In this episode, I read an academic paper I delivered in 2017 in partial fulfillment of a PhD class on St. Maximus the Confessor. There are some expressions I would change today, but I left the draft as-is. The paper is given below with all references and endnotes not read aloud in the episode (to make the reading smoother).
Escaping Herod’s Prison: An Illustration of Deification in St. Maximus the Confessor
By the intercessions of St. Maximus, to whom we submit our study: grant us grace, O Lord, to desire all that is pleasing to Thee, to examine it prudently and acknowledge it truthfully for the glory of Thy Name. Amen.
I. Introduction
A. In the Philokalia,i there appears writing by St. Maximus named Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice, which he wrote in the ancient genre of centuries. That is, each of the four books under this title are composed of one hundred brief chapters. My initial interest was simply in virtue and vice, partly because as a marriage and family therapy intern another keen interest of mine is today’s mental health theory and therapeutic practice. I am invested in applying the Orthodox tradition to what ails us in modern times, for our tradition is the quintessential medicine chest missing from so many counseling and psychotherapeutic theories and modalities. In any case, I selected Various Texts for my focus. It turns out, however, that for St. Maximus, my idea to simply study virtue and vice was not so simple. For St. Maximus, virtue and vice are woven into the divine and mystical tapestry of salvation and anthropology.
B. In chapter 79 of the First Century, he expresses this teaching by way of analogy, using a narrative from the New Testament. Portraying his teaching in this way was immeasurably helpful to me and quickly became the lucus crucis of my understanding. St. Maximus begins thus: “An intellect [nous] faithful in the practice of the virtues is like St. Peter when he was taken captive by Herod.” The analogy comes from Acts 12:3-18.ii The story, in brief, is that Herod in his madness killed St. James and, realizing this scored political points with Jewish leaders, imprisoned St. Peter in a second violent act. Peter was chained to two guards, but during the night an angel appeared in light, struck him on the side to awake him, and escorted him from the prison. The prison’s iron gate opened automatically, and Peter found himself unchained, free, and able to access the city once again.
C. In this narrative in Acts, we observe the madness of Herod, the faithfulness of God, the help of the angel, and the escape of Peter from Herod’s prison. Indeed, no one—not Herod, not the guards—no one associated with the prison understood just how Peter escaped their clutches. In his freedom, Peter beheld the city and sped toward the house where the disciples worshiped. All these elements of the story are symbolic for steps along the way of salvation and depictions of realities in the spiritual life for St. Maximus. His spiritual analogy is as follows:
An intellect [nous] faithful in the practice of the virtues is like St. Peter when he was taken captive by Herod.…Herod signifies…the will of the flesh. St. Peter is guarded by two squads of soldiersiii and shut in by an iron gate. The two squads signify the attacks suffered by the intellect from the activity of the passions and from the mind’s [dianoia] assent to the passions. When through the teaching of practical philosophy, as though with the help of an angel, the intellect has passed safely through these two squads or prisons, it comes to the iron gate, which leads into the city. By this I mean the obdurate and stubborn attachment of the senses to sensible things. None the less, the gate is opened automatically through spiritual contemplation of the inner essences of created beings; and such contemplation then fearlessly impels the intellect, now liberated from Herod’s madness, toward the spiritual realities where it truly belongs. (I.79)
His analogy draws on and ties together the 78 chapters of elegant and profound theological expression before it, which include themes of the divine nature, human nature, the relationship between God and man, and a vision of therapy to overcome the sinful passions, vices, and be clothed in the virtues, perceiving the inner essences of created beings, the logoi.
Before a close look at each element of the analogy, an overview of its interpretation will help orient us. The nous is imprisoned in the will of the flesh. The nous must escape, but it is buffeted by three things: the attack of the passions on the nous, the mind’s agreement with the passions, and the stubborn attachment to material and sensual objects and pleasures. The escape plan of the nous involves a focused practice of the virtues, a practical philosophy that has been revealed and prescribed by God. Once the nous undertakes this struggle for escape, and having made some progress, detachment to this world releases as if on its own. The nous is now free to contemplate the world as it is, without delusion, penetrating beyond the obvious, beyond materiality and beyond worldly ideologies. The nous beholds the inner essences of created things and speeds on its way to beholding God.
Consider this outline of corresponding elements:
Herod’s prison is the will of the flesh;
St. Peter is the nous;
The two guards are the passions’ attacks and the mind’s assent to them;
The iron gate is the stubborn attachment to this-worldly things
The help of the angel is the revealed practical philosophy or practice of the virtues, which is the means of escaping Herod’s prison
Once detachment is attained, this is the iron gate opening as if automatically
The city is the logoi, beholding the inner essences of created things
Peter’s freedom and vision permits him to speed after what his heart truly desires and his true home: God, represented by the city and the house of worship.
