Keep a look out throughout the week for more parts of this article.
By: Andrew Bohush
Saint Gregory Palamas
We cannot answer these questions without knowing God’s essence and energies. Who is God? Do we know God? How can we get to know God? We need to understand the concept of “God is known, His name is great in Israel”.[1]To know God and to understand Him are concepts that we are not able to comprehend. We must first know ourselves before we can even comprehend God. As we studied last semester with the Cappadocians and Saint John Chrysostom, we learned that we can never know God fully. We may think we know Him by way of His essence and energies, but we can only know as much as God gives us to understand. Now we come to Saint Gregory Palamas and to defend him in regards to his experience in knowing God. The great saints says, “for God is knowable only through the meditation of His creatures.”[2]
Saint Gregory Palamas “was born in the year 1296 in Constantinople”.[3]Saint Gregory’s a father was a dignitary, who was under the Andronicus II, but Gregory’s father reposed in the Lord when Gregory was young. In which, Andronicus took Gregory under his wing in his formation, education and upbringing. The future Saint Gregory was a very intelligent person, in which he excelled in his higher education. At the age of twenty, Gregory went to Mount Athos and became a novice at one of the monasteries. Having been tonsured a monastic, Gregory began his formation on the path to asceticism. At the age of twenty-one, Gregory during his path to asceticism had a vision of Saint John the Theologian
In the year 1330, a monk by the name of Barlaam came to Constantinople. Barlaam then went on to Mount Athos, “where he became acquainted with the spiritual life of the hesychasts’”.[4]Barlaam said “that it was impossible to know the essence of God”[5]and said that it a heretical error of using mental prayer. Returning back to Thessalonica, “Barlaam entered into disputes with the monks and attempted to demonstrate the created, material nature of the light of Tabor (i.e. at the Transfiguration). He ridiculed the teachings of the monks about the methods of prayer and about the uncreated light seen by the hesychasts.”[6]
By way of his controversies, Saint Gregory Palamas became famous for his teachings, “These controversies involved the fundamental questions of the ‘essence-energies’ distinction in God and the nature of the vision of God; and St. Gregory’s writings in response to his three main theological opponents (Barlaam, Akindynus, and Greogras) came mainly in the form of long and highly technical systematic treatises.”[7]
We now come to Saint Gregory in his “One-hundred and Fifty Chapters”. Saint Gregory gives his viewpoint and understanding on the essence and energies of God. In his seventy-third chapter, Palamas writes from Akindynos “‘The uncreated is unique, namely, the divine nature and anything whatsoever distance from this is created.’ Thus do they make into a creature the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for there is one and the same energy of three, and that of which the energy is created cannot itself be uncreated. For this reason it is not the energy of God that is a creature – certainly not !-but rather the effect and the product of the energy.”[8]
Saint Gregory says that, “The divine substance and the divine energy are inseparably present everywhere, the energy of God is accessible also to us creatures, for according to the theologians it is indivisibly divided, whereas the divine nature remains utterly indivisible to them.”[9]Saint Gregory then goes on to quote Saint John Chrysostom, saying, “‘A drop of grace filled all things with knowledge, through it wonders took place, sins were loosed’”.[10]Saint Gregory comments on this saying that “he [Chrysostom] indicated that this drop of grace was uncreated, he then hastened to show that it was an energy not the substance”.[11]
In Chapter 134, of his “One-Hundred and Fifty Chapters”, Saint Gregory writes a very harsh, but good warning to those who are taking the side of Barlaam. Saint Gregory writes, “And one who is not trihypostatic not master of the universe is not even God. Therefore, those who thus hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos are athiests.”[12]Saint Gregory here is saying that those who believe Barlaam and Akindynos do not believe in God and all that there is to God and therefore do not know God.
