A Language of Stone and Sky: Maximus and Augustine (Part Three)
One Will or Two?
The circumstances that led up to, and
even beyond Chalcedon are fairly well known and will only be briefly restated
here:[1]
while Grillmeier follows Karl Rahner and notes that Chalcedon was not an “end
but a beginning,”[2]
and others especially in regards to systematic theology have agreed,[3] as
far as the immediately post-Chalcedon theological environment goes Brian Daley
pulls no punches and notes that as far as many were concerned Chalcedon was,
“as a vehicle of compromise, more or less dead on arrival.”[4] On
the one hand, Chalcedon is rightly seen as bringing together the intuitions
that were with the church from St. Paul in Ephesians 1:10 and especially as it
began to be reflected upon in Irenaeus, that our salvation is in Christ insofar
as he “recapitulates” and so heals all the proper elements of creation and
humanity: “He was incarnate and made Man; and then he summed up in himself (anakefaliosasqai
auton) the long line of
the human race, procuring for us a comprehensive salvation, that we might
recover in Christ what in Adam we lost, namely being in the image and likeness
of God.”[5] This of course becomes later reflected in
Nazianzen’s pithy phrase “that which is unassumed is unhealed”[6]
and his coining of the term qewsiV.[7]
Yet on the other hand Chalcedon was
also borderland haunted by the diverse pressures of the things it joined, and
many of its opponents wanted to collapse its tensions in either Nestorian or
Monophysite directions. Such a collapse
would also be a rationalizing reduction of the scandal of Christ, a sanitizing
of the necessary “lectio difficilior of the gospel” thereby in a sense removing
the stumbling block of Christ.[8] Internal to its ideas were elements of
unification, but a unification that would not be “natural” (thus not enwsiV ousiodhV which Maximus rejects)[9] and so obliterate the integrity of natures in
some tertium quid;[10]
nor, on the other hand, rendering them only superficially or morally
joined. Seen from this perspective it is
unsurprising “all future discussion of the will, knowledge, and consciousness
of Christ belong in the end in that area of Christological problems which were
marked out by Chalcedon”[11]
because Chalcedon itself was not an artificial bracket upon Christian discourse,
but what we have come to recognize as a necessary and natural stage of
clarification.
Skipping over the political pressures
towards integralism[12]
that also fueled the monoenergist and then monothelite majority in the years
that followed Chalcedon, we can come straight to the heart of Maximus’ dispute
with Pyrrhus, keeping in mind von Balthasar’s insightful remark and so keeping
an eye on some of the true significance of Maximus’ position:
It
was not simply that Eutyches had united the natures ‘too much’ and Nestorius
‘too little’, but that they divided them and united them in the wrong way; they
did not understand in what unity really consisted. Their mistake was to look for the synthesis
on the level of nature…and then to describe it as a synthesis of natural powers
(Nestorius) or as a natural union (Eutyches)…But the level on which they came
into conflict cannot itself be the context of a real solution—it can only be
the scene of an empty dialectic…[13]
The
basic goal here is to maintain and press the absolute Chalcedonian logic that
the absolute integrity and absolute unity of the natures be maintained, because
herein lay the entire mystery of salvation, that the entirety of our humanity—human will included—was taken on by the entirety of Divinity, without the two
losing what they were. In this sense
Maximus’ dispute with Pyrrhus mirrors that of Gregory of Nazianzus’ dispute
with Appolinarius: where Gregory argued against Appolinarius’ concept that the
Logos replaced the rational soul of man that “Whoever hopes in a mindless
person is mindless himself!”[14]
Maximus will end up arguing nearly identically regarding Pyrrhus’ proposition
there is only one will in Christ: “If man has the faculty of will by nature, as
has just been demonstrated, and if they yet maintain that Christ had the human will
only by mere appropriation of it, then…it follows that the whole mystery of the
economy must be assumed to be an illusion.”[15]
Thus Maximus himself denies that the
solution is to be found “in the realm of things” or in a “composite thing” (sunqetika pragma)[16] but rather in a more mysterious
manner of harmony (o aporrhtoV tropoV thV sumfuiaV).[17]
Christ is the upostasiV of the “parts” (meroi--though these parts considered as integral natures are
themselves “wholes” or kaqolikoi)[18]
and as such this is not some “natural” fusion but is described as the “personal
activity” (autourgia) of
the LogoV.[19]
And in this manner the integrity of the two natures, God and
man, are preserved through a hypostatic, and not natural-synthetic,
unity-in-distinction, and it is by this preservation and unification that our
salvation as qewsiV is
accomplished:
If,
then, as man [Christ] has a natural will, he certainly wills those things that,
as God by nature, he has fashioned and introduced naturally into his own
constitution. For he did not come to
debase the nature which he himself, as God and Word, had made, but he came that
nature might be thoroughly deified which, with the good pleasure of the Father,
and the cooperation of the Spirit, he willed to unite to himself in one and the
same hypostasis, with everything that naturally belongs to it, apart from sin.[20]
In reading this, however, two
