The Church Fathers · c. 630–650
Two Hundred Chapters on Theology and the Incarnate Dispensation
Maximus the Confessor · c. 580 – 662
What it is
Two centuries of short, deliberately difficult sentences on God, creation, and the Word made flesh, arranged so that the reader has to supply the connections. God is always willing to become man, one of them says, in those who are willing.
Why it lasted
The most compressed statement of Maximus's thought, and the form in which the Philokalia carried him to the modern Orthodox world. Its idea that the incarnation is repeated in each person is the root of the Eastern doctrine of deification.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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