Why study this passage? And why go in depth with each element? Because it is an accessible touchstone for understanding St. Maximus in particular and Orthodox theology in general. Escaping Herod’s prison is a compact picture of St. Maximus’ vision of praxis and theoria.
D. I examine his analogy of Herod’s prison by drawing on the rest of St. Maximus writings with special attention on the First Century, in which this passage appears.
II. Why is the intellect in Herod’s prison?
A. A natural question arises as we begin the examination: How did the intellect, the nous, find itself in prison in the first place? Why does it find itself in need of escape? To answer these questions and do the most justice for this passage, we must start with the background that leads St. Maximus to focus on the necessity and method of escaping Herod’s prison.
B. He begins the First Century with the Creator-creature distinction or the Uncreated-created distinction, starting with a general axiom: “Everything that derives its existence from participation in some other reality presupposes the ontological priority of that other reality” (I.6). This axiomatic truth may be termed an existential presupposition.iv This is to say, the axiom is not a logical claim so much as it is a recognition by experience of the Reality sustaining the existence of creatures. Creatures point to the divine Cause of created beings. St. Paul makes a similar point in Romans 1:18-20.
Maximus moves from his generally stated axiom to a particular description of the Cause. “Thus, it is clear that the divine Cause of created beings…is incomparably superior to all such [created] beings in every way” (ibid.). This involves the transcendence of God, who is beyond being-ness itself since he brought into existence the very being of created things from nothing, or non-being. In short, creatures in no way participate in God the Creator’s essence, Whose essence utterly transcends being and is beyond human ken. This Creator-creature distinction is the difference between the Uncreated God and the created status of “all things visible and invisible,” as the Symbol of Faith reads.
C. And yet, according to St. Maximus, God wills that his beloved creatures participate in Him in a mode suited to their creatureliness. Even this way of participating in God, however, remains a mystery and neither may be logically deduced, nor its description grasped by human reason.
God, in whose essence created beings do not participate, but who wills that those capable of so doing shall participate in Him according to some other mode, never issues from the hiddenness of his essence; for even that mode according to which He wills to be participated in remains perpetually concealed from all men.v (I.7)
The manner of this participation is known to God alone, who “in the surpassing power of his goodness” freely creates participating beings (I.7). St Maximus emphasizes that such creatures, although they participate in the divine life (but not the divine essence), nevertheless cannot be co-eternal with God since they were willed to exist by him.
D. St. Maximus segues from this into a presentation of the Incarnation of the divine Logos (I.8-13ff), strongly signaling that the Incarnation bridged the unbridgeable gap for human participation in the divine life. Indeed, he all but openly states this, perhaps in keeping with his teaching that the mode of participation in divinity “remains perpetually concealed from all men.” To be sure, the Incarnate Logos is the presupposition for human participation in divinity. St. Maximus says that “the great mystery of the incarnation remains a mystery eternally,” explaining that “it is revealed merely to the extent that those saved by it can grasp it” (I.12). So, we see in his teaching of the Incarnation two things. First, it is consistent with his apophatic approach to the subject and, second, that the Incarnation is the precondition for the salvation of humanity.
E. The question is raised, however, why the Logos was “once for all born in the flesh” (I.8). Why the Incarnation? In the midst of his presentation of the Incarnate Logos, St. Maximus introduces the fall of human nature due to sin from its original, stable state of grace. The saint notably personalizes this portion of his theology, stating,
As a man I deliberately transgressed the divine commandment, when the devil, enticing me with the hope of divinity, dragged me down from my natural stability into the realm of sensual pleasure. (I.11)
By personalizing the primordial Fall, Maximus directs us not to abstract it but to recognize our participation in it both through our primordial parents’ ancestral sin and in our own willfulness. The bondage of sin is not an abstract idea needing an abstract solution; it is a real and present danger that you and I must face today.
Imprisonment in the will of the flesh and attachment to sensible things, the language of the Herod’s prison analogy, is expressed here as “the realm of sensual pleasure.” Thus, we have our answer as to why the intellect of each newborn son or daughter of Adam finds itself in Herod’s prison. St. Maximus, as the remote progeny of our first parents, inherited this corrupted nature such that he can personalize the primordial Fall in two aspects. First, he participates in the ancestral sin by inheriting the corruption wrought by Adam’s original sin. Second, he sees himself personally liable for his own transgression of divine commandments, transgressions that ultimately root in the first transgression antecedent to all subsequent iniquity. Imprisonment in sensual pleasure—that is, the will of the flesh, Herod’s prison—is part and parcel of the corruption of human nature, in which the devil delights as much today as in Eden (I.11).
