What Are the Corners and Towers?
by St. Maximus the Confessor
Feast of St. Meletius, Archbishop of AntiochAnno Domini 2020, February 12
THE SECOND book of Chronicles says that Uzziah “did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and he sought the Lord in the days of Zechariah, who understood the fear of the Lord, and the Lord made him prosper…. And Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem, both at the gate at the corner, and at the corner of the valley, and at the corners, and he fortified them. And he built towers in the wilderness and hewed many cisterns out of the rock, for he had many flocks in Shephela and in the low country, and vinedressers in the hill country and on Mount Carmel, for he was a husbandman” (cf. 2 Chr. 26:4-5; 9-10). What are the “towers,” and what is the “gate of the corner”? What is the “valley,” and what is its “corner”? And what, again, are the “corners” and the “towers in the wilderness”? What are “Shephela” and the “low country,” and who are the “vinedressers”? And what are the “hill country” and “Mount Carmel,” and the meaning of the fact that he was a “husbandman”?
Response
48.2. Come, O all-hymned Word of God, and give us, in the degree commensurate to us, the revelation of our own words! Remove the thickness of the veils that cover them, and show us, O Christ, the beauty of their inner meanings! Take us by our “right hand,” that is, the intellective power within us, and, “guiding us in the way of your commandments” (Ps 118.35, LXX), “lead us to the place of your wondrous tabernacle, unto the very house of God with a voice of rejoicing and confession” (Ps. 41:4) so that, through confession manifested in practice, and through joy realized in contemplation, we too may be counted worthy to come to the ineffable place of your feasting, and join our voices of praise to those who spiritually keep festival, singing, with the silent voices of the intellect, the praises of the knowledge of the unutterable mysteries. And forgive me, O Christ, and have mercy on me, for at the command of your worthy servants, I have recklessly dared to attempt things beyond my power, and enlighten my unenlightened mind for the contemplation of the questions now before me, so that you may be glorified even more, for giving light to eyes that were blind, and articulate speech to a tongue that was mute.
48.3. I think that, just as Solomon, up to a certain point, was a figure of Christ, so too Uzziah, up to a certain point, is also a figure of Christ. For the name of Uzziah, translated into Greek, means the “might of God (1 Cor. 1:24), and the natural might and enhypostatic power of God the Father is our Lord Jesus Christ, “the stone who became the head of the corner” (Ps. 117.22; Acts 4:11; cf. 1 Pt. 2:7), by which I mean the Church. For in the same way that a corner constitutes through itself the mutual conjunction of two walls, so too the Church of God is the union of two peoples, the one coming from the Gentiles and the other from the Jews, whose common bond is Christ. And it is Christ who builds the towers “in Jerusalem”—by which I mean he builds them “in the vision of peace”—and these “towers” are the divine and inviolable primary principles of the doctrines concerning divinity, that is, the fortresses, built “at the gate of the corner,” which are the principles of the doctrines concerning the Incarnation. For the Gate and the Door of the Church is the same one who said: “I am the Door” (Jn. 10:9). This gate is surmounted by towers, that is, the fortresses of the divine doctrines of the Incarnation, through which those who wish to believe rightly must make their entrance, finding protection in the “corner,” by which I mean the Church. For the one who is fully armed with the towers of the divine doctrines, as fortresses of the truth, does not fear insolent arguments or demons who might threaten them.
48.4. “And at the corner of the valley.” The “valley” is the flesh, and its “corner” is its union with the soul according to their conjunction in the spirit. At this conjunction, the “towers,” that is, the fortresses of the commandments, are built along with the doctrines that are upon them with discernment in order to safeguard, as if in a corner, the indissoluble union of the flesh to the soul.
48.5. “And at the corners he built towers.” Perhaps Scripture used the word “corners” to describe the way separated creatures are united through Christ. For Christ unified the human being (τὸν ἄνθρωπον), mystically removing, by means of the Spirit, the difference of male and female (cf. Gal. 3:28), freeing the principle of nature in both from the properties characteristic of the passions. He also united the earth, driving away the variation between the sense-perceptible paradise and the rest of the world. He united earth and heaven, demonstrating that the nature of sensible things is one and inclines toward itself. He also united sensibles and intelligibles, and demonstrated that the nature of the things that have come into being is one, being conjoined according to a certain mystical principle. According to a principle and mode beyond nature, He united created nature to the uncreated. And at each unity, that is, at each corner, He built and fortified the supportive and connective towers of the divine doctrines.
