St. Maximus the Confessor

Oversimplified

• St. Maximus the Confessor (7th c.), the great synthesizer of Greek patristic thought, who defended that Christ has two wills — divine and human — and suffered mutilation for it.
• His vision of all creation returning to God through the God-man ties together Christology, cosmology, and theosis.

Summary

St. Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662) opposed Monotheletism, the teaching that Christ had only one (divine) will. He argued that a complete human nature includes a human will; to deny it is to leave humanity unhealed. For refusing to be silenced he had his tongue and right hand cut off — hence "Confessor." The Sixth Ecumenical Council (681) vindicated him.[^1]

The cosmic Christ

Maximus taught that Christ, the divine Logos, is the meaning (logos) of every created thing, and that the incarnate Word gathers a fractured cosmos back into union with God — the human person as "microcosm and mediator." His work is a summit of the theology of Theosis. See Christology, The Incarnation, Theosis.

[^1]: St. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua and Disputation with Pyrrhus; his teaching was vindicated at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (681).