Saint Gregoire Palamas developed in its thought this proverb of the Fathers, according to whom God was made man, so that the man becomes God . He summarizes a long tradition on this subject, to which he wants to be faithful and which touches with the most fundamental question of Christianity, that of the hello or the deification of the man. Here an outline of its life, its work and its thought. The bibliography will make it possible to the reader to further go.
life and work
The life of Gregoire is known to us in its writings, but also by the Éloge of Palamas little made up of time after its death by its disciple and friendly Philothée Kokkinos, which was patriarch of Constantinople. Gregoire was born in Constantinople in 1296. His/her parents were the noble ones of Asia Mineure which, because of the invasion of the Turks, took refuge in Constantinople. His/her father, Constantin Palamas, were senator and belonged to the entourage of the emperor Andronic II Paleologist. He died little of time after the birth of Gregoire. It is then the emperor who dealt with his traditional education and his studies at the imperial university until approximately the twenty years age. Gregoire chooses, probably before the term of the cycle of his studies which intended it for the service of the State, to become monk and to then give up Hellenic sciences. The young man had been prepared with his monastic vocation by family piety. His/her parents knew the prayer of the heart, they attended the monks athonites and to spiritual education their children had entrusted to them. Thus Gregoire profited from the spiritual paternity of a famous Master of the prayer of the heart, Théolepte of Philadelphia. It is perhaps under its council that Palamas was withdrawn, about 1316, with the Mont Athos. It was followed there by his two brothers. As for his/her mother and her two sisters, they carried out also a monastic life, but in Constantinople. With the Athos Mount, Gregoire became during three years the disciple of Nicodème, a monk hésychaste who initiated it with the life of hermit. Following the death of this last, Palamas decided to join the community of Large Lavra, rested by saint Athanase of Athos. It remained there as a cantor during three years, then it chose the solitary life again. It took Gregoire the Sinaïte for spiritual father and went to remain among the hésychastes of the hermitage of Glossia. About 1325, it was obliged to flee, because of incursions of pirates Turkish. It is then with Thessalonique that it resided during a few months in company of the disciples of Gregoire Sinaïte, among which two future patriarchs of Constantinople were, Isidore (Boukharis) and Calliste. In Thessalonique, it was ordered priest in 1326. Then, Gregoire left, accompanied by ten monks, to found a hermitage with Berrhée, where it followed the lifestyle adopted by the hésychastes, by devoting five days of the week to the pure prayer in loneliness and saturdays and Sunday with the liturgical services with the other monks of the hermitage. About 1331, it had once again to flee because of incursions, Serb this time. Gregoire turned over to the Sainte Mountain, with the hermitage of Saint-Sabbas. It is there that it started to write its first works. A little later, it accepted the load of higoumene or superior to the Monastère of Esphigmenou.About 1335, of return to the Saint-Sabbas hermitage, Gregoire wrote, at the time of talks of union of the Churches, his indisputable Traités on the procession of the Holy Spirit , a work on the Trinity intended to push back any attempt at doctrinal compromise with Latin on the topic of the procession of the Spirit. By doing this, Gregoire did not refuse really the union of the Churches, it especially wished to avoid a factitious doctrinal union, whose true stake was not theological, but political. Indeed, some of its contemporaries were ready to sacrifice the orthodoxe faith to link themselves in the Latin Occident and to thus profit from its military support to push back the invasion of the Turks.
