1. The Domain of Theology

1. The Domain of Theology

We must start with the common root of all the versions of synergia, the Greek word. Syncretic mind of the Late Antiquity was acting chiefly in the mode of the merging and synthesis, and it collected the enormous pool of words for this mode beginning mostly with the prefix syn-: synousia, synesis, synaisthesis, syneinai, etc. etc. Synergia (cooperation, collaboration, concerted activity) was a typical element of this pool, and not too popular; it was not exploited in philosophical and mystical teachings so abundant in the Late Antiquity, and it begins to be conceptualized in the Christian discourse only. From the very start it is applied to the relation of God and man, and it should be noted that its conceptualization (as pointed out, e.g., in Lampe’s “Patristic Greek Lexicon”) includes two different meanings: besides one given above, synergia can also mean assistance, help. The difference is not cardinal, but important both theologically and anthropologically: the second meaning implies that only one side of the relation is active, and the necessity of man’s own activity in his relation with God is one of the most disputed subjects in all the history of Christian thought. Orthodox thought accepts synergy as a necessary principle of man’s relation with God, and interprets it more in accordance with the first meaning. This is the position of Orthodox synergism: man should not be passive in his relation with God, and his free will and his energies should collaborate with God’s grace present in the world. Contrary to it, in the West both catholic and protestant theology reject the idea of human will freely collaborating with God’s grace. They reject also the principle of synergy as such so that this principle remained a specific part of the Orthodox tradition and was for a long time one of the main points separating Eastern and Western Christian thought. Now this situation is changing, however, since Western theology takes gradually more conciliatory position to Orthodox synergism.

In Orthodoxy, all its basic conceptions are provided with Scriptural roots, and for synergy there are two principal supporting points in New Testament: 1) in the First Epistle to Corinthians the God – Man relation is characterized by the term close to synergia: “We are fellow-workers (synergoi) with God (1 Cor 3,9); 2) the response of Mary to the Annunciation (Lk 1,38). In this response “Mary could have refused; she was not merely passive, but an active participant in the mystery… Supreme example of synergy is the Mother of God”[2] . The next necessary level is the dogmatic basis, doctrinal formulas established by Ecumenical Councils. For synergy such basis is provided by the resolutions of the VIth Ecumenical Council stating that there are two wills or energies in Christ, Divine (uncreated) and human (created), and they are in harmony and accordance with each other. “The relation of the two energies in Christ is the ontological basis… of synergy”[3] . As for the essence of the conception, synergy was conceived in Orthodoxy as a subject of spiritual experience and practice more than a doctrinal principle. Hence the teaching of synergy developed chiefly in the Orthodox ascetical tradition called hesychasm (from the Greek word hesychia meaning quietness). Having its roots in the early Christian monasticism of the Desert th Fathers of Coptic Egypt and Palestine in the 4-5 cc., hesychasm developed gradually into a school of masterly articulated spiritual practice that created an original method of anthropological self- transformation directed to the union with God conceived as the “deification of man” (theosis) or transcension of all the human being in its energies into the horizon of Divine being. The reservation “in its energies” is important: hesychast practice transforms the set of all energies of a human being not touching upon its essence or substance; and it is stated by a special “Palamitic dogma” of the 1351 that the union with God is possible only as the union of human and Divine energies but not human and Divine essence. This union or man’s ontological transcension is considered as unreachable by man’s own energies and realizable only by means of Divine energy or grace; and it implies that synergy, or the contact and collaboration of human and Divine energies, is the crucial precondition of the achievement of the goal of Christian life. Hesychast practice is structured as a ladder whose steps ascend from the initial step of the conversion and repentance (the step of the rejection of worldly way of life, or Spiritual Gate) to the final step of the deification. The first steps are devoted to the overcoming of stubborn patterns, attitudes and structures of consciousness inherent in the worldly way of life while on the higher steps the fundamental change of the whole human being begins. All the hesychast Ladder is supposed to consist of the two big parts, of which the first is called Praxis (practice) and the second Theoria (contemplation), and the main distinction of the second part is that at its steps the action of some “outer energy” becomes noticeable, i.e. the energy perceived by man as coming from without and not belonging to him. As for synergy, it has its special place at the Ladder. It is when the contact and collaboration of human and Divine energies or wills is achieved that the transition from Praxis to Theoria takes place, and thus synergy appears on the verge between Praxis and Theoria and keeps its presence on all the further steps (cf.: “Synergy or coherence of the two wills continues at all the higher stages of the ascent to God”[4]).

But how can it be achieved? Evidently, the contact and “coherence of the two wills” of different ontological status need some very special conditions, and it took several centuries for hesychast th practice to build a path to synergy. At the period of the so called Sinaitic hesychasm (7-10 cc.) a specific anthropological mechanism has been discovered and mastered that is the key to synergy.

This mechanism that I call the “ontological mover” is the combination of two activities, attention and prayer, the latter taking the special form of the hesychast incessant prayer. Here the attention secures the uninterrupted and incessant character of the prayer, and the prayer, due to such character, embraces all the levels of the human being and accumulates enormous energy directed entirely to personal communion with Christ. In this way a hesychast advances actually to synergy, and the access to higher steps of the Ladder is opened up.

At its higher steps hesychast practice takes a specific character with growing elements of spontaneity. New forms of prayer emerge called sometimes “automobile” (i.e. going on their own without any man’s effort) and a certain chain or hierarchy of new configurations of energies of a human person is generated in a spontaneous process that has an obvious resemblance to processes of self-organization. The most significant of these new phenomena is the radical change of man’s perceptive system: the formation or “opening-up” of some new perceptions takes place. These perceptions called often the “intellectual senses” (noera aisthesis) are completely different from all physical senses (though they have some likeness to the sight, for which reason hesychasts call the experience of them the “vision of the Light of Tabor” considering the event of Christ’s Transfiguration on the mount Tabor as the prototype of hesychast Theoria). Here the integral and fundamental reorganization of the human being begins that is generated by the Divine energy acting in man and manifesting itself explicitly and visibly due to synergy. (The parallels to synergetics that are evident here will be discussed later.) Here we concentrated on synergy in hesychasm, i.e. on the experiential aspect of the Orthodox conception of synergy. It is this aspect that is particularly important if we discuss synergy – as we do now – as the anthropological and epistemological paradigm, in the first place. However, it should be at least mentioned briefly that synergy is also closely connected with basic theological problem fields such as Christology (the problem of the two wills in Christ), the conception of theosis, and especially theology of Divine energies. As a result, one can find in Orthodox theology the full-fledged theology of synergy, the main contributions to which belong to Maximus the Confessor (580-662), Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) and Gregory Palamas (1296-1357).

th It was given the completed form in the “palamitic synthesis” of the 14 c., and in the modern “neopalamitic” theology founded by Russian ?migr? theologians (V.Lossky, J.Meyendorff e.a.) its studies are renewed and continued. These two lines in the Orthodox conception of synergy, experiential or ascetic, and theological or patristic, not contradict, but complement each other (it is often said that the specific nature of Orthodox tradition is the union of patristics and ascetics that have the same spiritual foundations). Taken together, they form an integral whole having two principal distinctive features: 1) the phenomenon of synergy belongs specifically to the economy of personal being, it is a phenomenon of the meeting and collaboration of two personalistic formations; 2) synergy is characterized by radical asymmetry since the energies that reach their contact are different ontologically and play completely different roles in the contact. These features should never be forgotten in all comparisons of the Orthodox synergy with similar (to some or other extent) phenomena in other contexts and fields.