in a Christian aesthetic and semiotic vision of a universe
overbrimming with God’s glory. Along the
way we will notice that discussion of these three “sections” bleed into and
saturate one another, not being truly discrete but more properly abstractable
“moments” or “captures” of a total picture.
[1] One may note a certain inconsistency in my
citations—some from PG, some from English translations of Maximus, etc... Maximus proved much more difficult to
translate than I had anticipated (though this embarrassment was mitigated
somewhat by Wilkins, Blowers, Brian Daley, Jaroslav Pelikan, and several others
all in one way or another starting out by noting the difficulty of Maximus’
prose, so if they found it difficult I’m not too ashamed). I attempted to track down and check as many
quotes as I could in Greek, but ultimately time constraints meant that some
quotes simply had to go unchecked.
[2] C.f. John Rist, “Augustine of Hippo,” in The Medieval Theologians, ed. G.R. Evans
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001)
[3] Brian Daley, “Introduction” in Von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 15.
[4] Jaroslav Pelikan, The
Christian Tradition: A History of Development of Doctrine vol.3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300)
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), 269.
[5] Balthasar, Cosmic
Liturgy, 57. Indeed Balthasar’s
presentation of Maximus as “creative synthesizer” of the tradition to retain
its strongest and most orthodox elements from an increasingly fragmenting stream
of concepts is the burden of a lengthy
introduction, pp.29-74.
[6] Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity
and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian
Encounter With Hellenism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 5-6.
[7] Often this division goes under the title “The de
Regnón Paradigm” though this is unfair as it is a misreading of de Regnón. c.f. Michel René Barnes, “De Régnon
Reconsidered,” in Augustinian Studies,
26:2 (1995), 51-79; Kristin Hennessy, “An Answer to De Regnón’s ‘Accusers’: Why
We Should Not Speak of ‘His’ Paradigm,” Harvard
Theological Review 100:2 (2007): 179-197
[8] Sarah Coakley, “Afterword: ‘Relational Ontology,’
Trinity, and Science,” in The Trinity and
an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology ed. John
Polkinghorn (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing, 2010), 191.
[9] The literature is growing but still seems to circulate
around several key thinkers.. C.f David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite; Stephen Holmes, The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History,
and Modernity (Illinois: IVP, 2012); Paul Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic
Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Daniel Costelo, The Apathetic God: Exploring the
Contemporary Relevance of Divine Impassibility (Eugene: Wipf and Stock,
2009); Thomas Weinandy O.F.M. Cap., Does
God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000); Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to 4th Century Trinitarianism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011); Michel René Barnes, “Augustine in
Contemporary Theology,” Theological Studies,
56, 1995; Idem, “De-Regnon Reconsidered,” Augustinian Studies, no.26-2 (1995), 51-79; Idem, “Re-reading
Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity,” in The
Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium of the Trinity ed. Stephen T.
Davis, Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins, (New York: Oxford Press, 1999);
Lewis Ayres, “The Fundamental Grammar of Augustine’s Trinitarian Theology,” in Augustine and His Critics: Essay in Honor
Gerald Bonner, ed. Robert Dodaro and George Lawless (New York: Routledge,
2000); Idem, “Remember that You Are Catholic,” (Serm. 52:2); Sarah Coakley,
“Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction—Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and
the Pedagogy of the Song,” Modern
Theology, 18 (2002): 431-443; David Bentley Hart, “The Mirror of the
Infinite: Gregory of Nyssa and the Vestigium
Trinitatis,” Modern Theology 18 (2002): 541-561; Lewis Ayres, “On Not Three
People: The Fundamental Themes of Gregory of Nyssa’s Theology as seen in ‘To
Ablabius: On Not Three Gods,’” Modern
Theology 18 (2002): 445-474; Michel René Barnes, “Divine Unity and the
Divided Self: Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology in its Psychological
Context,” Modern Theology 18 (2002):
475-496; Lucian Turcescu, “’Person’ vs ‘Individual’ and Other Modern
Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa,” Modern
Theology 18 (2002):527-539; Michel R. Barnes, “The Fourth Century as
Trinitarian Canon,” in Christian Origins:
Theology, Rhetoric, and Community, ed. Lewis Ayres and Gareth Jones
(London: Routledge, 1998).
[10] Brian E. Daley, “Making a Human Will Divine: Augustine
and Maximus on Christ and Human Salvation,” in Orthodox Readings of Augustine ed. Aristotle Papanikolau and George
E. Democopoulos (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 101.
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