About 1336-1337, it entered in conflict with the ideas of a monk and Italian philosopher, named Barlaam the Calabrian. This last was professor at the imperial university and a specialist in the Pseudo-Denys. Its fame was large in Constantinople and much consulted it in various fields of knowledge. Palamas wrote, between 1336-1337 and 1341, some Lettres , the Triades for the defense of the saints hésychastes , and a Tome hagioritic , works which testify to the controversy with Barlaam. The conflict related to the question of the knowledge of God: can one differently know God than by a demonstration, otherwise than by the only reasoning from what God created and who preserves his print? For Barlaam, there did not exist better approach that one to know God, who in itself is absolutely unknowable, as Denys said it. The study of the Writings was in its eyes of less importance. It started to violently criticize the practices of the monks hésychastes, practices about which it had gotten information and which supposed another form of knowledge of God, a more intimate and personal knowledge, by the intervention of a incréée grace of the Spirit. For Barlaam, these practices testified to an ignorance on behalf of the hésychastes and it announced it around him not without irony. The monks then asked Palamas to be their spokesperson in this conflict where their spirituality was reduced to nothing. Gregoire knew well Barlaam, it maintained a correspondence with him. He developed, starting from an attentive reading of the Greek Fathers, a distinction as a God between his gasoline imparticipable and energies participables, distinction stressing that God is indeed unknowable in itself, in his gasoline, as recalled by Barlaam, but that the man is not constrained for as much with ignorance, because God in his kindness appears with him such as he is, in his energy, where he is completely present and acting. Barlaam did not accept this distinction. It tried to refute it with all the intelligence of which it was able. The question was finally discussed publicly on June 10th, 1341, at the time of a council chaired jointly by the emperor, Andronic III, and the patriarch of Constantinople, Jean Calécas. The council condemned Barlaam, which left Byzance to turn over in Italy. However, the conciliar document was not signed by the emperor, because of his death, which has occurred five days after the council.
The opposition to the theology of Palamas was not finished. The relay was taken by Gregoire Akindynos, who was perhaps the disciple of Palamas, in any case his friend and a mediator in the first times of the controversy with Barlaam. For its part, it accepted spirituality hésychaste while radically refusing the distinction as a God between the gasoline and energies. The new regent Jean Cantacuzène, who was with the service of the late emperor Andronic III, then joins together a second treating council of the same in August 1341 question. Akindynos was condemned there in its turn. The synodal Volume was officially published, but the patriarch Jean Calécas, who disputed savagely the political authority of Jean Cantacuzène, agreed to sign the document while preventing the new regent, but also the minor son of the emperor, namely Jean V, to do as much of it. This document thus did not solve yet definitively the question. This conflict in connection with regency involved any Constantinople in a civil war of 1341 to 1347, which opposed Jean Cantacuzène to a government nominally chaired by Anne of Savoy, the widow of the emperor Andronic III. During this period, the patriarch Jean Calécas persecuted Palamas because of his political sympathy to Jean Cantacuzène, and granted his support for Gregoire Akindynos, which hastened to refute theology palamite in his Antirrhétiques . Palamas was put in prison for its political positions in 1342 and excommunicated for its religious ideas in 1344. In captivity, he wrote different Lettres and his Seven Antirrhétiques against Akindynos . Gregoire Akindynos, as for him, in spite of his judgment in the 1341 and opposition of the Anne empress of Savoy and the imperial court, was ordered priest by the patriarch Jean Calécas, of which the ambition was to appoint it bishop, and this in order to strengthen his authority vis-a-vis the partisans palamites of Jean Cantacuzène. This crisis period politico-nun was untied in 1347. Indeed, on February 2nd of this year, the empress, conscious owing to the fact that the patriarch Jean Calécas used Gregoire Akindynos at purely political ends, convened a council bringing together the representatives of the two parties in conflict. The patriarch Jean Calécas there was condemned and deposited, and the synodal Volume of 1341 was confirmed there. Consequently, Jean Cantacuzène became Co-emperor with the young person Jean V, and this, until the majority of this last, and the monks hésychastes accepted the support of the Church again. Another council, chaired by Jean Cantacuzène and the empress, condemned once again the deposed patriarch Jean Calécas, excommunicated Gregoire Akindynos and made publish another Volume, which confirmed that of 1341. These two Volumes were once again confirmed by a third council held in Holy-Sophie a few weeks later. It is Isidore Boukharis, a friend of Palamas, which became patriarch of Constantinople. Gregoire was then devoted métropolite of Thessalonique in May 1347. He could not however not go in his episcopal city before 1350, because of his occupation by Zealoies who refused the imperial authority of Jean Cantacuzène. They is probably at that time that it wrote its 150 chapters physical, theological, ethical and practical which constitute, with the Triades of defense of the saints hésychastes , his major work. Hardly installed with Thessalonique, Gregoire was again confronted with a controversy with Nicéphore Grégoras, always on the same questions. A new council, convened in June 1351 by Cantacuzène and the Calliste patriarch, who succeeded the late Isidore recently, approved once again the theology of Palamas and the distinction between the divine gasoline and energies. A second council was dawning in the same way a few later. The synodal Volume published on August 15th, 1351 ratified these decisions and excommunicated from now on all those which did not accept the doctrines defended by Gregoire Palamas.
