The Land of Unlikeness

Here is the second installment of my paper on a mutually enriching conversation between Maximus Confessor’s theological vision and the Christian tradition of hospitality; a scaled down version of which I recently presented at the Pappas Conference on the Church Fathers at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary. The section of the paper below follows upon my previous post and an exploration of Maximus’ Christology (which I am not posting on TLOU). Thank you for your attention and any thoughts you may have…

III. Created Ecstasy: Maximus’ Understanding of Humankind as Microcosm
Lars Thunberg, perhaps the most immanent living Maximian scholar, shows, in his magisterial study Microcosm and Mediator, that in Maximus there is an analogy between the unity of divine and human natures in Christ and the unity of body and soul in humanity.1 This image of the unity in Christ reflected by the unity of human nature points to constitution of humankind as microcosm. According to Thunberg the Confessor considers the constitution of created humanity “as an ontological preparation for the eschatological mystery of theandrism.”2 The task of humankind is a mission in the world and it presupposes the theandric, Incarnational schema we have been articulating in Maximus’ theological ontology and Christology for its total realization. According the Thunberg there are three key ideas or factors that propel toward the idea of the human as microcosm. They are
(a) His understanding of the relation between unity and multiplicity; (b) his christological interpretation of the created cosmos; and (c) the influence of the Cappadocian Fathers, who had already made use of this idea in a Christian sense. Furthermore, at this point a decisive influence should also be seen in Nemesius of Emessa.3

In Nemesius the understanding of humankind as microcosm is linked directly to a divine task given to humanity. This task is one of unifying through himself the opposing poles of the cosmos. So it is not only through his constitution of reflecting the world (the body-soul unity reflects the unity of natures in Christ as well as the permeation of the created world by the Spirit of God) but it is also through an act of mediation. Humanity has been placed by God in an intermediary position (he is the meeting of the spiritual and sensual) in order to carry out this act of unification of difference. Since the things of the world are reflected in humanity God gives him the vocation of gathering them all together for their and his final telos or goal, which is ultimately deification or a transfigured cosmos. He should integrate or harmonize opposite phenomena such as mortal creatures with immortal, non-rational with rational, etc. “In this way man should function as a world in miniature, and for this reason he was created as a reflecting image of the whole cosmos.”4
Maximus, along with Nemesius, highlights the active nature of this task of mediation. Ambigua 41is the primary text where Maximus works out this notion, but there are others. Another is to be found in Mystagogia chapters 5 and 7 and the Confessor’s interpretation of the Divine Liturgy. In chapter 7 Maximus develops the line of thinking that says that the universe should be seen as a makranthropos or a human enlarged. This is of course a parallel with the idea of humankind as microcosm. Just as the world contains both visible and invisible aspects, so do humans in that they are body and soul. This dual constitution of the cosmos and humankind is also mutually reflected in that the intelligible dimensions or things of the world represent the soul (one thinks here of Nyssen’s idea of the body as the ‘mirror of the mirror’ of the soul in On the Creation of Mankind), while the soul in humankind represents the intelligible things of the world. The sensible things of the world reflect or are a type of the body, just as, vice versa, the body is the reflection or type of sensible things. Just as there is only one human, who is constituted by the union of body and soul, so there is only one world, made up of its different elements.
Thunberg makes the point that
This analogy between man and the universe, however, is not only a static fact. The duality should be transformed into a unity, unthreatened by dissolution. This task of unification is attributed to man as microcosm and mediator, though this task is refused by man as sinner, who lets himself depend on the world (especially in its sensible element) rather than mastering it. Thus, only through God’s Incarnation in Christ can this task or active mediation take place. Thereby it becomes a fully theandric task. The Incarnation, which was foreseen as the perfection and fulfillment of the full task of mediation, becomes its only possible cause.5

