Abstract:
Through a close reading of the two definitions of evil in the Introduction to Responses to
Thalassios, this article points out a circular, cognitive-affective-somatic, genetic mechanism that
St. Maximos the Confessor considers responsible for the initiation and transmission of the
fallness as a human condition and the specific manifestation of it in the form of passions. It
elucidates the first definition as mainly phenomenological, by identifying the circular
mechanism and its behavioural expressions, and the second definition as more aetiological, by
explaining why this mechanism emerges and reemerges with the fallen humanity despite its
catastrophic results.
CONTRIBUTION : This article highlights a double genetic mechanism (survival cum passions) that
St. Maximos the Confessor grasped within the fallen human condition as a curse solvable only
in Christ, a notion largely carved out by previous Maximian scholarship, but fully explained
and valuated here.
Description:
Special Collection: Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu, Romania, sub-edited by Daniel Buda (Lucian Blaga University) and Jerry Pillay
(University of Pretoria).
The author is participating
as the research associate
of Dean Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay,
Faculty of Theology and
Religion, University of
Pretoria.