This last could be devoted to its task of bishop while remaining available to the emperor for missions of mediation. In 1354, whereas it sailed towards Constantinople in order to achieve one of these missions, there was made prisoner by the Turks and had to remain one year in Asia Mineure occupied. It on the occasion there to visit various Christian communities, but also to lead various debates with Moslems and Jews converted to Islam. Its ransom having been paid to the Turks, it returned in 1355 to Constantinople where it met the papal legate Innocent VI, Paul of Smyrna, which, come at the time of talks from union of the Churches, had been shown particularly reticent with regard to theology palamite. There was then, in the presence of the emperor Jean V and of the papal legate, a new public debate between Gregoire Palamas and Nicéphore Grégoras. During this debate, the Byzantine authorities sought to show that the doctrines palamite, conform to that of the Fathers, did not constitute an obstacle with the union of the Churches. After this debate, Gregoire turned over to Thessalonique. It was devoted to it especially to preaching, but it also wrote between 1356 and 1358 its Four treaties against Grégoras . Reached of a disease since 1352, Gregoire died on November 14th, 1359 and, following a constant popular veneration, was canonized in 1368. The worship of the relics of the saint of the Byzantine Church remained until today in Thessalonique. And in Orthodoxy, a liturgy makes report of him second Sunday of Lent.
mystical theology
Gregoire did not seek as a religious writer the beauty of the style, but the expression of the truths in which he believed firmly (Triads 3,1,2). Generally, when it approaches religious ideas to defend them, it does it exhaustively, it returns there on several occasions in various places of its work, according to the contrary arguments of its adversaries and the biblical sources and patristics which come to confirm its opinions. This way of doing enriches its writing considerably, but is diverting for the modern reader, who is unceasingly likely to lose the discussion thread of the thought of Palamas in the profusion of the opposite reasoning and the references. According to Palamas itself, the starting point of its doctrines, or more exactly of the deepening of doctrines than it received itself, is the fact that there are people, like Barlaam, which, because of their inexperience of the grace and their incredulity with regard to those who testify to such an experiment, the saints of the Bible, the Fathers, as well as the hésychastes, reject the incréé character of the energies imparted by the Holy Spirit (Tome cheese hagioritic). In other words, if a person as Barlaam rejects the possibility of having a supernatural knowledge of God thanks to the communication of his incréée energy, it is because it did not do itself of it the experiment (Triads 3,3,3) and that it does not trust more those which did it. However, for Palamas, this experiment of the grace is the best proof of the existence of God and the theological intuitions which it defends (Triads 2,3,38).
Gregoire insists on this experimental aspect of the grace. Its theology aims at defending those which live as of now divine energies, energies which the words do not show, but which remain nevertheless perceptible in works, those of Christ, but also those of the saints to his continuation (Tome cheese hagioritic). Palamas explains us why, in spite of the need for the polemic, it has evil to write on the topic of the deification of the man, precisely because it acts above all of an experiment lived and intimate with God, of an experiment which thus exceeds all that the intelligence can include/understand and render comprehensible through the only words or the only reasoning (Triads 3,1,32).
