Here is a wonderful response to the ‘By grace and participation’ post (below) from Vincent Rossi:
As a student of St. Maximos the Confessor for 20 years, and particularly of the Mystagogia, I would say that it is precisely the first paragraph quoted of Chapter 24, which you say is â??hard to takeâ??, that is absolutely essential for an understanding of the work, focus, theological method, metaphysical depth and spiritual vision of the Confessor. Without understanding what he is doing theologically in that first paragraph of Chapter 24, which sums up what he articulates in Chapters 1 through 7 of the Mystagogia, one can have only the vaguest and most superficial understanding of what Maximos means by that all important word â??participationâ?? (Gr: methexis, metousia). For Maximos, communion means precisely mystagogy, and mystagogy means initiation into and participation in the Great Mystery, and the Great Mystery is the Incarnation of the Logos, One of the Holy Trinity, through which, by perchoresis or reciprocal indwelling, human beings may be deified and all nature transfigured. We have heard a lot about â??relational ontologyâ?? over the past decade or so. St. Maximosâ?? ontology is the authentic relational ontology of patristic Orthodoxy, but more precisely it is a Trinitarian, liturgical, doxological, perichoretic ontology, one that is neither Hellenic nor Hebraic, that is, neither downplaying the timeless essence of beings because of the supposed â??hellenismâ?? of substance-language, nor overly privileging the eschatological dimension because of its hebraic scriptural basis, an ontology that grounds the unity, union and communion of the Uncreated and the created in the everpresent hypostatic reality of Christâ??s Godmanhood and the everpresent energetic grace of the Life-giving Holy Spirit.
It may well be true that Zizioulas learned everything he knows from Maximos, but it does not necessarily follow that everything Zizioulas says about Maximos is true. Anyone who seeks truly to learn in St. Maximosâ?? school had better wear his presuppositions lightly and, yes, be prepared to be humbled.
