The art of thinking about God

BIFC summmer conference

Ohrid August 5-10, 2013

In charting the four topics we will be using the works of a sixth century Theologian
and a monk, Maximus the Confessor whose ascetical teaching on renunciation can be
used as an incentive for contemporary Theological discourse, and especially for the
questions that usually cause polarization such as the extent of human rights,
environmentalism, consumerism and hedonism.

1) The Art of Renunciation in an Age od Self-love

The first theme is renunciation and self-love. Self-love is the logical beginning
in the exploration of renunciation in Maximus. Since it represents the most
fundamental point of antagonism and resistance to God’s ideal of human life it serves
as a testing ground for the core argument, that the concept of renunciation is the key
to understanding Maximus’ ascetical theology. In the lecture it will be espoused that
renunciation provides the counterbalance to self-love. If the state of self-love leads to
all passions, vices and sins, then the state of renunciation leads to all virtues,
knowledge and love of God. The former is an alienation from God, the latter is
Godlikeness. In other words these are two contradictory patterns of being. The
emphasis is on being. If one’s pattern of being is self-love then that is what one’s
being is. And if one’s pattern of being is renunciation then that is what one’s being is.

2) The Art of Temperance in and Age of Self-gratification

The second theme is renunciation and pleasure and pain. According to

Maximus, after the Fall reason became obscured by the interference of the flesh which
has become the medium of sensible pleasure that becomes an end in itself. But such
pleasure is inevitably intertwined with pain, which God introduced to counterbalance
pleasure. For Maximus both pleasure and pain are unnatural. This means that
beginning of renunciation of unnatural pleasure is the beginning of overcoming
unnatural pain. Maximus calls this process the “death of death.” As the cycle of life
which generates death is put to a stop, corruption also ceases, and a life begins,
already on this earth, of imitation of Christ, who in his suffering and resurrection
announced the “death of death.” Renunciation employs Christ’s suffering and
resurrection in the believer, so that he is not waiting to be freed from this world, but
already participating in his own redemption and recapitulation. The conclusion is that
happiness is the uninhibited practice of renunciation of unnatural pleasure, and
anticipation of the end of pain and death. To renounce worldly pleasures in this life is
to view the world from the perspective of its eschatological fulfilment.

3) The Art of Selflessness in an Age of a Self-indulgent Church

The third theme is renunciation and the church. According to Maximus, life in
the church is threaded through with renunciation. Two aspects of the church are of
special importance to this study. These are baptism, as the entrance in the church, and
liturgy, as the participation in the life of the church, which as a body of believers and
as a building, is a paradigm of God and the created order.
Baptism brings one back to the initial incorruptibility of Adam. Through
baptism man receives the pristine human nature acquired by his union with – Christ –
the second Adam. Being created anew at baptism man is facing Adam’s dilemma of
The art of thinking about God
BIFC summmer conference
Ohrid August 5-10, 2013
how will utilize the bodily senses. For the baptized, Maximus says, the choice should
always be voluntary death for our own wishes, or rather, renunciation of our own self.
In his Mystagogia, Maximus explains some aspects of the liturgy. The
dynamic of the liturgy, according to him, requires that every one of the participants is
there for the other.1 For him the liturgy, the axis of the life of the body of Christ,
communicates his favourite topic: selfless love overcoming selfish self-love through
renunciation. Each person participating in the liturgy affirms that true love is love of
the other and not of the self. The church then represents the true reality of God and his
creation, or as Maximus says, the church is their paradigm (ei)kw/n). According to
Maximus, its revelation of reality begins with God, continues with the world, both
intelligible and sensible, and it ends with the human soul.

4) The Art of Restoration in an Age of the Abolition of Man

The fourth theme is renunciation and the world. Here renunciation is closely
related to Maximus’ understanding of ke/nwsij, both in Christ and the believer,
demonstrating how this translates into believer’s encounter of the affairs of the world.
Renunciation for Maximus follows the kenotic example of the Son of God. In his
work Expositio orationis dominicae Maximus insists that by his ke/nwsij, Christ re-
affirms God’s assessment of the created order as being good, and confirms his plan
for a final transformation and unification. This plan God carries through Christ, and
subsequently through the believers who participate and imitate him. It is this mutual
kenotic movement by which the believer "by the humbling of the passions … takes on
divinity in the same measure that the Word of God [became] genuinely man."2
The corresponding response of the Christian to the ke/nwsij of Christ for the
sake of the world is believer’s personal ke/nwsij for the sake of the world. On the
basis of this the dissertation shows that every single decision the renewed believer
makes will affect the entire world. In its interpretation renunciation is not denial of the
material world, but the true appreciation of its natural purpose in the original creation.
To renounce the worldly pleasures in this life is to view the world from the
perspective of its eschatological fulfilment.
The most concrete expression of ke/nwsij, however, for Maximus is always
communal. The self-emptying of the follower of Christ must produce the virtue by
which Christ reconciles the world with God, which is forgiveness.

1
Myst. 1 (PG 91: 668B; Berthold 1985: 187).
2
Or. dom. (CCSG 23: 101-105; trans. Berthold 1985: 103).