Despina Prassas: “Peace be with you” (John 20:21): St. Maximos the Confessor and Calming the Thoughts

St. Maximos the Confessor, a seventh century Greek monk, was a keen observer of human behavior. One of his primary interests was the human condition, namely, the predicament human beings find themselves in as a result of the primordial disobedience of Adam and Eve outlined in the book of Genesis (2:16-3:24). This disobedience manifested itself in a variety of ways, including the struggle regarding moral decision-making. Along with being removed from the Garden of Eden, the disobedience of Adam and Eve had ramifications regarding the activity of the human will. The natural human will, originally aligned with the will of God, has been transformed into a “gnomic” will, a will that must deliberate when making decisions. There has been a fracturing of the cohesiveness of the two wills, divine and human, and the consequence of this transformation is an onslaught of thoughts (logismoi) that overwhelm the human mind as it is trying to make a decision. These thoughts, which derive from different sources, plague and paralyze the monk. In order to combat these thoughts, Maximos has proposed a series of spiritual exercises whose purpose is to help clarify the decision-making process and “tame” the thoughts. My paper seeks to explicate and clarify the remedies and exercises outlined by St. Maximos the Confessor in the Quaestiones et dubia (CCSG 10) and the Capita de caritate (PG 90.959-1082) that control and reign in the logismoi.