MAN IN CREATION -- THE COSMOLOGY OF ST.

MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

Jesse Dominick

The theology of creation and salvation in Orthodox Christianity upholds the

centrality and kingship of mankind while simultaneously embracing a cosmological
vision that is largely absent in western Christendom. A common characteristic of
all creation is corruption and death, and yet we are told that God is not the
author of death (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-14), and that all of creation awaits its
redemption through the revealing of the saints (Romans 8:19-22), when all of heaven
and earth will be united to God (Ephesians 1:9-10). Within this framework, St.
Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662) is recognized as a theological and spiritual
giant by the Orthodox Church. In his two troparia he is hailed as an “enlightener
of the universe” and a “herald of the faith.”

Although best remembered for his stance against the Monothelite heresy, St. Maximus
also masterfully harmonized the works of his philosophical and theological
predecessors, correcting where need be, into a complex web in which cosmology,
anthropology, Christology, soteriology, and eschatology are presented in one
harmonious vision in which creation reflects the glory of God, and man is charged
with the task of raising all of creation to union with the Godhead. Enabled by the
Incarnation of the Divine Logos, the reciprocity of love between God and man is set
forth as the path to this union in the spiritual universe of St. Maximus. As Lars
Thunberg states, “His system of theology was in fact a spiritual vision of the
cosmos, of human life within that cosmos, and therefore of the economy of
salvation, the salvific interplay between the human and the divine.[1]” For St.
Maximus, salvation is much broader than a rescue from sin and death, a Divine
undoing of man’s mistake, but points to God’s eternal plan for mankind, regardless
of the Fall. The Son of God was to be incarnate whether man had sinned or not,
precisely to call man, and through his priestly lordship over the cosmos, all of
creation into a deific union in the life of the Trinity.

St. Gregory of Nyssa

St. Gregory of Nyssa
Much of St. Maximus’ cosmology was developed in opposition to the cosmology of the
third century theologian Origen, which remained popular in certain monastic
circles, especially through the influence of the fourth century monastic and avid
student of Origen, Evagrius Ponticus. In the Origenist system the material world
exists as a result of the fall of pre-existent souls or intellects which grew
satiated in their contemplation of God, and thus fell into the created order.
Conversely, for St. Maximus, the material creation itself is an intended good
creation of God, and the body and soul of man came into existence simultaneously as
a cohesive unit. In a series of digressions in his Ambiguum 42, he explains that
man is a complete species, with a necessary relation of body and soul which
continues even after death (1321D-1324B); that the soul does not preexist the body
(1325D-1336B); and that the body does not preexist the soul (1336C-1345C). In this
point he is preceded by St. Gregory of Nyssa, and followed by St. John of Damascus,
[2] and is in harmony with the general Patristic dictum that the creative act of
each day was manifested instantaneously. The Confessor explains that the nature of
the body and the nature of the soul form, according to the will of God, the
composite nature of man, manifested in one human hypostasis.[3]
As Vladimir Lossky demonstrates, there is no singular Patristic definition of what
precisely in man is defined as the image of God.[4] Considering the cohesion of the
double-nature of man, for St. Irenaeus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory
Palamas both body and soul make up the image of God in man. For others it is found
in the lordship of man over creation; his spiritual nature; his mind (νοῦς); his
immortality; or his ability to know God and share in His divine life, etc. For St.
Maximus, the image of God in man is connected to the mind and reason (λόγος).
Quoting St. Gregory the Theologian, he writes: “’Then we shall know as we are
known’ (1 Cor. 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what
is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now
longs.”[5] However, as Thunberg demonstrates, it is the νοῦς which is most closely
related to the image of God for St. Maximus, and thus fallen man has, through
turning from the “leadership of reason,” replaced the image of God with that of
irrational animals, while the renewed man in Christ is characterized by a γνῶσις
attained through the νοῦς. The image of God in man is known through charity which
subordinates man’s freedom to the creative will of God (λόγος), which is the
reasonable principle whereby man’s life ought to be oriented.[6]

