Maximus the Confessor

Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World

Paul M. Blowers

Christian Theology in Context

Sets Maximus's work not only in the monastic and theological but also cultural and political contexts of the stormy seventh century in Byzantium
Reconsiders classic themes in Maximus's theology, Christology, and spiritual doctrine through some fresh interpretive lenses
Includes an entire chapter on the recontextualizations of Maximus in the later history of Christian theology

Maximus the Confessor

Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World

Paul M. Blowers

Description

This study contextualizes the achievement of a strategically crucial figure in Byzantium's turbulent seventh century, the monk and theologian Maximus the Confessor (580-662). Building on newer biographical research and a growing international body of scholarship, as well as on fresh examination of his diverse literary corpus, Paul Blowers develops a profile integrating the two principal initiatives of Maximus's career: first, his reinterpretation of the christocentric economy of creation and salvation as a framework for expounding the spiritual and ascetical life of monastic and non-monastic Christians; and second, his intensifying public involvement in the last phase of the ancient christological debates, the monothelete controversy, wherein Maximus helped lead an East-West coalition against Byzantine imperial attempts doctrinally to limit Jesus Christ to a single (divine) activity and will devoid of properly human volition. Blowers identifies what he terms Maximus's "cosmo-politeian" worldview, a contemplative and ascetical vision of the participation of all created beings in the novel politeia, or reordered existence, inaugurated by Christ's "new theandric energy". Maximus ultimately insinuated his teaching on the christoformity and cruciformity of the human vocation with his rigorous explication of the precise constitution of Christ's own composite person. In outlining this cosmo-politeian theory, Blowers additionally sets forth a "theo-dramatic" reading of Maximus, inspired by Hans Urs von Balthasar, which depicts the motion of creation and history according to the christocentric "plot" or interplay of divine and creaturely freedoms. Blowers also amplifies how Maximus's cumulative achievement challenged imperial ideology in the seventh century—the repercussions of which cost him his life-and how it generated multiple recontextualizations in the later history of theology.

Maximus the Confessor

Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World

Paul M. Blowers

Christian Theology in Context

Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: Backgrounds
1. Maximus in His Historical Setting: Betwixt and Between
2. Writing Theology in Early Byzantium
Part II: The Cosmic Landscapes of Maximus's Theology
3. Creation as the Drama of Divine Freedom and Resourcefulness
4. Maximus's Cosmic Christology: Flesh Transfiguring the World
5. The Church and Its Liturgy as Threshold of the New Creation
Part III: Maximus's Vision for the Transfigured Creation
6. Protology and Teleology in Maximus's Interpretation of Human Nature, Human Fallenness, and Human Hope
7. Active Passivity: Maximus on the Passion of Jesus Christ
8. Love, Desire, and Virtue: Transfigured Life in Christ and the Spirit
Part IV: Maximus's Afterlife East and West
9. Recontextualizations of Maximus East and West
Epilogue
Select Bibliography
Index

Maximus the Confessor

Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World

Paul M. Blowers

Christian Theology in Context

Author Information

Paul M. Blowers holds the Ph.D. in patristics and early Christian studies from the University of Notre Dame, and since 1989 has taught church history and historical theology at Emmanuel Christian Seminary in Johnson City, Tennessee, where he is currently the Dean E. Walker Professor of Church History. He is principally a scholar of Greek and Byzantine patristics, and particularly of the theology of Maximus the Confessor, but he has also taught broadly in the field of church history and Christian thought. He is a Past President of the North American Patristics Society and is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Early Christian Studies. Author, editor, or translator of six books in early church history, he has published numerous journal articles.

Maximus the Confessor

Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World

Paul M. Blowers

Christian Theology in Context

Reviews and Awards

"Transfiguration of the World, published in Oxford University Press on 2016, is not only an useful tool for the monastic space, where the mystical aspect and the doctrinaire one are very important (and they are very well presented inside his approach), but also for the theologians from the academic space, philosophers and historians who want to find more about the presented topic or to go deeper in the complex history of Byzantine space of the 7th century." -- Iuliu-Marius Morariu, Studia Monastica

"this book offers not only a splendid overview of Maximus in context and Maximus studies in general, but also offers up a wonderfully fresh re-reading and re-telling of Maximus by a seasoned master." -- Marcus Plested, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

"Blowers' portrait is a corrective to modern accounts that neglect the influence of his monastic theological milieu and their sources. While no stranger to protoscholastic precision and at times clearly possessing the grand vision of an Aquinas, Maximus is first and foremost a monk on a quest to align his will with the ground of his being and all being, namely the Logos. This shift in focus for understanding Maximus' spiritual pedagogy is the primary contribution of the monograph. Its impact is therefore primarily on modern appropriations of historical theology, but it is also an outstanding guide for introducing Maximus in pedagogical settings."--Samuel Pomeroy, Modern Theology