Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Saint Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) is one of the greatest Fathers of our Church. At times, he is placed as the fourth Hierarch alongside Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom. At a critical time, when Christ-named humanism was challenging the very essence of the Church as a “communion of deification,” Saint Gregory Palamas put forward the teaching on the deification of man through his participation in the uncreated energy of God. He did not present new theological truths that had not previously existed in Holy Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. However, by using the language, terms, and concepts of his time, he overturned the challenges to and attacks upon the Christian faith and life through the timeless truth of the Church.
God does not remain inaccessible and incommunicable to man, nor does He approach and enter into communion with him by using created means; rather, He enters into a direct relationship and personal communion with him through His uncreated energy, or His uncreated energies. In this way, man participates directly and personally in divine life and becomes god by grace. Ultimately, the whole of Palamite theology culminates in the defense of this truth: the truth of man's renewal in Christ and deification, that is, his becoming a person “according to the likeness of God.”
As Elder Sophrony aptly pointed out, “Saint Gregory Palamas is the one who explained to us how to stand before God, how to know Him in an affirmative way”.[1] The energy of God is not some indefinite power or superpower. The energy of God is God Himself; He is “the living God,” who becomes accessible to man, who can participate in Him. Through the energy of God, we experience the living God within history and in our lives.
In the polemic he developed against Barlaam's false teaching concerning the created character of divine energy, Saint Gregory Palamas also emphasized the priority of the person. Following Saint Gregory the Theologian to a certain extent, and word for word in the passage, Palamas says: “And when God spoke to Moses, He did not say, ‘I am the essence,’ but ‘I am the One who is’;[2] for the One who is is not from the essence, but the essence is from the One who is; for the One who is Himself has encompassed all being within Himself”.[3]
The derivation of essence from the One who is does not mean that the One who is is given priority over essence, something which would ultimately mean the existence of a being without essence. This mistake was made recently in theological circles during a discussion of the concept of the person, with the cited passage of Saint Gregory Palamas even being invoked in support of it. Thus, while essentialism, which Orthodox theologians rightly reject, is avoided, an essenceless personalism emerges in its place. This personalism is entirely foreign to the patristic tradition and to the theology of Saint Gregory Palamas. As Saint Gregory emphasizes, we distinguish the hypostasis from the essence and demonstrate its difference from it, but we cannot find a hypostasis without essence: “It is impossible to see a hypostasis without essence”.[4] The divine hypostases are not parts of the divine essence, because in each hypostasis there is “the entire and perfect Godhead”.[5]
Human nature was created in relationship and reference to divine nature. We were created, Saint Gregory Palamas notes, repeating the Apostle Peter, “so that we might become partakers of the divine nature”.[6] This means, as he himself adds, that we were neither previously nor from the very beginning, upon our creation, partakers of this nature.[7] And although man ought to have advanced toward “likeness,” he not only failed to do so, but also moved in the opposite direction. This twofold deviation was caused by man's pride. It alienated him from the virtuous life according to nature and led him to the impassioned life contrary to nature. When, however, man humbles himself and recovers his natural reference to God, the opposition within him is removed; he comes to peace and lives the virtuous life according to nature.[8]
Man, therefore, is not called to conquer his nature or to free himself from it, but to oppose its deviation, to conquer its passions, and to direct it toward the purpose for which it was created from the beginning: “toward the likeness,” toward participation in the “divine nature.” It is precisely within this perspective that man is called to wage war against his flesh or even to hate himself.[9]
Christian asceticism is also carried out within this perspective, and it constitutes a central axis in the life and teaching of Saint Gregory. And because pride was the cause of man's deviation, humility and mourning are therefore put forward as the principal medicines for his restoration.
Saint Gregory Palamas, as his biographer and encomiast Philotheos, Patriarch of Constantinople, notes, possessed the highest degree of humility and a sincere “love from the heart”; he had the deepest compunction, mourning, and ever-flowing tears.[10] Finally, with absolute persuasiveness and unconquerable strength, he defended unceasing prayer, countering Barlaam the Calabrian, who regarded it as an intellectual process.