F. Having encountered why the nous finds itself in Herod’s prison, we now turn to the escape plan—namely, praktike, the teaching of practical philosophy.
III. What is the escape plan of ‘practical philosophy’?
A. The nous has realized that it is imprisoned in a willful and corrupt flesh. It grasps the need for escape. And yet, like Peter, the nous finds itself chained between two guards, attacks of the passions and the mind’s assent to the attacks. What is the nous to do?
The two squads signify the attacks suffered by the intellect from the activity of the passions and from the mind’s assent to the passions. When through the teaching of practical philosophy, as though with the help of an angel, the intellect has passed safely through these two squads…it comes to the iron gate, which leads into the city.
In chapter 67, St. Maximus clarifies that practical philosophy is equivalent to the law of the Old Testament. Now, he is not importing legalism or salvation by keeping Mosaic law, for in the next breath he uses the same language of “law” regarding the New Testament, a law that leads to the vision of spiritual realities.
The law of the Old Testament through practical philosophy cleanses human nature of all defilement. The law of the New Testament, through initiation into the mysteries of contemplation, raises the intellect by means of spiritual knowledge from the sight of material things to the vision of spiritual realities. (I.67)
Practical philosophy under the language of Old Testament law must be understood as a cleansing process, which is the emphasis St. Maximus gives to it. Recall how preoccupied the Mosaic mindset and legal dictates are with being either clean or unclean, defiled or purified from defilement. Cleansing is the function or work of practical philosophy. But specifically, how is the Old Testament a picture of practicing the virtues?
B. In another work, his First Century on Theology, St. Maximus remarks on Old Testament teaching regarding the sabbath, seeing in these Old Covenant prescriptions the spiritual meaning of finding rest in God alone by means of dispassion (36-39). When the attacks of the passions (the soldier on one side) become impotent because the mind (dianoia) no longer assents (the other soldier), the nous experiences rest. This sabbath rest is the fruit of the soul that has practiced the virtues and cast off the chains of sin, experiencing freedom. This is one aspect of the Old Testament law-as-practical philosophy.
B. He presents yet another aspect in his teaching on dispassion in the work Third Century on Various Texts. Spiritually interpreting Old Testament law about the release of slaves, he explains that the nous and dianoia (“intelligencevi and reason”) are like Hebrew bondservants released after six years (cf. Deut. 15:12). That is to say, the nous and dianoialabor for the person practicing the virtues. The fruit of this labor is freedom, the release from slavery due to having engaged for a symbolic six years of practical philosophy. Twelve years is the fulfillment, so this is the initial stage of the spiritual life. This stage of practical philosophy is represented by the Old Testament law, i.e. practicing the virtues. It is the stage that proceeds the New Testament stage, which is the stage of perfection. In the NT stage, the nous anddianoia are set free to “devote themselves to spiritual contemplation, [to] contemplate the inner essences of created beings (logoi)” (III.53).
C. In On the Lord’s Prayer, St. Maximus provides a compact and concrete teaching, moving from Old Testament to New, from practical philosophy to spiritual contemplation. Practicing the virtues is purification (i.e. escaping prison) in order to contemplate the logoi. In his profound explanation on asking the Father for our daily bread, he says in part:
Let us therefore shun the love of matter and our attachment to matter with all the strength we have, as if washing dust from our spiritual eyes; and let us be satisfied simply with what sustains our present life, not with what pampers it. (p. 300)
He captures the spirit of such discipline in an aphorism: “Let us show that we eat for the sake of living and not be guilting of living for the sake of eating.” Desiring what we need and no more purifies the body. The body is thus made a “messenger of the soul,” and the soul in its turn becomes a “herald of God” once it is established in “the good,” which must be the sphere of the virtuous life.
In conforming ourselves to the meaning of this article in the Lord’s prayer, St. Maximus teaches “we can proceed in purity to the next petition, saying, ‘And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’” Only once the passions are checked can the Christian interpret relationships between God and neighbor rightly, and be truly, authentically disposed toward forgiveness. In short, we see clearly.
Practical philosophy, which is the practice of the virtues, cleanses the soul of defilement, with emphasis on cleansing. Nonetheless, as St. Maximus emphasizes elsewhere, purification is not enough without actively acquiring the virtues (Theoretikon). With the precondition of purity accomplished, the soul is then prepared to contemplate the inner essences of created beings.
IV. But how can the nous engage praktike to escape Herod’s prison?
A. In discussing all of this with a pastor friend, he noted that Buddhism also emphasizes detachment, and Hinduism is likewise strongly ascetic. What distinguishes Orthodoxy from them? Furthermore, in our society there is no shortage of secular self-help material. So, to avoid a syncretistic or secular depiction of St. Maximus’ teaching, and to distinguish the unique revelation of Orthodoxy with respect to human salvation in Christ alone, we must underscore Maximus’ presuppositions about engaging praktike.
