St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), archbishop of
Thessaloniki (1347-1359), was and is a controversial figure. His experience and
teachings of the Uncreated energies of God was severely attacked by Barlaam the
Calabrian (who accused him of following the supposedly innovative teachings of
St. Nicephorus of Mt. Athos [d. c. 1300]),[1] Gregory
Akindynos, Nicephoras Gregoras, and others in his own time. Although his
theology was vindicated by several councils in Constantinople between 1341 and
1351, and he was canonized just nine years after his death in 1368, it remained
a topic of disagreement. His theology and influence fell into nigh-obscurity
from the late sixteenth century practically until the twentieth century, and
today there is still disagreement within the Orthodox Church over how to
understand his theology and interactions with his opponents, as well as
continued debate from outside the Church.[2]
However, for the
faithful Orthodox Christian there is no such question: St. Gregory Palamas is
undoubtedly a great Father of the Church, fully within the Orthodox Tradition.
His theology is a seamless whole with that of all the Fathers who came before
and after him. Whereas the Church recognizes heretics to be such because they
innovated, She recognizes St. Gregory Palamas to be one of the three great
Pillars of Orthodoxy, and his hymns connect him with the three Theologians and
the Three
Holy Hierarchs.[3] His commemoration on the Second
Sunday of Great Lent is understood as a continuation of the First Sunday’s
celebration of the Triumph
of Orthodoxy. In placing him between the Sundays of Orthodoxy and the Cross, the Church “underlines the fact that, in
his life and teaching, St. Gregory stands as an unsurpassable witness to the
Orthodox Christian faith and a supremely skilled guide to the mystery of the
Cross, the vision of Christ in glory.”[4] The Council of 1351 which proclaimed
Palamite theology holds ecumenical status and is widely regarded as the Ninth
Ecumenical Council.[5] And his troparion leaves no doubt as
to his position within the Church: “O light of Orthodoxy, teacher of the
Church, its confirmation/ O ideal of monks and invincible champion of
theologians/ O wonder working Gregory, glory of Thessalonica and preacher of
grace/always intercede before the Lord that our souls may be saved.”
However, it must be
emphasized that St. Gregory Palamas was no mere “traditionalist” in the sense
of one who simply repeats theological formulae that came before him, but rather
he is one who truly entered into the living stream of the Orthodox Tradition,
that is, into the Life of the Holy Trinity. Although his writings are replete
with Scriptural and Patristics quotations, he did not intellectually develop
his theology of the essence and energies in God from a synthesis of those who
came before him. To theologize, even based on the great Fathers of the Church,
apart from personal experience would ultimately be an exercise in philosophical
speculation, but St. Gregory’s beginning point was precisely his own personal
experience of the divinizing grace of God. Archbishop Basil Krivosheine makes
exactly this point: “He was not a mere compiler if only because the starting
point of his theologizing was his own spiritual experience and not only the
study of the books of the holy Fathers.”[6] Commenting on the view that
monastics must study secular wisdom because knowledge of God comes through the
mediation of creatures, the great saint himself does not offer a rebutting
philosophical argument, but speaks from a place of experiential intimacy: “I
was in no way convinced when I heard such views being put forward, for my small
experience of monastic life showed me that just the opposite was the case.”[7]
And not only did St.
Gregory’s theology begin with his own experience within the Church, but it is
the possibility and reality of this experience which he directly defended
against the blasphemies of Barlaam, Akindynos, and Gregoras. Ultimately the
very theology and life of the Church was at stake in the Palamite
controversy—for theology is, at its height and center, not a collection of
dogmatic statements, but it is the Person of Jesus Christ—our great God and
Savior, Whom we may know by Divine illumination, to which dogmatic statements
point the way. True theology, true spiritual life, is the vision of Christ in
glory, and so at the heart of the Orthodox faith also stands the Cross-bearing
Christian who has beheld Christ in glory. Of such, St. Gregory states: “We
believe what we have been taught by those enlightened by Christ, which they
alone know with certainty.”[8] His experiential theology is that of
the saints preceding him because they experienced the same Christ. The
centrality of such personal experience of the glory of God is underlined by St.
Symeon the New Theologian’s statement that whoever does not desire to attain to
the vision of Christ is possessed by the devil,[9]and St. Gregory’s own statement that the
vision of God “is the only proof of a soul in good health.”[10]
CONVERSATION