Survival of the species

by Andrea Elizabeth

A few discussions of atheism have come into the radar lately, which has got me to thinking. For the survival of the species to be the main motivation for the continuance and development of life, it would have to someone else’s goal, because I think most people are too selfish to be mainly motivated by what’s good for future generations over what feels good now. This flaw was the essence of the fall – I want it for me now, not for others later. True, a mother’s instincts drive her to protect her child over herself – when obvious danger presents itself, wont get into how a mother can also be selfish amidst more subtle dangers – but this instinct isn’t really her idea, generally. Someone must have put it in her, and I don’t know how atheists explain that.

Another related observation is that babies of all species seem surprised to discover their appendages. Whoa, is this hand really mine? I’m noticing that when I do this, it does that. It seems a gift. Not only is the baby uninvolved, but parents don’t choose their baby’s equipment either, so who does? Random chance of atomic attraction (why are atoms attracted to each other anyway?) doesn’t do it for me.

This gets into where does desire come from. If survival of the species is the motivation, and if desire is only to that end, then more efficient desire would be less selfish than people are. Unselfish desire for future generations would be mainly cerebral, but humans are basically less cerebrally motivated, despite our other advances. As an aside, to me a person should develop from being feelings oriented, to being more rational, then hopefully, back to purified, unselfish feelings – the mind in the heart, if you will. Hardly anyone achieves this. Less and less in each generation, according to the Church. It seems that atheists believe that the species is, or was, too stupid to be concerned for future generations so desire for pleasure had to take over to get people to procreate. Actually, I’ve heard some Christians (Protestant if I recall) say that too. God gave us desire to propagate the species. That seems sort of demeaning. The command be fruitful and multiply wasn’t enough for us dummies, so He had to entice and seduce us into it? Same goes for eating. Is food good because otherwise I’d be too stupid to eat it and die before I could have any kids? Surely desire has a higher function than that. The Calvinists say that we are put here to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. They may be onto something (cringe). All our desire should be aimed toward enjoying Him, though that is too selfish a word. Theosis is enjoyment better understood. From OrthodoxWiki,

Theosis (“deification,” “divinization”) is the process of a worshiper becoming free of hamartía (“missing the mark”), being united with God, beginning in this life and later consummated in bodily resurrection. For Orthodox Christians, Théōsis (see 2 Pet. 1:4) is salvation. Théōsis assumes that humans from the beginning are made to share in the Life or Nature of the all-Holy Trinity. Therefore, an infant or an adult worshiper is saved from the state of unholiness (hamartía — which is not to be confused with hamártēma “sin”) for participation in the Life (zōé, not simply bíos) of the Trinity — which is everlasting.

This is not to be confused with the heretical (apothéōsis) – “Deification in God’s Essence“, which is imparticipable.

Alternative spellings: Theiosis, Theopoiesis

Orthodox theology

The statement by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, “The Son of God became man, that we might become god”, [the second g is always lowercase since man can never become a God] indicates the concept beautifully. II Peter 1:4 says that we have become ” . . . partakers of divine nature.” Athanasius amplifies the meaning of this verse when he says theosis is “becoming by grace what God is by nature” (De Incarnatione, I). What would otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful man may become holy as God is holy, has been made possible through Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate. Naturally, the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis – it is not possible for any created being to become, ontologically, God or even another god.

Through theoria, the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ, human beings come to know and experience what it means to be fully human (the created image of God); through their communion with Jesus Christ God shares Himself with the human race, in order to conform them to all that God is in knowledge, righteousness and holiness. Theosis also asserts the complete restoration of all people (and of the entire creation), in principle. This is built upon the understanding of the atonement put forward by Irenaeus of Lyons, called “recapitulation.”

For many fathers, theosis goes beyond simply restoring people to their state before the Fall of Adam and Eve, teaching that because Christ united the human and divine natures in his person, it is now possible for someone to experience closer fellowship with God than Adam and Eve initially experienced in the Garden of Eden, and that people can become more like God than Adam and Eve were at that time. Some Orthodox theologians go so far as to say that Jesus would have become incarnate for this reason alone, even if Adam and Eve had never sinned.

All of humanity is fully restored to the full potential of humanity because the Son of God took to Himself a human nature to be born of a woman, and takes to Himself also the sufferings due to sin (yet is not Himself a sinful man, and is God unchanged in His being). In Christ, the two natures of God and human are not two persons but one; thus, a union is effected in Christ, between all of humanity and God. So, the holy God and sinful humanity are reconciled in principle, in the one sinless man, Jesus Christ. (See Jesus’s prayer as recorded in John17.)

