Divine Contingency Theologies of Divine Embodiment In Maximos the Confessor and Tsong Kha Pa gn

321 Pages·2008·1.706 MB·English

by  Thomas Cattoi

D C
ivine ontingenCy
Theologies of Divine emboDimenT in
maximos The Confessor anD Tsong kha pa

Divine Contingency
Theologies of Divine Embodiment in
Maximos the Confessor and Tsong kha pa
t C
homas attoi

gorgias Press
2008
First Gorgias Press Edition, 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Gorgias Press LLC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cattoi, Thomas.
Divine contingency : theologies of divine embodiment in Maximos the Confessor
and Tsong kha pa / Thomas Cattoi. -- 1st Gorgias Press ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Incarnation--Comparative studies. 2. Maximus, Confessor, Saint, ca. 580-662.
3. Tson-kha-pa Blo-bzan-grags-pa, 1357-1419. 4. Christianity and other religions--
Dge-lugs-pa (Sect) 5. Dge-lugs-pa (Sect)--Relations--Christianity. I. Title.
BT220.C25 2008
230’.14092--dc22
2008026782
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standards.
Printed in the United States of America
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of Contents....................................................................................................v
Preface: The Challenge of Contingency............................................................ix
1 Dialogue or Enstasy? Spiritual Transformation Across Different
Traditions.........................................................................................................1
The Silent Ground: Identity or Relation?...................................................2
Spiritual Practices, Spiritual Texts................................................................5
Necessary Judgments? Particularity and the Challenge of
Difference.............................................................................................11
2 And His Kingdom will have an End: Evagrios Pontikos and the
Flight from Plurality.....................................................................................21
Individual Freedom and the Providential Cosmos.................................23
The Nous and the Created Order: Ascent through Gnōsis......................29
The Kephalaia Gnostika and the Dissolution of Individuality.................35
3 The Redemption of Plurality: Maximos the Confessor and the
Christo-centric Cosmos...............................................................................43
The Embodied Cosmos: Christology as Synthesis of Knowledge.......44
Interpreting Tabor: the Transfiguration as Hermeneutic Event..........51
Diachronic Redemption: Contemplating the Incarnate Word..............61
The Eschatological Banquet: the Ends of Contemplation and the
Knowledge of God.............................................................................68
4 Moira Theou: Spiritual Transformation and the Boundaries of
Identity...........................................................................................................75
Using the Pathē: Christ’s Appropriation of The Passions and the
Restoration of Moral Autonomy......................................................76
Salvific Analogy: the Uniqueness of Christ and the “Repeated
Incarnations”........................................................................................86
Glorified plurality: the Role of Agapē and the Celestial Jerusalem.......97
5 The Henad in Tibet: rDzogs chen and Original Self-Awareness.......111
The Primordial Buddha and the Retrieval of Oneness........................113
rDzogs chen and Individual Cognition: the Compassionate Nature
of Primordial Reality.........................................................................130
v
vi DIVINE CONTINGENCY
Gnosis and Ground: Immanence and Gradualism in the Thought
of ‘Jigs med gLing pa........................................................................138
Constantinople II and the ris med Movement: Different Strategies
for Similar Impasses..........................................................................152
6 The Gift of dharmakāya: Contemplation and Philosophy in Tsong
kha pa’s Understanding of Practice.........................................................157
Three Bodies or Four? Non-abiding Nirvāna and the Buddha’s
Activity in the Conditioned World.................................................159
The Defeat of “Private Reason”: Tsong kha pa’s Critique of
Svātantrika..........................................................................................167
Meditation and Insight: the Lam rim chen mo and the Integration of
Philosophy into Practice...................................................................178
The Order of Nature: a Closer Look at Two Similar Arguments......186
7 Imitatio Buddhae and Deification: Perfections and Virtues in Tsong
kha pa and Maximos the Confessor........................................................191
The Operative Transcendent: Apratishtitā Nirvāna and Divine Self-
Disclosure as Matrices for Virtuous Activity................................193
The Necessity of Form: Virtues and Perfections in the Lam rim chen
mo..........................................................................................................199
Active Apatheia and Agapē: A Comparison.............................................207
dGe lugs Gradualism and rDzogs chen’s “Retrieval of the Pure
Basis”: A False Contradiction?........................................................217
8 The Virtues of Participation: Maximos’ Theology of Divine
Embodiment after the Encounter with Buddhism...............................223
Who is Afraid of Natural Theology? Participation and the
Challenge of Nihilism.......................................................................225
Illegitimate Words? Maximos, the svābhāvikakāya, and the Flight
from Theology...................................................................................239
Performing the Self: Identity, Boundaries, and the Unending
Incarnation.........................................................................................247
Worshipping God in the Flattened City: Liturgy, Community, and
the Eucharistic polis...........................................................................254
The Temptation of Emptiness: What has Chalcedon To Do with
Experience?........................................................................................264
9 Conclusion...................................................................................................273
Divine Embodiment and Religious Diversity: towards a
Chalcedonian Theology of Religious Difference.........................273
TABLE OF CONTENTS vii
Bibliography.........................................................................................................281
Primary Texts from the Christian Tradition in the Original
Language.............................................................................................281
Primary Texts from the Christian tradition in Translation..................283
Primary Texts from the Buddhist Tradition..........................................285
Secondary Literature..................................................................................286
Index......................................................................................................................305

