maximus

Gentiles of the Soul: Maximus the Confessor on the Substructureand Transformation of Human Passions

Blowers, Paul M., 1955-

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1996,pp. 57-85 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/earl.1996.0008

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Gentiles of the Soul: Maximus the Confessor on the Substructureand Transformation of the Human Passions

PAUL M. BLOWERS

Maximus the Confessor, in his attempt to deal with the problems of human pas-sion, freedom, and love in an ontological and physiological as well as moralframework, is seen by some scholars to be adumbrating the thought of Aquinason these subjects. Yet the argument here is that Maximus’s doctrine of the hu-man passions is aimed not per se at a comprehensive metaphysics of human pas-sibility or at a doctrine of supernaturally infused ÃagŒaph, but—still very much ina neo-Cappadocian (and to some degree neo-Areopagitic) key—at a teleology ofthe passions that judges their ultimate ontological status in relation to the latentchaotic element in bodily nature, the definition of the frontiers of human free-dom, and the ongoing, ever-unfolding potentiality, resourcefulness, and moral-spiritual “utility” of all natural human faculties. All of this belongs, moreover,within Maximus’s larger Christological perspective. As the “gentiles” of thesoul, to use Maximus’s own analogy, the passions are a “contingent presence”in the history of human nature, and despite their deviance in connection withthe abuse of free will, they still constitute a crucial vehicle by which incarnation-al grace is embodied in the farthest reaches of the cosmic order, of which humannature is the treasured microcosm.

In classical philosophy as well as later patristic thought, the human pas-sions presented a moral but inevitably also an ontological, or else physi-ological, dilemma. Plato debated in his dialogues over whether the soul’slower, passible parts had any real (eternal) existence apart from incarna-tion and involvement with evil. But neither he, nor Aristotle after him,could ultimately imagine the soul moving without some measure of pas-sion, and in the Republic and the Symposium he saw desire (ÃepijumŒia)

Journal of Early Christian Studies 4:1, 57–85 © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press.

and irascibility (jumŒov), right along with ruling reason, as manifestationsor functions of the soul’s essential energy of eÕrwv, the deep passion pro-pelling it toward things divine.1 For these classical writers, as MarthaNussbaum suggests, the passions are not simply the “blind surges of af-fect” nor equatable with appetites like hunger and thirst; they have to dowith the determination of the Good and actually “embody ways of inter-preting the world.”2 The Stoics, while generally convinced that pleasure,pain, fear, desire and other passions were not rooted in parts of the soulbut were errant mental impulses ( ÄormaŒi), judgments (krŒiseiv), or opin-ions (dŒoxai), perhaps associated with “diseased” states or dispositions ofthe mind, were neither univocal nor transparently clear on the ontologyof the passions within the dominion of the mind (to ÄhgemonikŒon).3 Yet in

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1. Cf. Rep. 485C; 490A–B; Smp. 188D; 205E–212B. See also F. M. Cornford, “TheDoctrine of Eros in Plato’s Symposium,” reprinted in Plato: A Collection of CriticalEssays, ed. Gregory Vlastos (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,1971), vol. 2, 120–21; R. A. Markus, “The Dialectic of Eros in Plato’s Symposium,”ibid., 132–43. Though Aristotle certainly rejects or revamps basic elements of Plato’spsychology, he still sees the soul’s motion as appetitive ( ÃoretikŒh) motion entailing fac-ulties of ÃepijumŒia and jumŒov, all of which stand in necessary or “natural” tension withthe intellect (cf. de An. 433A–434A; de Mot. An. 700B–701A, 703A).

2. Martha Nussbaum, “The Stoics on the Extirpation of the Passions,” in her TheTherapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1994), 369; see also idem, “Aristotle on Emotions and Ethical Health,”ibid., 78–101; idem, “The Therapy of Desire,” ibid., esp. 507–10.

3. On passions as faulty impulses, judgments, or opinions among early Stoic writ-ers, see the reports of Stobaeus 2.88,8–90,6; Andronicus, De passionibus 1; Galen, Deplac. Hipp. et Plat. 4.2.1–6; and Plutarch, De virtute morali 446F–447A, in The Hel-lenistic Philosophers, ed. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1987), 2.404A–406D, 408G. On the connection of passions with dis-eased mental states in Stoicism, see Stobaeus, 2.93.1–13 (Hellenistic Philosophers2.415S); Diogenes Laertius 7.115 (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta [SVF] 3.422); Ci-cero, Tusc. disp. 4.27 et al. (SVF 3.423–427); Galen, De locis affectis 1.3 (SVF 3.429).Max Pohlenz claimed to find a disparity between Zeno, who viewed the passions asdiseases to be eradicated, and Chrysippus, who “rationalized” them as judgments be-longing to the mind. See his “Zenon und Chrysippus,” Nachrichten der Akademie derWissenschaften in Göttingen, phil.-hist. Klasse, Fach. 1, no. 2 (1938): 188ff; idem, DieStoa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1948), vol. 1, 90–97. John Rist has ex-plained this apparent disparity by the fact that Zeno and Chrysippus alike saw the pas-sions as mental “judgments”; they differ only in precise definition of such a judgment.“Zeno must have held that judgments qua judgments are to be viewed as free from ir-rational ‘colouring’, that the ‘colouring’ is the inevitable result of misguided judgmentswhich thus damage the ÄhgemonikŒon. Chrysippus, on the other hand, held that there isno such thing as a merely mental act and that all judgments must have some kind ofemotional colouring, correct judgments—made only by the wise—presumably involv-ing eÃupŒajeiai, false judgments involving some degree of pŒajov” (Stoic Philosophy[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969], 30). Corroborating this view is BradInwood in his valuable monograph on Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism

their idealization of ÃapŒajeia as the complete conquest of the passions,Stoic writers retreated from a purely nihilistic position: utter destructionof affectivity would be unwise, indeed unintelligible. The true goal of themoral life would rather be a therapeutic affectivity, wherein certain eÃup-Œajeiai—not “good passions” as such but trained, reasonable affective re-sponses—would displace irrational or diseased ones and bring stability tothe soul.4 In turn, the perceived latitude for interpreting the precise on-tology of the passions inevitably opened a door for later Stoic writers likePosidonius to “platonize” the passions as faculties of the soul, andprompted a sophisticated critique from the likes of Galen.5 In time itwould provide an incentive for early and medieval Christian writers to

BLOWERS/MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR 59

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 130–31. More recently, broaching again thevariations among early Stoic thinkers on the nature of the passions, Martha Nussbaum(“The Stoics on the Extirpation of the Passions,” esp. 372 [and n. 31], 373–86) arguesthat Zeno saw a passion more as the fluttering felt from a belief, not the belief itself;Chrysippus opted instead to equate the belief and the accompanying pathos. He seatsthese beliefs/passions squarely within the dynamic reasoning faculty because only rea-son can fully evaluate, say, the upheaval of grief over a lost loved one; only reason canadequately represent the core of one’s personal being in spurning merely external goodsand processing judgments of ultimate moral value. As Brad Inwood explains (Ethicsand Human Action in Early Stoicism, 129–32), the thrust of the arguments of Zenoand Chrysippus for passions as “a kind of rational impulse” (rather than as expres-sions of different parts or faculties of the soul) is obviously aimed at enhancing per-sonal moral responsibility and accountability. It appears clear that ethics, not physics,was the primary matrix of early Stoic teaching on the passions.

4. Cf. Diogenes Laertius 7.115 (Hellenistic Philosophers 2.407D), who designatesthree primary eÃupŒajeiai: reasonable “joy” (qarŒa) as opposed to “pleasure” ( ÄhdonŒh);“cautiousness” (eÃulŒabeia) as opposed to “fear” (fŒobov); and rational “wish” (boŒulh-siv) as opposed to “desire” (ÃepijumŒia); Cicero Tusc. disp. 4.12 (SVF 3.438), whospeaks of the tres constantiae (5eÃupŒajeiai); and among Christian writers, cf. Lactan-tius, div. instit. 6.15 (CSEL 19.536–39); Augustine, civ. Dei 14.8.1 (CCSL 48.423). Inciv. Dei 9.5 (CCSL 47.254–55), Augustine credits Cicero and Epictetus among the Sto-ics with allowing a relative value for affections even like compassion in a sage who isalready free from the vices. On the eÃupŒajeiai see also Nussbaum, “The Stoics on theExtirpation of the Passions,” 398–401; Inwood, Ethics and Human Action in EarlyStoicism, 173–175; Rist, Stoic Philosophy, 25–26, 31–35.

5. Posidonius, 34 (ap. Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 4.3.2–5, Hellenistic Philoso-phers 2.410K). Posidonius claimed the authority of the early Stoic writer Cleanthes inthis view (Frgs. 33, 166, ap. Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 5.6.34–37, HellenisticPhilosophers, 2:413 I). On Galen’s own developed criticism of the Stoics, his psycho-physiological theory of the passions, and his prescriptions for a therapeutic rechan-neling of the passions, see James Hankinson, “Actions and Passions: Affection, Emo-tion, and Moral Self-Management in Galen’s Philosophical Psychology,” in Passionsand Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, Proceedings of the FifthSymposium Hellenisticum, ed. Jacques Brunschwig and Martha Nussbaum (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 184–222.

make their own refinements both on the morality and the physiology ofthe passions.

In patristic literature, evocative discussions of the human passions as aproblem of philosophical psychology come not only in technical treatisesof theological anthropology6 but in the ascetic and monastic tradition,where doctrine and experience constantly converge.7 To be sure, earlymonastic writers generally begin with the properly moral or existentialdilemma of the passions, not their physiology. Evagrius sums it up thisway: the ascetic life is “the spiritual method for cleansing the passible partof the soul,”8 the war against the wicked and idle thoughts (logismoŒi)that induce passions and the perfection of ÃapŒajeia in the interest of undis-tracted prayer and contemplation of God. Even for Evagrius, however,human sensibility and passibility belong within an economy of “provi-dence and judgment,” the rehabilitative scheme of embodiment and in-volvement in passible existence which is at the heart of the Origenist his-tory of souls. Evagrius certainly sees bodily affections at the root ofhuman sin, but, recognizing the passible nature as provisionally given byGod to fallen souls, acknowledges its relative dignity and utility, howev-er remote. ÎpŒajeia for Evagrius begins with the reorientation and stabi-lization of the affections, not their obliteration, since experience showsthat the passions can in some cases serve the spiritual life—though Eva-grius does not substantially elaborate on this prospect.9

In the writings of the Cappadocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa, the“economic” perspective on human passibility is more conspicuous, asthey searched to give their own answer to the persisting Origenist queryof how rational beings (logikoŒi), created and sustained by God throughhis perfect and eternal Logos, could ever lapse. As Brooks Otis has shown,since the Cappadocians overall resisted, on the one hand, the Origenist


6. E.g., Gregory of Nyssa’s anim. et res. and hom. opif.; Nemesius of Emesa’s nat.hom.

7. Cf. Anton Vögtle, “Affekt” (B. christlich), RAC 1:166–70; Gustave Bardy, “Ap-atheia,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité 1:727–46; Tomas Spidlík, The Spirituality of theChristian East: A Systematic Handbook (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1986),267–81.

