Intellect or Heart, Reason or Faith?

Some instances of crede ut intellegas in Damascene and Maximian reflections

Abstract

Addressing the imputed opposition between Christian theology and metaphysics from the premise of the inadmissibility of severing ties with the Holy Fathers of the Church, this paper argues for the necessity of revisiting dogmatical works like the Fountain of Knowledge and Ambigua with the scope of ascertaining their perspective on the issue. Brief textual analyses will show why the sublation of the Messalian and Evagrian extremes by the Orthodox Byzantine synodal theology (with the purpose of a Union in God) was and remains necessary. On a third layer, the paper gives some indications of the relation in which certain methodological and systematical traits of the cataphatic and apophatic Orthodox dogmatic theology stand to scientific thought.