On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ Quotes

“if life always went well, would we not become so attached to our present state, even though we know it will not last, and by deception become enslaved to pleasure? In the end we would think that our present life is the best and noblest, and forget that, being made in the image of God, we are destined for higher things.”56”
― St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“By his gracious condescension God became man and is called man for the sake of man and by exchanging his condition for ours revealed the power that elevates man to God through his love for God and brings God down to man because of his love for man. By this blessed inversion, man is made God by divinization and God is made man by hominization.45 [1084D] For the Word of God and God wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystey of his embodiment.”
― John Behr, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“For through the presence of God we are called gods (Jn 10:35), children of God (Jn 1:12), the body (Eph 1:23) and members (Eph 5:30) of God, even “portion of God.” In God’s purpose this is the end toward which our lives are directed. For this end man was brought into the world.”
― St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“we believe that a logos of angels preceded their creation, a logos preceded the creation of each of the beings and powers that fill the upper world, a logos preceded the creation of human beings, a logos preceded everything that receives its becoming from God, and so on. It is not necessary to mention them all. The Logos whose excellence is incomparable, ineffable and inconceivable in himself is exalted beyond all creation and even beyond the idea of difference and distinction.”
― St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“teleologically speaking, bodies are called into partnership with souls to attain to full communion with God. Historical, bodily existence is marked by inequalities and ambiguities, but these have become the very resources, as it were, out of which arises the new creature in Christ.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“all Christians are called to an “ascetic” life broadly understood, insofar as every believer must aspire, through disciplined practice (πρᾶξις) and contemplation (θεωρία), exercising every level of the life of the soul and the body, to participate in the transfiguration of the cosmos—indeed, to be a miniature demonstration of its realization—and thereby to share actively in Christ’s mediation of the new creation.67”
― St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“Yet there is purpose in all this, for when we reflect on the instability and fickleness of such things, we are led to seek refuge in the enduring things that are to come. For if life always went well, would we not become so attached to our present state, even though we know it will not last, and by deception become enslaved to pleasure? In the end we would think that our present life is the best and noblest, and forget that, being made in the image of God, we are destined for higher things.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“in Ambiguum 42, where he describes the distinctive but connected origins of body and soul, and their synthesis in a single human species, and more importantly, the assumption by the New Adam of the first Adam’s soul-body constitution.40 In the incarnation, the Logos who created universal humanity fashioned his own manhood in a (prelapsarian) Adamic perfection; he himself modeled the perfect co-existence of intelligent soul and material body.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“Christ is the two natures, however, not in the sense that the natures are purely collapsible or reducible to the one hypostasis. It is a properly and perfectly irreducible relationship between his person and natures”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“when Jonah prefigures the God who for our sake became like us, through flesh animated by a rational soul, save only without sin (Heb 4:15), he marks out in advance the mystery of the incarnation and the sufferings that accompanied it.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“For if reason is the limit and measure of created beings, then being moved contrary to (παρά) that [213] limit and measure, or else beyond (ὑπέρ) that limit and measure, is tantamount to irrationality”
― St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“from death as a condemnation of sin and, like Christ, the captain of our salvation (Heb 2:10), turned death from a weapon to destroy human nature into a weapon to destroy sin. For if sin maintains death as a weapon to destroy human nature in those who, with Adam, keep sin active, how much more will human nature boast death as a weapon to destroy sin in those who realize righteousness through faith in Christ!13”
― St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“Through the abundant grace of the Spirit it will be shown that God alone is at work, and in all things there will be only one activity,20 that of God and of those worthy of kinship with God. God will be all in all wholly penetrating all who are his in a way that is appropriate to each (cf 1 Cor 15:28).”
― St. Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“The essence of the scriptural law is thus summarized in Jesus’s dictum Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19:18; Mt 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mk 12:31). Finally, the spiritual law, or law of grace, leads humanity to the ultimate imitation of the love of Christ demonstrated in the incarnation, a love which raises us to the level of loving others even above ourselves, a sure sign of the radical grace of deification. It is enshrined in Jesus’s teaching that There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend (Jn 15:13).”
― John Behr, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings

