(The parallels to synergetics that are evident here will be discussed later.) Here we concentrated on synergy in hesychasm, i.e. on the experiential aspect of the Orthodox conception of synergy. It is this aspect that is particularly important if we discuss synergy – as we do now – as the anthropological and epistemological paradigm, in the first place. However, it should be at least mentioned briefly that synergy is also closely connected with basic theological problem fields such as Christology (the problem of the two wills in Christ), the conception of theosis, and especially theology of Divine energies. As a result, one can find in Orthodox theology the full-fledged theology of synergy, the main contributions to which belong to Maximus the Confessor (580-662), Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) and Gregory Palamas (1296-1357).

th It was given the completed form in the “palamitic synthesis” of the 14 c., and in the modern “neopalamitic” theology founded by Russian émigré theologians (V.Lossky, J.Meyendorff e.a.) its studies are renewed and continued. These two lines in the Orthodox conception of synergy, experiential or ascetic, and theological or patristic, not contradict, but complement each other (it is often said that the specific nature of Orthodox tradition is the union of patristics and ascetics that have the same spiritual foundations). Taken together, they form an integral whole having two principal distinctive features: 1) the phenomenon of synergy belongs specifically to the economy of personal being, it is a phenomenon of the meeting and collaboration of two personalistic formations; 2) synergy is characterized by radical asymmetry since the energies that reach their contact are different ontologically and play completely different roles in the contact. These features should never be forgotten in all comparisons of the Orthodox synergy with similar (to some or other extent) phenomena in other contexts and fields.