St. Maximos the Confessor defines human willing as ‘rational desire’ (orexis logikê). In his Letter to Marinus and the Disputation with Pyrrhus, he describes, rather technically, the stages of a particular act of will from willing to use via, amongst others, enquiry, deliberation and choice. Before embarking on a motion through these stages, a crucial question needs to be answered: “Is this desire rational, i.e. in accordance with the principle of human nature?”
In St John Damascene, Andrew Louth discusses John’s rendering of the Maximian teaching on the will. He provides an answer to the above question by quoting Iris Murdoch: “’Freedom is not strictly exercise of the will, but rather the experience of accurate vision which, when this becomes appropriate, occasions action’. From this point of view, deliberation is what we fall back on when our vision is clouded or confused: it is a measure of our lack of freedom, not the signal exercise of freedom. (…) The bridge between ascetic and dogmatic theology is explicit; for John’s discussion of Christ’s willing in On the Orthodox Faith is part of his presentation of human psychology, which, as we have argued, serves an essentially ascetic purpose.”
This paper explores another possible bridge: towards the Confessor’s mystagogical theology. It is suggested in his (mystagogical) commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, where, in the context of “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, he remarks that God demands from human beings intelligent worship (logikê latreia).
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