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Abstract
This dissertation studies the conception of sexual difference in the thought of Maximus the Confessor (580–662 C.E.). It focuses in particular upon several enigmatic phrases in Ambiguum 41 which describe first the human person and then Jesus Christ as “shaking out of nature the distinctive characteristics of male and female,” “driving out of nature the difference and division of male and female” and “removing the difference between male and female” (PG 91 1305 C, 1309 A, & 1309 D). These statements have appeared to contemporary scholars to conflict with the broader shape Maximus's thought because the Confessor is known for a theological vision of cosmic unity in distinctions, a positive valuation of material creation, and his position, amid the seventh century Monothelite controversy, that Christ had two wills, stemming from his human and divine natures.
By contrast, I argue that the removal of “male and female” in Ambiguum 41 does not conflict but rather plays a crucial role in Maximus's vision of the transfiguration of creation. The key to understanding Maximus's language of sexual purgation, I argue in chapter three, is its link with his notion of the human person as bond [[special characters omitted]] of the cosmos. In chapter four I then argue that the notion of “male and female” in Maximus's anthropology relates in an important way to his Christology, not by a parallel to the presence of two wills in Christ, but rather by the absence of two key volitional modalities in Christ, [special characters omitted] and [special characters omitted], deliberative will and free choice, respectively. The removal of male and female in human beings and the absence of deliberative will and free choice in Christ mirror each other because of their connection in Maximus's notion of “original transgression.”
Chapters one and two treat two key predecessors of Maximus, Gregory of Nyssa and Nemesius of Emesa, showing how each theologian defines sexual difference in relation to the organization of the cosmos in ways that likely influenced Maximus.
