Maximus the Confessor and Inconvenient Theology

Grigory Isaakovich Benevich – patrolologist, cultural scientist, associate professor at the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy. Author of three books; editor, author of articles and commentaries on Russian translations of St. Maximus the Confessor. The first edition of the book compiled by him and his colleagues, Rev. Maximus the Confessor: Polemics with Origenism and monoenergism. St. Petersburg: Oleg Abyshko Publishing House, 2014, available on the Internet. – Grigory Isaakovich, for many years you have been studying the life and works of Maxim the Confessor, the holy father who lived in the 7th century, that is, more than a thousand years ago. How can it attract us, people living in the 21st century? GB: – Maximus the Confessor represents a rather rare combination of qualities for the patristic tradition, many of which were valued not only during the time of the fathers of the Council period, but are also important for modern man. Here we can be deceived, because we tend to project some of our conjectures onto what we love. In general, if you look at the history of “maximology” over the last hundred years, you can see many different approaches to it. Not only different researchers, but also different generations of scientists, and just readers, perceived and perceive it differently. This is fine. This is precisely a sign that we are dealing with a great thinker and person. – What do we know about Maxim as a person? Greek life characterizes St. Maxim as a person of noble birth who received a good education, and the Syrian biography, the so-called psogos, as a person from the lower strata of society without a systematic education. There is some intrigue here for us. What do you feel about it? – Syrian history has been known for a very long time; Brilliantov and Epifanovich, for example, knew it, and no new documents that overturn our understanding of the origin of the saint have appeared since then. Until 2003, most of the leading experts followed the Greek version of Maximus’s life story; they said about the Syrian version that it was an invective, that it could not be trusted, although some information, perhaps, could be taken from there, but in general, they followed the traditional version - the Constantinople origin of the saint. They took the Greek life as a basis and, according to this life, established the dating of all the works of Maximus. And then only one article by Kristjan Budignon appeared, “Was Maximus the Confessor a Constantinople?”, which did not introduce any new sources, but simply offered a different view. Back in 2003, leading experts on hagiographic materials related to Maxim, the authors of the critical edition of “Documents from Exile”, Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, write that after all, he probably lived in Constantinople, and in 2004 an article by Boudignon appears, and another scientific paradigm begins. Another puzzle was formed from the same cubes. After this, the scientific mainstream shifted, and already in the Oxford Guide to Maximus the Confessor, which was compiled by the same Allen and Neil, the Syriac version is accepted and a complete re-dating of his works is proposed in accordance with the proposal of the next generation of scientists M. Jankowiak and F. Booth. Everything turns upside down, and it turns out that all or almost all the people who appeared in his life lived in another place, at another time. I cannot say that I disagree, although many questions remain. But it is clear that this “paradigm change” is largely explained by the fact that modern people are much closer to Maxim, who is from Palestine, from some marginal family. Now they reason like this: coming from a noble family is probably a linden, such a hagiographic cliché. It is closer to us that a person emerged from a strange environment. - It's not just the lower classes. After all, according to the Syrian psogos, Maxim’s father was a Samaritan, and his mother was a Persian (Zoroastrian, that means), and she was also “the slave of a Jew,” and they were baptized, one might say, forcedly. But I won’t go into details; anyone who wants to can read it for themselves. In a word, the origin is the most unenviable from the point of view of Byzantine officialdom and is directly opposite to the noble family from Constantinople, which gave their son the best education, so that as a young man he ended up being the secretary of Emperor Heraclius, etc. Translating into the realities of modern Russia, if you believe the version of the origin of Maxim from Psogos, it is as if a Chechen married, say, an Uzbek guest worker (a cleaning lady for the new Russians), and from such a family the greatest Russian and European philosopher would emerge. – According to the new version of Maxim’s life, where did he receive his education? – First in Palestine, in monasteries, and then, having fled from the Persian invasion, Maxim ended up in Alexandria, there was a famous philosophical school, and Maxim, thus “getting used to” the local intelligentsia, received a good education, in particular, they believe that he could study with Stephen of Alexandria, with whom Sophronius, the future Patriarch of Jerusalem, and St. were friends. John Moschus (whose works, however, for some reason do not have any special philosophy). At the same time, the question remains why Maxim himself has almost no philosophy in his early works. The question is, where is his philosophical