Theosis and Gregory Palamas

8/2/2019 Theosis and Gregory Palamas

1/24

St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 50:4(2006) 357-79

THEOSIS AND GREGORY PALAMAS:CONTINUITY OR DOCTRINAL CHANGE?

Norman Russell 1

Theosis did not mean much to most Byzantines in the early fourteenth century. Some writers referred to it in passing. Anyone whowas at all familiar with the Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus, orhad dipped into the erudite discussions of Maximus the Confessor,could not have failed to have come across the term. But it was notwidely used by later Byzantine writers. In patristic literature wheretheosis, or deification, was mentioned it was usually a metaphor for

baptismal adoption by grace, or for the final consummation of theresurrected life. What it did not imply, except perhaps amongsome of the pioneers of hesychasm, was a personal experienceattainable in this life through a programme of contemplativeprayer. 3

1 An early version of this paper was delivered as the 2006 Fr Georges FlorovskyLecture.

2 On the patristic approaches to theosis see N. Russell, TheDoctrine ofDeification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).3 For examples of how Palamas's older hesychast contemporaries regarded deification

see Theoleptos of Philadelphia: "And as Adam, moulded by God's hand from dust,became through divine inspiration a living soul, so the intellect moulded by the virtues and repeatedly invoking the Lord with a pure mind and an ardent spirit, is divinely transformed, quickened and deified through knowing and loving God"(Theoleptos Texts 2; Philokalia,trans. G. E. H. Palmer, P. Sherrard and K. Ware,vol. iv [London: Faber and Faber, 1995], 189); Gregory of Sinai: the resurrected

"through incorruption and deification will become intellects, that is to say, equal tothe angels" (Gregory of Sinai, On Commandments and Doctrines,53; Philokalia,

P l Sh d d W l i 222) Th L d ill d i h id


2/24

358 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

Gregory Palamas changed that. On being accused of heresy in

1340, he elaborated a theory of deification through participationin the divine energies that split the Byzantine intellectual worldinto two camps. By the mid-fourteenth century there was scarcely alayman, let alone a monk or a bishop, who had not taken up a postion on the Palamite view of theosis and the theology it entailed. 4

The furore this theology caused is astonishing. Synods held in1341,1347, and 1351 acquitted Palamas of heresy. But a synod in1344 and a minority group meeting in 1347 condemned andexcommunicated him. A sustained opposition was led by some ofthe most prominent intellectuals of the time until Palamas' death,

through contemplation the mind can become illuminated and wholly transformedwith light (holosphtoids).According to Kallistos, when Gregory put this teachininto practice, he experienced a strange transformation and his hermitage was "filled

with light from the effulgence of grace" (Balfour, Gregory the Sinaite, Discours the Transfiguration, 64,67-68, quoting Kallistos of Constantinople, Life of Greg the Sinaite8, ed. . Pomialovskii [Moscow, 1896]).

4 For synoptic accounts of Palamas's approach to theosis see J. Lison, "La divinisationselon Grgoire Palamas. Un sommet de la thologie orthodoxe," Irnikon 67(1994): 59-70; Russell, Deification, 304-9. There are several major studies of theosis in Palamas, which while containing much of value treat the earlier patristicevidence very sketchily, if at all, with the result that they present Palamas's version oftheosis as normative for the Eastern tradition as a whole: J. MeyendorfF, Introduc

tion l'tude deGrgoirePalamas, Patristica Sorbonensia 3 (Paris: Editions du Se1959), pan 2, chapter 3: 'Le Christ et l'humanit difie: rdemption, dification etecclsiologie' (abbreviated Eng. trans. G. Lawrence, A Studyof GregoryPalama[Leighton Buzzard: Faith Press, 1964]); G. Mantzaridis, pen theses tou

anthrpou didaskalia Grgoriou tou Palama(Thessalonica, 1963, reprinted in his Pahmika (Thessalonica: Pournara, 1973), 147-268 (Eng. trans. L. Sherrard, The Deificationof Man: StGregory Palamasand the Orthodox Tradition[CrestwooNY: SVSPress, 1984]); R. Flogaus, TheosisbeiPalamas und Luther: ein Beitra kumenischen Gesprch(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), 77-284; A.N. Williams, The Ground of Union:Deificationin Aquinas and Palamas (New Yo& Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 102-56. Studies which take cognizanceof Palamas's particularity include T L Anastos "Gregory Palamas' Radicalization


3/24

Theosis and Gregory Pakmas 359

probably in 1357, and for many years afterwards. 5 The last synodconcerning Palamas, held in 1368, resulted in his canonization.But even then the controversy continued until overtaken by thecatastrophic events of the fifteenth century.

Why did Palamas' teaching provoke such hostility? And why didsuccessive councils fail to provide a solution? Personalities and politics certainly played a part, but the fundamental reasons were theological. Educated people took theology seriously. Many wereattracted by Palamas's vision of union with the divine but uneasyabout his explanation of the mechanics of it. Was his teaching traditional or innovative? Was it orthodox or heretical? Persuasivearguments were advanced by either side. It was not easy to decidebetween them.

