What We Once Were

Through the fall our nature was stripped of divine illumination and resplendence. But the Logos of God had pity upon our disfigurement and in His compassion He took our nature upon Himself, and on Tabor He manifested it to His elect disciples clothed once again most brilliantly. He shows what we once were and what we shall become through Him in the age to come, if we choose to live our present life as far as possible in accordance with His ways.

~ St. Gregory Palamas

Nothing But Eye

In mystical contemplation a man sees neither with the intellect nor with the body, but with the Spirit; and with full certainty he knows that he beholds supernaturally a light which surpasses all other light. But he does not know through what organ he beholds this light, nor can he analyze the nature of the organ; for the ways of the Spirit, through which he sees, are unsearchable. And this is what St. Paul affirmed, when he heard things which it is not lawful for man to utter and saw things which none can behold: “…whether in the body or whether out of the body, I cannot tell” (2 Cor. 12:3) — that is, he did not know whether it was his intellect or his body which saw them. For he did not perceive these things by sensation, yet his vision was as clear as that whereby we see the objects of sense perception, and even clearer still. He saw himeslf carried out of himself through the mysterious sweetness of his vision; he was transported not only outside every object and thought but even outside himself.

This happy and joyful experience which seized upon Paul and caused his intellect to pass beyond all things in ecstasy, which made him turn entirely in on himself, this experience took the form of light — a light of revelation, but such as did not reveal to him the objects of sense perception. It was a light without bounds or termination below or above or to the sides; he saw no limit whatever to the light which appeared to him and shone around him, but it was like a sun infinitely brighter and larger than the universe: and in the midst of this light he himself stood, having become nothing but eye. Such, more or less, was his vision.

~ St. Gregory Palamas, quoted in Bp Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 131

In the Shining Heavens

[Note: Mt. Athos, the spiritual home of St. Gregory Palamas, is known as the Garden of the Theotokos. According to tradition, the choice of the peninsula to be the site of many thriving monastic communities was originally made by her. Mt. Athos is under the special protection of the Theotokos to this day. The following selections are from the book by Robert Payne, The Holy Fire.]

For Gregory Palamas the supreme light was that which shone on Mount Tabor, the same light which streams in radiance across Heaven. Listen to him as he describes the Virgin standing beside Her Son in the shining Heavens:

The death of the Virgin was for her the beginning of life, bringing her to a heavenly and immortal life. Now the whole heavens are her abiding place, a palace worthy of her dignity. There she was removed from the earth and took her place on the right hand of the Emperor of All, wearing her many-colored and golden robe, according to the Psalmist who has spoken of these things. And this golden robe is no more than her body gleaming with divine lights, and decorated with the flowers of her virtue. And she together with her Son are now the only ones to live in the glory of Heaven.

For neither the earth, nor the sepulcher, nor death itself had power to hold her body, which is the fountain of life and the dwelling place of the divine, a place more joyful than Heaven or the Heaven of Heavens… So the body of the Mother is glorified with the same glory which falls about the body of the Son… And for her it was not necessary that she should live on earth for a little while after death, and so she was removed instantly to the Heavens, leaving behind her the clothes she wore in the tomb. (from the Homily on the Dormition)

In the works of Gregory Palamas the words beauty, splendor, glory, light, the light of lights are continually repeated. Like Athanasius, he sees the universe charged with the energy of the Incarnation, but he also sees it charged with the beauty of the Virgin. The earth is a divine place, the beauty of it is almost too much to be borne. The light of the Transfiguration did not cease; it continues always.

In Thy Light Do We See Light

Certain saints after the Coming of Christ in the flesh see this light like an endless sea flowing miraculously from a single sun, which is the adored Body of Christ.

The Holy Name contains within itself that divine energy which penetrates and changes a man’s heart when it is diffused throughout his body.

[Gregory] believed that men are endowed with a divine breath which moves within their physical bodies, and the body acquires holiness by this divine breath pouring into it. The body is not evil… For him God was not merely essence; He was also energy; and though the essence remained incommunicable, the energy could be perceived…

The name of man is not given separately to the body and the soul, but to both together, for together, they have been created in the image of God.

