St Vladimir's Theohgical Quarterly 55 3 (2011) 295-317

T H E TRANSGRESSION OF A D A M AND C H R I S T THE

N E W A D A M : S T AUGUSTINE AND S T MAXIMUS THE
CONFESSOR ON THE D O C T R I N E OF ORIGINAL S I N

Daniel Haynes

"What I am saying is that in the beginning sin seduced Adam and

persuaded him to transgress Gods commandment, whereby sin
gave rise to pleasure and, by means of this pleasure, nailed itself in
Adam to the very depths of our nature, thus condemning our whole
human nature to death and, via humanity, pressing the nature of
(all) created beings toward mortal extinction."1

Introduction
To a Western theologian, such a quote by Maximus Confessor, a
sixth- and seventh-century Byzantine theologian, may be very
surprising. There have sometimes been coarse characterizations of
the Christian East by the West—such as by Adolf von Harnack—
that sinfulness and fallenness, in particular "original sin," are not a
part of its theological anthropology, but this type of claim is narrow
in perspective and should be reduced to an ignoratio elenchi?
According to the Eastern Christian tradition, which prefers
the phrase "ancestral sin" (προπατορική αμαρτία) over "original
sin," human fallenness is situated within the greater narrative of
creation, incarnation, resurrection, and cosmic recapitulation and
divinization. Sin and the Fall are a part of the human condition,
but they are not a part of the human makeup as an essential quality;
nor are they the final chapter of the cosmic story. Humanity also
does not stand guilty of Adams sin as one massa damnata\ as
1 St Maximus the Confessor,^ Thalassium 61 (CCSG 22:95), in On the Cosmic Mys­
tery of Jesus Christ: Selected WritingsfromMaximus the Confessor, ed. Paul M. Blow­
ers and Robert L. Wilken (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2003), 137.
2 See for instance, Adolph von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 2
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), 166.

293
294 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

Jean-Claude Lärchet notes, "only the consequences of Adams

sin on nature are transmitted, which are essentially more or less
radically."3 Guilt, or culpability, is not something transmitted from
generation to generation through our fallen nature—as in the
Augustinian tradition—but instead what is considered "inherited"
is the subjugation to death and passibility. In the Greek Patristic
tradition, it is the fear of death and its avoidance that is generally
seen as instigating the false use of the passions, by which sin enters
into the life of every human being.
So, the difference between Eastern and Western perspectives
on the Fall lay first in the determination of how all humanity is
connected with the sin of Adam and Eve (the issue of Original Sin)
and second in the subsequent results of this fall for the entire cosmos
(the issue of ancestral guilt and the fallen state). Maximus the
Confessor articulates a position between the Eastern and Western
perspectives on original sin. From an Eastern perspective, Maximus
sees the results of original sin being death and passibility, and from
a Western perspective Maximus determines that fallenness is the
effect of a sinful and severely weakened gnomic will, which is not
inline with the logos of its created nature. Maximus' qualification
of the gnomic (γνώμη) will that is hypostatic in nature—instead
4
of an "essential quality" of the human person like the natural
will—allows for a human being to have an intact nature that is not
inherently corrupted or guilty and also a fallen will that impassions
and enslaves them to sin.
There are several essays on the topic of original sin in Maximus,
and so I do not intend to repeat a general analysis of Maximus'
thinking on the subject. What I wish to present in this article is a
more in-depth study of the connection and disconnection between
Augustine and Maximus on original sin in their writings. These two
great thinkers in Christian theology, separated by a little over 100
3 Jean-Claude Larchet, "Ancestral Guilt According to St Maximus Confessor: A
Bridge between Eastern and Western Conceptions," Sobornost 20/1 (1998): 26. Cf.
John Boojamra, "Original Sin According to St Maximus the Confesssor," SVTQ20
(1976): 19-30.
4 John Boojamra, "Original Sin According to St. Maximus Confessor," 27.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 295

years and both located in Carthage, N o r t h Africa, for a long period, 5

hold a great deal of agreement on the topic, but it is their differences
that present issues for Eastern and Western Christian relations. I will
argue that Maximus' hypostatic and tropological understanding of
will and original sin take seriously the Augustinian concerns with
the good of created nature and the infectious existence of sin in
the world, while at the same time avoiding a Manichean reading of
original sin that sees sin as corrupting human nature and rejecting
the transference of guilt through procreation. While there are
negative aspects to Maximus' treatment of the body and sex in his
discussion of original sin, the upshot is an anthropology that leaves
human nature intact and more easily open to divinization.

Augustine and Maximus: the Soul and the Imago Dei

Gregory of Nyssa (ca 335—394) in his work, On the Creation of Man,
eloquently describes the importance of the creation of humankind
over all other created reality:
O marvellous! A sun is made, and no counsel precedes; a
heaven likewise; and to these no single thing in creation is
equal. So great a wonder is formed by a word alone, and the
saying indicates neither when, nor how, nor any such detail.
So too in all particular cases, the aether, the stars, the inter­
mediate air, the sea, the earth, the animals, the plants—all are
brought into being with a word, while only to the making of
man does the Maker of all draw near with circumspection, so
as to prepare beforehand for him material for his formation,
and to liken his form to an archetypal beauty, and, setting
before him a mark for which he is to come into being, to make
for him a nature appropriate and allied to the operations, and
6
suitable for the object in hand.