This reconciliation is made actual through the struggle (podvig in Russian) to conform to the image of Christ. Without the struggle, the praxis, there is no real faith; faith leads to action, without which it is dead. One must unite will, thought and action to God’s will, His thoughts and His actions. A person must fashion his life to be a mirror, a true likeness of God. More than that, since God and humanity are more than a similarity in Christ but rather a true union, Christians’ lives are more than mere imitation and are rather a union with the life of God Himself: so that, the one who is working out salvation, is united with God working within the penitent both to will and to do that which pleases God. Gregory Palamas affirmed the possibility of humanity’s union with God in His energies, while also affirming that because of God’s transcendence and utter otherness, it is impossible for any person or other creature to know or to be united with God’s essence. Yet through faith we can attain phronema, an understanding of the faith of the Church.

The journey towards theosis includes many forms of praxis. Living in the community of the church and partaking regularly of the sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, is taken for granted. Also important is cultivating “prayer of the heart”, and prayer that never ceases, as Paul exhorts the Thessalonians (1 and 2). This unceasing prayer of the heart is a dominant theme in the writings of the Fathers, especially in those collected in the Philokalia.
       See also: Desert Fathers, Hesychasm, Maximus the Confessor, Monasticism

Who do you say that I am (2)

by Andrea Elizabeth

After an interesting tour in gnosticism, on page 65 of God, History and Dialectic by Dr. Joseph Farrell, we get back to the heresy of subordinationism of the Son to the Father. Athenagoras of Athens combats the Gnostic’s dualism, but leaves Christ open to being an energy of the Father instead of a person in that he says Christ dwelt in the Father’s mind, being called Logos, or Reason, before He became the firstborn of creation, which made Him a creature. Dr. Farrell then criticizes St. Justin Martyr’s philosophy of not doing  much different, though unbeknowingly. Here is his summary of St. Justin’s thought:

(1) God is absolutely unoriginate (aggenhtoV);149
(2) He is preeminently Father, therefore, because He is the Creator of
all;150
(3) Thus, by implication, the Word, as Son, is originate, as is Creation,
and therefore the Son is a creature, and not divine;
(4) God the Father is thus utterly transcendant,151
(5) The Logos is an Emanation(proodoV) of the Father to the Word,
bridging the gap between the Father’s utter transcendence and the
world: “Just as we see happening in the case of a free [fire?], which is not
lessened when it has been kindled but remains the same, and that
which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not
diminishing that from which it was kindled.”152

The last point again focuses the dilemma, for on the one hand, the
illustration of the fire clearly is to be understood as an illustration of the full
deity of the Logos; on the other hand, Utter Transcendence itself would
seem to be the distinguishing attribute of deity in Justin’s system, and
therefore, the Logos, as imanating from that Transcendence, would seem
to be less than divine. (p. 68)

First I note that #3, the most serious “implicat”ed charge, is unfootnoted, and not a necessary one, imo, by what he says in his commentary underneath and the additional quote. If the Father is like a fire and transcendent, then the Son’s fire-ness can also be transcendent and not less than divine. At least he says, “seems to”. I don’t think St. Justin would be a Saint if the Church Fathers thought he seemed to say that. Next Dr. Farrell asks some interesting questions.

(1) If the Divine Logos which inspires philosophy and theology is one
and the same Logos, does this justify Christians making use of
whatever individual fragments or particular truths philosophy may
possess, i.e is the fragment true in and of itself, or only in the
context of the fullness and completeness of the Logos, which is
what St. Justin seems to imply?
(2) On the other hand, if one rejects St. Justin’s conception of the
Logos, then is not one denying the unity and consistency of truth,
and therefore, does not one deny the whole basis of Christian
theology, that which we encountered from its beginning, i.e., that
there is a relationship between what God does in Creation and
what He does in Redemption, for it is on account of the former that
He is recognized for Who He is in the latter;
(3) But if Christ is “the Logos in everyman”, what exactly distinguishes
the Logos in Christ from the Logos in everyman? It would appear
that Justin is implying that the distinction is not “qualitative” but
merely quantitative”, that there is something called “Logos” which
Christ has more of than anybody else. (p. 69, 70)

Before #1, Dr. Farrell quoted St. Justin as saying that the ancient Greeks “borrowed from the Old Testament”, so to me that puts that worry to rest, what they got right, they got from revelation, not that revelation is incompatible with reason. Perhaps he is setting up a false dialectic between humanity and deity. Humanity is in God’s image, but God is above being, and therefore His reason is above, not “more” than, ours, and not opposed to it. Which reminds me that I need to get back into St. Dionysius. Regarding #2, in my mind this speaks to my delimma with St. Maximus’ explanation of Recapitulation being all-encompassing whether one is an orthodox Christian or not. He makes the distinction between ever-living well, and ever-living ill in Christ’s redemptive work in immortalizing man, but living well has to do with acting in natural human fashion, of which the virtues are a part, and not so much about being baptized. Even so, he also talks glowingly about baptism, so it is obviously not unnecessary or of no effect. I’m a maximalist, so I wouldn’t risk not living right nor not being in the right Church, Christ’s Body.