PersonalitiesHesychast doctrine first became a matter of public debate as a resultof the clash between two powerful and disputatious personalities,Gregory Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian. Palamas's austerecountenance gazes out at us from his near-contemporary portraitswith fiercely intellectual intensity. Of aristocratic background, hehad become a monk at the age of twenty after an excellent education in Constantinople. In 1340, when the charge of heresy wasfirst laid against him, he was in his early forties, competent in

5 For die history of die hesychast controversy to the death of Palamas, see J.Meyendorff, Introduction,Part 1; D. N. Moschos, Platonismos Christianismos? Oi

philosophikes prohypotheseis tou Antihsychasmou touNikphorou Grigora (1291361) (Athens: Parousia, 1998). On the later history of the conflict see G. Mercati,

Notizie diProcoro e Demetrio Odone,Manuele Caleca e Teodoro Melitiniota ed alt apprenti per hstoria delh teologia e della letteratura bizantina del secoloXIV, Studi eTesti 56 (Vatican City, 1931); N. Russell, "Palamism and the Circle of Demetrius

Cydones," in Ch. Dendrinos et al. eds., Porphyrogenita: Essayson the History and Lit-erature of Byzantism and the Latin East in Honour of JulianChrysostomides


4/24


formal logic, well read in the Fathers and deeply experienced in the

life of solitude and prayer. 7

His opponent and accuser, Barlaam the Calabrian, was a cleverGreek from Southern Italy who had made a reputation for himself as a philosopher in Constantinople. He was of a type not unknownin academe. Combative, self-assured and acerbic, he was considered arrogant even by his friends. But he was an excellent dialectician and, like a modern positivist, refused to tolerate nonsense.When in Thessalonica in 1336 he heard some hesychasts talkingabout their experience of psychosomatic prayer and vision of divine light, he knew it was nonsense and said so. 8

Gregory Akindynos, a friend initially of both Barlaam andPalamas, tried to dissuade Barlaam from aiming his arrows at some-

7 The modern biography of Palamas (see Meyendorff, Introduction,Part 1) is basedon a Lifeby die Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos (ed. D. Tsamis, Phihtheou hagiologika erga,Thessalonica, 1985). For a survey of recent work on Palamas seeE. Sinkewicz, "Gregory Palamas," in C. G. Conticello & V. Conticello eds, La thologie byzantine et sa tradition,vol. 2, (XlIe-XIXe s.), CCSG (Turnhout: Brepol2002), 138-54.

8 Barlaam of Calabria Letter 5.114-27 (ed. Schiro, Barlaam Cakbro, Epistole gr[Palermo, 1954], 323-24): "But on meeting some of your fellow-hesychasts, I wasinitiated by themit were better I had not beeninto some extraordinary and ab

surd teachings, unworthy of the mind, not to say of the understanding, products of adeluded fancy and unrestrained imagination. What was taught among them wascertain strange disjunctions followed by conjunctions of the mind with the soul,and the soul's encounters with demons and various red and white lights, and certainmental entries and departures taking place through the nostrils rhythmically withthe breathing, and certain palpitations occurring round the navel, and finally aunion within the navel of our ruling element with the soul that takes place with theassurance and certainty of the heart, and such things which, in someone who practises them, seems to me would inevitably lead to sheer insanity or to filling the mind

but emptying it of all sense." Who were Barlaam's informants? Palamas refers tothem as "the more simple" (haplousteroi) of his brethren {Triads 2.1.1; 2.2.14; cfPhil h PG 151 585A) B A Ri h h i i d h


5/24


one who was "not himself completely ignorant of archery." 9 ButBarlaam, having got the better of Palamas in a preliminary debateon the legitimacy of apodictic proof in theological argument, 10 wasdetermined, he said, "to humiliate the man." 11 In the event, it wasBarlaam who was humiliated. 12 He left Constantinople in 1341 forgood, but the rancour continued. Akindynos, disillusioned firstwith the vanity of Barlaam and then with the insistence of Palamason what appeared to be innovative doctrines, became the leader of an anti-Palamite faction. As the Patriarch John Kalekass ecclesiastical adviser from 1344 until his condemnation in 1347, he complained bitterly of Palamas's "insolence," "conceit" and "moraldepravity." 13

The fourth protagonist in the drama, who took over the leadership of the anti-Palamite party after Akindynos s condemnation

and exile, was the philosopher, Nikephoros Gregoras.14

Gregoraswas able to continue to attack Palamas even after the supposedlydefinitive synodal Tome of 1351 because he enjoyed the protectionof the Emperor John V. At a debate arranged by the emperor in1355 between Gregoras and Palamas, the philosopher attacked thearchbishop of Thessalonica (as Palamas now was) with sarcasm,impugning his competence as a scholar and ridiculing his religious

9 Gregory Akindynos Letter 10.32-33 (ed. Hero, Letters of GregoryAkindynos [Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1983], 38).

10 See R. E. Sinkewicz, "The Doctrine of the knowledge of God in the Early Writingsof Barlaam the Calabrian," Mediaeval Studies 44 (1982): 181-242.