5 For a discussion on whether Maximus knew the works of Augustine, see G. Berthold,
"Did Maximus the Confessor Know Augustine ?," in Studia Patristica, XVII, 1, ed. Eliz­
abeth Α. Livingstone (Oxford/New York: Cistercian Publishers, 1982), 14-17; Brian
E. Daley, SJ, "Making a Human Will Divine: Augustine and Maximus on Christ and
Human Salvation," in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, eds. George Demacopoulos &
Aristotle Papanikolaou (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 2008), 101-26.
6 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man (PG 44:133-36).
296 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

This beautiful and symmetrical picture of creation that Gregory

paints touches upon a fundamental element to both Latin and
Greek Patristic theology: that the human person is the central point
of the Creation around which the cosmos revolves. Humans are
the crown of Gods creative acts and reflect His glory because they
are made in His image. Where Latin and Greek thought generally
differ is on the ability of this image to be disfigured.
The Greek Fathers spoke about "the inclination towards God."7
With this phrase they are emphasizing that human beings are made
in the image of God and are therefore called to adoption and the
redemption of their bodies (Rom 8:23). Such a positive starting
point does not side-step human fallenness, but moves beyond it
so as to reveal true human nature. At least as early as Irenaeus of
Lyon (ca. 202) in the second century—and developed more fully
by Origen (ca. 185—254)—the Greek Fathers began separating the
concepts of image (είκών) and likeness (όμοίωσις) so that image refers
to humankinds "protological endowment," and likeness refers to
the "eschatological vocation" of humanity in the recapitulation and
deification of the cosmos.8 Gods image in humankind does not change
or suffer, but humanity's likeness to God, developed through grace
and virtue, opens up to deification. Being made in the image of God
means that humans are, "Simultaneously earthly and heavenly, transient
and eternal, visible and invisible, truly and in fact a 'deified animal.'"9
The Latin and Greek Fathers both believed that creaturely
existence could not be reduced to a flat ontology; but the Latin
tradition, at least represented by Augustine, did not hold that the
image and likeness were separate categories of anthropology. For
Augustine, likeness did not add to the image of God, but was the
measurement of the deformity of the image to its original. Augustine
elucidates on the image of God in humankind in the De Trinitate
through the analogy of the Trinity:

7 Panayiotis Nellas, Deification m Christ\ tr. Norman Russell (Crestwood, NY: SVS
Press, 1997), 15.
8 Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 93.
9 Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 93.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 297

For it was not that gods might make, or make after the image
and likeness of gods; but that the Father, and Son, and Holy
Spirit might make after the image of the Father, and Son, and
Holy Spirit, that man might subsist as the image of God. And
God is the Trinity. But because that image of God was not
made altogether equal to Him, as being not born of Him, but
created by Him; in order to signify this, he is in such way the
image as that he is "after the image," that is, he is not made
equal by parity, but approaches to Him by a sort of likeness.10
Since human beings are ontologically and ethically distinct from
the Trinity, likeness for Augustine is a matter of degree on a
gradient scale in the chain of being to God. 11 To be an image is to be
a likeness to an original. Thus, the image of God can be more or less
deformed in a human being depending on the scale of likeness. But
no matter what the level of deformity of the image through sin, it
is never fully eradicated. Later in the De Trinitate, Augustine states,
"For, as [I] have said, although worn out and defaced by losing the
participation of God, yet the image of God still remains. For it is
His image in this very point, that it is capable of Him, and can be
partaker of Him." 12 Augustine probably held image and likeness to
be synonyms to emphasize grace in his dispute with Pelagius.
The Greek Patristic tradition held to the distinction of Irenaeus
and Origen between image and likeness while also believing that
likeness adds something to the image of God in humans. Maximus
the Confessor follows this theological anthropology, but with an
apophatic distinction between the nature of God and the image
inherited from Cappadocian thought. 13 \nAmbiguum 7, Maximus
comments:

10 De Trinitate, 7.6.12. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from the De Tnnitate will be
from the Edmund Hill, OP, translation, The Trinity (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press,
1991 & 2000).
11 De Tnnitate, 12.11.16.
12 De Tnnitate, 14.S.ÌÌ.
13 Lars Thunberg and A. L. Allchm, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthro-
pology of Maximus Confessor (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1995), 115.
298 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

As to the beginning, in addition to receiving being itself, one

receives the natural good by participation: as to the end, one
zealously traverses ones course toward the beginning and
source without deviation by means of one s good will and
choice. And through this course one becomes God, being
made by God. To the inherent goodness of the image is added
the likeness acquired by the practice of virtue and the exercise
of the will. The inclination to ascend and to see one s proper
beginning was implanted in [humanity] by nature.14
This very positive emphasis on free will and deification through
virtues is qualified in Maximus' Four Hundred Chapters on Love
with the doctrine of grace. In Century 3, chapter 25, Maximus
discusses four divine attributes communicated to humankind and
sustained by his Providence: being, eternal being, goodness, and
wisdom. The first two properties are given by nature (the image of
his being by our being, the image of his eternal being by our eternal
being) and the second two are given by grace (the likeness of his
goodness by our goodness, and the image of his wisdom by our
wisdom). 15 Maximus says, "every rational nature indeed is made to
the image of God; but only those who are good and wise are made to
his likeness."16 Maximus uses likeness to emphasize the reciprocity
between God and humans through self-determination and grace.
Lars Thunberg aptly puts it as follows: "Likeness perfects the image
character of man in that it completes what is of nature, and is thus
unchangeable, with what is of will, and thus differentiated according
to everyone's personal choice and capacity."17 Augustine and
Maximus' different theological anthropologies of image and likeness
reveal presuppositions that will influence their understanding of
original sin. W i t h one the image is shifty and corruptible—though
not eradicable—and with the other the image is unchangeable with

14 (PG 91:1084A), Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 59.

