Giving up the world: Man as a free agent in the ascetical ideal of

Maximus the Confessor

Introduction
The ascetical ideal of Maximus the Confessor works within the struggle between
the willing fall into sin and the willing surrender to the will of God. The purpose of my
research is to explore the role of renunciation in the process of this struggle for the
transformation of human nature. The basic argument will be that for Maximus
renunciation is a move not against nature, but according to nature. Renunciation reflects
the spiritual ecstasy by which man discovers his true origins in the Logos – his archetype
– and is inclined towards Him as his telos or end.1 As such renunciation is not denial of
body and matter but their true appreciation. It is viewing the world from the perspective
of its future glory, and a present consummation of its eschatological establishment.
Each of the themes studied below sheds light on Maximus’ understanding of
renunciation. It will be seen that the life of praxis and ascetic struggle is actualisation of
the Kingdom of God which as a potency is an ontological element in human nature. It has
been embedded in man from the moment of creation and it has an eschatological bearing,
but it can be anticipated here on the earth.
Next the role of renunciation in the transformation of man will be explored. The
roots of this transformation are to be sought in the dialectic between pleasure and pain.
According to Maximus pain exists to remind us that sensual pleasure is like seawater, the
more one drinks it, thirstier one becomes. Pain also reminds us that this world, this life,
even if properly lived, is still not the complete thing. Indeed, pain is here to remind us
that this is not our home, and that the world as we know it is not the way it is supposed to
be, and is certainly not our final destination. Renunciation reverses this dynamic and
through the transformation of the passions and detachment from sensual pleasure leads to
a longing for God. This longing for God is no less than  transformed into divine
eros.2

1
Amb. Io. 7 (PG 91: 1076D; Blowers and Wilken 2003: 53).
2
Cf. Q. Thal. 55 (CCSG 7: 499.313; Tvorenija 2002: 586).

1
 The last part of the study will present renunciation as participation in Christ. It
will be seen that man, through Christ, is enabled to fulfil his task of mediation between
the divisions of creation, the final goal the attaining of deification, where the division
between the Creator and creation is overcome. The most powerful enactment of this
mediation is the liturgical participation in the body of Christ where each and every one of
the participants is there for the other. As Maximus says,3
With the advent of Christ at the end of time, there will be a change and
transformation of inclination and choice in human beings from
faithlessness to faith, from wickedness to virtue, from ignorance to
knowledge of God.
Renunciation is a sign of hope that the coming of Christ is the climax towards which
human history leads, and a practical embodiment of the prayer, “your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
1. Renunciation: preliminary observations
a. Not Denial of the Material World
Renunciation for Maximus is not rejection of the world, and consequently it is not
ultimately motivated by fear of punishment or by hope for a reward. In other words,
renunciation is not a heroic act whereby one gives up natural commodities which in the
life to come will be granted in a more abundant form. The plausibility of this claim is to
be sought in Maximus’ basic understanding of the creation of the world and its final goal.
This is best seen in his cosmological reversal of Origen’s system of the eternal world of
minds, by which reversal Maximus departs from Origen and Origenistic metaphysics in
general. According to this system the world of minds, originally static and immobile,
proceeds toward material existence as a consequence of the fall. From this follows the
conclusion that the creation is co-eternal with the procession of the divine hypostasis.
This was a state where the incorporeal beings contemplated and enjoyed the presence of
God in their original immobility (stasis). Due to a saturation of contemplation these
incorporeal beings had turned their eyes from God. This state is the movement (kinesis)
or the fall. In order to catch them in their fall, God creates (genesis) material bodies for
all beings.
Maximus’ system which starts with genesis, proceeds with kinesis, and ends up
with stasis, reverses the pattern. In this system God creates the sensible world by his own
3
Ps. 59 (CCSG 23: 3.7-11; trans. McFarland 2005: 410).

2
will and proclaims it essentially good. Thus souls cannot exist before their bodies.
Otherwise, says Maximus there is a risk “… of seeing this unique miracle, the sensible
world, where God lets himself be known by wordless proclamation, as simply the result
of sin.”4 After the fall (kinesis) man is moving to something beyond the original creation
– the stasis, or the immobile state of contemplation of God.5 Such a system re-
emphasises the doctrine of theosis – the process of deification of man – as participation
of the created nature in the divine life. This is a crucial emphasis in Maximus’ theology
aptly defined by John Meyendorff: “While he (Maximus) firmly holds his position on
creation as a free act of God in time, he does not want to reject the doctrine according to
which creation exists by participation (metoche) in God, who alone exists ‘by himself’.”6
In order to keep the two assertions together – God's free act of creation in time and the
participation of the creation in God – Maximus develops his own teaching on the Logos.
The statement in Col. 1:16 that "in him [Christ - the Logos] everything on heaven and on
earth was created", gives Maximus the basis to say that the logoi of all created beings
were already present in Christ the Logos as preconceived ideas. This does not mean that
the logoi were pre-existent. The logoi did not have any concrete pre-existence, but they
had been eternally present in the Logos as analogous thoughts which He, at creation,
realises as creatures. This is another crucial point in Maximus’ thought, namely the claim
that the creation of the world is the result of God’s will. According to such a view there
cannot be an ontological participation of creation in God. It is not a result of God’s being
that happens by means of emanation. But there is a good basis for an analogical
participation in God. “For all things, in that they came to be from God, participate
proportionally in God.”7
On the basis of the analogy of logoi, God can reveal himself to man and,
according to Maximus, the logoi of "truth and goodness … reveal God"8 par excellence.
Truth reveals God as if from a standpoint of his essence, although the essence is utterly
unknowable by definition, since the absolute truth, as God's essence, is, among other
things, simple, indivisible, unique, impassible, and immutable. On the other side,

4
Amb. (PG 91: 1328A; trans. von Balthasar 2003: 61).
5
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1217C; Meyendorf 1987: 132-133).
6
Meyendorff 1987: 134.
7
Amb. (PG 91: 1080B; trans. Blowers and Wilken 2003: 55).
8
Myst. 5 (PG 91: 673C; trans. Berthold 1985: 191).

3
goodness reveals God through the acts by which he is manifesting his manifold energies
that proceed from the one essence, like the rays from the sun. Thus when the soul,
moved by truth and goodness, unites to the divine, the process of deification begins as a
gradual progress toward final glorification by the synergistic means of God’s grace and
man’s earnest efforts.
Renunciation for Maximus is thus neither rejection of the world nor hope for a
reward. It cannot be so because through it begins the re-unification of the world and, in
accord with this process, the life of renunciation is a “reward” in itself.
b. Anticipation of the Kingdom of God
Renunciation for Maximus is the life of the kingdom of God, and pain is a sign that
the kingdom has not come in its fullness yet. The life of renunciation is the life which
offers the greatest of joys, but in this world it is fated to clash with the principle of fallen-
ness. It is an act according to the logos of human nature by which the deviant aspect of
passibility is overcome. Thus renunciation is inevitably painful but, paradoxically, it is
what life should ideally look like. From this it follows that there is nothing violent in
Maximus’ insistence on “giving up” the world. It is an attitude which logically flows
from his understanding of the ultimate reality discussed above. It has nothing to do with
moralism. This world is good by virtue of the fact that it has been created by God. There
is much to be enjoyed in it, and with a good purpose. However, having in mind that the
human mind has “gone astray and lost its natural motion”9 creation must not be at the
same time a cloud and a veil which makes us blind to the beauty of the creator. “For the
cloud is the fleshly passion darkening the pilot of the soul, and the veil is the deceit of the
senses.”10 Thus besides giving up sin (a non-negotiable directive which every Christian
must follow)
, there should be a point of giving up the beauty of this world for the sake of the
beauty of the logoi of the creation, and ultimately for the sake of the beauty of God. This
is the focal point of Maximus’ ascetical ideal. We must not come to love life on earth to
the point of ultimate attachment to it. Regardless of whether one is tested with “pleasant
things” or with “sorrowful things”, or with “afflictions of the body”, the ultimate goal of
that testing is the renunciation of all other alternatives to God’s providence for one’s life.
9
Amb. (PG 91: 1112A; trans. Louth 1996: 99).
10
Ibid.

4
On the one side, the “pleasant things” must not be taken for granted as one’s personal
property, but rather as an asset to be given away for the sake of others. On the other side
the sorrows and the afflictions, as a drastic way of being stripped of any possessions,
make room for the re-installment of the most important gain a man can be granted: that of
his own life or soul. This is how Maximus puts it: “To the first the Lord says, ‘If anyone
does not renounce all he possesses, he cannot be my disciple’. To the second and third he
says, ‘in your patience you shall possess your souls’.”11 This means that renunciation and
the accompanying pain and suffering introduce the new life, thereby announcing the
death of the old life or, in the words of Maximus, ‘the death of death’. The meaning of
this is that once the cycle of life which generates death is put to a stop, corruption also
ceases, and a life begins, already on this earth, of imitation of Christ, so that one loves
one’s enemies; even as one is hated, one responds with doing good, and prays for one’s
persecutors.12
Such an ascetical ideal is not intended to dull our senses, but rather to sharpen
them to become sensitive for the reality which is both ‘already here’ and ‘not yet’. Those
who still cling to the carnal and the worldly Maximus admonishes with the words of
Jesus: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me … and
whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:37-38).
According to Maximus this means to leave all relations to the carnal and to strip oneself
of all passions of the flesh.13 Renunciation and suffering, in other words, reveals both
what we have become through sin, and who are we truly meant to be. For Maximus this
suffering is a healing process – a process of establishing of the Kingdom of God. It is not
a waiting to be freed from this world, but rather a rejoicing that one is already
participating in its redemption and recapitulation. In other words, the virtuous life is a life
of the world that is to come. The man who possesses virtues is already blessed. No other
circumstances can change that. As Maximus explains in The Ambigua: “If you take away
all bodily and external advantages from the condition of general blessedness, and leave
nothing whatever but the virtues, it remains a state of blessedness. For virtue, by itself, is
sufficient for happiness.”14 Of course, this happiness is not acquired by the believer
11
Car. 2.91 (PG 90: 1016A; trans. Berthold 1985: 60).
12
Cf. Car. 1.61 (PG 90: 873A; Berthold 1985: 41).
13
Cf. LA 5 (CCSG 40: 13.79-87; Sherwood 1955: 105-106).
14
Amb. (PG 91: 1173A; trans. Louth 1996: 136).

