I read von Balthasar’s treatise on Maximus the Confessor in 2009. I am going back over some notes. The following is a summary from von Balthasar and my playing around on MS Paint. Thanks to K. Johnson for finding Patrologia Graece for me.
- Maximus reworks some of Ps. Dionysius’ concepts. When we approach an idea, or rather, when an idea comes across our consciousness, we first have a general impression of reality (pragma) and gradually grow clearer unity reaches the full knowledge of the individual object.
- “What flashes upon us ‘in an undivided way’ (ameristos) in the first encounter (
) is not some empty general concept of being–a contradiction in terms–but a revelation concerning the Monad (
), the unity of that being that truly is one: a logos that instructs the thinking mind that God and the world are undivided and so makes possible all thought of things different from God (123, see PG 91, 1260D).
Outlaw Huguenot 