15 G. C. Berthold, Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings m The Classics of Western
Spirituality (New York: Paukst Press, 1985), 64.
16 Berthold, Four Hundred Chapters on Love, 3.25, Maximus the Confessor: Selected
Writings, 64.
17 Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 129.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 299

completion of likeness through the "incarnation of the virtues"

(άρεταΐς σωματούμενον).18
But where did Augustine and Maximus believe the image of God
was located in the human being?
Cyril of Alexandria affirmed in his Commentary on John that the
image of God is impressed on the whole human person, both body
and soul (ψυχής δέλέγω και σώματος),19 even though in other places
he relegates this only to the soul.20 Irenaeus also held that the image
character of humankind is to be predicated of the whole person
body and soul.21 He further taught that the image was a natural gift
that cannot be lost; whereas the likeness is a supernatural loss in
Adam for which Christ restores.22 So, a stream of Patristic thought
on the image of God saw the image of God as applying to the human
being in all of its parts. Gregory of Nyssa even sees the unity of the
image such that it takes place before the division of the sexes.23
Another more dominant stream of Patristic thought—which
include Augustine and Maximus—held that the soul (νους or mind/
spirit) was the location for the image of God in humans. In the Greek
Fathers, this viewpoint was represented by Clement of Alexandria,
Athanasius,24 Cyril of Jerusalem,25 and John Chrysostom to name a
few.26 Maximus ascribes the image of God to the soul in the eleventh
chapter of the first century of the Chapters on Knowledge, "God in
his goodness, creating every rational soul to his image, brings it into
being to be self-moving (αυτοκίνητος)."27 In this passage, freedom

18 Ambiguum 7 (PG 91:1032AB).

19 Commentanus in Joannes (PG 4: 822D).
20 Horn. In Lc, 96. See Ύικών" in G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford·
Oxford University Press, 2007), 411-12.
21 Gustaf Wingren, Man and the Incarnation. A Study in the Biblical Theology ofIre­
naeus (Edinburgh: Wipf and Stock, 1959), 95.
22 Everett Ferguson, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (New York: Routledge, 1990),
560.
23 Horn. Opif 16.3-7 (PG 44:180B-181A).
24 Gent, 34.
25 Gtf.,4.18.
26 Horn m Gen, 8.3-4.
27 Berthold, 130.
300 ST VLADIMIR'S T H E O L O G I C A L QUARTERLY

is characteristic of the image of God, but elsewhere Maximus also

speaks about mind (νους) and reason (λόγος) also being a part of the
image motif. \n Ambiguum 7, Maximus quotes Gregory Nazianzen
on the aphorism from 1 Cor 13:12, "Then we shall know as we
are known," and says this shall take place, "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."28
The Latin tradition almost unanimously affirmed the position
that the image of God is in the soul as well. Tatian,29 Ambrose,30
and Augustine31 all held to the soul as the place of the image of God.
In book twelve of the City of God, Augustine says, "God, then, made
man in His own image. For He created for him a soul endowed with
reason and intelligence, so that he might excel all the creatures of
earth, air, and sea, which were not so gifted."32 This is not to say that
Augustine and Maximus held to a negation of the body, but that
the connection with invisible divinity must take place through the
invisible nature of the human person. Augustine and Maximus both
saw the body as the tool to practice the virtues and take part in the
resurrection. It is only fallen human nature that limited the proper
use of the body. For Augustine this was the difference between being
"ensouled" and "enspirited,"33 and for Maximus between "being,"
34
"well-being," and "eternal well-being." Both thinkers zealously
attacked the "Origenist" ontology of the fall of pre-existent souls
into bodies as a punishment for sin. Maximus and Augustine both
defended the creationist position of the soul and body being created
by God together. One of Maximus' best defenses of the body and

28 Ambiguum 7 (PG 91: 1077B), Blowers, The Cosmic Mystery of Christ, 53-54.
29 Orat., 12,15.
30 Hexameron, 6.7.40.
31 Civ Dei y 12.23; Gen ad litt, 10.2; Ep 166.12. Unless otherwise noted, quotes from
the Civitas Dei will be the translation of R. W. Dyson, The City of God Against the
Pagans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 and 2003). All quotes from
the Genesis ad Litterum will be from the translation of Edmund Hill, OP, ed. John
Rotelle OSA (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002).
32 Civ Dei, 12.23.
33 Augustine, Gen lit, 6.28.39, p. 323.
34 Ambiguum 7 (PG 91:1073C).
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 301

soul belonging together is found in Amhiguum 7, where Maximus

talks about death:
For the soul, after the death of the body, is not simply called
soul, but the soul of a human being, indeed the soul of a
certain human being. Even after it has departed the body, the
whole human is predicated of it as part of its species according
to its condition. 35
Augustine makes a similar pastoral statement in his treatise on
Care for the Dead about the nature of humankind including both
body and soul:
Yet it follows not that the bodies of the departed are to be
despised and flung aside, and above all of just and faithful
men, which bodies as organs and vessels to all good works
their spirit hath holily used. For if a father s garment and
ring, and whatever such like, is the more dear to those whom
they leave behind, the greater their affection is towards their
parents, in no wise are the bodies themselves to be spurned,
which truly we wear in more familiar and close conjunction
than any of our putting on. For these pertain not to ornament
or aid which is applied from without, but to the very nature
of man. 36
A final comparison between Augustine and Maximus on the soul
is that of the corruption of the soul. Maximus' theology of image
and likeness and his understanding of nature prevent sin from
tainting the essential makeup of the soul. Maximus makes this point
of created ontology very clear in Amhiguum A2:
Generally speaking, all innovation (καινοτομία) is manifested
in relation to the mode (τρόπος) of the thing innovated, not
to 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. The mode thus innovated, while the natural principle is
preserved, displays a miraculous power, insofar as the nature
appears to be acted upon, and to act, clearly beyond its normal