11 Akindynos Letter 10.34.12 PG 150.691D.13 Akindynos Letters40.138-39,44.48 and 70(ed. Hero, pp. 156,190, and 192). On

Akindynos see Juan Nadal Ca Zellas, "Gregorio Akindinos," in Conticello, La thologie byzantine,189-314.

14 On Gregoras R. Guilland, Essai surNicphore Gregoras (Paris, 1926), is still of value.


6/24


epistemologa 15 On the Palamite side the enmity was reciprocated.When Gregoras died in 1360, the mob broke into his house anddragged his body through the streets. 16

PoliticsThese personal animosities fuelled the debate. But politics, bothecclesiastical and imperial, also came into it. When Barlaam pub

lished his attack on hesychasm in 1340, under the title Against the MessalianSy he touched on a raw nerve. "Messalian" was theByzantine codeword for "Bogomil," and although Palamas himselfwas not a Bogomil he was in contact with people who were, or werethought to be. Only four years later, in 1344, an internal investigation conducted by the Protos and Council of the Holy Mountainunmasked a group of heretical monks centred on the Lavra

(Palamas's monastery) and Iviron. The ringleader was theLavriote, Joseph of Crete, who with twenty-six other monks wasexpelled from the Mountain. 18 This was a major episode, reportedto the patriarchate in a HagLoretikon Gramma^ although it is nev

15 See Meyendorff, Introduction,l64r-66 (Eng. trans. 108-10). Gregoras's account othe debate is in his Roman History 30 and 31. There is an independent account bythe Protostrator George Phakrases (ed. M. Candal, in OCP 16 [1950]: 328-56).

16 John Kyparissiotes Pakmicarum Transgressionum 4.10 (PG 152.734D-736A).17 On the affair of 1344 see Rigo, Monad esicasti, 135-220.18 Joseph and his associates were condemned for disparaging icons, depreciating the

sacraments, refuting the incarnation of the Word and the resurrection of the dead,and engaging in homosexual acts. They were subjected to beatings and other punishments before expulsion, Joseph's closest disciple, George of Larissa, beingbranded with a cross on his face (Akindynos Letters 52.67-69). The official report(the Hagioretikon Gramma) defines these men as "Bogomils," but Rigo is doubtfwhether they were formally members of the sect. He suggests they were spiritual enthusiasts somewhat on the lines of the "fools for Christ's sake" {Monaciesicasti,2What we seem to have here is not so much the infiltration of Mount Athos byBogomils as overlapping circles of enthusiasts gathered round teachers such as Greg


7/24


mentioned by Palamas or Philotheos. Fully aware in 1340, however, of the vulnerability of his position, Palamas took swift actionto protect himself and his fellow hesychasts. In the mid-winter of 1340-41 he made a flying visit to Constantinople to inform himself of the charges. He responded without delay to Barlaamsarguments with the three treatises On Theosis which make up thethird of his Triads. He also drew up a statement of his doctrinalposition in the form of a set of anathemas, the Hagioretic Tome,which was signed by twenty of his more prominent Athonite supporters, including the Protos, five abbots, and the bishop of Hierissos. When Palamas was summoned to Constantinople in1341 to answer charges, he was therefore well prepared and hisviews were vindicated in councils held in June and August ofthatyear.

In the years that followed political factors contributed to prolonging the debate. Soon after the June council of 1341 theEmperor Andronicus III died, and civil war broke out between theGrand Domestic John Kantakouzenos and the regency ruling inthe name of the young Emperor John V Palaiologos. Thehesychasts tended to support Kantakouzenos. The government inConstantinople was not especially against the hesychasts but thePatriarch John Kalekas became so and in 1344 had Palamas con-

21 The Hagioretikon Gramma,preserved in a single copy in Vat. Gr. 604, has not beenedited. For a description see Rigo, Monad esicasti, 137-48.

22 Mentioned by Akindynos in his speech to Kalekas, 4 (ed. Nadal, in Conticello, La thologie byzantine,260).

21 Ed. with French trans. J. Meyendorff, Dfense dessaints hsychastes,Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 30-1 (Louvain, 1959; partial Eng. trans. N. Gendle, Gregory

Pakmas, TheTriads, Classics of Western Spirituality [London: SPCK, 1983]).There is a convenient reprint with Italian translation in E. Perrella, ed., Gregorio


8/24


demned. 23 When Kantakouzenos entered Constantinople in 1347one of his first acts was to hold a council which deposed Kalekasand rehabilitated Palamas. For the next few years John VIKantakouzenos and John V Palaiologos ruled as co-emperors, andduring this time Palamism was reconfirmed by the synod of 1351.After Kantakouzenos' abdication in 1354, John V ruled on hisown. He pursued a pro-Western policy, privately becoming a Catholic. Under his reign the Orthodox Church was allowed to get onwith its own affairs without any persecution of anti-Palamites orenforcement of pro-Palamite synodal decisions. The majority willwas not imposed by the government, with the result that dissentingcircles were able to keep the debate open. 24 But at least this enabledPalamism and theosis to be discussed exhaustively.

