Epistle to Thomas

“Epistle to Thomas” (18 chapters) written by St. Maximus the Confessor, probably in 640 (or 635-636). The work is a continuation of the “Difficulties to Thomas”, in response to which St. Maxim received clarifying questions from the addressee. The message sets out in detail the doctrine of two wills in Christ and refutes monothelitism. St. Maximus explains that Christ, being both perfect God and perfect man, has two wills: Divine and human. Each will acts according to its nature, but they are in perfect harmony and unity. The author consistently refutes the arguments of monothelitism supporters who claim that Christ had only one will. He proves that the presence of two wills does not contradict the unity of the Person of Christ, but, on the contrary, confirms the fullness of His human nature and the ability to redeem humanity. The absence of human will in Christ would make the complete deification of human nature impossible. It was the voluntary acceptance of suffering and death on the cross, manifested by human will, that became a sacrifice for the sins of the world. Denying the human will in Christ is tantamount to belittling human nature as a whole and belittling the gift of freedom given to man. *The title of the work in Latin is Epistula Secunda ad Thomam. To the sanctified servant of God, the spiritual father and teacher, Mr. Thomas, humble and sinful Maxim, an unworthy servant and disciple. 1. They say that the hypostasis of wisdom is virtue, and the essence of virtue is wisdom. Therefore, the proof of constant wisdom is the image of learning by contemplation, the solid foundation of virtue is the logos of practical contemplation, and both have the most unfalse character - a close examination of the truly unshakable existence, divided into desire and fear; one attracts to Beauty, the other frightens with the greatness of the Creator; from them comes the merging of those worthy with God, according to unmixed unity, creating those who undergo by position that [being] which is called by nature Creator. 2. So, these, sanctified ones, you, like no other mortal, prefer to everything: having shown wisdom constantly manifested in the image of those who are accomplished, and having presented virtue firmly confirmed by the Logos of the conceivable, you have made both of them a character of the desire for true being, restrained by the desire and fear of the Creator. According to this desire, being united completely with all of God in a spiritual way, you unfailingly move through faith to participate in the vision of goods, the discovery of which is deification, signified by those saints through whom God becomes recognizable to mortals. Therefore, exercising with insatiability only in idolizing knowledge, you have an ever-moving desire, which makes food for you the father of desire, paradoxically increasing hunger through the sacrament. 3. For this reason, pearl, you again ask for dirt; eating grains - stained with manure; pure and radiant and not bearing the sign of carnal substance and convinced of the futility of this transitory life, laughing at the luminous and flaming minds - making the stench of passions the only sign of life. And you force me, who cannot withstand the weight of your extreme God-imitable exhaustion, to again touch the spiritual logos, [me], who has not yet accepted the baptism of John through doing [the virtues], nor who has heard whether there is a Holy Spirit through spiritual contemplation. However, I will take on this, being bold (for who is bolder than an ignorant teacher), fulfilling your commandment, my master and sanctified father, supported by your prayers, and I create this main word, starting from the first of those presented. 4. St. Gregory from the first word about the Son: “Therefore the Monad, moving from the beginning, stopped at the Triad” and again from the second [word] about the world: “For the Monad, moving because of wealth, transgressed the dyad (for it is higher than matter and form from which bodies are composed), and was determined by the Triad because of perfection.” 5. Since you commanded to reconcile in these words the various causes of the movement of the pre-primordial Monad and to free the exhausted mind from bewilderment about them, I, the God-honored ruler, see - although the sight of the soul is taken away due to stupidity of reasoning - the same reason, mentally represented from both [words], which the teacher himself establishes in a clear and definite [way], having nothing mysterious, in the word about the Son, saying: “We honor unity of command; however, not that unity of command that is determined by the unity of a person (for even one, if it is in discord with itself, will form a multitude), but that which constitutes the equality of nature, the unanimity of the will, the identity of the movement and direction towards the one of Those Who are from the One...” ...on both. I say that the same is the movement of human knowledge about how the Monad is a Triad, unable to simultaneously comprehend how in the Divine the logos of being and the mode of existence are jointly revealed. 6. So, the Monad moves because of wealth, so that the deity, which is Jewishly abbreviated by the definition of one person, is not poor, but surpasses the dyad, so that the Divinity is not understood as a body in volume, form, appearance and contemplated image; limited to the Triad because of perfection, so that there is no discord in the Divinity, in Hellenic style in the mythological multitude. For the only [being] - perfect - [is being] by nature uncomplicated, undispersed and simultaneously avoiding singularity in hypostasis, duality in matter and multiplication in essence. This is precisely what I clearly showed through the sent tomos, saying: “For this means to surpass the dyad and not stop at the dyad, and again to limit ourselves to the triad and to stop at the Triad the movement of the Monad, if only we honor the Oneness of Command, not covetous, as determined by one person, or again disorderly, as spreading into the limitless, but which [is] the Trinity of one honor by nature: the Father, the Son and the co-numbered Holy Spirit”; and again: “Since the Divinity [is] a monad and not a dyad, not a Triad, not a multitude, as beginningless, incorporeal and without contention.” 