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).
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