Closely linked to the image of God is this freedom of man, which is seen as a sign
of the image in man, a shadow of the Divine Archetype, to be used to draw ever
nearer to God. St. Maximus states: “If man is the image of the divine nature and if
the divine nature is free, so is the image.”[7] Finally, although not included in
the image of God in man for St. Maximus, the body is closely related to its
destined realization. As man is a composite of body and soul, the body too is
called to submission to the Divine Logos, and through dominion over the irrational
part of himself, divinity is mediated also to the body which thus participates in
the attainment to the likeness of God.[8]

With the unity of man in both composition and purpose firmly established, we can
begin to look at man’s central position in St. Maximus’ cosmology, in which the
fate of the entire cosmos is tied to that of man. As Torstein Theodor Tollefsen
writes in his The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor: “[man] is
created just for this purpose: to actualize the created potential of his being to
achieve a fully realized community between all creatures and their Creator.”[9] In
his vision of this task, man is described by St. Maximus as a microcosm (ό μικρὸς
κόσμος) because man is composed of both body and soul—both physical and spiritual,
sensible and intelligible natures, he is thus the creation in miniature, as
creation also consists of both physical and spiritual realities. In this he is
following upon the Cappadocian Fathers, and Nemesius of Edessa. Man occupies a
“middle” position in creation, straddling the division between the material world
that we inhabit and the spiritual world of the angelic powers.

Conversely, if man is a microcosm, then for St. Maximus the universe is a

makranthropos—a man distended, and so the universe can be contemplated as a man.
St. Maximus states in his work The Church’s Mystagogy that “the whole world, made
up of visible and invisible things, is man and conversely that man made up of body
and soul is a world ... intelligible things display the meaning of the soul, as the
soul does that of intelligible things, and that sensible things display the place
of the body as the body does that of sensible things.”[10] As body and soul
constitutes but one man, so the visible and invisible aspects of the universe
constitute but one cosmos. As Lars Thunberg explains, this relationship between man
and the universe does not remain static, but takes on a dynamic element—“the
duality should be transformed into a unity, unthreatened by dissolution. This task
of unification is attributed to man as microcosm and mediator.”[11] For St.
Maximus, the fact that man is a microcosm suggests and naturally leads to this
vocation as mediator, in which man “[recapitulates] in himself the elements of the
entire world, in his body and in his soul.”[12] Ambiguum 41, as well as chapters 5
and 7 of The Church’s Mystagogy is relevant for the outlining of this active role
of mediating. This role of mediation and unification, of uniting diversity, with
all diversity preserved, is a consequence of man’s bearing the image of God, and of
man’s personal relationship with God.
St. Maximus writes of five dualities or divisions in which man participates by his
being, and is called to overcome in the deification process: created and uncreated,
intelligible and sensible, heaven and earth, paradise and universe, male and
female.[13] Fr. John Meyendorff succinctly explains how man was intended to mediate
between these divisions:
Originally, man was called to overcome the sexual opposition by “impassibility,”
and to unite through holiness the universe and paradise, thus making one single and
new earth. He was then to unite earth and heaven by virtue, in order to make one
single, tangible creation, to unify the tangible and intelligible worlds by
acquiring angelic gnosis, so that creation might no longer be divided between those
who know and those who do not know God. Finally, man was to reunite by love the
created and the uncreated, so that in His love for creation, God might become all
in all.[14]

“Impassibility” here refers to the Patristic teaching that virginity reigned in the
pre-lapsarian world, and to St. Maximus’ teaching that even the distinction between
sexes only exists because God foreknew the fall of man, and that man would thus
need a means of procreation. So to abide in virginity would overcome the gender
distinction. For St. Maximus, this mediating work explains why man was created
last, for it is man and man alone as a natural link who is called to unify the
polarities in creation and offer them to God. As Dragos Bahrim notes, man is not a
mediator simply in his ontological makeup as body and soul, but man is called to
mediate specifically in his soul by vocation. To incline towards God and mediate
between the divisions of creation is the guiding principle of man, his λόγος
φύσεωσ. This idea of the logoi is central to Maximian theology. He states: “the
logoi, firmly fixed, preexist in God, in accordance with which all things are and
have become and abide, ever drawing near through natural motion to their purposed
logoi.”[15] Thus the logoi are like a blueprint, identified with the thoughts and
wills of God for each distinct creature.