35 Jmbiguum 7 (VG91: 1101B).

36 On Care to Be Had for the Dead, 5.5.
302 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

scope. The principle of human nature is to exist in soul and

body as one nature constituted of rational soul and a body;
but its mode is the scheme in which it naturally acts and is
acted upon, which can frequently change and undergo altera-
tion without changing at all the nature along with it. Such
is the case for every other created thing as well, when God,
because of his providence over what he has preconceived and
in order to demonstrate his power over all and through all
things, desire to renew it with respect to its creation.37
Sin for Maximus is not something that can destroy nature. It can
only distort and twist in the actualization of choice. Maximus
sees it as being more accidental to nature than a corruption of it.
Even though sin does not have metaphysical existence, it can be
existentially very real. In his spiritual interpretation of the city
of Nineveh in Ad Thalassium 64, Maximus speaks of sin as if it
were something clumping up and sticking to our nature: "The
Lord, through his three-day burial and resurrection, destroyed the
'parched blackness' of sin that has accrued to human nature through
its transgression, and renewed the 'smoothest beauty' ofthat nature
through the obedience of faith."38 This quotation by Maximus may
ring familiar with Augustine, but he does not see sin as corrupting
any part of human nature, including the soul.
Augustine, on the other hand, sees original sin as being infused
or imputed to the soul. In his Literal Interpretation of Genesis,
Augustine directly talks about the sin of the soul. In commenting
on Genesis 2:5 when God created rain to fall upon the earth,
Augustine interprets it to mean "before the soul sinned." 39 Later, in
Book 10, Augustine combats the idea of the soul being propagated
through Adam, and he puts forth the argument that the verse from
Romans 5:12, "in whom all sinned," must apply both to the flesh and
to the soul. 40 For either God is the author of sin by putting a pure
soul in a sinful body, or there is a pure soul that does not need the

37 (PG 91:1341D-1344A), Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 89-90.

38 (CCSG 22:231 ), Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 166.
39 Gen lit, ISA.
40 Gen lit, 10.18.11-19.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 303

grace of Christ to be healed. Are we to interpret Augustine as saying

that sin can corrupt ones nature? In his decade long dispute with
the Pelagians, Augustine countered a created ontology consisting
of good and evil substances and a free-will not dependent on G o d s
grace. In his work, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Augustine
describes that sin is not due to nature, but is accidental:
For in that when a man is born there is something good, so far
as he is a man, he condemns the Manichean, and praises the
Creator; but in so far as he derives original sin, he condemns
the Pelagian, and holds a Saviour necessary. For even because
that nature is said to be healable, it repels both teachings;
because it would not, on the one hand, have need of medicine
if it were sound, which is opposed to the Pelagian, nor could
it be healed at all if the evil in it were eternal and immutable,
which is opposed to the Manichean ... this is both contrary to
the Pelagians, who make this concupiscence itself a matter of
praise, and contrary to the Manicheans, who attribute it to a
foreign and evil nature, when it really is an evil accidental to
our nature, not to be separated by the disjunction from God,
but to be healed by the mercy of God.41
Augustine, then, sees sin and evil as not having real existence, but as
being an "accidental vice."42 The nature of human beings is disordered
and fragmented, but it is not completely destroyed as nature qua
nature. It is safe to say that Maximus and Augustine agree on the
metaphysical constitution of fallen humankind in terms of the soul
and its corruptibility, but Maximus creates a stronger buffer, in my
opinion, against a Manichean understanding of human nature as
evil through his distinction of image and likeness. For in Maximus'
anthropology, there is still a positive principle in humankind that
is not corrupted because of the fall, and this opens up the way of
synergy in his thought. Augustine's monergism would bewail an
accusation of Pelagianism, but Maximus would counter that the
grace of God underlies any act of reciprocity.

41 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 3.25.

42 Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, 2.2.
304 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

Augustine and Maximus: The Fall and Original Sin

Moving on to Augustine and Maximus' reflection on the Fall
itself, several similarities and differences emerge. The most obvious
difference is in the way each thinker emphasizes the historical
nature of the Fall. Augustine presents a very literal and historical
reading of Paradise and the Fall in his work On the Literal Meaning
of Genesis. In Book 8, Augustine mentions the three senses in which
people have interpreted Paradise. One is to see Paradise only in the
literal material sense, another by the spiritual sense, and a third by
a combination of the two.43 Augustine opts for the third mode of
interpretation, in which he sees Adam as being both made out of the
mud and sfigura of Christ to come as St Paul writes in Romans 5:14.
The same application goes for paradise itself and other elements of
the Edenic narrative.
Maximus does not address the historical nature of Paradise or the
Fall, but relegates it to symbolism of metaphysical principles. This
is most evidently seen in the opening response oí Ad Thalassium 61,
where Maximus discusses the creation ofhuman nature not including
sensible pleasure or pain. Instead humankind was furnished with a
type of "spiritual capacity for pleasure" that would allow it to enjoy
God ineffably. But "at the instant he was created, the first man, by
use of his senses, squandered this spiritual capacity—the natural
desire of the mind for God—on sensible things."44 So in effect
humanity fell at the first instant of creation and not necessarily due
to the temptation to eat the fruit.
One can also see this difference between Augustine and Maximus
in the discussion of the two trees in the garden. Augustine interprets
the tree of life as both a real tree and a sacramental figure of Christ.
Just as there is a heavenly Jerusalem and an earthly city, so to humans
need a bodily sign of a spiritual need and reality. Similarly, the tree
of knowledge of good and evil was a genuine tree that contained the
choice of the will of God or the vice of disobedience.45 It is not that
43 Gen lit, 8ΑΛ, p. 346.
44 (CCSG 22:85), Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 131.
45 Gen lit, 8.12.6.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 305

