Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos of Nafpaktos
We can confront the topic of freedom from many
angles. The first angle is the moral one, from which man's freedom is to
act without being hindered by various duties. The second angle is the
psychological one, from which his freedom consists in being able to make
decisions without being subjected to various influences. A third angle
is the philosophical one, from which freedom is the inalienable right of
man, as a rational being, to think and to act. It is also possible for
all the other freedoms, social, personal, national, economic, and so
forth, to be put into this framework.
Those aspects of freedom will not concern us, but we
are going to examine freedom from one angle, that of theology. For we
shall discover that it differs greatly from the other angles, in that it
is more integrated.
It must be said from the start that independence, or
freedom, is an essential constituent of man. When God created man, He
gave him free will, which not even He Himself violates.
In Holy Scripture it says that man was created in the
image and likeness of God (Gen. 1,26). The holy Fathers have given
various definitions as to just what this image is. Sometimes they refer
it to man's sovereign dignity, to his superiority and his lordship over
the terrestrial world, sometimes to his soul and body, sometimes to the
whole man, sometimes to the ruling part of his soul, which is the nous,
sometimes to his independence. All these definitions show that the holy
Fathers avoid specifying one particular point which is the image, but
they rather describe all the functions which express the image. In any
case it is a fact that one interpretation of the image also refers to
independence, which interests us here.
John of Damaskos' interpretation concerning the image
is characteristic. He says that God formed the body from the earth and
"by His own inbreathing gave him a rational and noetic soul, which last
we say is the divine image". Extending this interpretation he says: "for
'in His image' means the nous and free will, while 'in His likeness'
means such likeness in virtue as is possible". Thus 'in the image'
refers chiefly to the noetic and independent. In what is to be said
below we shall mostly interpret independence, freedom, because there are
many misinterpretations on this subject. We shall emphasize some
essential points.
a) The relativity of human freedom
Man as a creature, as created by God, has absolute freedom within its relativity. With his freedom he can even turn against his creator, but this freedom is relative. This is because man is not uncreated, but created, which means that he was created by God and therefore has a beginning.
Archimandrite Sophrony observes: "Absolute freedom
means being able to determine one's being on all levels, independently,
without constraint or limit in any form. This is the freedom of God -
man does not have it", for he has not the authority to create "out of
nought".
The ultimate temptation for the freedom of man (and
in general of subsistent spirits) "is to fashion his own being,
determine himself in all things, become a god himself, and not just take
what is given, because that would entail a feeling of dependence".
Thus man does not have absolute freedom by his
biological birth. But he can acquire absolute freedom by his rebirth and
experiencing Christ's life, as we shall explain in the next section.
b) The challenge of freedom
The preceding also leads us to another parallel
conclusion, that what is given to man by his existence is a challenge
for freedom. True freedom is not just the choice of an event, but the
possibility of a self-determined existence.
It has been observed very correctly that: "The
ultimate challenge to the freedom of the person is the 'necessity' of
existence. The moral sense of freedom, to which Western philosophy has
accustomed us, is satisfied with the simple power of choice: a man is
free who is able to choose one of the possibilities set before him. But
this 'freedom' is already bound by the 'necessity' of these
possibilities, and the ultimate and most binding of these 'necessities'
for man is his existence itself: How can a man be considered absolutely
free when he cannot do other than accept his existence?" Therefore man
"as a created being cannot escape the 'necessity' of his existence".
In this light we can interpret an agonising
existential question of many contemporary young people: "Why did my
parents give birth to me without asking me? Why should I come into
existence without being asked?" To be sure, before someone came into
existence there was no one to be asked, but in any case this is a
question which shows that the greatest challenge for freedom is the fact
of existence and the fact that therefore man has to do something in
order to be given the possibility of determining a new birth for
himself.
Incidentally it should be pointed out that in the
opinion of some, the embryo in its mother's womb is asked if it wishes
to come to life. And the miscarriage of many embryos is interpreted as
their refusal to be born. Thus in a way their existential freedom is
preserved. We cannot judge this view from the patristic point of view,
because the holy Fathers have not expressed themselves on this matter,
at least as far as I know.
c) Freedom and fall
The freedom of man before the fall somehow worked
differently from that which works today. Freedom as we know it in the
period after the fall, after the victory of sin and the passions, after
the illness which came into the whole human race as a consequence of
Adam's sin, after the decay of communities and institutions, is
receiving dreadful effects and it requires great pains in order to
express it in a positive way. In the life before the fall there was the
possibility of positive or negative response to the will of God, but
that was different from freedom as we live it today. In other words,
today we suffer terrible pressures and effects, and therefore it is with
great labour and struggle that we make decisions about doing something,
while in man's original life this labour and struggle did not exist.
