The God-Man

The Theanthrapos according to Saint Maximos the Confessor
By Fr. George Florovsky



The Incarnation of the Logos is the basis and goal of Revelation — its basic theme and meaning. From the beginning God the Logos appoints Incarnation for himself so that the consecration and deification of all creation, of all the world, is accomplished in the union of the God-Man.
For man is a microcosm. He stands on the border of worlds and unites in himself all planes of existence. He is called to unite and gather everything in himself, as St. Gregory of Nyssa taught. In the prospects of this universal consecration of existence, the speculative correctness of strict, precise dyophysitism is particu -larly clearly evident and comprehensible. This is not only a soteriological axiom or postulate. St. Maximus does not only show the fullness, the "perfection" of Christ’s human nature from the necessity of redemption — "what is not assumed is not healed." He does indeed repeat these words of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. For the world was created only in order that in the fulfillment of its fate God should be in everything and that everything should commune with him through the Logos Incarnate. Hence, it is understandable that in the Incarnation the whole totality of created nature — πάντα τα ημών — must be assumed by the Logos and assimilated "without any omission."
In the fallen world the Incarnation turns out to be redemption, salvation. But from time immemorial, it was willed not as a means of salvation, but as the fulfillment of created existence in general, as its justification and foundation. It is for this reason that the redemption itself is by no means exhausted by some negative factors alone — liberation from sin, condemnation, decay and death. The main thing is the very fact of inseparable union of natures — the entrance of Life into created existence. For us, however, it is easier to understand the Incarnation as the path to salvation. It is this aspect which is the most important thing of all, for we must, first of all, be redeemed in Christ and through Christ.
The mystery of God-Manhood has been active in the world from the beginning. St. Maximus distinguishes two moments and periods: the mystery of the Divine Incarnation and the "grace of human deification." The Old Testament is the still uncompleted history of the Church. The historic event of the Gospel is the focus and the division of two epochs, the summit and mystical focus of oikonomia. This is the fulfillment, the crowning of the revelations of the Logos in the world the Logos created, in the Law and Scripture the Logos gave to man.
Christ is born of a Virgin. Therefore, first of all, he is consubstantial with us — "the same in nature." But he is born not of seed, but by an immaculate Virgin Birth, a birth which was "controlled not by the law of sin but by the law of Divine truth." Therefore he is free of sin — the hereditary sin which is transmitted first of all in the "illegality" of carnal conception, echoing especially the thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa. He receives the primordial, still chaste, human nature, as it was created by God from time immemorial, as Adam had it before the fall. And with this he "renews" nature, displays it beside the sin "of which decrepitude consists." However, for the sake of our salvation the Lord primordially subordinates himself to the order of sufferings and decay. He voluntarily deigns to accept mortality and death itself, from which he could be entirely free, being beyond sin. The Lord subordinates himself to the consequences of sin, while staying not privy to sin itself. In this is his healing penance.
He becomes a man "not according to a law of nature," but according to the will of oikonomia. "Innocent and sinless, he paid the whole debt for mankind, as if he himself were guilty, and thereby returned them anew to the original grace of the kingdom. He gave himself for us at the cost of redemption and deliverance, and for our pernicious passions he gave with his life-giving suffering — the curative healing and salvation of the whole world."
Christ enters the "suffering" or "passionate" order of things, lives in it, but inwardly remains independent of it and free. He is "clothed" in our nature’s capacity for suffering — this phrase is more accurate than "passion" — through which we are attracted to sin and fall under the power of the evil one. But he remains passionless — that is, immobile or non-suffering, "non-passive," free and active as regards "reproachful" or "anti-natural" or "para-Physical" incentives. This is "imperishability of the will," "volition." Through abstinence, long-suffering, and love, Christ warded off and overcame all temptations, and displayed in his life every virtue and wisdom.
This imperishability of the will is reinforced later by the imperishability of nature — that is, the resurrection. The Lord descends even to the gates of hell, to the very region of death, and deposes or weakens it. Life proves to be stronger than death Death is conquered in resurrection, as in the abolition of any suffering, weakness and decay — that is, in a land of "transformation" of nature into immortality and imperishability. The series of stages is: existence; true existence or virtue; and eternal existence which is in God, which is "deification." At the same time there is a series of redeeming actions: union with God in the Incarnation, imperishability of will in the righteousness of life, and imperishability of nature in the resurrection.
Throughout, St. Maximus emphasizes the integrating activity of the God-Man. Christ embraced and united everything in himself. He removed the cleavages of existence. In his impassive birth he combined the male and female genders. Through his holy life he combined the universe and paradise. Through his ascension, he combined earth and heaven, the created and uncreated. And he traces and reduces everything to the proto-beginning or proto-cause. Not only because he is the Logos, and creatively embraces everything and contains it within himself but also by his human will, his human volition, which brings about God’s will, which organically coincides with it and receives it as its own inner and intimate measure or model.
