Maximus the Confessor and René Girard: A hermeneutic approach

• Author: Daniela Sorea
• Position: Department of Sociology-Philosophy, <I>Transilvania</I> University of Bra&#x015f;ov.
• Pages: 257-262

Page 257

1. Introduction

Hermeneutics means search for significance. Initially denoting a modality for approaching the text of the Scriptures, the term extended its connotations, turning into a fruitful method for approaching any discourse and entering thereby in the field of philosophy. The operation of significance search may develop, starting from the text level, upwards or downwards; it is crediting or deconstruction, remaining within the limits of the previous definition. This statement may be argued for in the very initial field of hermeneutics, the text of the Scriptures.

The interpretative discourse may be ascendant or descendent, may enrich the text or may impoverish it. In an example close at hand, Maximus the Confessor credits the text of the Scriptures and René Girard, in a likewise hermeneutic approach, refuses its metaphoric dimension. The two divergent interpretations function on the same text and they are approaches of the same type.

The paper herein argues for the sense similarity of these two hermeneutic discourses. Maximus the Confessor and René Girard preach love to the same extent. Heraclites' path upwards and downwards proves to be, once again, one and the same.

2. Steps towards Self-Accomplishment at Maximus the Confessor

For Maximus the Confessor, Dumitru Stăniloaie deems, [3] our Lord's embodiment is the sense and the purpose of the world. It was created to be sacrificed to God, to the purpose of Christ's mystery.

The sin, defined as separation of the will from the nature's reason to be, is a diminution of the human being and a narrowing of the world. It is a closing of the access to meanings, a sliding on the sensible surface of the things, a valuation of the sentient against the reasoning it should have served. Salvation is the re-opening towards the world and thereby towards God. The deification process is conducted by divinity within the world asPage 258efficient power and from outside, as purpose. The divine plan of unification with the human involves two moments. In the first, God turned into human being. In the second, the human being turns into God, through unification with Him. Between the first moment, of the embodiment and the moment of the deification, there is interposed the climbing. It has, in Maximus the Confessor's standpoint, three steps: the purification from passions, the knowledge in spirit upon the world's reasons to be and the unification with God through contemplation, in His direct Light, of the reasons to be of things. On another plan, in correspondence with it, Christianity means commandment, dogma and faith. At the end of the climbing, the accord with nature is remade, asked by its very sense.

The Ascension is only possible through the Logos, which is through the reason hidden within nature. Through the embodiment, the Logos undertook humanity, contradicting from within its penchant towards the sensitive and constituting Himself, along a subtle exercise of dialectics, into a model of non- suffering through passions. The climbing is the ever-thinning of the climber's being and of the world, so as to allow the Logos to be perceived in them, less body and more Word, in virtue of the simple and intuitive understanding. [4]

The climbing fulfills itself, without coming to an end, in the human being's lifting to the condition of God through Grace and opens for it the possibility of the apophatic knowledge. The ascension is simultaneously a mystic death. Through Jesus, a universal law functions, the one of immortality through death.

For Maximus the Confessor, the Scriptures are guide on the path of the ascetic achievement of the union with God. Its text is a long metaphor for the fight of the Logos in the body and at the same time a subtle course of elaborated psychology. The biblical situations are, in a deeper significance, consignations of the permanent fight within the climber, between passions and grace. Corresponding to the three levels of the self-accomplishment, the Scriptures in their horizontal development possess the ever-deeper cover of the clerical man: the Law is his body, the Prophets are his feelings and the Evangels, his soul.

If existence lies in God's power, then the participation in His goodness and wisdom resides in the rational beings' power. The option for Christ's path is an issue of potency and act, placed under the sign of the...