A monk in a divided empire
Maximus lived during a period of war and intense debate over how to speak about Jesus Christ. Traditional Greek accounts associate his early monastic life with Chrysopolis, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. His later career carried him into North Africa and Rome. He opposed imperial attempts to settle the dispute by requiring agreement with one formula, or by prohibiting further discussion. The Lateran council of 649 rejected the teaching of one will in Christ and the imperial decree known as the Typos. Maximus became one of the most prominent defenders of that position.[1]
In Carthage in 645, he debated Pyrrhus, a former patriarch of Constantinople. His resistance eventually brought trials and repeated exile. In 662 his tongue and right hand were cut off, and he was banished to Lazica, in the region of present-day Georgia, where he died. The title Confessor remembers his suffering for the faith. He is honored as a monk and teacher, not as a bishop. The later Sixth Ecumenical Council affirmed the doctrine for which he had suffered.[2]
Why Christ’s human will mattered
The question was whether the one person of Jesus Christ, confessed as fully divine and fully human, possesses the natural capacity to will both as God and as man. Monothelitism affirms one will; dyothelitism affirms two. The distinction concerns the completeness of Christ’s humanity, rather than a division of Christ into two persons. A humanity without a human will would lack something integral to human life.[3]
The definition of the Third Council of Constantinople, held in 680–681 and counted as the Sixth Ecumenical Council, teaches two natural wills and two natural operations in Christ. It also says that his human will is not opposed to his divine will. Human obedience is therefore real, rather than a divine activity merely appearing to be human. The prayer in Gethsemane is an important scriptural setting for this teaching: the Gospel presents Christ’s acceptance of suffering as the obedience of the incarnate Son.[3]
The range of his writings
Maximus wrote in several forms: short spiritual chapters, letters, dialogues, and extended explanations of difficult texts. The Ambigua, often translated as On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, explores passages from earlier Christian writers through sustained theological and philosophical argument. Its subjects include creation, human nature, language, and the relation between the visible and invisible. It belongs to a much wider intellectual world than a collection of sayings alone might suggest.[4]
The Questions to Thalassius addresses difficulties in Scripture. Together with the Ambigua, it shows how Maximus connects particular interpretive problems with the renewal of creation in Christ. His concern extends from the spiritual struggle of an individual to the purpose of the created world. These larger works help explain why readers encounter him in studies of biblical interpretation, Christology, and Christian accounts of the cosmos.[5]
The Mystagogy turns to the Church and the Divine Liturgy. It interprets worship as participation in the mystery of Christ, rather than treating liturgical actions only as external ceremonies. The work’s later influence makes it an important companion to his ascetical writings: prayer, communal worship, and theological reflection are closely connected within his thought.[6]
The Lord’s Prayer and the Ascetic Discourse
The commentary on the Lord’s Prayer begins as a response to a correspondent. Its opening connects understanding the prayer with putting it into practice. Maximus reads its petitions in relation to the Incarnation, adoption by grace, liberation from sin, and the restoration of human life. Calling God Father is consequently more than a form of address: it belongs to a changed relationship with God, received through the Son in the Holy Spirit. The work asks the reader to move between familiar words and the larger Christian account of salvation.[7]
The Ascetic Discourse uses a different form: a brother questions an elder. Its first question asks why the Lord became man. The answer moves through creation, humanity’s fall, Christ’s saving work, and the gift of the Holy Spirit before turning to the commandments. The dialogue places practical instruction within that narrative. It does not begin with a self-contained program of discipline, but with the question of what Christ has done and how a Christian life responds.[7]
Four Hundred Chapters on Love
The Chapters on Love consists of four groups of one hundred brief sections. A “century” here means a hundred chapters, not a period of time. The opening sequence traces connections among faith, self-restraint, patience, hope, freedom from the passions, and love. Its short units often depend on the movement of the surrounding chapters; they are not simply unrelated maxims.[7]
Maximus’s language about freedom from the passions can sound like a call to emotional indifference if read in isolation. Yet the first century also connects love of God with love for every human being and joy at another person’s amendment. In this setting, the struggle against the passions concerns the desires and hostilities that prevent love. Reading the early chapters together makes the relationship between prayer, detachment, and concern for one’s neighbor easier to see.[7]
A practical point in the parish study cited here is the distinction between a faculty of the soul and its misuse. Desire and the capacity for anger are not treated as things simply to erase; the question is how they are directed. This helps explain why Maximus can discuss demanding ascetical practices alongside patience, generosity, and mercy. His moral vocabulary concerns the healing of human life, not merely the suppression of outward behavior.[2]
Books and where to begin
On Prayer and Divine Love brings the commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, the Ascetic Discourse, and the four centuries on love together. Begin with the dialogue for an introduction through questions and answers, or with the commentary if you want to follow a familiar prayer. Read the chapters on love in small connected groups. The volume contains these three works; it is not a collected edition of all Maximus’s writings.
Related authors and places
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite provides an earlier example of Greek Christian reflection on symbols and divine knowledge. Saint Gregory of Nyssa offers another patristic approach to human nature and its transformation. For a later exposition of Christ’s two natures and wills, see Saint John of Damascus. The monastery library introduces communities connected with authors represented in this catalog.
Follow Maximus’s prayer commentary through the Orthodox prayer guide, or compare his work with Cyril and John of Damascus in the theology reading guide.