Faith and Science (‘Lost’ 3)

by Andrea Elizabeth

At the outset, I believe that this post is probably going to be wishy-washy. That may be best because my contention is that science and faith are usually divided with too opaque a wall between them. Therefore it is meet and right to take them out of their respective closets, and throw them both in the wash and let them agitate together. That metaphor has too much conflict. Let’s instead take them out of their respective cabinets, pour them into the bowl, and knead them together, not only harmoniously, but with the communication of properties (however without confusion, separation, or change – keep forgetting the four nouns of Chalcedon – oh, or division).

One of the main themes of ‘Lost’ is the relationship between faith and science, which was originally presented as either/or in the characters of John Locke and Jack Shepherd. Throughout the series Island Jack developed faith and sideways Locke decided to have surgery. I like this turnaround even though it was Locke’s conviction that the Island alone had healed him. Sideways Locke didn’t have this relationship with the island, but had to learn to “let go” of his past in order to seek medical help. This letting go was an act of faith. It seems that the two different circumstances called for different paths to healing. Island Locke let go of the abusive world he knew, Sideways Locke let go of seeing himself as a victim. Escape vs. detachment. Island Rose faced the same thing as is brought out in the article I linked in my second post about ‘Lost’, which I’ll make a new linkable category for.

The false division between science and faith also characterizes the false division between spirit and matter. It is common sense to realize that we must take care of our bodies with physical interventions such as eating and bathing, so why is going to the doctor seen as giving up on faith? I will say that the great ascetic Saints can live without food and bathing, but this is not to be tried at home. It is also true that miracle working Saints heal people without traditional medicine. However these Saints are rare, though miraculous healings are still heard of.

Because these miracles do occur, one can feel like a failure if they can’t walk on water and if they have physical or emotional problems that aren’t healed by normal Communion at their Church. I’ll have to make a common sense leap again and say that between Church services we still have to rely on things of this world for our survival, and not just that, but abundant life. There is a way to see this through Christ’s Incarnation by which he assumed all of creation in taking a material body. This recapitulation destroys the division between spirit and matter as St. Maximus teaches us. Our communion with matter can be an extension of our communion with Christ. I would still seek healing at Church first, but it may be God’s will to also seek it from a medical doctor.

I wrote in a comment at The Ochlophobist’s a few weeks ago that I am a literal materialist. I do not think it is for me to see (yet) the uncreated light with my spiritual eyes. It seems to be for me to see God’s glory in a candle or in the sunshine or my children’s faces. To hear his voice in birdsong or human singing and instruments. To feel his love through my husband’s touch, the warmth of the sun, and soft, smooth cloth. To smell prayer in incense, flowers and cedar trees. To taste Him in the Eucharist above all, as well as other places’ offerings. And to find spiritual healing in prayer and physical healing in prayer-accompanied medicine, which can be part of the answer.

The inferiority of changeableness

by Andrea Elizabeth

From Kierkegaard’s exposition on Plato’s Phaedo in The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, p. 73:

Now, the soul has the greatest similarity to what is divine, immortal, rational, homogeneous, indissoluble, and is ever self-consistent and invariable; whereas the body has the greatest similarity to that which is human, mortal, irrational, multiform, dissoluble, and never self-consistent (p47). But here we come to an equally abstract view of the existence of the soul and its relation to the body. To be more specific, this view is by no means guilty of tangibly assigning the soul a specific place in the body, but on the other hand it does disregard, and completely, the soul’s relation to the body, and the soul, instead of moving freely in the body produced by it, continually tries to sneak out of the body. [...] That the soul is not compounded is quite admissible, but as long as there is no more explicit answer to the question in what sense it is not compounded and, in another sense, to what extent it is a summary of qualifications, the definition of the soul naturally becomes totally negative, and its immortality becomes just as langweilig (boring) as the eternal number one.