Philosophical Method

From the beginning philosophical issues were at the forefront. Thecentral problem concerned the nature of divine knowledge.Palamas opens the First Triad with the question: cHow can onedemonstrate by rational argument (logi) the good that is beyondreason (hyper hgon)V He was replying to a questioner who hadasked him about the value of secular studies (he ex paideid)and

had reported the argument that by studying phenomena one canarrive at their inner principles, their logpi> which can be traced backto the mind of the Creator. Hence intellectual work"the methods of distinction, syllogistic reasoning and analysis"can raise usup to the mind of God and conform us to his likenessa kind of do-it-yourself theosis. 2 This caricatured somewhat the views of Barlaam, who though confident that by sheer intellectual effort

23 No mention is made of the affair on Mount Athos in 1344 as a reason for Palamas'sexcommunication. He was convicted on disciplinary charges for allegedly present


9/24


human reason could arrive at the limits of what was knowable, asPlato and Aristotle had done, held the inner life of God to be inaccessible to human knowledge. 27 Palamas strongly depreciated thevalue of intellectual effort, maintaining the primacy of direct illumination over scientific reasoning. "Christ," he said, "did not say,'if you would be perfect, acquire a secular education, study mathematics, devote yourself to the science of beings.'" The beginningof contemplation and divine wisdom is the fear of God, expressedin a life of prayer and asceticism, which engenders love, which leadsto illumination by God and participation in the divine life.

If Palamas had stopped there, there might have been no subsequent controversy. Barlaam claimed that he and Palamas did notdiffer in their epistemologa Akindynos had no special competencein philosophical questions, and Gregoras appeared to be in agreement with Palamas over the limitations of the human mind.Indeed, as an opponent of Aristotelian methodology, Gregorasbelieved that the syllogism was a tool for second-rate minds unableto ascend to true knowledge. 29 He held true knowledge to be theresult of direct illumination, though in his case he interprets this asthe mind s freeing itself perfectly from material images (amorphia)rather than attaining to a vision of some object other than itself. 30

But Palamas did not stop there. He attempted to give an explanation of how human beings are transformed by God in terms of real experience, in terms, that is, of a vision of light which is at onceboth perceptible and completely spiritual. This led to his postulating a real distinction in God between that aspect which isimparticipable and transcendentthe divine essenceand thataspect in which human beings can participatethe divine energy."The latter," Akindynos correctly reports, "he calls theosis andpower and energy and grace and illumination and form and essen-


10/24


tial and natural glory of God, being different as he says from hisessence and nature." 31 Philosophical critics objected to Palamas'sassigning ontological status to divine attributes which in fact couldonly be distinguished conceptually 32 Gregoras felt that Palamaswas actually reviving the Platonic theory of Forms as intermediaterealities between God and the created world. 33

As Haakon Gunnarsson has recently argued in a thoughtful

study on Palamas's mystical realism, his attempt to argue his casewithin a contemporary philosophical framework was a bold undertaking. 34 Palamas had strong reservations about the apophaticapproach to divine reality. He tries to make sense of mystical experience in the scientific and philosophical language of his day. Yetparadoxically, "almost every attempt arrives at establishing that thespiritual cannot be grasped by man's natural intellectual capacity,

nor expressed in philosophical language."35

Gunnarsson concludesthat on the philosophical level "it is difficult to see that [Palamas'sapproach] meets the standards for a cogent epistemology of mystical experience." 36 In the fourteenth century, too, not many trainedin the "outer learning" were convinced if they were not alreadyfriends of the hesychasts.

31 Akindynos Letter 27.88-90 (ed. Hero, 92).32 See, e.g., Demetrios Kydones, De personarum proprietatibus in Trinitate

ConstantinumAsanem (ed. M. Candal, "Demetrio Cidonio y el problema trinitariopalamitico," OCP2S[1962]: 75-20) and the discussion in Russell, "Palamism and


11/24


Theological IssuesThe theological issues debated by Palamas during the sixteen yearsfrom his Third Triad in Defence of the HolyHesychasts ( 1341 ) to hislast treatise Against Gregoras (1357) all revolved around the correctexegesis of the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor. In theThird Triads first treatise, which is on the nature of illumination,Palamas concedes that the Taboric light was symbolic. But that did

not mean that it did not exist in reality. Symbols can work on several levels simultaneously. The Taboric light was not simply anexternal phenomenon, but an "enhypostatic" symbol (enhypostatonsymbofon), meaning that the light was real even if it did not have anindependent existence, or hypostasis, of its own. 38 If it had beenindependent, it would have added a third nature to Christ's existingtwo, the human and the divine. Building on a definition going

back to Leontius of Byzantium, Palamas contrasts enhypostaton("enhypostatic") with authypostaton ("self-subsistent") andanhypostaton ("without independent existence"). 39 Enhypostaticreality occupies a place in between the self-subsistent and the accidental. In the case of the Taboric light, it both symbolizes and isdivinity. It is accessible to perception yet transcends it. As"enhypostatic" symbol it enables the beholder to participate in the

divine.For Barlaam a symbol could only be something other than thereality it represented, a dichotomy that was to be taken even furtherby Gregoras. In the latter s view a symbol is a humble thing indeed.It can be any sensory stimulus that leads the mind to knowledge of itself, which is ultimately an intellective grasp of the divine. A

37 On the patristic exegesis of the Transfiguration see J. McGuckin, The Transfigura

tion of Christ in Scripture and Tradition (Lewiston and Queenston: Edwin MellenPress, 1986).


