Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Concept of "Perpetual Progress"

“With Such Joy Surcharg'd”: The Predicament of Satiety in Patristic Theology andParadiseLost

“…Therefore, all affirm that there is a happiness without fatigue and without satiety, a happiness that satisfies without tiring” (267). (Mateo‐Seco does not gloss his “many” for the patristic authors concerned with this debate, but we can look to Maximus the Confessor and Gregory of Nazianzus as two examples [see Blowers]. ) The debate would appear to come to a close when Origen's account of creation—the idea that spiritual surfeit led to the creation of bodies, divisions, and hierarchies—was declared anathema by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 ( OFP 125‐26) .…”

“…Maximus took up and modified Gregory of Nyssa's position on satiety, thereby arguing against Origen's. “Maximus was, like Gregory, particularly repulsed by the idea of a satiety (κόρος) experienced by intellectual beings already united to God, and the very possibility that a mind could become sated in the contemplation of God, thus stalling out in its spiritual progress to the point of falling away through boredom or negligence” (Blowers 153‐54). Gregory of Nyssa's contemporary Gregory of Nazianzus disputed Origen's theory of satiety in a different vein, contending that God withheld part of himself so that we would not replicate Satan's fall through satiation (Gregory of Nazianzus 45).…”