Ad Thalassium 61 addresses the question of what happens to the disobedient, the impious and the sinner.

St. Maximus begins his answer by stating that man originally was impassible in having a “spiritual capacity for pleasure, a pleasure whereby human beings would be able to enjoy God ineffably.” But the fall made him subject to the addictive, irrational cycle of sensual pleasure and pain, subject to his fallen passions which result in death. He states that this cycle is perpetuated by humans being born through sensual pleasure and the resultant pain, suffering, and death. To abolish this cycle, Christ had to be born purely of a virgin so that his suffering would not be justified.

“And in order for suffering human nature to be set right, it was necessary for an unjust and likewise uncaused suffering and death to be conceived- a death “unjust” in the sense that it by no means followed a life given to passions, and “uncaused” in the sense that it was in no way preceded by pleasure…. For this reason, the Logos of God, who is fully divine by nature, became fully human, being composed just like us of an intellectual soul and a passible body, save only without sin (Heb 4:15).

“For the Lord exerted manifest strength of tanscendent power by inaugurating for human nature a birth unchanged by the contrary realities (of pleasure and pain) which he himself experienced. For having given our human nature impassibility through his Passion, remission through his toils, and eternal life through his death, he restored that nature again, renewing the habitudes of human nature by his own deprivations in the flesh and granting to human nature through his own incarnation the supernatural grace of deification.”

St. Maximus then describes at length how suffering and death were “converted” by Christ to being instruments and tools to defeat sin. As we nail our sinful passions through deprivation of pleasure, we obtain life in Christ. This is possible for “all who in the Spirit are willingly reborn of Christ with the bath of regeneration (Titus 3:5) [and] are able by grace to put off their original Adamic birth based on pleasure. By keeping the gospel commandments they preserve the baptismal grace of sinlessness and the unabated and immaculate power of mystical adoption in the Spirit…. the baptized acquires the use of death to condemn sin, which in turn mystically leads that person to divine and unending life.” Thus death can no longer destroy human nature, but is a means to destroy sin and “realize righteousness through faith in Christ.”

It is interesting to me that St. Maximus describes the end of the righteous and the impious who “like me transgresses the gospel commandments” as not being in a local or place, but either ending in Christ,

“not in a status of where at all, having by grace received God himself as his status instead of a local where… For God does not admit of where; he is unqualifiedly beyond all where.” [But] “whoever does not share in the power of well-being in relation to God will be like a body part utterly bereft of the soul’s vital energy….For where will one who is unable to receive the effective presence of God in a state of well-being appear after having endured exclusion from the divine life, a life transcending aeon, time, and place?…we can say that he will by no means be free of a life constrained within limits, since he will not enjoy that life which fully defies limitation and is beyond any location… there is no where for him to appear, since he does not enjoy God as sustaining his life unto well-being. Either way, how will he exist when he does not have God as his location itself, the only sure foundation of well-being, which is in God?”

In this chapter, St. Maximus beautifully unites the functions of faith, works, and grace as our means of participation in life in Christ.