12/24

3 6 8 ST VLADIMIR'S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

merely bodily vision is simply a preliminary step on the road to

reality. For Gregoras even the theophany on Mount Sinai and theIncarnation itself are only symbols to be transcended. 40

Palamas's discussion of the status of symbols brings him to thetopic of the second treatise (Triads 3.2), which is on the nature of participation in God. Here he develops the distinction between theessence and the energy of God that was to become the principalpoint of dispute with Akindynos and Gregoras. Barlaam hadaccused him of the Messalianism of Theodore Blachernites. 41 ButBlachernites' error was to claim that it was the divine essence thatwas visible rather than the eternal glory. 42 Barlaam had denied thereality of the divine energies, claiming that anything which is notthe essence of God has a beginning in time and must therefore becreated. Against him, Palamas quotes Maximus and theCappadocians in support of the idea that there are divine realitieswhich are participable and therefore cannot be the essencebothsides taking it for granted that the divine essence is imparticipableand yet are still in some sense God. How can we prove that?Palamas resorts to a soteriological argument. If the powers or energies are not eternal realities, as Barlaam claimed, the deifying graceof the Holy Spirit would be created and therefore incapable of deifying the believer. 43 This was precisely the argument thatAthanasius had used for the homoousion of the Holy Spirit. 44 NowPalamas was predicating a participable third term connecting theSpirit and the believer, a reality which is participated but does not

40 On die meaning of symbols in Gregoras see Moschos, Pktnismos,192-95.41 Theodore, a priest of the church of Blachernae in Constantinople in the time of

Alexius I (1081-1118) had been condemned, after a synodal process, for teaching adoctrine of mystical union with the essence of God. See J. Gouillard, "Quatre procs

de mystiques Byzance (vers 960-1143). Inspiration et autorit," REB 36 (1978):5-81, esp. 19-28.42 P l T i d 3 2 3 ( d P ll 852)


13/24


derive its being by participation, which is more than symbolic butnot self-subsistent.

The synod of June 1341 accepted Palamas's distinction betweenessence and energy, but Gregory Akindynos and some of his friendsdid not. Intellectually, Akindynos was perhaps not in the sameleague as Barlaam or Palamas, but he had a genuine concern forOrthodoxy and during the next five years focussed attention ontwo expressions used by Palamas which did call for clarification.These were the use of the word "divinities" (theottes) as an alternative term for energies, and the description of the deified humanbeing as "uncreated by grace" (aktistos dia tencharin).The first inAkindynos' view implied polytheism, the second Messalianism. 45

Palamas responded to such criticisms with a spate of writings inthe months following the council. His trilogy against Akindynos,

comprising On Union and Distinction, On DivineEnergies and On Participation in God,his two dialogues, one Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite,the other Theophanes, and a treatise On the Ditheism of Barlaam and Akindynossucceeded each other at shortintervals from the summer of 1341 to the end of 1342.

In his Dialoguebetween an Orthodox anda Barlaamite(autumn1341), Palamas identifies the central problem as the need for a cor

rect understanding of the nature of participation in God. TheBarlaamites do not deny the reality of theosis. 46 But in their viewthose who share in it share in a created divinity, for there can onlybe one uncreated divinity, which by definition is the divine essence.To Palamas, calling such participated divinity, or grace, "created"makes God a creature. 47 The sharing of human beings in the sourceof divine life becomes impossible. But if we speak of the divine

energies, we can overcome this problem without making Godcomposite or compromising the transcendence of the divine


14/24


essence, for the whole of God is present in each of his energies.Those who participate in the energies therefore participate in thewhole of God. 48

In On Divine Energies (usually known as his Apology and alsofrom autumn 1341) Palamas presents theosis as a gift of the Spirit,who both gives himself and does not give himself to the believer.For "the Spirit is imparticipable in his essence, while in his deifyingenergy, which is called 'divinity,' 'thearchy,' and 'theosis'"all Dio-nysian terms"he is participable by the worthy." 49 The deifyinggift and theosis are one and the same, not something apart fromGod, for Maximus says "theosis is ingenerate." 50 Theosis, in otherwords, is not something to be reified as a gift we receive and keep asa possession. It is the Spirit himself in his mode of self-giving. Itexpresses a reUtion, not a thing.