5
himself. Only in the context of God’s grace and guidance does renunciation finds its
place of preparation for a life of imitation of God. Outside this context it could easily lead
to the exact opposite condition of humility: to that of idolatrous pride. If pain is seen as
an end in itself, says Maximus, then the persons who do so “culpably make the Word
flesh for themselves.”15 Renunciation makes sense only if it is crowned by love.
Otherwise it is not connected with God.16
Renunciation does not mean to wait to be “freed” from this world, but rather to
participate in its redemption and recapitulation through the overcoming of the divisions.
These divisions were to be overcome originally by man before the fall. They should have
been overcome by the first Adam in the following order: the division between male and
female; the division between the garden of Eden and the rest of the land; the division
between spiritual and sensible; and the division between the creation and the Creator.17
The failed task of the first Adam had been achieved by the second Adam – Christ.
Through his incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension he did make the whole
creation united within itself and with God. Thus, Christ opened the way for all those
united to him to achieve the same unity. This unity reveals the beauty and the goodness
of the true logoi of creation by which believers are getting ready for the coming of the
Kingdom of God. This again confirms that Maximus’ teaching on the perception of the
logoi is not an appeal for a repudiation of the visible order of the creation. He is rather
appealing for an appreciation of the creation by the perception of its true dignity. Any call
to austerity and fortitude against carnal pleasure and endurance of pain has nothing to do
with some sort of masochistic revenge against the appetites of the body. On the contrary,
this call has all to do with the affirmation of the bodily.
Through renunciation we recognise the value God puts on the created order and
confirms his plan for a final transformation and unification, a true unity in diversity. Such
renunciation leads to deification of human beings, whereby they participate in God and
God participates in them. Thus giving up the world is to be undertaken for the sake of its
true discovery and redemption.
2. Renunciation and Praxis

15
Car. 2.42 (PG 90:1144BC; trans. Berthold 1985: 156).
16
Cf. LA 36 (CCSG 40: 83.714-716; Sherwood 1955: 125).
17
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1305C; Louth 1996: 157). This issue will be discussed in more detail latter in the text.

6
 Praxis is the witnessing sign to the observing world, both tempting and oppressive,
that neither its created lure is worthy of the splendour the Creator, nor is its temporary
ruler able to withstand the coming of the Kingdom of God.18 Throughout Maximus’
corpus, he develops the idea that the Kingdom of God itself is already present in those
who follow Christ. It is present in two ways: in potency in those who believe, and in act
in those who have gone beyond the stage of belief and have left the natural way of life to
live the life of Christ.19 That is the life of praxis and ascetic struggle. For this purpose
God had given man two pairs of faculties. The first pair is being and ever-being, which
belong to man by essence, and the other is wisdom and goodness – faculties to be
appropriated by free choice.20 In our fallen condition our natural will has to overcome
our deliberative (gnomic) will and accept the grace of God (i.e., Jesus Christ as
communicated by the Holy Spirit). "The Spirit does not give birth to a stubborn will, ...
but if it so desires he transforms and deifies it."21 So understood, free will and choice
exclude not only the idea of irresistible grace, but also the idea of apokatastasis, universal
salvation. In order for freedom to be preserved, human beings must be free not only to
accept God’s invitation, but also to reject him and be without him forever.
One can again discern here Maximus’ understanding of man as a free agent in the
process of deification. As man by a free will chooses God, the will is, by grace,
transformed from a changeable into an unchangeable state.22 The final goal is the rest
symbolically represented by the Sabbath.23 The Sabbath, reminds Maximus, has been
given so that the ox and the servant can take rest. He compares the first with the body,
which is leading an ascetic life in the way to virtue, and the servant to the contemplative
state of the mind. “The Sabbath is the state of both soul and body, that is, the immutable
condition which is tranquil in virtue and peaceful.”24
There is something gripping in the way Maximus speaks about tranquillity and
rest in the midst of a troubled and fallen world. This comes from his certainty that

18
Cf. Q. Thal. 33 (CCSG 7: 229.19-25; Tvorenija 2002: 464; cf. Luke 17:21).
19
Cf. Th. Oec. 2.92 (PG 90: 1169A; Berthold 1985: 168).
20
Cf. Car. 3.25 (PG 90: 1024BC; Berthold 1985: 64-65).
21
Q. Thal. 6 (CCSG 7: 69.21-23; trans. Meyendorff 1975: 149).
22
Cf. Berthold 1985: 180; note 232.
23
Sabbath or the eschatological stasis about which Maximus says “sta¢sin a¦eiki¢nhton” and “ki¢nhsin sta¢simon.”
Q. Thal. 65 (CCSG 22: 329-321.193-194).
24
Th. Oec. 2.65 (PG 90: 1153A; trans. Berthold 1985: 161).

7
renunciation is a sign of the true perception of reality. When we will perceive the true
logoi of the world, we will be peaceful at its present turmoil. To be sure, the process that
leads to deification is a process of pain and suffering. However, the state of deification
for Maximus is a transformation, so that the Kingdom of God is actualised in those who
have completely detached themselves from the passions and earthly phenomena. In a
paradoxical way, when the body is deified it rejoices. It does not suffer, if by suffering
one means the despondent clenching of teeth when facing pain. Pain will be present until
the end of this present age. But deification already participates in the joy of the presence
of the future age that keeps us close to God and compels us to give up the world. This
joy, says Maximus, is supernatural: “By ‘supernatural’ I mean the divine and
inconceivable joy, which God naturally creates when he is united by grace to those who
are worthy.”25
Deification does not extract one from the pathos the world is enduring. The
pathos may even be intensified, but in the realm of rest the soul and the body have
attained the divine pathos. It is a pathos that is deeply compassionate for the world. The
moment of deification (if we can call it a moment) is a moment which already unites the
divisions. And, although in reality this has not happened yet in its fullness, it has been
contemplated as such by the mind of one who has attained perception of the logoi. Thus
the suffering is not an unredeemed suffering. It is for the sake of virtuous living which
triggers the healing process that brings us to complete wholeness.
Maximus urges us that, although we have received salvation by grace, we should
develop our salvation by introducing the reality beyond the fallenness of this world.26
How much of the reality will be grasped depends on the disposition of the soul. Grace, or
the “sun of justice” (Mal. 3:20), is shining upon everyone. And if the soul willingly
submits to its rays, it is being softened like wax. If not, it is hardened like mud.27 Neither
the wax nor the mud do the softening or the hardening – it is a result of the work of the
sun. It is outside of the power of the soul to redeem or judge itself, for this is absolutely
in the power of God. Nevertheless, it is left to man, as a free agent, to participate in his

25
Q. Thal. 59 (PG 90; 609B-C; trans. Daley 1982 : 338-339).
26
Cf. Th. Oec. 1.12 (PG 90: 1087B; Berthold 1985: 130-131).
27
“The double image of wax and mud and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 7:13) are taken from
Origen (Princ. 3: 1.11) who gets them from Philo (Quis rer.div.her. 181: 3.41).” (Berthold 1985: 171, note
14).

8
own redemption or judgment. According to this view, no one can attain final rest (stasis)
without active receptivity for God’s work in him.28 This may look as a sort of semi-
Pelagianism, or a “works-righteousness”. However, none of the terms mentioned above
does justice to Maximus’ understanding of synergism. What one has to keep in mind is
the centrality of Christ in Maximus’ thought. Nothing besides the work of Christ could be
accepted as a basis of human transformation. All the good things that flow out of the
believer find their source in the mercy of God.29 There is nothing that one can offer which
has not been received by God’s grace. The grace of God is the basic presupposition on
which Maximus builds further. Grace and freedom are seen as two essentials, where
grace initiates the path of deification and the will responds appropriately with gratitude.
Anything less would be despising of the grace of God that comes through the invaluable
sacrifice of Christ, of which the kenotic incarnation is the beginning, and the cross is the
climax.
The corresponding response of the Christian to the kenosis of Christ is a personal
kenosis of all fallen forms of existence. It is this mutual kenotic movement by which the
believer "by the humbling of the passions … takes on divinity in the same measure that
the Word of God [became] genuinely man."30 The same can be said about the insight into
the divine mysteries. There is a natural capacity that must be engaged in order to receive
the supernatural grace. The charismata of the Spirit would be gravely misused if the
receptive faculties had not appropriated them according to their natural capacity.31 At the
same time Maximus insists on the principle that absence of good deeds indicates absence
of faith. Commenting on the stone in Zerubbabel’s hand, Maximus writes: 32
The ‘stone’ (Zech. 4:7) is faith in [Christ]. And it is ‘in the hand’,
because faith in Christ is manifested in the practice of the
commandments. For ‘faith without works is dead’ (Jas. 2:26), as are
works without faith. The hand is clearly the symbol for ascetic
practice.
The interpretation of the hand as an ascetic practice is a vivid image of how faith
needs to be carried in order to be effective. It seems that the practice of ascetic
renunciation for Maximus is not just a means towards transformation but a true sign of
28
Cf. Th. Oec. 1.47 (PG 90: 1100BC; Berthold 1985: 136).
29
Cf. LA 42 (CCSG 40: 115; Sherwood 1955: 133).
30
Or. dom. (PG 90: 877A; trans. Berthold 1985: 103).
31
Cf. Q. Thal. 59 (CCSG 22: 45.28-51; Balthasar 2003: 72-73).
32
Q. Thal. 54 (CCSG 7.461; trans Cooper 2005: 232).

9
the transformation itself. The struggles that the ascetic encounters and the pain and the
suffering associated with them are practising works of love for no other reason but love
itself. As such they already belong to the realm of the new creation. Not even
contemplation should replace the ascetic struggle. The person who tries to find God by
means of contemplation alone would not succeed in the quest if the ascetic aspect had not
been involved.33 Maximus is insistent to keep emphasising that the link between the
ascetic and the contemplative is never to be broken. For him, contemplation and ascetic
action complement each other in a continuous mutual embrace. Being interdependent, the
presence of the one indicates the presence of the other manifested through the distinct
effects of each.34 It follows that the “divine philosophy” is attained as a joined effort of
contemplation and ascetic struggle mediated by reason that has the role of a bridle to
keep the movement of the body away from unnatural dispositions.35 Thus the active
aspect is never downplayed as if of less value than contemplation. As a matter of fact,
contemplation is also an “act,” but performed in a different, spiritual sphere.
This leads to the conclusion that contemplation is not the end of the corporeal in
man, but rather it signals the transformation of being, a new stage of activity. The point
that Maximus makes refers to his specific refutation of Origenistic dualism. The body,
like the soul, is a medium through which God manifests himself. When man is deified by
grace, then “God shines through body and soul when their natural features are
transcendent in overwhelming glory.”36

3. Renunciation and transformation

a. Pleasure and Pain
The last years of Maximus’ life, which were lived in exile, show in the clearest
way his deep commitment to his own ideals of suffering expressed throughout his corpus
of works. In his discussion with Theodosius, Maximus sums up his theology of pain: "I
give thanks to God who cleanses me of my voluntary sins by means of involuntary
chastisement".37 This is one of the four types of ‘abandonment’ or suffering that God uses

33
Cf. Q. Thal. 48 (CCSG 7: 339; Cooper 2005: 63).
34
Cf. Q. Thal. 58 (CCSG 22: 31; Cooper 2005: 63).
35
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1118A; Louth 1996: 97).
36
Th. Oec. 2.88 (PG 90: 1168AB; trans. Berthold 1985: 167).
37
RM (PG 90: 112D; trans. Allen 2002: 51).

