The phenomenon of freedom in the context of the human person in the Greek patristic

Attitude towards freedom creates two fundamentally different directions in the articulation of the key ideas for understanding the phenomenon of the human person, to issue in the Latin West and the Greek East. Representatives of the Greek patristic express a specific unanimity in the negative interpretation of freedom, which receives the name of «disastrous» and is perceived as the source of sin and the root of all evil. Libertas is interpreted as a test to overcome that man was not capable of. As an example, many thinkers turn to the Old Testament story of the Fall of Adam. In Greek patristic gradually formed a firm conviction that freedom is destructive to human personality and spiritual development. Therefore, the foundation of ascetic practices, rooted in the IV century kin, is the fixation of attention on cutting off their own will, the subject, which is dedicated to a significant body of literature of the period. Freedom is not fraught with the danger to humans when fed by God as spiritual growth. However, the freedom and the location of the heart in representatives Cappadocian schools is a necessary condition not only to every good work, and spiritual development. In the treatises of thinkers of the patristic period postulated freedom from fear, and there is a new concept of «fear of God», that is, sin and failure to follow the commandments. However, in the Greek patristic there are opinions that stand out from the canvas thinking about the phenomenon of freedom in the context of understanding the human person: the denial of freedom within the boundaries of the world partite (Isaac the Syrian), the idea of freedom from suffering (Eph-raim of Syria). The concept of Maximus the Confessor loss of true freedom, that is integrity, which is the core image of the personality, led to the fall of man. General at the western and eastern representatives of patristic is the idea of freedom from attachment to the world and all that fills it. In the works of Western thinkers of the patristic period, in the context of the individual key advocates question the relation of divine grace and free will, the Greek - is the central idea of his own will to achieve eradication and desire to live according to God's will. Disclosure of the ontological foundation of human existence, the essence of personality in man, identifying the internal foundations of his personality is possible only if the full elimination of their own will, and that is equivalent to the absolute understanding of freedom as such.

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