Reviews for College Student's Introduction to the Trinity

The average rating for College Student's Introduction to the Trinity based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-15 00:00:00 Sabrina Griswold If we want to think of how a man sees the universe in relation to God and his such a cosmic view while not being New-Agey or compromising in his Christian faith, then Maximus the Confessor is the man for you. I can't hide my sadness while reading the book, sadness as it talks about Arab invasions in a typical Islamic, expansionistic approach to places that never belonged to them. I can't hide my sadness over how Christians in these early councils were splitting hairs trying to define who Christ was in his divine nature as relating to his human nature. Those patriarchs of these early councils had too much time on their hands. Had they found a hobby or got involved in something really productive for the world, they would have been more useful. But they were lazy bums arguing over every small detail of the divine nature and castigating anybody who disagreed with them as a heretic anathematized. Because of their argumentative spirit, Maximus the confessor "was tried again in Constantinople, tortured, had his tongue and his right hand 'the instruments with which he had defended Orthodoxy (or to his judges proclaimed heresy) 'cut off, and exiled to Lazica, the homeland of Cyrus of Alexandria. He died there, over eighty years old, on 13 August 662. He died abandoned, except for his two disciples: there was no protest from Rome or anywhere else. Within twenty years the teaching for which he had given his life'the doctrine that Christ had two wills, a divine will and a human will'was vindicated at the sixth Ecumenical Council, convened at Constantinople in 680, though no mention was made there of the great confessor of Orthodoxy, St Maximus. (p.18). There is the influence of Denys (Dionysius the Areopagite) who comes with a tradition of cosmic theology. Cosmos to both of them was not seen "in traditional classical terms as the spheres of the planets, the sun and the moon, and beyond them the fixed sphere of the stars'for him, as for most Christians, lifeless beings'but as rank on rank of angelic beings, praising God and radiating his glory, and drawing human beings up into praise of God and the transforming power of his glory."(p. 31). To them, the coming of the reconciling Christ and our attempts to respond to and live out that reconciliation in our lives has cosmic significance, just as they saw Fall of man in ontological terms'the letting-loose of corruption and death driving the whole created order towards non-being. It was all linked. Maximus is known for his attachment to ascetical theology, which simply means to tell us about how how we come to know God, it is not about some kind of spiritual technique; to come to know God is a matter of experience, not speculation; for a Christian to come to know God is to respond to a God who has made himself known (p. 33). If we ask Maximus what the spiritual life is about, he will stress that it is all about how we love. In our fallen state, apart from the call of God, we are in a state of self-love, philautia. It is from this condition that all the passions flow: Maximus calls it the 'mother of passions' (p. 38). For Maximus, Love is about how we relate'to God, to other people (and, indeed, to ourselves): Maximus defines it as an 'inward relationship' of the utmost universality (Epistula 2:401D). What is interesting to me is that Maximus uses the word agapê for love but sometimes he uses the word erôs. To me that confirms that love is love, and it can't be dissected or fragmented into types as it all flows from the Lord directly, the source of all love. Without Him, we don't even know what love is. For Maximus, training in Christianity is a training in love. He is a theologian who will take us by the hand and give us practical tips on how to apply the teaching of the gospel of our Lord on love. In his famous work Centuries on Love, he teaches us: If you harbour resentment against anybody, pray for him and you will prevent the passion from being aroused; for by means of prayer you will separate your grief from the thought of the wrong he has done you. When you have become loving and compassionate towards him, you will wipe the passion completely from your soul. If somebody regards you with resentment, be pleasant to him, be humble and agreeable in his company, and you will deliver him from his passion. (CC III.90). As a Muslim, I found the teachings of Jesus to be "idealistic", too dreamy and have no bearing on reality. I wondered, how can anybody love their enemies? Why would God ask for a far-fetched thing like that? What good would it do me to love my enemies, if this even were possible?! Now, to Maximus, the objective is to help us conform to the image of Christ, to be like God, and in so doing we are no longer living according to the Adamic dust nature. He says it beautifully meditating on this passage that used to be a stumbling block to my conversion to Jesus: 'But I say to you,' says the Lord, 'love your enemies…do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you' (Matt. 5:44). Why did he command this? To free you from hatred, grief, anger and resentment, and to make you worthy of the supreme gift of perfect love. And you cannot attain such love if you do not imitate God and love all men equally. For God loves all men equally and wishes them 'to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth' (1 Tim. 2:4). (CC I.61). The whole purpose, as we see, behind the teachings of Christ is to free us, to set us free from bondage to our fleshly nature. What would I do with a faith if it was a mere set of dogmas and doctrines?! No use. I need a Saviour that liberates and elevates me to be like God, to be made truly and transformed into His image. As Evangelical Christians, we hear all too often that these monks have to work too hard in order to earn their salvation. We go around saying, they are saved by "works". Look at their ascetic struggle. For Maximus and many of the Early Fathers of the Church, engagement with Scripture and natural contemplation leading to union with God is at the heart of the Christian life, but ascetic struggle is not simply an initial stage to be accomplished as quickly as possible, it is an abiding concern of the spiritual life. The most fundamental reason for this is that, paradoxically, ascetic struggle can achieve nothing on its own. It is all a work of grace that rests completely on who Christ is and His saving work. Also, it pains us to see a word between the sexes. Maximus does not believe in what the poet Amy Clampitt has called 'the archetypal cleft of sex'. His cosmic theology revolves round the notion of the divisions of being. In his treatment of this he draws together a metaphysical analysis of being that places the human person at a kind of central crossing-place in his understanding of reality, and then relates to that the renewal of nature through the Incarnation, and the celebration and recapitulation of that renewal in the Eucharistic liturgy. Maximus shares with Gregory of Nyssa a belief in the double creation of humankind: an original creation that transcends sexuality, and a second creation, embracing sexual division, that has been introduced, not because of the Fall, but with a view to the Fall, that will exploit this division and turn it into an opposition, even a warfare. In Christ, the human person unites heaven and earth, in Him alone, they meet and are joined as N.T. Wright expressed it in his book "Simply Christian". We have to be restored to the original creation that transcends sexuality, that one in which there is no male or female but all are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28).

Review # 2 was written on 2016-09-28 00:00:00 Jhone Elmusbahi In Andrew Louth's introduction to the texts in this volume, he notes that Anna Comnena, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I and the historian of her father's reign, had expressed surprise that her mother was reading Maximus the Confessor, complaining that his writing made Anna's head swim because it was so difficult. I have to admit that I feel much the same way in reading these works of Maximus. Some of the problem is that there are texts which are trying to explicate the problems in other texts of other Greek Fathers (St. Gregory Nazianzus especially), but part of the problem is that they are hard to read. Mind you, I also suspect that Anna Commnena's mother's answer that she needed to read a bit more deeply to appreciate Maximus is equally true of me. That said, even if I frankly didn't understand the texts of Maximus featured here, Andrew Louth's introduction was worth the price of admission. Louth has the gift of explaining extremely difficult theology in such a clear and concise manner that it makes one go and hunt up the works that he describes. And, after reading these works, I understand much better how great an achievment that is.