Here I assume he is comparing the soul to Absolute Divine Simplicity or the One. Earlier he talked about all the virtues being many but ultimately one, but I’ll leave that for now, except that it is relevant to the discussion in Phaedo about how one’s acquisition of the virtues affects one’s afterlife. There is a part at the end of Phaedo that talks about the unvirtuous soul, though remaining a fully intact soul, is pretty much shunned in the afterlife. The idea that an individual soul can be shunned by other souls seems to place the soul more in the realm of the particular, or diverse, or many, than the universal one. Perhaps the virtuous souls are absorbed by the abstract, and as Kierkegaard surmises, the negative One, and the unvirtuous ones are left to their diverse independence. I can see the appeal of licentiousness in that case.

The problem with the ever shrinking amount of abstract forms in the ascent of the hierarchy to the One is that it has trouble reconciling and maintaining the many. In the essence/energy distinction, the many are retained, but in order to do this the proper Ordo Theologiae must be assumed. Instead of going from essence to activity to person, person is the starting point who determines activities according to nature, unoriginate in the Father’s case, created in ours. A person is many and one. A person has a vast amount of energies which enable him to eat, think, gaze, etc. all at once. There is one human nature, which Yannaras explains in the link, and I think says is more about how we are and do the many things in a personal way. An individual is one person who has a human will to choose the different activities, good or bad. If God is seen as an essence first, then reducing His component parts into one poses problems, the first being boredom to Søren and me. His essence, beyond beingly being as Dr. Jones says (see the St. Dionisius category), is the mode in which He personally moves, but stays immovable, which gets us back to Kierkegaard.

The supposed superiority of the soul is due to its immutability compared to the body’s being subject to change. Likewise a soul that is governed by a passionate body harnesses itself to changeableness and does not achieve a good end in the afterlife, even if it of itself does not change, however that may be. St. Maximus says that it must attain a habit of virtue – virtue achieved not only internally, but through the body. A properly governed body positively affects the everlasting stable soul. Thus it can be said that in some respect, in that case, the body shares in the soul’s stability. This is the point in unGnostic theosis. The body comes to partake of unchangeableness. This is why many bodies of the Saints remain incorrupt.

In the above I am borrowing the idea of the immutable soul from Plato. While I believe the soul has a beginning, I agree it doesn’t have an end. The above doesn’t depend on the idea of a stable soul that doesn’t change and which is not in and of itself affected by the body, but can also be applied to the notion that a person – body, soul and spirit or whatever three parts you want to say make up a human person – was created to achieve a state of unchangeableness. “Ever moving rest” as St. Maximus calls it. Adam in the Garden was yet to attain it in that he was immature and needed to develop stable maturity even before he sinned. He had a gnomic will that had to deliberate in a less than omniscient state. God, even as Incarnate Son, does not have a gnomic will, in that He is omniscient and doesn’t have to blindly choose between good and bad options. He knows all the good options for sure. In partaking of His nature by grace (we will always have a human nature but can be joined to God’s divine nature through His communicating energies), we can attain a conscious stability which extends to our human bodies as illustrated above.

If one does not achieve theosis in this life, then their body at the final resurrection, I suppose, will be unused to being joined to a dispassionate soul, or at least to God’s kingdom. Even if the soul is not dispassionate, contrary to Plato, I think that with the removal of sinful options that one is accustomed to will cause torment in the soul and the body. This lack of options is not due to their being none but One, but due to there being no sin in heaven. This has been explained as the existential state of hell by some. I have heard from western sources that there is sin in their idea of a physical hell, but how that brings suffering I’d have to look more into.

As far as the soul seeking to go in and out of the body, before death there is a demonic way that can occur, but there is also a Christian way. Many saints while still living have trans-located, but their appearance in other places was not disembodied. I do not know the nature of their being in another place at the same time other than that. It appears though that we are created to partake of a certain amount of divine omnipresence.

The Personhood of the Holy Spirit

by Andrea Elizabeth

It seems that there has been some development of statements (I wont say Tradition) about the Holy Spirit. The Creed was expanded to say that He proceeds from the Father and is worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son, but still does not go into the same detail as it does the Son. Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, or the Hospitality of Abraham, portrays the Holy Spirit as being as much of a person as the Father and the Son. There are more vague statements made of Him however. Olivier Clement includes these:

The very name of Christ is a Trinitarian name: Christos, Messiah, means ‘anointed’ with the Messianic unction. Now the Father is the one who from all eternity ‘anoints’ the Son by causing the Spirit to rest on him, or rather in him, as an unction, the ‘oil of gladness’ of the psalm, because the Spirit is the joy of the divine communion.