After all, the fall was a volitional act, and therefore an injury to the human will, a disconnecting of human will and God’s will, and a disintegration of human will itself, among passions and subordinating external impressions or influences. Healing must penetrate to the original wound and the original ulcer of sinfulness. Healing must be the doctoring and restoration of the human will in its fullness, self-discipline, integrity, and accord with God’s will — here there is the usual antithesis: Adam’s disobedience and Christ’s obedience and submissiveness. St. Maximus extends this with his ontological interpretation.
St. Maximus speaks the language of Leontius. He opposes nature (and essence), as something general and merely conceivable — able to be contemplated with the mind — to hypostasis, as some -thing concrete and real — πραγματικώς υφιστάμενον. For him hypostasity is not exhausted in features or “peculiarities” but is first of all independent existence — καθ’ έαυτό. “Non-un-hypostasity” or reality does not unfailingly signify hypostasity; that is, independence, but can also indicate "inner-hypostasity" — that is, existence in another, and with another . Only the concrete or individual is real. As for Leontius, hypostasis is signified not so much by individualizing features as by an image of existence and life. Hypostasity is not a special and superfluous feature, but a real originality. Therefore, "non-self-hypostasity" by no means limits or decreases the fullness or "perfection" of nature. The fullness of nature is determined and described by general features, "essential" or "natural" traits — they are "tokens of perfection," of completeness or fullness.
The Incarnation of the Logos is the reception and inclusion of human nature into the unalterable hypostasis of the Logos. Christ is united, a "united hypostasis," and it is this which is the hypostasis of the Logos. It is for just this reason that it is said: the Logos became flesh, for the Logos is the subject. As St. Maximus explains, "became flesh" precisely signifies acceptance into hypostasis, and "origin" or genesis through such acceptance.
In a certain sense, through the Incarnation the hypostasis of the Logos changes from simple to complex — "compound;" συνθετος. However, this complexity merely signifies that the single hypostasis is at once and inseparably the hypostasis; that is, the personal center, for both of the two natures. The complexity is in the union of natures which remain without any change in their natural characteristics. The Incarnation is "God’s ineffable humility," his kenosis, but it is not the "impoverishing of the Godhead." And the human in the hypostasis of the Logos does not cease being "consubstantial with," "of the same essence with" us.
St. Maximus defines "hypostatic union" precisely as the union or reduction of "different essences or natures" in a unity of person — hypostasis. The natures remain different and dissimilar. Their “differentness” does not cease with union, and is also preserved in that indissoluble and unflagging inter-communion, inter-penetration — περιχώρησις eις άλλήλας, which is established by the union. "In saying that Christ is of two natures, we mean that he consists of Divinity and humanity as a whole consists of parts; and in saying that after the union he is in two natures, we believe that he abides in the Godhead and in Manhood, as a whole consists of parts. And Christ’s "parts" are his Divinity and Humanity, of which and in which he abides." What is more, he is not only "of two" or "in two" but simply "two natures." Since there is no mixing, it is necessary to count. Christ’s human nature is consubstantial with ours, but at the same time it is free of original sm — this is also connected with the immaculate conception of Christ and the virgin birth. In other words, primordial human nature is displayed and realized anew in Christ in all its chastity and purity.
And by virtue of this hypostatic nature all that is human in Christ was permeated with Divinity, deified, transformed — here the image of the red hot iron is used. Here the human is given a new and special form of existence, and this is connected with the very purpose of the coming of the Logos — after all, he "became flesh" in order to renew decayed nature, for the sake of a new form of existence. The deification of the human is not its absorption or dissolution. On the contrary, it is in this likeness to God, or likening to God, that the human genuinely becomes itself. For man is created in the image of God, and is summoned to the likeness of God. In Christ is realized the highest and utmost measure of this likening, which fortifies the human in its genuine natural originality. Deification signifies the indissoluble connection, perfect accord and unity. First of all, there is inseparability — always "in communion with one another." By virtue of hypostatic union Christ,while being God, is "incarnate but unaltered," and always acts in everything "not only as God or according to his Divinity but at the same time as a man, according to his humanity." In other words, all of Divine Life draws humanity into itself and manifests itfcelf or flows out only through it. This is a "new and ineffable form for revealing Christ’s natural actions" — in inseparable union, however, without any change or decrease in what is characteristic for each nature, "immutably."
The possibility for such a union is founded in the natural "non-non-divinity" of the human spirit which is the intermediary link in the union of the Logos with animated flesh, an idea taken from the thought of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. The form of Christ’s activity in humanity was different from ours, higher than it, and often even higher than nature, for he acted entirely freely and voluntarily, without hesitation or bifurcation, and in immutable harmony, and even union of all desires with the will of the Logos. And again, this was more the fulfillment of human measure than its abolition. God’s will, which motivates and forms human volition, is accomplished in everything. However, this did not eliminate human volition itself. It befits man to do God’s will, accepting it as his own, for God’s will reveals and builds the tastes and paths which most correspond to the goals and meaning of human life.