However, as we have seen, being in the image of God, man possesses freedom, and
thus he may live in accordance with, or contrary to his logos physeos. For St.
Maximus, drawing upon many theologians before him, this points to man’s τρόπος
ὐπάρξεως—his mode of existence. He writes, “all innovation is manifested in
relation to the mode (τρόπος) of the thing innovated, not its natural principle
(λόγος). The principle, if it undergoes innovation, corrupts the nature, as the
nature in that case does not maintain inviolate the principle according to which it
exists.”[16] Thus, man’s logos of existing as body and soul, and his vocation of
turning towards God remain constant, but his tropos is variable according to his
willful decisions.

This leads to St. Maximus’ famous triad, Being-Well-being-Ever-being.[17] Being and

Ever-Being pertain to the image of God in man, while Well-being, or conversely Ill-
being, pertain to the likeness of God to which man is called. Simply by existing
man obviously possesses Being, and as the soul is immortal and all bodies will be
resurrected by virtue of Christ’s resurrection, he too possesses Ever-being.
However, according to the choices man makes through his free will, he attains
either Well-being, that is—a life in Christ, or Ill-being—a life apart from God. He
who achieves Well-being through a holy mode of existence accomplishes man’s call to
the likeness of God, and thus will enjoy Ever-well-being, while he who neglects the
commandments of the Lord through his mode of existence will suffer Ever-ill-being.
Adam and Eve transgressed against the image of God within them and their logos
physeos, and chose a tropos hyparxeos of disobedience, whereby Paradise was closed
to man until the Incarnate Logos again opened the doors to us. Thus, St. Maximus
writes that man is given Being at birth, Well-being at Baptism, and Ever-being at
the bodily resurrection.[18]

As man turned from the Lord, and ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,
he was unable to fulfill his vocation as mediator of all creation. Meant to rule
over creation in a relationship of love, Adam instead gave himself over to his
senses and became dominated by creation and his passions, thus preventing the
intended relationships between God and man, and man and creation. Thus the only
true man to ever live, the Incarnate Logos Christ our Lord mediated the divisions
of creation, which man is again free to effect in his own life. Fr. John Meyendorff
again explains:

By his virginal birth, Christ overcomes the opposition of the sexes—In Christ, says
Paul, there is neither male nor female (Gal. 3:28). By his death and resurrection,
Christ destroys the separation that existed since the fall between paradise and the
universe. Today you shall be with me in Paradise, says Christ to the good thief (Lk
23:43)—giving to the human race access to the forbidden garden, coming back himself
on earth after his resurrection, and showing that in himself paradise and the
universe are henceforth one. By his ascension he unites heaven and earth through
the exaltation of the human body, co-natural and consubstantial with ours, which he
had assumed. By going beyond the angelic orders with his human soul and body, he
restores the unity between the worlds of sense and of mind, and establishes the
harmony of the whole creation. Finally, as man, he accomplishes in all truth the
true human destiny that he himself had predetermined as God, and from which man had
turned: he unites man to God.[19]

The fate of all creation is tied to that of mankind, its high priest and mediator,
and thus in this turning from God, the entire cosmos was turned from God. St.
Maximus writes, “in the beginning sin seduced Adam and persuaded him to transgress
God's commandment ... thus condemning our whole human nature to death and, via
humanity, pressing the nature of (all) created beings toward mortal
extinction.”[20] Through Adam’s sin the original beauty of creation was tarnished,
but through our Lord Jesus Christ all is and will be restored.

