Salvation through Temptation: Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Victory over the Devil by Benjamin E. Heidgerken (review)

Benjamin Heidgerken’s first monograph draws attention to the dense cosmology of the premodern world. The universe consists of parts both visible and invisible. The invisible world may not be susceptible to inquiry vis-à-vis the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the invisible world is the subject of intense scrutiny by early and medieval Christian authors. Even the demons, who are invisible but by no means imperceptible, behave according to a certain logic. Locating Maximus and Aquinas within this “thicker universe” is a reminder to theologians who, rather than wrestling within these premodern conditions, pass over the talk of angels and demons as superfluous. If theologians do not take this material seriously, then they disqualify themselves from shaping theological imaginations by refusing to use their own. We need not be surprised why the worse, and not the better, occupies this void.

Heidgerken offers a constructive contribution to fill this gap with his present work, which is a revision of his doctoral dissertation. His research falls in line with one recent study of Maximus (though absent from his bibliography), John Gavin’s They Are Like the Angels in the Heavens: Angelology and Anthropology in the Thought of Maximus the Confessor (Rome: Institutum patristicum Augustinianum, 2009). For Gavin, angels serve as a foil to clarify Maximus’s theological anthropology. In a similar way, Heidgerken uses demonology to elucidate Maximus’s soteriology. Heidgerken argues that demonic temptation resolves issues in scholarly treatments of Maximus. Christ “is like us in all things save sin” (Heb 4:15). Yet, in his mature description of Christ’s human will, Maximus claims Christ lacks a “gnomic will,” that is, a deliberating function between alternatives, resulting from and conditioned by human fallenness. The author proposes that demonic temptation—an externalized, personified force—allows Christ to experience temptation’s bites. This view avoids positing imperfections within Christ’s psyche, while reverencing the fullness of human experience. One would be satisfied with a complete inventory of the Confessor’s demonology in relation to his Chris-tology. Yet, Heidgerken’s book goes beyond the seventh century to compare Maximus with Thomas Aquinas. In his Introduction, Heidgerken inserts himself among Marcus Plested, Matthew Briel, and Christiaan Kappes, who have explored the intellectual exchange between Greek and Latin thinkers in the medieval period and have revised in important ways the hackneyed labels of “Eastern” and “Western” through their assiduous historical studies. Heidgerken follows the work of Antoine Levy’s Le créé et l’incréé, which compares Maximus and Aquinas in order to arbitrate the Palamite controversy. This comparative approach is not without pitfalls. Both figures are saturated with secondary literature and any influence of Maximus on Aquinas is heavily mediated—as Heidgerken is aware—through Aquinas’s medieval precursors John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, and Alexander of Hales.

Chapter 1 treats Maximus’s sources for his anthropology and Christology. Heidgerken identifies fourth-century bishop Nemesius of Emesa’s On Human Nature as a key influence on Maximus’s development of the will and the role of choice. I will say more on this later. He turns to Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection, where Nyssa posits that affective behavior is natural to the human condition, and choice results from human sinfulness. Heidgerken then outlines Origen’s and Evagrius’s teachings on demonic temptation. He shifts to Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus to sketch the Christological picture Maximus inherits, pointing out the different ways they describe Christ’s relationship to unfallen and fallen human existence.

Chapter 2 discusses Maximus’s anthropology with special reference to human temptation. Heidgerken describes Adam’s original state as good, containing the logos of immutability. However, Adam’s tropos or manner of being was susceptible to motion and...