The idea of supererogatory grace, which is
added to nature in order to order it towards God, is foreign to the tradition
of the Eastern Church. As the image of God, the ordering of the human person
was towards its Archetype. Its nature tendered spontaneously towards God by
means of the will, a reasonable and spiritual power. ‘Primitive righteousness’
rested on the fact that since man was created in the image of God, he could not
be other than a good nature, ordered towards goodness, towards communion with God,
and the acquisition of uncreated grace. If this good nature has come into
disharmony with its Creator, that can only be by reason of its power of
determination from within, its αυτεξουσια.
It is this which confers on man the possibility of acting and willing not only
in conformity with his natural dispositions but also in opposition to his
nature which he can pervert, and render ‘against nature’. The decadence of
human nature is the direct consequence of the free decision of man. He has
willed it so, has deliberately placed himself in this position. A condition
against nature must lead to the disintegration of the being of man, which
dissolves finally in death, the last separation of nature, become unnatural and
separate from God. There is no longer a place for uncreated grace in the
perverted nature where, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, the mind like a
mirror turned about, instead of reflecting God, receives into himself the image
of formless matter, where the passions overthrow the original hierarchy of
human being. The deprivation of grace is not the cause but rather the
consequence of the decadence of our nature. Man has obstructed the faculty in
himself for communion with God, has closed up the way by which grace should
have poured out through Him into the whole creation. (Vladimir Lossky, The
Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church [Crestwood, N. Y.: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1976], 131-32)
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