ABSTRACT
Maximus' indebtedness to Areopagite theology is well-known. Like Dionysius, Maximus recognized the unbreachable dissimilitude between God and creation and the unceasing desire of the human soul for total divinization in this life. In Maximian thought, the divine life has an intimacy with beings that is lacking in Dionysius. God engages his creatures with redeeming love and grace, and they respond with their own logoi. The Maximian intellect travels the distance between finite beings and God but as it rises to higher states of contemplation, it does not let go of what the earlier stages have revealed. Maximus uses the three key moments of the incarnational mystery as a theological iconography and relies on its stark imagery, Cross, Tomb, Resurrection to bring the reader's thought to a standstill, as if confronting her mind with the ineffable and ungraspable reality of God's sacrifice. Maximus' imagery has amazing plasticity and conceptual range.