the tree was evil or the fruit poisonous, but that humankind "would
have had no reason to reflect that [they] had a Lord and master, and
to feel it in [their] bones, unless [they] had been given an order."46
Accordingly, the name of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is
rooted in the future painful reality of breaking the commandments
of God. The choice of Adam—rooted in pride—to touch and eat the
fruit was his own, and likewise the penalty of death that followed that
choice. For evil is "not a nature of any kind, but the loss of the good
has been given this name."47 Augustine is attempting to safeguard
the goodness of creation versus its sinful and evil use ifrui vs. uti).
H e further avers that "divine justice ensures that those who have
been willing to loose, what they ought to have loved will be grieved
by the loss of what they have in fact loved, while praise in every
case continues to redound to the creator of all natures." 48 Maximus
emphasizes the same disposition of will and love in his work, The
Ascetic Life-.
It is clear that God made them and has given them to men for
their use. Yes, everything that has been made by God is good
and fair, so that we who use them may be pleasing to God. Yet,
we, in our weakness and material-mindedness, preferred mate-
rial and worldly things above the commandment of love.49
So, in his commentary on the two trees in Genesis, Augustine
emphasizes the moral choice to violate the command of God and
to taste painful consequences of the choice. Before Adam was the
choice of either the good with the assistance of G o d s grace (the tree
of life) or the ontological state of self-reliance and "death-dealing
pleasures," which requires endless choice between "contrary pains." 50
Maximus sees the two trees in much the same way as Augustine,

46 Gen ¿it, $.12.6.

47 Gen ht, 8.31.14, p. 364
48 Gen ht, 8.31.14.
49 (PG 90: 916D-917A), Polycarp Sherwood, Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 21,
St Maximus the Confessor: The Ascetic Life, The Four Centuries on Charity (New York:
Pauhst Press, 1955), 107.
50 Gen ht, 11.75.
306 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

except that he accentuates the metaphysical significance of the two

trees. For Maximus:
The two trees are, in the symbols of Scripture, our faculties that
enable us to distinguish between particular things: our intellect,
that is, and our senses. The intellect has the ability to discern
between the intellectual and the sensible, between temporal and
eternal things; it is the gift of discernment that urges the soul to
give itself to some things and to refrain from others. The senses,
on the other hand, have the criteria for telling bodily pleasure
from pain; more precisely, they are the power of ensouled and
sensitive bodies that gives them the ability to be attracted by
pleasurable things and to avoid painful things.51
Here, Maximus is associating the tree of life with mind, which
discerns between intelligible and sensible. The senses in this
dialectic discern the difference between pleasure and pain. If Adam
chose to discern the existence of pleasure and pain from a strictly
bodily and materialistic standpoint, then they will have partaken
of evil from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and died, but
if he had contemplated on the logoi of his existence and being,
the difference between temporal and eternal—and not just banal
pleasure or pain—then Adam would have eaten of the tree of life.52
Maximus calls the fallen will, with its passibility, a kind of "mixed
knowledge." 53 The question still remains, why did Adam and Eve
choose to disobey G o d s commandment?
Augustine answers this question the same way as Maximus:
because of free-will and creatures being created ex nihilo. Since
God is not the creator of evil natures, as the Manicheans taught,
there must have been an evil will at work that preceded that action.
Augustine makes this assertion in Book 14 of the City of God,
"Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they
were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had
not an evil will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will
51 Ad Thalassium 43 (CCG 7,295,40-48) ; Hans von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy (Igna-
tius Press, 2003), 183.
52 Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 166.
53 Blowers, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, 132, note 2.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 307

but pride? For 'pride is the beginning of sin' [Sirach 10:13]." 54 In

addition to the effect original sin had on the will of humankind,
Augustine also found that it had an effect on the ordering of the
soul. H e writes that Adam s body "lost the grace whereby it used in
every part of it to be obedient to the soul."55 There are two roots for
action according to Augustine: love or cupidity. 56 Love is a good
will, and everything that is good is a gift of grace from God. 57 The
loves of Adam and Eve were rooted in self-love and pride, which
Augustine sees as the cause of the fall. The evil will then brought
forth bad fruit that was also not of God:
The good will, then, is the work of God; for God created him with
it. But the first evil will, which preceded all mans evil acts, was
rather a kind offalling awayfromthe work of God to its own works
than any positive work. And therefore the acts resulting were evil,
not having God, but the will itself for their end; so that the will or
the man himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree
bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be not
in harmony with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a vice or
blemish, yet it is true of it as of all vice, that it cannot exist except in
a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing.58
It is difficult to understand evil without a history, and Augustine
is not unaware of this perplexing and mysterious phenomenon. 5 9
In De libero arbitrio, Augustine plainly states that he does not
know why Adam would choose a nothing, a nihil, like sin. There
is not an efficient cause that can explain the choice of disobedience
rather than the Good itself. All that he can say is that it must be a
kind oidefectivus modus.60 Augustine elsewhere compares trying to
understand this deficiency like seeing darkness or hearing silence.61

54 Civ Dei, 14.13.

55 On the Merits, 1.21.
56 On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin, 1.19.
57 Against Two Letters ofPelagius, 2.18.
58 Civ Dei, 14.11.
59 Allan Fitzgerald & John C. Cavadini, Augustine through the Ages (Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1999),6ll; Civ Dei, 12.6.
60 De libero arbitrio, 2.20.
61 Civ Dei, 12.7.
308 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

