Headley, SC if All Things Were Equal, Nothing Would Exist-From Cosmos to Hierarchy in Dionysios the Areopagite (Sixth Century) & Maximos the Confessor (580-662)

7/27/2019 Headley, SC if All Things Were Equal, Nothing Would Exist-From Cosmos to Hierarchy in Dionysios the Areopagite (Sixth Century) & Maximos the Confessor (580-662)

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'IF ALL THINGS WERE EQUAL, NOTHING WOULD EXIST'I:FROM COSMOS TO HIERARCHY IN DIONYSIOS THE AREOPAGITE

(SIXTH CENTURY) & MAxIMOS THE CONFESSOR (580-662)Stephen C. HEADLEY

Contemporary man will have trouble seeing the logic of Saint Augustine's(354-430) deduction: 'I fall things were equal, noth ing would exist'. Whatis likely to be obscure is the unstated relation the bishop of Hippo preswnes between the equality of modernity, a sort of imposed similitude,and totality. In ancient Greek the term 'hierarchy', which describes theconstruction of wholes, was invented a century after Saint Augustine'sdeath by a Syrian monk, who called himself Dionysios, in order todescribe the sacred order of relations of creatures to their Creator. Despitethe articulation of the one God through the relations of three Trinitarianhypostases, the Christian God is always considered as united in the distinction of three persons.2 The spectrum from totus, a whole, to nothing(ness)I. 'Quia non essent omnia, si essent aequaLia ... (Sainr Augusrine, De diumis questionibus

octoginta tribus, question 41, linea 3).2. Whar makes me.Chrisrian 'Son of God' rheism distincrive? A rapid juxcapositionof earlier

cheologies will bring our ifS specific characrer. Mosr primary religious expression is 'cosmomeisric', S[fucruring me world inrernally by insralling a muirirude of spirirs and divinities(Assmann 2001). Monomeism is always a counrer-religion, juxraposed ro mese earliercosmo[heisms, creating social space in me 'inner self of man. For man [Q admir macme multimde of his idols is false gods is a painful experience, only accomplished by meadmission mac meir recognirion is sinful. 'The cosmic process loses ifS synergic characterifir is conceived of as [he work of a single God.' (Assmann 2002: 230) The gods foundedsocieties 'and kingdoms, ofi:en only of a single ciry, bur nonemeless exercised power on anearm mar was inseparable from namre and myth. Beginning in me founeenrh cenrUlYbefore Chrisr, Mosaic monorheism used an entirely differenr scarting poinr, namely marman was creaced in me image of his Crearor. This was comemporaneous [Q me very differenr inua-cosmic solar monorheism of Amenophis IV- Akhenaron. While Akhenaconwas uying ro engender a correcr undemanding of me world, Moses was insisring uponfideliry co a new alliance established wirh a uanscendenr God mrough a reformularionof me namre of individualiry and subjecriviry (Assmann 2002: 233) . Monomeism is


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(nihilum) in Saint Augustine's maxim is today no longer commonly usedand therefore neither Dionys ios' understandin g of a hierarchy inherentin creation nor Augustine's belief in a real personal, omnipotent Creatoris present in 'modern' minds to justifY Augustine's observation. Thevirtue of difference, nowadays everywhere affirmed, has over the centuries become a division favouring fragmentation and not convergence; inthe sixth-seventh century mindset, difference (o/a


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For the first time in Western Europe since the sixth century,Christianity during the twentieth century lost the credibility needed tobridge the gap from the personal self to the whole, the totality who isGod. That monotheistic link had fissured and needed restoration; this wasnot the first time such a reconstruction loomed urgent. In the examplefrom the sixth and seventh centuries sketched out below, we will showhow an immensely influential cosmic holism of the sixth century wasrevamped by a theologian (possibly a Syrian monk) who called himself Dionysios 'the Areopagite' after he had studied the terminology ofcosmology from Proclus (c. 410-485; head of the Neoplatonic school inAthens, finally closed by Justinian in 529). Dionysios had set out to christianise the 'a-theistic cosmology' of the later Stoics.3 IfDionysios turned tothe Neoplatonism ofProclus, retaining the ir terminology, he neverthelessplaced the Christian God in an impenetrable realm well beyond the emanations of Stoic cosmology. A century later through the commentaries ofMaximos the Confessor (580-662) , Dionysios was then introduced intomainstream Christian theology by this disciple, in a revised form.

This final period of late antiquity experienced a full-fledged spiritualrevolution which took the form of the doctrine of the incarnation of theWord of God. What relationship to tOtality did Christianity propose?If Christ incarnated a new relationship with mankind it was because

3. For the Stoics, God is simply one of the different forms of the real and hence cannot beconsidered a Theos in the Christian sense of God. Both Hinduism and Islam ptoducedvariants of radical monism/pantheism, whe re the being of God and man aJ"e fundamentally of one essence. But such 'unity in diversity' ontology can be taken to describetotally distinct theological outlooks. Thus while al-Hal laj speaks of the uansposition ofroles (shath) wherein Allah enters into union with man, talking with a human tongue,Ibn Arab] adopts a Neo-Platoni c quasi-pantheism . For the Hindu monists like SankaIaand Ramanuja, from the outset there is only one being. In this sense their monismis acosmic, for the universe has neirher macro nor micro dimensions. Later WesternEuropean medieval. Chrisrian scholasric rheology is builr on rhe concepr of rhe 'analogyof being' thar exisrs between the C reator and the creared. Being by itself is not being byanother; being is an analogical concept because it refers borh to the finite and the infinitemodes of existence, that of the creature and Creator. This has a more ancient Semiticexpression which we have just seen. A:; Saint Paul put it on the Areopagus in Athens, ' . .. InHim , we live, we move and we are . .. (Ac ts 17: 28). Thus from the beginning, the expression of being in Christian cosmology was highly personalised. Being was considered to bederived from the inter-personal communion of God and man . Being is communion; thisis the distinctive characteristic of C hristian theism. If an abyss separates the C reator fromthe c reature, he nonetheless lives ftom communion with his maker 'through whom allthings were made' . Earthquakes, tidal waves and human evil notwithstanding, cosmologyby definition expresses the benevolence of its Creator.

'IF ALL THINGS WERE EQUAL, NOTHING WOULD EXIST

he encompassed humanity into his own relationship to his Father. Yetthe relationship of mankind and God in no way resembles an intraTrinitarian one since humanity is separated from the Word of Go d bythe abyss of creation. Christians are only sons of Go d by adoption. AChristian becomes part of a whole through the relation of a creature withthe Creator. This whole implies, inter alia, a cosmology where the word'transcendence' 4 also came to be used to indicate the bridge between thecreated and uncreated, established by the incarnation of Jesus.

The central religious experience of Christians is one of being savedfrom a universe riddled with mortality (and hence corruptibility, sin)by being incorporated into Christ's resurrection from death. Salvationis a performative in the sense that Christ accomplishes it. Thus Christsays that he is the way, the truth and the life Oohn 14: 6). Creation isrevealed as a cosmology embodying this divine economy, a providentialplan which offers Christians a new mode of being (Tp6rroc, D r r a p ~ I c , ) . Inthis article I am combining approaches to cosmology taken both fromthe sociologist Louis Dumont and from patrology. As an anthropologist, I do not need to deconstruct the revealed truths of Christianity (seeCannell 2006) . I am interested in the comparative sociology that a studyof early Christian cosmology permits. Even where I rely on patrologistsfor their understanding of our two authors, by reading these fathers ofthe Church I am seeking to understa nd their religious anthropology. Infact, one cannot separate their theology from their anthropology.