8. cap. pract. 78 (SC 171.666). (Patristic sources in this essay will be cited by vol-ume number in series; page[s]; and where necessary, lines or sections).

9. Some examples: the utility of anger in fighting demons (cap. pract. 24, SC171.556; ibid. 42, SC 171.596), in fighting for virtue (ibid. 86, SC 171.676), and inengendering courage and patience (ibid. 89, SC 171.682); the utility of concupiscencein longing for virtue (ibid. 86, SC 171.676) and in producing temperance, charity, andcontinence (ibid. 89, SC 171.680–682); the healthy fear of God (ibid. prologue, SC171.492).

postulate that sin arose from an intellectual negligence of preexistent soulsdue to spiritual satiety (kŒorov),10 and, on the other hand, an Augustin-ian-type theory of conscious moral sin (Adam’s choice of evil qua evil),11

they were forced back again to the seduction of the Devil and the passi-bility of the body as roots of sin and fallenness.12 Deviant passions (pŒa-jh), the symptoms or diseases of sin that have become virtually secondnature to fallen humanity, were a necessary disciplinary consequence ofAdam’s lapse—yet somehow they were already a cause of the Fall. If so,then, Adam could not be held unqualifiedly responsible for sin becausehis passible constitution was not his own doing; but neither of coursecould the Creator be culpable.13 The Cappadocians were hardly unawareof the difficulty. Gregory of Nyssa famously tries to obviate it by propos-ing that God created the protoplasts with animal drives and sexuality onlyin prevision of the Fall.14 He also carefully distinguishes between the in-nate affective powers of ÃepijumŒia and jumŒov, which are appetites ( ÄorŒex-eiv) or drives ( ÄormaŒi) under the hegemony of reason, and the irrationalpassions (pleasure, grief, fear, lust, rage, greed, etc.) that are a legacy ofhuman fallenness.15 Yet such assertions, strictly speaking, still fail to ac-count for the inherent infirmity of those faculties that induced Adam toclose his eyes to the Good (recalling Nyssa’s analogy in his De virgini-tate).16 Presumably Adam would not have turned away from the Goodhad there not been an ulterior object of desire present to the soul and thusantecedently “in” the soul’s receptivity. The problem of the latent ge-netic instability of created passible faculties appears to be left hanging.


10. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, v. Mos., Bk. 2 (GNO 7, pt.1.114,17–19; 116,17–19;117,20–24); idem, hom. 12 in Cant. (GNO 6.366,11–367,1); Basil suggests kŒorov asone possible cause of Adam’s fall (Quod deus non est auctor malorum 6, PG31.344Cff), but it does not become definitive in his interpretation.

11. See Gregory of Nyssa, hom. opif. 20 (PG 44.200C): “for humanity would not have been deceived by patent evil” (oÃu gar Õan ÃhpatŒhjh Äo Õanjrwpov t Ów prodŒhlÓwkakÓw).

12. Brooks Otis, “Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System,” DOP 12 (1958):109–110.

13. anim. et res. (PG 46.61A).14. hom. opif. 17 (PG 44.189B–192A); ibid. 22 (204D–205B). On the wider rami-

fications of Gregory’s resolution of this anthropological paradox, see Hans Urs vonBalthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory ofNyssa, trans. Mark Sebanc (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 71–87.

15. Cf. virg. 12 (GNO 8, pt. 1.297,24–300,2; 301,15–302,4); v. Mos., Bk. 2 (GNO7, pt. 1.62,9–63,9); mort. (GNO 9, pt. 1.55,11–23); anim. et res. (PG 46.53C–68A).See also Verna Harrison, Grace and Human Freedom according to St. Gregory of Nys-sa (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 145–49, 158ff.

16. virg. 12 (GNO 8, pt. 1.298,21–299,12).

Brooks Otis sees here a logical flaw in the “coherent system” of Cap-padocian theology and anthropology. More recently, however, RowanWilliams and Michel Barnes have in separate studies cogently argued thatwith Gregory of Nyssa, the attempted philosophical solution to the prob-lem of human passibility is more dialectical and sophisticated than wasonce thought. Countering claims that Nyssa’s discussion of the soul andpassions in De anima et resurrectione is muddled insofar as Gregory hasMacrina denying both that the passions are extrinsic powers independentof the soul and that they are properly native to the soul, Williams showshow in this treatise Gregory is carefully unfolding a basic distinction be-tween the soul’s oÃusŒia, as an intelligent and impassible animating power,and its fŒusiv, as empirically linked in its history with bodily (impulsive,passion-prone) existence.17 As a Christian thinker, Gregory is committedto a view of the soul both as a created unity and as a complex moral agentgenuinely affected by diverse internal and external circumstances, and asrecapitulating in its moral life the struggle for the good which is takingplace simultaneously at the lower and higher levels of creaturely nature.In this case, “the conflict of mind and passion arises only when we are for-getful of their continuity—passion (in the wider sense) sustaining a bodywhich is charged with making sense of itself, coming to ‘mean’ something,to bear the task of an intelligible communication in the world of whatGod’s life is like; and reason being incapable of so moulding the bodilylife into meaning without harmony with those impulses which are its ownfoundation or inchoate forms.”18 Michel Barnes similarly concludes thatfor Gregory and Macrina, the passions are usable, if accidental, psycho-logical elements that do not ultimately compromise the soul’s essential in-tegrity. “Both the teaching in Genesis about making human beings in theimage of God and the reading of the sequence of creation as showing ahierarchy of ensouled being are meant to support the doctrine of humanmoral unity.”19


17. See Rowan Williams, “Macrina’s Deathbed Revisited: Gregory of Nyssa onMind and Passion,” in Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity: Es-says in Tribute to George Christopher Stead, ed. L. R. Wickham and C. P. Bammel(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 227–46. A focal point of this subtle distinction of oÃusŒia andfŒusiv is anim. et res. (PG 46.53C–56A).

18. Williams, “Macrina’s Deathbed Revisited,” 240.19. Michel Barnes, “The Polemical Context and Content of Gregory of Nyssa’s Psy-

chology,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 4 (1994): 8–11. Barnes also notes(11–20) the different tack of Gregory’s argument for the unity of the human mind andmultiplicity of its faculties (including the passible ones) in the De hominis opificio. HereGregory appeals to the properly theological analogy, developed in far more detail inhis Contra Eunomium, of the congruity between the one, perfectly impassible mind of

Over and beyond a philosophical solution, however, Gregory is confi-dent that genuine insight into the passible nature can and must come alsothrough the legacy of human, spiritual experience (peéra) itself, especial-ly as mediated by experienced teachers worthy of imitation.20 Compellingdescriptions of the Fall and of the passions appear in his ascetic works,not just in his more speculative anthropological treatises, the De anima etresurrectione and De hominis opificio. In the opening of the De institutochristiano, a work ostensibly deeply influenced by the spiritual existen-tialism of Pseudo-Macarius,21 Gregory invites his reader critically to observe within the soul an innate “impulse of desire (thv ÃepijumŒiavÄormŒh) toward Beauty and Excellence” as well as an “impassible andblessed love” (Ãapajhv kai makŒariov Õårwv) of that divine image of whichhuman beings are an imitation.22 But coexistent with these endowments,he adds, is

a certain illusion (planŒh) about things visible and in flux, caused by irra-tional passion and bitter pleasure (dia pŒajouv ÃalŒogou kai pikrav Ähdonhv),an error which is always deceiving and bewitching the soul that is carelessand unguarded because of laziness ( Äupo ÄrÓajumŒiav), and dragging it towardthe terrible evil that derives from this life of pleasures and begets death forthose who pine for it.23

Gregory is identifying here the ascetic struggle at the very root of hu-man passibility (pŒajov), that is, the primal human “experience.” In hisown words he is describing “that which the first man experienced (pŒeponje) but which now all of us experience who sin in imitation of hisdisobedience through self-interested free choice (aÃujairŒetùÓ proairŒe-sei).”24 The integrity of human freedom and the realization of the divineimage have always depended, not merely on decisions informed by knowl-


God and his multiple operations and acts (creating and generating without passion; soalso having anger, desire, suffering, etc., which are not “passions” strictly speaking, es-pecially as evidenced in the Incarnation of the Son).

20. See virg. 23 (GNO 8, pt. 1.333,15–343,19; and esp. 334,23–335,21); v. Mos.,Bk. 2 (GNO 7, pt.1.35,22ff).

21. See Reinhart Staats, Gregor von Nyssa und die Messalianer (Berlin: Walter deGruyter, 1968), who demonstrates, definitively it seems, that Gregory’s De institutochristiano draws upon the Great Letter and Spiritual Homilies of Ps-Macarius, not viceversa.

22. instit. (GNO 8, pt. 1.40,1–10).23. Ibid. (40,11–41,2). Translations throughout are my own unless otherwise not-

ed.24. Ibid. (44,1–2): Âo pŒalai men pŒeponjen Äo prwtov plasjeŒiv, nun de pŒantev oÄi thn

toŒutou parakoŒhn aÃujairŒetÓw proairŒesei mimoŒumenoi.

edge of God, but on the right orientation of the innate human affections,the drives at the very core of our being. The dynamic of human “motion,”the drama of human, historical existence itself, is precisely the creativetension between conscious choice (proaŒiresiv) and innate appetite. Willand desire, decision and urge, must always be actively coordinated to thesame tŒelov for true virtue to be realized. As Nyssa explains in De vir-ginitate, when free will cuts off the soul’s desire for God it diverts that nat-ural drive toward a new object which really is no object at all (as evil is ametaphysical non-entity). Humanity “invents” evil in the sense of intro-ducing a false experience (peéra), an anomalous pŒajov in place of thehealthy one.25 Thus proaŒiresiv, according to Gregory, is the “the demi-urge of the passions”26 and so also the vehicle of their redemption andredirection.