To name Christ is to confess the whole, for it is to point to God (the Father, the ‘principle’ of the godhead) who has anointed the Son; and to the Son who has been anointed, and to the unction itself, which is the Spirit. This accords with Peter’s teaching in Acts: ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 10:38) and with the teaching of Isaiah: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me’ (Isaiah 61:1), The Psalmist simply says, ‘Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness’ (Psalm 45:7).

Basil of Caesarea On the Holy Spirit, 12 ( The Roots of Christian Mysticism p. 59)

This next passage makes Him sound more like a Person, but yet seems to set Him apart (not a good word, but the distinction seems more) from the Father and the Son.

That God is, and that he is everywhere and fills the universe, is known by the angels and the saints who have purified themselves, because they are enlightened by the Holy Spirit. But where, how, and what he is, not one amongst all beings knows: only the Father knows the Son and the Son the Father, and the Holy Spirit knows the Father and the Son, since he is co-eternal and identical with them in essence. Indeed these Three who are only One know themselves, and are known by one another. As he himself said who is by nature God and Son of God, ‘Who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of a person which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God’ (1 Cor. 2:11). And again: ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’ (Matthew 11.27).

Diadochus of Photike Catechesis, 5

The following hymn, rising at once to the mystery of the divine cosmic Logos, glorifies in a single sequence the Father as the principle of the godhead, and the Spirit as the ‘bond of the Son and the Father’. [Synesius of Cyrene Hymns, 5] But this bond is himself a Person; nothing in God can be impersonal.  (p. 59,60)

[...] The Old Testament has manifested the Father clearly, the Son only dimly. The New Testament has revealed the Son and implied the divinity of the Spirit.

Today the Spirit lives amongst us and makes himself more clearly known. It would actually have been dangerous openly to proclaim the Son while the divinity of the Father was not fully acknowledged, and then, before the divinity of the Son was accepted, to add as it were the extra burden of the Holy Spirit … It was more fitting that by adding a little at a time and, as David says, by ascending from glory to glory, the splendour of the Trinity should shine forth progressively.

Gregory Nazianzen Fifth Theological Oration, 31, 26 (p. 61)

Here’s a new explanation of the Spirit,

The Trinitarian revelation is implicit also in the prayer which Christ himself taught us, the Lord’s Prayer, of which the first three petitions invoke the three divine Persons. For the Son is the Father’s eternal name, which he hallowed to the point of death on a cross. And the Kingdom is identified with the Spirit, who is therefore both the unction of the Son and the Kingdom of the Father, as Paul Florensky observed.

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come.

By these words the Lord is teaching those who pray to begin with the very mystery of God … The words of the prayer really point to the Father, the Father’s name, and the Kingdom, to teach us … to honour, to call upon and to adore the One Trinity. For the name of God the Father, in its essential subsistence, is the only-begotted Son. And the Kingdom of God the Father, is the essential subsistence, is the Holy Spirit. For what Matthew calls ‘Kingdom’ another evangelist calls Holy Spirit: ‘Thy Spirit come…’ (Luke 11.2 variant reading).

Maximus the Confessor Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (p.62)

The Fathers’ Emphasis on Unity

by Andrea Elizabeth

[T]he Trinity constitutes the inexhaustible fruitfulness of Unity. From the Trinity comes all unification and all differentiation. That is so, despite the fact that – as Dionysius insists elsewhere (Divine Names, II, 11) – unity, in God, is always stronger than distinctions, so that ‘distinctions remain indivisible and unified’.

God, the divine Origin, is praised in holiness:

whether as Unity, on account of the character of simplicity and unity proper to this Individible whose unifying power unifies us ourselves and assembles our different natures in order to lead us together … to that unification which is modelled on God himself;

or as Trinity, because of the thrice personal manifestation of this superessential fruitfulness whence all fatherhood in heaven and on earth receives its being and its name;

or as Love for man, because… the godhead has been fully imparted to our nature by one of its Persons calling humanity and raising it to himself, for Jesus mysteriously took flesh, and the eternal was thus introduced into time and by his birth penetrated the utmost depth of our nature.

Dionysius the Areopagite Divine Names, I,4

- Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism p. 62,63)

When reading Sts. Dionysius and Maximus on God’s sourcehood, sustaining power, in and through all-ness, and Cosmic Recapitulation, one can get a sense of universalism – God is all in all. Despite others’ insistence on a separate place for the damned, I tend toward’s C.S. Lewis’ view illustrated in The Great Divorce. That the ones in “hell” are ones who separate themselves further and further away from God, and who as a result become smaller and smaller. One of his guys even disappeared – I’m not sure I go that far. Many teach that this type of hell is existential, because there is no “place” where God is not. Their separation is like a figment of their imagination (tormenting though that be) because they separate themselves from reality – God.