After this general introductio n to our subject, the topic of this articlecan now be clearly set out. I will try to explain how the word 'hierarchy' was used to describe the dynamics of the Christian relationship toGod and how this use later opened the floodgates to a certain individualism. By this sixth century neologism, 'hierarchy', Dionysios meant theoutpouring of God's love for his creation, considered as a 'sacred order'(apx1) of grace made adequate to each person. God's coming 'towards'man is the precondition of any ascent towards He 'through whom allthings were made' . Studying the meaning of the Dionysian neologism'hierarchy' enables us to perceive that it is totality, the Christian holism,that structures personhood.

Like other words, for instance, cosmology (that 'beautiful, good' order),or more recently, the notion of society, the word 'hierarchy' has differentmeanings depending on the century of ts use and the autho r employing it.4. Today a new meaning for the word 'transcendence' has been added to its semantic field,

one that is pejorative, an imagined bridge leading towards an unknowable abyss.

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While later Fathers of the Ch urch also refered to the term 'hierarchy' in thesame sense as Dionysios, here we will refer exclusively to the Areopagite'swritings and their reconsideration in Saint Maximos' writings5 aroundthe rurn of the seventh century, approximately a cen tury after Dionysios.6Conte mpora ry usage starts with philosophical visions as opposed as Kant'sepistemology and Hegel's phenomenology and, after them, hierarchy isthen transposed into social science jargon before being hijacked by politicalscience where it has become a synonym for the systemic domination ofsocial stratification. For instance, when Donald E. Brown subtitles his 1988book Hierarchy, History and Human Nature, The Social Origin ofHistoricalConsciousness, he is transposing the phenomena of social stratification ontothe idea of hierarchy (Brown 1988: 314-315). The justification for this verymodern usage of hierarchy is modern historiography, which, if nothingelse, confirms Louis Dumont's point that there is an intrinsic connectionbetween individualism and histOrical consciousness. As we will see belowtheologians such as John Meyendorff and John Zizioulas will introduceinto the thought of Maximos the Confessor dimensions of nter-subjectiveconsciousness that are likewise distinctly modern.

Hierarch: order as an adequation of Divine compassionIn the Eastern Mediterranean, the notion of the world as an immensecosmic play was at the centre of much StOic and Neo-Platonic religiousexperience and thought. For sixth-century Christians, the most recentand most influential intellectual exposition of the isomorphism betweensociety and the cosmos was that ofProclus. From this late Greek notionof the well-ordered cosmos, Dionysios retained the vision of a harmo-nious and indeed beautiful (in the sense of well-ordered) precision. On theother hand, for this monk Christianity had revealed that the cosmos didnot emanate from God in ever-weaker circles of lesser being. Instead theLord of All creates the world out of nothing. Proclus had proposed a cos-

5 Translarions: Ponsoye: Ambigua 1994, Questions a Thalassios 1992, Lettres 1998;Soriropoulos: Mystagogie; Touraille (Philokalia vo!. 1, 1995): Centuries sur l'amour,Centuries sur ... l'incarnation.

6. Many excellenr srudies of their individual wrirings and aspecr:s of rheir rheology exisr.We have exrensively borrowed from these: especially, Rene Roques (1983 [1954]) forDionysios and on rhe wrirings of Maximos, rhe works of Hans Urs von Balrhasar (J947)and Jean-Claude Larcher (1996).

' IF All THINGS WERE EQUAL NOTHING WOULD EXIST'

mology where in a logical dialectical process from the monad proceededthree momenta: persistence (or identity); differentiating procession andreturn (or union). Thus at each stage in the hierarchical descent, lowerhypostases7 proceed from higher ones, whereas for Dionysios, at each distinct level there is a direct, unmediated and immediate relation to what isbeyond, the whole, that is God concerned by his creation and crearures.

Afrer the council of Chalcedon (451), Dionysios was for both theWestern and Eastern Church an important vectOr of a new vision ofexistence and personhood. After the Fourth Ecumenical Council atChalcedon (45 I) , 'being' previously classified by t he Aristotelian tree ofPorphyry (c. 23 2-C. 303): essence, class, species, genus and individuals,was in the process of being replaced by personhood (im6amaic;). Thegrace of hierarchy is seen as the path of deification (8tomc;), throughwhich man comes to know God.8 Dionysios was adapted by Maximos,whose teaching on Christ shows how this dynamic hierarchy or ascenttakes place through and in Christ's pe rsonhood (hypostasis). Mankind'sadoption into Christ's mode of being is the foundation of hierarchy,characterized.

The Christian Trinity brought creation and all mankind our ofnothing, en dowing it with the will to know God expressed in its ascenttOwards Hi m through this hierarchy. When Dionysios in the sixth century coined the term hierarchy for the first time, it was to illustrate this'sacred order'.9 He presents his vision in his four famous brief treatises:

7 Here rhe ancienr Greek rerm hypostasis meanr underlying realiry, whereas in Chrisrianrheology the rerm came ro mean person (-hood).

8. For rhe neo-Plaronisrs procession and rerum (existlts et reditus) were timeless and unhisrorical. As Paul Rorem poinrs our (1996: ~ 3 5 ) , ' ... The uplifting is nor a=mplished bythe symbols [of he hierarchy] themselves, as if rhey possess any magical efficacy; ir occursin the process of inrerprering them ... Rorem calls this episremology one of unknowing.Divine Names 13: 'The preference is for the way up through negarions, since this srandsthe soul ourside everything which is correlarive wi th ir:s own finire narure ... beyond theourmosr boundaries of the world, the soul is broughr inro union wirh God Himself. . .'While God 's ecstasy rakes rhe form of an overflowing of His Goodness in a processionrowards humaniry, mankind's ecsrasy rakes rhe form of a rerum ro God. Commenringon rhe Divine Names, Secrion7, Maximos the Confessor will wrire: 'The unknowing ofGod ... is a knowledge which knows, in silence, thar God is unknown.'

9 I[ is imporranr ro nore rh ar from rhe beginning, i.e. already in Dionysios' writing, rhemeaning of rhe word 'hierarchy' moves rowards the norions of order (Tai;U) and subordina[ion with the accenr on srarus and puriry/power. Normative classificarions howeverneed nor have any sacred principle ar their inceprion. Nor in Dionysios was rhe opposireof hierarchy', 'anarchy' . .

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!he Divine Names, !he Mystical!heology, !he Celestial Hierarchy and !heEcclesiastical Hierarchy. 0How then did Dionysios himself define hierarchy? In the third sec

tion of !he Celestial Hierarchy, Dionysios provides six complementaryexplanations which provide some clarification of what he means by hisneologism. The first definition merely claims that hierarchy is essentiallyof divine and celestial origin.

