For two sins arose in our forefather through transgression of the divine commandment. One was blameworthy. The second, whose cause was the first, was not blameworthy.
The first came from the disposition, which voluntarily refused the good. The second came from nature, which, following the disposition, involuntarily refused immortality.
Correcting this alternating corruption and alteration of nature, our Lord and God assumed this whole nature in its entirety. In the nature He assumed, He also had the passible principle, which He adorned with incorruption according to His disposition.
Therefore, because of the passible principle, He became sin for our sake according to human nature. Yet He did not know voluntarily chosen sin, because of the immutability of His disposition.
By this immutability of disposition, the Lord corrected the passible principle of nature. He made its end, by which I mean death, the beginning of transformation toward incorruption.
Through one man, who voluntarily turned his disposition away from the good, the nature of all men was changed from incorruption into corruption. So also, through one man, Jesus Christ, who did not turn His disposition from the good, nature was restored for all men from corruption into incorruption.
Thus the Lord did not know my sin, that is, the alteration of my disposition. He did not assume my sin and did not become it.
But for my sake He became sin. That is, He became the corruption of nature which arose through the alteration of my disposition, taking it upon Himself.
For our sake He became, by nature, a passible man. By means of the sin that arose through me, He destroyed my own sin.
In Adam, the inclination of his personal disposition toward evil deprived human nature of its common glory. God judged that man, who had dealt wickedly with his disposition, was not good enough to possess an immortal nature.
So also in Christ, the inclination of His personal disposition toward the good deprived all human nature of the common shame of corruption. At the Resurrection, nature was transformed through the immutability of His disposition into incorruption.
For God reasonably judged that man, who does not alter his disposition, could again receive back an immortal nature.
By "man" I mean God the Word incarnate. Through the Incarnation He hypostatically united to Himself rational and ensouled flesh.
For if the alteration of disposition in Adam introduced passibility, corruption, and mortality into human nature, then the immutability of disposition in Christ restored to that nature impassibility, incorruption, and immortality through the Resurrection.
Thus the alteration of human nature toward passion, corruption, and death is the condemnation for Adam's voluntarily chosen sin.
Man came to possess what he did not possess when he was fashioned in the beginning by God. He brought about this alteration and knew it, committing through disobedience a voluntarily chosen sin. Clearly, its offspring is his condemnation to death.
But the Lord took upon Himself this condemnation for my voluntary sin. I mean that He took the passibility, corruption, and mortality of human nature.
He became sin for my sake according to passibility, corruption, and mortality. He voluntarily clothed Himself in my condemnation according to nature, though He Himself was uncondemned in His disposition.
He did this in order to condemn my voluntary and natural sin, and my condemnation. In this way sin, passion, corruption, and death were driven out of nature.
From the love of God for mankind there arose a new mystery. It was the divine economy concerning me and for my sake, who had fallen through disobedience.
For the sake of my salvation, He voluntarily appropriated my condemnation through His death. By that death He granted me spiritual restoration unto immortality.
I think it has been shown in many ways how the Lord, not knowing sin, became sin. It has also been shown how man, who knows and commits sin, did not become sin.
Man was delivered both from voluntary sin, which he himself began, and from natural sin, which the Lord took upon Himself for his sake. The Lord was completely free from the first sin.
Therefore, according to the meaning set forth and grasped by the intellect, this discussion makes the proper distinction concerning the homonymy of the term "sin."
One may say that committing and knowing sin is in no way better than becoming sin. The first separates us from God, when the disposition voluntarily rejects divine things.
The second often becomes an obstacle to evil. Because of natural weakness, it does not allow the wicked inclination of the disposition to be carried out in deed.
The phrase χύριος γενέσθαι μέν ἁμαρτία may at first seem perplexing. Yet the following reference to 2 Cor 5:21 shows that Thalassius follows the holy Apostle Paul.
Paul says that God made Christ "sin" for us, though He "knew no sin." In other words, God laid the sins of the whole world upon Christ and dealt with Him as with an actual sinner.
Maximus designates the first sin as εὐδιάβλητος, because it was the result of the first man's conscious act of will.
The second sin, by contrast, is in a certain sense innocent, ἁδιάβλητος. It is the unexpected and unforeseen consequence of the first.