The goal set before sinful man is the purification from the passions, howevernot the elimination of the drives. . . . proaŒiresiv either orients the drives totheir nature-given goal and limits them to it, or proaŒiresiv leaves the drivesto themselves against their nature-given destiny so that an apparent good ofperversion becomes their goal instead of the true good. The drives are in theirnature destined to a goal but as drives cannot discriminate between true andfalse good. proaŒiresiv possesses the power to make the distinction; howev-er, proaŒiresiv may be enslaved by habit so that it is no longer able to see theinborn goal and orientation; for man forms himself according to his decisionand forms himself against his essential nature if he gives in to the drives; theresult is, then, that the peculiarity of man as image of God has no longer anyform (eÃidov) in him and he loses all orientation in perversion.27

The postlapsarian passions have taken on an aberrant eÃik Œwn, yet it isalways within the reach of free will to transmute each of them into “aform of virtue”: anger into courage, cowardice into caution, fear into obe-dience, hatred into aversion to vice, the faculty of love ( Äh Ãagaphtikh dŒu-namiv) into a desire (ÃepijumŒia) for genuine beauty, haughtiness into a forceto raise the mind above deviant passion—all in conformity to the true di-vine image.28 Of paramount importance to Gregory is the full integration


25. See virg. 12 (GNO 8, pt. 1.298,21–299,12).26. mort. (GNO 9, pt. 1.58,7–8): oÃu to swma twn pajhmŒatwn aÕition Ãall’ Äh

proaŒiresiv Äh dhmiourgousa ta pŒajh. See also Harrison, Grace and Human Freedomaccording to St. Gregory of Nyssa, 144, 164.

27. Ekkehard Mühlenberg, “Synergism in Gregory of Nyssa,” ZNW 68 (1977):107–8; cf. Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1982), 120–22.

28. hom. opif. 18 (PG 44.192C–193C). Jérome Gaïth, in his La concéption de laliberté chez Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Vrin, 1953), 61–62, remarks that for Gregory,then, the goal of ÃapŒajeia is precisely “une sublimation du pathos sensible par pathos

and use of the deep-seated human affections, aggressions, and aversionsin that perpetual spiritual striving (ÃepŒektasiv) wherein the whole of hu-man nature is constantly being stretched to new perfections. One can ar-gue, as does Brooks Otis, that this eternal spiritual progress reallyamounts to a perpetual overcoming of the underlying, unresolved weak-ness and mutability of the passible nature (the problem at the heart of anyChristian-Platonic theory of the Fall and of sin).29 Gregory, however, glo-ries in the dynamism of human “nature” so defined. Through eternalchoosing of the Good, mutability (tropŒh) becomes the wellspring of theever new creature in Christ.30 The grace of the infinite Creator acts in per-petual cooperation (sunŒergeia) with human choice, thus assisting the in-born powers and drives of finite human beings in avoiding deceptive, ego-istic goods and in attaining transformation and perfection in God, theirtrue tŒelov.31

Gregory of Nyssa’s achievement was to subsume the human passionsunder his doctrine of free will, to position them squarely within the realmof graced human intentionality. Well beyond the fourth century, the attempts to articulate a religious anthropology in response to systema-tic Origenism assured that questions of the causality, morality, and“tractability” of the passions would be integral in Byzantine ascetic the-ology. In the early seventh century, Maximus the Confessor, the period’smost prolific monastic teacher and a careful reader of Evagrius and theCappadocians, received a letter from his spiritual confidant, the Libyanhegumen Thalassius, petitioning him to compose, in addition to a com-mentary on troublesome passages of Scripture, a full Christian treatise onthe passions. An erudite spiritual writer himself, Thalassius included somethirty-three highly nuanced questions representing a full constellation ofissues relating to human passibility. The list of themes can be condensedas follows: What is the origin, means, and end of the passions, and from


spirituel. L’opposition se trouve réduite non par le sacrifice du pathos corporel, maispar son intégration dans le dynamisme (Õårwv) de l’esprit comme une force en-richissante et complémentaire. Cette sublimation qui signifie à la fois liberté et libéra-tion, Dieu la réalise, à l’origine, dans l’Image, en créant le corps léger, transparent etspirituel.” In this connection, see also Robin Darling Young, “Gregory of Nyssa’s Useof Theology and Science in Constructing Theological Anthropology,” Pro Ecclesia 2(1993): 352–55. Young effectively depicts Gregory, in his analysis of bodily life andpassion, as a discreet navigator of the “experience of contradiction” in human life.

29. Otis, “Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System,” 108–9, 113–14, 116ff.30. See v. Mos., Bk. 2 (GNO 7, pt. 1.34,6–14), where Gregory uses the dramatic im-

age of free choice “birthing” the new creature from mutable human nature.31. See Mühlenberg, “Synergism in Gregory of Nyssa,” 99–104, 106–12; Harrison,

Grace and Human Freedom according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, 215–49.

which faculties of the soul or the body do they arise? How precisely dothey assail the soul and body? What is the role of the demons in unleash-ing the passions? Do they operate by orderly sequence or merely chaoti-cally? What is the providential purpose of the experience of the passions?What sorts of thoughts, words, and actions lead to their abolition (sim-ply put, what is the means to ÃapŒajeia)? And once the passions are ban-ished, how does the soul go about reorienting the passible faculties for thegood?32 “How does the soul nobly reverse itself, using (qrwmŒenh) thosethings by which it formerly faltered for the purpose of propagating andrealizing virtues?”33

Maximus unfortunately declined in the Quaestiones ad Thalassium toinclude a full treatise on the passions, and we are left to reconstruct histheory from substantive insights in this text and elsewhere in his works.Overall he deals with the passions from three interconnected perspec-tives—I shall call them ontological (or physiological), existential (moral-ascetic), and teleological—though not all three are always immediately inview in his individual expositions. For him, as for Gregory of Nyssa, it isplainly insufficient to ask where the passions originate, or what their phys-ical or metaphysical status is, without considering at once their presentmodality and moral use (qrhsiv) as well as their eschatological goal co-incidental with the natural motion or appetitive drive of the soul towardGod.

This is clear already in Maximus’ treatment of Adam’s passions, forAdam is not just the first human being, the father of the race, he is, likeother great biblical figures, a prototype of the monk in his or her asceticstruggles, and his humanity is an antitype of the new eschatological hu-manity of the Second Adam. Maximus’ prelapsarian Adam is a somewhatelusive figure, more a potency than an actuality.34 He bears a certain re-semblance both to Irenaeus’ Adam, the innocent primed to bring his crea-turely abilities to fruition, and to Gregory of Nyssa’s Adam, the sublimeadult living a life akin to the angels.35 We learn from Maximus that be-fore the Fall Adam enjoyed ÃapŒajeia,36 but it is rather a perfect state ofpassibility than a sheer impassibility, for Adam had a definite intellectual


32. For the complete list of questions, see Quaestiones ad Thalassium, Intro. (CCSG7.23,108–29,208).

33. Ibid. (27,165–167); emphasis added in translation.34. See John Boojamra, “Original Sin according to Maximus the Confessor,” St.

Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 20 (1976): 19–30.35. Cf. Irenaeus, Epideixis 12; haer. 4.38.1–4; Gregory of Nyssa, hom. opif. 17.36. Maximus, qu. Thal. 42 (CCSG 7.285,7–9). Cf. Lactantius, div. instit. 6.15

(CSEL 19.537–38); Augustine, civ. Dei 14.10 (CCSL 48.430–31).

desire (Õefesiv) for God and capacity for spiritual pleasure ( ÄhdonŒh) thathe chose in the Fall to squander on sensual fantasies.37 As Adam was afull human being at this point, the whole soul and body coexistent, wecan assume that the lower passible faculties, the concupiscible and irasci-ble elements of the soul, also participated in this original ÃapŒajeia. YetMaximus says little of Adam in this prelapsarian state—less even thanGregory of Nyssa, who, rather hypothetically, places Adam and Eve before the Fall in an intermediate, quasi-angelic existence with bodilyqualities ostensibly like those in the resurrection.38 Both Maximus andGregory are clearly anxious to correct the Origenist myth of a prehistoricFall and a second, corporeal creation, but Maximus asserts that Adam fell“at the instant of his creation” (Âama t Ów ginŒesjai)39: the appearance of de-viant passions (pŒajh), the dysfunctional movements of the passible facul-ties, was virtually immediate or coextensive (though not coessential) withthe creation. Maximus does not explain how such a deviation of created,naturally implanted passible faculties could occur in the first place, otherthan mentioning occasionally the genetic mutability—not a flaw but a“susceptibility”—that distinguishes composite, creaturely nature fromthe Uncreated.40 Material creation always holds within it a latent dimen-sion of chaos or disorderliness (to Õatakton): the instability of passion be-gins here,41 precisely where its moral potentiality also begins.

Elsewhere Maximus comes close to reproducing Gregory of Nyssa’stheory of the “garments of skins” (Gen 3.21), whereby the irrational pas-sions were superadded to human nature in consequence of the Fall.42 Ei-ther God mingled the soul with the passible body and subjected it to bod-ily change at the time of the Fall, on account of the transgression, or,


37. Ibid. 61 (CCSG 22.85,8–21). Maximus’s insistence on Adam’s prelapsarian ca-pacity for spiritual pleasure is analyzed in detail by Gregory Telepneff and BishopChrysostomos, “The Person, Pathe, Asceticism, and Spiritual Restoration in SaintMaximos,” GOTR 34 (1989): 253–57.

38. Gregory of Nyssa, hom. opif. 17 (PG 44.188B–189A). See also Gerhart Ladner,“The Philosophical Anthropology of St. Gregory of Nyssa,” DOP 12 (1958): 88–91;Monique Alexandre, “Protologie et eschatologie chez Grégoire de Nysse,” in Arché eTelos: L’anthropologia di Origene e di Gregorio di Nissa analisi storico-religiosa (Mi-lan: Vita e pensiero, 1981), 122–59.