Palamas locates its spiritual approach in the history of the revelation Judeo-Christian, by showing that this revelation of God to humanity is progressive and that there are common points between what occurred in the advance from at towards the NT and what currently occurs in the evolution from the NT towards its result in the future life. He will say: just as before only the prophets, and those which listened to them, had seen in the Spirit the mysteries of the law of Brace, the preexistence of the Verb and the Spirit of God, before they are expressed in the revelation of the Trinity, while the others stopped the ears, in the same way, now, only the saints and those which listen to them see in the Spirit the mysteries of the Gospel before they become fully obvious in the future life, while certain Christians do not want to intend some to speak. But which are these mysteries evangelic seen by the saints and all those which surround them? The mysteries are those about which speak to the Fathers, like the Pseudoone, Maxime the Confessor and the Pseudoone, of the authors that Gregoire strongly appreciates and quotes constantly. They explain us why God transcends, exceeds, is above the déifiant gift which it makes with the man, of the divinity that it communicates to those which of it are worthy. He exceeds this déifiant gift, because he is the origin, the source, the eternal cause. This grace déifiante is, just like God, incréée and eternal. Contrary to the living beings and the world, the creatures and creation, this grace does not have a beginning in time. It exists since always as a God. By the Fathers, we learn that this grace déifiante is a light, that which radiates around God, of the angels, but also of the saints. The human being does not have any average automatic to obtain and let show through in him this light emanating of God. This is why it is always a grace, a favor that God made with the man, without this last not knowing the moment of its demonstration. The Fathers still teach us that this light spreads the joy in the man, a joy spiritual, major, unutterable, which is one of the most manifest signs of the presence of God in the man (Triads 3,1,36). Moreover, this light constitutes the beauty of the century to come, of the Kingdom of God, the eternal life. We join here the achievement of the mysteries of the Gospel about which Gregoire spoke, namely the final and plenary demonstration of incréée glory, of the eternal light. It is there the sign of the presence of God in all the beings to which it gave the life. It is the transfiguration of all creation. The saint from this eschatologic point of view is that which in the Spirit apprehends already, here and now, but not yet completely, this future reality. And all those which are put at its listening and take its advice are also the recipients (Tome cheese hagioritic). We have here base this distinction as a God who posed so many problems with Gregoire or rather with his contradictors: God appeared like Trinité, Père, Fils and Spirit, but also, and it is paradoxical, like God inaccessible in itself and yet everywhere and always accessible in the gift that it does itself to us, from its own life. This paradox is the base of the theological innovation of Palamas compared to the authors whom he likes to quote, of the distinction as a God between his gasoline imparticipable and its energy participable, between what God is in itself, right from the start, without the beings created by him, and what God is for creation and the creatures, the universe and the living beings, the men in particular, with whom he wants since always entering in relation.
We should be stopped a few moments on this theology, which is one of the most beautiful reflections of the human spirit to justify the deification of the man. For Palamas, there is actually triple distinction as a God: the Trinity, the gasoline and energies (Chapters 75), but these distinctions do not affect of anything its unit, because there is one God trinitaire, living and acting as its gasoline as in its energy. This triple distinction is explained by the fact why the gasoline of God are identified neither with three divine hypostases or people, Père, Fils and Spirit, which divide it while keeping an existential primacy compared to it (Triads 3,2,12), nor with energy, because it is the transcendent cause. The gasoline of God, as a transcendent cause of energy, has, summarizes and unifies in itself a multitude of energies, it is able to multiply without being divided into as many realities participables than there are participants (Triads 3,2,24-25), than is to create the world in all his diversity (Triads 3,2,26) or for déifier the men to predispose with the reception of the grace (Triads 3,2,13). Incréée energy, like activity of God apart from itself, is absolutely inseparable from the gasoline, it proceeds about it and does not have an autonomous existence compared to it (Triads 3,1,24). Since God is indivisible, it is completely present in each one of its energies. The least atom of energy thus gives us access to the totality of God and allows us to know it and to name it (Triads 3,2,10-11). Lastly, this energy will be fully visible only at the end of times, like radiation of God in all things. Divine energy, it is at the bottom the communication that God does itself, so that other beings, the beings created, the human beings in particular, can exist and profit from its life in abundance. In this direction, incréée energy is an eternal effect of the kindness of God in our connection (Triads 3,2,24).