Saint Gregory in his Thirty-Fifth Homily “Another on the Transfiguration”, writes, “As snow’s whiteness is inadequate to depict how delightful that sight was, the evangelist added the word ‘shining’ to show that the light which made those clothes glistening white was supernatural. It is not a property of light to render the objects it illuminates sparkling and white, but to show up what colour they are. This light, however, apparently revealed, or rather, transformed, the things it shone upon, which visible light cannot do.”[13]
This light that Saint Gregory is preaching on was so hard and unbearable for the disciples at the Transfiguration to see the light of Christ because it was so bright, so Christ only showed an amount of light that the disciples could see. Dr. Christopher Veniamin writes in his book, “The Orthodox Understanding of Salvation: ‘Theosis’ in Scripture and Tradition”, that the light “which was revealed at the Transfiguration, will be revealed only at the Last Day”.[14]
Father John Meyendorff says that “Palamas’s originality lies in his analysis of the state proper to the new man, which emerged from his opposition to the humanism of Barlaam. The real communion of man with God is, for Palamas, the necessary condition of a true knowledge. We have read above that Palamas’s objection to Barlaam turned on the supernatural knowledge accessible to Christians only; such knowledge was but one aspect of the deification of which we receive the firstfruits here below.”[15]
Father John Meyendorff, then goes on to say, “True knowledge is therefore distinguishable from all external assimilation of the truth; a certain knowledge of God can come from the Scriptures, for by that means one can accept dogmatic truth and confess Orthodoxy, but those are no more than means to attain the immediate and intimate knowledge of God procured for us by baptism.”[16]Father Meyendorff finishes with saying that it is not “knowledge”, but “be considered it as superior to all knowledge.”[17]What strikes me as important is when Father Meyendorff says, “for nothing can surpass the apparition of God and his dwelling within us, nothing can equal it, nothing can come near it.’ ‘Such a union,’ he writes elsewhere, ‘is beyond all knowledge, although metaphorically we do call it knowledge.’”[18]
George Mantzarides
George Mantzarides writes on the fact of being a traditionalist or innovationist. He writes, “Saint Gregory Palamas has been accused of being an innovator, and at the same time he has been honored as a traditionalist theologian. The concepts of traditionality and innovation are closely connected with time, apart from time neither of them can be correctly understood. Traditionality, when expressed in strong and dynamic terms, and so related to the flow of time, can very easily be characterized as timeless tradition, which is of course a strictly conservative attitude. This means that traditionality and innovation are not necessarily irreconcilable. Rather, the opposite is true; the one often supplements and completes the other. Tradition innovates. The most authentic innovations have been the products of tradition. Gregory Palamas, as a traditionalist theologian, was a man of innovations. He can therefore be very well characterized as a traditionalist innovator.”[1]
What George Mantzarides is saying here that it is okay to be both a traditionalist and an innovator. But in order to be an innovator, you need to be an innovator with good taste, which he is saying about Palamas. For example, there can be traditions that can be created by families. These traditions can be an innovation, but if they are bad innovations then there can be a problem.
Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams in his writing “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, cuts Palamas and his stance on the knowability of God down to the point where Williams is saying that Palamas is not able to understand the ways of Aristotle. Williams first starts out saying, with a very harsh statement and it does not get any better through the writing. Williams writes that “the Palamite position is deceptively simple: God cannot be known, communicated or participated as he is in his ‘essence’, but is known, communicated and participated in his ‘energy’ or ‘energies’. God may thus be said to exist in two modes, being equally fully present in both; so that man participating in the divine ‘energy’ by grace is authentically sharing the life of God, and is ‘deified’ by his participation.”[2]Williams then goes onto say, “The energies are not identical with the hypostases of the Godhead, rather they are possessed and exercised in common by all three persons.”[3]Williams is setting up his argument with starting off with what Palamas is saying and then trying to twist and negate everything of Palamas.