39. Ibid. 61 (CCSG 22.85,13).40. Cf. carit. 4.9 (PG 90.1049B); ambig. 15 (PG 91.1220C); ep. 12 (PG 91.488D).

See also Pseudo-Dionysius, div. nom. 4.24 (PG 3.728A).41. ambig. 8 (PG 91.1101D, 1104A–C, 1105B).42. On the extensive significance of the “garments of skins” in Greek patristic in-

terpretation, see Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on theNature of the Human Person (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987),43–91.

having foreseen the Fall, fashioned the soul this way from the very be-ginning so that it could eventually become aware of its full dignity vis-à-vis the body.43 In Ad Thalassium 1—where Thalassius has posed to himthe question, “Are the passions (pleasure, grief, desire, fear, and the rest)evil in themselves or only with use (para thn qrhsin)?”—Maximus re-sponds by deferring to Gregory in the De virginitate:

These passions, like the rest, were not originally concreated with human na-ture, for if they had been they would contribute to the definition of that na-ture. But following what the great Gregory of Nyssa taught, I say that, on ac-count of humanity’s fall from perfection, the passions were introduced,attaching to the more irrational part of human nature. . . . [Nonetheless] thepassions become good in those who are earnest, once they have wisely sev-ered them from corporeal objects, and used them to gain possession of heav-enly things.44

As with Gregory, there is a potential confusion here over how passioncan be both a cause and a consequence of the Fall. Maximus, however, ishardly equivocating. Implicit here, explicit in other texts, is the assumedNyssene distinction between pŒajov as the natural, affective motion of thesoul under divine influence,45 and the variant pŒajh which, as deviant mo-


43. ambig. 8 (PG 91.1104A–B). See also Polycarp Sherwood, “Maximus and Ori-genism: ARQH KAI TELOS,” Berichte zum XI. internationalen Byzantinisten-Kongreß III,1 (Munich, 1958), 16–21. Sherwood argues that in this text in ambig. 8,Maximus is not opting explicitly for either theory, the first being Gregory of Nyssa’soption, the second basically Maximus’ own formulation (although I would interjectthat the second hypothesis may be a retort to Gregory’s thesis in hom. opif. 17, thatGod formed the animal and sexual nature in prevision of the Fall in order to assure thepropagation of the race once it had lost its “angelic” dignity). At any rate, each hy-pothesis mentioned by Maximus has some legitimacy, Sherwood argues, for sensibili-ty and passion are both a punishment for sin and a providential means by which hu-man beings are to learn their created dignity.

44. qu. Thal. 1 (CCSG 7.47,5–10, 18–20); cf. Gregory of Nyssa, virg. 12 (GNO 8,pt. 1.297,24–300,2); ibid. 18 (GNO 8, pt. 1.317,10–319,25); anim. et res. (PG46.49B–68A). Cf. Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological An-thropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2d ed. (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 157–53. Thunberg points out that despite Maximus’ affirmation of Gregory’s postu-lation here of a superadded irrational passibility, he declines to see it explicitly in termsof a physiological change: “there is no reference at all to man’s bodily character, noris the word creation used in relation to the introduction of the passions into the life ofman.” Maximus plainly wants to avoid any possible implication of a kind of “doublecreation” in the Origenist sense.

45. ambig. 7 (PG 91.1072B): “This motion [consequent upon a creature’s genesisor being] they call a natural faculty, driving toward its proper end, or else passion (pŒa-jov), that is motion passing from one thing to another with the impassible (to ÃapajŒev)as the goal (tŒelov), or else effective operation (ÃenŒergeia drastikŒh) with the self-perfect (to aÃutotelŒev) as end.”

tions or judgments (krŒiseiv), are functionally tantamount to vice(kakŒia)46 but still within range of redeemability. Before the Fall, in prin-ciple at least, the passible element enjoyed pure motion; after the Fall thepassible element is providentially stunted, subjected to new movementswhich, morally speaking, can go either way, incurring hardship or help-ing us to virtue; but their deviance can become seemingly “second na-ture.”47 By making Adam’s paradisiac impassibility more a theory or apotency than an actuality, and by making the Fall almost instantaneouswith Adam’s creation, Maximus indicates that humanity, historicallyspeaking, has known both dimensions of passibility virtually from the be-ginning: the ambiguity of historical human life is precisely the persistenceof unnatural passion under the guise of natural passion.48 There is, he be-lieves, a “generic sin” (genikh ÄamartŒia) that has become native to humanpassibility itself, and yet it is the weakened “gnomic” will (gnŒwmh) whichallows the forces of evil to continue this subjugation of natural to unnat-ural passion.49 Such is precisely the situation which the incarnate Christcame to rectify, “healing the passibility associated with pleasure” (to kajŠÄhdonhn pajhton ÃiasŒamenov), and doing so by conscientious choice (kataproaŒiresin) rather than by mere gnŒwmh.50 By voluntarily submitting tohuman birth, save through the virgin’s womb, Christ at once subjectedhimself to human passibility and overcame the deviant passions associat-ed with sexual procreation.51 The spiritual life, as rebirth in Christ, is

46. See Sherwood, “Maximus and Origenism,” 10–11.47. Very rarely does Maximus speak of human “nature” in the sense of “fallenness,”

and when he does use the term this way (e.g., ambig. 10, PG 91.1140A), it is rather abehavioral than an ontological meaning: “second nature,” or engrained habit wouldbe a fair rendering here. See also Polycarp Sherwood, The Earlier Ambigua of St. Max-imus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism (Rome: Herder, 1955), 152 andn. 54.

48. qu. Thal. 21 (CCSG 7.127,5–32). The classic case in point here is for Maximusthe subjugation of natural human origination (gŒenesiv) under the law of sexual gen-eration (gŒennhsiv).

49. Ibid. (CCSG 7.127,19–129,35).50. Cf. qu. Thal. 21 (CCSG 7.129,36–133,107); ibid. 42 (285,7–289,90). Maximus

writes: “Therefore our Lord and God, correcting this interchangeable corruption andalteration of human nature, by assuming the whole of human nature, even himself hadin that assumed nature the passible element which he adorned with incorruption invirtue of his free choice (kata proaŒiresin). Because of the passibility he assumed, heby nature became ‘sin’ (2 Cor 5.21) for our sake, yet while not knowing any inten-tional moral sin (gnwmikhn ÄamartŒian) because of the incorruptibility of his free choice.Because his free choice was incorruptible he rectified the passibility of human nature,turning the end of the passiblility of human nature—death, I mean—into the begin-ning of the natural transformation into incorruption” (ibid. 42, CCSG 7.285,18–28).

51. ambig. 41 (PG 91.1309A); ibid. 42 (1316C–1317B); cf. ep. 44 (PG 91.644B).


meanwhile a struggle to bring the passions to their proper goal. The pri-mal epithymetic and thymetic drives, “natural and innocent passions”that are a necessary human condition ( Ãanagkaéon parakoloŒujhma) forwhich we are not intrinsically responsible ( oÃuk ÃefÃ Ähmén), must becomemore than survival instincts; lest they fall subject to those unnatural pas-sions for which we are morally responsible (ÃefÃ Ähmén), they must bepressed into the service of Christian virtue, even if in a relative capacity.52

Adam’s experience is truly our experience. The distance between us isthoroughly collapsed. In the introduction to the Quaestiones ad Thalas-sium, Maximus discourses at length on the Fall of the first human beingas the paradigmatic narrative of the monk’s own struggle with the pas-sions. With certain earlier writers like Nemesius of Emesa, Maximus isdetermined to hold together the rootedness of the passions at once in sub-sidiary faculties of the soul and in the mind’s irrational (immoral) judg-ments. Vice (or passion in the negative mode) is by definition “an irra-tional movement of natural faculties toward an end other than theirnatural one, based on a fallacious judgment (krŒisiv).”53 Elsewhere Max-imus describes it physiologically as a state or contingent condition (perŒi-stasiv) of the natural faculty,54 paralleling the moral terminology of habit


52. qu. Thal. 55 (CCSG 7.487,123–489,142). See also the important analyses ofChristoph Schönborn, “Plaisir et douleur dans l’analyse de S. Maxime, d’après lesQuaestiones ad Thalassium,” in Maximus Confessor: Actes du Symposium surMaxime le Confesseur, Fribourg, 2–5 septembre 1980, ed. F. Heinzer and C. Schön-born (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires, 1982), 273–84; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kos-mische Liturgie: Das Weltbild Maximus’ des Bekenners, 2nd ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes-Verlag, 1961), 191–94 (“Dialektik der Leidenshaft”); Claire-Agnès Zirnheld, “Ledouble visage de la passion: malédiction due au péché et/ou dynamisme de la vie:Quaestiones ad Thalassium de S. Maxime le Confesseur XXI, XXII et XLII,” in Philo-histôr: miscellanea in honorem Caroli Laga septuagenarii (Leuven: Peeters Press,1994), 361–80; and Telepneff and Chrysostomos, “The Person, Pathe, Asceticism, andSpiritual Restoration in Saint Maximos,” 256–61. On Maximus’ theory of the pas-sions from a Jungian-psychotherapeutic perspective, see Vasiliki Eckley, “Psyche andBody—Person and World,” Religious Education 85 (1990): 356–67.

53. qu. Thal. Intro. (CCSG 7.29,220–31,222). Cf. carit. 1.35 (PG 90.968A); ibid.2.16–17 (988D–989B); ibid. 3.42 (1029A–B). Cf. Nemesius of Emesa, nat. hom. 16(PG 40.673B–676B), who carefully defines passion as “a movement of the faculty ofappetite upon perceiving an image of something good or bad,” or as “an irrationalmovement of the soul due to apprehending something good or bad.” In Nemesius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus alike there is a clear tendency to describe passion interms of the mind and the lower powers of the soul colluding in one synchronous“event.” Mental misjudgment of the good and the registration of that misjudgment inthe concupiscible and irascible faculties constitute a simultaneous moment. Moral re-sponsibility for vice thus extends at once to the whole complex of the soul and is nev-er exclusively attached to the nouv, despite its central role.

54. qu. Thal. 21 (CCSG 7.127,28).

