SIMPOZION INTERNATIONAL DESPRE SFANTUL MAXIM MARTURISITORUL

ARTICOL PRELUAT DE AICI

Belgrade, October 18-21, 2012

International Symposium 
on Saint Maximus the Confessor

KNOWING THE PURPOSE OF EVERYTHING 
THROUGH THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION

St. Maximus International Conference in Belgrade 
Concluded its Works with the Divine Liturgy

The First Two Days

The St. Maximus the Confessor Symposium, “Knowing the Purpose of Everything Through the Power of the Resurrection,” co-hosted in Belgrade by the Belgrade Theological Faculty and the Orthodox Christian Studies Program of Fordham University, has begun with opening remarks by Bishop Maxim of Alhambra and the Western American Diocese, Patristics Professor at the Faculty and a Maximus scholar in his own right. Bishop Maxim introduced the new dean of the Faculty, Professor Predrag Puzović, who expressed his satisfaction at beginning his term as dean with such a grand event. He observed that St. Maximus is the “most universal spirit of his time and probably greatest thinker in the history of the Church. He has become the focal point of reference in modern Orthodox and Catholic dialogue.” The first church dedicated to St. Maximus, he noted, is in Serbia.

Bishop Maxim, chief organizer of the event, included in his welcome address, greetings to panelists and guests from His Holiness Bartholomew, Ecumenical Patriarch and His Holiness Irinej, Serbian Orthodox Patriarch.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, in his address, noted that “The Saints represent God’s gift to the world, precious beacons within the darkness of this transient world, and an example to be followed leading us to our final goal – the Kingdom of God.” Among these saints, who we commemorate this weekend, is the Confessor Maximus. Born in the sixth century and reposed in the seventh century, he, like all saints, belongs to the timelessness of the Kingdom of God, wherein we have him as a Heavenly intercessor before the Throne of Christ. The Ecumenical Patriarch highlight St. Maximus’s major contributions to theology in his address: his emphasis on love as the foremost of the virtues, his staunch defense of the two wills of Christ during the monothelite controversy, his distinction between the natural and the gnomic will, and his insistence that there is no natural evil, but the negligence of thoughts, from which stems mistaken actions and, important for a consideration of the contemporary ecological problem, the mistaken use of things that results from mistaken thoughts.

His Holiness Patriarch Irinej greeted the presenters and guests with an import note that by commemorating the 1350th anniversary of St. Maximus’s repose with this solemn symposium, we invoke his blessing. And trulyhis blessing has been invoked. Three monks from the Holy Monastery of St. Paul’s on Mt. Athos arrived on the opening day of the Symposium with the incorrupt hand of the Confessor, a generous donation to the Symposium from the Igumen Partheny. The Metropolitan of Pergamon, John Zizioulas, one of the speakers over the four-day event, served for the unveiling of the relic in the Faculty chapel. The grace was evident as the Maximus’s life in Christ, permeated with the Divine energies of God, manifest through his relics to fill the chapel with vivifying Heavenly grace. Hundreds of pilgrims bowed down in veneration before the Paschal mystery evident in St. Maximus.

Certainly, it is the power of the Resurrection manifest in his relics and holy prayers that make St. Maximus important not only for his theology but his witness to holiness. Over 40 artists captured the image of this holiness, which is the Divine image manifest in man, in a special art exhibit put together by Adrijana Krstić and Dragana Mašić to honor the subject of the Symposium. The art exhibit was also unveiled on the first night of the Symposium. Adorning the hallway that runs between the chapel and lecture hall, the artistry is a worthy tribute that connects St. Maximus’s spiritual and intellectual gifts to humanity.

Indeed the spiritual and the intellectual are tied together by the thread of St. Maximus’s witness to Christ, celebrated in this capital of the Balkans perched on a promontory above the rivers Sava and Danube. The Danube threads across Central Europe, leaving behind Proustian landscapes of cultural artifacts as it enters the Balkan Peninsula, where self-preservationcoexists with transcendence. St. Maximus is asimilar thread to link West and East. Here, in Belgrade, one encounters a parallel intellectual perspective threading remnants of German idealism with the lasting potency of the Byzantine legacy, which is most clearly articulated in the Logos-centered reality of St. Maximus the Confessor.