Then Williams goes on to call Palamas and his disciples “small-minded”, Williams says that “I have no desire whatsoever to belittle the stature either of Palamas or of his modern disciples; error and confusion are not the prerogative of small minds, and to be able candidly to examine the points of incoherence in a theologian’s work should be a testimony to what the student has learned from that theologian at his greatest and best.”[4]
Then Rowan Williams goes on in his writing “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, tells us that once we understand the of Aristotle, then we will be able to understand what Saint Gregory Palamas is trying to say about how we can know God. Williams writes, “Once this [the way of Aristotle] has been understood, it becomes possible to grasp more clearly what precisely is going on in Palamism.”[5]Williams then goes on to write about how Palamas has a difficult time understand the difference between ousia and hypostasis, therefore there is a misunderstanding of the Holy Trinity saying that “treating the Persons of the Trinity as distinct from the ‘substance’ of God. The Persons are not other than ousia, another ‘mode’ of divine existence; quite simply, they are the ousia.” The one thing that Williams says is that the argument that Palamas makes is an “odd argument”.[6]To this Williams adds “that if we fail to distinguish ousia from energeiai, we have no means of distinguishing the generation of the Son from the cration of the world, since the former is an ‘essential’ or ‘natural’ act, while the latter is ‘volitional’?”[7]Rowan Williams finishes his writing with,
“Palamism has come to be present as the doctrine of the Eastern church on the knowledge of God, and any critical questioning of Palamism is interpreted as an attack upon the contemplative and experiential theology of Orthodoxy. However, I have already indicated that many scholars, by no mean unsympathetic to the Eastern tradition, have cast serious doubt upon whether the Palamite distinction of ousia from energia is really a legitimate development of the theology of the Cappadocians or Maximus.”[8]
Trethowan, Dom Illtyd.
Ware writes on Trethowan, calling him a Western Doubter. Ware puts in his response back to Trethowan and Williams that, “‘Christians have indeed used expressions about their knowledge of God which are, on the face of it, contradictory of one another.’”[9]Also in his book “Mysticism and Theology”, Trethowan writes, “‘Words which are used of God are never strictly descriptions of him…When we speak of God we have to use language which is, taken at its face value, contradictory’”.[10]
“Trethowan affirms that there is a ‘mysterious element’ at the root of all human experience; alike in our moral experience and in our experience of external object, in our sense of ‘ought’ and our sense of ‘is’, an awareness of God is already present. While this apprehension of God may be termed ‘direct’, Trethowan insists that it is not ‘immediate’ or ‘unmediated’, for we are apprehending God in or through the medium of ourselves and our world. This apprehension of God involves, according to Trethowan, a ‘union without confusion’, as does all human knowledge. On the grounds he concludes, ‘the Palamite distinction [between essence and energies in God] must, I think, evaporate’.”[11]
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware responds back to Rowan Williams and Illtyd Trethowan in his “The Debate about Palamism”. He points out that “Trethowan, as we have noted, sees no necessity for the essence-energies distinction because all knowledge involves a ‘union without confusion’”.[12]His Eminence replies to this saying, “In our normal experience of physical objects and other human persons, although our awareness of these objects or persons involves a ‘union’ with them, we are at the same time quite clear in our own minds that these objects or persons do not literally ‘become’ ourselves, nor do we literally ‘become’ them.”[13]When a person is in a time of need, they look to God. But the question is that they say “they know God”, but do they really think they are knowledgeable of God in His essence and energies.
Then we get to Metropolitan Kallistos on Rowan Williams, he calls Rowan Williams’ article “defective” and that it “is too hasty and sweeping in its conclusions.”[14]Ware also writes that “When I compare Williams’s presentation of Palamas with what the saint actually wrote, I feel that Williams never comes to grips with the real Palamite standpoint.”[15]Metropolitan Kallistos then goes on to say, “Williams proceeds to attribute to him views which Palamas himself never had the slightest intention of maintaining. Something has gone wrong here: the opponent whom Williams attacks is very largely one of his own imagination.”[16]Metropolitan Kallitos mentions that Williams has no “historical perspective” to his argument. His Eminence is saying here that before Williams was to go and try to cut Saint Gregory’s view point down, Williams needed to know his history and to not second guess Palamas.