This development calls a question, that to know how, according to the words of Palamas, being worthy of such a grace. Or formulated differently: which are the means which can predispose us with the reception conscious of energy déifiante? There exist various means which go together and which are constitutive of the Christian life. But for enumerating them, it is necessary to insist on the fact that they are never but means implemented by the human activity. However, the man, by itself, is unable déifier. He needs the activity of God, of his intervention repeated in the history as the Writing testifies some, of the incarnation of the Son and the communication of the energy of the Spirit. In contrary direction, the salutary activity of God is not enough either, because the man was created free and God refuses to force it even with the hello, it is completely freely that it must agree to it. But, if neither the human activity nor the divine activity are enough with the hello, how to leave the dead end? By a common activity of the man and God: is needed that the man wants to be saved and that God wants to save it, one needs in the man a synergy of his activity and that of God by the means of the permanent gift of the grace, energy, the Spirit spread in him. It is only by this human and divine collaboration that the various means become salutary for the man. Among these means, there is initially and before all the mysteries or sacraments of the Church, mainly the baptism and the eucharistie, whose Gregoire says that our entire safety depends on it (Homélie 62). To include/understand this assertion, it is necessary to make a turning by the doctrines of the corruption of the human nature by the sin and its restoration by the incarnation of the Verb of God. These doctrines rest on the account of the Genesis and the work of Christ according to the NT. The sin of Adam, like appears biblical and original of the human being, is the first manifestation of disobedience to God. He is for Palamas the cause of a corruption of humanity, in the two directions of the term: psychic and physical. By its irruption, the sin causes a death of the heart before even that of the body, a psychic disorder and a forfeiture of the body. Indeed, Palamas considers the sin like a deterioration of the image of God in the man, deterioration by which the man becomes unable to be with the resemblance of his Creator, to take part in the life even of God (Chapters 39). However, this deterioration of the divine image in the man is actually a denaturation of its intelligence, included/understood as being the spiritual faculty highest of the heart, faculty which makes it possible the man to know, to make choices freely and to direct all its life consequently. This denaturation with for effect to deprive the man of a faculty which was his in the beginning, that to see God (Triads 1,1,3) and thus to link themselves with him. So by the sin the man loses this resemblance, the divine life, and this visual capacity of the intelligence which linked it with God, it is not by for as much abandoned with its fate. There are of course all the divine interventions in the Biblical story, but there is also and especially the announced arrival of Jesus-Christ. For Palamas, it is precisely to make it possible to the man to find his original state and more still by the deification than the Verb of God was made flesh (Triads 1,1,22). Indeed, by the hypostatic or personal union of the Son of God to the human nature, this one takes part again and completely in the divine life (Triads 2,3,21). While incarnating itself, while becoming a man with whole share, the Son could link our humanity déchue with his divine Person and restore it in itself by the communication of his own divinity. What is preceded in Transfiguration and is achieved in Resurrection. We find in the Person even of Christ this human and divine collaboration for safety. According to the image of Paul saint, Christ is new Adam, i.e. the new man, that which transmits either the sin and death, but the life even of God, because he is God himself. How does it do that? Precisely by the mysteries or sacraments of the Church, mainly the baptism and the eucharistie, which allow an incorporation and a real communion the Body déifié and déifiant of the Christ, Corps who contains the plenitude of the divinity and who, according to Palamas, is the source of the incréée light, who spouts out in the heart of the believer (Triads 1,3,38) and illuminates her intelligence again, opens again the eyes of the heart (Triads 1,3,33) to contemplate God, if the man has faith in him (Triads 2,3,40). By the mysteries or sacraments, the energy of the Spirit operates in us, if we believe it and want it, which the Son achieved once and for all in itself, in its own flesh for us. From this point of view, the Church, Body of Christ, are thus nothing less than one community of men animated by the faith as a Jesus-Christ and in the process of deification by the grace or energy Spirit.
The mysteries or sacraments are not the only means of deification, even if they remain fundamental and impossible to circumvent for the Christian. The doctrines of the corruption of the divine image in the man, the intelligence, and of the possibility offered to the man to find the resemblance with God by the grace also lead to an ethical prospect. Sin is perceived by Palamas like upheaval of operation original and natural of powers of heart, upheaval by which it is more part reasonable of heart (faculties of knowledge, judgment and reasoning) which controls the impassioned part (the desire and transport), but the reverse. In this way, the man is diverted good, God himself, and lets himself lead by his passions, like cupidity, the ambition and vanity, etc to cure this psychic and body disorder, the monk hésychaste research the impassibility, which means by no means here the insensitivity or a setting with died of the impassioned part of the heart, which in oneself is good, but the re-establishment of the psychic forces in their functions first, those of before the fall caused by the sin in the heart. This reversal takes place under the direction of the intelligence in synergy with the grace and makes it possible the man to embrace the happy virtues and passions, to acquire news and better provisions: temperance to control the body, the love to dominate the impassioned part and sobriety to purify the intelligence. This reversal makes it possible to the man to gradually achieve the commands evangelic in the love of next and God. When the man arrives to this love, he reaches according to Gregoire a properly divine state (Triads 2,2,19 and 1,2,2).
