How is a participatory understanding of the divine mystery to be attained?

The next question concerns the nature of human participation in God. Participation implies duality, not identity, but the two terms are not commensurate, the one being finite, the other transcendent. Palamas’ solution to the problem of participation was his development of the essence–energies distinction based on Basil of Caesarea’s distinction between the divine essence and its attributes. Testimony to this distinction was sought in the gospel accounts of the transfiguration of Christ, which thus became the subject of detailed exegesis. This chapter discusses the distinctions Palamas sought to make, including one he hotly denied between a higher and a lower divinity, and concludes that the distinctions are not ontological but are intended to highlight the centrality of the experience of God.

The Orthodox struggle to assimilate Palamite thinking

The Palamite controversy originated in Barlaam’s formal complaint that Palamas’ teaching was a cover for the dualist heresy of Bogomilism, or ‘Messalianism’. A series of Constantinopolitan councils upheld Palamas’ orthodoxy, but many of its opponents subsequently abandoned Orthodoxy and joined the Latin Church. Thus the ‘Palamite heresy’ became a weapon, in the confessionally competitive climate of the early modern age, with which Catholic missionaries could attack confidence in the Orthodox Church as a reliable vehicle of salvation. The attempts of Dositheos II of Jerusalem and Nikodemus the Hagiorite to publish the complete works of Palamas came to nothing. The Philokalia in its Slavonic version introduced hesychast theology to Russia but omitted Palamas himself. Palamite thought was appropriated in Russia chiefly by the controversial ‘glorifiers of the Name’, the imiaslavtsy. It was against the background of imiaslavie that the early work on Palamas by the Russian émigrés in Paris was undertaken.

Could Palamas become ‘the inheritance of all Christians’?

This chapter considers the treatment of Palamas in recent debates. A major obstacle to his reception is the polemical use made of him by Palamites and anti-Palamites. The methodologies adopted by modern scholars include the expository, the problematic, the antithetical, and the comparative. The problematic method has been the most fruitful, as used by Torstein Tollefsen (who presents the energeiai as the pluralization of the divine unity), Manuel Sumares (who discusses the capacity of creatures to receive divinity), Stelios Ramfos (who highlights the importance of notion of enhypostasia), and Christos Yannaras (who argues that essence and energy are both modes of existence). Recent colloquia have shown the difficulty of demonstrating compatibility between Palamas and the Western intellectual tradition, but Nikolaos Loudovikos argues ably for ‘contiguity’ between Aquinas and Palamas.

What is the reality of divine–human communion?

The nature of divine–human communion was the central issue in the hesychast controversy. This raises the question of the nature of divine grace. Basing his discussion on Dionysius the Areopagite, Palamas argues that grace is both the giver and the gift, both essence and energy, for Scripture (Joel 3:1, LXX) says that God will pour out from his Spirit, making a distinction between the pourer and the poured. Palamas’ discussions of how grace is appropriated focus on the vision of light, the meaning of enhypostatic existence, and the nature of symbols. He argues that if grace is merely created, as Akindynos maintained, we could have no communion with God, because we would have nothing bridging the ontological divide between the Creator and the creature.

What does doctrinal development mean?

This chapter, the first to address ‘the larger questions’, discusses the philosophical and theological context in which Palamas worked. The East made a distinction between the ‘outer wisdom’ of the pagan Greek philosophers and the ‘inner wisdom’ of the Church Fathers. Palamas rejected the parity of the two wisdoms espoused by Barlaam, who argued that ‘truth is one’, but did not repudiate philosophy as such. All parties to the controversy, however, gave priority to the Church Fathers, taking as their chief authority Dionysius the Areopagite. The correct exegesis of Dionysius became central to the debate. Methodological issues that were discussed explicitly include the relationship between dogmatic and mystical theology, and between theology and contemplation, and the correct explication (anaptyxis) of Christological dogma. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the different ways in which theological decisions were made authoritative in the East and in the West.