Igumen Damascene (Christensen), abbot of St. Herman's Monastery, Platina, CA

Igumen Damascene (Christensen), abbot of St. Herman's Monastery, Platina, CA
In his essay “Created in Incorruption,”[21] Fr. Damascene of St. Herman’s Monastery
in Platina, CA gives a detailed synopsis of the Patristic doctrine of pre-lapsarian
creation, and the effects of the fall on mankind and the cosmos, and he draws
heavily from St. Maximus. As Fr. Damascene relays, regarding man’s physical
condition before the Fall, St. Maximus teaches that Adam and Eve were wholly
without sexual relations and passions;[22] partook of imperishable fruits but
produced no bodily waste;[23] were impervious to cold and heat and all the
elements;[24] were free of all bodily infirmities and injuries;[25] and thus they
were immortal, of another temperament “held together by qualities that are simple
and without strife. For reason of this temperament was the first man naked, not as
one fleshless or bodiless, but as one not having the temperament which makes the
flesh denser, mortal, and tough.”[26] In speaking of bodily temperaments, St.
Maximus is again combating Origenism which taught that man was fleshless and
bodiless before the Fall.[27] For the Fathers, man’s body was indeed somehow less
physical, and more spiritualized, but it was still indeed a body of flesh, just as
the risen Christ possessed a body, and yet could hide His identity and pass through
doors.
Fr. Damascene further relates the teachings of St. Maximus on the condition of
man’s mind before the Fall. According to St. Maximus, man suffered neither from
forgetfulness nor ignorance, and his mind was not “impressed by the
imagination”[28] which, as we know in our condition, acts as a barrier between man
and God and prevents man from seeing clearly into the cosmos—from contemplating the
logoi of the creation around him. It is through contemplating these traces of God’s
glory in all of creation that we are able to raise our nous to God, and thus the
wall of the imagination is a barrier to contemplation of God.

In Ambiguum 45 he further states that man was free of the “deceitful passions of
the imagination,” and had no need for arts and skills or the study of nature which
he rose above in his wisdom.[29] Furthermore, an important point for St. Maximus is
that “When God created human nature, He did not create sensible pleasure and pain
along with it; rather, He furnished it with a certain spiritual capacity for
pleasure, a pleasure whereby human beings would be able to enjoy God
ineffably.”[30] Clearly man was meant for a reality that is wholly other than our
experience of corruption, pain, worldly pleasure, and death.

However, as we have said, Adam and Eve sinned and “Through sin, this cosmos became
a place of death and corruption.”[31] In seeking his nourishment apart from God,
man darkened the image of God within himself and handed all of creation over to
death, which takes us as “his food.”[32] For St. Maximus, the garments of skin
which Adam and Eve were clothed in by God indicate the susceptibility to pain and
corruption that immediately befell them. Furthermore, the deceit of the devil,
driven by his self-love which for St. Maximus is the root of all evil, fractured
human nature in its tropos hyparxeos into a myriad of opinions and illusions.
Through this man discovers all the vices and drives them into his nature as a law.
Especially man discovers three principle vices: ignorance, tyranny, and self-love.
In short, the Fall—the sin of Adam, the deceit of the devil, drives man from his
natural contemplation of God to a life governed by the sensible pleasures of the
world which eventually drives him into the grave.

