For there was no other way for man,
being created, to become the sons of God by the grace of divinization, without
first being born of the Spirit, I the exercise of his own free choice, owing to
the indomitable power of self-determination which naturally dwells within him.
[1348A] (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum 42, in On
Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols. [trans. Nicholas
Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2014], 2:181)
If, then, voluntary activity makes use
of the potential of nature, either according to nature or against nature, it
will receive nature’s limit of either well-being or ill-being—and this is
eternal being, in which the souls celebrate their Sabbath, receiving cessation
from all motion. The eighth and first, or rather, the one [1392D] and perpetual
day, is the unallowed, all-shining presence of God, which comes about after
things in motion have come to rest; and, throughout the whole being of those
who by their free choice have used the principle of being according to nature,
the whole God suitably abides, bestowing on them eternal well-being by giving
them a hare in Himself, because He alone, properly speaking, is, and is good,
and is eternal; but to those who have willfully used the principle of their
being contrary to nature, He rightly renders not well-being but eternal
ill-being, since well-being is no longer accessible to those who have place
themselves in opposition to it, and they have absolutely no motion after the
manifestation of what was sought, by which what is sought is naturally revealed
to those who seek it. [1393A] (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to John: Ambiguum
65, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, 2 vols.
[trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2014], 2:279, 281)