“In company with all of these achievements, and yet after them all, God fulfilled for our sake the truly new mystery of his incarnation, a mystery for which and through which all these other things took place. Here again, [1345A] God innovated human nature in terms of its mode, not its principle, by assuming flesh mediated by an intelligent soul; for he was ineffably conceived without human seed and truly begotten as perfect man without corruption, having an intelligent soul together with his body from the very same moment of his ineffable conception. That Every Nature, by its Proper Principle, Always Has Its Own End (τέλος)”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“As Maximus explains in Ad Thalassium 64, each law has its own proper discipline (ἀγωγή) and its own place within the gospel of Jesus. The natural law trains us in the basic solidarity and single-mindedness appropriate to individual human beings who share a common nature; it is enshrined in Jesus’s Golden Rule (Mt 7:12; Lk 6:31). The scriptural law leads to a higher discipline wherein human beings are motivated no longer by the mere fear of divine punishment but by a deep-seated embrace of the principle of mutual love. “For the law of nature,” writes Maximus, “consists in natural reason assuming control of the senses, while the scriptural law, or the fulfillment of the scriptural law, consists in the natural reason acquiring a spiritual desire conducive to a relation of mutuality ith others of the same human nature.”44 The essence of the scriptural law is thus summarized in Jesus’s dictum Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19:18; Mt 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mk 12:31). Finally, the spiritual law, or law of grace, leads humanity to the ultimate imitation of the love of Christ demonstrated in the incarnation, a love which raises us to the level of loving others even above ourselves, a sure sign of the radical grace of deification. It is enshrined in Jesus’s teaching that There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend (Jn 15:13).”
― John Behr, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“Pride (τύφος) alone, an accursed passion composed of the two vices of arrogance (ὑπερηφανία) and vainglory (κενοδοξία), is able truly to imprint the will.16 Arrogance denies the Cause of virtue and nature, while vainglory adulterates nature and virtue themselves. The arrogant accomplish nothing godly, and the vainglorious produce nothing natural. Pride is a combination of these two vices. It is contemptuous toward God and accordingly reproaches his providence to the point of blasphemy. Pride is a stranger to nature, and accordingly manipulates everything natural against nature, and in its abusive way distorts the beauty of nature.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“In the Ad Thalassium, Maximus reveals his debt to the Alexandrian hermeneutical tradition, including the principle that the Holy Spirit has inserted “obstacles” (σκάνδαλα) in Scripture to prompt us to explore its deeper mysteries”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“For the Word of God and God wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystey of his embodiment.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“For God is the beginning and the end. From him come both our moving in whatever way from a beginning and our moving in a certain way toward him as an end.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“As Maximus further concludes, the three laws exhibit the principal ends to which human nature is called: the natural law grants us the fundamental enjoyment of being (τὸ εἶναι), the scriptural law the enjoyment of a higher well-being (τὸ εὖ εἶναι), the spiritual law the beatific grace of eternal well-being (τὸ ἀεὶ εὖ εἶναι).”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“For the Origenists pre-existent souls, who had “cooled off,” moved away from an initial unity with God; for Maximus, human beings, who in a historical fall abused their freedom to turn toward what was worse, in Christ are able to move toward God who draws them by grace into his divinizing life. The argument turns on the understanding of movement. For Origen the basic scheme was rest (στάσις) in God followed by movement (κίνησις) away from God that led to “becoming” (γένεσις), the coming into being of things, i.e. the creation of the world. Maximus argues that his view cannot withstand philosophical scrutiny. For it assumes that God, who is supremely beautiful and ultimately desirable, is incapable of satisfying the desire of those who seek God. If rational beings had in fact reached the “end,” that is, rest in God, and were moved to turn away from God, what will prevent this from happening again and again. “What could be greater reason to despair?” asks Maximus.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“Maximus further concludes, the three laws exhibit the principal ends to which human nature is called: the natural law grants us the fundamental enjoyment of being (τὸ εἶναι), the scriptural law the enjoyment of a higher well-being (τὸ εὖ εἶναι), the spiritual law the beatific grace of eternal well-being (τὸ ἀεὶ εὖ εἶναι).”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“when God “joined himself to us” and a “new way of being human appeared,”37 the person of Christ, true God and true man.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“described the theological achievement of Maximus the Confessor in terms of a grand “symphony of experience” rather than a perfectly contoured and self-enclosed doctrinal system.10 More recently Cyril O’Regan, again using the analogy of a “symphonic” theology, has suggested that Maximus’s work is an extended and richly textured gloss on the Chalcedonian Definition, which functions for him as “a dense knot of implication, both visionary and interpretive,” that holds the mysterious key to the world and its salvation.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“Maximus presupposes the principle of the “non-existence” of evil objects of human infatuation. Beginning with Adam, humanity has been deceived by merely apparent goods, which, ontologically speaking, do not participate in the true Good and thus do not truly exist. They “exist” only in human fantasy and attendant passions and sinful acts.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“This triad of virtue, knowledge, and mystical theology evokes the three dimensions of the spiritual life—ascetic practice (πρᾶξις), contemplation (θεωρία), and mystical theology (θεολογία)—which Maximus appropriated from Evagrius and”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“triad of “being,” “well-being,” and “eternal well-being” which is central to his teaching on creation, redemption, and deification.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“He furthermore displayed the “smoothest” beauty of all in human nature, that of the incorruptibility granted through resurrection, a beauty in no way coarsened by materiality.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ

“God does in truth both destroy it and save it. [231] He destroys it by causing it to abandon its sin, and he saves it by correcting it with the acquisition of true knowledge; or better yet, he destroys the city’s sin with revitalized faith, and brings about its salvation through the death of that sin.”
― Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