Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

58 THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST
out the nature that we have. What makes the Son of God the unique
person he is is the eternal life of love in the Trinity in which he shares
in a filial way.
MAXIMUS’ UNDERSTANDING OF THE WILL
There are several problems in the way of understanding Maximus’
conception of willing. The first is quite simply that it seems that
his analysis of the human will, though it draws on earlier thought, not
least that of Aristotle, is largely original. Maximus is not using an
already available notion of the will, but thinking through something
that appears to be quite new in the history of human thought (though
Maximus was anxious not to appear to be an ‘innovator’). 10 But if, as
has been suggested, Maximus virtually creates the notion of the
will, 11 understanding him is compounded by the fact that this notion,
so central to Maximus’ understanding of what it is to be human, is
also something that much modern thought tends to take for granted.
For whatever problems there are in understanding Maximus, it is
certainly not the case that he has an oversimplified way of
understanding human nature, but rather that we have, borne to us by
the concepts and values of our Western culture that has shaped us.
Maximus’ understanding of human nature is many-layered: more than
some other Fathers is he free from the tendency (found in many
classical philosophers, too) to oversimplify what it is to be human, and
to locate the human in our intellectual, rational capacity. Rather to be
human is to be a creature that loves with a love that integrates the
several layers of our being, layers some of which we share with the
non-rational, and even non-animal creation. In so far as it belongs to
the twentieth century (and also some earlier ones) to oversimplify
what it is to be human, and locate that in our will, in our (pretended)
ability to do what we want, to choose between this and that, such an
oversimplification makes Maximus utterly opaque to our
understanding.
For Maximus, what is distinctive about being human is selfdetermination
(autexousios kinêsis: movement that is within one’s own
power). Twice Maximus takes his definition of what is involved in selfdetermination
from the fifth-century bishop, Diadochus of Photikê:
‘self-determination is the unhindered willing of a rational soul
towards whatever it wishes’. 12 This self-determination is not,
however, absolute: human beings are created in God’s image, and it is
in their self-determination that they reflect God’s image. This selfdetermination
is, then, ordered towards God: human beings are
creatures whose nature finds its fulfilment in their freely turning
towards the God to whom they owe their being. What is meant by