immediate questions[21]
seem to be raised. Here we see that
Maximus has, as he is famous for, equated “will” as something that is “natural”
i.e. attributed to a nature and not the upostasiV[22]-- yet, this seems counterintuitive and
one at least initially would argue for the common sense of Pyrrhus’ dilemma:
“It is impossible not to posit some Willer with the will itself,”[23]
so that two wills would seem to imply two subjects in Christ, and hence
Nestorianism. The second question
regards the meaning of “introduced naturally into his constitution.” Maximus, as we have just briefly shown, has
already argued that it is not a “natural” union in the sense that the
Incarnation takes place on the level of nature itself, but—for want of a better
English term—on the level of “person.”[24] What could “introduce naturally into his own
constitution,” therefore mean? Has
Maximus contradicted himself, or is he using loose terminology? To answer this question, we shall see, is to
also begin to address also Pyrrhus’ objection that two wills implies two
willers.[25]
Several concepts come together for
Maximus in his response, the first and most immediate of which is his appeal to
Trinitarian theology against Pyrrhus[26]:
if one extends his logic to its converse, there would be three wills within the
Trinity, or if one accepts one will, the Trinity is reduced to a Sabellian
monad.[27] Thus the dilemma becomes that Pyrrhus either
is a Sabellian, or an Arian! But this
negative critique is not of itself enough to discover the fullness of Maximus’
own positive material position.
That the Son could have introduced
humanity “naturally into his constitution” without contradicting Maximus’ other
claim that it is not a “physical” or
“natural” union but a hypostatic one is seen precisely in the concept that
mediates between hypostasis and nature: tropoV uparxewV or “mode of existence” which serves as
a gloss for upostasiV. Our prima facie identification of
will with a “willer” or a hypostatic existence has to do with a sharp division
between nature and person. On this
account “nature” appears as something inert and, as it is for Pyrrhus
especially, something subject to the laws of necessity and not freedom.[28] However this division is too absolute to
handle Maximus’ more nuanced distinctions.
Here with tropoV uparxewV we must understand a distinction between the “principle” of a
thing’s nature or existence, its “what it is” (logoi; ti esti) and the “mode” of its existence,
the “how it is,” (tropoV; opwV esti).[29]
The incarnation thus represents a “tropic” unity and not
“natural” unity:
Formerly
nature possessed no union with God in any mode or structure [tropon h logon] of substance or hypostasis, those categories in which
all beings are generally understood; but now it has received a union in
hypostasis with him, through the ineffable harmony, preserving unchanged, its
own different structure of substance in relation to the divine substance
towards which it is hypostatically one and yet different, through the
union. As a result, in the structure of
its being [en tw einai
logw] according to which it has come into
existence and continues to be [Christ’s humanity] remains in unquestionable
possession of its own being, preserving it undiminished in every way: but in
the structure of how it is [tw tou pwV einai logw] it receives existence in a divine way [en qew tropw] and neither knows nor accepts at all the urge towards
movement centered on any other thing. In
this fashion then, the Logos has brought into being a communion with the human
nature that is much more wonderful than the first one was, uniting the very
nature to himself hypostatically, in a substantial way.[30]
Thus the upostasiV seen in terms of a tropoV uparxewV is not something opposed or apart
from nature, but the mode in which a
nature operates. Maximus writes “it is
impossible to think [ouk esti nohsai] of a hypostasis without nature,”[31]
while conversely no nature simply coincides with its hypostasis. This absolute unity and irreducible relation
does not blend the two however:
The
fact that no nature is without hypostasis does not make it into a hypostasis
but rather into something hypostasized [enupostaton], so that
this should not be conceived simply as a property that can only be
distinguished [from the hypostasis] in thought, but rather is recognized as a
form [eidoV] in actual fact [pragmatikoV]. Even so, the fact that a hypostasis is not without
essence, but shows it to be essential [enousion]; it should
not be thought of as a mere quality, but must be seen as truly existing
together with that in which the qualities are ground [that is, with its nature][32]
You
[Pyrrhus] do not realize how you fall into error for this precise point: you
are entirely ignorant of the fact that synthetic things are said in reference
to the hypostasis to some other (“third kind” of) nature.[33]
[…] He assumed as good that which is proper to [human] nature and which
expresses that power inherent in our nature…these natural things of the will
are present in Him, but not in the same mode as us. He did truly hunger and thirst, not in a mode
similar to ours, but in a mode which surpasses us, in other words
voluntarily. Thus he was truly afraid,
but not as we are, but again in a mode surpassing us. To put it concisely: all things that are
natural in Christ have both the rational principle proper to human nature, but a supernatural mode of existence.[34]
Hence
we begin to see why, in Maximus’ reasoning, it makes sense to circumvent
Pyrrhus’ equation of a will with a willer.
