Wednesday, August 13, 2025

It is the 13th of August 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

I was recently reading a story about a young couple who wanted to call their soon-to-be newborn “Max,” and the guy wanted to call him Maximus, instead of Maximillian or Maxwell, and the mom-to-be complained that as “Maximus,” he would sound like a gladiator. I suppose. Unless you’re a student of church history and the tumultuous 7th century, you might be proud to name your child Maximus, as in “the confessor,” perhaps the most interesting person in the 7th century. We’ve mentioned him before (for example, on the show on the Virgin Mary), but he’s never been given the daily treatment, and boy, does he deserve it.  

Maximus was named for, and destined for, the life of imperial politics. Born in Constantinople in 580, we know little of his early life- but he would become the secretary to the Emperor Heraclius before abandoning the life of a courtier to become a monk. He settled across the Bosphorus in Chrysopolis (modern day Uskudar in Turkey). But the Emperor and Patriarch joined forces to patch over some of the older differences regarding the two natures of Christ (remember: this was THE issue in the early church). They wanted to renege on the Council of Chalcedon’s teaching of the two wills within Christ- human and divine in favor of the teaching that Jesus had one unified will. The “one will” folk, following Heraclius and the Patriarch in the East, were called “Monothelites”- this was condemned by the Pope and the Western church, and Maximus made his way towards Rome, where he would team up with Pope Martin I, who called a council to affirm the teaching of “two wills”.  

Here’s why this was important: the thinking was that the Eastern church was so scared of the error of the Nestorians (making Jesus two distinct things- a God AND man instead of the GodMan), they went the other way- commingling the Human and Divine such that they collapsed into one another. But for Maximus and others, the issue of the “will” was central because in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus says “not my will, but your’s” in his prayer. The “true man” aspect of the Creeds- central to the teaching of Christ’s assumption and redemption of humanity required this, according to Maximus and many in the West. Unfortunately, this is the era of the Byzantine Imperial power, and both Pope Martin and Maximus would be arrested and sent to Constantinople for trial. Martin, an old pope, would die and is the last Pope to also be a martyr. Maximus would be exiled only to continue to teach against the Monothelites and was called back to Constantinople, where his tongue was cut out and his right hand cut off- to keep him from speaking or writing anymore. He would die and be regarded as a “confessor,” that is, someone who was asked to be martyred for their faith, but their true confession led to their downfall.

While this story is often the headline for Maximus, he was more than just a thorn in the side of the Byzantine emperor and patriarch, arguing for a Chalcedonian Christology. He has been called perhaps the “greatest theologian in the Byzantine tradition”. Maximus is one of the chief names involved in the development of “theosis”- the key to salvation as taught in the East. If Roman Catholics stress an infused righteousness and grace leading to Salvation and Protestants tend towards an imputed righteousness (an external declaration), then the East, following Maximus, teaches a kind of absorption of humanity into the divine- humans becoming like God (through grace)- and this is “theosis”.

Maximus also wrote what we believe to be the oldest extant biography of the Virgin Mary- a fascinating text which has only been translated into English in the past decade or so. It is very likely the product of now lost works in which Mary is said to have been the source for many of the Gospel stories of Jesus. Her acceptance of the task of being the Mother of God is also, according to Maximus, the overturning of the curse of Eve and qualifies women for ministry in the church, no longer subjected to men. In the biography, Mary is not only active throughout the ministry of her Son, but after his death, becomes a key leader of the church in Jerusalem. The two wills in Christ, Theosis, the biography of Mary, and we haven’t even gotten into his work Dionysius the Areopagite and Neo-Platonism. Hans Urs von Balthasar- one of the last century’s great Catholic thinkers wrote: The Cosmic Liturgy: the Universe According to Maximus the Confessor.

The Weekend Edition Whiteboard here at the CHA studios has made note of this, and Maximus the Confessor- who is celebrated in Western and Eastern churches on his feast day, this the 13th of August- is likely to get that treatment sooner rather than later. He is said to have died on this day in 662 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and the prophet Jeremiah- a Messianic promise from the 33rd chapter:

14 “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah.

15 “‘In those days and at that time
    I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;

    he will do what is just and right in the land.

16 In those days Judah will be saved

    and Jerusalem will live in safety.


This is the name by which it will be called:

    The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 13th of August 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man, while no fan of monothelitism loves himself a monorail- there’s nothing like a genuine, bona fide, electrified six-car monorail- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who stands by Marge vs. the Monorail as the best Simpsons episode- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.