In patristic vocabulary, the adjective ἁδιάβλητος, meaning "blameless," is very often applied to the human passions of Christ.
Anastasius of Sinai, arguing against the Monothelites, uses this adjective in a somewhat different context.
He distinguishes in man "the God-created and God-given will of our rational soul" from "the fleshly, diabolical, and material will" that arose as a result of sin.
"The holy fathers define the fleshly will as alien and unfitting to Christ. According to the fathers, the fleshly and passible activity of sin is not natural and God-created."
"Nor is it the spotless and blameless, ἄμωμον χαὶ ἁδιάβλητος, activity and will created according to the image and likeness of God."
A scholion says: "By the sin of nature he means death, because of which we leave being even unwillingly. By the sin of disposition he means the choice contrary to nature, through which we willingly fall away from well-being."
A scholion says: "Because the Lord, having become incarnate, was by nature corruptible as man, for which reason He is said to have become sin. Yet by His disposition He was incorrupt in nature, as sinless."
In other words, the Lord did not know the sin that arose from the gnomic will.
A scholion says: "He says that the death of the Lord became the beginning of incorruption for the whole of human nature."
A marginal note says: "Because the Lord, even as man, was by nature sinless."
A scholion says: "The sin that arose through us is the corruption of nature, while our sin is the mutability of disposition."
"Therefore man, who by righteous judgment underwent natural death, also became mortal for the destruction of the mortal disposition."
Κατά τὴν ἀνάστασιν may also be translated "by reason of," "according to," or "through" the Resurrection.
In the phrase δἰ ἢν, the feminine probably implies σάρχωσις or ἐνανθρώπησις, that is, the Incarnation or becoming man.
Τὴν πρὸς ἀθανασίαν ἀνάχλησιν means a recall or calling back toward immortality.
A scholion says: "By the first sin he means the alteration of disposition, which the Lord did not possess. Yet He truly assumed passibility according to nature, which was the punishment for Adam's altered disposition."
"Therefore He alone is 'free among the dead' (Ps 87:6), since He does not have the sin through which death arose."
A marginal note says: "Clearly, this means committing and knowing sin according to disposition."
Another marginal note says: "Certainly, it means becoming Adam, passible by nature, as punishment for the sin of disposition."
"Not knowing it, the Lord became sin by assuming, as man, the natural passibility according to the flesh that came about through the sin of disposition."
The essence of Maximus' thought is probably this. The corruption and mortality of our nature, that is, the second sin, produce physical weakness and often hinder the execution of our wicked inclinations and thoughts.
Therefore, to become sin is better than to commit and know sin. It means inheriting the passibility, τὸ παθητόν, corruption, and mortality proper to human nature after the fall.
Here passibility means the capacity to suffer or undergo something. It is better than carrying out a wicked disposition and thus becoming like the forefather Adam.
Gregory Palamas, like many other Greek fathers of the Church, held that we inherited death from Adam, not guilt.
Therefore Adam's sin was not a collective sin of the human race, but something like a corruption of human nature.
The personal responsibility of men is considered only insofar as they imitate Adam. What they inherit from him by birth is only corruption and death, which in turn lead them to sin.
Thus men are drawn into a certain vicious circle of death and sin. The easy transition to the first person in this question, such as "my sin," should be understood in the sense of imitating Adam.
Τὴν ἐμὴν οὖν μὴ γνοὺς ἁμαρτίαν ὁ κύριος, τουτέστι τὴν τροπὴν τῆς ἐμῆς προαιρέσεως, τὴν ἐμὴν οὐκ ἔλαβεν ἁμαρτίαν οὔτε γέγονεν.
ἀλλὰ τὴν δι' ἐμὲ ἁμαρτίαν, τουτέστι τὴν διὰ τὴν τροπὴν τῆς ἐμῆς προαιρέσεως φθορὰν τῆς φύσεως, ἀναλαβών, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν γέγονε φύσει παθητὸς ἄνθρωπος.
"The Lord, not knowing my sin, that is, the mutability of my disposition, did not assume my sin and did not become it."
"But He assumed the sin on my account, that is, the corruption of nature, φθορὰν τῆς φύσεως, ἀναλαβών, which came about through the alteration of my disposition."
"For our sake He became, by nature, a man subject to blameless passions."
THEOSIS