… Gregory Palamas rejoiced in comparing man to light:

Man being himself a light, he holds up his light to see the Light, and looking into himself, he looks upon the Light, and if he looks further, then also he sees the Light, and always he sees by virtue of the Light, and therefore there is communion, and all is one.

The word light is so often repeated in his pages that they seem to dance and quiver with the beams of light he saw in his cell in the Holy Mountain…

Higher Than the Angels

Man, by virtue of the honor of the body created in the likeness of God, is higher than the angels.

The theology of Gregory Palamas did not spring fully armed from his contemplative spirit alone; it had its roots in the long history of Eastern Christianity. He was not the first to say that man occupies a place of unexampled splendor and importance: otherwise Christ would not have assumed the flesh of man…

Gregory Palamas said that man, body and soul, was higher than the angels. From the soul came a divine energy which was continually being poured into the body; and the incorporeal angels, though closer to God, are deprived of that vessel into which the divine energy is poured. “Man,” said St. Basil, “is a creature who has received the order to become a god.” Gregory Palamas answers that he becomes a god when he practices meditation and sees in the place of the heart the blazing light of the Transfiguration.

Participating in the Divine Nature

In Gregory Palamas the long debate which revolved around the question whether God could or could not be comprehended came to an end…Because the grace of God is made visible in the uncreated Light which wells up in “the place of the heart,” and because the monks, and most especially the saints, enjoy this grace in their deepest meditations, Gregory concluded that God was indeed visible, for He was this Light, but in another sense. He remained eternally invisible, for the greatest saints never claimed that they had seen the essence of God. The face of God remained veiled by its own shining, and no mortal man had ever seen His face. The classic statement in which Gregory Palamas resolved the quarrel reads simply:

We may not participate in the divine nature, and yet in a certain sense we may readily participate in His nature; for we enter into this communion with God, and at the same time God remains entirely inaccessible. So we affirm these two contrary things at one and the same time, and we rejoice in this antinomy as a criterion of truth.

[Note: Man is said to participate in the divine energies. He is not said to participate in the divine nature according to God’s essence. Both essence and energies are the uncreated God Himself, however. The energy of God — “grace” — is not created.]

The Light of Tabor

… The light of Tabor is the Kingdom of God.

It was not a sudden light: it was without end or beginning, uncircumscribed in time and place, and imperceptible to the ordinary senses; and yet it was known; and men who were living had seen it, and been deified by it, because they had partaken of the energy of God. So the disciples, standing on Mount Tabor, had seen the Light and become celestial beings, for their flesh, as they gazed on the Light, was transmuted into spirit. This blinding Light was seen by St. Paul at Damascus, by Elijah when he was lifted up in a chariot of fire and by Moses when he stood beside the burning bush. And how shall one seek this Light? Above all, by repentance, by calling upon the Name of Jesus and demanding pity of the Holy Name…

Joy Come Down to Earth

Throughout the work of Gregory Palamas and St. Symeon the New Theologian one is made aware of an extraordinary sense of exaltation. As they speak of the Light of God, the illuminatio divina, it becomes almost tangible; it gleams, shines, bursts into a thousand separate particles; and the world is clothed with it. The monks of the Eastern Empire seem to have passed through one of those rare periods when joy seems to have come down to earth.

~ from Robert Payne, The Holy Fire, SVS Press, a biographical anthology of the Eastern Fathers (highly recommended!). The chapter on Gregory Palamas includes a vivid description of St. Gregory’s confrontation with Barlaam as well as a survey of the complex political and historical scene of 14th c. Byzantium.

