Creation is Incarnation: The Metaphysical Peculiarity of the Logoi in Maximus Confessor

Maximian logoi or the "principles" of created being are often virtually identified with Platonic ideas or forms. This assumption obscures what is distinctive about Maximus's concept of the logoi. I first note two metaphysical peculiarities of his doctrine, and then propose that these...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wood, Jordan Daniel 1986- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2018]
In: Modern theology
Year: 2018, Volume: 34, Issue: 1, Pages: 82-102
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Maximus, Confessor, Heiliger 580-662 / Platonism / Theory of ideas / Creation / Christology / Incarnation of Jesus Christ
RelBib Classification:KAB Church history 30-500; early Christianity
NBD Doctrine of Creation
NBF Christology
VA Philosophy
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:Maximian logoi or the "principles" of created being are often virtually identified with Platonic ideas or forms. This assumption obscures what is distinctive about Maximus's concept of the logoi. I first note two metaphysical peculiarities of his doctrine, and then propose that these only make sense if we follow Maximus's own directive to read the logoi through Christology proper - that is, as describing creation as the Word's cosmic Incarnation. This suggests, in creative tension with a good deal of twentieth-century philosophical theology, that the God-world relation is not fully exhausted by the analogia entis: Maximus divines a still deeper hypostatic (not natural) identity between Word and world that actually generates natural difference - for perhaps the first and only time in the history of Christian thought. Here I assay a first step toward retrieving that relation.
ISSN:1468-0025
Contains:Enthalten in: Modern theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/moth.12382