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In other words, grace is natural to man. The divine power is a part of man's NATURAL integrity. There is not a set of gifts given to "nature" and then another set of gifts given to "supernature". When our parents "fell from grace" there was not a fall into "nature" stripped of "supernature," rather it is something UNnatural (this means that there is no concept of 'natura pura' either actually or theoretically). The fall is a fall into dialectic. I cannot be a human person without grace. We stand within the Incarnation and understand this question and we can equally say with Michael Baius - against the Thomistic tradition on some conception of the "absolute gratuity of grace" without reference to the Incarnation - that given that God wills the mystery of His embodiment in Jesus Christ, God could not have created me other than I already am. The vision of God is natural to man, what God does in Redemption, He does in Creation. God intention in Creating was to will the mystery of His embodiment in Jesus Christ.

The purpose of life is not to resist it or to indulge in it, but to live. As St. Ireneaus in the early second century observed, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive" as we see in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Marriage as a spiritual path moves along the "narrow path that leads to life" between these two extremes where the Divine Energies and the vital sap of daily life in the world converge. The Orthodox Church holds marriage in honor as a Mystery of the Church-a means of Grace uniting heaven and earth-where the word and action of the Lord turn ordinary water into the wine of the Spirit creating an effervescence in the soul of the partakers

Man was created with free will. Its power was compromised by the fall. It is further dimished by delusion and the passions. We escape them through true faith, worship and fasting. Our freedom increases as these negative forces decrease.

Forgiveness is one of the exclusive human qualities or attitudes, crucial to the basic make-up of the human person, especially when we speak in terms of the spiritual tradition of Christianity. Recent formulations define forgiveness as the opposite of resentfulness, rancor and hatred, entailing the relinquishment for justification and punishment. These issues, initially belonging to the ground of philosophical, theological or sociological speculation, appeared recently on the scene of psychological research and applications.