(I) .. .What I must now do is explain what I mean by hierarchy and say whatadvantage such hierarchy offers to those who are members of it. So, I hope thatmy discourse will be guided by Christ .. . the inspiration of what has bee n knownabout hierarchy .. . Keep these holy truths a secret in your hidden mind. Guardtheir umty safe from the multiplicity of what is profane (Sources chretiennes [SC],58: 86; Patrologica Graeca [PG) 145 b; trans. by Luibheid and Rorem 1987: IF ) .(2) In my opinion a hierarchy is a sacred order, a sta te of understanding and anactivity approximating as closely as possible to the divine. And it is uplifted to theimitation of God in ptoportion to the enlightenments divinely given to it ....Thegoal (OK07fOC;) of hierarchy, then, is to enable beings to be as like as possible to Godand to be one with him. A hierarchy has God as its leader of all understandingand action ... Hierarchy causes its members to be images of God in all respects,to be clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial light and indeedof God himself It ensures that when its members have received this full anddivine splendour they can then pass on this light generously and in accordancewith God's will to beings further down the scale (SC 59: 87-88; PG 164d; trans.ibid.:r53-I 54) (3) Ifone talks then about hierarchy, what is meant is a certain perfect arrangement,an image of the beauty of God which sacredly works out the mysteries of its ownenlightenment in the orders and levels of understandingof he hierarchy . . . (perfection) becomes what scripture calls a 'fellow workman ofGod' I Cor. 3: 9; III John8) ... Therefore when the hierardlic order lays it on some to be purified and onothers to do the purifYing, cause illumination; on some to receive illumination artdon others to cause illumination . .each will actually imitateGod in the way suitableto whatever role it has .... The beatitude of GO'd is something uncontaminated bydissimilarity ... It is also the cause of every hierarchy artd yet it surpasses by fur everysacred thing (Se 59: 90; PG 165 b-c; trarts. by Luibheid artd Rorem 1987: 198).

Elsewhere Dionysio s says that hierarchy is:(4) .. . The common goal of every hierarchy consists of the continuous love ofGodartd of things divine ... It consists of seeing things as they really are ... It consistsof an inspired participation in the one-like perfection and in the one itself, as furas is possible ... (Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1,3; PG 376a; trans. by Luibheid artdRorem 1987: 198).

10. Dionysios is known to have written others, but none survive.

'IF ALL THINGS WERE EQUAL NOTHING WOULD EXST'

(5) When we talk of yearning, whether this be in God or in an angel, whetherin the mind or in the spirit or in nature we should think of a unifYing and comingling power which moves the superior to provide for the subordinate, to bein communion with peer and subordinate to return to the superior and the outstanding (Divine Names IV, 15; PG 7I3a-b; trans. ibid. 1987: 83).(6) I have set out in due order the many yearnings springing from the One andI have explained the nature and the knowledge and power appropriate to theyearnings within the world and beyo nd (Divine Names IV, 16; PG 713 b-c; trans.ibid . 1987: 83).

If we bring together these six explanations, we understand that: (I) amember of this hierarchy, of this order, is one of a living aggregate. Christhas articulated this hierarchy as a church, ecclesia, i.e. (2) this teleologyis befitting (eW1Tpmtc;); it makes each man participate in a holy order(rMtc;) by imitating God according to the light and image which is ineach one of us. (3) To be part of the hierarchy is to cooperate with God(see I Cor. 3: 911 ) and this implies each person being purified as he/sheneeds be. This is both a personal and a collective process where (4) theunifying love of God, his Providence, being higher, helps the lower purifYitself This capacity expresses both a received and given light at each level.So in the EcclesiasticaL Hierarchy the meaning and the finality of this hierarchy are explained as that of the 'sacramental', 'global' activity of purification, illumination and perfectloning (Rogues 1983 [1954]: 279-280).

Deification can only take place if man by grace partakes of the uncreated energies of the Trinity. Seraphima Konstantinovsky (2002: 22) provides a clarification ofwhat Dionysios the Areopagite mean t by hierarchy.She writes that

.. . (W)hat hierarchies pass on to the lower levels is not being, but union with thedivine created energies and, in effect, deification. Now, since all levels of beinghave been directly created by God artd there is therefore no emanation of being,only direct communion with t he creator can deifY. Thus in Dionysian cosmology,the 'higher' beings do not uplift the ' lower' ones to a union with themselves, butrather to a direct union with their Creator.

The concept of hierarchy is a critical one for conceptualising transcendence, worlds beyond our contemporary mind name of secularisation andindividualism. Hierarchy here does not imply domination, but in Christianity

11 . The reference to SaintPaul 's first epistle to me Corinthians (3: 9) involves adifferent metaphorfor an organicwhole, matof he buiJdingor temple to which each Christian is incorporatedas a living srone; what me third episde oOohn (Verse 8) calls 'fellow workers for the truth'.

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has the positive connotation of divine guidance, a sacred order infused into allcreation. Riou notes that the doctrine of these divine energies,

.. . about les schemas verticaux de participation et de causalite pour leur substiruerle symbole d'une union synergique , sans emanation du superieur dans l'inferieurni assomption de I'inferieur dans le superieur, mais compenerration collaborante,sans qu'il y ait fusion . (1973: 62.)12

On the other hand, John Meyendorffhas claimed (1969: 139, 147) thatthe Dionysian concept of hierarchy is not without a certain individualisticand anti-ecclesial bias. For Meyendorff, the Christian Eucharist has thetendency to become for Dionysios a symbolic drama where only certainwell-initiated individuals actually penetrate the mystery. If for Dionysios'hierarchy was meant' .. to express the simple idea that all beings are created for union with God', this would explain Dionysios' reluctance toresort to the Chalcedonian concept of personhood or hypostasis (Christhas two natutes, human and divine in one person) due to 'sensible-intelligible' dualism that his doctrine of hierarchy entails (Meyendorff 1969:137,139,141,143). Dionysios says that 'Jesus', the Incarnate Lord, is thehead of every hierarchy (Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 1,1 [372a]). Later whenMaximos the Confessor incorporates Dionysios into mainstream Christiantheology, he will emphasise t he collective dimension of salvation throughChrist's incarnation by envisaging all hierarchy in terms of the relationshipof the human and divine accomplished in the incarnation ofJesus Christ.Here ontology, the science of being, is replaced by a theology of existencebased on a vision of distinction in union.

Hierarchy as distinction (O/QKP/O/C;) uniting Man to God l 3Dionysios differs from Plato's understanding of union with Go d (themind's rising above the concerns of the body, Iheaetetus 176 a-b) andPlotinus' (201-270) formulation of a fully divine man (led to the One byknowing himself, Enneads V, 9, I). Dionysios insists that it is not throughthe articulation of hierarchies involving the macro- and micro-cosmos,bu t a double mediation through the angelic and ecclesiastical hierarchies

12. Following M. von Ivanka; see Sources chretiennes 59: 89 , note 3.13 . According to Andrew Louth (1996: 130), 'hierarchy' isa word coined by Dionysios himsel

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that permit man to become fully deified in the one and only God (DivineNames II,rr; trans. by Luibheid 1987= 66-67).

In his treatise On Divines Names (II.2), Dionysios writes that,although 'the Word of God operates sometimes with out, sometimes withdistinctions' (trans. by Luibhied 1987= 60), God is no t a whole madefrom the sum of his attributes. Dionysios began by claiming:

.. . All the Names appropriate to God are praised regarding the whole, entire, full,complete divinity, rather than any part of it, and that they all refer indivisibly;absolutely, unreservedly, and rotaiJy to God in his entirety (On Divines Names11.1; [Cans. ibid. 1987: 58) .

