“The Word of God, very God, wills that the mystery of his Incarnation be actualized always and in all things.” – St Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7.22
I don’t usually write book reviews, but as one of the best (if not the best) theology books I’ve ever read, I felt that I had to write about The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor by Jordan Daniel Wood (2022). This book offers a novel reading of St Maximus the Confessor in which creation and salvation are the historical Incarnation of Jesus Christ. That sounds bold and controversial – but is it really any bolder than St Paul when, looking to the man on the cross, he declares, “in him all things in heaven and on earth were created” (Col 1:16), and that all things are destined to be “gathered up in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10)?
Wood seeks a “thick retrieval” of St Maximus’ theology, which allows him to speak for himself but also asks questions that he might not have asked himself (pp. xv-xvii). In this way, we can use the theology of Maximus – who was an incredibly profound but by no means systematic thinker – to answer more systematic questions about creation, salvation, and the relationship between God and the world. Modern scholars tend to interpret the identity between God and the world in Maximus’ thought metaphorically, in terms of a relation or participation between the world and God rather than a hypostatic identity as in Jesus Christ (pp. 3-14). But what if we take the Confessor at his word about the Incarnation’s cosmic scope: that the Word wills to accomplish the mystery of his Incarnation always in all things?
The Middle
What does “the mystery of his Incarnation” – or translated more literally, “his embodiment” – mean? How could God become human, that the Word become flesh? St Maximus interpreted the logic of the Incarnation according to the neo-Chalcedonian revolution in metaphysics, which made a pivotal distinction between the nature of a thing and the concrete thing itself (hypostasis). Hypostasis and nature obey different, opposing logics, such that a hypostasis is irreducible, indifferent, and yet identical to (that is, becomes the individuality of) its nature (pp. 20-39). Because of this, two natures that have no similarity to one another (divinity and humanity) can coexist in one hypostasis (Jesus Christ).
Hypostasis and nature are the two basic elements of Maximus’ metaphysics. The only two ways that one thing can be really united to another, while retaining its integrity, are according to nature or according to hypostasis. I am united to my parents according to (human) nature, while my body and my soul are united to one another according to hypostasis (me). Therefore, hypostatic union is what makes the difference between Christ’s natures possible in the first place. This is the second principle of Maximus’ Incarnational logic: “hypostatic identity generates natural difference” (pp. 39-43).
In Christ, both divinity and humanity retain their full integrity. Neither one suppresses or changes the other, and in fact there can be no natural relation between divine and human nature. However, these natures with their natural activities and wills come together in one concrete reality, Christ, who acts and wills without division. Maximus refers to this new, divine-human mode of action, in which divinity and humanity mutually pervade one another, as perichōrēsis, which is the third principle of his Incarnational logic (pp. 43-49).
This “Christo-logic” would be impossible to know if it weren’t for the historical event of Jesus of Nazareth himself. It’s only because of Christ, who performed miracles with his flesh and suffered with divine power, that we can know about this divine-human mode. His hypostasis – the concrete fact of Christ himself, with his divine-human mode of acting and willing – is what discloses both divine and human nature and their ultimate identity. This is the fourth and final principle of Incarnational logic that Wood discerns (pp. 49-52).
The Beginning
What does it mean for “the Word of God, very God... [to be] in all things”? Like Christ’s divinity and humanity, there is no natural commonality whatsoever between God and creation, which is the Confessor’s major objection to Platonism and Origenism (pp. 63-67). How, then, could creation come to be, if there can be no natural relation between God and creation? Maximus says: not from God’s nature, but from God’s eternal will and knowledge, which are the logoi (“reasons” or “definitions”) of all natures and individuals (p. 65).
These many logoi, according to St Maximus, are the one Word (logos), and the one Word is the many logoi, which give beings their natures, powers, and activities (pp. 68-72), as well as their hypostatic properties (pp. 72-75). The logoi, then, are really one with God (the Word) – he is them – despite there being no natural similarity between God and the logoi, which would allow for Neoplatonic participation (pp. 75-79). How is this possible? Within Maximus’ metaphysics, there is only one possible answer: according to hypostasis. The Word of God unites the logoi of created beings with his divinity in his one hypostasis, “the body of Christ,” and thereby makes created nature and participation possible (pp. 79-83).
