International Network for Byzantine Philosophy

Fr Dr Doru Costache provides a glimpse of his chapter in Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2019)… The chapter entitled ‘Sleep, Dreams and Soul-Travel: Athanasius within the Tradition’ considers the views of the Alexandrian theologian against the complex backdrop of fourth-century spiritual literature. Athanasius never wrote treatises on sleep and dreaming, nor did he elaborate one on divine knowledge, but his theological and pastoral commitments imposed frequent stops in those areas. His approach to sleep and dreaming was complex: neutral, positive, and negative. Naturally assessed, both sleep and dreaming were either neutral or positive occurrences. One could not be held personally responsible for the uncontrollable, namely, for what happened during sleep both inside one’s mind and around the person. Overall, getting nocturnal rest was important physiologically as well as ascetically. In a typical manner, Athan...

Professor Bronwen Neil offers a taste of a forthcoming book that she co-authored:  Dreams, Virtue and Divine Knowledge in Early Christian Egypt (Cambridge University Press)... What did dreams mean to Egyptian Christians of the first to the sixth centuries? Alexandrian philosophers, starting with Philo, Clement and Origen, developed a new approach to dreams that was to have profound effects on the spirituality of the medieval West and Byzantium. Their approach, founded on the principles of Platonism, was based on the convictions that God could send prophetic dreams and that these could be interpreted by people of sufficient virtue. In the fourth century, the Alexandrian approach was expanded by Athanasius and Evagrius to include a more holistic psychological understanding of what dreams meant for spiritual progress. The ideas that God could be known in dreams and that dreams were linked to virtue flourished in the context of Egyptian desert monasticism. Our volume traces that de...

With the kind permission of Professor John Behr, below is the preface from his forthcoming book, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). After I let it be known a few years ago that I was writing a book on John, I was often asked how my commentary is coming on. To avoid disappointment or confusion, I should make it clear up-front: this is not a commentary on John! It is rather an attempt to put into dialogue various readers of John, ancient and modern—Fathers, especially from the second and third centuries but also later figures, and modern scriptural scholars, theologians, and philosophers—with, ultimately, a theological goal: that of understanding what is meant by Incarnation and how it relates to the Passion, how this is conceived of as revelation and how we speak of it, that is, the relationship between scriptural exegesis and theological discourse. The genesis of this volume lies primarily in the work in ...

With the kind permission of Andrew Psarommatis, here is an excerpt from his forthcoming translation of Quaestiones ad Theopemptum ( CPG 7696), by Saint Maximos the Confessor. The excerpt is from Maximos’ answer regarding the “Touch me not” passage from the Gospel of John. Μαξίμου μοναχοῦ πρὸς Θεόπεμπτον σχολαστικὸν ἐρωτήσαντα περὶ τοῦ κριτοῦ τῆς ἀδικίας, καὶ τοῦ, Ἐὰν τίς σε ῥαπίσῃ ἐπὶ τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα, καὶ τοῦ, Μή μου ἅπτου, οὔπω γὰρ ἀναβέβηκα πρὸς τὸν πατέρα.   Τὸ δέ, Μή μου ἅπτου, πρὸς τὴν Μαγδαληνὴν λέλεκται Μαρίαν παρὰ τοῦ κυρίου, κηπουρὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι νομίσασαν, δηλοῦντος τοῦ μυστηρίου καὶ ὑποφαίνοντος, ὡς ψυχὴ πᾶσα νοερά, μήπω τὸ συμφυὲς σκῆνος ὑπεραναβᾶσα, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τῶν ἐν γενέσει καὶ φθορᾷ μόνων, οὐδὲν οὐδαμῶς διαφερόντων λαχάνων κηπευομένων—ἴση γὰρ ἐπ’ ἀμφοῖν ἥ τε ῥοὴ καὶ ἀπορροὴ καὶ ἡ τοῦ χρόνου περιγραφὴ καὶ περίοδος—, δημιουργὸν εἶναι τὸν Λόγον ὑπολαμβάνουσα διὰ τὴν περὶ ταῦτα καὶ ἕως τούτων πρόοδον αὐτοῦ καὶ συγκατάβασιν, οὐκ ἀξία τῆς τούτου κατὰ πνεῦμα...

With the kind permission of Fr Dr Demetrios Harper and St Vladimir's Seminary Press, here is a preview from the first few pages of his forthcoming book:  The Analogy of Love: St Maximus the Confessor and the Foundations of Ethics . The battle between the vitality of the human spirit and a sinister force determined to quench or restrain it is an age-old theme, one that has been played out upon the stage of history in various ways and portrayed by a multitude of characters. Paradigms and culturally conditioned associations have shifted and transformed over time, but the essential and qualitative sense of conflict remains, embedded inextricably in the human consciousness. A lengthy dialectical argument is not really needed for proof of such an assertion, the evidence for which can be found in the mundane and daily aspects of human existence; in the tensions that exist between family units, cultural demographics, religious confessions, nations, and abstract ideas; and, most profou...