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date: 24 February 2021

Abstract and Keywords

The author describes Maximus’ doctrine of Christ, the Logos of God, as the beginning and end of the divine Economy of creation and salvation, and shows how he corrects Origen. The following texts are basic to this description: Amb.Io. 7 and 41, Q.Thal. 60, and the first ten chapters of Chapters on Knowledge. The divine Economy is the eternal project of the Trinity. He then discusses some problems involved in Maximus’ doctrine of the creation of a temporal world, with some comments on John Philoponus and Maximus as they defend Christian doctrine against neo-Platonism, and a focus on the procession and conversion of beings in relation to Christ. In a description of Maximus’ Christocentrism, it is important to show how the created cosmos is divinely instituted as an ontologically interconnected structure: particulars, species, and genera are interconnected in accordance with the logoi as principles for the achievement of the universal glorification of beings.

Keywords: neo-Platonism, cosmology, divine Economy, creation, salvation, Christ, John Philoponus, Maximus, Origen, cosmos

Torstein T. Tollefsen

Torstein T. Tollefsen is professor of philosophy at the University of Oslo (Norway) in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas.

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