The deification of man, or his perfection and fulfillment as a person, comes as the crowning achievement of a long and arduous ascetic journey. This journey restores peace to the soul of the believer and transforms the tears of mourning and repentance into joy and gladness of heart. Thus, man is freed from earthly passions, tastes divine blessedness, and is illumined by the uncreated light. He becomes an earthly angel of God and brings all creation to God together with himself, because he himself participates in all things, just as he participates in God, who is above all, so that he may be His exact image.[11]
At this point, it is also worth emphasizing the importance of the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas for the proper theological approach to and treatment of the contemporary ecological crisis. This crisis is neither superficial nor something that can be addressed solely through legislative measures or even through a simple change in man's outward behavior. The ecological crisis springs from man's inner crisis, from the separation of the mind from his heart. It springs from his failure to embrace all creation with love and to refer it, together with himself, to God.
The ecological crisis begins with man's inner crisis, with the crisis of the human person, of the human hypostasis. And the pollution of the environment reflects man's inner pollution, the pollution of his mind and heart. Without the purification of the heart from impassioned dispositions and of the mind from impassioned thoughts, it is impossible for man to have proper relationships with the world and the things of the world. If man does not begin with the crisis that exists within him, he cannot properly address the ecological crisis. The renewal of the world presupposes the renewal of the human hypostasis.
The truth of deification does not appear only in the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas, but is also made perceptible in his life. After all, the description of deification in human language is impossible, because, as he himself notes, “even when spoken of, it remains ineffable, and is known by name only to those who have been granted it”[12]. Saint Gregory Palamas had the good fortune to be born and raised in a family that struggled for holiness. All the members of his family had evident marks of holiness, and for this reason their canonization was carried out by the Ecumenical Patriarchate recently.
Saint Gregory Palamas did not base his anthropology on the philosophical currents of his time. He based it on the lived Tradition of the Church, which he himself experienced and knew from within. Of course, he used the language, terms, and concepts of his time, as the earlier Fathers of the Church had also done. This, however, did not affect the substance of his teaching. On the contrary, the use of these terms and concepts opened new horizons for philosophical thought itself as well.
The scholarly analysis of patristic texts, including those of Saint Gregory Palamas in the present case, seeks to identify the sources from which the Fathers drew their teaching. Thus, for example, it identifies Platonic or Neoplatonic influences in Saint Gregory Palamas. And indeed, a superficial reading of his works might perhaps create such impressions. When, however, a deeper reading of them is undertaken, one comes away with an entirely different impression. Words and modes of expression are not identical with the truth, but are merely means for indicating it, always in a relative manner. And understanding this truth is neither easy nor possible outside the spirit of the communion of those who expressed it, outside the spirit of the “communion of deification.”
Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), Address to the Community, November 19, 1989.
See Exodus 3:14. 36, 625C.
Gregory Palamas, In Defense of Those Who Devoutly Practice Stillness 3.2.12, ed. P. Christou, The Works of Gregory Palamas, vol. 1, Thessaloniki, 1962, p. 666. Compare Gregory the Theologian, Oration 45.3, PG.
Gregory Palamas, To Gavras 30, ed. P. Christou, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 358–359.
Gregory Palamas, To Paul Asanes 9, ed. P. Christou, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 371.
See 2 Peter 1:4.
See Gregory Palamas, Theophanes 15, ed. P. Christou, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 239.
See Gregory Palamas, To the Nun Xene 54, ed. P. Christou, The Works of Gregory Palamas, vol. 5, Thessaloniki, 1992, p. 222.
See Luke 14:26.
See Philotheos of Constantinople, Oration in Honor of Saint Gregory Palamas, PG 151, 569 AB.
See Gregory Palamas, To the Nun Xene 59 and To John and Theodore the Philosophers 18, ed. P. Christou, The Works of Gregory Palamas, vol. 5, Thessaloniki, 1992, pp. 224 and 239.
Gregory Palamas, In Defense of Those Who Devoutly Practice Stillness 3.1.32, ed. P. Christou, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 664.
Source: Enateinseis, Periodical Publication of the Holy Metropolis of Kykkos and Tillyria, Issue 10, January–April 2010. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