7. So, holy father, I did not hide any of the difficulties, keeping [them under] a certain mysterious meaning for more prepared listeners (for who surpasses you in understanding or proclaiming [things] divine?), but I expressed everything according to my strength, although my presentation is simple in appearance, as you can see from what has been stated. 8. The same from the same word: “[The Divine] through the mind entered into communion with the flesh, and the inferior man became God after he united with God and became one with Him, because the best prevailed.” 9. And this, holy father, [I] did not leave unexamined, but to the best of my strength and capacity of reason, written in the letter sent to you, [and] in need of testing the following: “So, the Logos, [Himself] alien to change, became impoverished to our passionate nature and through the Incarnation truly accepted the weakness of nature, welcomed as God visible and God from below, through flesh, by nature passionate, gloriously discovered super-infinite power. And after the flesh was clearly mixed with God and became one [with Him], having reached the Strongest, [it] was completely deified in the identity of the hypostasis by the Logos who perceived it.” 10. So, how could I, a servant of God, a beggar in word and mind, explain this more clearly? For I said that the flesh was mingled with God and became one [with Him], having achieved the best; and explaining how and to what extent this achievement became real, he added: “she was completely deified by the hypostatic identity with the Logos who perceived her”; and in order to clearly convey what the incarnate Logos did by achieving hypostatic identity, explaining “how?”, I say “completely”, and “how much?” - that “as far as He could deify it by perception according to hypostasis.” For if the Logos Himself, always unchangeable, through unexpected impoverishment made for Himself the seed of His own flesh, it is clear that the flesh, completely united with Him, found its hypostasis in Him, i.e. I want to say that in relation to hypostasis, the flesh was no different from the Logos. If according to hypostasis to the Logos... ...believing that the Lord took the experience of men [...], in our likeness, only except for sin. It would not be safe to say that the achievement was accomplished in a different way, which characterizes the perceived nature essentially, so as not to not know to us that the difference in the natural property of intelligently animated flesh, after unification, is abolished by the better, and that there is no sign testifying to its own existence. 11. It was precisely in this way that Severus, the most wicked disciple of the wicked Apollinaris, who thought, dogged the single complex nature of Christ and His single energy, [thereby] clearly alienating Him by nature and energy from the Father and Mother. For if, according to Sevier, Christ is a complex nature, [then] Christ by nature is completely complex; if Christ is complex by nature, then Christ is Christ by nature; if, according to Sevier, Christ is Christ by nature, then He is not consubstantial with either the Father or the Mother, unless the Father and Mother are Christs by nature, and [then] Christ will be a middle nature, having from those two (Father and Mother) energy that essentially characterizes this nature. [But] obviously, it is impossible for nature to be some kind of middle ground between God and creation, not participating in either [nature] and not being composed of both, so as not to [be like] those depicting a half-goat, half-horse. 12. For this reason, we must not be mistaken in the unity [of natures], so as not to accept the heresy of Nestorius, who became the culprit of idolatry alien to us, nor to destroy [their] difference, so as not to allow, during their mutual penetration, the thoughtless Apollinarian confusion, which introduced the new nature to us; but just as we piously know [Him in] significantly different [natures] in the identity of a single hypostasis, so we confess Him in the diversity of natural properties [natures] united by hypostasis. [At the same time] we do not undermine, hide or destroy either one or the other natural [properties], so as not to spoil in any way the meaning of [their] existence and nature, destroying everything (for the imperfect meaning of nature means nothing), and dooming ourselves to take a share in an imperfect salvation or to completely fall away from the whole because of cowardice or passionate ignorance and depriving ourselves of this [salvation]. For [He who is] God by nature, having become truly man by nature, is at once true God and at the same time true man, whereby He naturally possesses everything [proper] to these natures, having each of them perceived (except for sin, the inventor of which is the mind moving against nature): whereas He would not be one of them truly, if they believed that He did not sufficiently possess [the properties of] each of them. If both [natures] really exist, because, as is customary [from the Fathers], everything by which each [of natures] is contemplated is perceived naturally, [then] we will understand the achievement, believing that truly the Creator of all things, Himself remaining unchangeable in Divinity, having been conceived in the Virgin mother, as He Himself desired, took upon Himself [human] nature, becoming unknown to it at conception hypostasis. By this nature, I say, he was born of a mother, born before all ages from the Father, being by nature a man as perfectly as he was God. If He perceived each of them - for obviously He was perfect in both [natures], Himself becoming a hypostasis for them - then He also perceived their essential movements, Himself appearing to them as unity, as natural to Him and unmerged with each other in the manner characteristic of unity. Without them it was absolutely impossible to know what He was and how He was; both Apollinaris and Sevier would have destroyed, destroying those who created the natural properties of His intelligently animated flesh, in order to show that, by attributing to God in the Manichaean way only the image of flesh, a naked image, or, let’s say more decently, only a name, they deprived it of the reality of the thing. From the interpretation of the letter of St. Dionysius to Gaius. 