(Âexiv) or disposition (diŒajesiv). The originating vice of passion is a de-viant self-love55 thrusting humanity into a dialectical “bouncing” be-tween sensible pleasure and pain; and there is a resultant diffusion of pas-sions which Maximus, under Evagrius’s influence, often describes througha hierarchy of relations.56 But whatever their configuration in experience,these deviant passions, or vices, are metaphysical non-entities and existonly relative to human free choice. The passions, says Maximus in an ex-egesis of II Chronicles 32.23, are the “gentiles” of the soul who enjoy onlya “contingent existence” (parupŒostasiv).57 Describing rather technical-ly the passion of “toil,” for example, he explains:

Toil is clearly a deficiency (Õålleiyiv) or retreat of natural habit (Âexiv), and adeficiency of natural habit is a passion (pŒajov) of the natural faculty (dŒunamiv)subject to that habit. A passion of the natural faculty subject to the habit con-sists in the abusive functioning of its natural operation (ÃenŒergeia), and theabuse (parŒaqrhsiv) of that mode of operation consists in the movement ofthe faculty toward that which arises unnaturally and does not truly exist.58

The consistently most helpful distinction in Maximus’ understandingof the passions seems, then, to be that between the passible faculties andtheir proper use (qrhsiv) as leading to a perfect habit and disposition. InAd Thalassium 1, he heartily reaffirms with Gregory of Nyssa that nega-tive passions can still be reoriented by positive use: concupiscence ( Ãepi-jumŒia) can be turned into “the appetitive movement of the intellectual de-sire for divine things,” pleasure ( ÄhdonŒh) into the mind’s gladness at beinglured to divine gifts; fear (fŒobov) into cautious concern for retributivepunishments (or, when conditioned by love, even into that fearful rever-ence for God of which the Bible speaks);59 grief (lupŒh) into a “corrective


55. E.g., see carit.. 2.8 (PG 90.985C); ibid. 2.59–60 (1004B–C); ibid. 3.8 (1020A);ibid. 3.56–57 (1033B–C). See also Irénée Hausherr’s detailed analysis of deviant self-love in Philautie: de la tendresse pour soi à la charité selon Maxime le Confesseur(Rome: Pont. Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1952), 43–83; Thunberg, Microcosmand Mediator, 232–48.

56. See Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 248–84; also Hausherr, Philautie,70–83.

57. qu. Thal. 51 (CCSG 7.405,186); cf. ibid. 58 (CCSG 22.33,95–96), where deviant sensible pleasure ( ÄhdonŒh) is described as ontologically “non-existent”(ÃanupŒostatov).

58. Ibid. 58 (CCSG 22.27,17–24).59. See ibid. 10 (CCSG 7.85,44–87,68). The links between Maximus and the earli-

er Christian ascetic tradition are especially evident in his teaching on godly fear. SeePaul Blowers, Exegesis and Spiritual Pedagogy in Maximus the Confessor: An Inves-tigation of the Quaestiones ad Thalassium (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of NotreDame Press, 1991), 58–59, 220.

repentance.”60 In Ambiguum 6 Maximus speaks of reason inducing thetransformation of ÃepijumŒia into charity (ÃagŒaph) and irascibility (jumŒov)into joy (qarŒa),61 whereas in Ad Thalassium 55 he projects that ÃepijumŒiacan be transmuted into divine Õårwv, and ire into “spiritual fervency (zŒe-siv pneumatikŒh), red-hot eternal movement (diŒapurov ÃaeikinhsŒia), andtemperate madness (sŒwfrwn manŒia).”62 Maximus thus commits himselfto a principle of good (or evil) “use” of things (prŒagmata) that are in-trinsically morally neutral, or more specifically the use of the thoughts(noŒhmata) of those things.63 Herein he modifies a Stoic notion that is al-ready fundamental to Cappadocian anthropology, not only with Grego-ry of Nyssa64 but also with Basil who, in his homily Against Anger, as-serts that desire, irascibility, and other passible faculties “each becomes agood or an evil for its possessor according to the use made of it.”65 Long


60. Ibid. 1 (CCSG 7.47,25–26)61. ambig. 6 (PG 91.1068A).62. qu. Thal. 55 (CCSG 7.499,311–15); cf. ep. 2 (PG 91.397B); and carit. 2.48 (PG

90.1000C–D): “For the mind of the one who is continually with God even his concu-piscence abounds beyond measure into a divine desire and whose irascible element istransformed into divine love (Õårwv). For by an enduring participation in the divine il-lumination it has become altogether shining bright, and having bound its passible ele-ment to itself it, as I said, turned around to a never-ending divine desire and an un-ceasing love, completely changing over from earthly things to divine” (trans. GeorgeBerthold, Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings, CWS [Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press,1985], 53–54). Especially striking in these texts is the possibility for irascibility, notconcupiscence alone, to be transmuted into eros or at least into the fervency that sus-tains this passionate love of the divine. Cf. orat. dom. (PG 90.896C), where Maximusspeaks of jumŒov, classically a defensive drive, holding on to God and stretching themind like a sinew in its burning desire for God.

63. Cf. carit. 2.73 (PG 90.1008A–B) on the “right use” (qrhsiv ÃesfalmŒenh) of thethoughts (noŒhmata) of things outside the mind; ibid. 2.75–76 (1008B–1009A); ibid.4.91 (1069C–D); also ambig. 7 (PG 91.1097C), where Maximus contrasts “right use”(eÃuqrhstŒia) and “ill use” (paraqrhstŒia) of natural human faculties. In his QRHSIS:Die Methode der Kirchenväter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur (Basel: Schwabe,1984), 96, Christian Gnilka notes Maximus’s modification of the Stoic principle ofqrhsiv: “Was für [der Stoiker] Epiktet der Gebrauch der Vorstellungen (qrhsivfaítasiwn) ist, für Maximus der Gebrauch der Gedanken (qrhsiv nohmŒatwn): daseine wie das andere steht in der Macht der Menschen, entscheidet über die sittlicheQualität einer Handlung und über den Wert der Dinge.” Nevertheless, “Die Chrêsis,die der Kirchenlehrer vor Augen hat, ist in einen ganz anderen Rahmen gespannt alsdie Epiktets.” For Maximus qrhsiv is directed, teleologically, at the realization of trueÃagŒaph (carit. 4.91, PG 90.1069C–D); indeed, the right use of things is already an ÕårgonÃagŒaphv (ibid. 1.40, 968C).

64. virg. 18 (GNO 8, pt. 1.317,10–319,25); anim. et res. (PG 46.61B, 65B–68A,88D–89A); mort. (GNO 9, pt. 1, 61,16–18).

65. Basil of Caesarea, Hom. adversus eos qui irascunter 6 (PG 31.365C–D); cf. alsoEvagrius, cap. pract. 88–89 (SC 171.2.680–688); keph. gnost. 1.84 (PO 28.1.56); 3.35

after Maximus too, Byzantine ascetic theologians would continue to re-work this principle; it is basic, for example, to Gregory Palamas’ nuancedconception of ÃapŒajeia.66 Similarly in the Latin tradition, Lactantius haddescribed passion as a kind of natural richness (urbertas naturalis) in soulsuseful for cultivating virtue, while Augustine vigorously defended the roleof godly emotions (fear, desire, joy, sorrow) as modeled in the Incarna-tion, and exercised with right reason (cum rectam rationem). True ÃapŒa-jeia for Augustine was not insensibility in this life, but related only to theliberation from disturbance that would characterize the celestial life.67

For Maximus the trichotomy of the soul’s faculties (reason, concupis-cence, irascibility) is, perhaps more than the soul-body dichotomy, theprincipal underlying matrix and framework of the soul’s disintegrationthrough the vices and reintegration through the virtues.68 The diversity


(PO 28.1.110). On this theme in monastic thought and tradition, see also Spidlík, TheSpirituality of the Christian East: A Systematic Handbook, 267–70. On its Stoic back-ground, see R.-A. Gauthier, “Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la psychologie de l’actehumain,” RTAM 21 (1954): 73–75, and Gnilka, QRHSIS: Die Methode der Kirchen-väter im Umgang mit der antiken Kultur, 29–43; for its broader patristic developmentprior to Maximus, see Gnilka, ibid., 44–95 (esp. 65–79 on the Cappadocians).

66. Triads 2.2.19 (Greek text ed. John Meyendorff, Défense des saints hésychastes,2nd ed., Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense: Études et documents, fasc. 30 [Leuven: Spi-cilegium sacrum Lovaniense, 1973], 361,5–363,8). Having defined ÃapŒajeia not assheer mortification of the passible part of the soul but its redirection from evil to thegood through virtuous habits (Âexeiv) and training of the irascible and concupisciblefaculties, Palamas writes: “For it is the misuse (parŒaqrhsiv) of the powers of the soulwhich engenders the terrible passions, just as misuse of the knowledge of created thingsengenders the ‘wisdom which has become folly’ (1 Cor 1:20). But if one uses (qr Ówto)these things properly, then through the knowledge of created things, spiritually un-derstood, one will arrive at knowledge of God; and through the passionate part of thesoul which has been oriented towards the end for which God created it, one will prac-tice the corresponding virtues: with the concupiscent appetite, one will embrace char-ity, and with the irascible, one will practise patience. It is thus not the man who haskilled the passionate part of his soul who has the preeminence, for such a one wouldhave no momentum or activity to acquire a divine state and right dispositions and re-lationship with God; but rather, the prize goes to him who has put that part of his soulunder subjection, so that by its obedience to the mind, which is by nature appointedto rule, it may ever tend toward God, as is right, by the uninterrupted remembranceof Him. Thanks to this remembrance, he will come to possess a divine disposition, andcause the soul to progress towards the highest state of all, the love of God” (trans.Nicholas Gendle, Gregory Palamas: The Triads, CWS [New York: Paulist Press, 1983],54–55, emphasis added).

67. See Lactantius, div. instit. 6.15 (CSEL 19.536–39); ibid. 6.16 (539–41); Augus-tine, civ. Dei 14.8.1–9.6 (CCSL 48.423–30).

68. Cf. carit. 1.64–67 (PG 90.973C–D); ibid. 3.3 (1017C). See also Thunberg’s thor-ough discussion in Microcosm and Mediator, 259–78. Maximus rarely treats individ-ual passions or vices apart from a broader psychological matrix or framework, be it

and society among the soul’s powers can lead to a spiritual battlegroundor, by proper use,69 a magnificent unity-in-diversity, the perfect interrela-tion ( Äh Ãallhlouqov sqŒesiv)70 reflecting the natural integrity of the soul.This is in his view one meaning of Peter’s vision in Acts 10 of the animalsdescending from heaven on a sheet: they variously represent the threeprincipal powers of the soul which are good in themselves, because cre-ated by God, but which must be tamed by “sacrificing” their propensitytoward savage vices.71 Elsewhere, in a lively allegorical interpretation ofKing Hezekiah and his armies trying to keep the Assyrians out ofJerusalem (II Chron 32.2–4), Maximus has Hezekiah as the mind (nouv)commanding its assistant “elders and captains”—reason, concupiscence,and irascibility—to work in concert not only to guard the fortress of thesoul against vices but positively to turn it on a course to victory.