This affirmation derives from the initial revelation of the name of Godto Moses (Exodus 3: 14) 'I am that I am (E/ryt! ascher Ehye)', from theapophatic vision that Dionysios holds of the unity of the Trinity as that of aGodhead beyond Deity whose subsistence is beyond being. In this chapterDionysios explains the relation of the three persons of the Trinity who arenot confused (11. 5; 641D), and yet linked by a sacred dance (xopita) ofmovement 'beyond movement' joining the three persons of the Trinity inthe unity of the Godhead. Later in this same chapter of the Divine Names,Dionysios writes about the difference between indifference (the Godheadbeyond Deity) and benign processions or differentiation (Olll:KPI(JtC;):

.. . Our theological tradition assertS that the unities [i.e. divine unity] are thehidden and permanent, supreme foundations of a steadfasmess which is morethan ineffable and more than unknowable. They say that the differentiationswithin the Godhead have to do with the benign precessions and revelation ofGod . . . (II,4; PG 640d; trans. ibid. 1987: 61).. .. The term 'divine differentiations' is given to the benevolent processions of thesupreme Godhead .. . And it becomes differentiated in a unified way. It is multiplied and yet remains singular. It is dispensed to all without ceasing to be a unity(If,IO; PG 649 b; trans. ibid. 1987: 66).

Dionysios is notorious for avoiding any explanation of the union ofChrist's human and divine natures. However it is clear that these are notNeo-Platonic emanations; the incarnation is related to that process bywhich the One, the Good, is generously diffused, constituting a hierarchyof beings categorised by their own capacity to reflect his light. The Word ofGod comes out of the One and enters the world of man, that of diversityand division. It is in this sense that for Dionysios hierarchy is created out ofdistinctions. That the space of distinctions (ollx(JTl1fla) is good, creating thepossibility of communion, arises from Dionysios's positive evaluation ofdifference (Oia


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this vision (already clearly expressed by Gregory ofNyssa [c. 33 o- c. 395])of distinction in the sense of expansion ( 8 L a < r r o , l ~ ) in Dionysios, and evenmore so in Maximos, is the expression of he movement of God's compassionate condescension towards His creation. As priest Christ initiates ourhuman intelligence i nto understanding this providence (npovOLa).

It is easy, when reading Dionysios, to agree with Roques (1983 [1954]:28 4) that Dionysios has sacrificed direct personal contact between Christand mank ind to this vision of hierarchical mediation, but does Dionysiosreally attempt to incorporate the Neo-pl atonic cosmology and its hierarchic laws? The implications of the creation of the world and mankind exnihilo had of course been the subject of much thought on the part of thefourth century Church fathers, John Chrysostom (347-407), Gregory ofNazianzus (329-39 0) and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 330-c. 395) In particular,Gregory of Nyssa had developed an understanding of man as an 'extension' in time having the 'dimension' of a temporal 'interval' (8UXIJTlJpa),a specific kind of difference, a 'spacing' comprising movement. This 'distance' ( 8 L a I J T a ( J L ~ ) was opened by the category of when', of duration. Inthis cosmology, time and space become those limitations on the world, yetthe categories of how a person is. Thus becoming is movement ( K i v l J ( J L ~ ) ,either limited or circular movement. When can one measure the cosmosin which mankind exists? The answer of Dionysios and Maximos will be,during deification. One comes to know God's creation by discerning in allmatter the logoi of He who created it. Clearly this 'wordly' knowledge isthe result of a process of sanctification very different from our own worldview. The ,lOYOL of differentiated creation reflect together the purpose ofthe Creator and these ,l0YOI, because they pre-existed in God, are heldtogether by His Logos. It will remain for Maximos the Confessor to insistthat these persons are participating members in the ensemble of lOYOIwhich drive the economy of salvation coordinated by Christ's incarnationin the flesh (Thunberg 1995 [1965]: 73 -80).

Individualism in DionysiosThe sixth century world of the Greek fathers of the church is not thatinherited by the medieval West from Saint Augustine. As mentioned inpassing above, the veneration of the humanity of Christ , V1adimir Lossky(1967: 60) is almost foreign to Eastern Christianity. This follows onfrom the formulations of the first council in Nicea (convoked in 32 5 bythe Emperor Constantine) and the Fourth Ecumenical Council held in

'IF ALLTHINGS WERE EQUAL NOTHING WOULD EXIST '

Chalcedon (45 I) culminating in the 'ineffable' distinctions between thesingle nature of the Godhead and three persons in the Trinity. For, beingtheological clarifications, these dogmas were also of the utmost importancesociologically. They attempted to distinguish the Christian Oecumenefrom the non-Christian one, initially the Persian, and later the Arab.

For Dionysios, knowing Go d apophatically (theological description of God in terms of what he is not) can never occur by knowingChrist apart from the other two persons of the Trinity. The EcumenicalCouncils made it clear that, if God is one, the three persons of the oneGod cannot be treated separately one from another. Dionysiosin On theDivine Names proposes that the only way to come to know the TriuneGod is through grace and light, which he also calls natural energies

( 8 v v a p l ~ ) . God's essence remains unknowable, but, as V1adimir Losskyexplains (1963: 100-101) his energies descend towards man ' .. . ou t ofhis nature .. .' to make this Creator known. These processions or manifestations reveal God as darkness (IJKo-rod. As the cause of all being, Goddoes not exist, since as the cause of all existence, he is above existence,just as God is no t unity bu t the cause of all unity.

If God brings everything together into a unity without confusion, if'Perfect peace ranges totally through all things with the simple undilutedpresence of its unifying power' (Divine Names XI,2; Luibheid 1987: 122),what of those who do not want such a peace? Dionysios replies:

'There are many things which take pleasure in being other, different, and distinct,and they would never freely choose ro be at rest'. This is true, assuming that whatis meant here is that being other and being different refer to the individuality ofeach thjng and to the fact that nothing tries to lose its individuality. Yet, as I willtry ro show, this situation is itself due to the desire for peace ( ~ a v x i a ) For everything loves to be at peace with itself, to be at one, and never to move or fall awayfrom its own existence and from what it has. And perfect Peace is there as a gift,guarding without confusion the individualityof each .. . Yet there is nothing whichhas rotally fallen away from unity. That which is completely unstable, u nbounded,un-established, undefined, has neither being nor place among the things that havebeing (Divine Names XI,3 and 5, Loubheid 1987= 123).

Di d Dionysios develop a theology of private personal holiness reservedfor an elite, where only the totally purified could be said to stand beforeGod? Unlike modern Orthodox commentators, however, Maximos theConfessor, while correcting certain aspects of Dionysios' thought, nevercriticized Dionysios for depicting Christ's presence in the world onlythrough hierarchical intermediaries, which would have compromised anyecclesiological holism. Modern critics, who are no t monks like Dionysios

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and Maximos, and who have probably themselves been influenced bymodern European individualism, have found Dionysios lacking in asense of congregation. An Anglican Bishop, Westcott wrote in 189 I:

(Oionysios) fails indeed by neglecting ro take in the whole breadth of theGospel ... The whole view of life which he offers is essentiaJly individu al and personal and subjective; the one ma n is the supreme object in whose progress hisinterest is engaged. Though he gives a magnificent view of the mutuaJ coherenceof aJI the parrs of the moraJ and physical worlds, yet he turns with the deepestsatisfaction ro the solirary monk, isolated and self-absorbed, as the highest rypeof Christian energy .. . An d so it is that he is unable to see in their full beaury andsrrength those instincrs and faculties of man, by which he is impelled rowardssociaJ combination .. . (cited by Andrew Louth 1989: ch . 8).

