Review, Alexandros Chouliaras, The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body, Studia Traditionis Theologiae 38, Brepols, Turnhout 2020, Review of Ecumenical Studies 3 (2021): 535-539. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body
2020
How are we to regard our body? As a prison, an enemy, or, maybe, an ally? Is it something bad that needs to be humiliated and extinguished, or should one see it as a huge blessing, that deserves attention and care? Is the body an impediment to human experience of God? Or, rather, does the body have a crucial role in this very experience? Alexandros Chouliaras’ book The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: the Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body argues that the fourteenth-century monk, theologian, and bishop Gregory Palamas has interesting and persuasive answers to offer to all these questions, and that his anthropology has a great deal to offer to Christian life and theology today. Amongst this book’s contributions are these: for Palamas, the human is superior to the angels concerning the image of God for specific reasons, all linked to his corporeality. Secondly, the spiritual senses refer not only to the soul, but also to the body. However, in Paradise the body will be absorbed by the spirit, and acquire a totally spiritual aspect. But this does not at all entail a devaluing of the body. On the contrary, St Gregory ascribes a high value to the human body. Finally, central to Palamas’ theology is a strong emphasis on the human potentiality for union with God, theosis: that is, the passage from image to likeness. And herein lies, perhaps, his most important gift to the anthropological concerns of our epoch.
Becoming Homotheos: St. Gregory Palamas’ Eschatology of Body
In "The Triune God," edited by Constantinos Athanasopoulos, 235–47. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015
In the latter portion of The Triads, St. Gregory Palamas describes deification as an event that is inclusive of the entirety of man’s being, inasmuch as he becomes “entirely God in his soul and body by grace”. This bold assertion on the part of St. Gregory is demonstrative of the way in which he consciously follows in the footsteps of his theological forebearer, St. Maximus the Confessor, by synthesizing Evagrian-style spirituality with Biblical anthropological presuppositions. Man qua being, for Palamas, can only be defined as such to the extent that he possesses both soul and body, both of which are eternally predetermined for deification. The ascetic life and the practice of the virtues therefore constitute not a rejection of the body or its powers, but rather function as a way of redirecting man away from an inordinate obsession with the physical world that he may become receptive to the deifying grace of God. In his rigorous defense of the practitioners of hesychia, Palamas makes it clear that he considers prayer and the ecstatic experience of the uncreated light to be events that are inclusive of man’s entire hypostasis, even asserting that man’s bodily senses become capable of participating in this foretaste of the eschata. My paper shall focus upon Palamas’ ‘eschatological’ view of the body and his insistence on the relevance of man’s somatic dimension in the spiritual life. I shall also strive to illuminate the ontological presuppositions of his synthesis that enable his anthropological perspective, with particular emphasis on those which he received from his predecessors. Finally, I will argue that the Incarnation is a sine qua non of his theology and, consequently, of his eschatology of body.
Communion with God: An Energetic Defense of Gregory Palamas
Modern Theology, 2016
This paper responds to Robert Jenson’s and Catherine Mowry LaCugna’s critiques that the Palamite distinction between essence and energies prevents communion with the divine hypostases. Palamas is shown to consider energies that which make essence, and to insist that these energies must be enhypostatic. Combined with a non-polyonomous concept of divine simplicity, this metaphysic allows for distinct knowledge of each hypostasis as God through activity. Therefore, using Western distinctions provided by Leonard Hodgson and Petro Chirico, Palamas is shown to preserve the possibility of communion. The paper concludes by showing the distinction as amenable with Jensons’s and LaCugna’s projects.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016
The 13th and 14th centuries represented the most productive and influential period in the history of philosophy and theology in the West. A parallel and less influential (for the West) proliferation of arguments and theories took place in the East, at the same time, as a result of the defence of the Hesychastic movement offered by St Gregory Palamas and his followers. The papers brought together in this volume discuss the importance of Palamite ideas for the understanding of God in terms of divine energies, and for contemporary approaches to solving perennial problems in science, metaphysics, aesthetics, and ethics. Some of the contributors take a more reserved evaluation of the Palamite corpus, preferring to highlight similarities and differences between Palamas and the chief representatives of Medieval Scholasticism, such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Ockham. Other essays offer a radical re-evaluation of the Western history of philosophy and theology, preferring to bring out the reasons for Western philosophical and theological shortcomings and providing a wider critique on Western culture. Contributors to this volume include some of the top scholars on Palamite studies from the fields of philosophy, theology, aesthetics, cultural criticism, and art theory. As such, it represents a particularly useful resource for advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students and researchers in Christian theology and philosophy, Byzantine cultural studies and aesthetics.