The second of the mind’s elders or captains is the concupiscible faculty, bywhich divine love (ÃagŒaph) is produced. Through this love, the mind, volun-tarily attaching itself to the desire for the undefiled Godhead, has a ceaselesslonging for what it desires. Still another elder or captain is the irascible facul-ty, by which the mind ceaselessly clings to the peace of God, drawing itsmovement toward the divine passion (Õårwv) of desire (ÃepijumŒia).72

Interestingly, while Maximus views ÃagŒaph here as the supreme factorin the victory, the full rallying of the passions, in particular the Õerwv prop-er to concupiscence, is imperative.73

As an ascetic exercise, this reorientation or wise use of the passible fac-ulties entails a healthy self-knowledge and diligent contemplation. Trulyto know oneself and one’s own powers, as Basil of Caesarea had taughtin his homily On the Words “Give Heed to Thyself”, is tantamount to


the soul-body dichotomy, the trichotomy of the soul’s faculties, or the hierarchy ofvices. See also, e.g., carit. 2.74–76 (PG 90.1008B–1009A), where he connects the pas-sions with these three sources: sense experience, temperament, and memory. The con-nection of the passions with the craft of the demons is of course standard, though thedemons’ work is more a catalyst for deviating the passions already latent in the soul(cf. carit. 2.31, PG 90.993B–C, etc.). There are some instances where Maximus treatsan individual passion independently, in terms of its peculiar psychological and experi-ential horizon (e.g., qu. Thal. 10 on fŒobov).

69. carit. 3.3 (PG 90.1017C). See also Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator,195–207.

70. qu. Thal. 39 (CCSG 7.261,53).71. Ibid. 27 (CCSG 7.195,92–197,112).72. Ibid. 49 (CCSG 7.355,75–81); cf. ibid. 39 (259,7–13); ep. 2 (PG 91.397A–B).73. Maximus doubtless knows Pseudo-Dionysius’ classic defense of the use of e‰r-

wv and erotic imagery in describing the soul’s passion for God, a defense which includesscriptural and patristic references: see div. nom. 4.11–15 (PG 3.708B–713C).

mastering those faculties in the service of virtue. Maximus writes in AdThalassium 16 of a kind of intro-circumspection leading to a new goal forthe passions. “Every passion,” he says, “is invariably composed, in inter-connected fashion, of a sensible object, sense itself, and a natural facul-ty . . . irascibility or concupiscence or reason deviated from its naturalfunction.” But if the mind assiduously contemplates the synthetic goal(tŒelov) of these three things, and discriminates the natural principle ofeach and their proper interrelation with each other, it can obviate theirconspiracy and bring about a more “natural” state of the soul, and so toorehabilitate sense experience (aÕisjhsiv) itself.74 To know oneself is thus,for Maximus, to learn the frontiers of one’s nature, and in so doing, topush out those frontiers in the direction of higher virtue.

Along with this deep self-contemplation, however, Maximus will also,deferring to Evagrian wisdom, prescribe a radical denial of the viciouspassions: ÃapŒajeia as detachment or dispassion.75 Monks must always bevigilant of the lurid thoughts and memories that induce the vices.76 Thesecret is preemptively to cleanse, or properly use, one’s representations(noŒhmata) or recollections of a sensible object by stripping them of irra-tional affection through love,77 and to circumcise one’s dispositions andproclivities spiritually.78 Still, monks are sure to encounter instances whenthe demons so overwhelm them with temptations and evil thoughts thatcontemplation will not suffice. The only course of action then is to disen-gage from all other activity except pure and uninterrupted prayer, and tofortify the protective virtues of self-control and patience with “innategood thoughts”—lest the demons steal the soul’s desire (Õefesiv).79 Notinfrequently Maximus insists on the full abolition or shutting down of thepassions qua vices,80 although, like Evagrius and Augustine, he admitsthat they are deeply engrained or hidden in the depths of the soul.81


74. qu. Thal. 16 (CCSG 7.109,72–93).75. Maximus’ teaching on the ascetic struggle against the passions is treated in de-

tail in Walther Völker, Maximus Confessor als Meister des geistlichen Lebens (Wies-baden: Franz Steiner, 1965), 174–200.

76. carit. 2.74 (PG 90.1008B); ibid. 2.84–85 (1009D–1012C); ibid. 3.20 (1021B–D).77. Ibid. 2.15 (PG 90.988C–D); ibid. 2.17 (989A–B); ibid. 2.78 (1009A); ibid.

2.82–85 (1009C–1012C); ibid. 3.1 (1017B); ibid. 3.3–4 (1017C–D); ibid. 3.20(1021B–C); ibid. 3.40–43 (1028D–1029B); see also Hausherr, Philautie, 96–102.

78. qu. Thal. 65 (CCSG 22.279,460–466).79. Ibid. 49 (CCSG 7.357,120–359,149; 365–367); cf. also ibid. (365,256–

367,288); carit. 2.6 (PG 90.985A–C); ibid. 2.61 (1004C–D).80. qu. Thal. Intro. (CCSG 7.41,395–404); ibid. 49 (357,131–359,136); ibid. 51

(403,166–405,171); carit. 1.86 (PG 90.980C); ibid. 1.94 (981B–C); qu. dub. 77 [I,53](CCSG 10.58). See also Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 195–97.

81. E.g., carit. 3.78 (PG 90.1041A).

The redirection or sedation of the passions is never a matter purely ofprivate asceticism and contemplation. There is always for Maximus thelarger, cosmic scheme of things, at which level it is a battle of raw will anddisciplined reversal of the effects of transgenerational vice. As he indicatesin Ambiguum 8, the provident God has a larger plan “to use the thingswe have done by our own impulses for our correction” (qrhsjai . . . taprÜãmata taév oÃikeŒiaiv Äormaév prov swfronismon Ähmùn).”82 Accord-ingly, Maximus proposes three means for the healing treatment (Õiama) ofthe passions, and with them the latent disorderliness ( to ‰atakton) of bod-ily nature:

. . . whether unwilling or unable, because of the inbred habit of evil, we arecleansed of the weakness [of the passions]; or else we reject the present andindwelling evil and learn in advance to look toward restraining future evil; orelse one human being sets forth an admirable example of superior persever-ance and pious courage for other human beings. . . .83

That is to say, either God enacts the healing of the passions by externaldiscipline, in spite of our helplessness, or else we learn the cure on ourown, by willfully spurning evil and altering our habits, or by imitating thevirtue of one more advanced than us.84

Healing or redirecting the passions is the underside of a process of spir-itual development that centers on the positive, reintegrating power ofvirtue: both the four cardinal virtues which, Maximus says, redeem ourwhole sensate experience,85 and the supreme, truly cosmic virtue of love:love of self, love of neighbor, love of God, including that deep longing andattachment that he calls “the blessed passion of holy Õerwv.”86 “Love is


82. ambig. 8 (PG 91.1104B–C). Cf. carit. 2.39 (PG 90.997B–C) and 2.44(1000A–B), where Maximus appropriates classical medical imagery to depict God him-self (and only derivatively the Christian ascetic sage) as a Physician of souls who, inhis own good timing, and by careful discipline, applies the therapy of his judgments(krŒimata) to those struggling with the passions. He does not redeem everyone fromtheir passions right away, in the interest of their being healed through striving.

83. ambig. 8 (1104C–D).84. For an analysis of the “mimetic” (imitative) paradigm in Maximus’ under-

standing of the human fall into violent passions and of the recovery of virtue in theethical life of the Christian, see Michael Hardin, “Mimesis and Dominion: The Dy-namics of Violence and the Imitation of Christ in Maximus Confessor,” St. Vladimir’sTheological Quarterly 36 (1992): 373–85. Hardin’s study is limited to Maximus’ Capi-ta de caritate.

85. ambig. 21 (PG 91.1248A–1249C).86. carit. 3.67. The centrality of love in Maximus’ anthropology has already been

extensively treated in the studies of Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 309–22, andJ. M. Garrigues, Maxime le Confesseur: La charité, avenir divin de l’homme (Paris:Beauchesne, 1976), esp. 176–99. See also the annotated translations of Maximus’

the offspring, as it were, of the gathering (sunagwgŒh) of the soul’s facul-ties for the same purpose in relation to divine realities, and of the union(Âenwsiv) of those faculties—rational, irascible, and concupiscible.”87 It istheir best collective use. As noted earlier, Maximus projects the transfor-mation of desire ( ÃepijumŒia) both into ÃagŒaph and Õerwv.88 There is no in-terest to segregate ÃagŒaph, as self-transcending charity, and Õårwv, as thedriving passion deeply rooted in the individual soul; both express the tru-ly graced and indeed “natural” motion of the concupiscible faculty. In thisconception of love Maximus approximates what one contemporary the-ologian has termed “affective conversion,” a kind of transforming pas-sion that subsumes both falling-in-love (“the unreflective desire to giveoneself in which the self is experienced as passive and helpless because thedesire is experienced as originating and existing beyond . . . the reflec-tively conscious self”) and deliberate or intelligent commitment. Such is akind of love that transforms the whole desire, and thus the whole indi-vidual person, in relation to, and in the full interest of, the beloved.89 Itis a love that disposes the affections while at the same time being “tex-tured” by them. The ascetic goal of ÃapŒajeia is accordingly redefined forMaximus as for Gregory of Nyssa. “Detachment” (or “impassibility”) isscarcely adequate to describe an inward, habitual stability and reorienta-tion of the passions sustained through imitation of divine justice, endur-ing good choice, virtuous disposal toward one’s neighbor, extraverted loveof all human beings equally, and in summary, “the use of things with rightreason (to meta Ãorjou lŒogou qrŒhsasjai toév prŒagmasi).”90

The question could logically be posed as to whether all conceivablefunctions of the passible faculties might therefore, through the reinte-


Chapters on Love by J. Pegon, Maxime le Confesseur: Centuries sur la charité, SC 9(Paris: Cerf, 1945); Polycarp Sherwood, St. Maximus the Confessor: The Ascetic Life,The Four Centuries on Charity, ACW 21 (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1955),136–208, 248–67; and Berthold, Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings, 35–98; and I-H. Dalmais’ French trans. of Maximus, ep. 2 (PG 91.392D–408B), in La vie spir-ituelle 79 (1948): 296–303.

87. qu. Thal. 49 (CCSG 7.353,58–61).88. See above, notes 61–62 and related text.89. Walter Conn, “Affective Conversion: The Transformation of Desire,” in Reli-

gion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., ed. Timothy Fallon andPhilip Riley (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1987), 261–76, and esp. 268–70. The conceptof “affective conversion” is Lonergan’s, further elaborated by Conn.