If the grace received by the mysteries or sacraments of the Church opens the Christian life on an ethical prospect which culminates in the capacity to like as God likes, it still offers another possibility in this life, that to see God. It is not here question of a natural contemplation, by which the human intelligence becomes able to apprehend the reason of the beings created by God, i.e. the understandable trace left by God in each thing and which makes it possible to recognize it as creator of the universe. It is an estimable form of knowledge of God, but it is not yet a true knowledge of God. The same applies to all as one can learn on God by the Writings, the dogmas or the confessions of faith (Triads 1,3,48 and 2,3,18 and 40). All this knowledge is good, but they remain external with That about which they speak. Theology, with the etymological direction of speech on God, is not yet the vision of God. To say something on God, it is not yet to make the intimate and personal experiment of God (Triads 1,3,42), experiment to which the man can predispose himself by the pure prayer or method of speech hésychaste.
The word “hésychie”, which is at the origin of the term “hésychasme”, means peace, calm, rest, and qualifies all at the same time a state of life of the monk hésychaste, the reclusion in the loneliness of a cell, and a state corresponding of the heart, silence obtained when the activity of the directions, imagination and the intelligence calms down to make place with the activity of the Holy Spirit. The method of speech hésychaste supposes for its practical application a place quiet, solitary, well off any agitation, the sitting position and the closed eyes. But one can also keep the open eyes and fix his glance on the chest or the navel as on a fulcrum. It implies moreover a training with the control of the breath. It is acted in fact of collecting and of alleviating the intelligence at the rate/rhythm of the inspiration and the expiry. Initially, the intelligence must follow the movement of the inspiration which goes down to the heart and there be retained at the same time as the breath. If there are the opened eyes, the fixing of the glance on the chest is an additional help to reduce the intelligence in the heart. As for the fixing of the glance on the navel, it rather aims the fight against passions of the heart (Triads 1,2,7-8). In a second moment, the expiry allows a certain relaxation of the attention until the resumption of the breath. This respiratory exercise is accompanied by an invocation, recitation mental and continuous of a formula, such as “Lord Jesus-Christ, Sons of God, have pity of me” or in a short form “Lord, have pity”. It is necessary a certain time so that this invocation becomes completely spontaneous. Which is the goal of this rather simple method in its description? It is a question for the monk hésychaste of purifying the intelligence, to make him find the rest, the hésychie, by diverting it of all mental feelings, images or designs (Triads 2,2,15), which predisposes it with the participation in divine energies (Triads 2,1,30). Why reduce the intelligence in the heart while following the movement from the breath inspired? Because the heart, already in the Bible, is the seat, the clean place, of the intelligence (Triads 1,2,3), the place where the grace of Christ appears (Triads 1,3,38) and where it can with its contact exceed itself in the extase, the union with God (Triads 1,2,5). Why finally continuously call upon Jesus-Christ by begging it to have pity? In a certain way, it is all the history Judeo-Christian of the redemption which is recapitulated in this formula which the hésychaste in the presence of Christ remembers continuously. Its intelligence acquires in an sustained effort an uninterrupted awakening at the same time of the imperfection of its nature and divine mercy, promise of the grace communicated by the Son in the Spirit. All that comes to divert it EC salvific reality is drawn aside by the memory of this reality which unceasingly returns to the conscience until the energy of the Spirit makes a sudden irruption in the heart and achieves indeed what it had in memory. It is a step of faith, where the intelligence, convinced of its weakness gathers and turns to Christ, while waiting for of him safety like achievement of a promise made with humanity. By doing this, the intelligence it constrained step to be acted, but is diverted all consciously that could prevent it from acting. Free then with the Spirit to intervene in this purified heart, prepared with its arrival, i.e. worthy of him.