13. “And all the other [actions] with which He independently and unsuspiciously performed us for the sake of economy, following the example of the soul moving the body naturally fused with it, moving the acquired nature as truly becoming and called His or, better to say, Himself invariably becoming what nature really is.” 14. I am amazed at your wisdom, truly beloved, and I never cease to be amazed at such firmness. For by questioning you teach and by teaching you philosophize and by humiliating yourself you build up and through those who are contrary you straighten out the opposite, portraying in everything and before everyone the exhaustion, salvation and love of the Lord. 15. Thanks to the spirit of meekness received from Him, you turned into an infallible teaching the question you posed in this way: “Do we say that in Christ every movement, without exception, is unique and divine, or, therefore, the movement of the soul is preserved, mediating between God the Word and the flesh, to which, according to the definition of the divine Gregory, the suffering of the flesh naturally refers?” And in a few words, instructing everyone to piety, knowing and pointing out that there is nothing more irresistible than truth, avoiding the verbal quackery of disputants and looking for those who are able, for the sake of poverty of spirit, to free themselves, like unleavened bread, from the leaven of passions and to get rid, like fishermen, from the waves of worldly temptations; [looking for] those who, not tolerating any pharisaism in conversation and having to be born by the fire of knowledge, for this reason believed in the Gospel. Having sought among them, most holy [father], [and], through similar states, having found and entrusted yourself to the ministry of the word, not needing to add anything to it from human reasoning, but having received reconciling grace by divine choice and purity of life, [you] apostolically taught about the meaning of the incarnation of the Lord, [who] through the rational soul united with the flesh and acted with it what is proper to it. You tried to set the words of the glorious Gregory as the limit of piety, so that we would know that the perceived nature is preserved in the integrity of its essential movements, without which the economy is completely meaningless if we do not have in Christ the nature according to us, reliably supported through its essential movement, the denial of which is equivalent to the destruction of nature itself. 16. And it is obvious that [approaches to this] a chorus of demoniacs - I mean Simon and Valentinus, and Manentus, Arius and Apollinaris and Eutyches, Dioscorus and Timothy, and Sevirus - who abuse the name Christians to the destruction of many and, together with the destruction of the perceived nature, come to deny its movement, and therefore [they] say that the Lord [was] rather the ghost of one empty image of the flesh, than by truth by a being, certainly realized by flesh, intelligently animated. Having dogmatized the single divine nature and energy of Christ, they come to the conclusion that the divine essence will either seem fictitious, deceptively acquiring the properties of our nature, or [will be] changed and, contrary to nature, subjugated by it. Truly such recognize one nature and movement of Christ; among such, the fleshiness of the Divinity is fictitious, and the Divinity is embodied deceptively and, contrary to nature, is subject to the movements of the flesh; among such, Christ, by the same energy of opposite [natures], will have, on the one hand, miracles from the power that occurs naturally, and on the other hand, will, contrary to nature, be deprived of it [as] subject to passions. Such define one and the same Christ by one and the same nature and effectively as passionate and dispassionate and do not consider anything more glorious than vain faith... [and a little lower] 17. We heard the great David saying that the beginning of divine words is truth, and from Ezra we are clearly taught that it overcomes everything as one strong one, for it is the existence of beings and is set as the indestructible foundation of the logoi, the most divine of them [i.e. beings, being], for it constantly gives to those who contain [it] the proof of all words and all deeds. If [my] word has outlined, to the best of my ability, the truth, [and] there is nothing more necessary than the truth; therefore, everything that is really involved in the truth is absolutely necessary. So, if we believe that Christ is in essence and by nature completely true God and in His essence and nature completely true man, nothing is more necessary than to always think and say that neither of His two natures is unique, but according to the number of [their] quantity is revealed [in Him] through essential differences from which [and] in which [He] is assured and in which [His being] is. Most of all [this must be done] when language and circumstances distort the correct teaching, when it is necessary to unite with the truth and clearly show agreement with it, so that we not only believe piously in our hearts, but also know with our lips, confessing correctly everywhere before everyone. [at the end] 18. But well, my honest head, now even more than before, be the most humane judge of what I have written, [for you] are so much superior to me in the height of virtue, as I have diminished and experienced the intellectual power of my soul through the corruption of passions. Comfort me, easing the burden of the evils that envelop me with the greatness of your virtue, [me], who has become a soul like “skin on the hip” (Ps. 119:83), dried up by the frost of sin and warped by the memory of eternal torment. Renew me by putting off the old [life] and [make me] the receptacle of the one mystical word according to Christ, which secretly communicates to you the boiling of the spirit, exciting and igniting the soul with love [only] to one Creator, to Whom be glory and dominion forever. Amen.