Christ’s
Humanity, Human Fallenness, and the Devil
For Maximus, Christ’s relationship
with fallen human nature renders him susceptible to temptation and demonic
attack as experienced after Adam’s Fall. To make sense of this claim, Maximus first distinguishes between Christ’s essential and relational
appropriations of human nature. Second, he sees in Christ’s essential appropriation
of human nature a “double descent” into characteristic features of both
unfallen and fallen human beings. After outlining these distinctions, I explore
some key terms that Maximus uses to indicate Christ’s essential appropriation
of fallen human nature to show how this appropriation enables Christ to experience
temptation in a mode parallel to that of fallen humanity.
Following form an affirmation of
Christ’s sinlessness, Maximus recognizes that there are some aspects of fallen
human existence that Christ cannot experience. If Christ’s mortal life were
perfectly identical to that of others since Adam, he would no longer be a
savior; he would be engulfed by sin like everyone else. Yet, Christ’s
experience must make sufficient contact with the fallen conditions of humankind
to render the affirmation of Hebrews 4:15 meaningful. How is Christ “tempted
like us in all things, yet without sin?” To differentiate between the grounds
of temptation and the beginnings of sin, Maximus distinguishes between Christ’s
essential and relational appropriation, or “taking on,” of human
nature. (TPO 19 [PG 91:220B]) According to the former appropriation. Christ
assumes what is an intrinsic aspect of the logos of human nature;
according to the second, Christ takes on, out of love of humanity, what belongs
to others “without suffering or doing it himself.” (See Dispute with Pyrrhus
[PG 91:304A-B) By essential appropriation, Christ becomes everything that other
humans are by nature. On the other hand, what Christ appropriates relationally—what
he does not experience—is truly sinful, a ”falsification of nature.” (TPO
20 [PG 91:237B-C]) Thus, Christ’s relational appropriation is the way in which Christ
relates to the evil activation of human nature; he does not himself do it, but,
by his essential appropriation of human nature, he understands the nexus out of
which it arises.
. . .
Despite Christ’s natural freedom from
the consequence of Adam’s sin, Maximus argues that Christ, through his condescension,
entered into deeper contact with those consequences. Christ willingly took
on a passible, corruptible, and mortal body in order to heal each of these aspects
of human life. Similarly, Christ suffers “out of weakness” precisely in order
to save those equally weak and sinful human beings striving after Christ’s
example; for this reason, Christ assumed a human nature that included the
consequences of Adam’s sin. (CT II 27 [PG 90:1137A-B]) Thus, while in an
absolute sense he did not need to, he willingly bore in his humanity the
punishment of Adam, in particular the possibility, corruptibility, and
mortality that all other human beings experience. (Benjamin E. Heidgerken, Salvation
Through Temptation: Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Victory
Over the Devil [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2021], 99-100, 101)