Father John Romanides
In his “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, Fr. John Romanides writes
“For several years Father Meyendorff has been contending, in various articles, that the debate between St. Gregory Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian does not represent a clash between Latin and Greek theology, as has been generally believed, but rather a domestic quarrel between certain Byzantine humanist and a large segment of Byzantine monastics and their adherents”.[17]Then Romanides goes on to say that “Meyendorff seems to be under the impression that what he takes to be Barlaam’s nominalism is due to a one-sided adherence to the principles of Neo-Platonic Areopagite apophaticism. This adherence is presented as the general philosophical background which Barlaam applied to the Filioque question and by means of which he concluded that both Greeks and Latins are wrong in believing that they can demonstrate their own positions.”[18]
Father Romanides goes on to clarify what Barlaam is really saying. Romanides says that Barlaam is making the claim that “there are two ways of arriving at a knowledge of God – the philosophical sciences and revelation.”[19]Romanides calls these two ways “gifts of God”.[20]
“Father John [Romanides] makes the mistake of deducing from Barlaam’s specific skepticism regarding demonstrative proof on the question of Filioque a universal skepticism concerning the knowability of God. Barlaam’s starting-point makes it possible for him to contend that in the patristic tradtion there is a third tradition there is a third position on the Filioque question which is not that of the mediaeval Latins or Greeks.”[21]Romanides says that Barlaam “maintains that this position, which puts the issue beyond the reaches of reason and therefore of demonstrative proof, is the key to union.”
“Barlaam’s starting-point also explains why Palamas accuses him of reducing what in Patristic theology are the suprartional experiences of faith to the level of ration inquiry. For Barlaam, knowledge of God is rational, and only things not known of God are suprarational. For Palamas, knowledge of God is based on the suprarational experience of the prophets, apostles, and saints; it transcends all rational knowledge and cannot, therefore, be understood or defined in rational categories, or dealt with dialectically and syllagistcally, taking non-existent universals as a starting-point.”[22]
What we see here from Father Romanides is his view in the difference between the two sides in the Palamite Controversy; Saint Gregory Palamas and Barlaam. Then Father Romanides goes on to state, “These observations indicate strongly that in the persons of Barlaam and Palamas one is confronted with the real clash between the credo un intelligam tradition of the post-Augustinian West and apophatic theology of the Greek Fathers. One cannot doubt the sincerity with which Barlaam believed himself to be Orthodox. Yet this sincerity in no way proves that upon coming East he left his Latin presuppositions in the West, or simply came, as Father John contends, as a non-Latin Byzantine theologian and philosopher.”[23]
To recap the paper, “Who is God? Do we know God? How can we get to know God?” We need to understand the concept of “God is known, His name is great in Israel”.[24]To know God and to understand Him are concepts that we are not able to comprehend. We must first know ourselves before we can even comprehend it. Then the other question that we have come to was Saint Gregory an innovationist or a traditionalist? We have read from the different accounts of Kallistos Ware, Rowan Williams, Trethowan, Meyendorff, Mantzarides and Romanides that each have their own ways of interpreting each other regarding Saint Gregory Palamas’ and his view on the knowability of God. There are those that are in agreement of Saint Gregory; Ware, Romanides. Then we have those who are against Saint Gregory; Rowan Williams, and Illtyd Trethowan. We just hope that one day that all those who do not believe in God, His, essence, energies, existence, His presence and come to the knowledge of Thine unapproachable glory will believe one day. But for right now all of us believers may do is pray for them.
In today’s world, we have the same problem as Gregory Palamas had during his time. I know from personal experience that I feel for Saint Gregory because I am fighting this within my own family. I always thought that “to know God, is to know oneself”. We aspire to know God every day, but it is to the point that we cannot comprehend what He is. This reminds me of John’s Gospel on Pascha where it says “”.[25]I believe we need to work harder to understand the truth and to help those that do not know. When we know God, it will hit us, but it will not be until the day God calls us to His Heavenly Kingdom and knowing God will be a never-ending journey.