90. carit. 1.24–27 (PG 90.965A–C); ibid. 1.40 (968C); ibid. 1.61 (973A); ibid. 1.71(976B–C); ibid. 2.30 (993B); myst. 24 (PG 91.713A–B). On Maximus’ more activistnotion of ÃapŒajeia contrasted with Evagrius’, see Lars Thunberg, Man and the Cos-mos: The Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Sem-inary Press, 1985), 98–101.

grating power of love, be transmuted or “used” for divine communionand human reconciliation. Simply put, is the full gamut of “passionate”experience in human beings potentially “virtuous” experience? Gregoryof Nyssa had speculated about the far frontiers of the experience of vicethat still might fall within the disciplinary scope of divine providence.Odious passions like anger, rage, even greed, he suggests as potential ser-vants of virtue.91 Pseudo-Dionysius too, in the Divine Names, surmisesthat the seemingly most flagrant passions are not without a relative par-ticipation in the Good: “unreasoning anger, mindless desire, headlongfancy, . . . even if they are to be found among the demons, are not total-ly, completely, and innately evil. For in other living beings it is not the pos-session of such qualities but rather the loss of them which brings ruin toa creature and is therefore evil. Possession of them can actually ensure life,can form the nature of the living being which has them.”92 The Pseudo-Areopagite is thinking here mainly of unreasoning animals, but the over-all force of his argument is precisely that wrath, desire, and cognate pas-sions are not intrinsically evil in created beings, the evil only lying in “theweakness and deficiency of natural qualities, activities, and powers.”93 In-deed, anger in reasonable beings can be a “sturdy working of reason inthem and the capacity they have to be grounded tenaciously in holy andunchanging foundations.”94 Maximus for his part is cautious when spec-ulating into the potential nobility of the passions, lest the experience ofvice be seen as quasi-necessary for the full apprehension of virtue. Theprinciple of utility (qrhsiv) holds true enough in the case of desire whenit longs for God, ire when it unleashes against evil and guards virtue, orgrief and toil such as can serve a corrective purpose.95 But, other than rea-sonable use of the affections associated with sustaining the body,96 how


91. virg. 18 (GNO 8, pt. 1.318,26–319,4).92. div. nom. 4.23 (PG 3.725B–C); cf. idem, cael. hier. 15.8 (PG 3.337B); trans.

Colm Luibheid in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, CWS (Mahwah, N.J.:Paulist Press, 1987), 91. See also Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 192–95.

93. Ibid. 4.25 (PG 3.728B); trans. Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius, 92.94. Pseudo-Dionysius, cael. hier. 2.4 (PG 3.141D), trans. Luibheid, Pseudo-Diony-

sius, 151. He also mentions that reasonable beings “experience desire” as a longing fordivine and immaterial realities (144A).

95. See above, notes 59–63 and related text; also qu. Thal. 58 (CCSG22.27,5–37,130). See also Christoph Schönborn, “Plaisir et douleur dans l’analyse deS. Maxime,” 273–84.

96. carit. 4.66 (PG 90.1064B): “Scripture takes away none of the things given byGod for our use but it restrains immoderation and corrects unreasonableness. For ex-ample, it does not forbid eating or begetting children or having money or managing it,but it does forbid gluttony, fornication, and so forth. Nor does it even forbid us to thinkof these things, for they were made to be thought of; what it forbids is thinking of them

can prurient carnal passions or pleasures fall within the economy ofvirtue? Sense, left to itself, deliberately inclines toward carnal pleasuresunless the higher soul with its “faculty for thinking pleasurable thingsover” ( Äh twn ÄhdŒewn Ãepinohtikh dŒunamiv), as Maximus charily defines it,subjects the senses to “toils” and pursues a course of self-control and truevirtue.97

In the overall scheme, the positive rather than the negative dimensionof human passibility is the salient feature in Maximus’ teaching. As in hisCappadocian predecessors, no final judgment on the ontological “status”of the passions can be pronounced without considering their economy and“use” in a teleological perspective. The lingering issue, however, is thatidentified above by Pseudo-Dionysius: the intrinsic weakness, deficiency(and mutability) of natural passible faculties. Earlier I noted Gregory ofNyssa’s resolution of this problem in the form of his doctrine of perpetu-al striving (ÃepŒektasiv): the natural human powers and drives, even in theafterlife, must constantly be stretched to new heights of perfection underthe direction of proaŒiresiv. Gregory glories in the affective as well ascognitive dimensions of this eternal progress, and in the paradox of thesoul finding sublime satisfaction precisely in its insatiable yearning forGod. Maximus himself, while certainly affirming with Gregory that “eter-nal movement around the Divine” ( Äh peri to jeéon ÃaeikinhsŒia) is a con-stitutive “natural energy” (ÃenŒergeia fusikŒh) of the soul,98 and that thisis an affective drive, a natural appetite or passion for God that must per-petually “stretch out along with” (sumparateŒinein) God’s own infinity,99

nonetheless makes important refinements of his own.100 TropŒh, the mu-tability-turned-deviance of souls (the epic dilemma of Origenism), cannotbe resolved solely on the “existential” level of good choices, since crea-turely choice (proaŒiresiv) itself is intrinsically liable to deviance.101

Maximus appeals instead to an underlying “plan” or lŒogov fŒusewv com-


with passion” (trans. Berthold, Maximus Confessor, 82); cf. also ibid. 2.17 (989A–B);qu. Thal. 55 (CCSG 7.487,123–489,134); or. dom. (PG 90.900B–D).

97. qu. Thal. 58 (CCSG 22.33,86–98); and ibid., scholium 10 (41,40–45).98. ep. 6 (PG 91.432A–B); cf. ambig. 7 (PG 91.1089B).99. Cf. ambig. 7 (PG 91.1069B, 1089B); opusc. 1 (PG 91.9A); carit. 3.98 (PG

90.1048A); and Gregory of Nyssa, v. Mos., Bk. 1 (GNO 7, pt. 1.4,10–15).100. See Paul Blowers, “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Con-

cept of ‘Perpetual Progress,’” VC 46 (1992): 151–171; cf. also Paul Plass, “‘MovingRest’ in Maximus the Confessor,” Classica et mediaevalia 35 (1984): 177–90; JosephFarrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor (South Canaan, Penn.: St. Tikhon’sSeminary Press, 1989), 145–154.

101. qu. Thal. 42 (CCSG 7.287,35–40).

prehending and guiding all natural human movements.102 Within thisplan, reason (lŒogov) properly speaking is not simply a hegemonic powerbut a mediator between the mind (nouv) and the affections,103 a strategicfacilitator of the proper use of all the faculties in the realization of virtue.In the same connection Maximus speaks of the “natural will” (jŒelhmafusikŒon),104 which cannot be restricted to personal choice (proaŒiresiv)or deep-seated desire (ÃepijumŒia) since it comprehends both. This naturalwill, modeled in the human will of Christ, in effect represents the resolveof the whole of human nature, the full economy of faculties acting in con-cert with each other both by ontological predisposition and by propermoral “use.” Indeed, in Maximus’ technical description of human will-ing, “use” (qrhsiv) is the summary volitional stage, the rallying-point ofthe natural powers, the final conjunction of impulsive desire and reasonedpersonal choice that results in concrete action.105

Maximus’ teleology is a careful revision of Nyssa’s perspective. Re-casting the paradox of desire and satisfaction, eternal motion and eternalrepose, in the afterlife, Maximus projects a gradual sabbatical transfor-mation of the human faculties (affections included) that brings their nat-ural motion to rest or completion precisely as it raises their activity be-yond their normal scope.106 J. M. Garrigues suggests that “il n’y a paspour Maxime d’épectase infinie d’un désir compris comme l’instabilité dulibre-arbitre, mais une montée sereine et sûre vers la plénitude et le reposdu port céleste.” Appropriating certain metaphysical axioms from Pseu-do-Dionysius, Maximus thereby corrects “la radicalité de l’existential-isme” and “le personnalisme radicale” of Gregory of Nyssa by integrat-ing “l’économie dramatique de la liberté dans une ontologie fondamentalede la participation.”107 Accordingly, Garrigues and others have argued


102. orat. dom. (PG 90.901B–D, 904D–905A).103. See I.-H. Dalmais, “Le vocabulaire des activités intellectuelles, volontaires, et

spirituelles dans l’anthropologie de saint Maxime le Confesseur,” in Mélanges offertsà M.-D. Chenu (Paris: Vrin, 1967), 190ff.

104. See opusc. 1 (PG 91.12C); ibid. 26 (280A); also Thunberg, Microcosm and Me-diator, 211ff; Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor, 115–130.

105. Opusc. 1 (PG 91.21D); cf. also Gauthier, “Saint Maxime le Confesseur et lapsychologie de l’acte humaine,” 73–77; Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 226.

106. qu. Thal. 65 (CCSG 22.279,466–468); ibid. 22 (CCSG 7.141,82–98); cap. the-ol. 1.54 (PG 90.1104A–B). See also Blowers, “Maximus the Confessor, Gregory ofNyssa, and the Concept of ‘Perpetual Progress,’” 161–65; Plass, “‘Moving Rest’ inMaximus the Confessor,” 183–85.

107. Garrigues, Maxime le Confesseur, 85, 91, 92. Cf. Alain Riou, Le monde etl’église selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Beauchesne, 1973), 43: “A l’épectase infiniedu désir, saint Maxime substitue la progression . . . elle-même de la nature se fait sousla conduite d’un pasteur-higoumène, d’un guide, d’un ‘gouvernail.’”

that with Maximus we are well on our way to Aquinas’ doctrine of thecausality of grace and the notion of a supernatural habitus of love ele-vating created nature to a higher stature.108 Though legitimate parallelscan be drawn between Maximus and Thomas (both of whom depend onNemesius of Emesa) from the standpoint of the economy of psychologi-cal faculties, the hegemony of reason and will, and the potential moralagency of the passions,109 such comparisons take us beyond the subtle nu-ances in Maximus’ treatment of the human will and passions in a “neo-Cappadocian” (and neo-Areopagitic) context.