Introduction: a sign of contradiction

Palamas is still regarded in the West with suspicion, partly because of Jugie’s persuasive construction of Palamism as a ‘near-heresy’, and partly because of the role of Palamas in Orthodox identity politics. The history of the reception of Palamas in the Orthodox world is traced in outline up to the imiaslavie controversy just before the First World War. The response to Jugie came from members of the Russian emigration, especially Meyendorff, who wished not only to defend Palamas but also to delineate an Orthodox identity in its new Western environment. The reception of Meyendorff’s work is discussed together with the new areas of research that he opened up. In a recent article on Palamas, Robert Sinkewicz declared that it was now time to raise the larger questions. These questions, concerning the coherence and significance of Palamas’ work on the philosophical and theological levels, are addressed in Part II of the book.

Concluding reflections

Akindynos’ negative assessment of Palamas’ character has been influential, particularly through its strong endorsement by Juan Nadal. Palamas knew how to use social networks and construct arguments to demolish his opponents. In assessing his character, however, the rhetorical conventions of dialectics need to be taken into account. Philosophically Palamas is important for his understanding of participation, his modification of certain Aristotelian categories, and his use of enhypostasia to posit activities or energies of the divine essence that are real, not notional, but have no independent existence apart from the essence. Theologically he maintains that deification is not the perfection of rational nature but the transformation of the believer, who becomes ‘uncreated by grace’ by partaking of the divine mode of existence. The greatest obstacle to the reception of Palamas is perhaps that by his essence–energies distinction he attempts to solve a problem that Western theologians do not have.

New directions since Meyendorff

This chapter examines the new directions taken since Meyendorff’s work in four fields: the edition of texts, historical research, philosophical investigation, and theological analysis. Ettore Perrella has made Palamas’ texts more widely available. Antonio Rigo and Ioannis Polemis have made fundamental contributions to our historical understanding. Much work has been done by scholars such as Demetracopoulos, Erismann, and Tollefsen on the philosophical structures of Palamas’ thinking. Our understanding of his theological perspective has been deepened by the work of, among others, Radović, Lison, and Yangazoglou. It is argued that a more nuanced Palamas has emerged from these studies, which has enabled us to understand better the context in which Palamas conducted his debates and the nature of the challenges facing him.

John Meyendorff’s response to Jugie

Meyendorff was the first to attempt an account of Palamas and Palamite theology based on a thorough investigation of the sources, both edited and unedited. On its publication in 1959, his Introduction was widely acclaimed. Two Western scholars who welcomed it warmly were Eric Mascall and Louis Bouyer, but a reaction set in the 1970s. This chapter follows the debate initiated by the Dominican journal Istina and continued in the pages of St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly and the Eastern Churches Review, and shows how behind it lay the Roman Catholic struggle between conservatives and progressives after the Second Vatican Council. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how Meyendorff abandoned the much-criticized dichotomies of his Introduction but did not alter his fundamental perspective.

Martin Jugie and the invention of Palamism

Jugie’s seminal articles on Palamas and the Palamite controversy defined ‘Palamism’ as an innovation that proved the fallibility of the ‘Graeco-Roman’ Church. At the Paris Institute of Saint Sergius, Sergius Bulgakov claimed that his sophiology was a creative reworking of Palamas, while Georges Florovsky saw Palamas as the crowning Father of the neopatristic synthesis. But the pioneering work on Palamas was done by Basil Krivoshein, then a monk on Mount Athos, and the Romanian professor, Dumitru Stǎniloae, who was the first to exploit the rich holding of manuscript sources at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The first work by the Paris Russians was undertaken by Vladimir Lossky and Kiprian Kern. The contacts both of them had with sympathetic Catholics were important. Lossky was given a platform by Jesuits leading the ressourcement movement; Kern’s work was published in French by the Benedictines of Chevetogne.