Mantzarides, George. ‘Tradition and Renewal in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas.’ Eastern Churches Review 9,1-2 (1977), 1-18.
Mantzaridis, Georgios I. The Deification of Man. SVS, 1984.
Meyendorff, J. A Study of Gregory Palamas. SVS, 1959.
OCA Website, “Saint Gregory Palamas”, https://oca.org/saints/lives/2016/11/14/103303-st-gregory-palamas-the-archbishop-of-thessalonica.
Romanides, John S. ‘Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics.’ Greek Orthodox Theological Review 6 (1961/62), 186-205; and 9 (1963/64), 225-70.
Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies. Edited and translated from the original Greek, with an introduction and notes by Christopher Veniamin. Dalton PA: 2016, 2nd repr. ed.
Saint Gregory Palamas: The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters. Edited and translated by Robert Sinkewicz, Studies and Texts 83. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1988.
The Triads. Edited with an introduction by John Meyendorff, and translated by Nicholas Gendle. Classics of Western Spirituality. Paulist Press: Mahwah, New Jersey, 1983.
Trethowan, Dom Illtyd. ‘Irrationality in Theology and the Palamite Distinction.’ Eastern Churches Review 9,1-2 (1977), 19-26.
Veniamin, Christopher. The Orthodox Understanding of Salvation: “Theosis” in Scripture and Tradition (Dalton PA: 2014, 2nd repr. ed.).
Ware, K. T. ‘God Hidden and Revealed: The Apophatic Way and the Essence-Energies Distinction.’ Eastern Churches Review 7,2 (1975), 125-136.
Ware, K. T. ‘The Debate about Palamism.’ Eastern Churches Review 9,1-2 (1977), 45-63.Williams, R. D. ‘The Philosophical Structures of Palamism.’ Eastern Churches Review 9,1-2 (1977), 27-44.
[1]Mantzarides, George. “Tradition and Renewal in the Theology of Saint Gregory Palamas, 1.
[2]Williams, “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, 27.
[3]Williams, “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, 27.
[4]Williams, “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, 29.
[5]Williams, “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, 32.
[6]Williams, “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, 33.
[7]Williams, “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, 33.
[8]Williams, “The Philosophical Structure of Palamism”, 43.
[9]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”, 47.
[10]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”, 47.
[11]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”, 52.
[12]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”, 53.
[13]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”, 53.
[14]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”, 54, 56, 57.
[15]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”, 57.
[16]Ware, “The Debate about Palamism”,
[17]Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, 186.
[18]Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, 190.
[19]Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, 190.
[20]Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, 190.
[21]Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, 191.
[22]Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, 191.
[23]Romanides, “Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics”, 192.
[24]Psalm 76:1
[25]John 1:5
[1]Psalm 76:1
[2]The Triads, 35.
[3]oca.org, lives of saints
[4]oca.org, lives of saints
[5]oca.org, lives of saints
[6]oca.org, lives of saints
[7]Veniamin, Homilies Introduction, xxiv.
[8]150 Chapters, Ch. 73, 169.
[9]150 Chapters, Ch. 74, 169.
[10]150 Chapters, Ch. 74, 169.
[11]150 Chapters, Ch. 74 169.
[12]150 Chapters, Ch. 134, 241.
[13]Veniamin, “The Homilies”, 276.
[14]Dr. Christopher Veniamin, “The Orthodox Understanding of Salvation: ‘Theosis’ in Scripture and Tradition”, 93.
[15]Meyendorff, John. “A Study of Gregory Palamas”, 168.
[16]Meyendorff, John. “A Study of Gregory Palamas”, 168.
[17]Meyendorff, John. “A Study of Gregory Palamas”, 168.
[18]Meyendorff, John. “A Study of Gregory Palamas”, 168.