PREFACE:
THE CHALLENGE OF CONTINGENCY
The thought of Jean Paul Sartre is perhaps an unlikely starting point for a
reflection on Christology and spirituality in a multicultural, multireligious
world. The French philosopher had little patience with organized religion,
or indeed, with religion of any kind. His thought gave it for granted that
faith in a God or a First Maker was a relic of the past—a relic which bol-
stered an unjust and ultimately doomed social structure. Sartre’s profound
pessimism leaves nothing beyond the reach of its suffocating embrace:
friendship and love are absent from his gloomy and depressing world,
where interpersonal relationships are inevitably marked by exploitation and
hostility.
If we turn to Sartre’s work La Nausée, the worldview we find is unre-
lentingly bleak. The main character, a man called Roquentin, experiences
feelings of repulsion and disgust when he looks at the roots of a chestnut
tree. Everything is obscene and threatening; the world is “brute and name-
less,” the superabundance of its elements is sickening and overwhelming.
Despite all our attempts to penetrate its significance, the world’s utter
pointlessness persists relentlessly, almost mockingly. For Sartre, the only
redeeming quality of this epiphany of the absurd is that it sets Roquentin
apart from the “bourgeois fools” whose consciousness is “dulled,” and who
cannot help seeing the world as “solid.” The bourgeois is perfectly at home
in the world; Roquentin’s horror for le visqueux saves him at least from a
destiny of inauthenticity and bad faith.1
In her work Sartre: Romantic Rationalist, the British novelist and phi-
losopher Iris Murdoch wonders whether Roquentin’s pose of moral superi-
ority is actually justified. He might well be more sensitive than the superfi-
cial bourgeoisie; but why is it that the “contingent superabundance” of the

1 Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea (trans. L. Alexander; New York: New Directions
Publishing Corporation, 1969), 126–9.
ix
x DIVINE CONTINGENCY
world must be seen as nauseating? Roquentin deplores the utilitarian atti-
tude that sees the world only as “material,” but he is incapable of offering
any constructive solution, and he retreats into an attitude of aristocratic
hauteur. Murdoch ascribes Sartre’s contempt for the contingent to a mor-
bidly defensive egocentricity; it is no surprise, then, if l’enfer, c’est les autres.2
But perhaps, Murdoch suggests, the superabundance of the world might be
experienced differently; it might even be a source of joy. Murdoch suggests
that contingent reality is more fruitfully approached as a lesson in the insig-
nificance of the observer, who eventually realizes that she is not at the cen-
ter of the world.
This Copernican revolution often begins in rather unexpected ways. In
her novel Bruno’s Dream, Murdoch suggests that it is through the experience
of love that many people are ripped out of their egocentric cocoon, until
even the experience of earthly love is left behind.3 One eventually learns to
“be in love with the separate world and the separate people it contains,”
even if this love is somehow less ardent, and less personal. If one is truly
capable of love, one does not need to withdraw from the world’s ‘messi-
ness’, or fear the indeterminacy of one’ consciousness, besieged by contin-
gency on all sides. To counter Sartre’s obsession with viscosity, Murdoch
resorts to an analogous aqueous metaphor: to face the world with balance
and inner detachment is like jumping into water, surrendering to creation’s
“mysteriously supportive properties.” Becoming an authentically spiritual
person is perhaps like learning to swim: one must “surrender a rigid, nerv-
ous attachment to the upright position,” and abandon oneself to the sur-
rounding waters.4
For the Christian theologian, Sartre’s fear of contingency indicates his
ultimate contempt for our creaturely condition. After all, the serpent’s
temptation in the garden, “you shall be like God, knowing good from evil,”
suggests an analogous desire to escape from our condition, marked by un-
avoidable illness, old age and death. As a consequence of the fall, the cre-
ated order becomes a menace, something that threatens our survival and
against which we need protection. In this uncertain world, the power of erōs
offers little solace: earthly love is fickle, it is often marred by conflict and

2 Iris Murdoch, Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (Tonbridge, UK: Viking Press, 1987),
15–19.
3 Iris Murdoch, Bruno’s Dream (London, Penguin, 1970), 292, passim.
4 See Peter J. Conradi, The Saint and the Artist: A Study of Iris Murdoch's
Works (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 134–8.