Amongst modern theologians and church historians, John Meyendorffand Alexander Schmemann shared Westcott's criticism of Dionysios.As Orthodox churchmen they had to deal with the damage to liturgicaltheology and ecclesiology caused by Dionysios' re-interpretation of theChristian liturgy as mystagogy. They were alarmed abou t the individualisticaspect ofDionysios' spirituality. Does Dionysios present liturgy as spectaclein the costume of symbolism? Here Andrew Louth comes to Dionysios'defence, saying that, although it is partially true that the sacraments becomespectacle, an 'ecclesial ballet', his vision of hierarchy, mutual inter-dependence and dramatic movement in terms of the path of monastic purification is a very organic part of his understanding of liturgy. Louth feels thatto attack Dionysios' mystagogy misunderstands what Dionysios meant byhierarchy.14 Indeed Seraphima Konstantinovsky (2002: 16-17) goes on tosay that they have substituted the modern understanding of hierarchy (seenote 2) for Dionysios' own comprehension of it. To attribute to the term'hierarchy' not what Dionysios meant, but what we now mean by the term'hierarchy', something independent of us in which we are forced to participate, is to read the present into the past. 5 In fact says Louth (1989: 132),the cosmos and its hierarchies reveal God to us only because we are a part ofthese hierarchies. Louth counters that it is the modern idea of community14. Tcironen (2007: 66---67), who srudied under Louth, also disputes mis. He claims mat, for

the Cappodocians, the subjectiviry of he mind is not a categoryof omology, and me intersubjeaiviry of the person is only a recent philosophical preoccupation. He cites as proofde HaJJeux's well-known 1975 article which concludes ' ... what they [the Cappadociansldenoted by the intra-divine KOlvwvia was the common nature and not the "dialogicaJ' interpersonal relations' (1990 reprint: 265). Obviously to discuss Zizioulas' reburral of his attackas it appears in his 2006 Communion and Otherness would require anomer whole article.

15. This is also Sistet Seraphima' s point (Konstaminovsky 2002: 16-17)

' IF All THINGS W ERE EQUAL, NOTHING WOULD EXST'

and community worship that are really individualistic because the individuals that make up the community 'should' all do everything together. Allthis is asking whether one goes to church to save the church or to be savedby the communion which the church already constitutes.

Louth (1989: 133) writes 'the idea of a hierarchical society--eventhough the word hierarchy is Deny's-is a more natural presupposition inlate antique society than any o ther: certainly more natural that our ownnotions of "social contract" which only go back to the Enlightenment(and which has hardly stood the test of even that short time)' (1989:133). Here Louth invokes the analyses ofMary Douglas (1973: Ch.4)ifor this anthropologist societies with a strong grid of shared values and apowerful system of group control carry with them a clear socio-cosmicisomorphism. As Daniel de Coppet and Andre Iteanu stated at the outsetof a series of essays on the theme of the claims of the cosmos to wholeness: 'no higher values than those which characterise it may exist' (1995:I). This leads them on to claim (1995: 3) that, 'In Europe, the assumption of successive cosmologies, which all claimed universality, appearsas directly responsible for the degradation of the idea of society.' If thecosmopolitan quality of the world oflate Mediterranean antiquity is analysed seriously, one must ask how were these diverse worlds interrelated?The answer to this question would require a history of the appearanceof the very notion of society in modern northern European languages,which is quite beyond the scope of this chapter.

Concretely, are these societies in the Eastern Mediterranean in thesixth and seventh centuries seeing, living and experiencing themselvesthrough that whole who is God?'6 Garth Fowden (1993) has shown thatfor late antiquity the federating value of the new empires, the first andsecond Byzantium and the first two caliphates in Damascus and Bagdhad,was monotheism. They were commonwealths whose cultures, languagesand social networks were distinct, but who shared a common monotheistic deity, Allah or the Trinity. As proof, he proposes that we notice thatthe armies of the first caliphate in Damascus were composed of a majorityof non-Arab soldiers. Religion, not ethnicity, was the binding factor.

Rerurning to Dionysios, Andrew Louth remarks (1989: 134) that'Denys' vision is remarkable because, on the one hand, his understandingof hierarchy makes possible a rich symbolic system in terms of which we

I.6. Peter Brown in an essay on me holy Man (1971; reproduced in Lasocieteet le sacrtdam l'A1ltiquititardive, 1985: 61) states that most of what we know of me daily lives of me peasantries of meeastern end of me Mediterranean comes /Tom me sayings and lives of me asceticaJ fumers.

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can understand God and the cosmos and our place within it, and, on theother, he finds room wi thin this strictly hierarchical society for an escapefrom it, beyond it, by transcending symbols and realising directly one'srelationship with God as his creature, the creature of his love.' Here Louthrefers to Dionysios' negative or apophatic theology. One wants to ask herewhether this sixth century Syrian monk's attraction to the vocabulary ofneo-Platonism was due to his conscious admiration for Proclus' and thePlatonic tradition (Louth 1989: 11-' . . the truths that Plato graspedbelong to Christ. . .'), or due to an understanding that the incarnationof the Word of God, what is 'beyond being', must be mediated (Prod us'principal preoccupation). Certainly the graded levels of reality, the hierarchies as Dionysios called them, were articulated ritually, theurgically.Finally for Dionysios, liturgy is more valuable than philosophical wisdom,if one understands it as revealed mystery, i.e. the manifestation of God'slove for mankind revealed in Christ (Louth 1989: 28).

The nexus of this debate over the meditating capacities of hierarchy,although it is a theological one hanging on the thread of faith, doesconcern the relation of the cosmos to transcendence. In the treatiseMystical Theology, Sections Three and Four define the transcendent asthe cause of all material and intelligible reality which itself is immaterial and unintelligible. Maximos the Confessor will transfer the centreof the drama of salvation in Christ from that of the interrelations of thedifferent levels of the cosmos to that of the relation of the transcendentto the human person conceived as a microcosm. Mediation, grace, theoutpouring of Divine Love, will retain their central value in the relationof Christ, the Mediator, to the micro-cosmic man.

Maximos the Confessor's (580-662)non-cosmological hierarchy

Milbank (1990: 62-65) has insisted that if Durkhe im understands socialstructure as following on from religion, it is because society only existsthrough a symbolic self-representation. Shortly before Durkheim, AugusteComte wondered whether social change was not reflected in alternativeconceptions of he 'natural' order. In recent theories of he secularisation ofreligion, social reality! 7 is not even located as the backdrop on which a reli-17. Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary (I879: 171 5) indicates that until Augustine

(c. 430 AD), in prose the adjective for social, as its root indicates (sec-; sequor), indicates

' IF ALL THINGS WERE EQUAL, NOTHING WOULD EXIST'

gious revelation is written. For totally different reasons, this is also true ofMaximos the Confessor where change, described in terms of a progressiverapprochement with God, is the contribution of monotheis m to preservethe health of the body social. Society's internal coherence is rooted in thatvalue provided by the wholeness of God. In the late Roman (Byzantine)empire where monotheism was the empire's religion, the way people speakand reason about the One belies their notion of person, hierarchy, andtranscendence. In this section we will look at how Maximos reinterpretsDionysios' holism as a non-cosmological hierarchy during the seventh century struggle with the heresy of monotheletism. 18

Initially, in the Ambigua, Maximos' book explaining the ambiguouspassages in Dionysios the Areopagite and Gregory of Nyssa, Maximosexplicitly agrees with Dionysios' definition of oneness and cites (Ambigua41: 1313a) his predecessor with approval:

For nothing of what is universal and containing (others) and generic can bedivided into what is parrial and contained and particular ... For everything generic,according to its own logos, is wholly present, indivisibly by mode of unity, to tho sesubordinate wholes, and the particular as a whole is considered as within a genus.