So just as the ecstatic, cosmic ontology of love is only fulfilled and understood fully through the Incarnation of the Logos or second Person of the Trinity, so the role of humankind as mediatorial microcosm in the ecstatic economy of love can only be realized in the Incarnation of Christ. In this realization of the role of humanity of Christ the goal of a deified humanity and thus deified or transfigured cosmos is accomplished and made possible. In the unfallen mode (tropos) of being the lives of humans were destined for deification (theosis, divinization). This is the most intimate possible communion between the human and God, in which the human participates in the Love of the Trinity, through the Son, in the Glory of the Holy Spirit. Here all aspects of human lives are immediate revelations of God. Deification however, is not static, but an ongoing growth into this most intimate communion between God and humans. This is a deifying communion which leads to a transfigured cosmos constituted by ecstatic love.
IV. Deification and the Cultivation of Virtue
In the unfallen mode (tropos) of being the lives of humans were destined for deification (theosis, divinization). This is the most intimate possible communion between the human and God, in which the human participates in the Love of the Trinity, through the Son, in the Glory of the Holy Spirit. Here all aspects of our lives are immediate revelations of God. Deification however, is not static, but an ongoing growth into this most intimate communion between God and humans.
With the fall of humanity, and thus cosmic tragedy, humanity moves from philadelphia, the love of humankind, to philatuia or self love. This self-love is not simply loving oneself. It is essentially construing the cosmos as revolving around the self rather than the Trinity. As such self-love disrupts the hierarchy of being which is constituted by love (particularly participation in Triune Love). It disrupts the entire cosmos, which was characterized most accurately by love. This disruption results in the fragmentation of human relationships and this fragmentation from  philautia gives rise to what Maximus calls “tyranny” (turranos). Maximus characterizes self-love in this way for philautia seeks to order all creation toward our possession. The true doctrine of creation, however, in which creatures are ordered and harmonized around the love in and of the Trinity is replaced by the tyrannical gaze of self-love in which creation and others become viewed through the possessing desire of the individual, and ultimately this grows into systemic evils such as racism. Once the true doctrine of creation is lost humans tend to see themselves as masters of creation, and thus masters over one another, rather than stewards of creation in which relationships are understood as God’s gift to be cherished and stewarded in harmony with the Trinity rather than controlled for selfish ends.6
Maximus claims that being formed in the virtues is the way in which the Spirit unites the human to Christ and thus deifies humans. So I argue in the next section that the virtue of hospitality, while not covered often explicitly by Maximus, is one of the avenues of virtue that, through our practice of it, allows us as humans to be deified by the Spirit through Christ. It is in welcoming the other that we welcome Christ and thus return to the life of love (phila-delphia) rather than tyranny, which arises from self-love’s “fortress mentality” with its desire to possess and bring everything thing within its orbit rather than living out a true doctrine of Creation which places the self and all things within the orbit of the Love of God. However, I will first briefly highlight Maximus’ understanding of virtue, the participation of the human in Christ, and thus the divinizing life.
Lars Thunberg makes a crucial point in understanding virtue in Maximus when he claims that
…social life and virtues are seen by Maximus in the light of the nature (physis)
of man, the nature that is common to all men, and the principle of which (the
logos of nature) excludes any split or separation within the individual or between
different human beings. One could as well speak of an ethical-social dimension
… For Maximus morality and sociality are not isolated in the theological cosmos.
They are precisely a dimension of life as a whole. The decisive proof of this is the
supremacy of charity in his system, the charity of love in which the exercise of
virtues culminate, that charity which is the final goal of the contemplative life of
insight and also is the consummation of the mystical life.7