Maximus, as far as I can tell from his reflections on the Fall in

the Ad Thalassium, does not answer the "how" question. Instead
he avers that it was due to the trickery of the devil62 and ignorance,
which is an irrational movement of a natural faculty toward its
unnatural end. 63 As Augustine, Maximus sees the fault of the fall
to lie within the free-will of Adam. Free-will was distorted in the
fall through what Maximus calls a "new mode of being." This new
mode of being rooted in free-will—and energized by our union
with Christ—is emphasized by Maximus through his distinction
between the natural and gnomic wills in humankind. Natural will
(θέλημα φυσικόν) is the will of the human person in their essential
nature. Adam and Eve were created with a certain logos of human
nature that included all of the aspects of being made in the image of
God. After the fall, humanity has a gnomic will (θέλημα γνωμικόν),
that is a kind o( habitus64 of will.
The term gnome appears numerous times in Maximus' writings,
but a clear definition of what it is exactly is not really given.65
Maximus does explain in his Dispute with Pyhhrus that the gnome
is a "mode of use" and not a "principle of nature."66 Dom Polycarp
Sherwood adds that gnome cannot alter or change the essential
nature of humans or the cosmos, but only their mode of being.67
After the Incarnation, the gnomic will can be re-ordered in virtue
and participate in the likeness of God through deification. The
gnomic will after the Fall for Maximus is not an isolated entity free
from the passions and existential frustrations. As Von Balthasar has
noted, Maximus and Augustine both understand the will to have an
appetite to reach for its object (δρεξις ζητητίη).68 For both thinkers,
there were grave consequences of the Fall for humankind. Augustine
saw death, pride, concupiscence, ignorance and psychological

62 Epistle 2 (PG 91: 396D).

63 Ad Thalassium, "Prologue" (CCSG 7), pp 29f.
64 Epistle6 (VG9h42$O).
65 See Sherwood, The Ascetic Life, 58-63.
66 PG91:308D.
67 Sherwood, The Ascetic Life, 58.
68 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 183.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 309

oppression all as aftereffects of the Fall.69 If Adam and Eve had not
sinned, they would have never died.70 This does not mean that they
were immortal, but the effect of bodily death would not have been
the experience of our first parents, much like the transformation
of Enoch up into heaven. Maximus saw death and passibility as
results of the Fall, and he emphasized the three primordial evils of
ignorance, self-love, and tyranny as being the foundation of all vice.71
It is the issue of Adamic guilt on which Augustine and Maximus
diverge in their theological reflections on the sin of our first parents.
Equally important for both fathers is the Christological perspective
through which to view legacy of Adam s transgression.
Augustine finds original sin to be a condition and not just an
event.72 That is to say that there is a distinction between the original
sin of the first act of sin and the original sin that is communicated
to the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. The first act of sin is
termed peccatum originale originans or "original sin as originating,"
and the inherited effects ofthat first act of sin are termed peccatum
originale originatum, "originating sin as originated."73 Augustine s
theology of original sin developed over time, especially during the
Pelagian debates. Reacting to the Pelagian assertion that God only
enacts a capacity for doing good works, and that what is inherited
from Adam is only death, Augustine affirmed the doctrine of
Original Sin as containing both death and sin in transference:
But how do the Pelagians say "that only death passed upon us
by Adams means"? For if we die because he died, but he died
because we sinned, they say that the punishment passed with-
out the guilt, and that innocent infants are punished with an
unjust penalty by deriving death without the deserts of death.
This, the catholic faith has known of the one and only media-
tor between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who conde-

69 Genlit, 11.5.7; 11.14.18; Civ Dei, 14.13; De lib arb, 1.11.22, 3.18.52; Nature and
Grace, 29.33.
70 On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins, 1.3.
71 £/>¿tf/¿2(PG91:397A).
72 Allan Fitzgerald & John C. Cavadini, Augustine through the Ages, 47.
73 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 1.11.
310 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

scended to undergo death—that is, the penalty of sin—without

sin, for us. As He alone became the Son of man, in order that we
might become through Him sons of God, so He alone, on our
behalf, undertook punishment without ill deservings, that we
through Him might obtain grace without good deservings.74
Augustine is concerned in this passage to counter two assertions
that threaten what he holds to be the Catholic faith. The first matter
is that by not affirming original sin, and asserting free-will, you
deny the need for a savior since you earn grace through merits; the
second worry is that the justice of God is vindicated. If humanity
only accepted the punishment of sin without also the commitment
of the act that deserves such death, God would seem unjust to
allow countless children to die. If Adams transgression was only in
imitation, as the Pelagians argued,75 and not innate in the human
person, then why baptize babies? They have not developed enough
to imitate anyone.76 Augustine also uses the Scriptures to argue
against inserting "by imitation" into St Pauls writings. The typology
of "in one man all died" and through "one man" comes salvation is
pressed to its logical limits and Augustine opines with a question
as to whether humans are saved through Christ or just through
imitation of Christ?77 While it is well known that Augustine was
going off of a bad Latin translation of the Greek in Romans 5:12
("in whom all sinned" instead of the more accurate "because all
sinned"), it does not limit the typological argument of Adam and
Christ he uses to talk about original sin.
According to Augustine, transmission of the Adamic nature is
transferred through one of the punishments for the original sin,
that of concupiscence. But can concupiscence rightly be called a
punishment for original sin? Augustine answers in the affirmative,
"Accordingly, criminal nature [original sin] has its part in the most
righteous punishment."78 He further notes that humans are induced
74 On Two Letters Against the Pelagians, 4.6.
75 On Merits and the Forgiveness of Sins, 1.9.
76 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 1.10.
77 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 1.19.
78 On Nature and Grace, 3.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 311

