I think the following is a good example of being careful of not engaging in the word-concept fallacy (a naïve reading of the following would lead one to think that Maximus agreed with the teachings of Honorius in his letter to Sergius, for e.g.):
Let not these words disturb you, for I am not implying
the destruction of our power of self-determination, but rather affirming our
fixed and unchangeable natural disposition, that is, a voluntary surrender of
the will, so that from the same source whence we received our being, we should
also long to receive being moved, like an image that has ascended to its
[1076C] archetype, corresponding to it completely, in the way that an
impression corresponds to its stamp, so that henceforth it has neither the inclination
nor the ability to be carried elsewhere, or to put it more clearly and accurately,
it is no longer able to desire such a thing, for it will have received the
divine energy—or rather it will have become God by divinization [GK: μαλλον δε
Θεος τη
θεωσει γεγενημενης]—experiencing
far greater pleasure in transcending the things that exist and are perceived to
be naturally its own. This occurs through the grace of the Spirit which has
conquered it, showing that it has God alone acting within it, so that through
all there is only one sole energy, that of God [GK: μονον εχουσαν
ενεργουντα τον
Θεον], and those worthy of God, or rather of God
alone, who in a manner befitting His goodness wholly interpenetrates all who
are worthy. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 7, in On
Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas
Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2014], 1:89, 91, Greek added in square brackets,
emphasis in bold added)
In speaking of “one sole energy” of
God and the saints, Maximos is not referring to a mixture or fusion of divine
and human energy, but to the divine energy alone acting I the saints, who have
voluntarily set aside their natural energies, in order to allow God to act
within them. The phrase itself, however, could be misconstrued as supporting
the heresy of Monoenergism, and Maximos was later to return to it in his first Opusculum,
but not, as is often said, to “retract” it: “Concerning the phrase ‘one energy’
found in the seventh chapter of the Ambigua of the great Gregory, the
argument is clear. In describing the future state of the saints, I spoke of ‘one
energy of God and the saints.’ This energy, which has the power to divinize all
the saints . . . belongs to God by nature, but to the saints by grace. I added
that this energy is of ‘God alone,’ for the divinization of the saints is exclusively
the result of divine energy, and not a power found without our own nature” (PG
91:33AB). Maximos therefore makes a real distinction between essence and
energy, which alone enables divinized human beings to act by means of an energy
that is not theirs by nature or essence, and God to act in them without
imparting to them His essence (PG 91:33BC). (Ibid., 480 n. 16)