Despite the ovewhelming universal passages so far in Clement’s book, there is this one section that admits there is something (or at least some sense of otherness) other than God (not in the Divine Simplicity sense).

By the Ascension the Body of Christ, woven of our flesh and of all earthly flesh, entered the realms of the Trinity. Henceforward the creation is in God, it is the true ‘burning bush’ according to Maximus the Confessor. At the same time it remains buried in the darkness of death and separation because of humanity’s hatred and cruelty and irresponsibility. To become holy is to clear away this weight of ashes and to uncover the glowing fire beneath, to allow life, in Christ, to swallow up death. It is to anticipate the manifest coming of the Kingdom by disclosing its secret presence. To anticipate, and therefore to prepare and to hasten.

Christ, having completed for us his saving work and ascended to heaven with the body which he had taken to himself, accomplishes in his own self the union of heaven and earth, of material and spiritual beings, and thus demonstrates the unity of creation in the polarity of its parts.

Maximus the Confessor Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer

Christ in his love unites created reality with uncreated reality – How wonderful is God’s loving-kindness towards us! – and he shows that through grace the two are become one. The whole world enters wholly into the whole of God and by becoming all that God is, except in identity of nature, it receives in place of itself the whole God.

Maximus the Confessor Ambigua

(RoCM, p. 54,55)

Our Father Among the Saints, Maximus the Confessor

by Andrea Elizabeth

Commemorated on January 21

Saint Maximus the Confessor was born in Constantinople around 580 and raised in a pious Christian family. He received an excellent education, studying philosophy, grammar, and rhetoric. He was well-read in the authors of antiquity and he also mastered philosophy and theology. When St Maximus entered into government service, he became first secretary (asekretis) and chief counselor to the emperor Heraclius (611-641), who was impressed by his knowledge and virtuous life.

St Maximus soon realized that the emperor and many others had been corrupted by the Monothelite heresy, which was spreading rapidly through the East. He resigned from his duties at court, and went to the Chrysopolis monastery (at Skutari on the opposite shore of the Bosphorus), where he received monastic tonsure. Because of his humility and wisdom, he soon won the love of the brethren and was chosen igumen of the monastery after a few years. Even in this position, he remained a simple monk.

In 638, the emperor Heraclius and Patriarch Sergius tried to minimize the importance of differences in belief, and they issued an edict, the “Ekthesis” (“Ekthesis tes pisteos” or “Exposition of Faith), which decreed that everyone must accept the teaching of one will in the two natures of the Savior. In defending Orthodoxy against the “Ekthesis,” St Maximus spoke to people in various occupations and positions, and these conversations were successful. Not only the clergy and the bishops, but also the people and the secular officials felt some sort of invisible attraction to him, as we read in his Life.

When St Maximus saw what turmoil this heresy caused in Constantinople and in the East, he decided to leave his monstery and seek refuge in the West, where Monothelitism had been completely rejected. On the way, he visited the bishops of Africa, strengthening them in Orthodoxy, and encouraging them not to be deceived by the cunning arguments of the heretics.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council had condemned the Monophysite heresy, which falsely taught that in the Lord Jesus Christ there was only one nature (the divine). Influenced by this erroneous opinion, the Monothelite heretics said that in Christ there was only one divine will (“thelema”) and only one divine energy (“energia”). Adherents of Monothelitism sought to return by another path to the repudiated Monophysite heresy. Monothelitism found numerous adherents in Armenia, Syria, Egypt. The heresy, fanned also by nationalistic animosities, became a serious threat to Church unity in the East. The struggle of Orthodoxy with heresy was particularly difficult because in the year 630, three of the patriarchal thrones in the Orthodox East were occupied by Monothelites: Constantinople by Sergius, Antioch by Athanasius, and Alexandria by Cyrus.

St Maximus traveled from Alexandria to Crete, where he began his preaching activity. He clashed there with a bishop, who adhered to the heretical opinions of Severus and Nestorius. The saint spent six years in Alexandria and the surrounding area.