As we have seen, the Fall was a perversion of man’s capacity for spiritual pleasure
into a hedonistic search for sensible pleasures, which introduces pain into the
life of man and the cosmos. This dialectic of pleasure and pain is important for
St. Maximus. He writes, “When God created human nature, He did not create sensible
pleasure and pain along with it ... but ... the first man, by use of his senses,
squandered this spiritual capacity—the natural desire of the mind for God—on
sensible things,”[33] and “Every forbidden pleasure has come to be through passions
aroused through the senses ... For desire added to sensual feeling changes into
pleasure, giving it a shape, and sensual feeling.”[34] Through this redirection of
desire, man became akin to the animals and uses his intellectual capacities for the
satisfaction of base sensual, self-loving desires and lusts. Conversely, God, in
His great love for mankind, introduced the rule of pain into our lives as a
“punitive and purgative counter-force into fallen man’s life.”[35] Of course, pain
ultimately leads to death, and viewed in a soteriological context, it is seen as a
gift from God that brings an end to our destructive, sinful, and pleasure-seeking
lives. However, in our fallen state we often only seek harder to find pleasure and
avoid pain.

As we have seen, St. Maximus taught that the virginal life reigned in the Garden
before the sin of Adam and Eve. Thus, the introduction of sexual passions and
especially the rule of sexual procreation is a foremost sign of the law of pleasure
and pain. Sexual intercourse is a result of sensible pleasure, and gives rise to
birth through pain. In a play on words, St. Maximus teaches that Adam’s coming into
existence (γένεσισ) was perverted by the Fall into the law of conception and birth
(γέννησισ)—an imprisonment from which we can escape only by the birth (γέννησισ) of
Christ. As Fr. John Meyendorff stated, Christ overcame the opposition of the sexes
through His virginal birth, and furthermore, He broke the law of pleasure by being
born without pleasure, and He broke the law of pain by His painless birth, as well
as His voluntary and sinless passion and death which transformed the law of death
“from a judgment of death because of sin, into judgment upon sin.”[36] St. Maximus
writes forcefully and extensively on this:

After the transgression pleasure naturally preconditioned the births of all human
beings, and no one at all was by nature free from birth subject to the passion
associated with this pleasure; rather everyone was requited with sufferings, and
subsequent death, as the natural punishment. The way to freedom was hard for all
who were tyrannized by unrighteous pleasure and naturally subject to just suffering
and to the thoroughly just death accompanying them. In order for unrighteous
pleasure, and the thoroughly just death which is its consequence, to be abolished
(seeing as suffering humanity has been so pitiably torn asunder by them, with human
beings deriving the beginning of their existence from the corruption associated
with pleasure, and coming to the end of their life in the corruption of death), and
in order for suffering human nature to be set right, it was necessary for an unjust
and likewise uncaused suffering and death to be conceived—a death “unjust” in the
sense that it by no means followed a life given to passions, and “uncaused” in the
sense that it was in no way preceded by pleasure.[37]

This unjust and uncaused suffering and death is clearly that of our Lord Jesus
Christ.

Christ overcame the law of pleasure and pain that ruled over mankind from the time
of the Fall, He mediated the divisions that man was called to in his microcosmic
vocation, and He offered Himself and all of creation back to the Father. However,
He did not accomplish this merely in our place, but He rather made it possible for
us to once again fulfill our vocation of ascending to God, and bringing the entire
cosmos with us. And if self-love is the foremost vice, then true love, of God and
others and all creation, is the highest virtue, and thereby we accomplish our God-
given tasks. Love possesses and fulfills all the other virtues—faith, hope,
humility, meekness, gentleness, mercy, self-control, patience, long-suffering,
kindness, peace, joy, etc. Through love man inclines his will to that of God, and
thus human nature is no longer at variance with its logos. By love, in Jesus
Christ, the fracturing of human nature is overcome, and harmony between God and man
is established. According to the Confessor, it is only through love that man is
shown to be truly in the image of God, for God is Love.[38] Through the
Incarnation, God initiated a reciprocity of love between God and man that leads to
the destruction of egoism and the deification of man.

