The Ascetic Life & The Four Centuries on Charity PDF
Preview The Ascetic Life & The Four Centuries on Charity
the Ascetic life the four centuries on CHARITY TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY POLYCARP SHERWOOD, O.S.B., S.T.D. St. Meinrad Archabbey Professor ofPatrology Pontifical Institute of St. Anselm, Rome WESTMINSTER, MARYLAND THE NEWMAN PRESS LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO 1955 Generated on 2011-09-13 01:06 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google THE NEWMAN PRESS WESTMINSTER MD USA a _ LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO LTD P *\ 6 & 7 CLIFFORD STREET LONDON WI Q q BOSTON HOUSE STRAND STREET CAPE TOWN 531 LITTLE COLLINS STREET MELBOURNE ORIENT LONGMANS LTD Al CALCUTTA BOMBAY MADRAS DELHI VIJAYAWADA DACCA First published in U.S.A. igtf First published in Great Britain igss Library of Congress Catalog Card Number : 55-8642 Nihil obstat: J. Quasten, cens. dep. Imprimatur: Patricius A. O'Boyle, D.D., Archiep. Washingtonen. d. 23 Feb. 1955 all rights reserved made and printed in great britain by william clowes and sons, limited, london and beccles Generated on 2011-09-13 01:06 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google GU 3 Sic)5 auctoribus vitae filius Generated on 2011-09-13 01:06 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google - Generated on 2011-09-13 01:07 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Prefatory ....... I. Life Theological position at the outset . Progress to and Establishment in Africa relations with imperial governors . Monothelite Controversy: the 'Psephos' monothelite controversy: the 'ecthesis* Crisis : the Affair of Pyrrhus Roman Activity Arrest and Trials II. Doctrine .... a. God .... The Triune God b. Man .... God and the World The Constitution of the World and of The Composite Nature of Man Man PAGE 3 6 7 10 12 14 18 20 24 26 28 29 32 45 46 47 5i 55 63 70 73 77 8i Freedom Man—Adam c. Deification Agents of Deification : The Church The Sacraments .... Asceticism and its Technique Prayer and Contemplation . Charity The Maximian Synthesis 87 9i 97 Generated on 2011-09-13 01:07 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google Vlll CONTENTS III. Special Introduction 99 a. The Ascetic Life 99 b. The Four Centuries on Charity 101 TEXT The Ascetic Life 103 The Four Centuries on Charity: Prologue . . . 136 Century I . . . ." . . . . 137 Century II 152 Century III 173 Century IV 192 NOTES Bibliography 211 Notes on the Introduction on The Ascetic Life on The Four Centuries on Charity INDEX 269 214 240 248 Generated on 2011-09-13 01:09 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google ST. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR THE ASCETIC LIFE THE FOUR CENTURIES ON CHARITY AOrOC ACKHTIKOC KEOAAAIA T7EPI AfAnHC Generated on 2011-09-13 01:09 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google Generated on 2011-09-13 01:09 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google INTRODUCTION Maximus, a disciple at the same time of two great diverse spiritual tendencies, that associated with the Pseudo-Denis and that stemming from Origen, en- deavored to compose them in his own thought and life. To him is due at once the transmission of the Origenist spirituality and the first serious reasoned criticism of the Origenist myth;1 to him is due a further and definitive diffusion among the orthodox of the Corpus Dionysiacum and the refutation of Monenergism sheltered by a famous text of Denis; a Neoplatonic mystic, he did not hesitate to use Aristotelian concepts and logic in the refutation of Monothelite errors. As a monk, then, nurtured on the same spiritual fare as the Monophysites—Denis and Origen —he had the acumen while retaining the fulness of this spirituality not only to reject the Monophysite position but to elaborate the orthodox doctrine of two natures in its ulterior consequences of two wills and operations.la Yet it is not only in the speculative and doctrinal realms that Maximus fixes our attention. A simple monk (for he was neither priest nor superior), Maximus was the inspirer of several anti-Monothelite councils in Africa and played a great part in the Lateran Council of 649;2 thoroughly a subject of the emperor, he knew how to maintain the Church's liberty in the face of the imperial ecclesiasticism; a thorough Byzantine by cul- tural formation and attachment, he consistently placed unity of faith, even though it be with the less-cultured Latins, above the narrower unity of language and rite. 3 Generated on 2011-09-13 01:10 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google 4 ST. MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR It is the one man of God and of His Church underlying this series of contrasts that I would try to sketch in the following pages. Previous writers have treated Maximus under one or the other of these aspects—as polemic theo- logian, as ascetic author, as champion of the Holy See, as exegete, as philosopher; even von Balthasar in his Kosmi- sche Liturgie considers only the structure of Maximus' thought. It is then the whole Maximus that I would en- deavor to present. In two passages of his earlier works Saint Maximus him- self gives a key to his whole life and activity, which it will be well to set at the head of this sketch of his life and doctrine. First he speaks in his introduction to the Diffi- culties from Denis and Gregoryz of their sanctity, of their God-given wisdom, so much so that they 'possess the living Christ above all, or better, Christ has become the soul of their souls, manifest in all their deeds and words and thoughts.' Such is the basis of his adherence and repro- duction of the doctrine of the Fathers. Again in the second part of the same work, dealing with the relations of body and soul at conception, he writes: The holy Fathers and teachers clearly proclaim, rather the truth that speaks and is spoken through them, that together with the descent of God the Word at conception instantaneously by means of a rational soul the Lord Himself, God the Word, was united to the flesh... .4 Here Maximus alleges not only the authority of the Fathers but that of the very fact itself: the truth that speaks. These passages indicate, I think, the cardinal attitudes of his life and thought: fidelity to the Spirit-animated tradition and to the revealed fact—the mystery of the God-man. If then Maximus is called theologian, as sometimes he Generated on 2011-09-13 01:10 GMT / Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google
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