Ah, of course! tying it to impassibility makes everything fall into place. Many thanks - this is extremely helpful in understanding Maximus!
It's hard to "step into" historic mental models and translate them into something meaningful. It's *extremely weird* for me to think of emotions as external impulses, and yet orienting to that view is required to interpret the text. I'm sure there are lots of other modern assumptions I bring to the text that are misleading and straight-up wrong. Not just confusion about the Ancients' psychological model of affects, but so many other pieces of their life and thought process.
Your reference to Augustine reminds me of Lewis's chapter on Charity in *The Four Loves,* where he gently disagreed on how we ought to view temporal attachments. It's certainly a fascinating (and important) subject. May we all order our attachments properly!
Terrific, thanks Seumas! That’s the most helpful and pastorally relevant / applicable explanation of patristic apatheia that I’ve read.
Ah, of course! tying it to impassibility makes everything fall into place. Many thanks - this is extremely helpful in understanding Maximus!
It's hard to "step into" historic mental models and translate them into something meaningful. It's *extremely weird* for me to think of emotions as external impulses, and yet orienting to that view is required to interpret the text. I'm sure there are lots of other modern assumptions I bring to the text that are misleading and straight-up wrong. Not just confusion about the Ancients' psychological model of affects, but so many other pieces of their life and thought process.
Your reference to Augustine reminds me of Lewis's chapter on Charity in *The Four Loves,* where he gently disagreed on how we ought to view temporal attachments. It's certainly a fascinating (and important) subject. May we all order our attachments properly!