St. Maximus sees first of all the unity of life in the unity of person. Because this unity is realized in the two natures so fully, human nature is generally a likeness of Divine nature. Recalling man’s likeness to God makes it much easier for St. Maximus to disclose and defend Orthodox Dyophysitism. This was also an important argument against Monophysitism in general, with its anthropological self-depreciation or minimalism. In St. Maximus there was no longer that vagueness which remained in Leontius in connection with the analogy of soul and body. St. Maximus flatly rejects the possibility of mixing or of the conjunction of hypcstases for a certain time, then their new separation or restoration. Therefore he categorically denies even the logical possibility of the pre-existence of Christ’s humanity before the Incarnation. In general, he uses the comparison with the human composition with very great restraint. He always emphasizes that we are speaking of the Incarnation of the Logos, and not the deification of man. By these same motives he brusquely rejects the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls as being completely incompatible with the true hypostatic unity of each person.
In the doctrine of the two wills and two energies in Christ Orthodox Dyophysitism becomes totally complete and definite. Only an open and direct confession of natural human energy and will in Christ removes any ambiguity in the doctrine of the God-Man. The metaphysical premises of St. Maximus’ discussion of two energies can be expressed in the following way. First, will and energy are essential traits of spiritual nature — they are natural traits. Therefore, the two natures unavoidably entails a two-ness of natural energies, and any wavering in acknowledging their two-ness signifies indistinctness in the confession of the two natures. Secondly, one must clearly and precisely distinguish natural will as the basic trait or characteristic of spiritual existence — θέλημα φυσικόν — and as selective volition, volitional choice and variation between possibilities which differ in significance and quality — θέλημα γνωμικον.
St. Maximus dwells on these preliminary definitions in great detail, for it is here that the basic disagreement with the Monophysites was revealed. The Monophysites claimed a union of volition and energy in Christ, a union of personal or hypostatic will, for Christ is one, his will is one. Consequently, one volition and one will. Does not unity of person include unity of will? And does not the assumption of two volitions weaken the union of the person of the God-Man? The Monophysites’ misunderstanding revealed an authentic theological question: what can the two wills and two energies mean given the unity of the willing subject? To start with, there are essentially two questions here. The concept of hypostatic will" can also be ambiguous: it means either the absorption or disintegration of human will in the Divine dynamic unity of volition; or the assumption of some "third" will, which corresponds to a "complex hypostasis" of the God-Man, as a special principle apart from and equal to the natures being unified.
St. Maximus first of all dismisses this last supposition: the whole is not some third thing — it does not have a special existence apart from its components; the wholeness signifies only the new and special form of existence of these components, but at the same time no new source of will and energy arises or is revealed.
The unity of hypostasis in Christ determines the form of the self-disclosure of the natures, but does not create any special "third" independent reality. The hypostasis of the God-Man "has only that which is characteristic of each of his natures. What is more, the hypostasis of Christ is, after all, the hypostasis of the Logos, which is eternal and unalterable, and which became the hypostasis for the humanity it received. Consequently, unity of "hypostatic volition" can practically mean only the unity of the will of God, which absorbs human will. This would clearly damage the fullness or "perfection" of the human composition in Christ. Least of all can one speak of a temporary and "relative assimilation" of human will by the Logos in the order of oikonomic adaption. This means introducing Docetism into the mystery of the Incarnation.
Will is a trait or characteristic of reasoning nature. St. Maximus defines it as "the force of striving for what conforms to nature, a force which embraces all traits or characteristics which essentially belong to the nature." One must add: the force of a reasoning soul, a reasoning striving, which is "verbal" or "logical," and a free and "masterful striving" — κατ’ έξουσιαν. Will, as the capacity to desire and freely decide, is something innate. A "reasoning" nature cannot be anything but volitional, for reason is essentially "despotic," a "dominating" principle; that is, a principle of self-determination, the capability of being defined by one’s self and through one’s self. Here is the boundary which divides "reasoning" beings from "non-reasoning" or "non-verbal" ones, who are blindly allured by nature’s might. They objected to St. Maximus by asking: but is there really no nuance of necessity or inevitability in the very concept of "nature," which cannot be eliminated? So the concept of "natural will" includes an internal contradiction. St. Athanasius was reproached for the same thing in his day; and Theodoret reproached St. Cyril for this as well.
