QUOTE : Maximus the Confessor, among the subtlest and most rigorous thinkers on the doctrine of Christ in the history of either Eastern or Western Christianity, was quite insistent that our “gnomic” will—our faculty of deliberation—is so wholly dependent upon our “natural” will—the innate and inextinguishable movement of rational volition toward God—that the former has no actual existence in us except when the defect of sin is present in our intellects and intentions.