Ambigua and Opuscula
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A monk argues that Christ must have a human will as well as a divine one, refuses an imperial compromise designed to end the dispute, and is mutilated for it.
- a human will held to be necessary to a genuine human nature
- the logoi of created things as their principles in God
- political theology resisted on the ground that doctrine is not negotiable
- vindication arriving only after the author's death
Maximus wrote dense clarifications of difficult passages in Gregory of Nazianzus and Dionysius, developing a cosmology in which every created thing has its own principle in God and returns to it. The controversy that defined him concerned whether Christ had one will or two: the imperial position, framed to reconcile the empire's divided provinces, held one, and Maximus argued that a human nature without a human will is not a human nature, so that the compromise emptied the incarnation. He was tried, had his tongue and right hand cut off, and died in exile; the council of 681 vindicated his position.
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