THE FREEDOM OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN FATHER DUMITRU STĂNILOAE’S THEOLOGY

Abstract

God is the supreme Mystery of existence, He is by His own power above existence. God is the tripersonal super-essence of spiritual nature, above all spirituality that we may understand or imagine. He is the one Who brings everything into existence and that is why there is a fundamental difference between God and creation; the origin and the existence of the creation depend on the will and the creative work of God. As personal super-essence and super-existence, God is completely free because He cannot be closed into a reference system; He is the ultimate instance of all His decisions and acts. Man, created in the image of God reflects at the level of creation the freedom of God. As created existence, he is part of a reference system of the created world, which depends on God in its existence and becoming. As personal existence, in the image of God, the human person is capable of an existence that is not entirely enclosed into the reference system of the created nature; he is called to the free communion with God and it is the ultimate instance that decides his thoughts, acts and words. Man guards and increases his freedom or loses it according to the manner in which he professes it. For within the freedom of man the possibility to state the freedom is involved, at the same time renouncing it. The paradox of the freedom of man consists of the fact that man gives up his freedom through his own freedom because of pride or because he leaves the communion with God, Who offers him the true freedom.