education? After all, by the time he wrote “Chapters of Love,” he should have already had it. But why did he hide it? Maybe he hid it because he wanted to write this essay for the monks. But where did he put it in “Questions and Perplexities”? He was already quite a few years old when he wrote them. He was generally silent for a long time and began to write late, at the age of 45–47. In this he differs from the Cappadocian fathers, for example, who began writing at an early age. It is clear from them that they received an education, learned to write, acquired the skill and began to write. And Maxim was just a monk for a long time. And his earliest work, which has come down to us - “The Word on the Ascetic Life”, is quite traditional, in it one can feel traces of the tradition that can be found in Barsanuphius and John - a conversation between a disciple and an elder. But right there – in the “Chapters on Love”, addressed to the same addressee, something completely different begins. – Related to philosophy? - Not quite like that. Philosophy in the special and technical sense, at first, as I said, does not play a big role in Maxim. But he enters into a latent dialogue with the Origenism of Evagrius and other Origenists already in the “Chapters on Love.” This work with the Origenistic tradition, the desire to answer the questions posed in Origenism, to use the best that was achieved by the Origenists, rejecting their heresies, will become Maximus's most important work. But the Origenists were the intellectuals of their time. During the time of Maxim they were already “broken,” dispersed and condemned. And Maxim took their heritage and, one might say, saved it from destruction. This fits, by the way, into his Palestinian origin, since it was in Palestine that Origenism was once especially widespread, and in psagos Maxim is accused of having been under their influence since childhood. The latter is most likely a “hitting”, but that Maxim knew well the works of Origen, Didymus the Blind, Eusebius of Caesarea and especially Evagrius is for sure. He knew and used them in his writings. This openness of Maxim to everything deep and valuable that could be found outside the mainstream of the Orthodox tradition, the ability to perceive these values ​​and work with them without damaging Orthodoxy, but, on the contrary, enriching it - this is the trait that, among others, appeals to us in Maxim today. If we talk about Maxim’s attitude to philosophy, then we can say that he has elements of philosophy, more precisely, work with philosophical and theological concepts and ideas, everywhere, and the further, the more. He also has works in which a purely philosophical interest is felt. But no matter what work of Maxim we deal with, the main thing is that he wakes people up. He surprises his recipients all the time. He has no flat spots or platitudes. He does not indulge in moralizing or repeating other people's thoughts. It will always have an unexpected twist. And it’s not that he’s being original for the sake of being original. Namely, he thinks about what he says. He always tries to go deeper, tries not to dwell on the familiar, but he makes the familiar unusual, no matter what he writes about. Any interpretation of it is more or less unexpected. This also applies to dogmatic issues when he writes about the Trinity or Christology. It is no coincidence that during his polemics with monothelitism, he incurred criticism not only from his immediate opponents, but also from the so-called hard diophelites, seemingly allies. He was uncomfortable all the time, and uncomfortable from all sides. If he polemicized with Origenism, then at the same time he polemicized with the opposite side, that is, with those radical anti-Origenists who polemicized with Origen in a primitive way. It's always visible. He always has the big picture in mind. He has a systematic approach to things. – He wrote for brothers in mind, capable of understanding and hearing, although formally the addressee could be specific. Therefore, both his letter addressed to the prefect of Carthage and the letter to the nun who escaped from the monastery may well be interesting and significant for us, living in a completely different historical context and life situation. Moreover, his questions and answers in “Questions and Perplexities” or in “Ambigvah” or in “Questions and Answers to Thalassia” are noticeably different from the questions and answers of Saints Barsanuphius and John. In Barsanuphius and John they are in the nature of instructions. The authors have the status of elders - as they say, so it will be. The most important connection between the questioner and the answerer is expressed there by the word “obedience.” In Maxim this word is almost absent, and his communication with the addressee is spiritual, which for him always means intellectual. When he answers questions, it’s not even entirely clear whether he’s asking them to himself or whether they’re asking him. There are no questions like “What should I do?”, that is, he does not act as an elder in the usual sense of the word. Sometimes he tells you what to do and advises you. But this is a very rare case, and this is not something that falls in the realm of obedience. This is a slightly different relationship. He rather gives a general outline of what, from his point of view, is Orthodox, that is, correct, but this is not specific advice on what to do. He does not bind anyone’s freedom with his advice, but always gives