The talks of the first evening were available to all and featured the important issue of the context in which St. Maximus is received. The first to speak was Maximos, a monk from Simonopetra Monastery on Mt. Athos who is presently a theology professor at Holy Cross School of Theology in Boston. Fr. Maximos spoke on “The Relevance of His Thought Today,” in particular focusing on two of what he identified as three historical appropriations of the thought and writings of the Confessor: the Maximus translations of Anastasius Bibliothecarius (ca. 800-879) and John Eriugena (ca. 815-877), whose work was closely intertwined with the cultural politics of Rome and the Carolingian court of Charles the Bald, and Maximus’s popularity in the 11th century Byzantine court. Both of these appropriations illustrate different sociologies of translation that reveal how contemporary preoccupations inform our reception of Maximus. At issue are the passions of the day that, until rooted out, result in the fragmentation that is indemic to our society. This fragmentation is rooted in a spirtiual pathology for which Maximus offers a cure, if only we avail ourselves of his entire teaching and not what we think is relevant. 

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Speaking of contexts, as we mentioned, Maximus is the thread tying together the intellectual and the spiritual, the cultural and the noetic. How could this be better expressed then marking the mid-way point of the Symposium on St. Maximus with an All-night Vigil and Divine Liturgy for the Confessor in the presence of his relics. Bishop David served the Vigil and Bishop Maxim served the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy with Bishop David and seven other priests concelebrating. Beginning at 8 pm, the Liturgy did not conclude until a quarter past one in the morning, although to mark such messianic moments of aeonic time with a chronometer is to distortthe truth behind this synaxis of the sanctified Confessor and the struggling Faithful: this was Eternity in a continuous anamnetic reflection of the “Resurrectional present” and it was experienced by hundreds of the faithful who came together to celebrate the Eucharistic joy of our Lord and to taste what St. Maximus knows: the power of the Resurrection.

The Third Day

The third day of presentations began with Christos Yannaras, the renowned philosopher and scholar who has found harmony between Heidegger and Orthodox thought in offering strong critiques of Western European philosophy; the author of more than fifty books, Yannaras delved into the treasures of the hereafter in “Ontological Realism of the Things Hoped After Death: Conclusions from Brief References in St. Maximus’s Works.” Yannaras took the paper as an opportunity to clarify the question of authority when it comes to interpreting patristic texts. We might merely say “the Church,” but is the Church bestowed authority by Tradition and Scripture, or does the Church itself birth these elements? Yannaras answers that true authority is experienced ontologically in an ecclesial mode of existence. This mode, of course, continues after the failure of the physical form. But, if hypostasis continues and nature has run its course, what is being hypostasized? It is the grace of God, for which the sanctified Person has prepared to receive throughout his life, which fills the Person at death and becomes the substance of the hypostasis. The ecclesiastical experience was not something completed in a glorious past, but was rather actively transported/transformed into a dynamic that is actuated now. This study shed light on hermeneutical ambiguities about those things that wehope for after death.

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Met. John Zizioulas remarked that Louth described the role of the hierarch like Dionysius (which is also how Maximus takes him), which shows the importance of the bishop to the Liturgy. What Maximus called the Truth had to be confirmed by the Synod of the Council…by the Institution, he often was referring to Ecumenical Councils. His own work had to be confirmed by the Sixth Council. So, Councils are an indispensible part of what we call Truth. So, we should not refer to Truth as disembodied from the Institution, this is not what Maximus would have in mind. It is not Eucharistic theology that creates the mess in which the Orthodox findthemselves. Rather, primacy is a natural consequence of Eucharistic theology. To this, Louth responded that he affirms the institution, but none are infallible.

Bishop Atanasije addressed Bishop Ignatije, concerning a moment in his talk when he discussed monastics and ecclesiastical tradition as potentially polarizing. Bishop Atanasije notes that we cannot say that Maximus has not ethics. Then we could say he has no dogmatics. He has both! It is clear that he has ethics! It is only bad if one chooses to think so. If there is ethics, there is ethics. It is another question about where it has gone. We should save words and use them. Some complain that theologians speak against ethics. All things are very well balanced in Maximus. To this, Bishop Ignatije noted thathe did not say every ethics is not good. However, our measures are not ethical by nature, but the true measure is Christ. If we are to be open here, it goes beyond ethics. It cannot be characterized by ethics, which implies a law. Maximus is not a slave to Law. When we talk about ethics it should be distinguished between that which is taught at universities and that of theological schools.

