Desiring the Beautiful

Filip Ivanovic is Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies (Podgorica, Montenegro) and author of Symbol and Icon: Dionysius the Areopagite and Iconoclastic Crisis.

"Ivanovic's masterful delineation of the theological 'heart' of the Dionysian and Maximian writings - love, beauty, deification - shows a deef affinity with and well excercised theological instinct for the overall ethos of Byzantine theology."--Bogdan G. Bucur, Duquesne University"In his carefully thought out and clearly expounded text Filip Ivanovic offers distinguished, judicious, and astonishing perspectives, bridging late antiquity and late modernity. Desiring the Beautiful, with its excellent scholarship, can also serve as a reliable and enjoyable introduction for those who have not yet mined the rich depths of Eastern patristic theology."--Sigurd Bergmann, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim "Filip Ivanovic adds an important voice to the conversation on the intuitive and aesthetical dimensions of the theological enterprises of Maximus and of Dionysius the Areopagite. Eros, in all its depth and richness as an expression of the creature's deep desire for transcendence and transformation, is certainly crucial to understanding the overall projects of both writers with respect to contemplation, asceticism, liturgical devotion, ethics, and other aspects of their work. Ivanovic offers fresh insight and helps bring the erotic and the aesthetic to the very forefront of the investigation of these two luminaries of early Byzantine theology."--Paul M. Blowers, Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan College "In this fine study, Filip Ivanovic explores central themes in two of the great Christian Neoplatonic thinkers of late antiquity, Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor. Both have a rich and complex vision of the way in which, through love of the beautiful, humankind is drawn into union with God, deification. Ivanovic makes clear, too, their differences, drawing out a fundamental ascetic dimension in Maximus's thought, present only implicitly and inchoately in Dionysius. Ivanovic establishes himself as one of the stars in what appears to be a brilliant constellation of young scholars of early Christian philosophy"--Andrew Louth, Durham University