While Origen influenced Maximus’ early thought on the Logos, Neo-Chalcedonian Christology was the starting point for his mature thought. In step with the Ecumenical Councils (Ephesus 431; Chalcedon 451), Maximus affirmed the Incarnation as a hypostatic union, where the human and divine natures coexist in the God-Man. The term hypostasis was one of the most controversial terms during the christological debates, which dominated Maximus’ life. For Maximus, the christological question was not merely an academic concern. Rather, Maximus as an ascetic understood that Christology impacted the spiritual life and the entire cosmos. Christ’s hypostatic union provides the primordial synthesis that makes the deification of humanity possible. The person of Christ is the foundation and goal for all creation, which is moving toward perfection through participation.
One of Maximus’ greatest achievements was his appropriation of philosophical terminology (such as hypostasis, communicatio idiomatum, and perichoresis), in order to advance a dynamic Christology, which reflected the Neo-Chalcedonian position. Maximus’ explication of Christ’s hypostasis begins by drawing a parallelism within the human composite of body and soul. For Maximus, the nature of the union between the soul and body is a pivotal concept. Maximus insists that the whole is nothing else but its parts and that there is no other existence without these unified parts (Opuscula, PG 91, col. 117D). Further, it is the totality of the parts in their mutual indwelling that has prominence over all divergence (Opuscula, PG 91, col. 521BC). The whole, in the sense of their person and their existence, is the hypostatic unity (Ambigua, PG 91, col. 1044D). Following this course of reasoning, the human nature of Christ, on account of having being in the Logos, consequently derives personality and existence from the Logos (Epistles 11, PG 91, col. 468AB). In other writings, Maximus further explicates Christ’s hypostasis through the concepts of communicatio idiomatum and perichoresis.
Maximus appears to be the first theologian to employ perichoresis in order to express the communicatio idiomatum of Christ’s divine and human nature (Thunberg 1995). According to the Scholies to Ps.-Denis, Gregory Nazianzen’s Letter to Cledonius (Letter 101) influenced Maximus’ concept of perichoresis. For Maximus, perichoresis conveyed a double penetration where the divine penetrates humanity (Quaestiones ad Thalassium 59, CCSG 22, p. 51 ff) and humanity penetrates into the life of God (Ambigua 5m PG 91, col. 1053 B). Maximus’ doctrine of perichoresis provides a foundation for all activity, whereby the unity of the human and divine within Christ provides a redemptive framework for humanity. The Incarnation makes dynamic ‘‘modes of existence’’ possible, where true human nature becomes open to relationship with God. This mode of participation leads to deification through Christ, who is the perfection of humanity and the world.
The Chalcedonian Christological definition, which states the two natures of Christ are without confusion, change, division and separation while in mutual communication, directly informs Maximus’ cosmology. While Maximus does not offer a precise theology of creation, the opening section of The Centuries on Charity (Book 4), gives the fullest discussion. Thunberg delineates eight elements in Maximus’ cosmology: (1) creatio ex nihilo, (2) creation because of God’s will, (3) creation because of God’s benevolence, (4) creation by the Word, (5) creation because of God’s prudence, (6) creation as divine condescension introducing an element of motion, (7) every creature composite of substance and accident, and (8) creation, not of qualities but of qualified substances, which need divine providence (Thunberg 1995). Maximus maintains that the primary principle in all creation is synthesis, which is expressed in the hypostasis of Christ. The Incarnate One is reconciling all polarities between God and the world. All nature finds fulfillment in God, where the Logos brings unity out of diversity through movements of contraction and expansion.
Maximus lived in a highly intellectual milieu, which may be characterized as “scholastic.” However, Maximus was neither rationalistic nor systematic; rather, he offers a mystical vision of the world as relating to the person of Jesus Christ. Maximus’ opaque spiritual theology points towards the mystery of the Incarnation. Maximus continually pushed the boundaries of articulation outward into the darkness of mysterY (Balthasar 2003).
See also: > Philosophical Theology, Byzantine > Philosophy, Byzantine > Trinitarian Logic
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