It’s All in Plato: Looking at the Realm of the Forms and the Logoi with Maximus the Confessor and Simon Oliver

Last updated on: August 23, 2016 at 1:39 pm by David Russell Mosley

It’s All in Plato: Looking at the Realm of the Forms and the Logoi with Maximus the Confessor and Simon Oliver 2016-08-23T13:39:44-04:00 David Russell Mosley

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

David Russell Mosley

Description
English: A photograph of a misericord in Southwell Minster, taken by myself in 2005.
Date 20 November 2006 (original upload date)
Source Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Kurpfalzbilder.de using CommonsHelper.
Author MedievalRich at English Wikipedia

Ordinary Time
23 August 2016
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Readers,

I’ve been spending a lot of time with C. S. Lewis lately, as my last letter indicated. I’m also reading Restoring Beauty: the Good, the True and the Beautiful in the Writings of C.S. Lewis by Louis Markos for review for Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal. In it I was reminded, as if I could ever forget, of Professor Kirke’s exclamation, “It’s all in Plato!” That led me to a video I’ll share below, with Drs. Simon Oliver and Tom O’Loughlin, about Plato. Before that, however, I want to look at a passage from the work of one of my favorite theologians, Maximus the Confessor.

Maximus the Confessor was a late-6th to mid 7th century theologian who was maimed for adhering to the Chalcedonian Definition. His most well known works are perhaps his Ambigua a series of theological and philosophical explanations of sticky passages, primarily in Gregory of Nazianzus, but also Denys the Areopagite. Maximus argues that all things participate in a particular logos, collectively called the logoi that preexists in God. Maximus argues that there is an underlying reason (logos) that informs and supports all things we see in existence (Stratford Caldecott believed these logoi to be intelligent guiding principles, or angels. I’m personally inclined to agree with him). The many logoi, according to Maximus all exist in the one Logos, namely Christ. For those already familiar, this will sound quite like Plato’s notion of the realm of the Forms where the highest form is the form of the Good. For Maximus, because all the logoi participate in the Logos there is a natural connection between us as creatures and the other logoi. In one particular passage, of these Ambigua (which means difficulties), he writes:

[…] and in the age to come, through the divinization which will be given to him [the Christian], he will love and cleave affectionately to the aforementioned logoi that preexist in God, or rather he will love and cleave affectionately to God Himself, in whom the logoi of beautiful things are steadfastly fixed. He is a “portion of God,” then, insofar as he exists, for he owes his existence to the logos of being that is in God; and he is a “portion of God” insofar as he is Good, for he owes his goodness to the logos of well-being that is in God; and he is a “portion of God” insofar as he is God, owing to the logos of his eternal being that is in God (Amb. 7 1081B-C).

The aforementioned logoi to which the Christian will cleave are specifically, the logoi of being, well-being, and eternal well-being, Maximus does not rule out that the logoi of all created things do not also have a place in this. This is precisely because all the logoi participate in the Logos.

To return to Plato and Professor Kirke, then, when the children and King Tirian and Diggory and Polly all find themselves in what they eventually discover to be Aslan’s country they realize that what they are seeing is Narnia (and also England in which the Professor’s destroyed house still stands) as it really is. They are, in a sense, seeing the logoi of Narnia, England, the house as they exist in the mind of God.

In the video below, Dr. Simon Oliver discusses the importance of studying Plato in theology. The video takes an interesting turn toward the end to sacramental ontology. The reason for this is that the many logoi are, for Maximus at least, the Logos. That is, in Christ, and in a new or different way since the Incarnation, all that exists has a special participatory relationship to him. Not only because he is their Creator, but because now all of creation has been bound together in him in his humanity, for humans are a microcosm, made up of all that exists from the lowest, basest matter, to the highest intelligence. Now these things, which already have their source in the Son are related to him and united to him in his humanity as well. This means that when we look at something in creation it not only participates in God as the source of its being, it is not only a sign that points to its creator, but it is united to us and through us to the Creator through the person of Jesus Christ who was both God and man. The implications of this are myriad.

Sincerely,
David

The Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything

Maximus the Confessor

Previous Post

August 22, 2016

Making the Political Other Worse than They Are: C.S. Lewis, Damnation, and Deification

Next Post

August 24, 2016 Folk Liturgy: St. Bartholomew's Bun Run

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Secular Age Advent Apologetics Atheism Beauty Being a Catholic Evangelical Being Catholic Being Deified: Poetry and Fantasy on the Path to God Blogging Book Reviews C. S. Lewis Catholic Imagination Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Christmas Church Calendar Church Fathers Church Life Community Conferences Cosmology Creation Curdled Words Deification Distributism Easter Economics Education Epiphany Essay Extracts Eucharist Faerie Faeriean Metaphysics Fatherhood Films Folk Liturgy Food and Drink G. K. Chesterton Harry Potter J. R. R. Tolkien Jove King Arthur Language Lent Life Literature and Poetry Liturgy Medieval Theology Music My Publications Mythology On the Edges of Elfland Ordinary Time Ordination Parenthood Parish Patristic Theology Pentecost Politics Prayer Racism Radical Orthodoxy Restoration Movement Sacramental Ontology Saints Science Sex and Sexuality Sophiology Stories The Inklings The Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything Theologians in the Church Theopoetics Thesis Research Uncategorized University of Nottingham What I'm Reading Writing

Select a Month December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 July 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz