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Free Will
The self-determination of the rational will — the foundation of human dignity, moral accountability, and the possibility of synergy.
Autexousion (from autos, self, and exousia, authority) is the patristic term for free will: the soul's capacity to determine itself. Orthodox theology insists on free will as essential to the image of God in humanity and the basis of moral accountability. It is not destroyed by the Fall but disordered. But it remains genuinely free — grace does not coerce. Synergy is possible precisely because the will remains capable of genuine cooperation with or rejection of divine grace.