One final point is to be made: for St. Maximus, the greatest experience of love and
the journey to deification happens precisely within in the Church, specifically
within the worship of the Divine Liturgy. As we have seen, man was initially
intended to unite heaven and earth by virtue, to unify the tangible and
intelligible worlds by acquiring angelic gnosis, and to reunite by love the created
and the uncreated.[39] He states that in the Liturgy, the Christian soul moves
towards experiential theology of God, acquiring intelligence equal to that of the
angels, able to contemplate the tri-unity of the divine Godhead, for “the Church is
not an ecclesiastical institution distributing divine grace, but truly a Mystical
Body that represents symbolically the whole divine-human mystery, the whole mystery
of God’s good counsel, and the economy of salvation.”[40] In his Mystagogia, he
describes the Church as a figure of God, as an image of the world, the Church as
man and man as the Church, and the Church as an image of the human soul – a series
of contemplations in which the various layers of man’s vocation and soteriology
unfold, but as is true for the entire Church, for St. Maximus the celebration of
the Eucharist is the very center of our entire lives, the movement in which all
things are unified towards God. He states, “... as a consummation of everything the
distribution of the mystery takes place. It transforms in itself and renders those
who participate worthily, through grace and participation, similar to the Good
which is this Cause ... In this way they may both be and be called gods through the
gift of grace, since God as whole fills them entirely.”[41] God is Love, and He
offered Himself wholly in His incarnated life, and so through His Body of the
Church and Her worship, man finds his purpose and the fulfillment of his vocation.

Orthodox theology is cosmological. Man is at the very center of creation and

theology, but He brings the entirety of creation with him. Charged with the task of
unifying the multiplicity and divisions of creation and offering it back to God,
man instead chose to seek a life of sensible pleasure apart from the nourishment
and commandments of God. In doing so we lost Paradise and the blessed life free of
corruption, and we plunged into an existence ruled by the laws of pleasure and pain
ultimately culminating in death for the entire cosmos. However, in the ultimate act
of love, God the Word became Incarnate and dwelt among us, fulfilling the roles
that Adam had laid aside. Through the kenotic love of Christ we can once again take
up our true life and ascend ever closer to the divine life of the Trinity, which
the regenerated man accomplishes through love in the worship of the Church. St.
Maximus the Confessor is a luminary of this theological vision in his writings and
in his life. By the grace of God may this divine plan be fulfilled through us in
the Holy Church.

* * *

Works Cited

—BAHRIM, Dragos. "The Anthropic Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor." Journal for
Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science 3 (2008): 11-37.
<http://docs.google.com/>.

—Hieromonk Damascene. "Created in Incorruption: The Orthodox Patristic

Understanding of Man and the Cosmos in Their Original, Fallen, and Redeemed
States." The Orthodox Word 44.258-259 (2008): 9-99.

—Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir's Seminary, 1976.

—Meyendorff, John. Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Crestwood, N.Y: St.

Vladimir's Seminary, 1987.

—Sherwood, Polycarp. The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His
Refutation of Origenism. Romae: Orbis Catholicus, 1955.

—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man.

—St. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith.

—St. Maximus the Confessor. Ad Thalassium. Patrologia Graecae, vol. 90.

—St. Maximus the Confessor. Ambigua. Patrologia Graecae, vol. 91.

—St. Maximus the Confessor, Mystagogy. Patrologia Graecae, vol. 91

—St. Maximus the Confessor. On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected
Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor. Trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis
Wilken. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary, 2003.

—St. Maximus the Confessor. "The Church's Mystagogy." Maximus Confessor: Selected
Writings. Trans.George C. Berthold. New York: Paulist, 1985.

—St. Nicodemus. A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel. Trans. Peter A. Chamberas. New

York: Paulist, 1989

—Thunberg, Lars. Man and the Cosmos: the Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor.
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary, 1985

—Thunberg, Lars. Microcosm and Mediator: the Theological Anthropology of Maximus

the Confessor. 2nd ed. Chicago: Open Court Pub., 1995.

—Tollefsen, Torstein. The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor.

Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/12692076/Torstein-Tollefsen-
The-Christocentric-Cosmology-of-St-Maximus-the-Confessor>.

