Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

50 THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST
hypostasis, and tropos belong together. 3 In a Trinitarian context,
Maximus will use these distinctions with some care. So, for instance,
seeking to explain the movement in the Trinity that an expression of
Gregory Nazianzen’s apparently implies, he says:
For the triad is truly monad, because thus it is, and the monad
truly triad because thus it subsists. Thus, there is one Godhead
that is as monad, and subsists as triad. If, hearing of movement,
you wonder how the Godhead that is beyond infinity is moved,
understand that what happens is happening in us, and not to the
Godhead. For first we are illuminated with the reason [logos] for
its being, then we are enlightened about the mode in which it
subsists, for we understand that something is before we
understand how it is. Therefore movement in the Godhead is
constituted by the knowledge about that it is and how it subsists
that comes about through revelation to those who receive it.
(Opusc. 1:1036C)
I have italicized the key words (note, too, that Maximus also expresses
the distinction of level as that between that something is and how it is).
This distinction between what is natural and what is personal is an
underlying theme in his metaphysics and becomes a guiding light for
Maximus in his exposition of the doctrine of Christ.
CHRISTOLOGY IN MAXIMUS’ EARLY WORKS
Christology is central to Maximus’ ascetical theology: our ascetic
struggle is, as we have seen, a response to the self-emptying of
the Word in the Incarnation. The Incarnation itself is regarded by
Maximus as a central turning-point in the history of the cosmos.
There is a phrase from one of Gregory Nazianzen’s sermons—‘and the
natures are instituted afresh, and God becomes man’ 4 —that he is fond
of quoting to express this idea of the Incarnation as a turning-point,
and to which he devoted one of his Ambigua (Amb. 41, which is
translated below). In the early Ambigua, Maximus is mainly
concerned with what is involved in the ‘instituting afresh’ of the
natures: in Amb. 41 he develops an elaborate notion of the healing of
the various ‘divisions’ found in everything that is. This, also, is
something that properly belongs to his cosmic theology, that will be the
subject of our final chapter. This is the context in which he discusses
Christology: there is little technical discussion of what the union of
natures in the one person of Christ involves. The same is true of Amb.
10—the longest of all his Difficulties—which is the nearest thing there
is to a comprehensive statement of Maximian theology.