Maximus, Sartre, and the Dialectic of Time-existence
What is interesting is that there seems to be no way out of this dialectic. However, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and later St. Maximus, expanded on this theme and posited a solution for this dialectic in the eschaton. The eschaton will not be either a state of immoble stasis, nor one of constant flux (since the righteous will not be able to fall into sin). This dialectic is transcended just as the false dialectic of free meaning a choice between good or evil is transcended. Paul Blowers writes in his paper:
“The Confessor reworks the categories of time, extension, and aeonic existence in an effort to describe an indescribable state. This moving rest presupposes a kind of extension (diastema) that is beyond time (kronos), and yet short of God’s own utter timelessness: a temporal timelessness or aeon, a moving motionlessness. On this plane the creature enjoys “eternally moving repose” as a finite being open toward the infinite, and yet also knows an “immobile eternal movement” since the end of the finite being is infinite and unattainable Thus the final stasis is thus a ‘dialectic vibration between time and timelessness, between creature and Creator.” (Blowers, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa and the Notion of Perpetual Progress)
So there is an interesting solution to this historical philosophical dilemma as proposed by these Eastern doctors. And, it is one which is simultaneously ontological and personal, whereas the pre-socratics were impersonal in their considerations, while the existentialists were ultimately concerned only with persons, since real being is the person who wills being-for-itself. So we have the permanence and stasis as preferred by the masses reconciled with the flux and change as preferred by the revolutionary. It seems only a personal God can rescue us from this false dialectic as well.
To quote one of my greatest movers and shakers, Shakespheare said that we wear a mask for the brief period of our life, then just take it off to go home.