Philanthropia as Skopos of the Incarnation: The Deifying Vocation of Humanity in Maximus the Confessor

Maximus the Confessor’s belief that the Incarnation would have happened without a Fall is a key facet of his thought, yet contradicts portions of his corpus which state that God became human due to sin. I assert that Maximus affirms a prelapsarian motive of the Incarnation for two reasons: his conception of deification as participation and understanding of humanity’s original vocation. Deification and vocation are presented by Maximus in such a way that they could have only been fulfilled through Christ’s Incarnation; the joining of human and divine natures is not a soteriological necessity. Analysing accounts of the Fall of Adam in both the Questiones ad Thalassium and the Ambiguum demonstrate that the Confessor reconciles the historic need for salvation with the will of God from all eternity. I argue that a reading of Ambigua 41 in the context of the Maximian corpus reveals an all- encompassing reason for the Incarnation. Philanthropy (φιλανθρωπία), God’s love for humanity, is the motive (σκοπός) for the Incarnation that embraces the divine preexistent intention without contradicting soteriology.

Creator

• Marco, Anthony

Publisher

• Trustees For Roman Catholic Purposes Registered.
• John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Language

• English

Identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.14278

Palabra Clave

• Maximus the Confessor
• Incarnation
• Sin
• Prelapsarian motive
• Deification and vocation
• Philanthropy

Date created

• 2024

Related URL

• Available from the publisher:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/heyj.14278
• Available from the library catalog:  https://marianunivindianapolis.on.worldcat.org/oclc/10100919592

Resource type

• Article

Source

• The Heythrop Journal (Vol.65, Iss.1)

Rights statement

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/