Gregory Palamas Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

First, the uncreated Glory (light, theophany) is involved when Macarie talks about becoming “all Light” (as being a participant to the uncreated light and to the visio Dei). Those who receive the divine light are anticipa-ting the resurrection-glory of the Age to Come. What now is for the most part an interior glory, though not exclusively, as in the case of Moses and several of the monastic saints of the Desert, will then, in the eschaton, will be shown forth externally in the transfigured bodies of the saints. But Christ Himself is deifying light. This light is ‘theurgic’ in the sense of ‘divinising’. Macarius states that our mixed human nature, which was assumed by the Lord, has taken its seat on the right hand of the divine majesty in the heavens (Heb. 8:1), being full of glory not only (like Moses) in the face, but in the whole body. Golitzin’s reading is very important and he emphasizes Macarius’ insistence on the divine nature of light (not a νόεμα, but an ὑποστατικόν substantial φῶς). So, Macarian expression of “becoming all light, all face, all eye”, is about of the interior presence of the Light of Christ, Who is present in the Saints and poured out exteriorly upon their bodies.
Second, becoming “all face” (theo-christophany) means that Christ is both, the face of God and the face of man. The word face is itself sometimes deeply significant for the Greek ascetic fathers, and, sometimes, according to Cassiday there is quite a coincidence of the images of the light and the face. The light that illumines the temple of the mind and body is nothing other than the splendour of the Lord’s face. Thus, Christ is the iconic revelation of God; Christ reveals God’s face. So it is Christ whose in-dwelling presence radiates the light that illumines the temple of the mind and of the body as well. Christ, the Glory of the Lord, descending upon the mind, dwelling in it and shedding his light upon it and upon the body of the ascet. When Christ abides in the Christian mind, the face of the Christian emulates the Lord’s face in the same way that the Christian’s mind and body reflects the divine light. This is also a “highly visual epistemology”, which reminds us of about the Evagrius Ponticus, On Thoughts 24, where he says that it is also possible for you ‘to form in your-self your Father’s face’. Through true prayer, the monk becomes ‘equal to the angels’ (Lk 20.36), yearning to ‘see the face of the Father who is in heaven’ (Mt 18.10). But the macarian first interpretation is preserved in the Hesychast method of prayer (mind within the body), through which we carry the Father's light in the face of Jesus Christ in earthen vessels (2 Corinthians 4:6-7), that is, in our bodies and it is related to the transformation of the body during prayer.
Third the expression becoming “all eye” leads us to the apophaticism (a hidden-revealed dialectic). In Ennead I.6.9 Plotinus argues that never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful. Ephrem also employs the image of the eye. The inner eye of the mind (Faith 53:12), or of the soul (Faith 5:18), functions by means of faith, in much the same way that the exterior, physical, eyes functions by means of light. The presence of sin darkens this inner eye by keeping out the light of faith, and so, in order that this inner eye may see properly, it needs to be kept lucid and clear. In a short poem Hymn Thirty-Seven, Ephrem compares Eve and Mary to the two inner eyes of the world: one is darkened and cannot see clearly, while the other is luminous and operates perfectly. The term which Ephrem uses to describe Mary’s eye is an important one for Syriac Christianity in general (in particular for Saint Isaac of Nineveh). Her eye is shaphya, a Syriac word which according to Sebastian Brock has no single translation equivalent in English, but it includes ‘clear, pure, limpid, lucid, luminous’. Further-more ‘the Luminous One’ is a title which Ephrem employs a considerable number of times with reference to Christ. Ephrem uses the term shaphya, and the accompanying abstract noun shaphyuta, ‘luminosity’, closely connected with the optical imagery of the eye concerns the mirror. It is prayer that is the mirror: if this mirror is polished and rightly directed, then it will reflect Christ’s beauty. Such prayer will be indeed theo-phanic, revealing something of the Godhead and it makes us filled with the beauty of the Lord’s face (Church 29:9-10). King-dom of heaven is depicted, visible to those who have a luminous eye. The vision of the luminous eye of faith needs to be enhanced by praise. The image of becoming ‘all eye’, entirely subsumed in the vision that consumes and unites, goes back to Plotinus. For me this is a form of expressing the apophatic di-mension of the experience of prayer. By employing this apopha-tic theology (all eye), Macarius send to the purity of spiritual mind. It is what allows the light of the Holy Trinity to shine forth at the time of prayer having become all eye. By this supra-intelligible union with this light, St. Gregory Palamas shows us that the doctrine of divine light is revealing to us the Desert Fathers ‘missing (i.e., hidden/apophatic) Christology’, as the ‘missing piece’ (sic!) of the current studies on Late Antiquity.