According to Maximus it was not, properly speaking, Christ who was transfigured when he was seen in glory; it was the disciples, who were momentarily enabled to see him as he truly is. “They passed over from flesh to spirit before they had put aside this fleshly life, by the change in their powers of sense that the Spirit worked in them, lifting the veils of the passions from the intellectual activity that was in them.” Again it is the passions that must be overcome before true vision can occur-though in this case “the veils of the passions” are removed momentarily by a miraculous intervention of the Spirit. Of the many layers of meaning in the vision itself, the one that concerns us here relates to the garments of Christ. Maximus finds in these a symbol “of creation itself, which a base presumption regards in a limited way as delivered to the deceiving senses alone, but which can be understood, through the wise variety of the various forms that it contains, on the analogy of a garment, to be the worthy power of the generative Word who wears it.” The physical creation is the garment of the Word, from which the Word itself shines forth to those who are able to see.
I hope it will be clear from these two passages that the Greek Fathers’ view of nature is very different from our own. We tend to think of nature as an autonomous system that can be understood largely in its own terms. It may need grace to complete or fulfill it, as Aquinas taught; nonetheless, as the very notion of “completion” shows, the starting point is nature. That is why Aquinas begins the Summa by discussing at length what can be known of God based on natural reason.
The view of Maximus is different. He does not think of nature as an autonomous system; it is more like a bush burning with divine fire, or a garment worn by God and shining with uncreated light. Another metaphor Maximus offers makes his view clearer. He says that physical things are to God as printed words are to their meanings. To study the physical world as an autonomous system would make as much sense as scrutinizing the marks on a piece of paper as if they were mere physical objects. The marks are not there to be studied in their own right, but to be read through, as it were, so as to discern the meaning behind them. If they seem to make no sense, then the solution is not to scrutinize them more and more closely; it is to learn the language in which they are written. The way one “learns the language,” however, is not by intellectual effort. It is by purifying oneself from the passions through ascetic struggle and obedience to the divine commandments.
David Bradshaw Christianity East and West: Some Philosophical Differences