to procreation "by the concupiscence which is in his members, and

the law of sin is applied by the law of his mind to the purpose of
procreation." 79 Even if someone is a Christian, the act of procreation
remains infected by concupiscence. This does not negate the
institution of marriage for Augustine, because procreation is a part
of nature. W h a t Augustine emphasizes is that procreation cannot
take place without concupiscence. H e states, "Only the children of
God are righteous, but in so far as they are children of God, they do
not carnally beget, because it is of the Spirit, and not of the flesh,
that they are themselves begotten." Even the spiritual rebirth of
baptism did not change this aspect of the human condition. 80
I have already noted above how Augustine uses Christ as the
reciprocal remedy for human fallenness in Adam's sin. It is interesting
that Augustine further argues that Christ was born without original
sin even though his theory of its transmission would seem to imply
that he would have it through his mother Mary.
But at the same time His participation in our inferior condi-
tion, in order to our participation in His higher state, held a
kind of medium in His birth of the flesh; so that we indeed
were born in sinful flesh, but He was born in the likeness of
sinful flesh—we not only of flesh and blood, but also of the
will of man, and of the flesh, but He was born only of flesh
and blood, not of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh,
but of God.81
Christ did assume our "flesh" without sin; even though he was born
of a "maternal flesh of sin."82 Augustine then clarifies what Christ
actually did assume from human nature, "For what H e then took
of flesh, H e either cleansed in order to take it, or cleansed by taking
it."83 W h a t this passage from On Merits illustrates is the extent that
Original Sin is transmitted through procreation. Even though Mary
was of the flesh of sin, Christ has to cleanse that flesh before or during

79 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 2.11.

80 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 2.45.
81 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 2.38.
82 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 2.38.
83 On Merits and on the Forgiveness of Sins, 2.38.
312 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

his Incarnation. Maximus also uses Christ as the lens through which
to view the Adamic story, and he also believes that original sin is
transferred through procreation sans the guilt of Adam and Eve.
Maximus begins his exposition on the legacy of Adam in Ad
Thalassium 6 1 . H e reflects on a passage in 1 Peter 4 : 1 7 - 1 8 , where
the Apostle states that "the time has come for the judgment of
the house of God to begin." His response starts with the natural
disposition of humanity in Adam before the fall. The Confessor
notes,
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.84
In the garden, humans were orientated by the logoi of their nature
to enjoy the vision of God without impediment. 85 Despite the
natural spiritual capacity to enjoy God, the final telos of creation
(deification) was not realized by Adam and Eve. So, the true state
oiapatheia (disconnection or dispassion) was more of a potentiality
in human nature than an actuality because the Incarnation had not
happened at this point. 86 Similar to Augustine, Maximus holds that
this tropos of being is spread to all humans through the pleasure of
procreation.
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.87
Maximus even goes so far to say:
According to this law, nobody is impeccable, being by nature
subjected to the law of engendering, added after creation
because of sin. Whereas then, because of the transgression,

84 Ad Thalassium 61 (CCSG 22:85).

85 Ambiguum 45 (PG 91:1353D).
86 Blowers, Cosmic Mystery, 31.
87 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:87).
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 313

sin (and, because of sin, the passible in engendering) came in

upon [human] nature; and whereas the first transgression ever
flourished together with the passible of engendering through
sin, there was no hope of freedom, nature being firmly bound
in its disposition of will by an evil bond ... For having, due to
its natural situation, an increase of sin in its passible element,
it had, along with generic sin in its passible element, by means
of the unnatural passions, the activities of all celestial virtues,
principalities and powers hidden in the natural passions.88
As stated earlier, Maximus does not follow the story of Adam and
Eve in its historical narrative, but asserts that humanity fell almost
immediately. 8 9 It might be easy at this point to accuse Maximus of the
very Origenist ontology he so painstakingly rebutted, but Maximus
refutes the notion that embodiment was the punishment for sin
and the fall. Maximus also distinguishes between the first sin of
Adam coming into the world and the second sin of corruptibility. 9 0
H e follows the distinction and logic of Augustine but excludes the
inheritance of the guilt of Adam. Instead, the consequences for sin
were pain (οδύνη), sensible pleasure (ηδονή), death (θάνατος) as a
"natural punishment." 9 1 Maximus ascribes these effects of the fall as
providential and according to the "economy of salvation." H e even
says that it is not a debt owed for sin, but a vehicle to curb our mind
from inclining to sin. 9 2
It is from this point that irrational pleasure and pains enter
the human story. Maximus states, "For every suffering (πονός),
effectively having pleasure as its primary cause, is quite naturally,
in view of its cause, a penalty exacted from all who share in human
93
nature." Similar to Augustine, Maximus holds that this tropos of
being is spread to all humans through the pleasure of procreation.
Original Sin is not to be seen here as the passing on of a corrupt