freedom to his listeners, always leaves a gap of freedom: but you think for yourself, decide for yourself what this means. – Maxim does not write about obedience. What other common patristic topics does he NOT write about? – He hardly writes about miracles, that is, he does not describe them (but he has a theology of the miraculous - the concept of the “new order” of natures), but there are no stories about miracles. Moreover, then everyone around wrote about miracles, the same Sophronius of Jerusalem, who wrote “The Miracles of Cyrus and John.” “And it was unusual for that time.” – And he actually has a lot of unusual things. No matter what you try, it’s unusual everywhere. A mystery in biography. His attitude to philosophy is unclear, when and how he picked it up, and how he put it into action. It seems that between the “Chapters on Love”, where there is almost no philosophy, and “Ambigvami”, where there is it, he simply sat down to books and then learned this, in just a few years. But this is one of the possibilities. It is not clear what he got by reading pagan philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, or Plotinus and Proclus, or Simplicius, and what he got by simply reading the holy fathers, the same Areopagitists. And there was also Philoponus, a Christian philosopher, but a monophysite and tritheite, that is, a heretic. Did Maxim read it? It seems so. Modern researchers are looking for traces of Neoplatonists in the works of Maximus, but parallel things are found in the Areopagite and the Cappadocians. It is impossible to say with certainty what exactly was taken and from whom. But findings like “he took this from this one, and this from that one” are the most banal level of attitude towards the text, because, in the end, it is not so important what and from whom he took it. – Is there something that he, on the contrary, writes about, while others are silent about it? – Very few of the holy fathers devoted separate large treatises to the topic of love. Why didn't this topic become central? After all, in the Gospel and in the messages it is everywhere... – It would seem that 90% of all theological treatises should have been written about this. But for some reason, it was necessary to live until the 7th century for the Epistle to Cubular John, about love (Epist. 2), to appear; now a new translation by Yegor Nachinkin of this most important work has been published, and in general, all of Maxim’s “Letters” have been published in an updated translation, with detailed comments. Of course, the theme of love occurs earlier, for example, in Chrysostom’s sermons. But here it is very important that Maxim’s “Chapters on Love” is addressed to a monastic environment. If Chrysostom speaks of love in an ethical sense, then Maxim speaks of it in an absolute, theological and existential, ontological sense. – Was Maxim the first to come up with the idea of ​​writing about love like this? – He is the heir to a tradition that comes from Philo, Clement, Origen, Evagrius. His chapters on love are clearly intended as an attempt to present the ideas of Evagrius in an Orthodox way. Evagrius was convicted, but his work lives on. It is necessary to write in such a way that what Evagrius wrote about is Orthodox, in order to remove all non-Orthodox elements from there and preserve the legacy of Evagrius, gnosis. From this point of view, both “Chapters on Love”, “Questions and Perplexities”, and “Ambigwa” are transformations of the Origenistic tradition. Maxim’s project is obvious: he set himself the task of not only refusing Origenism, but also saving everything good from there, because it was perishing before our eyes after the condemnation of Origenism. After the defeat of Origenism, primitive forms of theology and exegesis began to flourish. And Maximus the Confessor saves all the best from there, inserting it into the Orthodox context. Perhaps he takes to his aid both the Makarievsky corpus and the writings of such Orthodox fathers as Diadokh of Photiki. But the main thing here is his own creativity. – What is love, according to Maxim? – According to Maxim, “Love is a good disposition of the soul, according to which it does not prefer anything that exists to the knowledge of God” (Chapters on Love 1.1). The important word here is “knowledge”, “gnosis”. Knowledge in general can be perceived as knowledge about some subject. But all objects are “existing”. But God for Maximus (following the Areopagite) is not something that exists. So we are not talking about such knowledge; moreover, some completely different knowledge should be preferred to such knowledge of everything that exists. Which? The easiest way to say it, as it is now fashionable, is “personal”, “experienced”. But what is behind these words? The fact is that Maxim’s love is the disposition of the soul towards such knowledge, knowledge, one might say, by participation in the One, by common life, and not some kind of feeling. He also speaks of love as a passion, but what kind of passion: “a praiseworthy passion” that unites the saints with the Divine (On Love 3.71). Thus, his love is both a disposition of the soul and a passion (and can be praiseworthy and reproachful). And in another place he speaks of love as a virtue. And so, go and combine one of his thoughts with another... At the same time, Maxim writes a lot not only about love for God, but also love for one’s neighbor as the image of God. In his Letter to Cubular John about love, Maxim speaks of the three wanderers