St. Maximus resolutely deflects this reproach. Why is nature a necessity? Does one really have to say that God is forced to be, that he is good by necessity? In created beings "nature" determines the purposes and tasks of freedom, but does not limit it. Here we arrive at a basic distinction: will and choice — γνώμη. One could say volition and desire, or willfulness, almost arbitrariness. Freedom and will are not arbitrariness at all. Freedom of choice not merely does not belong to the perfection of freedom. On the contrary, it is diminishing and a distortion of freedom. Genuine freedom is an undivided, unshakable, integral striving and attraction of the soul to Goodness. It is an integral impulse of reverence and love. "Choice" is by no means an obligatory condition of freedom. God wills and acts in perfect freedom, but he does not waver and does not choose. Choice — προαιρεσις — which is properly "preference," as St. Maximus himself observes, presupposes bifurcation and vagueness — the incompleteness and unsteadiness of the will. Only a sinful and feeble will wavers and chooses.
According to the idea of St. Maximus the fall of the will consists precisely in losing integrity and spontaneity, in the fact that the will changes from intuitive to discursive, and in the fact that volition develops into a very complex process of search, trial, and choice. In this process that which is personal and special is attendant. Thus do personal desires take shape. Here incommensurate attractions clash and struggle. But the measure of perfection and purity of will is its simplicity — that is, precisely its integrity and uniformity. This is only possible through: "Let Thy will be done!" This is the highest measure of freedom, the highest reality of freedom, which accepts the first-created will of God and therefore expresses its own genuine depths. St. Maximus always speaks of the reality and efficacy of the human will in Christ with special stress; otherwise all oikonomia would turn into a phantom. Christ, as the "new man," was a complete or "perfect" man, and accepted all that was human in order to heal it. But it was the will, the desire, which was the source of sin in the Old Adam, and therefore it was the will which demanded doctoring and healing most of all. Salvation would not have been accomplished if the will had not been accepted and healed.
However, all of human nature in Christ was sinless and viceless, for this is the nature of the Primordial one. And his will was the primordial will, which was still untouched by the breath of sin. In this is all the originality of Christ’s human will — it differs from ours only "as regards the inclination to sin." There are no waverings or contradictions. Inwardly, it is unified and inwardly it conforms to the will of the Godhead. There is no clash or struggle between the two natural wills — and there must not be! For human nature is God’s creation, God’s will realized. Therefore, in it there is nothing — and cannot be anything — contrary to or opposing God’s will. God’s will is not something external for human will, but its source and goal, its beginning and its telos. Of course, this coincidence or accord of wills is not their mixing.
In a certain sense human actions and will in Christ were higher than nature or above it. "For through hypostatic union it was entirely deified, for which reason it was also completely not privy to sin." Through hypostatic union with the Logos everything human in Christ was strengthened and transformed. This transformation is proclaimed first of all in perfect freedom. Human nature in Christ is taken out from under the power of natural necessity, under which it found itself only by virtue of sin. If it remains within the bounds of the natural order, that is not so under compulsion but voluntarily and competently. The Savior voluntarily and freely takes upon himself all the weaknesses and sufferings of man in order to free him from them — like fire melts wax, or the sun drives away the fog.
St. Maximus distinguishes a dual assumption — the same distinction appears later in St. John of Damascus. First, there is natural or essential assumption. The Logos accepts the entire fullness of human nature in its primordial innocence and guiltlessness, but in that feeble condition into which it fell through sin, with all the weaknesses and flaws which are the consequences of sin or even retribution for sin but are themselves not anything sinful — the so-called "unreproachable passions" such as hunger and thirst, fear, fatigue. At the same time, though, the acceptance of weaknesses and disparagement are acts of free subordination, for in incorrupt nature there is no need to be feeble or under someone’s power. It is especially necessary to observe that St. Maximus directly ascribes omniscience to Christ through humanity as well. Indeed, as he understands it, "ignorance" was one of the most shameful flaws of human nature in sin. Secondly, there is relative or oikonomic assumption — acceptance in love and compassion. Thus the Savior accepted sin and man’s guilt, his sinful and guilty feebleness. In the portrayal by St. Maximus Christ’s human nature proves to be particularly active, efficacious, and free. This concerns the redemptive sufferings more than anything else. This was free passion, the free acceptance and fulfillment of the will of God. In the Savior’s chaste life the restoration of the image of God in man was accomplished — through human will. And by his free acceptance of cleansing — not punitive — suffering, Christ destroyed the power of the Old Adam’s free desire and sin. This was not retribution or punishment for sin, but the movement of saving Love.
St. Maximus explains Christ’s redeeming work as the restoration, the healing, the gathering of all creation in ontological, not moral, terms. But it is Love which is the moving force of salvation. The Love displayed on the Cross most of all. Christ’s work will be fulfilled in the Second Coming. The Gospels lead to this, to the "spiritual" appearance of the Logos, the God-Man, just as the Old Testament led to the Logos Incarnate. Here St. Maximus follows Origen’s motif.



The Byzantine Fathers
Of the Sixth to Eighth Century

Georges Florovsky