Simplicity of God according to St Gregory Palamas

Studia Patristica, 2020

This study highlights more unusual cases where Byzantine liturgical sources, such as in the Menaion and homiletic material of Fathers, are essential to understand certain notions of Palamas’ theoptic and epoptic ideas. The vocabulary and central themes of divine vision and participation in the divine energies are often found in Byzantine hymnody describing such experiences of divine light by the apostles and other saints. In some cases, Palamas’ formulations are closest to literature of a liturgical vs. dogmatic character. Furthermore, certain Palamite values, such as the presumed infallibility of patristic axioms (e.g., Basil the Great’s teaching on the Holy Spirit) build on liturgical assertions of the saint’s authority in doctrinal matters. Palamas’ combination of liturgical sources for his logical arguments on behalf of the apodeictic syllogism within an Aristotelian typology will be explored. This will lead to the conclusion that Palamas was very much influenced by contemporary Scholastic views and opinions on theology as a science and on the nature of the beatific vision. However, his own theory combined a natural epistemological skepticism with a divine illumination theory that distinguishes him from both Medieval Latin and Barlaamian positions on the scientific status of theology.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016

The 13th and 14th centuries represented the most productive and influential period in the history of philosophy and theology in the West. A parallel and less influential (for the West) proliferation of arguments and theories took place in the East, at the same time, as a result of the defence of the Hesychastic movement offered by St Gregory Palamas and his followers. The papers brought together in this volume discuss the importance of Palamite ideas for the understanding of God in terms of divine energies, and for contemporary approaches to solving perennial problems in science, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Some of the contributors take a more reserved evaluation of the Palamite corpus, preferring to highlight similarities and differences between Palamas and the chief representatives of Medieval Scholasticism, such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Other essays offer a radical re-evaluation of the Western history of philosophy and theology, preferring to bring out the reasons for Western philosophical and theological shortcomings and providing a wider critique on Western culture. Contributors to this volume include some of the top scholars on Palamite studies from the fields of philosophy, theology, aesthetics, cultural criticism, and art theory. As such, it represents a particularly useful resource for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in Christian theology and philosophy, Byzantine cultural studies and aesthetics.

2017

This volume seeks to explore the intersection of theology, philosophy and the public sphere not by referring the social and political to ethics and deontology as is often the case, but rather to ontology itself, to the very nature of beings. The meaning of history and historicity is most pertinent to this enquiry and is approached here both from the perspective of social reality and from the perspective of ontology. Joining together contributions focusing on theory of the public sphere and metaphysics, chapters explore subjects as diverse as the political implications of the Incarnation, the paradox between ontology and history, politically left and right appropriations of Christianity, the fecundity of Maximus the Confessor’s insights for a contemporary political philosophy, modern Orthodox political theology focusing on Christos Yannaras and numerous thematic areas that together form the mosaic of the enquiry in question.

2015

In contrast with the post-12th century notion of theology as an academic subject, the properly patristic idea of theologia is inseparable from prayer to be “truly” practiced. Theologia is an experience to be thus attained, for the vision of divine glory is not only for the age to come but is indeed available to the saints in the present life. Such will be one of the central arguments that St. Gregory Palamas will make in defence of the hesychasts, for whom -- as his sermons on the Theotokos teach – the Virgin is to be considered a model. For Palamas, the Mother of God by-passes the stages of praktiki and physiki and moves directly into theologia. She is the true theologian who prays truly and is from the start gifted with the discerning spirit of prophecy. Having entered into the Holy of Holies shortly after she was weaned, she more than any other has insight into a divine knowledge beyond that contemplated in philosophy and analogical reasoning. Fruit of experiencing a communion with God unlike any other, her mystical vision of God transcends mere discursive speculation. Yet the implication is that, in becoming the Mother of God, she embodies a paradox: having been fashioned by God through providential grace, she freely consents to be the means of fashioning God in a human form through her flesh. In her body, she circumscribes the pre-eternal God. In the light of some of the issues raised in his controversy with Barlaam, Palamas’ teachings on the Mother of God put into a new perspective the question that Spinoza introduced into modern and contemporary philosophy: what can the body be?

Modern Theology, 2016

This paper responds to Robert Jenson’s and Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s critiques that the Palamite distinction between essence and energies prevents communion with the divine hypostases. Palamas is shown to consider energies that which make essence, and to insist that these energies must be enhypostatic. Combined with a non-polyonomous concept of divine simplicity, this metaphysic allows for distinct knowledge of each hypostasis as God through activity. Therefore, using Western distinctions provided by Leonard Hodgson and Petro Chirico, Palamas is shown to preserve the possibility of communion. The paper concludes by showing the distinction as amenable with Jensons’s and LaCugna’s projects.

Term Paper, 2020

The relationship between theology and philosophy has always been a difficult issue throughout the history of Christianity. In the first part of the first "Triad," Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), the prominent Late Byzantine theologian, sharply criticizes “those who seek knowledge from external philosophers.” The theologian is outraged by the claims of such people that ‘engaging in science’ can make believers perfect in Christ. Palamas is convinced that “lovers of vain philosophy cannot contain the fear of God,” and stigmatizes the pursuit of knowledge as the ‘bad idleness.’ Gregory Palamas contrasted the “wisdom of external philosophers” with the “wisdom of God” on the basis of his conservative religious worldview. Perhaps nowadays such statements can make their author a reputation of a stagnant retrograde and an opponent of any intellectual development, but, in fact, this is not the case for the Byzantine theologian. The investigation of Gregory Palamas' views is done in this paper in the context of intellectual trends popular in Byzantine Empire in the first half of the century XIV for their proper understanding.

Review of Ecumenical Studies (Sibiu), 2021