Maximus the Confessor for Beginners: Understanding His Life, Theology, and Role in Church History (THE FORGOTTEN FATHERS)

In 662 AD, an elderly monk had his tongue torn out and his right hand cut off. His crime: refusing to sign a single document.His name was Maximus. History would call him the Confessor. Within twenty years of his death, the entire Church declared that everything he had suffered for was true.Born around 580 AD in Constantinople, Maximus served as First Secretary to Emperor Heraclius before abandoning the most prestigious administrative post in the empire to enter monastic life. What followed was a theological career of such brilliance and personal cost that the Church has spent fourteen centuries acknowledging, in its liturgy and councils, precisely everything for which he gave everything he had.When the Emperor of Byzantium commanded the Church to abandon the definitions of Chalcedon in the interests of political unity — when patriarchs yielded and bishops signed whatever was placed before them — what happened was Maximus.This book traces his life from the imperial court through monastic exile, through his alliance with Pope Martin I at the Lateran Council of 649 AD, through his arrest, mutilation, and death — and through the ideas that made it all matter. Why does it matter whether Christ possessed a genuine human will? Because the answer determines what salvation actually means.The empire that mutilated him is dust. The heresy he opposed was condemned within twenty years of his death. The truth he defended is proclaimed from every altar of the Church to this day. Read more