To act and to achieve a reality and a result is the work of nature:
nature defines the parameters and types of interactions and effectuation; it is
only in the hypostasis, the “mode of existence” or “how” of the nature of being,
however, that its concrete center of realization is actualized. Or put another way, Maximus argues that it is
not sufficient to note an individual thing by its individualizing
characteristics, for there is a degree of “ownership”[35]
of these characteristics that lay behind them which is implied in both “mode of
existence” and hypostasis.[36] The “hypostasis” then—here quite reminiscent
of Augustine in de Trinitate[37]—remains
strictly indefinable except that it implies a “propriety” of a bundle of
characteristics that is not itself exhausted in a survey of those
characteristics. Hence “human will” is
actually a function of human nature, a “formal” feature we might say, that is
only actualized in the “how” of its existence, the hypostatic reality which owns
it and manifests through it (though here the adverb “through” implies still a
much too extrinsic relation between nature and hypostasis).
[1] C.f. Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: I From The
Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975), 443-559.
[3] E.g. Sarah Coakley, “What does Chalcedon Solve and
What Does it Not? Some Reflections on the Status and Meaning of the
Chalcedonian ‘Definition,’” in The
Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of
God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 143-164.
[4] Daley, “Making a Human Will Divine,” 104.
[5] Irenaeus, Against
Heresies, III.18.1; c.f. Athanasius, On
the Incarnation of the Word of God (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary
Press, 2012), 35: “Through this union of the son of God with our human nature,
all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that,
by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which
goes with death has lost its power over all.”
[6] Greg. Naz. Epistle
101.
[7] Christopher A. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the
Knowledge of God: In Your Light We Shall See Light (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 117; C.f. Norman Russel The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (New
York: Oxford Press, 2006) pp.213-225, 341-344.
Both Russel and Beeley point out that the term “theosis” was coined by
Gregory, which of course was highly influential on the Byzantine tradition
especially through ps. Dionysius and
Maximus the Confessor.
[8] Grillmeier, Christ
in Christian Tradition, 556.
[10] Maximus uses the terms meson and metaicmion in order to reject them (Opuscula, PG 91, 121C), which as far as I
can tell convey roughly what is meant by
the Latin tertium quid—a third thing
produced by a blending and partial dilution (I translate Maximus’ use of antirropon as “dilution” in order to bring out Maximus’
pejorative use, though it appears to more usually mean something neutral like
“balance”) of two previous substances.
[11] Grillmeier, Christ
in Christian Tradition, 553.
[12] Von Balthasar makes it a repeated point of emphasis
that Maximus’ grasp of theology was what overcame the political integralism of
his day. Fascinating but for the sake of
space we have to pass it over. See:
Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 29-44,
74-81.
[13] Von Balthasar, Cosmic
Liturgy, 210, 212.
[21] At this point we could mention several other potential
difficulties, such as Pyrrhus’ objection that two wills by necessity at some
point come into conflict with one another, but this is less powerful a critique
than his others and only tangential to our current concerns.
[22] Disputation
With Pyrrhus of Our Father Among the Saints Maximus the Confessor trans. Joseph Farrell p.7 par.18-19: Pyrrhus:
“Therefore the willing appertains to nature?” Maximus: “Yes, the simple
willing, at least, pertains to nature.”