The consequence of theosis in this sense is that those who aredeified by grace become homotheoi wholly one with God. 51 Thisis a bold expression, used by the Fathers only as a Christologicalterm to refer to the deified body of Christ. 52 Palamas extends it tothe saints, claiming also that by grace they become anarchoi ("without beginning") and ateleutetoi ("without end"), not because theyhave become what God is in his essence, but because they havecome to share in his attributes. 53 To explain what he means Palamasoffers a human analogy. An artist's power or ability is part of him. It

48 Palamas Dkkgue 46 (ed. Perrella, 1212).49 Palamas On Divine Energies 33 (ed. Perrella, 1030).50 Palamas On DivineEnergies 34 (ed. Perrella, 1032). Cf. Maximus Thalassius 61,

schol. 16.51 Palamas On Divine Energies 36 (ed. Perrella, 1034).52 See G. W. E. Lampe, APatristic Greek Lexicon,s. v. homotheos.In his Confessi

Faith2, Palamas uses homotheosin this sense: the Son seated at the right hand of tFather made our nature homotheon (PG 151.765C). It is a short (but innovative)step to say that those who share perfecdy in Christ's deified representative humanity

h h i fC i


15/24


is naturally manifested in what is produced by him. This power isnot identical with the work of art, but the work of art is what it isbecause it participates in it. 54

The summer of 1342 brought something new to the debate. Inthe third tractate of his Refutations of theDialogue between anOrthodox anda Barkamite, Akindynos refers to 2 Peter 1.4"partakers of the divine nature." He challenges Palamas to show explic

itly how "partakers of the divine nature" is to be understood, claiming that Palamas postulates many divinities because he does notwant to admit participation in the divine essence. 55 Yet Maximussays, "that is why God made us, that we should become partakers of the divine nature," for it is in God that we live and move and haveour being. 56

Palamas responded in the dialogue Theophaneswkh an extended

exegesis of 2 Peter 1.4.57

This is not a text the Byzantines normallyreferred to, so Palamas did not have an exegetical tradition to drawon. 58 "What does the text mean?" asks Theophanes. "Clearly thatthe essence and nature of God are participable," replies his interlocutor, Theotimos. 59 Palamas, thinly disguised as Theophanes, disagrees. He quotes a chain of patristic testimonies from Maximus,

54 Palamas On Divine Energies 39 (ed. Perrella, 1040).55 Ed. J. Nadal CaZellas, GregoriiAcindyniRefiitationesDuae (Corpus Christianorum

31) 3.90, pp. 304-5. Nadal dates the refutations to not before June 1342 (p.xxxiv).56 Maximus Ep. 24/43 (PG 91.609C, 640B); Acts 17.28.57 Palamas Theophanes 13-21 (ed. Perrella, 1266-90).58 On the history of the exegesis of the text see N. Russell, "Partakers of the Divine Na

ture* (2 Peter 1.4) in the Byzantine Tradition," in Kathegetria.Essayspresented to Joan Hussey forher 80thbirthday (Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1988), 51-67. Cf.also the exegesis of Joseph Kalothetos in the fourth of his NineAntirrheticLogoi (ed.D. Tsamis, Ioseph Kahthetou Syngrammata [Thessalonica, 1980], 4.851-919, pp.188-90). Kalothetos has evidendy taken his lead from Palamas (his treatises aredated between 1342 and 1355). Like Palamas, he uses the text to prove that God is


16/24


(Ps.-) Athanasius, Basil and John Chrysostom to prove that weboth share and do not share in the divine nature. We have to maintain both positions. "But how can both be true?" asks Theotimos.

In his reply Palamas, interestingly, sets the Petrine text in itsscriptural context to demonstrate that participation in God is notsomething we have from the beginning as a constitutive aspect of our being. It is a gift given to those who live the Christian life. It wasin fact the purpose of our creation: "That is why God made us, thatwe should become partakers of the divine nature," for all things donot naturally participate in God. 60 So then, concludes Theotimos,God is by essence both participable and imparticipable. Since it isonly granted to the saints to participate in God, the others remainexcluded.

"But this is Messalianism!" cries Theophanes. The Messaliansthink that the purified receive the hypostasis of the Spirit and arethus promoted to the divine nature. The Fathers utterly reject this.It is totally unacceptable to say that the essence of God is participable by some people but not by others. God will be all in all, asGregory of Nazianzus says. But the way in which the saints receivethe whole of God in a manner which does not violate theimparticipability of the essence is because they participate in eachof the energies. Incorporeal reality cannot be divided up likebodies. Those who have become capable of accommodating thedivine energies have become capable of accommodating the wholeof God. Once they have transcended their nature, they cease fromevery energy of soul and body, with the result that they are possessed solely by the divine energy. 61

The council of February 1347 seemed a complete victory for

60 Palamas Theophanes 15 (ed. Perrella, 1272).61 Palamas Theophanes 16 (ed. Perrella, 1274-76) . It is worth noting that Palamas is


17/24


Palamas. Kantakouzenist bishops replaced those who had supported Kalekas, with Gregory Palamas becoming archbishop of Thessalonica, and a staunch pro-hesychast, Isidore Boucheiras,ascending the patriarchal throne. This might have been expected tohave settled the matter, but five months later, in July, a group of dissidents, including ten bishops, met in council, initially at thechurch of the Holy Apostles, and excommunicated Isidore andGregory Palamas. 62 At about the same time Nikephoros Gregoras,whom Akindynos had been urging since early 1345 to assume theleadership of the resistance to Palamism, came forward and published his FirstAntirrhetics against Palamas. 63 This was perhaps theoccasion that prompted Palamas' One Hundred and FiftyChapters,"intended," according to the full title, "as a purge for theBarlaamite corruption." 64 This work, a compendious study of Christian doctrine incorporating material from his earlier writings,recapitulates his teaching on the imparticipability of the divineessence and the access to God that we have through the divine energies. Palamas does not have anything new to say on these topics,but he sets out his views with merciful concision.