who appeared to Abraham as one person in whom the mystery of the Trinity appeared to him. Elsewhere he says that Lot did not overcome duality, but Abraham overcame and learned the secret of Unity. Therefore, the three people who appeared to him, the three guests, were one person for him, he addressed them as one. And this one is the image of the Triune God. Here is the basis of what Maxim says about love for his neighbors, whom the saint, having himself acquired internal unity, loves as God loves all people, that is, first of all, equally, equally offering everyone the One thing they need (see Chapters on love 1.25). This is the never-ending “hospitality of Abraham” - this is what the words and writings of St. Maximus actually are. If we take this conversation to another plane, then we feel that Maxim himself treats people somehow differently than we do, and at the same time this is recognized as the correct attitude. There is a gap of freedom between him and man. Another person is different for him, who also faces some kind of choice. And he leaves this choice to him: this is how things are, I see it this way - and you? This is not felt everywhere. For example, the Dispute with Pyrrhus is the most processed and ideological, and there is almost no such thing there. But the dialogues in exile – there is an air between the speakers, there it is felt to a greater extent. This sense of the personality of another, regardless of whether it is a positive or negative character, seems to me to be most similar to the Gospel. In this sense, the “Documents from Exile” are unique documents, a bit like the interrogation protocols of the first martyrs. Of course, the dialogues with Maxim were edited, but some kind of stamp lies on them. This is a genre of interrogation, dialogue in the face of death. Here is an example of such a dialogue: They say to him: You have no communication with the throne of Constantinople? No, I don’t,” says the elder. For what reason? - they ask, to which the elder replies: Because by means of the Nine Chapters written in Alexandria, the Ekphesis written by Sergius in that city, and the Typos recently published in the 6th Indiction, they rejected the four holy Councils; because in Ekphesis they condemned what they themselves taught in the Nine Chapters, and in Typos they abolished what they taught in Ekphesis - that’s how many times they overthrew themselves! So, condemned both by themselves and by the Romans, and then, in the 8th indiction, overthrown at the council and deprived of the priesthood - what kind of secrecy are they committing? What Spirit descends on what such [priests] do? So what? - they say to the old man. – You alone will be saved, and everyone will perish? – The three youths, who did not worship the idol when everyone else was worshiping, did not condemn anyone, for they were not thinking about what others were doing, but about how they themselves would not fall away from true piety. Likewise, Daniel, thrown into the lion's den, did not condemn any of those who did not pray to God, following the decree of Darius - he thought about himself, and he chose to die rather than fall away from God and not experience remorse for departing from what is lawful by nature. God forbid that I judge anyone or say that I alone will be saved. As far as it is in my power, I would prefer to die than to stain my conscience by the fact that I have in any way departed from God's faith. (Summary of debate 6) There is some kind of existentialism felt here, something connected with human freedom, and, at the same time, absolute determination and audacity. And this really attracts us because it is a living element. There is life in the text. – This happens because we see that Maxim is a living person with human psychology? “We don’t see his psychology at all.” There is no psychologism in his texts at all. His texts are not directed to the flock, and therefore he does not appeal, like Chrysostom and like all late antique rhetoric, for example, to some psychological moments. The fact that we do not see either his psychology or the psychology of the one to whom he is addressing is somehow offensive, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, it eliminates the distance between us. Because psychology is something temporary. People of the 7th century have a different psychology than people of the 21st century. But Maxim addresses the human spirit, and not the soul, so no psychologically recognizable states can be found in his texts. – Does the reader have to activate not only his intellect, but also his spirit? – Yes, its main task is to activate the spirit. Intelligence too, but if you remain at the level of intellectual, purely rational perception, then this, of course, is not interesting. Unfortunately, many scientific researchers of Maxim follow this path of rational research. I also wrote a lot in this genre. But Maxim’s strength lies in the fact that he awakens spiritually. Therefore, he is now a truly relevant author. Since we rediscovered the patristic tradition after the Soviet period, one of the main temptations is the temptation that you can put theology in your pocket, you can learn some set and calm down. And he writes about the two wills of Christ or about the Trinity in such a way that it is clear that these dogmas cannot be put into your pocket, nothing is clear. We cannot think, when pronouncing these dogmatic formulas, that we know something. And Maxim, with his texts, destroys our peace of mind that