Patriarch Sergius died at the end of 638, and the emperor Heraclius also died in 641. The imperial throne was eventually occupied by his grandson Constans II (642-668), an open adherent of the Monothelite heresy. The assaults of the heretics against Orthodoxy intensified. St Maximus went to Carthage and he preached there for about five years. When the Monothelite Pyrrhus, the successor of Patriarch Sergius, arrived there after fleeing from Constantinople because of court intrigues, he and St Maximus spent many hours in debate. As a result, Pyrrhus publicly acknowledged his error, and was permitted to retain the title of “Patriarch.” He even wrote a book confessing the Orthodox Faith. St Maximus and Pyrrhus traveled to Rome to visit Pope Theodore, who received Pyrrhus as the Patriarch of Constantinople.

In the year 647 St Maximus returned to Africa. There, at a council of bishops Monotheletism was condemned as a heresy. In 648, a new edict was issued, commissioned by Constans and compiled by Patriarch Paul of Constantinople: the “Typos” (“Typos tes pisteos” or “Pattern of the Faith”), which forbade any further disputes about one will or two wills in the Lord Jesus Christ. St Maximus then asked St Martin the Confessor (April 14), the successor of Pope Theodore, to examine the question of Monothelitism at a Church Council. The Lateran Council was convened in October of 649. One hundred and fifty Western bishops and thirty-seven representatives from the Orthodox East were present, among them St Maximus the Confessor. The Council condemned Monothelitism, and the Typos. The false teachings of Patriarchs Sergius, Paul and Pyrrhus of Constantinople, were also anathematized.

When Constans II received the decisions of the Council, he gave orders to arrest both Pope Martin and St Maximus. The emperor’s order was fulfilled only in the year 654.St Maximus was accused of treason and locked up in prison. In 656 he was sent to Thrace, and was later brought back to a Constantinople prison.

The saint and two of his disciples were subjected to the cruelest torments. Each one’s tongue was cut out, and his right hand was cut off. Then they were exiled to Skemarum in Scythia, enduring many sufferings and difficulties on the journey.

After three years, the Lord revaled to St Maximus the time of his death (August 13, 662). Three candles appeared over the grave of St Maximus and burned miraculously. This was a sign that St Maximus was a beacon of Orthodoxy during his lifetime, and continues to shine forth as an example of virtue for all. Many healings occurred at his tomb.

In the Greek Prologue, August 13 commemorates the Transfer of the Relics of St Maximus to Constantinople, but it could also be the date of the saint’s death. It may be that his memory is celebrated on January 21 because August 13 is the Leavetaking of the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord.

St Maximus has left to the Church a great theological legacy. His exegetical works contain explanations of difficult passages of Holy Scripture, and include a Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer and on Psalm 59, various “scholia” or “marginalia” (commentaries written in the margin of manuscripts), on treatises of the Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite (October 3) and St Gregory the Theologian (January 25). Among the exegetical works of St Maximus are his explanation of divine services, entitled “Mystagogia” (“Introduction Concerning the Mystery”).

The dogmatic works of St Maximus include the Exposition of his dispute with Pyrrhus, and several tracts and letters to various people. In them are contained explanations of the Orthodox teaching on the Divine Essence and the Persons of the Holy Trinity, on the Incarnation of the Word of God, and on “theosis” (“deification”) of human nature.

“Nothing in theosis is the product of human nature,” St Maximus writes in a letter to his friend Thalassius, “for nature cannot comprehend God. It is only the mercy of God that has the capacity to endow theosis unto the existing… In theosis man (the image of God) becomes likened to God, he rejoices in all the plenitude that does not belong to him by nature, because the grace of the Spirit triumphs within him, and because God acts in him” (Letter 22).

St Maximus also wrote anthropological works (i.e. concerning man). He deliberates on the nature of the soul and its conscious existence after death. Among his moral compositions, especially important is his “Chapters on Love.” St Maximus the Confessor also wrote three hymns in the finest traditions of church hymnography, following the example of St Gregory the Theologian.

The theology of St Maximus the Confessor, based on the spiritual experience of the knowledge of the great Desert Fathers, and utilizing the skilled art of dialectics worked out by pre-Christian philosophy, was continued and developed in the works of St Simeon the New Theologian (March 12), and St Gregory Palamas (November 14).

(from oca.org)

Some thoughts about detatchment

by Andrea Elizabeth

A lot of the quotes I’ve put up from my recent readings have been about detachment and denial. St. Maximus talks about losing the attachment to earthly things, and St. Dionysius about removing ourselves from our perceptions about God.

About the first, I don’t think that detachment means that we are not to tend to and care for material things, or that we shouldn’t even enjoy them while giving thanks to the Lord. I think he is addressing idolatry and selfishness instead. The opposite extreme is gnosticism that sounds more like an excuse to abandon and neglect the things we should be caring for.