This capacity for encompassment often demonstrates features ofinversion. In the theistic revelation which Maximos contemplates (seeAmbigua 41; translated in Ponsoye 1994: 292-299), the role of God'sprovidence in each person's destiny precludes any individualism. Man'srole as mediator involves his using his God-given 'rational' (AOY/KOe;-)nature to reunite to Go d the five divisions that characterise the universe.

a 'sharing, a fellow', while the more common noun societas was a fellowship, a union fora common purpose. Benveniste (vo l. 1,1969: 363-373) indicates that the western variants of Indo-European designated the people by *teutd; while at the eastern end of thislinguistic area the Indo-Iranian arya (people) derived from ari, meaning a person of mypeople. The Greek and Latin poLis/civitas, were initially very different, but both came toindicate the institution of the ensemble of citizens. Clearly society is a rather late notion,and had difficulty separating itself out from a reAexive, of my' body social. See Secu ldrTheories on ReLigion: CUrI'ent Perspectives, edited by Tim Jensen and Mikael Rothstein,Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000.

18. The belief in one and only one will/energy in Christ who has both a hum an and a divinenature was propagated by the Emperor Heraclius who, in 624 , was beginning to reconcilethe Monophysites in the eastern cnd of the Mediterranean. In 634 Heraclius prohibitedfurth er discussion of the issu e but finally in 681 thanks, largel y, to Maximos' opposition(confession which COSt him his life) , the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Constantinopleproclaimed that two wills in Christ, divine and human, was the orthodox faith .

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Maximos envisages this in five stages of reunion, which overlap and so areno t quite as distinct as in the five stages represented below:

- The reuniting of the creared and the uncreated.- The establishmenr of a passionless relation between men and women; through

rhe purity of man 's behaviour, eart h is to be made one with paradise.- Imi ta ting the complete God-ward direction of the angels, the difference

between knowing and non-knowing is to be abolished.- Men then reconciling the sensible and intelligible worlds.- Finally, a life by grace through communion with God abolishing the rlifference

between God and man , yet still this deification involves no ontological identitybetween the two.

Ho w should we characterize this seventh-century Christian hierarchypresented here? It is basically 'social'. The structure of man's relation toGod, that model of the whole (person) which pre-exists all creation, isarticulated by a divine relationship which founds man's intrinsic value. '9This value is grounded in the belief that man is created in God's imagesuch that he can indeed resemble his Creator through the praxis of thetruth revealed in himself. In terms of public behaviour, the hierarchicalthreshold of the fundamental ritual of Christianity, the Eucharist, is aform of commensality where the creature communes with his Creator.This is explained in detail in Maximos' commentary on the 'divine' liturgy, entitled Mystagogy (trans. by Sotiropoulos 2001).

In that commentary, Maximos the Confessor states (Mystagogy 7;see Thunberg 1995 [1965J: 142-143) that mankind, reborn in Christ,possesses a new mode of existence, shepherding himself and the cosmostowards a transformation and recapitulation in Christ. There is a sensein which Maximos' cosmology is a double inversion of the Neo-PlatonicGreek notion that the cosmos was a macrocosm vis-a.-vis society. If man isunderstood to be the microcosm, then there are three poles in this hierar-

19 . There is a vety large corpus of commenraty on rhe verse in Genesis I: 26 'Ler us makeman in our own image and likeness.' This passage is extraordinary because thtoughourrhe Old Testamenr the accenr is unceasingly on rhe fact rhar 'man is dust and ashesbefore God, ... thar he cannor srand before his holiness' (G. Kinel IT : 390). Made fromdusr from the earth ('afar mi n ha'adamah) and a breath oflife (rishllUlt haim) from God,man's Elohim narure indicares rhar he is by nature from above, hence the image (tselem)and resemblance (demur) to his Creator. In the New Testament rh is is raken up again,especially in the episrles ofSr. Paul (1Cor. I 5: 45; Col. 3: IQ) where the restorarion of herlivine likeness of creation with God is identical with being incorporated inro fellowshipwith Chrisr. See G. Kinel IT : 38r-397.

'IF ALL THINGS WERE EQUAL, NOTHING WOULD EXIST'

chical transformation. This can be portrayed as taking place in three progressive oppositions. Here ( ::::) = is encompassed by; C = encompasses):

Microcosm ::::) macrocosm (the Greek 'pagan' conception)Microcosm C macrocosm (the cosmology ofDionysios)Mankind ::::) Trinity (for Maximos mankind orchestratesa cosmic liturgy)For Maximos, the microcosm, man, is the centre of the cosmos and

in that sense encompasses it. An d if ma n is at the centre, this is becausethe deification of man is a pre-condition for the transfiguration of the(rest of the) world. Maximos' understanding of what is presented byDionysios the Areopagite (Divine Names XIII, 2) is couched in terms oflogical oppositions2 0 :

The name 'One' means that God is uniquely all things through the transcendence of the one unity and thar he is the cause of all without ever departing fromthat oneness ... For multiplicity is not without participation in the One, but thatwhich is many in its parts is one as a whole.

The forty-first Ambigua of Maximos explains how man has to be borntwice over so that the destructive aspects of he division of being found inhim may be erased, so that the positive aspects of the dichotomy of bodyand soul may play their role. Andrew Louth paraphrases this as follows:

. .. The human being has been created to hold together these divisions of being,which are all reflected in the human constirution. The human person is thereforeto be regarded as a microcosm and bond of creacion, mediating between all thedivisions. But because of the Fall, the human person can no longer fulfil this function. Therefore, in the incarnation. God has recapirulated the cosmic role of humanbeings and restored to them their primordial funcrion (Louth 1996: 155-156).

The key to this 'new' mediation is God's creation, man. The locus oftheology is no t to be found in the processes of the intellect, bu t in theinner structure of he mystery of creation, of an anthropology. To restoreman in his own image, this 'second God' (6 8Evrt:poC; etoc;), the 'Son ofman', reveals hims elf as both God and man. Th e hypostasis is not only theplace of resemblance to one's Creator, bu t also the proper place of responsibility, sin and merit, in short what colours the relationship to Go d(Meunier 2006: 300) . This vision of Christ comes to Maximos directlyri-om the declarations of the Fourth Ecumencial Council of Chalcedon(451). There he finds the terminology, the adjectives, to describe thew. In rhe same rext Dionysios has more poeric expressionsof he same reality as in 4: r 3: 'This

divine yearning brings ecsrasy so rhar rhc lovcr belongs not ro self bur to the beloved.'