10
to announce his plan of salvation for the world. The first type is the incarnation of Christ,
through which he brought salvation to alienated humanity. The second is that of testing,
as in the cases of Job and Joseph, who were ‘abandoned’ so that their true characters
would come to light through the test. The third type is the example of Paul who, through
this ‘paternal instruction’, learned humility and abounded in grace. The last one is the
punishment inflicted on those who turn their backs on God, and who are ‘abandoned’ so
that they may come to a point of repentance.38
Looking through the prism of such statements, it can be seen that Maximus makes
a clear distinction between the suffering of Christ and the sufferings of his followers.
Christ’s suffering is redemptive. The sufferings of his followers are not. Neither are they
meritorious in themselves. Each type of suffering mentioned above has the purpose of
bringing to light a reality beyond this visible world. Pain can tear the veil, offering a
glimpse of how things should really be, but can in no way carry one into that reality.
Although pain, and especially ‘voluntary hardship,’ is indispensable for the sinner to be
spared judgment39, there is nothing innate in human nature which can achieve its own
transformation. “For nothing created is by its nature capable of inducing deification …
[I]t is only by the grace of God that deification is bestowed proportionately on created
beings.”40
To his own question as to why this was commanded, Maximus responds that this
is in order that the human race might be freed from corruption and, granted ‘perfect love,’
an indiscriminate disposition toward all people after the example of God, “who loves all
men equally” and “wills that they be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.”41
Thus, the ‘death of death’ announces the reversal of Adam’s generation acquired in view
of his fall into sin. “For death, once it has ceased having pleasure as its ‘birth-mother’ –
that pleasure for which death itself became the natural punishment – clearly becomes the
‘father’ of everlasting life.”42
Pain, according to Maximus, is an indispensable experience in the process of
spiritual renewal and participation in God’s life. That is so because Maximus understands

38
Cf. Car. 4.96 (PG 90: 1071B; Berthold 1985: 86).
39
Cf. Car. 2.66 (PG 90: 1006B; Berthold 1985: 56).
40
Cf. Q. Thal. 22 (CCSG 7:141; Blowers and Wilken, 2003: 118).
41
Ibid.; cf. Lk 6:27-28, Mt 5:44, 1 Tm 2:4.
42
Q. Thal. 61 (CCSG 22:93; trans. Blowers and Wilken, 2003: 136).

11
man as a microcosm, and as such he is the agent through whom the multiplicity of
creation is to be brought to unity. Beneath its superficial observable division, there is
potential for a magnificent unity of the created logoi, whose ultimate destiny is to cohere
in perfect harmony, though without losing their distinctive properties. For the mediation
of such unity the created order, spiritual and material, needs a mediator – man, the crown
of creation.
This is possible only if the phenomena of the created order are overcome. The
sensible aspects of creation hide beneath its inner, spiritual aspects. These are the
fundamentals, the principles, the laws or God’s ideas. The true perception of any being
pays no regard to its sensible side, which deceives the appetites and arouses the passions.
Having perceived correctly, the mind ascends to spiritual ideas, so that the true logoi of
the created beings are discovered in the Logos. As their true nature is discovered through
contemplation, so the process of mediation of the divisions begins. Here is the moment
where pain and suffering become relevant. Thus Maximus says: “All visible things need a
cross.” The cross enables separation from all that is sensible and intelligible. As natural
activity and movement come to point of rest, then “the Word (Logos) which alone exists
by itself as if he had risen from the dead is manifested anew.” 43
The sensible and the intelligible need a cross, not because they are evil in
themselves, but rather because they are the medium of forbidden pleasure. Maximus’
presentation of pain and suffering – of, as he says, the need of a cross – is based on his
understanding of creation. According to him, carnal sensibility to pleasure and pain is not
part of the original design of man, who was created with a specific faculty to contemplate
God and experience spiritual pleasure. The momentary abandonment of this faculty in
exchange for a sensible pleasure – contrary to nature – left man in a condition of craving
for more sensual pleasure which, unchecked, would have kept him in a perpetually fallen
condition. Mortality and pain, thus, have been introduced by God as a corrective to this
state, as providential plan to lead humanity out of this vicious circle of increasing desire
for pleasure and separation from God.44
From all this, it follows then, that from the fateful moment of the fall, pleasure
and pain are intertwined, following each other inexorably and marking the existence of
43
Th. Oec. 1.67 (PG 90: 1108B; trans. Berthold 1985: 140).
44
Cf. Q. Thal.  61 (CCSG 22: 85; Blowers and Wilken: 131).

12
every human being. This causes a tension, an existential crisis which is a reflection of
man’s anxiety over his mortality and corruptibility, sensing as he does that this was not
his original destiny. Pleasure seems to be an attempt of man to prove his own
significance, to outwit the apparent futility of his life, to achieve, even if for a moment, a
self-actualisation, to come to a feeling of wholeness and harmony with the rest of
creation. Man’s pursuit of pleasure is a cry through which he declares his presence and
through which he communicates to the rest of the world the deepest longing for identity
and belonging. Pleasure is a reflection of the search for how one may say, positively and
unequivocally, “I am”.
However, according to Maximus, this drive for pleasure aroused by the senses is
the root of alienation from God. Pleasure, says Maximus, “is nothing else than a kind of
feeling formed in the sense organ by something perceived through senses, or a form of
sensible energy constituted by an irrational desire.” 45 This does not mean that the senses
should be totally abandoned. Maximus reminds us that the Saints knew well that
forbidden pleasure results from a movement of the soul contrary to nature. Thus, having
defined pleasure Maximus, further in the same text, goes on to say that, when the soul
moves in accord with its nature towards God, then the believers “are disposed to adapt
the flesh in a seemly way to God, through the ascetic practice of the virtues adorning [the
soul], as far as possible, with divine splendours.”
According to Hans Urs von Balthasar, for Maximus sexuality is the focal point of
the whole question of pleasure and pain.46 His observation is certainly correct. Following
Gregory of Nyssa,47 Maximus asserts that the sexual way of procreation has been given to
humanity only in anticipation of sin and, if it were not for sin, that there would have been
another way of filling the earth with people.48 However, marriage and sexual intercourse
are not sinful in themselves. “If marriage were reprehensible, so would be natural law of
reproduction, and if this natural process were reprehensible, then obviously we could
rightly blame the creator of nature, who invested it with this law of reproduction. How
then would we refute the Manichees?”49 What Maximus is communicating here is that,

45
Amb. (PG 91:1112CD; trans. Louth 1996: 100).
46
Cf. Balthasar 2003: 196. (Cf. Louth 1996: 213; note 11).
47
Cf. De hom. opif. 17 and 22 (PG 44: 189AB; 205A; NPNF 5: 407; 411-413).
48
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1309A; Louth 1996: 159).
49
Amb. (PG 91: 1340B; trans. Balthasar 2003: 199).

13
although sexual procreation is not part of God’s original plan, it is still part of God’s
design and as such it is good. The point is its proper use. He says this because no
pleasurable feeling is to be sought solely for the sensation it produces. This applies to
marital sex too. Nothing must be done out of craving for a particular sensation, but within
the context of God’s purpose for each gift he has providentially granted humanity.
Referring to renunciation it could be said that the sexual act in marriage is
commendable only in a context of mutual love, respect, trust, and fidelity – aspects which
emphasise his ideal of unity. It follows, paradoxically, that the sexual act itself could
bring its participants to the overcoming of the male-female division. This is precisely
where Maximus ascribes a positive role to the sexual act. “For humanity has the power of
naturally uniting at the mean point of each division since it is related to the extremities of
each division in its own parts.”50 Such statements as the one quoted here seem to confirm
the conclusion that, for Maximus, the overcoming of the divisions does not assume
abolishing of the differences but rather intensifies them. The more the man becomes
“man” and the more the woman becomes “woman,” the more the two become “one”.
Renouncing use of the sexual act for the purpose of sensual gratification should be
understood within this context. As the man and the woman refuse to use each other for
selfish pleasure they open the way for a truly lasting unity which is at the same time
confirmation of their distinctive maleness and femaleness. For Maximus, “to love” means
first of all to love the other.
The sexual way of procreation, while introducing life, immediately introduces
death as well. Human striving for continuity is proven futile, as its every attempt is
inevitably brought to a halt. Every move towards permanence increases the intensity of
transitoriness.
According to von Balthasar, this view of sexuality in Maximus has no “final and
fulfilling meaning”.51 Maximus, says von Balthasar, takes the quotation from Galatians
3:28, “For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female,” as abolishing all sexual
differences, thereby excluding the possibility that any of them could represent the
“likeness” to God. It seems that von Balthasar is making too much of what he calls the

50
Amb. (PG 91: 1305B. trans. Louth 1996: 157).
51
Balthasar 2003: 204.

14
“Eastern tradition”52 in Maximus’ thought. Adam Cooper rightly observes that reunion of
the divisions does not reduce diversity to indistinguishable confusion. Thus the “distinct
characteristics” will be retained even after the divided entities are united.53 In other
words the “feminine” and the “masculine” in human beings will still play a role in
keeping the unity of the universe. Thus, although no longer divided, they are still
different. To this can be added the overall view of Maximus on the overcoming of the
divisions, especially when he speaks of the overcoming of the final division, namely that
between God and his creation. The overcoming of this, the ultimate division happens
through love, in which human creatures “become completely whatever God is, save at the
level of being...”54 It is clear from this statement that this divinising unification between
the created and the uncreated still recognises their respective personal characteristics.
Following this logic, the same could be asserted for each of the mediations,
including that between the sexes. Sinful, temporal, and provisional aspects of created
existence are to be discarded. This is not, however, to the detriment of personal
uniqueness. On the contrary, each person in the body of Christ has a specific
indispensable role so that the more particularly functional one member of the body is the
more harmonious and united is the body itself. As the believers are formed into the body
of Christ, their distinctiveness, even their bodily particularities, are not lost.
Neither is Christ divided in the corporeal community. For Maximus the church is
the body of Christ because it has been freed from corruption and sin and lives in
accordance with the incarnated Logos.55 Each member does so by his or her own will.
Just as Christ, both God and man, is sinless by nature “so can we … be in him without sin
by the use of our free will.”56 Maximus has no doubts that the uniting moment happens by
grace, but only provided that man willingly participates in it. If man is to be a person, an
image of God, he must be a free agent. Polycarp Sherwood’s comment about Maximus’
understanding of the will is certainly true. He says that the most important concern of

52
Cf. Ibid: 204.
53
Cf. Cooper 2005: 211. Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1308C -1309D; Louth 1996: 158). Cf. Thunberg 1985: 82.
54
Amb. (PG 91: 1308B; trans. Louth 1996: 158).
55
Cf. Th. Oec. 1.84 (PG 90: 1164BC; Berthold 1985: 165-166).
56
Th. Oec. 1.84 (PG 90: 1164C; trans. Berthold 1985: 166).