About the second, I think this teaching regards having too presumptuous or shortsighted a view of God. Converting to Orthodoxy can seem in one way like you have been removed from your best friend and placed in a very crowded room, in the back. It is a bit painful and humbling, but as Fr. Seraphim Rose said, we suffer now to be rewarded in the next life. Still, senses of God’s presence and attention can comfort in this life as well.

Giving up presumptions and demands makes one vulnerable to being alone, but at the same time, one must have faith that reality is better than false notions. This may sound almost Buddhist or even Athiest, but the Church provides us with the affirmative, positive theology to assure us of the reality of God. We can let Him be Himself and not feel that we have to conjure up an image or form an intellectual fantasy. If we are silent, and unexpecting, except for trying to be aware of our sins, then we can rest in the fact that He knows what to do with us, and others we mention to Him as well.

The Second Century

by Andrea Elizabeth

1. The one who truly loves God also prays completely undistracted, and the one who prays completely undistracted also truly loves God. But the one who has his mind fixed on any earthly thing does not pray undistracted; therefore the one who has his mind tied to any earthly thing does not love God.

2. The mind which dallies on a thing of sense certainly has some passion about it, such as desire or sorrow or anger or resentment; and unless he disdains the thing he cannot be freed from that passion.

3. When the passions hold sway over a mind they bind it together with material things, and separating it from God make it to be all-engrossed in them. But when love of God is in control, it releases it from the bonds and persuades it to think beyond not only things of sense but even this transient life of ours.

4. The purpose of the commandments is to make simple the thoughts of things; the purpose of reading and contemplation is to render the mind clear of any matter or form; from this ensues undistracted prayer.

5. The active way does not suffice by itself for the perfect liberation of the mind from the passions to allow it to pray undistracted unless various spiritual contemplations also relieve it. The former frees the mind only from incontinence and hatred while the latter rid it also of forgetfulness and ignorance, and in this way it will be able to pray as it ought.

6. There are two supreme states of pure prayer, one corresponding to those of the active life, the other to the contemplatives. The first arises in the soul from the fear of God and an upright hope, the second from divine desire and total purification. The marks of the first type are the drawing of one’s mind away from all the world’s considerations, and as God is present to one, as indeed he is, he makes his prayers without distraction or disturbance. The marks of the second type are that at the very onset of prayer the mind is taken hold of by the divine and infinite light and is conscious neither of itself nor of any other being whatever except of him who through love brings about such brightness in it. Then, when it is concerned with the properties of God, it receives impressions of him which are clear and distinct.

- St. Maximus Four Hundred Chapters on Love

The last decade of St. Maximus’ first Century on Love

by Andrea Elizabeth

86. When the mind is completely freed from the passions, it journeys straight ahead to the contemplation of created things and makes its way to the knowledge of the Holy Trinity.

87. When the mind is pure and takes on ideas of things it is moved to a spiritual contemplation. But when it has become impure by carelessness, it imagines mere ideas of other things, so that receiving human ideas it turns back to shameful and evil thoughts.

88. When in time of prayer no ideas of the world ever disturb the mind, then know that you are not outside the limits of detachment.

89. When the soul begins to feel its own good health, then does it regard as simple and undisturbing the imaginings which take place in dreams.

91. It is a great thing not to be affected by things; but it is much greater to remain detached from the thought of them. Therefore, the demons’ battle against us through thoughts is more severe than that through deeds.

94. Through the working out of the commandments the mind puts off the passions. Through the spiritual contemplation of visible realities it puts off impassioned thoughts of things. Through the knowledge of invisible realities it puts off contemplation of visible things. And finally this it puts off through the knowledge of the Holy Trinity.

96. We do not know God from his being but from his magnificent works and his Providence for beings. Through these as through mirrors we perceive his infinite goodness and wisdom and power.

98. The mind which is settled in the contemplation of visible realities searches out either the natural reasons of things or those which are signified by them, or else it seeks the cause itself.

99. Dwelling in the contemplation of the invisible it seeks both the natural reasons of these things, the cause of their production, and whatever is consequent upon them, and also what is the Providence and judgment concerning them.

100. Once it is in 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. But it does receive encouragement from his attributes, that is, from what concerns his eternity, infinity, and immensity, as well as from his goodness, wisdom, and power by which he creates, governs, and judges beings. “And this alone is thoroughly understandable in him, infinity”; and the very fact of knowing nothing about him is to know beyond the mind’s power, as the theologians Gregory and Dionysius have both said somewhere.

- Maximus Confessor Selected Writings, p. 45,46