An excerpt from the book "THE PERSON IN THE ORTHODOX TRADITION" by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos
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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