We should further point out that man's freedom even
to sin and to withdraw from his Creator was a sign not of perfection but
of imperfection. For his vacillation about what to do, instead of being
stimulated by love and freedom towards the purpose of creation, the
lack of impetus in man towards his archetype, shows a weakness and
imperfection. Man should naturally be led towards the good. St. Maximos
the e Confessor, interpreting the request of Christ's prayer "Thy will
be done on earth as it is in heaven" says that he who impels his
rational power towards God and worships him mystically becomes a
participant in the angels' worship of God. In this case the words of the
Apostle Paul apply: "For our citizenship is in heaven". Among these men
desire does not sap their powers through sensual pleasure, "but there
is only the intelligence naturally leading intelligent beings towards
the source of intelligence, the Logos Himself". The perfection of man's
freedom lies in his turning naturally towards his archetype.
d) Natural will and will based on opinion
While speaking of man's independence, I think that
something must also be said about Christ's independence. St. John of
Damaskos speaks "about the wills and independence of our Lord Jesus
Christ". It is the subject of a dogma which shows us true freedom, how
the two wills in Christ work and also how the saints too, who are united
with Christ, can experience true freedom.
There is a difference between 'willing' and 'how one
wills'. To will is a work of nature, just as seeing is, since in all men
there is willing. However, 'how one wills' is not of nature, "but of
our opinion", just as how to see well or badly is also a matter of the
particular opinion and freedom of each man. The "willing" is called will
and "natural will", "how one wills" which is subject to the will, is
called "will based on opinion".
Through His incarnation Christ assumed human nature,
wholly without sin. Thus in His hypostasis the divine was united
immutably, inseparably, indivisibly with human nature. Since Christ had
two natures, therefore "we say that his natural wills and natural
energies were two". But since the hypostasis is one, therefore "also we
call one and the same both his willing and his doing". And Christ wills
and acts not in a divided way but in unison; for He wills and "each form
acts in communion with the other". It is one who acts, but in any case
He has two natural energies and wills which do not act separately, but
each single energy works in communion with the other. In any case "we
call the wills and the actions natural and not hypostatic".
We have said that in each person there is the natural
will and the will based on opinion. Christ had two natural wills, which
worked "in communion with each other", but he did not have a will based
on opinion. The will based on opinion is that of option, which is
expressed after judgement, thought, dissent and decision. There was none
of this in Christ. Therefore St. John of Damaskos says
characteristically: "It is impossible to speak of opinion and option in
Christ, if we want to speak literally". Opinion is a fruit and result of
seeking and will and judgement about the unknown. After the opinion is
formed, the option prefers one or the other. But Christ was not simply a
man, but also God who knew everything, and therefore "he was
unhesitating in thought and seeking and will and judgement, and
naturally he was at home with the good, and evil was alien". Christ's
will was naturally guided to doing good and to withdrawal from evil.
This is why as God He never sinned, nor did He have any possibility to
sin. What the human will desired did come about in the Person of Christ
"not in contradiction of opinion but in identity of natures". This means
that "He wished these things naturally, at the time when His divine
will wished and allowed the flesh to suffer and do the same things".
Thus in Christ there was not dissent, wavering, inner conflict when
there was something to be done.
Christ, being God and man, naturally had "a will",
but He did not have the will based on opinion, as we said before. His
human will "yielded and submitted to His divine will without being moved
by his own opinion, but willing those things which his divine will
wanted it to will".
Each will of Christ, both the divine and the human,
willed and moved independently. For in every intelligent nature there is
independence. How was it possible to have intelligence and not to have
independence? So Christ's soul "was independent in his willing and
wanted to moved independently", "but wanted those things independently
which His divine will wanted it to will". Thus the two wills in Christ
differed not in opinion, but in natural power: the divine will was
without beginning, accomplishing all things, therefore having power and
dispassion; His human will began in time, suffered natural and blameless
passions and, while naturally it was not all-powerful, still, since it
had been assumed truly and naturally by God the Word, that is why He was
all-powerful.
All these things indicate that since in Christ there
were two natures there were also two wills. Likewise his independence,
which is closely connected with his human nature, acted naturally
towards the good, following the divine will.
e) The freedom of the saints
What has been said is needed in order for us to
understand the limits of human freedom and also to understand how
freedom, independence functions in the saints. As we shall see in what
follows, the saint's independent will, precisely because he is favoured
with divine grace, always moves naturally towards the good. When I speak
of a saint I mean the deified person who partakes of God's deifying
energy.
The Apostle Paul offers this witness: "It is no
longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2,11). He has the
certainty that Christ lives in him, and so elsewhere too he says:
"Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ" (1 Cor. 11,1). St. Gregory
Palamas, bearer of the same Revelation, interpreting this teaching of
the Apostle, says: "Do you see clearly that grace is uncreated? Not only
is such grace uncreated, but also the result of this sort of energy of
God is uncreated; and the great Paul, no longer living the temporal life
but the divine and eternal life of the indwelling word, came to be
without beginning and without end by grace". And a little further on:
"Paul was a created being until he lived the life which had come about
by God's command; then he no longer lived this life but a life which had
become indwelt by God, become uncreated by grace: and wholly possessing
only the living and acting word of God".