15
Maximus in the journey of man’s unity with God is the so called “gnomic reform,” the
reform or transformation of the free will.57
It can be concluded then that the journey towards the uniting of all creation, as
Maximus sees it, happens through the overcoming of the divisions, but not through the
abolishing of the distinctions. In other words, the disunity is transformed, not through
melting, but through sharpening. This means that, as the layers of bluntness are taken
away, the natural features are being recovered and each member can fit alongside the
others, strengthening the unity, putting an end to the ‘warring’ principle in which each
entity engages against its counterpart in the pursuit of pleasure. Thus, forbidden pleasure,
being the driving power of perverted passions, needs to be eradicated, but the passible
element is retained, being transformed into an erotic faculty of the soul.
b. Passions
The passions divide the one nature into countless pieces. Due to this, says Maximus,
although our nature is one, we are so divided that we try to plunder each other.58 In its
attempt to achieve a state of harmonious wholeness on its own, humanity has been
engaged in a tragic struggle, tearing itself apart by passions aroused by pleasure and pain.
Thus the transformation of the passions through the renunciation of carnal pleasure and
experience of suffering is the only way one can properly serve God.59 The one “who does
not long for carnal pleasure and does not fear suffering, he has become passionless in
regard to them; together with the self-love which gives them birth, he has killed all the
passions [which proceed] from them …”60
What does it mean to kill the passions? Does one have to kill the passionate drive
itself? This is not Maximus’ solution. Killing the passions for Maximus means the
suppression of their misuse, or in other words their proper or natural use. Neither food,
nor begetting children, nor possessions and reputation are blameworthy in themselves.61
In Capita de Caritate he gives the following definition of the passions: “Passion is a
movement of the soul contrary to nature either toward irrational love or senseless hate of

57
Cf. Sherwood 1955a: 81.
58
Cf. Q. Thal. introduction (CCSG 7: 33.265-273; Tvorenija 2002: 380).
59
Cf. Q.Thal. introduction (CCSG 7: 39.382-41.394; Tvorenija 2002: 384).
60
Q. Thal. introduction (CCSG 7: 41. 395-399; trans. Tvorenija 2002: 384).
61
Cf. Car. 3.4 (PG 90: 1017D; Berthold 1985: 62).

16
something or on account of something material.”62 This statement reveals Maximus’
ambivalence towards the passions in the manner of Gregory of Nyssa, who has had some
doubts as to which part of the soul to attribute them, and he ended up describing them as
drives residing between the body and the soul.63 However both men, Gregory and
Maximus, not only see a positive aspect of the passions in their natural use, but identify
in them a potency, granted by providence, to incite the reason and the will towards deeper
desire for God.64 Their changeability is a point of existential crisis, a great danger and a
great opportunity at once.
Answering the first question in Quaestiones ad Thalassium, Maximus claims that,
in those who zealously seek God, the passions become beautiful, since they wisely
separate them from the carnal things. In doing this, they direct them towards attaining
heavenly treasures. Thus, for example, they turn desire into a longing for God, and
pleasure into a joyous ascension of the mind towards divine things.65 On the other hand,
the person who succumbs to carnal passions proves to be serving the creature and not the
Creator.66 The whole universe has been created in a way which punishes any violence
done against nature, or rather against the natural order of the creation. “Nature punishes
people who seek to do her violence, in the same degree as they indulge in an unnatural
style of life; her punishment is that they no longer have ready, natural access to the full
powers of nature. Their natural freshness is diminished, and so they are punished.”67 This
is the thin line that separates the passions’ potential to be utilised as a powerful means of
our personal transformation, and to be misused in the basest of ways through which they
enslave the human soul.
Following Nemesius,68 Maximus explains how the passionate part of the soul
works. The nourishing aspect of it cannot be persuaded by reason. On the other hand the
desiring and the incensive (concupiscible and irascible) aspects can be directed by reason.
Maximus says that this aspect of the passionate part of the soul is “obedient to reason”
62
Car. 2.16 (Pg 90: 988D – 989A; trans. Berthold 1985: 48). Cf. Q.Thal. 1 (CCSG 7: 47.5-10; Tvorenija
2002: 386). There Maximus refers directly to Gregory of Nyssa.
63
Cf. De an. (PG 46: 53C; Roth 1993: 52). Cf. Q.Thal. 1 (CCSG 7: 47-49; Tvorenija 2002: 386 – 387). Cf.
De virg. 12 (GNO 8/1: 298; Callahan 1967: 91).
64
Cf. Q. Thal. 51 (CCSG 7: 405.186). Cf. De virg. 12 (GNO 8/1: 297.24–300.2; Callahan 1967: 90).
65
Cf. Q. Thal. 1 (CCSG 7: 1.47-49; Tvorenija 2002: 386-387).
66
Car. 1.20 (PG 90: 964D – 965A; Berthold 1985: 37).
67
Amb. (PG 91: 1164C; trans. Balthasar 2003: 197).
68
Cf. Louth 1996: 211; note 121.

17
because this is its natural tendency.69 In a discussion of 2 Chronicles 32:2-4, having
presented Hezekiah as the mind, Maximus interprets the “elders and the captains” as
reason, concupiscence, and irascibility:70
The second of the mind’s elders or captains is the concupiscible
faculty, by which divine love () is produced. Through this love,
the mind, voluntarily attaching itself to the desire for the undefiled
Godhead, has a ceaseless longing for what it desires. Still another elder
or captain is the irascible faculty, by which the mind ceaselessly clings
to the peace of God, drawing its movement toward the divine passion
() of desire ().
As soon as the soul becomes empty or “barren” of twisted desires, a space is
being opened for the birth of reason, which enables the person to live in obedience to
God. Obedience to God, for Maximus, is not first of all an unquestioning acceptance of
God’s commands. This kind of obedience has its place in the process of growing towards
maturity, but it is inferior to the obedience which comes through true knowledge.
Accordingly, when the soul is barren and the reason obedient to God is born, “it might be
able to bring forth the power to see with knowledge what is in front of it, through a
religious attention to contemplation.”71 This true knowledge enables the soul to perceive
the carnal passions as they truly are. Ignorance, on the other side, nourishes these
forbidden desires and turns them into vices respectively of each of the misused faculties
of the soul: 72
Misuse of the rational faculty is ignorance and folly; misuse of the
irascible and concupiscible faculties is hatred and intemperance. But
the right use of these faculties is knowledge and prudence, love and
moderation. And if this is the case, then nothing created and brought
into being by God is evil.
For Maximus neither knowledge, nor ignorance, nor the will are to be understood
purely intellectually. Since all knowledge that the mind can acquire comes from God and
is granted by grace, it could be said, somewhat paradoxically, that this knowledge is
previously asserted by experience. The attitude of the will (gnome) towards God is much
more than an issue of knowledge (gnosis). This gnosis must proceed towards ecstasis,
which converges with love (agape). Love signifies complete surrender to God. Love

69
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1196C-D; Louth 1996: 148-149).
70
Q. Thal. 49 (CCSG 7: 355.75–81; trans. Blowers 1996: 74).
71
Amb. (PG 91: 1124D – 1125A; trans. Louth 1996: 107).
72
Car. 3.3 (PG 90: 1017CD; trans. Berthold 1985: 61).

18
testifies that man is in the image of God as it directs gnome to incline towards the “logos
of nature.”73
Paul Blowers points to the critique of the church fathers, including Maximus, by
modern interpreters such as Nicolas Berdyaev, that they have depleted spiritual love
“‘from the emotions and from all concreteness and individuality,’74 and fossilised it into a
means of transcendence devoid of human warmth.”75 This statement must be taken with a
caveat. No will can continue in a “long obedience in the same direction” unless it is
passionately committed to its given course. For Maximus, true knowledge is to be
captivated by the beauty and the goodness perceived in the logoi of all things. When a
human being acts intelligently it cannot but fall in love with God and “it does not come to
rest until it is embraced wholly by the object of its desire.”76 Ignorance is to be captivated
by the transitory phenomena of things. Therefore it is no wonder that Maximus interprets
the return of the exiled Jews from captivity as liberation from the slavery to the
mutability of the passions.77 Once in the realm of freedom the reason and the will are
elevated to the vision of divine beauty, and illuminated by it they turn the passible faculty
“to a never-ending divine desire…”78 As much as will plays an indispensable role in the
thought of Maximus, its ultimate goal is not to numb but rather to intensify the
experience of the encounter with God. The guideline that Maximus follows concerning
the passions is to be identified in his understanding of the nature of the created order.
Nature first needs to be brought to its original condition. However, this is not the ultimate
goal. It is rather the going beyond oneself.79 Maximus’ view of the passions must be
interpreted in this context. For example in the Gnostic chapters we read the following
statement: “The active man is said to dwell on the level of flesh as one who through the
virtues cuts away the attachment of the soul and the body.”80 The rest of the chapter

73
Ep. 2 (PG 91: 396C-D; trans. Louth 1996: 86-87).
74
Berdyaev 1960: 187-88; quoted in Blowers 1996: 82.
75
Blowers 1996: 82.
76
Amb. (PG 91: 1073C-D; trans. Blowers and Wilken 2003: 51).
77
Cf. Q.Thal. 54 (CCSG 7: 449.99-112; Tvorenija 2002: 557).
78
Car. 2.48 (PG 90: 1000D; trans. Berthold 1985: 54). This chapter reveals a link to Gregory of Nyssa’s
teaching on the eternal ascent of the soul. However, Maximus is not uncritical of Gregory’s system,
developing his own distinctive method that ends in stasis or rest, but without the Evagrian or Origenistic
possibility of cyclical falls.
79
Cf. Th. Oec. 1.81 (PG 90: 1116AB; Berthold 1985: 143).
80
Th. Oec. 2.17 (PG 90: 1132C; trans. Berthold 1985: 151).

19
reveals that it is the “deceitfulness of the material things” that is being discarded, not the
materiality itself.
From what is said above the link between the will and the passions becomes clear.
The passions become beautiful only in those who take “every thought captive to obey
Christ.”81 This obedience, which entails enduring pain for the sake of virtue, brings glory
to God, who in turn glorifies the believer by grace, thereby re-introducing him into the
participation in the divine life that is characterised by detachment (apatheia).82
c. Detachment
The transformation of the passions and the ascent to God begins with a fourfold
process of detachment. Detachment is the all-encompassing principle of the Christian
life. It should be applied even to the pleasant things in life, those that are not sinful in
themselves, but are nevertheless things which pull towards the earthly, the temporal and,
if not checked, establish a value system in which comfortable life becomes the ideal.
Turning ironically to the principles of the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount,
Maximus shows that it is very easy to apply Jesus’ admonishments in the wrong way.
Thus, for example, many are meek over their carnal desires, and the hearts of many are
clean out of vanity.83 In other words we would not judge ourselves, says Maximus. If we
did so, we would not have been judged at all. However, the Lord’s judgment is
introduced as a way of our chastisement through which we are spared from a final
condemnation.84 That is why there must be nothing that stands in the way of participation
in the divine life.
The process of detachment begins with the mortifying of the earthly members,85
and with a complete abstinence of any realisation of evil deeds. The second step is the
rejection of evil thoughts. The third detachment is the immobility of the concupiscible
principle of the soul towards the passions, and the fourth detachment is the purification
even from the simple image of the passion or any thought of sensible imaginations.86 This

81
2 Cor. 10:5; quoted in Q. Thal. 1 (CCSG 7: 47; trans. Tvorenija 2002: 387).
82
Cf. Car. 2.72 (PG 90:1157B; Berthold 1985: 162).
83
Cf. Car. 3.47 (PG 90: 1030C – 1032A; Berthold 1985: 67).
84
Cf. Car. 2.41 (PG 90: 998B – 1000A; Berthold 1985: 53).
85
Th. Oec. 2.95 (PG 90: 1169C; Berthold 1985: 168); cf. Col. 3:5.
86
Cf. Q.Thal. 55 (CCSG 7: 493.200-211; Tvorenija 2002: 581).

