The Ontology of Saint Maximus (pt.2)

The ontological paradox of sin in light of the ontological paradox of the Cross

In the previous post we learned that St. Maximus sees all created beings as in motion, and that this mobility points to them having some beginning and end. The beginning and end of all creatures is, of course, the Triune God Himself, who brings beings into existence by giving them a share in His eternal life, which is the only life there is. Maximus declares, alongside St. Paul, that the entire world is made “in” Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, through and for whom the Father creates the world (Colossians 1:16-17). As St Paul also says, it is in God that we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

But we concluded the previous post by introducing the unfortunate fact of sin, made possible by our free will. While the being of creatures is nothing other than participation in God, sin is the refusal to reciprocate God’s love. The result is, as Maximus says, the fall of creation into “non-being,” creating a sort of ontological paradox. 

Evil as Privation

Non-being is not, however, some “space” outside of God that exists for us to enter into. When we say “non-being,” we’re referring to nothing other than a “state” of creatures who are choosing to live in a way that alienates them from the true life of God, it signifies a regression back towards the nothingness out of which God created in the act of freely sharing His life. The cosmos and everything in it are meant to exist in communion with God and with each other in God. Evil causes fractures or splits within this hierarchical order, and these fractures cannot be physically grasped or felt because they have no true being, they’re merely ways of speaking of the disordered state of existence brought into the world by sin, a disorder that keeps the world from reaching its true end in God.