Jesse Dominick
8/26/2016

[1] Thunberg, Lars. Man and the Cosmos: the Vision of St. Maximus the Confessor.
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary, 1985. p. 31.

[2] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 28-29; St. John of Damascus, On the
Orthodox Faith 2:12

[3] Thunberg, Lars. Microcosm and Mediator: the Theological Anthropology of Maximus
the Confessor. 2nd ed. Chicago: Open Court Pub., 1995. pp. 97-98, 106. St. Maximus
analogizes this composition to the hypostatic union of the Incarnate Logos.

[4] Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY:
St. Vladimir's Seminary, 1976., pp. 115-116.

[5] Ambiguum 7, 1077B, in Maximus. On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected
Writings from St. Maximus the Confessor. Trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis
Wilken. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary, 2003. pp. 53-54.

[6] Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator pp. 117-118.

[7] Dialogue with Pyrrhus, PG 91 col. 324D, qtd. in Meyendorff, John. Christ in
Eastern Christian Thought. Crestwood, N.Y: St. Vladimir's Seminary, 1987. p. 137.

[8] Ibid. pp. 118-120.

[9] Tollefsen, Torstein. The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor.
Oxford:Oxford UP, 2008. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/12692076/Torstein-Tollefsen-The-
Christocentric-Cosmology-of-St-Maximus-the-Confessor>. pp. 102-103.

[10] Chapter 7, St. Maximus the Confessor. "The Church's Mystagogy." Maximus
Confessor: Selected Writings. Trans. George C. Berthold. New York: Paulist, 1985.,
p. 196

[11] Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos p. 74

[12] BAHRIM, Dragos. "The Anthropic Cosmology of St Maximus the Confessor." Journal
for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and Science 3 (2008): 11-37. p. 26. <
http://docs.google.com/>.

[13] Ambiguum 41, also in Quaest. ad. Thal. 48, 63.

[14] Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, pp. 139-140

[15] Amb. 42, 1329, qtd. in Sherwood, Polycarp. The Earlier Ambigua of Saint
Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism. Romae: Orbis Catholicus,
1955., p. 170

[16] Amb. 42 1341D, in The Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, p. 89-90.

[17] For example, see Amb. 42, 1325 BC.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, p. 143.

[20] Ad Thalassium 61, in On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, p. 137.

[21] The Orthodox Word, nos. 258-259, 2008.

[22] Ad Thalassium 21

[23] Ambiguum 10

[24] Ambiguum 45

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid., qtd. in Created in Incorruption, p. 21.

[27] St. Maximus’ Ambiguum 45 is dedicated to answering the Origenist use of the
statement that man was “naked in his simplicity” from St. Gregory the Theologian,
which they interpreted to mean that was naked of flesh.

[28] Qtd. in St. Nicodemus. A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel. Trans. Peter A.

Chamberas. New York: Paulist, 1989., p. 150, qtd. in Created in Incorruption, p.
20.

[29] Qtd. in Created in Incorruption, p. 22.

[30] Ad Thalassium 61, qtd. in Created in Incorruption, p. 17.

[31] Ad Thalassium 65, P.G. 90:740B, qtd. in Created in Incorruption, p. 9.

[32] Ambiguum 10, in Louth, Andrew, and Maximus. Maximus the Confessor. London:
Routledge, 1996. p. 127.

[33] Ad Thalassium 61, qtd. in Created in Incorruption, p. 17.

[34] Ambiguum 10, qtd. in Created in Incorruption, p. 18.

[35] Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 156.

[36] Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 160.

[37] Ad Thalassium 61, in On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, p. 131.

[38] Letter 2: On Love, 393C-396D, in Louth, Maximus the Confessor, pp. 86-87.

[39] Mystagogia, Patr. Gr. 91, 700C, qtd. in Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, p. 48.

[40] Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, p. 113.

[41] Mystagogia 21, Patr. Gr. 91, 697A, qtd. in Thunberg, Man and the Cosmos, pp.
114-115.