20
process leads the believer through stages in which the previous stage is a step to the next
one into the growth of likeness to God.
At the same time detachment is not equal to a state of undisturbed tranquillity. It
is much more a struggle of body and soul. On the one side, says Maximus, the one who
has not been detached from the earthly members will face suffering due to the
changeability of the mind. On the other side, the one who lives the life of praxis and
ascetic struggle will also endure suffering through their strenuous efforts to attain virtue.
The ascetic person will experience the peace of the Lord (John 16:27-28) and, if he
repents, the worldly man will be freed from changeability and attachment to the
corruptible.
Detachment as such gives birth to love,87 which is characterised by an important
feature. That is that love is a dynamic rather than a static entity,88 being “… a good
disposition of the soul.”89 The worst enemy of apatheia is the passion of self-love.
Instead of opening ourselves toward and for the other we are only occupied with our own
well-being. This stays in an absolute opposition to agape love - the love of God - which
enables human beings to participate in the life of God. Agape was the reason why God
became flesh, experiencing the fullness of the human condition, yet sinless. He lived a
life permeated with apatheia - a life with full control of the passible faculties of the soul -
the concupiscible and the irascible - for the purpose of their proper use. In Christ’s
example of agape Maximus sees the wholeness of the moral life of renunciation.
d. Love
Agape is present in the life of the believer as a result of his peace and harmony
with God. This peace enables him to establish harmony within himself and with other
people. Love for God can be best exercised if it is directed toward one's neighbour. But
since this love comes from God, or better, it is the love of God, it should be without any
limits. Such love is the highest possible way to honour God. This means that love is not
just a state in which the soul serenely and unilaterally contemplates God. In the case of
Maximus love reflects a bilateral relationship between the soul and God and thus this

87
Cf. Car. 1.2 (PG 90: 961B; Berthold: 1985: 35).
88
Cf. Berthold 1985: 87; note 4. The note draws attention to the fact that with the expression “good
disposition” Maximus has changed the static view of love in Evagrius.
89
Car. 1.1 (PG 90: 961A; trans. Berthold 1985: 36).

21
“disposition” can truly be called a “passionate love”90 as it is aroused in a response to the
movement of the divine love towards the soul – an act of mutual knowledge of each
other.
Knowledge for Maximus is not first of all an intellectual affair. It could be much
more called a love affair. The erotic aspect of love is fully engaged “by which one prefers
no being to the knowledge of God.”91 In other words, to prefer one thing against another
implicates decision or making a choice. Knowledge on its own cannot keep the mind free
from carnal passions. It soon grows weary and through negligence abandons purity and
sinks into defilement.92 In another place93 Maximus similarly warns that carelessness and
lack of diligence fill the anointed mind with pride, which returns it back to ignorance so
that passions are soon ruling over it.
Sheer intellectual perception cannot stir the soul towards a decisive movement,
but the mystical experience certainly does. This is well recognised by von Balthasar, who
says that without pathos knowledge cannot separate the mind from sensible phenomena.94
In other words “simple thoughts”, as Maximus reminds us, cannot be turned “into divine
things.” 95 As a matter of fact that is the very first stage of detachment of those who have
not attained “knowledge” i.e. mystical experience and are still motivated by hope for a
reward, or by fear of punishment. Love, on the other hand, requires both — knowledge
and pathos — together. As such it is the greatest good because through it a perichorectic
dance occurs at which God participates in man and man participates in God. “Other than
this there is nothing that can make the human being who loves God ascend any higher,
for all other ways of true religion are subordinate to it.”96 Without the experience of
divine love, human nature cannot attain immutability of virtue.97 To this divine love the
mind responds with love. Being rooted in it, the mind is firmly fixed in the spiritual
struggle and is completely overtaken by its longing for God.98 “For by an enduring

90
Car. 3.71 (PG 90: 1037AB; trans. Berthold 1985: 71).
91
Car. 1.1 (PG 90: 961A; trans. Berthold 1985: 36).
92
Cf. Car. 3.66 (PG 90: 1037A; Berthold 1985: 70).
93
Cf. Th. Oec. 2.55 (PG 90: 1148D – 1149A; Berthold 1985: 159).
94
Cf. Balthasar 2003: 342.
95
Cf. Car. 3.68 (PG 90: 1037B; Berthold 1985: 70).
96
Ep. 2 (PG 91: 401D; trans. Louth 1996: 90).
97
Cf. Car. 1.81 (PG 90: 977CD; trans. Berthold 1985: 44).
98
Cf. Q. Thal 49 (CCSG 7: 351.19-352.36; Tvorenija 2002: 510).

22
participation in the divine illumination it … turned it around to a never-ending divine
desire and an unceasing love.”99
The mind is the lover of God. In the manner of Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses,
commenting on Moses’ contemplation on the mountain, Maximus says that the highest
experience of the act of love is its ecstatic flight into the darkness of God’s sanctuary,
being absolutely freed of all other links but the awareness of God’s formless, invisible
and bodiless presence.100 One may make the conclusion that Maximus is neglecting the
communal aspect of love. Is he cancelling further relationship with creation? Shall we
become oblivious of other creatures? Does this mean we can be in relationship with
others only indirectly through our relationship to God? Maximus would say no! If God
loves other creatures, how can we not love them too? He is aware that a world where God
is our sole focus is not very different from Plotinus’ flight of the one to the One.
Maximus describes how Moses, following his ecstatic experience, returned to be among
the rest of the people. This return, Maximus comments, tells us that Moses’ transforming
experience was given to him to communicate its effects to the people of God. 101
Because of his participation in glory, his face shone with grace to all
men, so that having himself become a figure of the Godlike figure, he
gave and displayed without envy … the mysteries of God as a kind of
divinely-given inheritance
Love, for Maximus, is not just a state of intellectual purity of mind and soul. His
emphasis on the social and relational aspect of love permeates much of his works. For
example, he emphasises Jesus’ commandment to love the enemies102 (Mt. 5:44; Lk. 6:27-
28) as well as the greatest commandment consisting of undivided love for God and the
neighbour.103 Maximus’ consistency in making sure that no amount of effort from the
human side could ever achieve the standards of the divine reminds the reader that
Maximus is far from being a rigorist or legalist.
Both love and unity are paradoxical. Love reaches forward in a conscious move of
self-denial for the sake of affirming the presence of the other, and at the same time the
more loving and harmonious the relationship becomes, the more independent grow the

99
Car. 2.48 (PG 90: 1000D; trans. Berthold 1985: 53-54; cf. note 96 on page 92).
100
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1117B; Louth 1996: 103).
101
Ibid.
102
Cf. Car. 1.61 (PG 90: 973A; Berthold 1985: 41).
103
Cf. LA 6 (CCSG 40: 15.93-109; trans. Sherwood 1955: 106).

23
subjects involved in it.104 Each participates in the other and as the participation intensifies
the difference between them becomes more obvious. So as the mind gains admittance
into the presence of God, it “is inflamed with desire and seeks first of all the principles of
his being but finds no satisfaction in what is proper to himself, for that is impossible and
forbidden to every created nature alike.”105 Maximus goes on to say the mind can freely
contemplate and so participate in God’s energies such as eternity, infinity, immensity, but
also goodness, wisdom, and power. Love, in this case described as “inflamed desire”, is
the link that makes the transfer of natures possible. Such is the paradoxical power of love;
no wonder that it is the only divine energy or attribute with which God is thoroughly
identified: “God is love” (1 John 4:16).106 God who is love is the final object of desire of
human love.
According to Maximus, man’s primary natural characteristic is his yearning for
God. God, for him, is that “ultimately desired” ()107 end for whose
“… sake … all things exist.”108 In other words God satiates all human longing, and is its
beginning and end.”109 This was the driving power behind Paul’s exclamation: “‘and it is
no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’” (Gal. 2:20).110 In other place
Maximus will say that Paul said this as a true lover, “ .”111 Looking
through the lenses of Paul, in unison with him, Maximus ponders over the meaning of
existence which he discovers in love. He wants to lure the reader out from the shell of
deceptive safety of the realm of an independent existence, from the pathetic mimicry of
love in carnal affection. He challenges him to give up the false pretences over his soul, to
surrender his life, and find it resurrected in Christ.
Love is not only benevolent feelings for the other. So as a man prays for those
who have wronged him, much as he is freed from the passions of anger, the offenders
themselves are enabled to do the same. “If someone else bears you a grudge, be generous

104
This is how von Balthasar describes this process: “... the union between God and the world reveals, in
the very nearness it creates between these two poles of being, the ever-greater difference between created
being and the essentialy incomparable God.” Balthasar 2003: 64.
105
Car. 1.100 (PG 90: 981D – 984A; trans. Berthold 1985: 46).
106
Cf. Ep. 2 (PG 91: 404C; trans. Louth 1996: 91).
107
Th. Oec. 2.86 (PG 90: 1165B; trans. Berthold 1996: 166).
108
Amb. (PG 91: 1072C; trans; Blowers and Wilken 2003: 48).
109
Amb. (PG 91: 1073C; Blowers and Wilken 2003: 50-51).
110
Amb (PG 91: 1076B; trans. Blowers and Willken 2003: 52).
111
Div. Cap. (PG 90: 1348D).

24
and humble with him, treat him fairly, and you will deliver him from the passions.”112
This dynamic of love, as Maximus presents it, gives us an insight into his vision of the
kingdom of God. Redemption, for him, is unimaginable unless every aspect of the
creation, participating in the divine love, is permeating each other with that same love
that has, graciously and supernaturally, become their own. When man loves with the
perfect love of God, he is doing nothing else but fulfilling the purpose for which he was
created. The lack of such love is revealed in the tragic fraction of creation. Speaking of
the apostle Paul in the Ascetic Life 15, Maximus says that the plan of the demons has
always been to force him to break the commandment of love. In this particular resistance
of Paul and the other apostles is seen their decisive victory against the devil’s attacks and,
without any benefit for themselves being mentioned, they have reconciled the world with
God (2 Cor. 5:18-19). The wording in the Ascetic Life 15 is strong confirmation of
Maximus’ ideal of love as the renunciation of all satanic scheming and reasoning. Victory
is to be won through the love that is “giving up”. The focal point of the apostle’s ministry
of reconciliation is that “… by giving way, they conquered those who thought to
conquer” ( h{tth"    .113 This statement summarises
the main claim of this essay. For Maximus giving up, or renunciation, is the seed of the
victory of the kingdom of God already present. Giving up is life lived by the principles of
that kingdom. Renunciation is a sign of being present for the other – the ultimate meaning
of love. Thus love must be the same both for God and other people.114
As a monk, Maximus was well aware of the rivalry and hostility that could ravage
monastic communities. These people, who had given up everything, were still able to
fight over the most trivial of possessions. Obviously the mere renunciation of possession
and other commodities of life could not make one change one’s own disposition of mind
and will. Maximus, through the words of the spiritual father, reminds his fellow monks
that renunciation must be rooted in true understanding of God’s purpose for humanity.
You, the spiritual father, must admonish the novice: “hold this purpose, you too can love
those who hate you; but otherwise, it is in no way feasible.”115

112
Car. 3.90 (PG 90: 1044D; trans. Berthold 1985: 74).
113
LA 15 (CCSG 40: 35.293; trans. Sherwood 1955: 112).
114
Cf. Ep. 2 (PG 91: 401D; Louth 1996: 90).
115
LA 15 (CCSG 40: 35.293-295; trans. Sherwood 1955: 112).

