My translation of the poetic concluding passage of Archimandrite Cyprian Kern's work on the anthropology of St Gregory Palamas, one of the first great monographs on Palamite theology to appear in modern times:
Man is responsible before God to complete and disclose the plan that God has willed from eternity. Man, as a “God-speaking” [“bogo-slovesnoe”] being, is called to live and answer for this word about being. He is called as his mission to complete creation, that is, intelligently and freely. He is called to create in the moral, spiritual, intellectual, and aesthetic realms. He is called to arise and follow that path to which the God-Man commanded him, saying about Himself: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” [Jn. 14:6].
Where does this way lead?
One can answer with only one word: to deification.
Or let us use the very words that St. Gregory Palamas spoke before his death: “on high… on high… to the LIGHT.”
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