St Maximus the Confessor

I am sitting here at Suzy's school thinking about her education and Becky writing her thesis. It made me want to revisit some of the things that inspired me while writing my thesis, mainly Maximus the Confessor. One of the main things he is known for is exploring the theme of deification , a term that does not sit well with many evangelicals - mainly because they misunderstand or do not know what it means. Here is an excerpt from the Philokalia where Maximus addresses the topic:

On Deification:
"Everyone who does not apply himself to the spiritual contemplation of Holy Scripture has, Judaic-wise, also rejected both the natural and the written law; and he is ignorant of the law of grace which confers deification on those who are obedient to it. He who understands the written law in a literal manner does not nourish his soul with the virtues. He who does not grasp the inner principles of created beings fails to feast his intellect on the manifold wisdom of God. And he who is ignorant of the great mystery of the new grace does not rejoice in the hope of future deification. Thus failure to contemplate the written law spiritually results in a dearth (lack, an indequate supply) of the divine wisdom to be apprehended in the natural law; and this in its turn is followed by a complete ignorance of the deification given by grace according to the new mystery."

And then one more of my favorite quotes that sums it up a little more succinctly:

"God made us so that we might become 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet. 1:4) and sharers in His eternity, and so that we might come to be like Him (cf. 1 John 3:2) through deification by grace. It is through deification that all things are reconstituted and achieve their permanence."

Just a stroll down memory lane...