we understand something. This especially applies to “Mystagogy”, “Ambigvam to Thomas”, “Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer”. – How does he differ from other holy fathers? – By and large, this is true for many holy fathers. But you can see this better on Maxim than on others. We often have such a coiffed image of the holy fathers as people who said the right things, but were not very creative. They managed to speak Orthodoxy, unlike the heretics, but some were a little boring. What’s good about Maxim is that he completely destroys this opinion. He says it's not boring. What he says - we can piously say that it is right - but, in fact, it is a scandal. And to be honest, Cappadocian theology was also a scandal in its time, in contrast to the more conservative Arianism. In general, we are simply losing the sense of the scandalousness of Christianity behind such a coiffed-up piety of the image of the holy fathers, which is created by subsequent generations. Maxim is the least susceptible to combing. He remains inconvenient in all respects: both from the point of view of his life path, and from the point of view of his ecclesiology, and from the point of view of his texts, which are the subject of controversy in our times, if one reads them correctly and does not try to comb them. – Why do his works have such an effect? – With Maxim, like no other of the fathers, it is clear that he approaches the very edge of the inexpressibility of theological mysteries. They are inexpressible by ordinary logic and ordinary modes of expression, but he does not keep silent about them in the beautiful words of a formally apophatic theology. That is, he doesn’t just say that it is unknowable, ineffable, etc. For him, apophaticism is a way of spiritual and intellectual comprehension, just like cataphaticism. He tries to find the right words and with his speech brings us to the very core of the unknowability of the mysteries he speaks about. We feel that, indeed, all these aporias, seemingly opposite statements about God, the Trinity, Christology, the state of deification are not so simple. He talks about theology in such a way that we cannot put this theology in our pocket. This is not something you can label as “Orthodox”, repeat it and be pleased with yourself that you are in the truth. His speech and his theology are such that they do not allow you to rest on some formula. He talks about all this in such a way that you really understand that there is a secret here. It takes you to the edge of the possible, where these things can still be talked about using words and concepts. A similar feeling occurs when reading very good philosophy. You are taken out of the element of the ordinary. You are given to understand that we are talking about such things where there is no longer an object and a subject, where there is no duality. His own speech about theology is the speech of a person who touches this state in which there is no duality. Is it possible to theologize from this state at all, is it possible to testify to this state at all? Somewhere, somehow, he makes it clear what it could be. Maxim's speech differs from the speech of an ordinary person and from ordinary theology, even very good Orthodox theology, for example, from the speech of John of Damascus. We see that the type of speech is different, the speech fabric itself is different. – Does this method create discomfort in the reader or, on the contrary, give perspective? - It depends on what kind of reader you are. If a person was brought up on modern philosophy and modern poetry, then for him Maxim is his own, and if he is a person of a rationalistic bent in style and was brought up in the Enlightenment paradigm, then, of course, Maxim the Confessor for him is abstruse and not a very necessary and intelligible author. – But when this illusion of pocket theology is destroyed, what next? Does he give us something in return? Or do we then find ourselves in a state of confusion and must somehow find our way out ourselves, on our own? - I'm afraid I won't answer. We have come to the edge. I don't have a ready answer right now. – There is a common answer to this, which is that Maxim gives a methodology: you must always be in motion, never stop. – For some reason, this answer seems too easy to me. It is also already popular, as you said, in certain circles. I would abstain. To answer your question, you need to go through some kind of life path. – Then a practical question. Which works are best to start getting acquainted with Maxim? – Of course, from “Chapters of Love”, from “Questions and Perplexities”. Although it's hard to say for sure. Each has its own entrance. In parallel, Evagrius himself must be read in order to compare. It depends on what goals to pursue. Schmemann warned in the 70s: Maxim has become fashionable, everyone is addicted to him now. It is clear that Maxim the Confessor cannot replace Christ. And any such intellectual reading can easily turn into a goal in itself; you can tinker with these complexities ad infinitum. I myself gave a lot of time and a large chunk of my life to all this. There is such a danger too. But now Maxim the Confessor has ceased to be fashionable, as he was in the 90s. Now it is no longer possible to say that some holy father is fashionable. Just as Orthodoxy has ceased to be fashionable, so the holy fathers, even the most remarkable, have ceased to be fashionable. This is both bad and good. Interviewed by Dmitry Biryukov, Alena Chepel