The End
What does it mean for the Word’s Incarnation to “be actualized” in others? In line with the patristic tradition, Maximus viewed salvation as union with God or deification, but he developed this theme to a much greater extent. This union between us and God is certainly not according to nature, as the Origenists believed. Instead, the Confessor says, we become “everything that God is, however, without identity in essence” (pp. 91-94). This real union between things that are naturally different can only be hypostatic union, and not just any hypostasis, the Lord himself (pp. 89-96). This achieves identity between the saints and God in the person of the incarnate Word (pp. 96-104).
The power of deifying grace is certainly not a natural power within us that is activated. St Maximus points out that this would make us already God by nature (pp. 104-109). But grace is nevertheless a power within us, or else we could never be saved while remaining ourselves (pp. 109-112). How is this possible? Because, once again, grace is in us not according to nature, but according to hypostasis! The Word already exists in every being as the logoi, thereby making his divinity immediately present and available to all people (pp. 112-120).
How can we be really united to God while remaining ourselves? Maximus explains this by the logic of perichōrēsis, which we already saw in the Incarnation. Just as Christ’s divine and human natures wholly pervade one another while retaining their full integrity, “the whole man wholly pervades the whole God” (and vice versa) in the deified state (pp. 122-127). Christ is the logos not only of every nature, but of every hypostasis, making them “who” they are, which ensures that every person remains who they are even when deified (pp. 127-132). This unity in the person of Christ is the fullest realization of St Paul’s “body of Christ” language, which St Maximus frequently draws upon to describe the deified state (pp. 132-140).
The Whole
Both creation and salvation display the same neo-Chalcedonian logic, what Wood calls “Christo-logic,” that we see in Maximus’ Christology. But how do creation and salvation relate to the actual historical event of Jesus Christ? And how can the creation be the Incarnation in light of the fact that this creation is obviously imperfect and fallen? In other words, how could the Word possibly “will” to accomplish his Incarnation “always”? I find this chapter hard to summarize, given how complex (and beset with temporal paradoxes) it is. However, to me it’s also the most interesting and profound section of the book.
In short, humans were meant to be begotten voluntarily in the Spirit, and it’s because we wrongly identify ourselves with the fluctuating, sensible world (which is the Fall) that our origin is (or rather, appears) purposeless and irrational (pp. 145-155). Adam never existed in union with God as he was meant to, but from the very beginning falsely identified his ultimate good with this sensible world (pp. 155-167). This false identification is what makes us, like the sensible world, subject to irrational flux and suffering (passions), which is why the world is (or rather, appears) fallen (pp. 167-174). In other words, this is not really God’s creation yet, and if we are not yet united with God, we have not yet really been created!
Jesus Christ, by being incarnate as the “suffering God-man” [emphasis his] – subject to the same flux and passion as us – establishes the very logoi of providence and judgment (pp. 175-187). Therefore, his suffering and death on the cross is the very condition that makes our rebellion, suffering, and death possible in the first place, as well as what redeems us from them. Likewise, the historical Incarnation of Jesus Christ as a human creature is the very condition that makes creation possible (cf. Amb 41.9), and indeed all the logoi are actualized in the “very ‘events’ of Jesus’s historical life”! (p. 191) This whole story is filled with temporal paradoxes (we exist before our true origin!), but that’s only because God is beyond time (pp. 187-191).
Conclusion
I love this book because it made me look at the world in a whole new light. Together with St Paul, I can point to this man who lived in first-century Palestine and say, “in him all things on heaven and on earth were created” (Col. 1:16). Conversely, I can look around me at this world he created and see Christ, not merely as some abstract principle of logos, but the suffering God-man himself. That being said, this book is not for theological neophytes and assumes that the reader has at least a little background knowledge about the neo-Chalcedonian Christology that is so important to St Maximus. (Wood uses the term “enhypostatization” on page two without defining it first!) But I would still strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about God, the world, and the profound relationship between the two!