25
 In his discussion of love in Questiones ad Thalassium, Maximus also comments
on the other two prominent Christian virtues: faith and hope. Without this trio from the
New Testament, no fight against evil can prevail to the end. Faith persuades the mind to
look for help from God in the midst of spiritual battle. Hope establishes in the mind the
steadfast certainty of God’s promises, and love focuses the mind on God’s love so that its
full capacity is employed in the battle against evil powers.116 This passage confirms
Maximus’ strong biblical commitment. The mind is to be directed by the three supreme
virtues. Cooper is right when he says that, for Maximus, faith is a “direct form of
knowledge.” 117 It is only through faith’s lead that the mind accedes to God. In this “high
estimation of faith” Maximus follows Evagrius but, as Lars Thunberg observes, Maximus
goes further than Evagrius’ definition of faith as “a kind of natural and purified
gnosis.”118 For him, faith is given at baptism as a gift of grace, a power, an inner and
formless Kingdom of God.119 This logic is well seen in the Capita de caritate where
Maximus presents the role of commandments, instructions and faith. Each, in an
ascending order, leads the mind to a higher perception of reality. Thus it is the role of
faith to bring the mind into a direct contemplation of God, which is certainly superior to
the previously acquired “knowledge of beings”.120
Maximus differs from Evagrius on hope as well. While accepting Evagrius’
interpretation of hope as confidence and corroboration, Maximus recognises in it a more
significant role: that of the “strength of the other two”121 [faith and hope]: 122
For faith is the foundation of everything that comes after it, I mean
hope and love, and firmly establishes what is true. Hope is the strength
of the extremes, I mean faith and love … and teaches to itself through
itself to make it to the end of the course. Love is the fulfilment of these
wholly embraced as the final desire, and furnishes them rest from their
movement.
These and all other blessings are gifts of grace to the believer. Maximus begins
Epistula ad Iohannem cubicularium by saying: “You, the God-protected ones, cleave
through grace to holy love towards God and your neighbour, and care about appropriate
116
Cf. Q.Thal. 49 (PG 91: CCSG 7: 355.75–81; Tvorenija 2002: 510).
117
Cooper 2005: 229.
118
Thunberg 1985: 104.
119
Cf. Q.Thal. 33 (CCSG 7: 229.10-25; Tvorenija 2002: 464).
120
Car. 4.47 (PG 90: 1057C; trans. Berthold 1985: 80).
121
Thunberg 1985: 105.
122
Ep 2 (PG 91: 396B; trans. Louth 1996: 86).

26
ways of practising it.”123 In one single sentence we are given four fundamental tenets. The
first one is God’s protection. Believers are described as θεοφύλακτοι – those under the
protection of God. This communicates unequivocally that God both initiates and sustains
the spiritual transformation of the redeemed community. Grace, the second tenet, is
indispensable if the link with God is to be preserved. The twofold commandment of love,
towards God and neighbour, should follow as a response to God’s initiative of protection
and grace. Finally, the responsibility of the believer is to put this gracious experience into
practice by active participation in Christ the Mediator.

4. Renunciation as participation in Christ the Mediator

a. Mediation as the Supreme Realisation of Human Life

Maximus’ teaching on man’s role of mediation is dispersed throughout his whole
corpus. However, he espouses it in a succinct and systematic way in two places on which
I will focus in the discussion that follows. These places are in Ambigua 41, and in
Questiones ad Thalassium 48. In them, Maximus interprets man as a microcosm through
whom the divisions are overcome. However, man has tragically failed in his role as a
mediator. Instead of mediating unity, he dragged the whole creation into further division,
a division that threatens to disintegrate into nothingness, thus challenging God’s plan for
his creation. This is because evil, according to Maximus, is not an entity that exists on its
own. Enumerating Aristotle’s categories in the introduction of the Questiones ad
Thalassium, Maximus explains that evil has no being or hypostasis, and as such has no
“quality, quantity, relation, place, time, posture, acting, having, being acted on.”124 This
tendency of evil towards nothingness explains its other characteristic, namely that it is the
“irrational movement of the natural powers”125 towards something else which is not the
real goal of existence for which the first man was originally created.
Speaking of the fall of the first man, Adam, he espouses the distinction between
 and .126 The first is the original creation at which initially man was free
from sin and corruptibility. He did not have any carnal pleasures or bodily needs.

123
Ep. 2 (PG 91, 393A; trans. Louth 1996: 85).
124
Q.Thal. introduction (CCSG 7: 29.211-214; trans. Tvorenija 2002: 378).
125
Ibid. (CCSG 7: 29.220-221; trans. Tvorenija 2002: 378).
126
Q.Thal. 21 (CCSG 7: 127.5-9; trans. Blowers and Wilken 2003: 109).

27
Procreation itself would have been achieved through a nonsexual way. After the fall,
birth () has been connected with the sinful pleasure of indulgence. Thus coming
into life is inevitably connected with decay, which at the end leads to death.
Christ as second Adam assumes the decaying aspect of human nature. However,
since he was born without sexual intercourse, he breaks the circle of sexual procreation,
and with it, its association with decay and death that follows it. His incarnation initiates
the reversal of the process and accomplishes the role of mediator in overcoming the basic
divisions of the creation: the division between male and female; the division between the
garden of Eden and the rest of the land; the division between spiritual and sensible; and
the division between the creation and the Creator. 127 This five-fold mediation is
performed by each restored individual, through participation in Christ and through a
specific act of renunciation.
The first mediation is that between the sexes. According to Maximus the fall was a
result of sensual lust rooted in self-love – the mother of all sins. It could be said that this
desire for gratification led humanity’s ancestors to ‘use the other’ as a means towards a
selfish end which introduces a division between them. From that moment procreation is a
sign of man’s initial desire for carnal pleasure to which God providentially attached pain
and mortality as a way of preventing the irrevocability of falleness. Man is thus bound to
the circle of pursuit of pleasure as an attempt to achieve wholeness and the experience of
pain that reminds him that all that has been ‘achieved’ is a further alienation.128
Christ, through his virginal conception and birth, overcomes this division129
According to Thunberg, Christ performs this mediation “by subsuming the singularities
of male and female under their common logos, and also that he did it by avoiding the
misuse of his (passible) faculties.”130
How does renunciation refer to this mediation? The restored man understands the
common logos of male and female and realises that sensual gratification stands in the
way of its realisation of communion with God. This realisation happens through the
transformation of the generative faculties in both male and female. Thus the denial of

127
In what follows I summarise Thunberg’s presentation of the five mediations. Cf. Thunberg 1995: 373-
427.
128
Cf. Thal. 61 (CCSG 22: 93; Blowers and Wilken 2003: 136).
129
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1309A; Louth 1996: 159).
130
Thunberg 1995: 379.

28
selfish use of the other for pleasure first of all does not entail the suppressing of the
sexual drive through an ascetical exercise, but rather the perception that the only lasting
erotic unity is communion with God, and in him with other members of the redeemed
community. Renunciation is not negation of humanity’s sexual aspect; it is a sign of its
true fulfilment.
The second mediation is that between Paradise and the inhabited earth. The
mediation is performed by Christ in a twofold way. First the incarnated Christ leads a life
on the earth (oikoumene) which restores its sanctity. It is a life of conduct that affirms
God’s initial announcement that what he had created is ‘good.’ The second aspect of the
mediation Maximus sees in Christ’s promise to the thief that he will enter Paradise
together with him (Lk. 23:43). It could be said that the curse of the earth is reversed and
those who participate in Christ have an open access into Paradise. The participation is
reflected in the imitation of Christ by voluntary suffering. Through it man acquires a
level of higher knowledge, which is a symbolic equivalent of Paradise.131 By such
imitation of Christ in virtuous life132, man announces the life of the “kingdom of
heaven.”133 In other words pain and renunciation are not flight from the material world,
but rather agents of mediation towards its unification.
The third mediation is that between heaven and earth. This mediation is achieved
by Christ when he ascended to heaven with his “earthly body”134 and showed that the
“one nature of sensible things inclines towards itself.”135 For Maximus this means that
there is a natural tendency in human nature towards its common logos.136 Thus when he
says that man achieves this mediation by a life of virtue in accord with the angels137, one
sees again that the renunciation that such virtuous life assumes is a reflection of the true
unity between heaven and earth. It could be concluded that renunciation is not ‘violence’
against human nature. It is rather the first fruits of the natural tendency of that nature
towards its logos.

131
Cf. Amb. (PG 91, 1373A; Thunberg 1995: 386).
132
Cf. LA 1 (PG 90, 912AB; Thunberg 1995: 384).
133
Car. 2.34 (PG 90, 996BC; trans. Berthold 1985: 52).
134
Amb. (PG 91: 1309C; trans. Louth 1996: 159).
135
Q. Thal. 48 (CCSG 7:335.73-74; trans. Tvorenija 2002: 503).
136
Cf. Q. Thal. 2 (CCSG 7: 51 Tvorenija 2002: 388).
137
Cf Amb. (PG 91: 1305D; Louth 1996: 158).

29
 The fourth mediation is between intelligible and sensible creation. Christ
accomplished it through his progress with soul and body through the intelligible ranks of
heaven.138 Man is invited to participate in this mediation through a knowledge equal to
that of the angels. From unity in virtue in the third mediation, man proceeds to unity in
knowledge in the fourth mediation. Thunberg defines this knowledge in the following
way:139
… he [man] grasps and perceives the created world in all its orders
through his senses as well as through his mind – including himself as
object of perception – and holds it together in its pure relationship to
the Logos Creator in virtue of his pure mind and his purified sense,
which excludes any misuse of the created things.
To abstain from misuse of created things equals to renunciation. True knowledge
results in appropriate behaviour. For example, in the Ascetic Life 9 Maximus says that it
is only through the knowledge of God’s plans that one can love one’s enemies. There the
novice reveals his failure to employ love of enemies in spite of the fact that he has given
all material possessions and owns nothing but his body. The answer Maximus puts in the
mouth of the spiritual father sheds more light on his view of what it means to have
knowledge of God. The knowledge of God as a mystical experience includes also
knowing God’s plans. Only when the believer perceives God’s grand narrative can he or
she respond to adversity and insult with love.140
The fifth mediation is that between God and His creation. It is a mediation which
goes beyond all human capacities, and the union is not to be found in the common logos.
It is a mystical union where man goes beyond himself and the created realm. Christ has
achieved this union by the fact of his hypostatic union. In man this mediation happens by
grace and love. In this way man is “wholly interpenetrated by God, and become
completely whatever God is, save at the level of being, and receiving … the whole of
God himself.”141 Maximus identifies this mystical union as deification.
Deification begins with man's going out of himself, leaving behind the seemingly
natural elements of his existence, and opening himself for the divinising grace of God.
The whole man, body and soul, will be deified. So while in the first century of the

138
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1309C; Louth 1996: 159).
139
Thunberg 1996: 403.
140
Cf. LA 9 (CCSG 40: 21.160-23.173; Sherwood 1955: 108).
141
Amb. (PG 91: 1308B; trans. Louth 1996: 158).

