[...]... with its vision of the totality of St Maximus thought; Polycarp Sherwoods The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and his Refutation of Origenism (1955), with its stress on the anti-Orgenism of the Ambigua; and Lars Thunbergs Microcosm and Mediator (1965), which is a penetrating study of St Maximus anthroplogy Belonging to the phase of Maximus scholarship just before the end of the twentieth... Sherwood about the condition of the texts, and received the answer that to a great degree we can trust the PG I hope the future will not show that our trust was unfounded 10 Introduction 7 is a philosopher, Maximus is as well He gures in the history of dogma as the greatest theologian of his century He is remembered as the monk who defended the doctrine of the two wills of Christ against monotheletism This... is still present in his time In 2000 I defended my thesis The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor for the degree of Doctor Philosophiae at the University of Oslo Copies of the text were distributed to scholars both in Europe and in North America Since then several new and important works of Maximus have appeared, some of which mention or take notice of my research: Assad E Kattans thesis... Opuscula theologica et polemica 1 Introduction The term Christocentric cosmology adequately describes the worldview of St Maximus the Confessor (580662) He thinks of the whole natural cosmos as made because of a Trinitarian motif, by the Son of God, with Him as the centre of all created being, and with a view to the establishment of communion between created and uncreated being in Christ, the Logos... available, of course, in the original Greek in the CAG, but I am sure that the publication of translations will give scholars the oportunity to aquaint themselves more easily with the kind of material oered by these important sources The work of the commentators, whether Peripatetics or Neoplatonists, is an important element in the intellectual climate of the centuries before Maximus, and the legacy of the. .. work, there are some other publications of importance for the study of the philosophical context of St Maximus These include Richard Sorabjis Time, Creation and the Continuum (1983) and Matter, Space and Motion (1988) Sorabji develops certain philosophical themes from Antiquity and places great stress on the Neoplatonist commentators He even moves into the eld of the Church Fathers and shows how they... Introduction of wisdom and knowledge 16 In the De char Maximus says: The Christian philosophizes in these three things: in the commandments, in the dogmas and in the faith The commandments separate the mind from the passions, the dogmas introduces it to the knowledge of beings, and faith introduces it to the contemplation of the Holy Trinity. 17 Now, this saying is to be connected with Maximus doctrine of a... within the context they are put forward After this introductory chapter (Chapter 1) I shall make some comments on the philosophical doctrine of exemplarism and Maximus doctrine of creation (Chapter 2) Then follows his theory of the Logos and the logoi as the central theological (Trinitarian) principles of created being (Chapter 3) With the metaphysical structure of the world in mind we move to Maximus. .. Tửrửnen, Union and Distinction in the Thought of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) All these books highlight dierent aspects of the Confessors thought, some of which have proved stimulating to my work on the present revised version of my thesis This, in a special sense, is true of Tửrửnens book, which challenges some of the views I put forward in my thesis All these publications... is the highly valuable study of the Ad Thal by Paul Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor (1991) (Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken have also rendered the English-reading public great service with a translation of important texts from Maximus works, published in 2003 as On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ.) A study of importance to any future investigation of the topic of . philosopher, Maximus is as well. He figures in the history of dogma as the greatest theologian of his century. He is remembered as the monk who defended the doctrine of the two w ills of Christ against. available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tollefsen, Torstein, 1953– The Christocentric cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor / Torstein Theodor Tollefsen. p. cm—(Oxford early Christian studies) Includes. Preface For a start I should like to clear up a possible confusion regarding the title of this book. In 2000 I defended my thesis The Christocentric Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor a study of his