Anthropology and Deification
St. Maximus the Confessor’s account of the human person is built around two great distinctions — between the natural will and the gnomic mode of willing, and between nature and grace in the work of deification — and it culminates in his doctrine of theosis, the “ever-moving rest” in which the creature, without ceasing to be creature, comes to participate wholly in God. This section treats the will distinction that won the Monothelite controversy and the doctrine of deification that crowns Maximus’s theology.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)
Maximus is, with St. Gregory of Nyssa, the most profound anthropologist among the Greek Fathers. His thought holds together what lesser theologians let fall apart: a robust doctrine of human freedom and a still more robust doctrine of grace; the reality of creaturely distinction and the reality of genuine union with God. The two files in this section take the two hinges on which that synthesis turns.
The first treats the will: Maximus’s hard-won distinction between the natural will (thelēma physikon) — the created faculty of rational desire that belongs to human nature as such — and the gnomic will (gnōmē) — the deliberative, hesitant mode of willing characteristic of fallen hypostases. This distinction is what allowed him to confess two wills in Christ without dividing his person, and so to win the Monothelite controversy at the Lateran Synod (649) and the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681). The same distinction yields his luminous account of freedom: in deification freedom is not abolished but perfected.
The second treats theosis: deification as the “ever-moving rest” (stasis aeikinētos) in which the creature’s motion comes to rest in God without ceasing to be alive; the tantum-quantum principle of reciprocal exchange between God’s incarnation and humanity’s deification; and the insistence — which Maximus bequeaths to St. Gregory Palamas — that deification is always grace, gift, and never the creature’s natural achievement.
Navigation
| File | Subject |
|---|---|
| Natural and Gnomic Will | Thelēma physikon vs. gnōmē; why Christ has no gnomic will; the development in Maximus’s usage; freedom perfected in deification; Gethsemane |
| Theosis in Maximus | Ever-moving rest; the tantum-quantum exchange (Amb. 7; Various Texts 1.62); grace and nature; the energies bequeathed to Palamas |
See Also
- Theological Anthropology — the wider Orthodox doctrine of image, likeness, and ancestral sin
- Theosis — the pan-Orthodox doctrine of deification
- The Questions to Thalassius — the analysis of the Fall and the will that this section presupposes
References
- Bathrellos, Demetrios. The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
- Louth, Andrew. Maximus the Confessor. London: Routledge, 1996.
- Thunberg, Lars. Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor. 2nd ed. Chicago: Open Court, 1995.