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The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor is unavailable, but you can change that!

St. Maximus the Confessor is one of the giants of Christian theology. His doctrine of two wills gave the final shape to ancient Christology and was ratified by the Sixth Ecumenical Council in AD 681. This study throws new light upon one of the most interesting periods of historical and systematic theology. Its focus is the seventh century, the 100 years that saw the rapid expansion of Islam, and...

How, then, does Maximus define hypostasis and distinguish it from nature? Maximus follows the Cappadocian tradition, according to which nature is related to what is common, and hypostasis to the particular. In the opening part of his extensive letter to Cosmas on essence and hypostasis, he quotes definitions from Saint Basil’s letters, including the definition from his letter to Terentius discussed previously, to this effect.13 But Maximus also defines hypostasis in other ways. Hypostasis is an essence
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