In other words, love being the height and goal of the virtuous life means that Maximus’ thought on the virtues cannot be separated from his theological ontology I have articulated above. In the end, the virtues are all about love that participates in the God-humanhood of Maximus’ Christ.
Maximus is the inheritor of the tradition of Evagrius Ponticus. As such he has inherited the Evagrian hierarchy of eight capital vices. The Evagrian-Maximian hierarchy consists of eight vices which are gluttony, fornication, avarice, grief, wrath, listlessness, vainglory, and pride. Along with Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus accepts the tradition of the soul as trichotomous (as opposed to tripartite), composed of the rational, irascible, and concupiscible dimensions. Maximus also sees the virtues in the virtuous human as positive substitutes for the vices.8 The virtues are of course dispositions which lead the human in the direction God has created them toward (their logos). The vices and virtues belong to their constitutive elements in the soul. What is most important for our purposes here, however, is to point out that the hierarchy of vices, which the virtues counteract, is viewed by Maximus as the showing forth of disobedience of the dual commandment of love toward God and neighbor. As we have explored above, this disobedience is philautia or self-love, while the life of virtue is understood as the manifestation of charity, of philadelphia.9
For Maximus the life of vice is one of disintegration. The abuse of the natural faculties destroys the unity of the human as a composite being which comes from separation from God. But, as we have explored in Maximus’ larger cosmic theology and Christology, not only is the human separated from God, who is the integrating and final goal of all of human life, but she is also separated from neighbor by the self-love enacted in vices. This results in tyranny toward neighbor. This occurs because all humans participate in the same nature and are called to unity in peaceful or harmonious difference by being guided by this principle and aim (the integrating goal that is God). In the separation from her brethren by vice, the human is separated from charity, for charity coincides with the divinizing goal set before humanity.10 “Separation from charity in this context means precisely this double separation from one’s own true aim and from the unity of humanity.”11 The practice of virtue counteracts this separation and thus leads one back into the divine life of love toward God and love toward neighbor.
For Maximus the practice of the virtues (humility as counter to pride, poverty as counter to avarice, patience to wrath, etc.), and ultimately the summit virtue of charity, leads one into the divinized life.12 The cultivation of love toward neighbor is seen in Centuries on Charity as particularly opposed to anger, which is connected to the irascible element of soul.13 Following Evagrius once again, Maximus believes that the cultivation of the life of virtue leads one toward apatheia. However, whereas for Evagrius apatheia is more of a passive notion, for Maximus it is a state of serenity in which one is divinized into a new life of plenitude in which one overflows with love equally toward all. Within this vein Maximus explores detachment, but again, it is not a passive notion. It is in the imitation of the Triune God whose goodness and detachment issue forth in His creation of all that is and His infinite love and care for all that is. In imitation of this Triune detachment human detachment should serve the end of love toward all humankind, without distinction. So virtue functions toward the end of freeing humans from vice so that they may love God and others, loving these others out of Christ’s plenitude and fecundity. There is thus a close link between detachment and charity toward the neighbor.14 In Centuries on Charity II:30 Maximus claims:
He who is perfect in love and has attained the summit of detachment knows no
difference between “mine and thine,” between faithful and unfaithful, between
slave and freeman, or indeed between male and female. Having risen above the
tyranny of the passions and looking to nature, one in all men, he considers all
equally and is disposed equally towards all. For in Him there is neither Greek
nor Jew, neither male nor female, neither slave nor freeman, but everything
and in all things Christ.15

It is here that I want to make a decisive turn toward the practice of hospitality, for hospitality is a practice through which this detached love may be cultivated. In other words, we can logically talk about hospitality as a practice through which deification can take place, given Maximus’ overall vision.
In the next section below I want to explore how the practice of Hospitality is a virtue through which humans are deified by the Spirit in and through the Son. Put differently, I want to show that hospitality is one of the practices through which we meet God in the stranger or “other.” This is the case for, as the quote just above notes, for the person being truly divinized vision is such that she sees“…everything and in all things Christ.” To truly meet Christ in the other involves the discerning of the logoi or logos of the other. Discerning the true reason for being of another person involves meeting Christ in them, thus meeting God. To truly discern this reality about another person involves transformation from our self-love, which creates barriers and causes tyranny against the other, to philadelphia, which shapes human love toward a true understanding of creation. The other can no longer be our possession or a cardboard character in our story. They must be seen in all their glory, that is, that they are the bearer of the image of God. Thus, tyranny is brought to an end through the practice of hospitality.16