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relation of the twO natures of Christ, Go d and man: two natures freefrom all separation as well as mixture in one person. This encompassingis later called 'theandric'. The four privative adjectival terms (in italics inthe citation below), at the end of the Chalcedonian credo, are famous forcreating the conceptual foundation for an a pophatic presentation of thisparadox, the mystery of the incarnation of the Son and Word of God.Here is this extract of the credo confirmed by the council of Chalcedon(Camelot I961: 140):

.. . Engendre du Pere avant les siecles en sa divinite mais aux derniers jours, pournous et pour not re salut, (engendre) de Marie la Vierge, la Theorokos, en son humanite, en deux natures, sans confosion, ni changement, sans division, ni separation.

In the incarnate Christ, a a v y v v T O ~ (without mixture, or confusion),was one of the adjectives qualifYing this reciprocal compenetration

( n c p l x w P 1 J m ~ ) of human and divine nature in one person. This union inthe single person of Christ of wo natures was not defined dogmatically bythe council in terms of essences, but in terms of modes (rponol) of existence ( v n a p ~ / ~ ) and personhood ( v n . o a m m ~ ) . 2 1 For Maximos (see Meun ier2006: 302) a person is he who sets into motion the capacities of natures byorienting them for better or for worse. Only by using one's liberty givenin nature does one have any real existence as a person for it manifests his/he r singularity. Thus Maximos' reflection on personal interiority, whileallowing for a psychological dimension , is metaphysical by definition. Inhis fifteenth letter Maximos (trans. by Meunier 2006: 32-303) writes:

C'est ce que le discours de verite nous represente a prop os de !'economie (c'est-adire de l'incarnation) divine: les proprietes par lesqueUes la chair differe et se separede nous sont ceUes par lesquelles elle possede l'identite avec le Logos selon l'hypostase; et les proprietes par lesqueJJes le Logos differe du Pere et de I'Esprit et est defini(separe, r'xrpopi(ofJf:Vod en tan t que Fils SOnt celles par lesquelles iI garde, sauve,l'unicite avec la chair selon l'hypostase, en n'en etant separe par aucune loi (logos).

Meunier (2006: 303) states that, applied to the twO wills (divine andhuman) of Christ, this comprehension of the incarnation shows thatMaximos' understanding of person (hypostasis) integrates both the psychologic;U and anthropological dimensions in a richer, more 'modern',understanding of person than was known beforehand.

21. Balthasar (1947: 2J) admits that the subsequent Western European scholastic differentiation of essence and existence is not present in Maximos who often uses the words 'being'(dval); 'essence' (ovola); 'personal existence' ( i J 7 T a p ~ I < ) and 'person hood' ( i m 6 i J r a ( J t ~ )almost interchangeably.

'IF ALL THINGS WERE EQUAL, NOTHING WOULD EXIST'

In his thirteenth letter (PG 91, 52 I c) Maximos takes over the so-calleduniversal law of conjunction22 (couple, av(vyia) , or synthesis. In thisletter he applies this understand ing of synthesis to the Incarnation anddemonstrates its generality:

Each rotality, and particularly which results in the synthesis of different elements, while keeping a perfect identity of ts i n r 6 a m ( 1 / ~ , involves a differentiationwithout confusion of the parts integrated. Thus it maintains without falsificationthe particular and essential reason of each of its members. Inversely the pans,while keeping in their synthesis their natural reason without mixtUre or diminution, maintain without any possible division the singular identity of their rotality(Letter 13; PG 91,521 c).

This mysterious presence of he Whole in its partS is a synthesis that leadsdirectly to God, writes Balthasar (I947: 24; trans. by Stephen C. Headley):

If he members communicate only by the presence in them of the rotality that surpasses them, creatures also are only united by their transcendent identity in God: anegative identity in that they all communicate in the nought of their origin and inthat property of not being God; positive identity du e ro the faCt that the Crearorsustains them all by his presence in them.

Dionysios' integration into Eastern Christian theology via Maximos'reworking of his vision is said to mark the final victOry of Christianityover Hellenism (Balthasar 1947: 15-18). On the other hand, VladimirLossky (1963: I05) claims that for certain theologians in the CatholicWest,23 Dionysios was sometimes interpreted in ways that made hima vehicle for further penetration of Greek Neo-Platonism into Westerntheology. Ignoring that question, we will also confine ou r remarks toMaximos' reinterpretation of Dionysios' Christian cosmology, leavingaside Maximos' so-called role as a precursor of the Western Scholasticdistinction between being and existence. This seventh-century confessorof the faith derives his vision of the created world from the sacramental

22. The role of synthesis as developed by the Gnostics in thei r cosmological theology madethis notion widely known in the third century and, by reaction, sharpened the Christianfocus on a vision of creation ex nihilo.

23. That is, John Scot Erigena, whose translation of Dionysios dates from 862; certainVictorines (e.g. Hugues' commentary [h 141] on the CelestiaL Hierarchy and Richard 'scommentary [tII73]) as well as certain Cistercians authors [Isaac ofStelIa tJI69], ete.See Dictionnairede la SpirituaLite, fasc. 18-19, Paris, 1954, cols. 3 18+). Dionysios' m aininfluence begins in the twelfth century with Robert Grosseteste's translation and commentary, and that of A1bert the Great, and continues in the writings of Saint ThomasAquinas and Saint Bonaventure.

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304 lA COH ERENCE DES SOClETES

one he found in Sa int Paul's epistles. Writing to the Ephesians (I: 14-15 ,10), Saint Paul opens his letter with a famous description of humanity'sadoption by Christ before the world was created:

According as he (God) hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world,that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinedus to adoption of children by Jesus Christ ro him self. .. That in the dispensationof the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, bothwhich are in heaven, and which are one earth ; even in him.

This implies that the Logos is present in all created things, by bindingtheir logoi (their reasons for being, 'towar d God'24) together. This leaves thecosmos pregnant with an orientation towards the Trinity. Here hierarchyis always a dimensi on of man's experience of his created life. God is not aninfinity, the ulti mate 'beyond' of human intelligence, but the Creator. AlainRiou (1973: 55) remarks that this is not an ontology applied to the domainof cosmology, for both in Saint Paul and Saint Maximos, through t he structure of the created world, one is led to the mystery of the God's good will.Du e to the presence of the image of the creator and Logos in man, thelatter's knowledge of the world through his logikoi, his own rationality, isalready a feature of that communion which life embodies. This is a God oflife who is both the On e through whom all things were made and the Lordof the insights of our mind (Thunberg 1985: 129).

