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. . . by divine (eternal) condescension there exists "from the beginning" a reciprocity of natures between God and man. For this reason we are allowed to say that man is created in the image of God. This reciprocity, however, should express itself in action . Therefore, we also say that man is created toward the likeness of God. Likeness manifest itself on the tropological level ("moral," if we like, through in a widest possible sense), i.e., as the manner of existence on the basis of the principle of nature. (This is the famous distinction between "principle of nature," logos physeos , and "manner of existence," tropos hyparzeos, a distinction analyzed historically an in Maximus at length by Felis Heinzer in his dissertation Gottes Sohn als Mensch, Freiberg 1980)

God, too, has his "manner of existence" On the inner Trinitarian level, it expresses itself in an eternal movement from Unity through Duality to Trinity. In regards to man it expresses itself (soteriologically) on the basis of the reciprocity of the Incarnation, i.e., God moves tropologically toward men in incarnating Himself. Man in turn, who had been tropologically made passive and turned in a false direction, moves toward God, activated by the divine movement, and thus divinizing himself.

One may ask whether the question of habitus is ever really actualized in this system of thinking. The effective instrument of salvation is rather the activation of reciprocity on the human side, as effected by the Incarnation which liberates -- through the manifestation of the divine charity -- natural powers in man related to the likeness of God for which man is destined.

"Charity is not only a divine quality, but a divine-human destiny, based on the ontological reciprocity that God established in creating man in His image and likeness. That is to say that charity alone is the truly theandric quality in man, since it is already a theandric quality of God."

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