The uncreated energy of God is "indivisibly divided" (merizo- menamerists).65 It cannot be the divine transcendent being initself, which the Fathers never name in the plural. Human beingscan share only in the plural aspects of God. Those deemed worthyof union with him are united not to God in his essence, because thisis imparticipable, but to the uncreated energy of the Spirit. Thechapter on deification, drawing largely on the discussion in

62 MeyendorfF, Introduction,134 (Eng. trans. 89). For the text of the dissidents' TomeseePGl50.887D-885A.

63 Ed. H.-V. Beyer, NikephoriGregorae,Antirrhetika I, Wiener ByzantinistischeStudien 12 (Vienna, 1976). According to MeyendorfF (Introduction,140; Eng.


18/24


Theophanes, states that theosis is the purpose for which we were cr

ated, God intending to make us partakers of his own divinity.Those deified are in God and God is in them. They participate inthe divine energy but not in the essence of God. With patristic support, we are entitled to call this energy "divinity." 66

Perhaps no other theological dispute in the Greek world generated so much literature. In a rapid survey I have counted 83 treatises for Palamism and 57 against from the outbreak of the controversy to the death of the Patriarch Philotheos in 1376. 67Contemporary letters reveal how people sometimes changed sideson being convinced by the arguments of the opposing party. 68

Others simply sat on the fence, unable to make up their minds. 69

Both sides invoked Tradition, marshalled appropriate patristictexts, and presented cogent rational arguments. What preventedthem from reaching agreement?

Personal and political factors, as I have already suggested, were of secondary importance. The main reason was that although thecontroversial terms used by Palamasessence and energy, divinities, participation - were subjected to searching analysis, the fundamental assumptions of either side were not examined. JaroslavPelikan has said: "To understand a culture, it is essential to identifythose presuppositions in its thought and language that are so obvious to all that they are only rarely raised to the level of formal statement." 70 Palamas's presuppositions are three: first, that the experience of the hesychasts is realthe light they see is a real light whichbrings about intimate communion with the divine; secondly, that

66 Ibid., 105 (ed. Sinkewicz, 200).67 See the bibliographical appendices in MeyendorfF, Introduction,340-415.Since

1959 many more of these have been published.

68 Cf. Akindynos Letters 39,40,42,50,73; Palamas Letter 2to Gabras (Sinkewicz, no27 in Conticello, Thologie byzantine,147).69 Cf ki d l L tt D i l f Ai d L tt


19/24


God is inaccessible in his essence; and thirdly that the Fathersconvey an unchanging truth in its fiillness, so that consequently thetenets of hesychasm must be found in the Fathers. The first twopresuppositions account for the importance Palamas gives to thegospel account of the Transfiguration, and his innovative exegesisof it as a demonstration of theosis. The third accounts for hisextended discussion of patristic texts, particularly from theCappadocians, Dionysius and, above all, Maximus. In fact onecould say without exaggeration that Palamas's spiritual theoryarises from the interaction between the hesychast tradition andMaximus the Confessor.

The hesychast tradition is characterized by realism. Palamaspraises its great teachers for their experiential wisdom: JohnClimacus, the great Macarius, Symeon the New Theologian,

whose writings "one can call the writings of life,"71

Nikephoros theMonk, who taught the psychosomatic technique of prayer, 72 andTheoleptos of Philadelphia, Palamas's own instructor in the spiritual life and "trustworthy visionary of the truth of God's mysteries." 73 The divine Maximus, on the other hand, and Dionysius,"unerring beholder of noetic things," 74 are valued more for theirspiritual analysis of the intellectual ascent. But Palamas interprets

such ascent in the light of hesychast experience. The resulting ideaof theosis that we get from Palamas reflects a mystical realism basedon participation in God as light.

Is this the patristic doctrine of deification? Yes, in some of itsaspects. In Palamas' writings the ethical approach to deification,based on attaining likeness to God, is presented as merely preparatory. The eschatological aspect of deification recedes. The nominaland analogical approaches that we find in many of the Fathers areexpressly excluded Theosis is experienced as a dynamic participa-


20/24


tion, admittedly consummated in the life to come, but attainablein this life through the practice of hesychastic prayer. This represents a narrowing of the notion of theosis, yet also a deepening of it.Theosis acquires an experiential charge in Macarius and Symeonthe New Theologian, a charge which receives a theoretical rationaleonly in Gregory Palamas. Theosis is not just a name for createdgrace, a change brought about in the believer by divine action, ashis opponents argued. It signifies a real participation in the life of God, making us homotheoi and gods by grace.

