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)
