quarta-feira, 25 de setembro de 2019

Maximus the Confessor's "Letter to Marinus" (Vladimir Lossky)

Father Venance Grumel, in the article he devotes to Maximus in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique declares that Maximus, in his letter to Marinus, justifies the Roman formula! Now, Maximus shows that it is only a matter of economy. In the ninth century, at the time certain westerners already professed unacceptable views, Anastasius the Librarian, a high dignitary of the Roman Curia and a great Hellenist scholar in a letter addressed in Latin to John the Deacon, speaks of this letter of Maximus to Marinus: "We have translated a passage from the letter of Saint Maximus to Marinus, in which he says that the Greeks were wrong in accusing us, since we do not think that the Son is the cause of the Spirit, but we only want to show the unity of substance: as the Spirit proceeds from the Father, so likewise can one say that He proceeds from the Son, but understanding thereby the sending (missionem) of the Holy Spirit." "And thus,"Anastasius concluded, "Maximus has shown in what sense the Spirit proceeds and in what sense he does not proceed from the Son, and he has avoided the difficulty due to a reciprocal ignorance of the languages." The result is that for Anastasius the attacks by the Greek theologians make no sense. For him, the Father is the sole cause; the Filioque defines a mission. In Migne's Patrology, the editor of the letter of Anastasius (that precedes the letter of Maximus to Marinus) introduces here a little note where he signals that one should read emissionem where the text indicates missionem - if not, one would be in agreement with the schismatic Greeks!


From the book "Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: Creation, God's Image in Man, & the Redeeming Work of the Trinity" by Vladimir Lossky 

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