Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) on Romans 2:13 (cf. Galatians 5:4)

  

QUESTION 18

 

If, according to Saint Paul: “It is the doers of the law who will be justified,” how is it that he later says: “Whoever has been justified by the law has fallen away from grace”?

 

Response

 

18.2. It is not simply the doers of the law who will be justified, but rather those who in spirit practice the spiritual law understood spiritually according to the inner man. Those who so practice do not fall away from grace insofar as the Word has passed into the depth of their souls through their purification. Those, on the other hand, who corporeally serve the outer aspects of the law completely fall away from divine grace, for they are ignorant of the perfection of the spiritual law, which through grace purifies the intellect from every stain, and whose perfection is Christ. (Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios [trans. Maximos Constas; The Fathers of the Church 136; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018], 137)

 

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