John Damascene was a Monothelete

Jacob Tate raises, at OnePeterFive, John Damascene. This lesser blog hasn't spent much time on John's theology ... for its own sake. (A previous blog had spent more time on how John handled [an outdated form of] a different theology.) Tate points out mainly John's support of icons, but in the process cites John's (ostentatious) veneration of the Virgin Mother. In that light: Zachary Keith.

The Christian focus on this Mary has, historically, been a Monothelete concern. By saying Mary was the Mother of God, late-antique politicians like Cyril of Alexandria identified Christ with the Father In Heaven. With the failure of Constantine's and Arius' "Eunomian" project, the next generation of Constantinopolitan Emperors - particularly Theodosius II - could use this Marian formula to identify Christianity with the "well ordered" Christian State. So it was when Cyril ousted Nestorius. It is in Cyril's footsteps John will tread.

Keith notes that John set out his "Fount of Knowledge" as a middle-way between the "Eutychians" and the "Nestorians". In practice John addressed the Miaphysite organisation out in Egypt and in his own west-Syria much as Pope Benedict used to address the Pius X Society. For John they are in schism but not in heresy.

Note that John lived in an Arab-run west-Syria. The Marwânid régime in Damascus, up to the AD 710s / AH 90s, favoured the Miaphysites. The Roman emperors at the time were Constantine IV, Justinian II, and finally Leo III the Isaurian; these were dyotheletes. And Leo III and more-forcefully Constantine V were not just Dyotheletes. They were against icons and, under that Constantine, full-bore iconoclasts. This tendency traveled over to the Caliphate when, in the 100s/720s, Yazid II tore down statuary from Egypt to Syria.

I see in John's career first an attempt at rapprochement between the Miaphysites and his own Constantinople-loyal(ish) Melkites, mediated by the Virgin. John I doubt was ever that much loyal to the Rhomanía - as a Syrian, why would he be. Leo's turn against icons gave John that one more excuse to disassociate himself from Rome in writing.

In sum: John was a Monothelete, at least in the Constans II "Maroni" tradition. File him with the Maronite Chronicler and with George of Resh-'Ayné. (To the extent our Orientalists don't already.)

As to John's infamous rant against that different theology, to which the caliphate adhered: perhaps John sketched this text under 'Abd al-Malik, early on. John suppressed his own work - as long as that caliph was tolerating the Monotheletes, and the icons they venerated. Under that caliph's heir Yazid, those bets went off.