88 Ad Thalassium, 21 ; Larchet "Ancestral Guilt," 30.

89 Ad Thalassium 61 (CCSG 22:85).
90 Ad Thalassium 42 (CCSG 7:285).
91 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:87).
92 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:85).
93 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:85).
314 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

nature, but the passing on of a dis-ordered mode of being in the world

that includes death and passibility. Maximus' emphasis differs from
the Western tradition of Original Sin in that he still distinguishes
between nature and tropos, and he does not associate the guilt of
Adam with his descendents, for this would offend justice.
Sin is not merely a legal phenomenon but something that affects
humanity ontologically; though it does not ontologically corrupt
our essential human nature. Sin is a false simulacrum of created
human nature; it is inhuman. Maximus sees the Incarnation as
the true substitution for humanity caught in the cycle of pain and
suffering. Because of the virgin birth, Jesus was not conceived in
a tropos of death and "a life given over to the passions." 94 Jesus'
human nature provided the open capacity that Adam enjoyed in
Paradise, but His divine nature eclipsed the possibility of actual sin.
For Maximus, the death of Christ on the cross was not a "penalty
exacted for that principle of pleasure like other human beings,
but rather a death specifically directed against that principle" as a
"judgment on sin itself."95
He exhibited the equity of his justice in the magnitude of his
condescension, when he willingly submitted to the condem-
nation imposed on our passibility and turned that very passi-
bility instrument for eradicating sin and death which is its
consequence.96
Jesus conquered the mode of sin—rooted in the gnomic will—that
placed humanity in slavery. The Confessor further comments that,
Having given our human nature impassibility through his
passion, remission through his toils, and eternal life through
his death, he restored that nature again, renewing the habi-
tudes of human nature through his own incarnation the super-
natural grace of deification.97

94 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:87).

95 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:89).
96 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:89).
97 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:91).
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 315

In his commentary on the statement by St Paul in 2 Corinthians

5:21, " H e made him who knew no sin to become sin for our sake,"
Maximus discusses the manner in which Jesus became sin.
Therefore the Lord did not know my sin, that is, the mutabil­
ity of my free choice. Neither did he assume nor become my
sin. Rather, he became the sin that I caused; in other words
he assumed the corruption of human nature that was a conse­
quence of the mutability of my free choice. For our sake he
became a human being naturally liable to passions, and used
the sin that I caused to destroy the sin that I commit. 98
The condescension of the god-man brings about a new possibility
that Adam did not have, the chance for a "second nativity for
human nature." 9 9 Sin "nailed itself in Adam to the very depths
of our nature ... pressing the nature of all created beings towards
mortal extinction," but Christ "converted the use of death, turning
it into a condemnation of sin but not of human nature itself."100 The
substitution that Maximus affirms is condemnation of our human
nature through death because of sin for the condemnation of sin
in Christ because of his righteousness. 1 0 1 In this perspective Christ
does not suffer and die because of sin, but instead bestows grace
in the economy of salvation as sin and death s condemnation and
102
destruction. This is what Maximus sees as the Gospel of G o d :
The incarnate Son is God's ambassador and advocate for
humanity, and has earned reconciliation to the Father for
those who yield to him for the deification that is without
103
origin.
There is an implicit link here between Christ s substitution
for our ancestral sin and Maximus' so called Neo-Chalcedonian
Christology. His perichoretic doctrine of the communicatio idiom-
atum or "exchange of properties" affirms that in the person of Jesus

98 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 7: 287).

99 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:91).
100 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:93).
101 AdThalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:97).
102 Ad Thalassium, 61 (CCSG 22:97).
103 Ad Thalassium, 6\ {CCSG 22Λ01).
316 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

Christ there is a fully human nature and a fully divine nature each
with their own properties, neither of which are diminished by the
union (άντίδοσις) in the Incarnation. 104 Christology affirms the
positivity of human existence in all of its aspects and provides the
theological vocabulary for addressing the real dynamic power of the
Incarnation for understanding how it is that Christ became sin for
us. Thus, Maximus sees the cross as a part of a metaphysical narrative
that understands Incarnation as the mystery of the cosmos and
deification as its goal. Christ s hypostatized humanity, substitution
in death, and victory in resurrection offers the Christian the
overcoming of original sin and the synergetic power to achieve
deification through grace. Because humanity is created in the image
of God, which cannot be corrupted, and because Christ took on all
that human beings are in their gnomic existence (body, mind, will,
e t c . ) , likeness to God through deification can be achieved in part
in this life with fulfillment in the eschaton.

Conclusion
Augustine and Maximus offer similar and contrasting accounts
of how the first parents of humankind fell from the presence of
God and how the legacy ofthat transgression is passed on to every
member of the human race. Augustine offers a reading of the Genesis
account that sets free-will, pride, and creation ex nihilo as being the
cause of Adam and Eve choosing disobedience. Subsequently, guilt
and death entered human history and is passed on through their
seed. Because of his understanding of the image of God and free­
will being marred after the Fall, Augustine s monergism could not
affirm that anyone could do anything good of themselves. Maximus'
metaphysics and spiritual theology of the image and likeness of God
allowed a synergy that could be based both on grace and virtue.
Origens perfectionism is countered in Maximus by the notion of
a fallen will by gnome and not by nature. Free-will is marred by
the Fall, but it is still an essential principle of humanity for which
Christ the new Adam restores. The Original Sin of Adam does not
104 See Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 36-48.
The Transgression of Adam and Christ the New Adam 317

create a guilty damned human nature that afflicts the whole genus of
humanity, but it is a mode of nature passed on through procreation
and stricken with pain, suffering, and unnatural pleasure turning
over and over in a vicious cycle of false desire and entrapment. My
argument is that Maximus' reading of the Scriptural passages on
Original Sin, the metaphysics of his Christology, and the synergism
of his anthropology offers us a better dialectic in which to
understand the effects of sin on our human nature without having
to disregard grace or free-will. Maximus' vision of a recapitulated
cosmos through the Incarnation of the god-man Jesus Christ also
offers a model of grace and nature that avoids monergistic pitfalls,
and provides an upshot of a positive affirmation of a created human
nature.
 ^ s
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