[24] Brian Daley, “Nature and the ‘Mode of Union’: Late
Patristic Models for the Personal Unity of Christ in The Incarnation, 164-197 shows how this is of course not unique to
Maximus, who as ever has faithfully received the tradition—especially via
Gregory Nazianzen and Leontius of Byzantium—only to put his own creative spin
on it through attempts of clarification.
[25] We have obviously started this historical essay with
an eye on present issues. However we
cannot here address several contemporary criticisms of dyothelitism as this
would take us far too abroad. For a lengthy
examination of these, c.f. Thomas A. Watts, “Two Wills in Christ? Contemporary
Objections Considered in the Light of a Critical Examination of Maximus the
Confessors Disputation with Pyrrhus,”
in Westminster Journal of Theology,
71 (2009): 455-487.
[26] This appeal to previously established Trinitarian
principles was a consistent strategy of Maximus in his Christology. See: Adam G. Cooper The Body in St. Maximus the Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 132: “The consistent application of
trinitarian terms and formulae in Christology was considered by Maximus a key
to apprehending the mystery of the hypostatic union and communication idiomatum.”
Pyrrhus was dubious about this strategy, and makes it a point in the Disputation to note that Maximus is
making something of a category error: “The Father’s developed these ideas in
the context of the doctrine of God, not in that of Christology. Therefore it is not a sign of intellectual
honesty to use for Christology what they intended to say of the Trinity and try
to prove a contradiction this way.”
[28] Ibid., p.11: “If you say the will is natural, and that which
is natural is surely compelled, and if you say the wills in Christ are natural,
you in fact take away all his voluntary motion.” It is interesting that John Zizioulas makes
this sort of identification of necessity with “nature” and freedom of
“hypostasis” a key to project, especially in John Zizioulas, Being and Communion: Studies in Personhood
and the Church (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985): “Therefore,
as a result of love, the ontology of God is not subject to the necessity of the
substance.” (46). This is slightly ironic given that Maximus has become more
and more integrated into Zizioulas, especially in recent work: John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in
Personhood and the Church (New York: Zondervan, 2006). Obviously we cannot go into it here, and I
mean no crass conflation of Zizioulas’ nuanced project with Pyrrhus, however
this may in fact represent a point of divergence between the father’s Zizioulas
wants to resource and his own intentions for them. Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 178n.65 makes much the same observation in
passing.
[29] Cooper writes: “They are theoretical terms expressing
two logically distinct dimensions within a single entity.” (The Body in Maximus, 133); And
Zizioulas: “tropos adjusts being to an intention or purpose or manner of
communion…without change of what (logoi) each thing is.” (Zizioulas, Communion
and Otherness p.23ff). Similarly, the introduction by Wilken and
Blowers to The Cosmic Mystery of Jesus
Christ notes “Maximus intends to show how Christ took on himself natural
human passibility…In so doing Christ not only resolves the legacy of the fall
but pioneers a whole new modality (tropos) for human passion consistent with
the soul’s natural—and perpetually graced—desire for God.” (p.35).
[30] Ambigua, 36, PG 91, 1289C3-D5.
Cited in Daley, “Nature and the Mode of Union,” 186. Translation taken from Daley with a few
modifications in comparison with PG.
[35] I owe this terminology of “ownership” to von
Balthasar’s analysis: “Certainly, too, one can further distinguish among
individuating characteristics, between ‘essential qualities’ which mark of the
levels of specific being, and ‘hypostatic qualities’ which refer to the
individual as such: the shape of one’s nose, for instance, or the color of
one’s hair. But these last remain only
the sign and indication of a being-for-itself that lies behind them; they do
not belong themselves to the ontological order.” (Cosmic Liturgy, 224).
[37] St. Augustine, The
Trinity, trans. and ed. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991) V and
VII, quite infamously Augustine is perplexed on what exactly “hypostasis” could
mean, and notes we say “person” just so as to not remain silent. Here it is highly ironic that those who would
champion a disconnect between East and West at this point find, at a
particularly glorious apex of Eastern thought in Maximus, essentially the same
confession for essentially the same reason: hypostasis is meant to signal what
distinguishes the three—but precisely as such what is a hypostasis? It
cannot be a set of characteristics, genus, or species, or precisely as such it
would not differentiate the three but unite them. This has often escaped the attention both of
commentators on Augustine but also contemporary Systematic Theologians. C.f. Richard Cross, “Quid Tres? On What Precisely Augustine Professes Not to Understand
in De Trinitate V and VII,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007): 215-232
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