Creation is Incarnation: The Metaphysical Peculiarity of the Logoi in Maximus Confessor. (7th September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wood, Jordan Daniel
• Is Part Of: Modern theology. Volume 34:Number 1(2018)
• Page Start: 82
• Page End: 102
• Publication Date: 2017-09-07
• Subjects: Theology -- Periodicals; Philosophical theology -- Periodicals; 230.01
• DOI: 10.1111/moth.12382
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0266-7177

Abstract

Abstract: Maximian logoi or the "principles" of created being are often virtually identified with Platonic ideas or forms. This assumption obscures what is distinctive about Maximus's concept of the logoi . I first note two metaphysical peculiarities of his doctrine, and then propose that these only make sense if we follow Maximus's own directive to read the logoi through Christology proper – that is, as describing creation as the Word's cosmic Incarnation. This suggests, in creative tension with a good deal of twentieth‐century philosophical theology, that the God‐world relation is not fully exhausted by the analogia entis : Maximus divines a still deeper hypostatic (not natural) identity between Word and world that actually generates natural difference – for perhaps the first and only time in the history of Christian thought. Here I assay a first step toward retrieving that relation.