Theosis

Of all themes of S. Gregory’s theology let us single out but one, the crucial one, and the most controversial. What is the basic character of Christian existence? The ultimate aim and purpose of human life was defined in the Patristic tradition as θέωσις (theosis). The term is rather offensive for the modern ear. It cannot be adequately rendered in any modern language, nor even in Latin. Even in Greek it is rather heavy and pretentious. Indeed, it is a daring word. The meaning of the word is, however, simple and lucid. It was one of the crucial terms in the Patristic vocabulary. … It was the common conviction of the Greek Fathers. One can quote at length S. Gregory of Nazianzus, S. Gregory of Nyssa, S. Cyril of Alexandria, S. Maximus, and indeed S. Symeon the New Theologian. Man ever remains what he is, that is - creature. But he is promised and granted, in Christ Jesus, the Word made man, an intimate sharing in what is Divine: Life Everlasting and incorruptible. The main characteristic of theosis is, according to the Fathers, precisely immortality or incorruption. For God alone ‘has immortality’ -ο µόνος έχων αθανασίαν (I Tim. 6: 6). But man now is admitted into an intimate communion with God, through Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is much more than just a moral communion, and much more than just a human perfection. Only the word theosis can render adequately the uniqueness of the promise and offer. The term theosis is indeed quite embarrassing, if we would think in ‘ontological’ categories. Indeed, man simply cannot ‘become’ god. But the Fathers were thinking in personal terms, and the mystery of personal communion was involved at this point. Theosis meant a personal encounter. It is that intimate intercourse of man with God, in which the whole of human existence is, as it were, permeated by the Divine Presence.

The Genuine Renewal of Man

Actually, the whole teaching of S. Gregory presupposes the action of the Personal God. God moves toward man and embraces him by His own grace and action, without leaving that φως απρόσιτον, in which He eternally abides. The ultimate purpose of S. Gregory’s theological teaching was to defend the reality of Christian experience. Salvation is more than forgiveness. It is a genuine renewal of man. And this renewal is effected not by the discharge, or release of certain natural energies implied in man’s own creaturely being, but by the energies of God Himself, who thereby encounters and encompasses man, and admits him into communion with Himself. In fact, the teaching of S. Gregory affects the whole system theology; the whole body of Christian doctrine.

A Theology of Facts

The starting point of S.Gregory’s theology was the history of salvation: on the larger scale, the Biblical story, which consisted of Divine acts, culminating in the Incarnation of the Word and His glorification through the Cross and Resurrection; on the smaller scale, the story of the Christian man, striving after perfection, and ascending step by step, till he encounters God in the vision of His glory. It was usual to describe the theology of S. Irenaeus as a ‘theology of facts’. With no lesser justification we may describe also the theology of S. Gregory Palamas as a ‘theology of facts’.

In our own time, we are coming more and more to the conviction that ‘theology of facts’ is the only sound Orthodox theology. It is Biblical. It is Patristic. It is in complete conformity with the mind of the Church.

In this connection we may regard S. Gregory Palamas as our guide and teacher, in our endeavour to theologise from the heart of the Church.

~ from Fr. Georges Florovsky, St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers

Essence and Energy

[Note: According to Orthodox theology, the Son of God is begotten or generated from the Father. The Holy Spirit proceeds or is “projected” from the Father. The world, creation, is created by God. God Himself, in Trinity, is uncreated; “heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible” are creatures, created by God.]

If according to the delirious opponents and those who agree with them, the Divine energy in no way differs from the Divine essence, then the act of creating, which belongs to the will, will in no way differ from generation (γεννάν) and procession (εκπορεύειν), which belong to the essence. If to create is no different from generation and procession, then the creatures will in no way differ from the Begotten (γεννήματος) and the Projected (προβλήματος). If such is the case according to them, then both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit will be no different from creatures, and the creatures will all be both the begotten (γεννήματα) and the projected (προβλήματα) of God the Father, and creation will be deified and God will be arrayed with the creatures. For this reason the venerable Cyril, showing the difference between God’s essence and energy, says that to generate belongs to the Divine nature, whereas to create belongs to His Divine energy. This he shows clearly saying, “nature and energy are not the same”. If the Divine essence in no way differs from the Divine energy, then to beget (γεννάν) and to project (εκπορεύειν) will in no way differ from creating (ποιείν)…

~ St. Gregory Palamas, quoted in Florovsky, St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers

For a bibliography of published works by St. Gregory Palamas himself and modern scholars who have studied him, and for additional links to online resources, see the St. Gregory Palamas page at OrthodoxWiki.

Other useful readings not listed at OrthodoxWiki are:

Knowledge, Prayer, Vision: Three foundational aspects of the Theology of St Gregory Palamas at Monachos.net.

Articles by John Stamps at the Conciliar Press blog, The Orthodox Way, especially St. Gregory Palamas and Our Invitation to Sainthood. At the blog, do a search for “Palamas”.