My answer is not in any context, but it's an example that has stuck with me since 1970.
If you've done geometry out to the edge of your capacity, you've had this experience. The teacher or the text will assign you an "original", that is, a proposition to prove or a problem to solve on your own, as opposed to something that Euclid or someone did and you have to understand it.
And you struggle for an hour, maybe more. You try this line of attack, you try that, NOTHING gets you there. You're on the verge of blasphemy or tears.
Then, as we say,"it comes to you." And that formulation is, I think, VERY important. Truth is self-disclosing. When we "Get it", it's more often an experience of RECEIVING it, though our language also admits of the meaning "grasp" or "seize". "Comprehend" and "concept" are both words which have the sense of grasping or seizing. But it's interesting the the English word "get" and the Greek work "lambano" both can have the very active sense of grasp (Get him!) or a more passive sense of receive( "I got a letter yesterday").
Now, in that moment when you "get it", there is NEITHER any question of turning away or rejecting it, nor any apprehension of loss of freedom. The gift, as it seems, of "Getting it" delivers freedom, it doesn't take it away, and yet there is no question, at the time, of using one's freedom to reject the gift.
I've had similar experiences with fixing machinery, which neither my background not my inclination suits me to do.
So that is how one cooperates without effort or any sense of deserving merit, in the popular or common sense of the word. Who claims merit for eating food that is set before one when one is starving? One would have to be very sick indeed for eating to be an effort.
I'm not coming down on one side or the other of a theological dispute, not here. I am saying many of us have had an experience where something very like revelation overwhelmed our so-called "free will" and we found that overwhelming to be a gain, not a loss, of freedom.
A well-putting of that which is hard to put.
'True' is something we know by direct personal experience.
Now, in that moment when you "get it", there is NEITHER any question of turning away or rejecting it, nor any apprehension of loss of freedom. The gift, as it seems, of "Getting it" delivers freedom, it doesn't take it away, and yet there is no question, at the time, of using one's freedom to reject the gift.
I really agree with you in how you describe "getting it". We would call this the unilateral work of the Spirit upon the elect, or future believer. When you say that there is no question of using one's freedom to reject, does that mean one has the power, but never uses it in these situations? If so, then our differences here are minuscule, if even distinguishable.
I'm not coming down on one side or the other of a theological dispute, not here. I am saying many of us have had an experience where something very like revelation overwhelmed our so-called "free will" and we found that overwhelming to be a gain, not a loss, of freedom.
Amen, and well said. :)