Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

THE SOURCES OF MAXIMUS’ THEOLOGY 27
Cappadocian Fathers, and for this reason has attracted more
attention, perhaps, than any of them from recent scholars. It seems to
have been Gregory’s metaphysical genius that attracted Maximus.
They both share—with a clarity of exposition that distinguishes them
from many others in the Greek patristic tradition—the doctrine of the
double creation of the human person: a first creation that transcends
sexual difference, and a second creation marked by sexual duality.
They both work through an understanding of the wholeness of the
human person, in which soul and body are mutually complementary.
Maximus also seems to have been indebted to Gregory in his
treatment of the theme of the divisions of being. 26
Another strand in the theological tradition Maximus is heir to is
less explicit than that represented by the Cappadocian Fathers, but
much more fundamental, and that is the Alexandrian Christological
tradition of Athanasius and Cyril. He is heir to this principally
because this was the dominant tradition in Byzantine theology from
the sixth century onwards. It is important to realize how much he took
for granted the Cyrilline Chalcedonianism he inherited: his opposition
to Monothelitism is worked out within this tradition, not as a criticism
of that tradition. He is wholly committed to the Alexandrian
understanding of the Incarnation as the Son of God’s assuming a
human nature and living a human life, with its corollary in the
validity of theopaschite language. This comes out in two of the ‘later’
Difficulties (though several years earlier than Maximus’ involvement
in the Monothelite controversy). These are Amb. 2and4(neitherof
them translated here), which also bring out the difficulty Maximus
had with Gregory’s Christological language. Amb. 2 is concerned with
a passage from Gregory’s Third Theological Oration in which he
counters the Arian argument that one who is God cannot be said to
hunger, sleep or fear, all of which are attributed to Christ, by saying:
‘And, in a word, what is exalted is to be ascribed to the Godhead, to
that nature which is superior to sufferings and the body, what is lowly
is to be ascribed to the composite that for your sake emptied himself
and took flesh and—it is no worse to say—became a man.’ The reason
why this poses a difficulty for Maximus is the way in which it seems to
keep suffering away from the Godhead and thus possibly compromise
the unity of Christ’s person (though Gregory’s language here is in fact
very careful). Maximus’ response is a paraphrase of Gregory that
emphasizes the unity of subject in Christ and, in particular, expressly
justifies theopaschite language by using, and repeating, an expression
from Gregory’s Fourth Theological Oration—‘God passible’. The same
concern is found in Amb. 4 where he says, ‘therefore he was also truly
a suffering God, and the very same was truly a wonder-working man,
because also there was a true hypostasis of true natures according to