48.15. “And at the gate of the corner.” The “gate of the corner,” which is the faith of the Church, is the pious way of life through which we are introduced into the inheritance of good things. At this gate, as if upon mighty and noble towers, the intellect engaged with knowledge builds the fortresses of the divine doctrines concerning the Incarnation, composed of different concepts like so many precious stones, and of the modes of the virtues put in place for the safeguarding of the work of the commandments.
48.16. “And at the corner of the valley.” The “valley” is the flesh, and its “corner” is its union with the soul through the law of the commandments. Upon this union the intellect builds up, like a tower, the understanding that subordinates the flesh to the soul according to the “law of the Spirit” (cf. Rom. 8:2).
48.17. “And at the corners.” This means that there are many “corners” at which the intellect, supremely mighty in God, is said to build its towers. Here, a “corner” is the union of particulars with respect to universals according to the same nature and principle of being, as happens, for example, in the case of individuals with respect to their species, and of species to genera, and of genera to substance (on this classification associated with Porphyry, cf. Amb. 10.89). In each instance, all are uniquely conjoined to the limit of their extremes, at which extremes, as if they were “corners,” the aforementioned universal principles of the particulars produce the multiple and diverse unions of things that are divided. In addition, a “corner” is also the union of the intellect with respect to sensation, and of heaven to earth, and of sensible realities to intelligible realities, and of nature to the intelligible principle of nature (cf. Amb. 41.1). At these corners the contemplative intellect—using its own understanding and having firmly established true opinions concerning each reality—builds intelligible towers; that is, at each of the unions it establishes the doctrines that conjoin the unions.
Share this Post on Your Preferred Platform
"What is it that has ordered the things of heaven and those of earth, the things which move through the air and those which move in the water; nay, rather the things which proceeded them: heaven and earth and the natures of fire and water? What is it that combined and arranged them...set them into motion and put them on their unceasing and unhindered course?..But who is the architect of these things? Or did not he who made them also bring them into being? We shall certainly not attribute such power to spontaneity." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3 This comes after St. John of Damascus sets out to delineate between the created and the uncreated, a fact which, while at the core of existence, seems for him to be, for this very reason, the simplest to believe. Everything but God is created and, thus, susceptible to change. This means people, but this also means demons, angels, the rest of the created order across the entire cosmos. Everything is vulnerable to unrest. Except for God. If you have ever tried to explain the Holy Trinity to a child for the first time, maybe you have felt as I have the weightier, inexpressible side of God's unchangeability: how do I possibly communicate this essential fact to the person in front of me? (This is usually when my faint stutter starts to pop up again.) I like that here, like St. Patrick reaching for a three-leaf clover, St. John brings us back to earth to better understand the cosmos. Fire and water are no less mysteries than heaven and earth. And yet here we are, cooking and washing, eating and drinking, filled and sustained on what we can neither fully explain nor claim to have created. Only God is unchanging. Vice versa, God is the only constant we need. Maybe the rest is better left unsaid. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
"Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Incarnation not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the like." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 2 When I was studying Fiction in graduate school, one of the first methods I learned to really situate the reader in the story you were about to tell them was disorientation; if you wanted to ground them in one story, first you had pull the rug out from under their feet. So it's fitting that in the beginning of St. John Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith, before rebuilding our foundation, he first puts us squarely in limbo, seesawing back and forth between certainty and uncertainty. To paraphrase, there is no doubt (certainty) that about God some things can be expressed...but not all things (uncertainty). Some things about God are truly knowable (certainty), but some are unknowable (uncertainty). Oh, and while we're speaking about God (certainty), let's admit there's a gap, too, between what we say and what we know (uncertainty). My favorite line in this spiraling excerpt, "...it is one thing to speak, and another to know," takes me back to the final lines in Wendell Berry's poem, "How to Be a Poet," which he wrote primarily as a reminder to himself: Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Wherever your preferences fall on the cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology (whether you lean more toward what we can say about God or what we cannot), Berry's poem, I think, would nod along with St. John: before we say too much, let our words be preserved by the silence from which they came. I'm thinking of the silence, that filling, restorative quiet I feel when I step into a cathedral or in some of my favorite moments with my kids in the early hours. Even before praying, can we hear the One already praying in us? Let's start there. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
Late-Night Bookstores and Spiritual Reading
On St. Benedict and the Making of Vows
The Pursuit of Truth in the Age of AI
On the Theology of Raising Chickens
G.K. Chesterton and Raising Small Children
"Seal of the Fathers"
In Memory of Warren Farha, 1955-2026
An Ode to St. Brendan the Voyager
