"I think you will find that hesychastic fathers leave no doubt that we are born in complete depravity, slaves to sin (oh yeah, the Calvinists would love that part!), unable to choose anything but evil, and that we are saved by God's loving grace out of that rot."
I don't think so, Kosta. None of the Fathers save perhaps Augustine, believed in the total depravity of man at birth. The Fathers taught that while we might have lost the "likeness" of God at the Fall, we didn't lose the "image" of God. As +John of Kronstadt wrote: "Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him, because evil is but a chance misfortune, illness, a devilish reverie. But the very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement." It is fair, however, to say that without grace we cannot move from a state of being a bondsman or servant to sin towards theosis.
"I am no expert on Greek of course, but is it correct that the ancient Greek term for "slave" became the modern Greek word for "laborer" or "bondsman?"
No. The Greek word then and now for slave as we today think of slaves is "sklavos".
"Ancient Greeks considered every man who worked for someone else not feee. Only those who worked for themsleves were considered free men. Anyone serving anyone else was not."
Not quite, but close. There were many people who worked for others but were not sklavoi or douloi. The distinction to make is that there were different types of people who come under the English word slave and different states of life that we generically call slavery. Justin Martyr sort of makes this distinction:
"To yield and give way to our passions is the lowest slavery, even as to rule over them is the only liberty. The greatest of all good is to be free from sin, the next is to be justified; but he must be reckoned the most unfortunate of men, who, while living unrighteously, remains for a long time unpunished. The end contemplated by a philosopher is likeness to God, so far as that is possible."
I will have to look up individual fathers on this. Too late for tonight, though.
Kolo, that is, of course, true. I made a sweeping generalization that should have been qualified with "when taken out of context." If one is to quote their works out of context, as is often done with the Bible, one could easily be fooled into believing that hesychastic fathers indeed taught what some Protestants teach.
Thus, for instance, St. Symeon the New Theologian 1 says that the "only defence against" devil's power to derange our minds "is the ceaseless mindfulness of God", which must be stamped on our hearts "through the power of the cross" which "will render our thought steadfast and unshakable." [p. 203]
Thus, he is unambiguously saying the only way to resist the evil one is by the power of the cross and not on our own free will.
St. Gregory Palamas says that man's "perfection of the divine likeness is accomplished by means of the divine illumination that issues from God." [p. 376]
St. Nikitas Stitathos states that those "who pursue the carnal mode of life, and in whom the will of the flesh is imperious ... are not able to conform to God's will [cf Rom 8:8]...they are totally impervious to the rays of divine light."
The souls' senses of such people are are "maimed" and they "cannot aspire to God's spiritual beauty...and transcend the lowliness of visible things. It is as if they had become beasts conscious only of this world..." [p.108]
1The Philokalia, Vol. Four, Faber and Faber 1995
From these quotes, it can be inferred that man indeed has no free will and annot cooperate with God if his heart must be stamped, if his will must be animated, enabled, charged, etc. by the power of the cross or directly from God. What is missing is the firm belief of the hesychastic fathers that our will is washed free with baptism which exorcises the evil one that would otherwise control us completely.
One can also see how the hesychastic fathers, taken out of context, can be understood to support the filioque. Gregory Palamas, for example, echoes the Latin argument that the Holy Spirit is the longing after (i.e. eroV ) or love experienced by the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father.
Taken out of context of the totality of their teaching, such a misconception is easily formed. Hecyhastic fathers, of course, never taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds and from the Son.
St. Gregory Palamas makes that perfectly clear when he says "The pre-eternal rejoicing of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit who, as I said, is common to both, which explains why He is sent from both to those who are worthy. Yet the Spirit has His existence from the Father alone, and hence He proceeds as regards His existence only from the Father." [p. 362]