The Gnomic Will, Derived

Maximus the Confessor distinguished the natural will, which belongs to a nature, from gnome, the deliberative willing of a person whose good is not secure. The Church received the distinction in 681. It has been defended since. It has not been derived. An eliminative chain of 137 resolutions reaches it. The chain begins from the observation that non-being requires being and never starts from Maximus. This paper says where each of Maximus’s claims sits on it. Will comes before choice (R.11, R.14). Will is Good (R.47, Def.13). One Will is every being’s willing, without containment (R.44): the seventh Ambiguum’s one Logos and many logoi. Gnome is what the encounter with non-being introduces into a being’s knowing (R.73). The condition carries no guilt (R.101). Misuse is the being’s own act (R.76). Christ has a real human will and no gnome, because there is no “not” in his knowing (R.74, R.111 to R.116). Ever-moving rest is the eternal modality at R.90. Where the chain parts from universalist readings it does so on the same ground: choosing is time, and when time ends the being is what its choosing made it (R.131, R.135). The chain: Anything Willing Is, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19538257. Interactive edition, one anchor per resolution: https://anythingwilling.is/