B. St. Maximus answered why the Logos was “once for all born in the flesh.” He says, “Because of this,” that is, due to the deception of the devil and consequent marring of human nature, “God became perfect man, taking on everything that belongs to human nature except sin” (I.11). The Incarnation accomplishes two remarkable actions simultaneously. First, when the Logos came in the flesh the devil was baited by His flesh and, upon seizing Jesus Christ, he was “poison[ed],” which “destroy[ed] him utterly by the power of the Divinity within” the flesh of the Logos (ibid.). Second, although the Logos’ flesh was poison to the evil one, nevertheless “to human nature [the Logos’ flesh] proved a remedy restoring it to its original grace by that same power of Divinity within it” (ibid.).
C. In short, the Incarnation makes possible the practice of practical philosophy because it heals human nature. His Incarnation and life transfigured human nature. One consequence was the emergence of spiritual therapy to heal the person. St. Maximus touches upon this therapy throughout his writings. For example, he teaches that we repurpose the passions as antivenom against the venom of sin.
In short, the passions become good if—like wise physicians who use the body of the viper as a remedy against present or expected harm resulting from its bite—we use them to destroy present or expected evil, and in order to acquire and safeguard virtue and spiritual knowledge. (I.66)
Jesus Christ at once vanquishes the power of evil and mortality in human nature and becomes “the medicine of immortality, the antidote to our dying,” as St. Ignatius of Antioch memorably puts it (IgEph. 20). For St. Maximus, passions were originally good but distorted at the fall of human nature. Corruption resulted thereby. But human nature was transfigured, deified, and placed on the divine throne itself in the person of the Incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus, the iron gate opens by itself (“automatically”), and escape from attachment to sensible things is complete.
Thus also, the Incarnation of God and the salvation of humanity wrought thereupon is the absolute, decisive distinction and difference between Orthodoxy and the schemas of other world religions.
V. Conclusion: From Herod’s prison to the City of God
A. Once the nous is freed from Herod’s prison, it is at liberty to contemplate the inner essences of created things, the logoi. St. Maximus’ teaching on the logoi demands a focused study of its own, which I have not yet undertaken and would anyway extend beyond the scope of the present focus on the saint’s use of Herod’s prison.
B. For the present, the logoi correspond to the spiritual realities of the world in contradistinction from its sensible or material realities. That is, the nous’ vision is illumined to see what is natural to it, no longer encumbered or blinded by what is obvious and apparent to the flesh. It is seeing through creation as an icon of the Creator, similar to St. Paul’s teaching in Romans 1:20.
Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse (RSV).
C. Furthermore, contemplating such spiritual knowledge follows from the struggle of detachment of the flesh and attainment of virtue. By divine grace, once liberated from the blinding and binding effects of the flesh that weighs down the nous, the nous is able to ascend to that which it desires to behold and contemplate. In short, I understand contemplating the logoi to mean seeing reality as it is without delusions, in humility, and in genuine love for God.
D. Thus, St. Peter walks through the iron gate and beholds the city of God (as it were). The nous, freed from its bonds, rises above the sensible aspect of the world and apprehends God back of everything, that God is “everywhere present and fillest all things,” as our Trisagion prayer puts it. The liberated nous catches sight of the true meaning of things and is no longer ensnared by the devil’s traps or sensible beauty because it sees the traps for what they are and has beheld divine beauty, for which there is no comparison.
Glory to Jesus Christ. Amen.
Endnotes
iVolume two, as translated and edited by Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware. I am indebted to their glossary for Greek originals behind their translation of key words, such as intellect, mind, reason, etc. I cite St. Maximus from this edition in text with the convention, e.g., I.79 = First Century, chapter 79.
iiI encourage the reader to consult the scriptural text.
iiiThe Book of Acts mentions four squads of soldiers. I take it St. Maximus refers to the two soldiers, one on either side of St. Peter, as he sleeps in his chains during the night. Perhaps he extends this to two soldiers that presumably escorted him into prison.
ivPerhaps this is an instance where St. Maximus expresses part of his vision into the inner essences of created beings (logoi), i.e. creation points beyond itself to the One back of all, the transcendent Creator.
vHe also asks rhetorically, “For who, relying on the power of rational demonstration, can explain how the conception of the divine Logos took place?” (I.13)
viThe operative faculty of the nous is intelligence, to logikon; hence, I use the nous to relate the following use of the OT to the analogy of Herod’s prison.
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