Does Palamas's narrowing and deepening of theosis indicatecontinuity or change? This was a question that exercised some of the best Greek minds of the fourteenth century. Or, as they wouldhave put it, was Palamas orthodox or an innovator? Palamas himself took great pains to demonstrate that his essence-energies distinction was well founded in patristic teaching. An impressiverecent study by David Bradshaw confirms that his judgement wascorrect. 75 The Aristotelian terms, essence and energy, camethrough Plotinus and his successors into use among theCappadocians, and passed through them to Dionysius andMaximus. Maximus narrows the sense of "energy" and enriches it,in the way that Palamas was to do for "theosis." "Energy" is God sactivity that makes him manifest to his creatures and enables themto share in him. Palamas makes "energy" refer in a realistic and perceptible way to the light of the Transfiguration. Theosis is participation in this light, which is not a created symbol producing amerely imitative sanctity in whoever contemplates it, but is divinity itself, the uncreated glory of God which the hesychasts put on as"the garment of their deification," corporeally as well as spiritually,

75 D. Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West:Metaphysics and the Division of Christend


21/24


so that their bodies too are transformed and come to appropriatethe divine life. 76

It should be noted that Palamas elaborates this notion of theosisin a specifically monastic context. When he is preaching to thepeople of Thessalonica, he is altogether more traditional and moreincarnational. 77 God became man, he says, that the proud spiritsshould not imagine themselves deified through their incorpore-ality. 78 If the Word had not become incarnate, we would not haveknown God in his hypostatic reality as Father, Son and Spirit, butwould only have contemplated him in his creatures, "as was taughtformerly by the foolish ancient philosophers, and now by the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos." 79 But the Virgin, by conceiving the Word within her body, "deified the human race and madeearth a heaven." 80 The Word "became the Son of Man, sharing inmortality, to turn human beings into sons of God and make thempartakers of divine immortality." 81 How believers appropriate thiswithin the ecclesial community is illustrated typologically. Theincarnate Word gave us baptism as a sacrament and type of hisburial and resurrection to deify both the soul and the body. 82 Histransfiguration opened the eyes of his disciples, showing them thathuman nature has been deified by union with the Word of God. 83

We must imitate him in his earthly life to become partakers of hisresurrection and fellow-heirs with Christ. Through fasting and

76 Anastos puts it well when he says that the Trinity and the deified individual while re-' maining hypostatically distinct become energetically one, but goes too far in claim

ing that the ontological gap is crossed in deification ("Gregory Palamas'Radicalization," 344, 347).

77 This has been noted by Spiteris, Pakmas:U grazia e l'esperienza,79.78 Horn. 16, On the Incarnation,PG 151.204A.79 Ibid., 240B.80 Horn. 42On the Nativity of theVirgin 4 (ed. Oikonomos, p. 9): ten to anthrpinon


22/24


night vigils we are "renewed and deified" in our inner being. 84 Thistransformation of our human nature, first in the representativehumanity of Christ and then in our own persons through the life offaith, is thoroughly traditional and patristic, complementing themore technical version of theosis elaborated in a monastic contextand in a specific philosophical idiom.

While appealing constantly to the Fathers, Palamas was awarethat in his technical discussions he was "developing" what they hadsaid. At the first session of the council in 1351 he had claimed thathis teaching was simply an anaptyxis, an unfoldingor "unpacking" as we might say todayof what the Sixth Ecumenical Councilhad to say about the two energies of Christ. 85 This view of doctrinaldevelopment corresponds to what Maurice Wiles has called thelogical model, the drawing out of conclusions implicit in pre

mises.86

It does not fit the evolutionary model, expounded in itsclassic form by Newman. 87 Wiles rejects the logical model, whichhe regards as "self-evidently false." Nor is he happy with the evolutionary model, which would seem to hold doctrine hostage to contingent factors, such as the cultural environment. He proposesinstead "change through alteration of perspective," on analogy

with academic disciplines where insightfiil change occurs "when

somebody succeeds in seeing the subject from a new perspective."88

This seems to me a helpful way of looking at what Palamas wasdoing. By approaching theosis from the new perspective of his particular understanding of hesychasm, 89 he succeeded in shaping aphilosophical notion of deification which has elements of bothcontinuity and change. That is why successive synods could not

84 Horn. 25, On All Saints, PG 151.321A.85 Synodal Tome, PG 151.722 B.86 M. Wiles, The Remaking of Christian Doctrine (London: SCM, 1974), 4.


23/24


setde the question simply by pronouncing Palamas orthodox. Hiscritics needed to follow him in his shift of perspective. Theyobjected to what they regarded as his metathesLof doctrine. 90 Whathe was urging in effect was a metathesisof viewpoint. 91 Only a willingness to look at the issues from a different perspective could havebrought them to an understanding of what, in all sincerity, theywere unable to see.

The opponents of Palamism were not heretics. But, like many of the Fathers of the fourth century who had reservations about theword homoousios?1 they rejected novel terminology and insisted onwhat they took to be "the ancestral doctrines" tapatria dogmata.Palamas's torrent of treatises convinced some of them but his finalvictory was chiefly brought about by his supporters' capture of thepatriarchal office. His version of theosis was enshrined in Orthodox teaching as a result of his canonization by the synod of 1368,but among the intellectuals for whom it was intended itremainedand still remainscontroversial.


24/24

Theosis and Gregory Palamas

Documents

Transcript of Theosis and Gregory Palamas