Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor (review)

Outside of Polycarp Sherwood's study of Maximus the Confessor's massive Ambigua ad Joannem, few studies exist which focus on the context and scope of the individual writings left by the seventh-century saint from Byzantium. Blowers' book, a revision of his doctoral thesis, contributes notably towards filling this gap. The work takes up the exegetical scholia found in Maximus' Ad Thalassium, second in size only to the Ambigua and the most extensive of Maximus' spiritual writings, and examines them in the context of the larger tradition of monastic spiritual pedagogy. In the process, Blowers has provided a solid study that should be of benefit not only for students of Maximus, but also for students of Biblical hermeneutics.

St. Maximus is remembered in history primarily for his brilliant defense of Chalcedonian Christology against monotheletism in the mid-seventh century. One should not expect from Blowers' work, however, another study of the Christological and anthropological principles shaping Maximus' thought. This study traces the genre of spiritual pedagogy in the monastic tradition to which St. Maximus was heir, in order to illumine the purpose of his exegetical scholia in the Ad Thalassium. But the study is not without interest for the student of the history of doctrine. Extensive quotations provide an interesting glimpse of the Christological frame-work that gave to St. Maximus' exegetical methods their theological coherence and continuity.

Blowers divides his study into three main chapters. The first chapter examines the different genres used in the monastic tradition for instruction in monastic spirituality—spiritual pedagogy—in order to locate the genre governing the structure of the Ad Thalassium. Two traditions are discovered that provide the historical background for the literary form of the Ad Thalassium: the patristic exegetical aporiai tradition, a literary genre that seeks to resolve difficulties posed by certain biblical passages, and the tradition of the quaestio-responsio. The prevailing opinion has been that the format of the Ad Thalassium depends exclusively on the aporiai tradition. Blowers believes, however, that the aporiai genre is too limited in its scope to account for Maximus' intention in the work directed to Thalassius. After introducing and briefly describing the aporiai genre, Blowers devotes the bulk of the first chapter to the evolution of the quaestio-responsio tradition as a teaching device in monastic literature in order to propose this as the underlying structure adopted by St. Maximus. The quaestio-responsio format is more flexible, and capable of incorporating the concerns of the aporiai genre, but much better than the aporiai genre in providing for St. Maximus a structure to serve his principal aim of framing and developing for monks his own ascetic doctrine. This proposal reveals the Ad Thalassium to be more than a chain of exegetical scholia on difficult passages; it is in essence a spiritual catechism leading the monk to a mystical contemplation of the logoi and Logos of all creation through an anagogical approach to Scriptural exegesis. Blowers has shown, in other words, that the spiritual pedagogy of the Ad Thalassium is far more involved than might appear on a prima facia reading of the text.

Having established the purpose of the Ad Thalassium by uncovering its compositional format, Blowers has cleared the way for showing in the last two chapters that the method governing Maximus' Scriptural exegesis in the exegetical sholia of the Ad Thalassium is determined by his theological vision of the "cosmic LogosChrist." The Scriptures are revealed in this exegetical approach to be windows to higher, spiritual realities. They are the means given by God for the mind's ascent to a fuller vision of the reality that transcends and unites immediate appearances. Maximus' understanding of Scripture is thereby shown to be one with his theological understanding of reality. All things in their diversity are united by their inner logoi to the one Logos of creation, Jesus Christ. The governing rubric of Maximus' approach to Scripture is therefore shown to be his Christological confession. Maximus' belief that the Logos...