THE TRIUNE LIGHT AND HUMAN FREEDOM: DEIFYING GRACE, CHRISTIFORM SYNERGY, AND THE LITURGICAL AXIS OF THE KINGDOM
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Babeș-Bolyai University / Cluj University Press
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The Triune Light and Human Freedom: Deifying Grace, Christiform Synergy, and the Liturgical Axis of the Kingdom. Deifying grace is the name given to that form of divine nearness in which the Triune God does not merely act upon the world from without, but gives Himself to the human creature so that it may live from His own life. The present article considers this mystery in its intrinsic relation to human freedom, drawing first on the Thomistic account of grace as created habitus ordered to an uncreated end, and then on the Palamite theology of the uncreated energies, in which the light of the divine doxa is confessed as both absolutely transcendent and truly communicable. Within the framework of exitus-reditus, habitual grace appears as the inner configuration that makes the person capax Dei, whilst the Eucharist manifests the primacy of uncreated grace as the sacramental presence of the crucified and risen Lord, source of every participation. In dialogue with Gregory Palamas, the study examines how synergeia and the ἕξις θεῖα express a cooperation in which human freedom is neither abolished nor idolised, but drawn into the filial “yes” of Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit. Finally, the Byzantine lex orandi – especially the Paschal Vigil, the hymn Phōs Hilaron and the Divine Liturgy – is interpreted as the concrete axis along which the Triune Light encounters and transfigures human existence, so that the Church may appear as the new Jerusalem, illumined by the Slava of the risen Christ.