# Christocentric Cosmology of Maximus the Confessor



## RamistThomist (Feb 16, 2018)

Tollefsen, Theodore. Oxford University Press.

I found this text quite useful. True, it does have some flaws. There is a bit of speculation and some chapters do seem to go on indefinitely. Nevertheless, Tollefsen gives us a thorough treatment of numerous key texts in St Maximus's corpus. Tollefsen locates St Maximus clearly within the NeoPlatonic background, but also notes that Maximus broke the back of Hellenism at important points.

His key argument is that “The Logos is embodied in the world by certain logoi that come from him” (Tollefsen 2). So what are the logoi? The logoi are all contained in the divine wisdom, not just his thoughts but his acts of will. Logoi are ideas through which the creative will of God manifests itself (66). They are divine ideas through which the essences of such beings are instituted by the creative act (71). What God has defined eternally and what he wills at the moment of creation is conceived in the logoi as a system of essence with internal differentiation (87).

Contrary to modern personalist theologians, Maximus’ basic category is essence/ousia (93). But it isn't one undefined simplicity that could mean nothing, everything, or both. For Maximus essence contracts and expands (Amb. 10). It is moved from the generic to the specific. The movement of expansion is the ontological constitution of the cosmos (108). 

Tollefsen then gives a good summary of what person and hypostasis meant. Fathers: a hypostasis is an essence with properties. A hypostasis does not exist separate from nature, but is always present. The being of a hypostasis is in tension between the logos of nature and the mode of existence. A nature must always have a hypostasis, but not necessarily a hypostasis of its own kind. This is why Christ doesn’t have a human hypostasis.

Tollefsen gets into dangerous area when he suggests some overlap between Maximus's logoi and Gregory Palamas's energies. Yet he also notes they aren't quite the same thing. Aristotle: distinction between potentiality and actuality is what explains change. An energeia is an action which includes the end (Metaph. Theta, 3.1047a30ff.). With this background, Palamas then advances his anti-Barlaamite argument: If man is to be deified by participation in God, and if the essence of God is imparticipable, then man must be deified by some other ‘aspect’ of God than His essence (140). Otherwise, man would become God's essence. The solution, so Palamas argues, is the energies. When we say ‘God’ we do not mean the trihypostatic essence separately, but the essence with the activity. The energy is not separated from the essence because it is always from it (ex ekeines ousan).

Yet it is not quite the same as the logoi. The logoi are God’s intention through which all creatures receive their generic, specific, and individual essences. The logoi are acts of will instituting essence. They are the principles by which creatures participate in God (174). Cf. De Char. 3.23-25. By his logos of being man is constituted a essence which joins in the triadic structure of essence--potentiality--activity. Essence is the origin of potentiality. The divine energy is the manifestation of God’s power as Being, Goodness, etc.

The book is quite fine but rather expensive. One gets the same argument from David Bradshaw's Aristotle East and West for $70 cheaper.

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