30
Gnostic Chapters it reads that the process of purification includes the unbinding of the
“natural relation” of the soul from the flesh, this must not be interpreted as negative
assessment of the body itself, but as a positive statement of the future of the transformed
body,142 which begins its transformation here on the earth through the experience of the
Triune God. Blowers has identified some crucial expressions in support of this. He says
that Maximus does not describe deification only in terms of spiritual knowledge:143
…but also, dramatically, as a sublime experience … a pleasurable
suffering … a “supernatural passion”… wherein the creature’s utter
passivity to divine grace is but a consummation of the active powers in
human nature.
Without God the soul, being under the influence of the flesh, directs its desires
towards material things and thus acts unnaturally. This is due to the “gnomic will”, which
operates in human beings since the introduction of sin. This “gnomic will” makes choices
contrary to nature because human nature was created good, and before the fall could will
only good (i. e., Adam’s will was always in accordance to his nature and, thus, in
accordance with the will of God). That is why, according to Maximus, Christ did not
have "gnomic will". It was the will that got twisted and not human nature itself. Sin
comes as a result of corrupted will manifested through the deliberate personal act. That is
how the incarnate Word could have assumed human nature in all its aspects but sin.
Without the influence of the “gnomic will,” Christ's human nature was able to be in
perfect harmony with the divine nature, although these two natures had two distinguished
wills, and was able to attain deification by nature. Human deification, which is
deification by grace, begins with overcoming the “gnomic will” and following the
renewed “will of nature” in its adherence to the will of God. As John Meyendorff
observes, “The sin of Adam came from the philoutia, from attachment to himself in
consenting only to egoistic pleasure.”144 From this attachment resulted sorrow and death
for man. The acceptance of suffering and death in Christ will break up this philoutia, re-
establishing us in the charity that gives us wholly back to God. Thus renunciation is the
most natural thing man can do since his real nature was created without sin and with
potential to grow more and more like God.
142
Cf. Christou: 1982: 41.
143
Blowers 1996: 82. He refers to Q.Thal. 6 (CCSG 7: 69.23–24; 71.46–48.); 22 (CCSG 7: 139.66–
141.98); 65 (CCSG 22: 253.39–43); Amb. (PG 91: 1088C–D).
144
Meyendorff 1987: 137.

31
 b. Liturgical Participation
Deification for Maximus is impossible outside the church. It commences with
baptism and is further developed through active participation in the life of the church.
The following quotation is an apt summary of what will be said further below: “Baptized
in Christ through the Spirit, we receive the first incorruption according to the flesh. Keeping this
original incorruption spotless by giving ourselves to good works and by dying to our own will,
we await the final incorruption bestowed by Christ in the Spirit.” 145 The focal point of the
church’s life is liturgy. In his Mystagogia, Maximus goes step by step through the liturgy
and explains how each step is a further dispensation of the believer's engrafting into the
body of Christ according to the perfect pattern of the triune hypostatic agape relationship
within the Godhead. The deified life is a life of love and self-mastery. 146 Love and self-
mastery are identified with being baptised with the baptism of the Lord and drinking the
same cup with him (Mk. 10:38). Baptism represents the willing death of one’s will
concerning visible things, and the cup is the renunciation of the world for the sake of the
truth.147 Again and again, Maximus refers to the reason why one should give up the
world. The answer, from within different aspects and perspectives, is always the same:
“so that one should discover the true being of the world.”
By participation in the Eucharist the believer anticipates the glory that awaits him
after the final consummation and renewal of the whole creation. Each part of the
Eucharist reflects the mystery of the unity between the infinite transcendent God and the
created, limited man:148
By the divine kiss there is seen the identity of concord and oneness
and love of all with everyone and of each one with himself first and
then with God. ... By the Trisagion there comes about the union
with the holy angels and elevation to the same honor, as well as the
ceaseless and harmonious persistency in the sanctifying glorification
of God. By the prayer through which we are made worthy to call
God our Father we receive the truest adoption in the grace of the
Holy Spirit. By holy communion of the spotless and life-giving
mysteries we are given fellowship and identity with him by
participation in likeness, by which man is deemed worthy from man
to become God.

145
Th.Oec. 1.87 (PG 90: 1120B; trans. Berthold 1985: 133).
146
Cf. Car. 2.85 (PG 90: 1012C; Berthold 1985: 59).
147
Cf. Q.Thal. 30 (CCSG 7: 219-221; Tvorenija 2002: 460-461).
148
Myst. 24 (PG 91: 704D; trans. Berthold 1985: 207).

32
 The quotation above reveals Maximus’ fascination with the biblical idea of unity. We
have seen before that the ultimate goal of man as microcosm was to overcome certain
divisions in creation. This unifying process is best represented on the earth in the life of
the church as the body of Christ. The liturgy, says Maximus, assumes that each and every
one of the participants is there for the other.149 For him the liturgy, the focal point of the
life of the body of Christ, communicates his favourite topic: selfless love overcoming
selfish self-love. Thus, although the church is not another incarnation of Christ, it is
certainly his image (eikon) inaugurating his presence in the midst of the disunited world.
Each person participating in the liturgy affirms that true love is love of the other and not
of the self. As such, liturgy is the earthly enactment of the final consummation of the
whole creation in Christ.
c. Participation in Christ
As much as God becomes man, man becomes God in the same proportion150 (i.e.,
there is a mutual penetration of the natures without confusion and without change). This
means that there is a reciprocity between Christ's incarnation and man's deification where
they mutually condition each other. The Chalcedonian term perichoresis seems to be
perfect in expressing this mutual conditioning. Maximus describes this process as a
“blessed inversion.” In his Gnostic Chapters Maximus explains how this could happen.
He reminds us that the Godhead, which dwells bodily in Christ according to essence (Col.
2:9), dwells in us by grace and endows us with virtue and wisdom:151
A wisdom which, so far as this is possible in man, does not in any way
fall short of a faithful imitation of the divine archetype ... [B]y virtue of
our relationship with the Logos, the fullness of the Godhead,
embracing a diversity of spiritual principles, should come to dwell also
in us.
By taking human nature upon himself, Maximus says, Christ “divinely
recapitulates the universe in himself, showing that the whole creation exists as one, like
another human being.”152 Maximus sees this recapitulation and return to God allegorically
in the meaning of Sabbath. The “rest” of God on the Sabbath, is a time when the whole
creation is supposed to turn toward its Creator and act according to its purpose and end

149
Cf. Myst. 1 (PG 91: 668B; Berthold 1985: 187).
150
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1113BC; Louth 1996: 101).
151
Th. Oec. 2.21 (PG 90: 1133D; trans. Berthold 1985: 152).
152
Amb. (PG 91: 1312A; trans. Louth 1996: 160).

33
(i.e., worshipfully). “He rests when each being, having obtained the divine energy in due
measure, will determine its own natural energy with respect to God.”153 God’s final rest is
paralleled by the rest (stasis) of man as he attains theosis. Since theosis can be obtained
in this fallen world, it follows that man can live the life of the kingdom here on the earth.
But this is possible only for those who will “to be freed from any relationship to flesh and
the world.”154 Thus pain and suffering is the sign of the healing of human nature as are
being divinised. Once theosis is achieved, the believer participates in the pathos of Christ
for the world, and can be said that he suffers no more, but rather rejoices.155
As Christ has taken general human nature upon himself, everyone who joins him
repeats the process of healing of human nature in a personal way. United to the Logos in
whom all the logoi cohere, each individual experiences personal transformation which at
the same time becomes the unifying transformation of the whole universe, finally
attaining the harmony of all created beings with each other and of the creation with the
Creator:156
This ultimate unity happens in the reciprocal condescension of God to
participate in the created order, and in the ascension of the creation to
participate in God. This is the great hidden mystery, at once the blessed
end for which all things are ordained. It is the divine purpose
conceived before the beginning of created beings. … With a clear view
to this end [Christ, the hypostatic union of divine and human nature]
God created the essences of created beings.
Eventually, renunciation or giving up the world is nothing else but fulfilling the
divine purpose, from its genesis to its telos or stasis.
Conclusion
Renuciation, as Maximus understands it, affirms that God is creator by free will
and that his whole creation, sensible and intelligible, is valuable and good. The fall of
man introduced the tragic separation from God and the restless pursuit of pleasure.
Nevertheless, although there isn’t an ontological link between the Creator and the
creature, the link of the logoi still communicates to man his natural inclination for God.
Renunciation releases this inclination to its natural end. Thus man must look for the
meaning of life, not to himself, but rather to the one who created him. John Zizioulas

153
Th. Oec. 1.47 (PG 90: 1100C; trans. Berthold 1985: 136).
154
Amb. (PG 91: 1172A; trans. Louth 1996: 135).
155
Cf. Amb (PG 91: 1088CD; Blowers and Wilken 2003: 64).
156
Q. Thal. 60 (CCSG 22: 75.33-38; trans. Blowers and Wilken 2003: 124).

34
gives a fine summary of this truth: "Since God knows created beings as the realization of
his will, it is not being itself, but the ultimate will of God's love which unifies beings and
points to the meaning of being."157
Maximus sees this meaning in the ultimate unity with God or deification. The
path that leads there is through renunciation, which announces that man should go
beyond his own nature in ecstasy and yet without abolishing his humanity. This points to
the conclusion that, as Maximus sees it, there are not two alternative lifestyles, one of this
world in which we try to ‘make a living’ through all kind of compromises, and another of
the world to come where there will be no compromises. God is the ultimate reality, and
there is no alternative. Being the absolute truth, his revelation, commandments and
promises are not to be relativised. True understanding of God and his creation is
inevitably linked with true piety.158 God is the ultimate good as well. No other value or
circumstance should stay on the way to him. Maximus calls us to give up on this world
— not for the sake of the other world, but by announcing that the only life worth living is
the life of the world where the divisions are overcome. This reminds us that every single
decision we make will affect the entire system of the creation. We are here as if to bring
balance between the galaxies.
The only way we can appreciate the real value and dignity of anything is to
penetrate beneath the surface, to be able to recognise its inner coherence and beauty,
goodness and truth. For Maximus, this is discovered in the potential of creation for its
transformation; not only renewal but “resurrection” as well. The continuity of the “old” is
preserved, and yet, by grace, is brought to a level that is utterly “new”. This newness is
God’s ultimate gift – a unity between the Creator and the created.
The active willingness to receive the gift of God offered in Christ is the beginning
of the life of renunciation, through which man actively participates in his own
transformation and, through it, the transformation of the whole creation:159
because then, at the end of the ages, there will be through the same
God, our Savior, a transformation and renewal of the whole human
race that is all-encompassing, natural, and by grace, from death and
corruption to immortal life and incorruption in the expected
resurrection.
157
Zizioulas 1985: 97.
158
Cf. Th. Oec. 1.21 (PG 90:1092A. Berthold 1985: 132).
159
Ps. 59 (PG 91:857A; trans. McFarland 2005: 410).

35
 Renunciation is a way of all those in Christ to say with him “not my will, but
yours be done”! This was an ideal to which Maximus testified with his life and his
martyr’s death, and by which is known as the Confessor.

