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Not all things cease to move, howeνer, but only those governed by time while the things of virtue, being outside time, proceed for ever and, even if they be terminated, move again towards a new increase, for the ends become beginnings of other advances. The state of rest, which is absolιιte in the ideal world of Plato and Origen, here in the world of spiritual perfection of Μaximos is relative. It is an αεικίνητος στάσις and στάσιμος κίνησις, an ever-moving rest and an ever-remaining movement<⁴¹>. Spiritual perfection is without term, as Gregory of Nyssa had tauglιt long ago<⁴²>. 

Maximos, in his attempt to elucidate the state of transcendental life, offers the examples of St. Ρaul and Melchisedek, stressing the second even much more emphatically. Melchisedek, king of Salem, being presented in the book of Genesis as without genealogy, received in time a messianic character. Ιn the Epistle to the Hebrews he is said to be fatherless, motherless, without generation, having neither beginning of days nor an end of life and likened to the Son of God<⁴³>. 

Transition to eternity is not just an eschatological question for it belongs to the sphere of spiritual operation, which is independent of temporal or non-temporal conditions. Time and space may be abolished at any point of human life, even οn earth, if they are surpassed by reason and virtue. The gulf between God and man is bridged, even when man is still within this world of change and corruption, within the flesh, οn the sole condition that he has been removed through his own will from flesh and world<⁴⁴>. 

The adjectives fatherless, motherless and without generation were not attributed to Melchisedek "for the sake of natural and chronical properties", which characterize father and mother and generation, beginning and ends of days, i.e. things which have been abolished by Melchisedek himself. They were given to him "for the sake of divine and blessed properties", for the sake οf virtue, through which he transformed his species. Ιn other words he was named so, not οn behalf of his nature created out of nothing, according to which he began and ended his life, but οn behalf of the divine and uncreated grace, which comes forth from the eternal God and exists forever, above any nature and any time. Μan is recognized as having been begotten "gnomicly" in his integrity only through his uncreated grace, having attained that state, because he preferred virtue to his nature. So, he was begotten by the Logos in the Spirit to the divine and endless and immortal substances of God and this brings in itself truly the likeness of God who has begotten him<⁴⁵>. The one who has mortified his earthly members dies and rises with Christ<⁴⁶>. And since he has declined worldly goods and mortified the earthly members, he has ceased to reproduce in himself the life measured by time which has a beginning and an end, and is shaken by a multitude of passions. He abandoned these, for the sake of the better, the divine and eternal life of the Logos who dwelled in him<⁴⁷>. Being released from the bonds of time, he is freed in both extremes and so he becomes not only without end -an aspect easily understandable- but also without beginning, since beginning falls into the frame of time which was abolished. The end of times and ages is the complete unity of the genuine beginning with the genuine end within man who is saved. And since genuine beginning and end are just God, unity between these two elements within men who are saved constitutes a unity with God. Therefore, we observe first the choosing of things, then the complete unity between beginning and end, and finally theosis<⁴⁸>.

The one who receives the gifts of the incarnated Logos once, through the sacraments, is forever united with him and keeps his hypostasis forever inside his sοιιl. For Christ is all the time begotten in him secretly and he makes of the soul who begets him a virgin mother<⁴⁹>. Having the God-man permanently within himself, he is in a continuous and perfect contact with the divine. The one who is able to be elevated into the heavens through the divine Logos, who descended on earth for this purpose; he becomes God just as God became a man<⁵⁰>. When he supersedes nature, he becomes by grace what the giver of grace himself is by nature; after he stops his natural operations, according to flesh, according to sense and according to mind, he becomes God through participation in the divine grace. So in the proportion of his participation in the theosis he is also deified in soul and body; this is the uncreated θέωσις, divinization, which is offered to the worthy. And just as divinization is a divine energy without beginning and end, so also is the person who is deified.