A thought from John Zizioulas

St Maximus the confessor, following Gregory of Nyssa (On the Creation of Man 16-18, PG 44:177ff.), comes to the very root of the problem of human existence when he regards the biological mode of procreation as a result of the Fall (Ambigua 41, 42, PG 81:1309A, … ). Those who attribute this view of Maximus to a monastic or ascetic bias ignore the fact that he is not an ordinary thinker but perhaps one of the greatest and most creative geniuses in history, and that it is therefore impossible for him to say something without this being an organic and integral part of his whole thought. Maximus’s position on this question is inspired by Matthew 22:30, that is, by the basic presupposition that the true “being” of man is found only in his eschatological state…. Victory over death, the survival of the person, is incomprehensible without a change in a constitutive mode of the human hypostasis, without a transcendence of the biological hypostasis. Being as Communion John Zizioulas, page 52