ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the logic of perichōrēsis differs from that of Neoplatonic participation, and that this is quite evident in the philosophical theology of Maximus the Confessor (580-662 CE). Neoplatonic participation requires that the modality of lower effects come through the qualitative limitation of higher, actual causes, such that there cannot be modal simultaneity or symmetry in one and the same concrete reality. Maximian perichōrēsis, by contrast, posits just this modal symmetry not only in the God-man Jesus Christ, but in the existential condition of the deified human person too. Wood traces perichoretic logic as it derives from Cappadocian trinitarian theology and Christology, and then as Maximus uniquely applies it to the entire God-world relation in his eschatology (i.e. deification). This last move suggests that, at least in Maximus’s case, the truth and final form of the God-world identity exceeds the ontological limits of participation neoplatonically conceived.