Maximus effectively deepens the Cappadocian insight into the unlimit-ed resourcefulness of natural human powers directed, in communion withdivine grace, toward their proper tŒelov, which for Maximus is ultimate-ly God himself but, mediately, the multiplicity of lŒogoi—eternal princi-ples of virtue, beauty, and so too reason—that constitute the frontier be-tween God and creation. The “enjoyment” (ÃapŒolausiv) of these diverselŒogoi is never purely a function of intellect or of analytic reason. It en-tails the continuing exercise or use of the affections which drive the mindand the whole human being, teleologically, toward God. As Lars Thun-berg remarks, it is simply insufficient for Maximus to say that anger andconcupiscence are to be “logicized” and at last transcended, when thejourney of the soul demands the use of these faculties. Intellect and willare basic, but so too emotion and temper are integral to the realization ofvirtue and the engagement of the whole human being in communion withGod.110

If passion (pŒajov) bespeaks the primal Adamic and historic experience,the tragic loss of integrity suffered within the differentiated levels and as-


108. See J. M. Garrigues, “L’énergie divine et la grâce chez Maxime le Confesseur,”Istina 19 (1974): 272–96; idem, Maxime le Confesseur, 92 (n. 7), 95, 133; cf. the prefa-tory remarks of M.-J. le Guillou, ibid., 8. I would concur with Lars Thunberg’s criti-cism of this Thomistic reading of Maximus in Man and the Cosmos, 52–53, 102. Thun-berg rightly notes that for Maximus, love is not a supernaturally infused habitus (Âexiv)as such; rather, it represents primarily the reciprocal “theandric” communion of thewhole of human nature with God.

109. On Aquinas’ doctrine of the passions (Summa theologiae I-II.22–48), seemost recently Simon Harak, Virtuous Passions: The Formation of Christian Charac-ter (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 71–98; also Mark Jordan, “Aquinas’s Construc-tion of a Moral Account of the Passions,” FZPhTh 33 (1986): 71–93, and esp. 87–93.Jordan notes that Aquinas’ principal sources concerning the passions include JohnDamascene, Nemesius of Emesa (whose De natura hominis medieval writers attrib-uted to Gregory of Nyssa), and Augustine. Maximus does not figure among Thomas’cited sources.

110. Microcosm and Mediator, 207; similarly, cf. Telepneff and Chrysostomos,“The Person, Pathe, Asceticism, and Spiritual Restoration in Saint Maximos,” 261.

pects of human nature, so ultimately will passion bespeak the profoundexperience in which that nature regains its wholeness in Christ and re-ceives its full share in the divine life. Not surprisingly, Maximus describes“deification” in terms not only of perfected spiritual knowledge andvirtue, or as the christlike exercise of free choice by the saints in the es-chaton,111 but also, dramatically, as a sublime experience (peéra),112 apleasurable suffering (peisiv),113 a “supernatural passion” ( Äuper fŒusinto pŒajov) wherein the creature’s utter passivity to divine grace is but aconsummation of the active powers in human nature.114

The importance of Maximus’ constructive theory of the human pas-sions in its broader context should not be underestimated, to the extentthat he grapples with a historic problem of Christian anthropology andethics. In the postscript to his book The Education of Desire: Plato andthe Philosophy of Religion, Michel Despland suggests that Christianitymarked itself out from classical pagan piety by claiming to be a religionthat educated the human will over the human desires. Historically, how-ever, this led, in some theological systems to an exaltation of the will be-yond everything else created, to the definition of the will in opposition toreason and to desire; or else (and here Despland cites certain medievalscholastics, and all other Christian theologians overly dependent on Aris-totelianism) to the ontologizing of the freedom of desire wherein all hu-man subjectivity would be fit into “the metaphysical equivalent of par-liamentary closure . . . (providing) a definite framework for all judgmentsof reality.”115 Other modern philosophical anthropologists, Christianand non-, have leveled analogous accusations. Nicolas Berdyaev arguedthat some early Christian ascetics, Maximus included, had abstractedspiritual love “from the emotions and from all concreteness and indi-viduality,” and fossilized it into a means of transcendence devoid of hu-man warmth.116 Robert Solomon, the contemporary “Neo-Romantic”philosopher of the passions, has indicted traditional Christianity as a


111. See Farrell, Free Choice in Maximus the Confessor, 95–130, 143–54.112. qu. Thal. 6 (CCSG 7.69,23–24; 71,46–48); cf. ibid. 65 (CCSG 22.253,39–43);

Myst. 5 (PG 91.680C). On the importance of peéra in Maximus’ spiritual doctrine,see Pierre Miquel, “Peéra: Contribution à l’étude du vocabulaire de l’expérience re-ligieuse dans l’oeuvre de Maxime le Confesseur,” SP 7, TU 92 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1966), 355–361.

113. ambig. 7 (PG 91.1088C–D).114. qu. Thal. 22 (CCSG 7.139,66–141,98).115. Michel Despland, The Education of Desire: Plato and the Philosophy of Reli-

gion (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 280–87.116. Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man, trans. Natalie Duddington (New York:

Harper & Row, 1960), 187–88.

whole for exalting reason and for subverting the pure subjectivity of thepassions, which he defines as the deepest and best human “judgments”and the very core or essence of the human self.117

Michel Despland for his part commends Gregory of Nyssa and Augus-tine as early Christian theologians whose spiritual existentialism at leastheld place for the education of desire: Gregory with his vision of perpet-ual desire for intimate personal communion with God, Augustine with hisbelief that “the orientation of our will, in the end, depends on the storyof our loves.”118 Despland does not mention Maximus, but would he beas sympathetic with his insights? Maximus, after all, still has a criticalstake in the ontological framework of human willing and desiring as wellas the properly moral or existential dimension (lŒogov as well as trŒopov,to use his own terminology). Perhaps Despland would categorize Max-imus as a proto-scholastic who effectively subsumed the passions into afinely articulated network of cause-and-effect within a system of divinegrace and human intentionality. J. M. Garrigues has already averred thatin the evolution of his soteriology, the “mystique naturelle du désir” wasmerely a temporary infatuation of Maximus en route to discovering at last“la ordre de la personne” as the key to human will and creaturely move-ment.119 Hopefully this essay has shown that any such conclusions wouldbe premature. Maximus, in good company with Gregory of Nyssa andAugustine,120 still clings to the view that in the human pursuit of God,the deep-seated erotic and thymetic drives, while not informing the rea-soning mind and will as such, nonetheless empower them and “launch”them.121 They tell the story of how one’s moral choices and movementshave come about as grounded—strategically, as it were—in all the levelsof one’s being, and how one’s ultimate spiritual commitments have cometo be engrained and “owned.” For in Maximus’ anthropological inter-pretation of the virtues, virtuous decisions can never result in virtuous actswithout the trained and rallied responses of the soul’s full range of facul-ties and psychosomatic functions. Such training comes simultaneously in


117. Robert Solomon, The Passions (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976),xiv–xvii, 10, 25, 42, 112.

118. Despland, The Education of Desire, 283–84.119. Garrigues, Maxime le Confesseur, 97, 100ff.120. For a fuller comparison of Maximus with Augustine, see Robert Wilken, “Max-

imus the Confessor on the Affections in Historical Perspective,” in Asceticism, ed. Vin-cent Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995),412–23. I am indebted to Robert Wilken for a copy of his manuscript in advance of itspublication.

121. See Williams, “Macrina’s Deathbed Revisited,” 242; Harrison, Grace and Hu-man Freedom according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, 160–62.

the drama of human society, where loves and aversions are refined in agenuinely universal ascetic struggle to attain to the tŒelov of all creature-ly existence, and in the interior microcosm of the soul-body relationship,where the ever deepening habit and disposition of love give rise to newalignments in the soul’s affections, the virtues which displace the vices.

The narrative of the individual spiritual self and its loves is always forMaximus tied into a grander macrocosmic plot, or plan (lŒogov), that be-gins in Adam and “ends” in the hypostasis of the New Adam. RowanWilliams notes that for Gregory of Nyssa, “the interlocking frames of his-tory, gender and passion form the concrete structure for the soul’s jour-ney toward a God who is free from all of them”—a paradox, but one al-together appropriate to incarnational Christianity.122 Maximus, who isarguably more pained by the language of philosophical paradox,123

nonetheless follows the instinct of Gregory’s theological anthropology atthis point. The full fruition and transformation of created nature climax-ing in deification and the historical struggle for restoration from fallen-ness in all its manifestations are irreducible, intersecting grids or fields ofaction that can never, from a teleological and indeed a Christological per-spective, be extricated from each other. They constitute one history, onestory, one dynamic of human “nature,”124 aimed not at a mere spiritualrepristination (as in the myth of preexistence) but at the utterly new hu-man destiny opened up through the Incarnation. In the dénouement, theexperience of the passions is both a hallmark of the tragedy of the Falland a pivotal frontier of its resolution and even its ultimate transcendence.

In the end, Maximus’ scriptural image of the passions as the “gentiles”in the ascetic theater of the soul is perhaps his most fitting and evocativeanalogy. Like the gentiles, renowned for their “alienage” (to ÃallogenŒev)and “foreignness” (to ÃallŒofulon), the passions have always been a con-


122. Williams, “Macrina’s Deathbed Revisited,” 245.123. On Maximus’ attempts to obviate the strongly paradoxical language and im-

agery of Gregory’s notion of epektasis, see Blowers, “Maximus the Confessor, Grego-ry of Nyssa, and the Concept of ‘Perpetual Progress,’” 159–60, 163–64.

124. Von Balthasar, in his Kosmische Liturgie, 142, aptly suggests that fŒusiv itselfis for Maximus (as for Gregory of Nyssa), hardly a static category; it rather indicates“eine Anlage, ein Plan (lŒogov), ein Feld und System von Bewegung” (cf. von Balthasar’sinvestigation of Nyssa’s doctrine of the “openness” of human nature in Presence andThought, 111–19). For further commentary on Maximus’ doctrine of fŒusiv, see Thun-berg Microcosm and Mediator, 87–90; also Garrigues, Maxime le Confesseur, 107:“La permanence inaltérable de chaque nature dans son principe essentiel n’exclut paspour Maxime que l’énergie de la nature créée soit téléologiquement dynamisée vers leBien ultime.”

tingent presence (parupŒostasiv) in the economy of human salvation.125

But now the God who, as Maximus says, longs to be incarnate in all thathe creates,126 has opened up a means for their outright reorientation, in-clusion, and instrumentality in that economy, their redemption fromchaos and participation in the grace of deification. Only through these re-deemed gentiles is incarnational grace wondrously embodied in the far-thest reaches of creation, of which human nature is the treasured micro-cosm. For Maximus the Confessor, the resolution of the ontological andphysiological problem of the passions lies, not simply in a renovated phi-losophy of human being, but in the apocalyptic action of God in JesusChrist, an incarnational and recreative mystery the full effects of whichcontinue to be elicited in human life and experience.

Paul M. Blowers is an Associate Professor of Church History at theEmmanuel School of Religion, Johnson City, Tennessee


125. qu. Thal. 51 (CCSG 7.403,154–405,189).126. ambig. 7 (PG 91.1084C–D).

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