In the Apostle's words and in the interpretation by
St. Gregory Palamas, champion of the theologians, it is clear that a man
who has been united with Christ, who has attained illumination and
deification, by grace becomes uncreated and without beginning, because
he has the living Christ within him.
And St. Maximos the Confessor, interpreting the words
of the Apostle Paul that Melchizedek, who is a type of Christ, was
"without father, without mother, without genealogy" (Heb. 7,3), writes:
"The person who has mortified the earthly aspects of himself, thoroughly
extinguishing the will of the flesh within him and repudiating the
attachment to it which splits asunder the love we owe to God alone; who
has disowned all the modalities of the flesh and the world for the sake
of divine grace... - such a person has become, like Melchizedek,
'without father, without mother, without descent'. For because of the
union with the Spirit that has taken place within him he cannot now be
dominated by flesh or by nature".
Every Christian, when he is united with Christ, is
deified, sanctified, and his whole being, and somehow also his freedom,
which is always subject to God's will, is shown favour. In this sense we
say that by His incanartion He granted us freedom. He freed us from
sin, death and the devil and we enjoy this freedom in our spiritual
rebirth. Nicholas Kavasilas says characteristically: "It was when He
mounted the cross and died and rose again that the freedom of mankind
came about, that the form and the beauty were created and the new
members were prepared".
We have already seen that the challenge for freedom
is the given fact of existence, and this creates an existential problem.
But by rebirth in Christ, which takes place within the Church, the
people overcome this existential problem. Just as great as the
difference between biological birth and spiritual birth is the
difference between the struggle over the fact of existence and the
possibility of self-determination of the new existence. Man is born
spiritually by his own will. This spiritual birth has great meaning and
importance. St. Gregory the Theologian speaks of three births. The first
is the biological birth from the parents, the second is through the
mysteries of holy Baptism, the father of which is God, and the third is
through tears, and the father of this birth is the man himself. To
express ourselves through St. Maximos the Confessor, by the first birth
we come into being, by the second into "well being" and by the third,
which is identical with resurrection, into "ever well being"
Thus man is called to this new life, and if he
responds, he is born into "ever well being", overcoming the provocation
and temptation given in his existence. And since the deified person
becomes "uncreated", "without beginning" and "without genealogy" - by
the grace of God - for this reason he acquires a freedom which is
absolute within human limits and facts. Since his freedom has an impulse
towards God through love, there is no ambivalence in him, his
independence functions naturally and so he becomes perfect by grace,
since he has abandoned the imperfection of his nature, which is
indicated by the battle for single-mindedness.
St. Symeon the New Theologian says that our
self-determination, our free will, is not removed by Baptism, "but it
grants us freedom no longer to be held against our will in the devil's
tyranny". Baptism grants man the freedom not to be tyrannised by his
desire, by the devil. After Baptism it again depends on us whether we
remain self-willed towards God's commandments or we depart from this way
and go back to the devil through his cunning practices.
St. Diadochos of Photike, referring to the desire for
self-determination, says that independence is a desire of the rational
soul, which moves readily "towards whatever it desires". Therefore he
urges us to persuade it to move only towards the good. When it is moving
towards the good, it is fulfilling its purpose and moving naturally.
The same saint writes that all men are formed in the
image of God. "But to be in His likeness is granted only to those who
through great love have brought their own freedom into subjection to
God". "Only when we do not belong to ourselves do we become like Him who
through love has reconciled us to Himself". From these words of the
saint it can be seen that the likeness belongs to the saints who have
mortified their passions and subjected their freedom to God through
love. He emphasises the subjection of freedom to God, but this comes
about through love. For in fact it is only then that freedom moves and
functions naturally.
It can be added that "the only exercise of freedom,
in an ontological manner, is love". True freedom cannot be expressed
without love; it loses its ontological content. And this means "that
personhood creates the following dilemma for human existence: either
freedom as love, or freedom as negation".
In the saints we encounter the co-existence of love
and freedom. They love God really, I could say ecstatically, and
therefore their freedom, having been released from different admixtures
and ailments, is directed towards God, it moves naturally. And in this
way the saints are true men, what we have usually called persons.
Since, however, I do not wish to take my stand on a
philosophical and theological level, which may seem abstract - although I
do not think it is, for the theological position is necessary - I shall
go on to present some expressions of freedom, as it is experienced in
the ascetic life of the Church. One is man's freedom from death, another
is the freedom of the nous from logic and the senses, and the third is
man's freedom from the environment. These topics will reveal clearly the
great value of freedom, as the members of our Church experience it.
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