A lunch followed, after which Fr. Calinic Berger presented on “Towards a Theological Gnoseology: The Synthesis of Fr. Dumitru Staniloae” and Paul Gavrilyuk of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota spoke about “Georges Florovsky’s Reading of Maximus: Anti-Bulgakov or pro-Bulgakov?” This panel presented different appropriations of Maximus, by Staniloae and Florovsky respectively. Berger noted the special place of Staniloae among Maximus interpreters, particularly in his devotion to the Church and commitment to not separate dogma from life. His use of Maximus is with knowledge, but also balanced by an embrace of the Philokalic tradition that also animated Maximus, as well as contemporary ascetics. Gavrilyuk then concluded, noting that it is difficult to know how well Florovsky knew Maximus in the original, receiving Maximus as he did by way of Sergei Epifanovich’s St. Maximus the Confessor and Byzantine Theology. What he did know in the original was Bulgakov, whose sophiology implied paganism, pantheism, and other problems to Florovsky. Grounding the paper in a comparison of Maximus’s theory of thelogoi and Bulgakov’s sophiology.

For the final two talks, the Symposium moved to the University Hall of Belgrade University in downtown. There, His Eminence John, Metropolitan of Pergamon began his address by graciously noting that for years, he has been saying that Serbia is a center—it may be the center—for Orthodox theology for our time. By this, he means creative theology that takes theology and applies it to actual life and reality. Without any hesitation, Met. John expresses his admiration for the theological work that has taken place in this country and in this Church.

In his talk, “Person and Nature in St. Maximus’s Ontology,” Met. John noted that St. Maximus is the subject of extensive discussion in our time. He is an example of the wide, all-embracing area of theology. Yet, there are different ways to approach him, the present paper engages with him in the context of Nature and Person. Met. John defined terms and clarified the Cappadocian teaching on nature and hypostasis. He described the gnomic will as the will particular. It is involved in sin and sinfulness, but is in not sinful. It plays a decisive role in deification. It can lead us to good as well as to bad.

Met. John, seemingly responding to Jean-Claude Larchet, affirms that there is no necessity in nature. He noted that all theologians should be doing the work of helping us know how Maximus would reply if he was asked a modern question. Today, postmodernist tendencies threaten anything associated with nature. Modern existentialist thought puts so much emphasis on the Person’s freedom. The only experience available to modern man who has rejected Christ is nature in its fallen state. In Christ, freedom is not freedom from nature, but freedom for nature.

Bishop Atansije, speaking on “The Mystery of Christ in St. Maximus’s Theology,” was not at all mysterious about the principal influences on St. Maximus: it is the Bible, especially the works of St. John and St. Paul. The “Mystery of Christ” is not a common mystery. It is an event that is a Person, Christ Himself, which is the greatest gift of God to all creation, especially to humanity. The Gospel is the Eternal Living Word of God. His Grace noted that Sartre once said that he did not believe in God because He would have to create Himself. That is what God did with Christ. That is the Truth. That is the Reality we call Christ. There is no God apart from Christ and Father of Christ.

A couple years ago when there was an attempt to union with Monophysites, there was an effort to recuperate Severus, but for Maximus, he was the one who led them into schism. Man is called by God to perpetuate the Gospel and to incarnate the Gospel. Maximus is a living brother of Christ. He is the same Christ, many and One at the same time, and that is the Mystery of the Church. For Maximus, the Gospel is his poem about the Beloved, Christ. Bishop Atanasije strongly implied that so should it be for all who would wet their feet in the deep waters of theology. For the Power of the Resurrection, through which we can know everything, is known through the Evangel.

The Symposium was to conclude on Sunday with the Hierarchical Liturgy and consecration of the new church of St. Maximus in Kostolac, about 80 kilometers from Belgrade. Thereafter, the participants were to have lunch and then visit the ruins of the Roman town and fortress of Viminacium, as well as the still-active Medieval monastery of Ravanica.