Maximus writes this section in a metaphysical idiom, but his argument helps fill out the importance of recognizing the eschatological aspiration that was inherent in Adam’s situation.  If Adam was fulfilled, perfected from the outset, then we are almost inevitably left with a “fortunate fall” paradigm.  If Adam were fully himself, all that he was going to be, from his first creation, but left that place of rest, then he needed the fall to attain his most precious possession.  But Genesis 1-2 indicates that Adam was created sinless but immature, a child who had to grow until he was ready to receive the privilege of the tree of knowledge.  He doesn’t fall from fulfilled humanness, or from perfected fellowship with God.  He sins and becomes estranged in childhood, before he has reached his rest.  The fall doesn’t initiate history, sequence, maturation; the fall makes the path of maturation more circuitous.

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