The Christian Metaphysics of St. Maximus the Confessor: Creation, World-Order, and Redemption by Torstein Theodor Tollefsen (review)

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• The Christian Metaphysics of St. Maximus the Confessor: Creation, World-Order, and Redemption by Torstein Theodor Tollefsen
• Carl Vennerstrom

Torstein Theodor Tollefsen
The Christian Metaphysics of St. Maximus the Confessor: Creation, World-Order, and Redemption
Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia: Research on the Inheritance of Early and Medieval Christianity 90, Subsidia Maximiana 2
Turnhout: Brepols, 2023
Pp. 260. €70.00.

“We may, however, speculate . . .” (234). This line from the final chapter of Torstein Theodor Tollefsen’s work on the metaphysics of Maximus the Confessor is in a way typical of the work as a whole. This is not to say that Tollefsen is blasé in his interpretation of Maximus. Quite the opposite; his speculations are hard-won and soundly based on a masterful command of the Maximian corpus and the wider field of ancient and late ancient philosophy. And indeed it is certainly to Tollefsen’s credit that he does speculate. He is not content with a mere reconstruction of Maximus’s metaphysics. Instead, he often gives his focus to what is unresolved in the texts before him and judiciously offers and argues for reasonable solutions.

The impetus for this book, according to Tollefsen, is that while everyone writing on Maximus mentions and rehearses the metaphysical doctrines at the heart of Maximus’s system, that is, while “one uses and refers to metaphysical topics,” all the same, “they are seldom investigated as such” (20). It is this investigation that Tollefsen himself undertakes. But what are the “metaphysical topics” that he has in mind? In turn, Tollefsen addresses epistemology, knowledge of God, creation, the Logos and the logoi, logoi and activities, universals, and incarnation and deification. Throughout, he is keen to emphasize the indivisibility of these elements of Maximus’s thought, that these topics are not discrete building blocks fitted together. He puts it this way: “The elements are not simply brought together, they are thought together, thought together systematically into a unified structure” (19). Tollefsen makes good on this statement by incorporating all elements of Maximus’s thought, including his ascetic and mystagogical theories, into an ordered whole. This emphasis on the wholeness of Maximus’s thought receives special attention in Chapter Six, where Tollefsen unfolds what he calls the holomerism (whole-partism) of Maximus, with careful and detailed attention to Maximus’s adaption of Porphyrian logic.

Perhaps the most interesting and contentious part of the book comes in Chapter Five on the logoi and the activities, where Tollefsen gives a rebuttal to the standard distinction between essence and energies as seen in John Meyendorff. Tollefsen believes that the vital distinction is not between essence and energies, but between the internal and external activity of God. Since Tollefsen argues that according to Maximus “activity is natural and belongs to God’s essence” (145), it is not possible to say that the essence of God is internal and non-participable while the activities are external and therefore participable. The distinction between internal and external activity, while not one that Maximus makes in so many words himself, is, nevertheless, an attractive solution, and one for which [End Page 484] Tollefsen had already established a clear basis in Chapter Three on creation. Coincidentally, a reader might be left with the impression (not made explicit by Tollefsen) that this reading shows a deep coherence with the doctrine of God taught by Thomas Aquinas.

I wrote earlier that Tollefsen offers and argues for reasonable solutions to difficulties in the metaphysics of Maximus. Not every solution he offers will be satisfying to all of his readers. Nevertheless, they are all worthy of contention and thought, and not only to understand Maximus himself better; they also promise to enrich our understanding of many ancient and late ancient philosophers. The most obvious figures are those who receive extensive treatment in the text: Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius, and John Philoponus. But others could be mentioned, perhaps especially Evagrius of Pontus, whose ascetic theory and adaption of Origen paved the way for Maximus in important respects. More importantly, Tollefsen is keenly aware that since the topics that he explores have been the scenes of perennial philosophical contention, since they concern basic questions about reality, human...