Health as Movement: Maximus the Confessor’s Embodied Deification in Ambiguum 7
Travis Myers, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO
Early Christian notions of health, care, and embodiment, on the one hand, largely reflected practices of the broader Greco-Roman culture. On the other hand, Christians of the earliest centuries exhibited a capacity to associate their suffering with Christ in connection with the Christian salvation narrative. In this paper, I examine the theological anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (580-662 CE) as a figure historically situated at the tail end of the patristic period, one positioned to draw from these existing conceptions of health and embodiment within his theological reflections. I trace two threads of early Christian understandings of health and the body as a means of historically contextualizing Maximus at the end of the early Christian period: 1) early Christian experiences of health, illness, and suffering generally; and 2) competing monastic traditions as they relate to the body and health more specifically.
My main analysis then shifts to Maximus’ theological writings, focusing primarily on Ambiguum 7, as I probe key aspects of his anthropology with an eye toward the role of the body. I argue that Maximus understands the human person in the context of a cosmic salvation history, a narrative anchored in Christ and intrinsically fused with a dynamic of movement. In terms of health, I further contend that a healthy body for Maximus is one engaged in the movement of deification, a process within each person paralleling and embodying the cosmic movement of the whole universe, a cultivation of imitating Christ and gradually growing into the likeness of God over the course of one’s life.
My main analysis then shifts to Maximus’ theological writings, focusing primarily on Ambiguum 7, as I probe key aspects of his anthropology with an eye toward the role of the body. I argue that Maximus understands the human person in the context of a cosmic salvation history, a narrative anchored in Christ and intrinsically fused with a dynamic of movement. In terms of health, I further contend that a healthy body for Maximus is one engaged in the movement of deification, a process within each person paralleling and embodying the cosmic movement of the whole universe, a cultivation of imitating Christ and gradually growing into the likeness of God over the course of one’s life.