International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

BYZANTINE PHILOSOPHY AND 
MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR – PART 1
Convener:
 Sotiris Mitralexis
Emma Brown Dewhurst
, 
How Can We Be Nothing? The Concept of Nonbeing in Athanasius and Maximus the Confessor
Rev. Demetrios Harper
, 
Moral Judgment in Maximus the Confessor
Rev. Nikolaos Loudovikos
, 
Maximus and the Unconscious
Sotiris Mitralexis
, 
Rethinking the Problem of Sexual Difference in 
Ambiguum 41
Dionysios Skliris
, 
The Notions of 
ἐπικράτεια
and 
ἐγκράτεια
in Maximus the Confessor

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Emma Brown Dewhurst
Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom;
[e-mail]
How Can We Be Nothing? 
The Concept of Nonbeing in Athanasius and Maximus the Confessor
In 
On the Incarnation
, Athanasius offers detailed account of nonbeing (μὴ εἶναί) as the ultimate 
separation from God. The consequences of sin are that creatures that are preserved by God and 
granted being by him, fall back into the nothingness from which they were created. Athanasius 
explains that this is the condemnation of death which thereafter had mastery over creation. This 
leaves us with a problem however, as, although it explains the way in which human nature is affected 
by sin, it does not account for the effect of sin within our personal, hypostatic lives. If sin truly is 
isolation from God and immediate relapse into non-being, how can we be nothing, when we clearly 
persist in our fallen lives and have a chance of redemption in Christ?
In this paper, I look at the cosmic ideas of Maximus the Confe ssor as a way of expanding and 
making sense of Athanasius’ concept of non-being. Maximus’ breakdown of creaturely subsistence 
into being – wellbeing – eternal-wellbeing (τὸ εἶναι – τὸ εὖ εἶναι – τὸ ἀεὶ εὖ εἶναι) allows him to 
emphasise that it is being and eternal-wellbeing that are gifted to humanity, and that our choice 
to participate in renewed nature in Christ is a choice to move toward well-being. In his 
Chapters 
on Love, 
Maximus identifies non-being as the privation of ‘true being by participation’. Given that 
Maximus understands the gift of eternal-wellbeing as the final choice of God that is to come, so also 
does Maximus understand the finality of nonbeing as reserved for the age to come. Instead, in this 
life when we sin, we seem to occupy a different kind of nonbeing, that is misdirected movement 
that has no true life because it does not live and move in God. I finish by looking at some Biblical 
parables that offer some insight into this suspended kind of nonbeing that has not yet lapsed into 
eternal death because of Christ’s invitation that awaits the response of the human. These include the 
barren fig tree that is given another year to bear fruit (Luke 13:6-9), and the woman at the well who 
does not know that she is not alive because she has not drunk of the water of life (John 4:4–26).
I finish by concluding that by using Maximus, we can offer an explanation that makes sense 
of the difficulty found in Athanasius. We can both acknowledge nonbeing as mistaken creaturely 
movement that is given an opportunity for ‘true being by participation’ in the life, death and 
resurrection of Christ, and know that if a creature persists to reject life, it can only, at the end of 
time, fall back into the primordial nothingness that Athanasius describes.

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