emerges gradually in the course of his [Maximus’] spiritual journey, in the midst of his ruminations on the theandric mystery of the Living One.41 Though an exhaustive lexical account of the patristic use of the word is lacking, Riou believes that it is only with Maximus that it attains both precision of sense and centrality of position, as a way of speaking of the Incarnation and its consequence for the world. For Riou, Maximus discovered by his own spiritual struggle and hard-pressed confession