The hierarchy Dionysios described concerned a cosmos defined by acircumscribed place. This means that time in this cosmos is only circumscribed movement (Balthasar 1947= 9 I). Maximos replaces the emanations of Dionysios by a natural form of being 'conform to the whole'(the original meaning of the Greek word 'catholic', Kanx O,lOV) , Le. theLogos. Maximos envisages the attributes of material existence with an'Aristotelian optimism' (Balthasar 1947= 17). Its hierarchy is preserved ina 'two-dimensional' relation that is both simpler, yet more encompassing,not a great chain of being, bu t a cosmic liturgy where the image of Godin man makes of him the mediator between earth and heaven. Maximosactually uses his vision of the divine dignity of the created world as anessential part of his argumentation against diastole and systole of thegrace found in Dionysios . The path to the contemplation of the Go d

24. As Maximos paraphrases Ephesians I in his work Ambigua 7 (trans . by Riou 1973: 56):'Chaque erre intelligible et rationnel, ange et homme, par le logos - meme selon lequel it aete cree (logos qui est en Dieu et qui est en vue - np6r; - de Dieu), est dit et est parcelle deDieu 11 cause de son logos qui preexiste en Dieu ... s'il se meut selon ce logos, it parviendraen Dieu, en qui preexiste son logos d'ecre comme principe et cause.' (PG 90: I080b--c)

'IF ALL THINGS W ERE EQUAL NOTH ING WOULD EXIST

passes through 'natural' contemplation (eEwpia cpvalKi) of the createdworld. If for Dionysios God's transcendence is a distance mediated bywhat Chenu has jokingly called 'all that bureaucracy of light', Maximossees God' s goodness everywhere at work in re-creating in the resemblanceto the image in which he was created. Finally this is a reformulation ofwhat Saint Paul wrote to the Romans (8: 28-29):

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, tothem who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, healso did predestine ro be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be thefirstborn among many brethren .

IBy whom all things were model:creation ex nihiloRiou has called this vision of Maximos a 'transcosmism', neither the 'economic', soteriological 'cosmism' of Origen nor the ontological 'cosmism'of Dionysios. Maximos the Confessor revises Origen's (c. 185-25 I)concept that all rational beings (,lOY/KOt) were created equal and and thatthemselves determine their place in the human hierarchy. This ranking,for Origen, was not one based however on 'accomplishment', rather ontheir respective de-, re-generation as human beings. Maximos' vision, onthe other hand, is based on God as a personal finality (TE,lOC;), involvinga vision (eEwpia) of movement towards Him. For Origen all ranking wasbased on the Greek dichotomy of mind above matter, a nostalgia of lostorigins where the final end at best only reproduced the point of departure. In Maximos, the transfiguration of human nature in Christ produces an impatience to attain the future, as experienced in God. Thereis no development from pantheism here. Eschatology is produced by avision of the future deriving from the divine council, i.e. providence,preparing the advent of paradise.

As Saint Paul putS it, 'conformed to the image of his Son, that hemight be the firstborn among many brethren.' Preserving the meaningof creation out of nothing (ex nihilo), for Maximos means grasping thefinality of all creation. A person yearns to configure him or herself to theimage in which it was created (see Riou 1973: 59 ,67,97). What is this'nothing' out of which God's creation comes? Nothing is that which isincomprehensible!Juan Miguel Garrigues insists that for Maximos whatis mysterious to the point of incomprehensibility, is the relation of manto God, the mediation by the imago Dei .of the created to his Creator.

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Lablme hyposrarique du Fils qui unit Dieu et I'homme est irreducrible a outehierarchie des narures; il esr l'ex nihilo de la creation, le mysrere de la philanthropie triniraire dans lequel s'exreriorise l'indicible amour des personnes : 'Je lesai aimes comme tu m'as aime' Oohn 17: 23, cired by Riou 1973: 97, nore 23)

This understanding of nothingness as 'nothing that is comprehensibleto man'25 is already found in Saint Gregory of Nyssa who identifies it asthe 'mystery of God's will: " .. . to gather in one all things in Christ, bothwhich are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him'" (EphesiansI: 9-10). For Saint Gregory ofNyssa (Riou 1973: 97 note 23, followingWolfson 1970), the mystery of God's will is the only aspect of the incomprehensibility of God which really concerns mankind (Ephesians I: 9).

11 rransforme donc par la un theme meraphysique -'le non-etre'- pour signifierle cceur meme du mysrere uinitaire : I'ex nihilo, le neant, c'est i'ablme de I'unitehyposrarique du Chrisr pour I'economie de son incarnation pre-connue dansla gratuite du conseil rrinitaire, En effer, Dieu ne peut etre dir neant dans sonessence, mais en tant qu'il imerviem comme 'comingence' dans la non-necessiteabsolue de son libre arbirre creareur.

Above we have sketched our in what way for Maximos the recapitulation ofChrisr's two modes of being in one person is both the foundationof the economy of salvation and the eschatological movement of thewgoi towards Christ. Bur what is hidden in Christ is also hidden in theHoly Spirit. What in Maximos is called the kenosis, or self-emptying ofthe Holy Spirit, parallels the kenosis of Christ when the Word of Go dbecomes incarnate, Filiation, being the son of God, lost by the firstAdam, is rediscovered when the second and final (&vrepo


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308 lA COHERENCE DES SOCIETES

en tant qu'individ u; elle est celle de l'homme comme vocation hypostatique (personnelle et catholique), celle de I'Eglise qui en hypostasie toute la creation.

What typifies Maximos' cosmology is that the categories of kind(yevo


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1994). To analyse its social morphology dominated by the Muslim notion ofdhimmitude implies that the Christian oecumene has become, at least in sociological terms, only a partial whole. Before outright nationalism, the formerByzantine commonwealth might have shared common values, but the liberation of the different 'ethnic' Orthodox lands in the Balkans later exacerbatedecdesiological problems in the nineteenth and twentieth centurys. Only aNeo-Patristic synthesis could begin to resolve these. Maximos much more thanDionysios is at the centre of any renewed commonwealth.

AppendixMAxlMos' UFE AND WORKS EVENTS AND PERSONALI11ES

454 - Council ofChalcedon Empereur Justinian (482-565)c. 590-605 - Maximos studies

philosophy and rhetoric inthe Byzantine capital (Aristocle,Dionysios, Evagrios, Origen).- - - - -610 - Maximos works as the personal'state secretary' to EmperorHeraclios'; in 614 he leavesthe court for the monasteryof Philippicus at Chrysopolis,across the Bosphoros - - -Ambigua II (commentaryon Gregory of Nazianze)- - - - - - . - - - - - --- - - -Mystagogy

Commentary on the 'Our Father'The Ascetic Life, The Foltr Centuries on 630 - Maximos enters monasteryCharity (prior to 632) of Euchratas under its abbot

Sophronios- - - - - - - - - - - ._--- . -.- - - - - . - . - -Questiones ad Thalassios 634 - Synodalletter ofSophronios,Patriarch of Jerusalem

Ambigua I (before 638) 638 - Statement (Ecthesis) of EmperorHeraclius on the single will ofChrist- 641 - Pyrrus, Patriarch ofConstantinople- - -- ----

' IF ALL TH INGS W ERE EQUAL NOTHING WOULD EXST

- -------45 - Maximos debates the exiledPatriarch at Carthage- - - ._- _ . -646-649 - Maximos in Rome Council ofLatran convened to oppose

Emperor Constans' and PatriarchPaul H's doctrine of the 'singlewill' (monotheletism)- --

653 - Arrested, Maximos is returned[0 Byzance

654 - Pope Matrin I arrestedby the Emperor;Pyrrhus returns as patriarch- - _ . - -655 - First interrogation of Maximos -- -667 - Second interrogation

and martyrdom ._--- - - -- -680-681 -The Third Council ofConstantinople confirms theChristology of Maximos

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Documents

Headley, SC if All Things Were Equal, Nothing Would Exist-From Cosmos to Hierarchy in Dionysios the Areopagite (Sixth Century) & Maximos the Confessor (580-662)