#7 in Christian orthodoxy books
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Reddit mentions of On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ
Sentiment score: 3
Reddit mentions: 6
We found 6 Reddit mentions of On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. Here are the top ones.
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New Advent page: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10078b.htm
PDF of his Ambigua or Difficulties, on interpretation of difficult passages from Scripture and the Fathers: https://www.academia.edu/10390492/Introduction_to_Maximos_the_Confessor_The_Ambigua_Harvard_University_Press_2014_
A fantastic and slim volume from SVS Press in the Popular Patristics Series, general editor John Behr (I highly recommend these editions for all the Fathers): https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Mystery-Jesus-Christ/dp/088141249X/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?keywords=maximus+the+confessor&qid=1565741206&s=gateway&sprefix=maximus+the+co&sr=8-2
Generally histories:
Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
Chadwick - The Early Church
Retrieving Nicaea
Specific Important Authors
Apostolic Fathers
Origen Note: Not everything he said is orthodox, but he was an extremely important figure.
Desert Fathers
Athanasius - On the Incarnation
Basil - On the Holy Spirit
Gregory of Nazianzus
John Chrysostom
Augustine - Confessions
Rule of St. Benedict
Gregory the Great
Maximus the Confessor
John Damascus
The Cosmic Mystery of Christ is a text by st. Maximus the Confessor. In it he says a lot against the idea that we once were in perfect onion with God before the Fall.
This is one of the primary theological problems with theology drawing too much on neoplstonism, as this type of New Age thought does.
If we existed in perfect union with God before the Fall, then God is not the summa bonum that all creation has a natural will pulling and enticing it into communion with God as it's theological and eschatological end. Instead the satisfaction that God brings is ultimately as unsatisfying and fickle as the world.
Also the notion of monism is a neoplatonist idea that contradicts Christian thought and is from the Neoplatonist monad. We believe God is both distinct from and personal with creation.
The early Church Fathers taught that God became man so man could become God and that by grace we become everything Christ is by nature; so we so we do teach what is called deification (theosis) of the mind, but importantly also the body and all of the cosmos. Not just the mind, nor does it become a monist model nor was this the original state for reasons listed above.
The notion that it's just the mind and not the body as well is another neoplatonist view that disagrees with Christanity. In part, this is why Orthodox will pray standing up, bowing, kissing things, lighting candles. It's all ways for the liturgical worship to teach and to structure the proper practice of treating prayer as both a spiritual/noetic/intellect thing and a material physical thing involving your body and what is materially beyond your body.
Humans aren't spiritual beings. Humans are human beings and we are both spiritual and material.
>I'm currently waiting for some books by Hans Urs von Balthasar, particularly his book on Saint Maximus the Confessor's cosmology
I would highly recommend this as a good introduction to this subject.
Thanks! If you are interested, you might like these books.
https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Mystery-Jesus-Christ/dp/088141249X
https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Maximus-Confessor-Handbooks/dp/019877933X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=oxford+handbook+st+maximus&qid=1574213882&sr=8-1
https://www.amazon.com/Christocentric-Cosmology-Maximus-Confessor-Christian-ebook/dp/B005GIRMIY/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=maximus+cosmology&qid=1574213944&sr=8-1
I can only speculate, but St. Maximus' work On the Cosmic Mystery of Christ is probably a factor in that school of thought, which is and isn't neoplatonic.
https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Mystery-Jesus-Christ/dp/088141249X