Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) on John the Baptist being compared to "Elijah" and there being many "forerunners" (προδομος)

  

I believe, therefore, that if the meaning of the whole of divine Scripture is properly and piously smoothed out, the disagreements perceived on the literal level of the text will be seen to contain nothing contradictory or inconsistent. For in accordance with true teaching, all the saints from the beginning [1253A] were “forerunners” [GK: προδομος] of the mystery, which they proclaimed in advance and prefigured through their sufferings, deeds, and words. Therefore, the saints can justifiably stand in the place of each other: all can stand in place of all, and each in place of each. Moreover, the saints can be named in place of the books written by them, just as the books can be named in place of the saints, which is why the books are called by their names, as is the habit of Scripture. And the Lord Himself clearly demonstrates this when he calls John the Baptist by the name of “Elijah,” either because the two were equal in the habit of virtue (as the teachers say), in the purity of their intellect in all things, and in the austerity of their way of life; or because of their identical power of grace; or because of some other, hidden reason, which is know to God (who identified the two figures) and [1253B] to those whom He enlightens about these mysteries. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiggum 21, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 1:441)

 

Further Reading:


"Elias" as a "forerunner" in LDS Scripture