36
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Gregory of Nyssa. De Hominis Opificio. J.-P. Migne., ed. 1857-1866. Patrologiae cursus
completus, Series Graeca, vol. 44, Paris. English: NPNF vol. 5. Trans. H. A.
Wilson.
______________. De anima et resurrectione. J.-P. Migne, ed. 1857-1866. Patrologiae
cursus completus, Series Graeca, vol. 46, Paris. English: Trans. Catharine P.
Roth. 1993. The Soul and the Resurrection. Crestwood, NY.

______________. De virginitate. M. Aubineau, ed. 1966. Sources chrétiennes, vol. 119.

Paris. English: Trans. V. W. Callahan. 1967. St. Gregory of Nyssa: Ascetical
Works. Washington, DC.

Maximus the Confessor. Ambiguorum Liber J.-P. Migne., ed. 1857-1866.

Patrologiae cursus completus Series Graeca, vol. 91. Paris. English: Trans.
Paul M. Blowers and Robert L. Wilken. 2003. On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus
Christ: Selected Writings from St Maximus the Confessor. Crestwood, NY.
Andrew Louth. 1996. Maximus the Confessor. London and New York, NY.

______________. Capita de caritate. J.-P. Migne., ed. 1857-1866.

Patrologiae cursus completus Series Graeca, vol. 90. Paris. English: Trans.
George C. Berthold. 1985. Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. London.

______________. Capita theologica et oeconomica. J.-P. Migne., ed. 1857-1866.

Patrologiae cursus completus Series Graeca, vol. 90. Paris. English: Trans.
George C. Berthold. 1985. Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. London.

______________. Expositio in Psalmum lix. P. Van Deun ed. 1991. Corpus

Christianorum : Series Graeca, vol. 23. Turnhout-Leuven.

______________. Epistula ad Iohannem cubicularium. . J.-P. Migne., ed. 1857-1866.

Patrologiae cursus completus Series Graeca, vol. 91. Paris. English: Trans.
Andrew Louth. 1996. Maximus the Confessor. London and New York, NY.

______________. Liber asceticus. P. Van Deun ed. 2000. Corpus

Christianorum: Series Graeca, vol. 40. Turnhout-Leuven. English: Trans.
Polycarp Sherwood. 1955. St. Maximus the Confessor : The Ascetic Life, The
Four Centuries on Charity. Westminster, MD and London.

______________. Mystagogia. J.-P. Migne., ed. 1857-1866.

Patrologiae cursus completus Series Graeca, vol. 91. Paris. English: Trans.
George C. Berthold. 1985. Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. London.

______________. Orationis dominicae exposition. P. Van Deun ed. 1991. Corpus

37
 Christianorum: Series Graeca, vol. 23. Turnhout-Leuven. English: Trans.
George C. Berthold. 1985. Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. London.

______________. Quaestiones ad Thalassium I & II. C. Laga and C. Steel, eds.

1980. Corpus Christianorum : Series Graeca, vols. 7 & 22. Turnhout-Leuven.
English: Trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert L. Wilken. 2003. On the Cosmic
Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St Maximus the Confessor.
Crestwood, NY.

______________. Relatio Motionis inter Maximus et principes. J.-P. Migne., ed. 1857-
1866. Patrologiae cursus completus Series Graeca, vol. 90. Paris. English:
Trans. Pauline Allen and Bronwen Neil. 2002. Maximus the Confessor and his
Companions. Oxford.

Secondary Sources

Allen, Pauline and Neil Bronwen., eds. 2002. Maximus the Confessor and his
Companions: Documents from Exile. Trans. Allen Pauline and Neil Bronwen.
Oxford.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. 2003. Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the
Confessor. Trans. Brian E. Daley. San Francisco.

Bathrellos, Demetrios. 2004. The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the
Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor. Oxford.

Berthold, G. C. 1982. “Did Maximus the Confessor know Augustine?” Studia Patristica
17: 14-17.

Berdyaev, Nicolas. 1960. The Destiny of Man, trans. Natalie Duddington New York: NY.

Berthold, George. 1982. “The Cappadocian Roots of Maximus the Confessor,” 51-59. In
Felix Heinzer and Christoph Schönborn., eds. Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le
Confesseur. Fribourg-en-Suise.

Blowers, Paul M. 1991. Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor. An
Investigation of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium. Notre Dame, IN. (Christianity
and Judaism in Antiquity, 7).

_____________. 1992. “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Concept of
‘Perpetual Progress.’” Vigiliae Christianae 46.2: 151-171.

_____________. 1996. “Gentiles of the Soul : Maximus the Confessor on the

Substructure and Transformation of the Human Passions.” Journal of Early
Christian Studies 4: 57-85.

38
Boojamra, John L. 1976.“Original sin according to St Maximus the Confessor.” St
Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 20: 19-30.

Cooper, Adam G. 2001. “Maximus the Confessor on the Structural Dynamics of

Revelation.” Vigiliae Christianae 55.2: 161-186.

______________. 2005. The body in St. Maximus the Confessor : Holy Flesh, Wholly
Deified. Oxford.

Christou, Panayotis. 1982. “Maximus the Confessor on the Infinity of Man,” 261-271. In
Felix Heinzer and Christoph Schönborn., eds. Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le
Confesseur. Fribourg-en-Suise.

Daley, Brian E. 1982. “Apokatastasis and ‘Honorable Silence’ in the

Eschatology of St. Maximus the Confessor,” 85-96. In Felix Heinzer and
Christoph Schönborn., eds. Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur.
Fribourg-en-Suise.

Farrell, Joseph P. 1989. Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor. South Canan, PA.

Geanakoplos, Deno J. 1969. “Some aspects of the influence of the Byzantine Maximos
the Confessor on the Theology of East and West.” Church History 38.2: 150-163.

Heinzer, F. and Schönborn, C. eds. 1982. Maximus Confessor: Actes du Symposium sur
Maxime le Confesseur. Fribourg-en-Suise. (Paradosis, 26).

Lossky, Vladimir. 1976. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY.

Louth, Andrew. 1981. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to
Denys. Oxford.

____________. 1986a. “Maximus the Confessor,” 190-195. In Cheslyn Jones at. al., eds.,
The Study of Spirituality. Oxford.

____________. 1986b. “Pagan Theurgy and Christian Sacramentalism in Denys the

Areopagite.” Journal of Theological Studies 37: 432-438.

____________. 1993a. “St Denys the Areopagite and St Maximus the Confessor: The
Shaping of Tradition,” 117-130. In S. Coakley and D. A. Pailin., eds. The Making
and Remaking of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honour of Maurice Wiles.
Oxford.

____________. 1993. ”St Denys the Areopagite and St Maximus the Confessor: a
Question of Influence.” Studia Patristica 27: 166-174.

39
____________. 1996. Maximus the Confessor. London and New York: NY.

____________. 2004. “The Ecclesiology of St Maximus the Confessor.” International

Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 4.2: 109-120.

McFarland, Ian A. 2003. “Developing an Apophatic Christocentrism: Lessons from

Maximus the Confessor.” Theology Today 60: 200-214.

______________. 2005. “’Naturally and by Grace’: Maximus the Confessor on the

Operation of the Will.” Scottish Journal of Theology 58.4: 410-433.

Maksim Izpovednik. 2002. Tvorenija. Trans. Slavyanobulgarski manastir “Sv. VMCK

Georgi Zograf.” Sveta Gora, Aton.

Meyendorff, John. 1987. Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Trans. Fr. Yves Dubois.
Crestwood, NY.

Nichols, Aidan. 1993. Byzantine Gospel: Maximus the Confessor in Modern Scholarship.
Edinburgh.

Schaff, Philip, and Henry Wace., eds. 1893. A Series of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
[= NPNF] vol. 5. Trans. W. Moore, M. Day, H. A. Wilson, and H. C. Ogle.
Oxford. Reprint, Grand Rapids, MI, 1975.

Sherwood, Polycarp. 1952. An Annotated Date-list of the Works of Maximus the

Confessor. Rome. (Studia Anselmia, 30).

________________. ed. and trans. 1955a. The Ascetic Life. The Four Centuries of
Charity. London.

________________. 1955b. The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and
his Refutation of Origenism. Rome (Studia Anselmiana, 36).

Telepneff, Gregory and Bp Chrysostomos. 1989. “The Person, Pathe, Asceticism, and
Spiritual Restoration in Saint Maximos.” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 34:
249-261.

Terezis, Christos and Eugenia Tzouramanai. 1999. “The Dialectic Relationship between
God and Human Beings in Origen and Maximus the Confessor.” The Greek
Orthodox Theological Review 44: 329-339.

Thunberg, Lars. 1985. Man and the Cosmos : The Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor.
Crestwood: NY.

40
____________. 1995. Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of
Maximus the Confessor. Chicago and La Salle, IL. (ed. 2).

Yeago, David S. 1996. “Jesus of Nazareth and Cosmic Redemption : The Relevance of St
Maximus the Confessor.” Modern Theology 12: 163-193.

Zizioulas, John. 1985. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church.
London.

41
 The ascetical ideal of Maximus the Confessor works within the struggle between
the willing fall into sin and the willing surrender to the will of God. The purpose of my
research is to explore the role of renunciation in the process of this struggle for the
transformation of human nature.

Each of the themes studied below sheds light on Maximus’ understanding of

renunciation. It will be seen that the life of praxis and ascetic struggle is actualisation of
the Kingdom of God which as a potency is an ontological element in human nature. It has
been embedded in man from the moment of creation and it has an eschatological bearing,
but it can be anticipated here on the earth.

The plausibility of this claim is to be sought in Maximus’ basic understanding of

the creation of the world and its final goal. This is best seen in his cosmological reversal
of Origen’s system of the eternal world of minds, by which reversal Maximus departs
from Origen and Origenistic metaphysics in general. According to this system the world
of minds, originally static and immobile, proceeds toward material existence as a
consequence of the fall. From this follows the conclusion that the creation is co-eternal
with the procession of the divine hypostasis. This was a state where the incorporeal
beings contemplated and enjoyed the presence of God in their original immobility
(stasis). Due to a saturation of contemplation these incorporeal beings had turned their
eyes from God. This state is the movement (kinesis) or the fall. In order to catch them in
their fall, God creates (genesis) material bodies for all beings.
Maximus’ system which starts with genesis, proceeds with kinesis, and ends up
with stasis, reverses the pattern. In this system God creates the sensible world by his own
will and proclaims it essentially good. Thus souls cannot exist before their bodies.
Otherwise, says Maximus there is a risk “… of seeing this unique miracle, the sensible
world, where God lets himself be known by wordless proclamation, as simply the result
of sin.”160 After the fall (kinesis) man is moving to something beyond the original
creation – the stasis, or the immobile state of contemplation of God.161 Such a system re-

160
Amb. (PG 91: 1328A; trans. von Balthasar 2003: 61).
161
Cf. Amb. (PG 91: 1217C; Meyendorf 1987: 132-133).

42
emphasises the doctrine of theosis – the process of deification of man – as participation
of the created nature in the divine life.

God's free act of creation in time and the participation of the creation in God –
Maximus develops his own teaching on the Logos.

43