Abstract

This chapter compares the topic of knowledge in the works of Maximus the Confessor and Proclus, and considers the way in which their differences should serve as a cautionary tale when comparing Christian and Neoplatonic traditions. Drawing from the work of Demetrios Bathrellos, Brown Dewhurst begins by considering the similarities between these approaches to knowledge, then by indicating the ways they depart from one another in terms of nature, providence, and will, and the role of apophaticism. Of most importance is the place that knowledge occupies within Christian thought as divine disclosure to creation, a disclosure most complete in theōsis, despite remaining an apophatic mystery. Comparatively, in Neoplatonic strata, the gap between knowledge of creatures and knowledge of the divine is one enforced by natural difference and thus one never overcome in the way Christians describe. Ultimately Christ’s hypostatic union of divine and human natures transfigures Christian understandings of knowledge in ways that are irreconcilable to Neoplatonic notions.