Saint Gregory Palamas, The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters
1988
The Capita 150 deserves special prominence in the Palamite corpus, equal to that of the Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts. It was written in a relatively tranquil period after the triumph of Palamism in the Council of 1347 and prior to Gregory's polemics with Nikephoros Gregoras. Gregory Palamas took this opportunity to stand back somewhat from the atmosphere of controversy and reflect at length on the larger doctrinal context of the debates and the relation of the detailed issues to this context. The Capita 150 thus opens with a discussion on the nature of human knowledge and its application to the natural and supernatural domains. These considerations lead into a profound reflection on the image of God in man. Here Gregory Palamas produces not merely a synthesis of the patristic doctrine but a genuine theological development within the Church's tradition to meet the needs of the controversy with which the Church was confronted. After dwelling on the consequences of the Fall and th subsequent quest for healing, Palamas then reviews the principal issues of his controversy with Gregory Akindynos and his followers. The present study has arrived at a number of interesting conclusions that contribute to a fuller understanding of the works of Gregory Palamas. In spite of his hearty polemic against profane wisdom Palamas had considerable familiarity with the scientific revival of his time and was capable of discoursing on such subjects at least on the popular level. The suspected Augustinian elements in his Trinitarian theology derive not from Augustine but from the hesychast theology of the Jesus Prayer, particularly as it is found in the writings of Theoleptos of Philadelpheia. Finally, in composing the Capita 150 Palamas drew extensively on his earlier writings and even incorporated an entire work, namely, the Reply On Cyril. The critical edition of the text is based on a detailed study of all the available manuscripts and represents a great improvement over the text of the Philokalia. A translation is offered both as an aid for the understanding and interpretation of the Greek text and also for the benefit of the general reader with an interest in Eastern Christian theology.
Potency of God. Hypostaticity and living being in Gregory Palamas
Starting from the 24th chapter of Gregory Palamas’ The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, the paper shows how God’s act of creation places a genetic ontological difference inside of the human being. The rational soul (λογικὴ ψυχή) is by nature hyper-cosmic, while the body is from the cosmos and constitutes the animality of the human hypostasis. A real ontological speech on the human being is therefore possible only at the level of his corporeity. On the other hand, the rational soul constitutes the κατ'εἰκόνα Θεοῦ, the centre of human hypostaticity, which is the hyper-ontological foundation of every human person, his being-hypostasis in the likeness of the Holy Trinity, what roots anthropology in Triadology. Moreover, in the paper the Theo-anthropology of Gregory Palamas is studied in relation with Aristotle’s anthropology and psychology.
St Gregory Palamas' teaching on the soul
The anthropology of the Orthodox Church is totally connected with Ecclesiology and Trinitarian theology 1 . The fathers of the Church presented human as a union of body, λόγος (word), volition (θέλησις) , soul (ψυχή) without the dichotomy that proposed by the philosophers 2 . According to the fathers, especially in their ascetic works, the heart (not as the human organ) is the sovereign center of the whole "esse" of humanity. Mind (νούς) and word (λόγος) are spread in the heart and from there to the whole human being. He, as a unity, consisting of body (σώµα), soul (ψυχή), mind (νούς),word (λόγος) volition (θέλησις) and heart (καρδιά), accepts the energies of the Holy Spirit and with them steps to Deification 3 .
Gregory Palamas’ Defense of Theology as Ἐπιστήμη: Historical Background and Sources
Studia Patristica, 2020
This study highlights more unusual cases where Byzantine liturgical sources, such as in the Menaion and homiletic material of Fathers, are essential to understand certain notions of Palamas’ theoptic and epoptic ideas. The vocabulary and central themes of divine vision and participation in the divine energies are often found in Byzantine hymnody describing such experiences of divine light by the apostles and other saints. In some cases, Palamas’ formulations are closest to literature of a liturgical vs. dogmatic character. Furthermore, certain Palamite values, such as the presumed infallibility of patristic axioms (e.g., Basil the Great’s teaching on the Holy Spirit) build on liturgical assertions of the saint’s authority in doctrinal matters. Palamas’ combination of liturgical sources for his logical arguments on behalf of the apodeictic syllogism within an Aristotelian typology will be explored. This will lead to the conclusion that Palamas was very much influenced by contemporary Scholastic views and opinions on theology as a science and on the nature of the beatific vision. However, his own theory combined a natural epistemological skepticism with a divine illumination theory that distinguishes him from both Medieval Latin and Barlaamian positions on the scientific status of theology.
THE THEOTOKOS AS MYSTICAL THEOLOGIAN: ST GREGORY PALAMAS' SERMONS ON THE VIRGIN MARY
2015
In contrast with the post-12th century notion of theology as an academic subject, the properly patristic idea of theologia is inseparable from prayer to be “truly” practiced. Theologia is an experience to be thus attained, for the vision of divine glory is not only for the age to come but is indeed available to the saints in the present life. Such will be one of the central arguments that St. Gregory Palamas will make in defence of the hesychasts, for whom -- as his sermons on the Theotokos teach – the Virgin is to be considered a model. For Palamas, the Mother of God by-passes the stages of praktiki and physiki and moves directly into theologia. She is the true theologian who prays truly and is from the start gifted with the discerning spirit of prophecy. Having entered into the Holy of Holies shortly after she was weaned, she more than any other has insight into a divine knowledge beyond that contemplated in philosophy and analogical reasoning. Fruit of experiencing a communion with God unlike any other, her mystical vision of God transcends mere discursive speculation. Yet the implication is that, in becoming the Mother of God, she embodies a paradox: having been fashioned by God through providential grace, she freely consents to be the means of fashioning God in a human form through her flesh. In her body, she circumscribes the pre-eternal God. In the light of some of the issues raised in his controversy with Barlaam, Palamas’ teachings on the Mother of God put into a new perspective the question that Spinoza introduced into modern and contemporary philosophy: what can the body be?