When God answers this call, when divine energy appears in the heart, the purified intelligence becomes with his contact spiritual and luminous, faculties created change and the grace is transmitted heart to the body, which him also takes part in the hello. The déifiés men then manage to see with the directions and the intelligence what exceeds them (Triads 3,3,10). It paradoxically occurs a feeling exceeding the directions and an intellection exceeding the intellection (Triads 3,1,35-36). It is for the saint the vision or contemplation of God. The intelligence finds this original capacity to see its Creator. The déifiant gift granted by the Spirit constitutes for the indicator at the same time the body and the object of its luminous vision (Triads 3,2,14). It is what makes it possible to see and what is seen, the incréée light of God. Palamas will say that the indicator contemplates what is similar to its mode of contemplation (Triads 2,3,31), that it knows God as a God (Triads 2,3,68) or, in opposite direction, which it is God himself which is contemplated through the transformed heart and body (Triads 1,3,37). What he wants to say each time, it is that only the light, energy or the grace, because it comes from God and that it is God himself, can make known to us God. This vision of the light by the light carries out the union of the man with God (Triads 2,3,36) and allows him to find the resemblance which existed between them in the beginning. The progression in this contemplation of God is infinite, even in the future life, not only because the desire of the man is without limits in his connection, but also because God who lets himself contemplate is itself infinite (Triads 2,2,11). It is a way of explaining why the man is put in the presence of a plenitude. All that the man seeks of better in this life or is forever able to wish in the other life is there in abundance.
It is necessary to know however that, for Palamas, if the energy of the Spirit is indeed a plenitude which is offered to us as of now, nobody apart from Christ is not in measurement to contain it completely. The participation in this omnipresent energy by a purified intelligence, similar to a fuel for divine fire, always partial and is varied (Triads 3,1,34). This energy of the Spirit appears indivisibly in as many glares as there are worthy men to receive it and are let take part according to the receptive capacity of each one of them. The same one and single energy of the Spirit is communicated to men different, who are not able to entirely profit from it, but well in function at the same time from their own personality and their activity. What means that divine energy does not remove what makes the singularity of a man, when it déifie, it adapts to it in the form in particular charismas of the Spirit about which holy Paul (1 Co 12,4-11 speaks; Triads 3,2,13).
If the man cannot take part in the totality of the energy of the Spirit, there does not remain less true about it than it is about a gift by which entire God comes to remain in the entire man (Triads 3,1,27). How to include/understand this inhabitation of God in the man? To explain it, Palamas makes use of a term borrowed from the christology. This term is the enhypostasy, which indicates the fact of including in hypostasis, to even integrate in its person. While being incarnated, the Verb of God assumed the human nature in its divine Person, it enhypostasiée it. In opposite direction and thanks to this incarnation of God, the human person can not assume the nature of God who is imparticipable, but her energy. The deification is a enhypostasy of the energy of the Spirit, energy which is sent in the hypostasis of the man to be contemplated there (Triads 3,1,9) permanently (Triads 3,1,18). By this permanent gift déifiant, wisdom and the eternal life are in the man without being separate of God (Triads 3,1,35-36 and 38). The saint acquires by grace a novel mode of existence, by which its person is from now on made up of a new permanent element which comes to be added to the heart and the body and which is the incréée energy of the Spirit (Triads 1,3,43). So that one can say of him, because of the presence of mind, than it is incréé by the grace (Triads 3,1,31), than it is without beginning nor end (Triads 3,3,8). The integration of this new element, become constitutive of the human person in the deification, does not cause the suppression of our humanity. While becoming God, we do not cease being man, psychic and body. On the contrary, for Palamas, while becoming God, we become fully man. By the divine grace, our human nature is led gradually to its perfection: the heart can as of now seeing God, being animated by his wisdom and its kindness, and the body receives the pledge of its future incorruptibility, a first impression of Resurrection.
At the end of this course, the saint hésychaste thus acquires a novel mode of life characterized by the permanent presence of the energy of the Spirit in him. This experiment is for him an initiation with the mysteries evangelic. But this initiation is not given for him only. The saint hésychaste will be respected, it will receive the confidence and the affection of other men, all those which will come to him to be initiated in their turn with these mysteries, until the experiment of these mysteries themselves constitutes for them initiation (Tome cheese hagioritic). Spiritual paternity, by which a saint is able to transmit what it itself received, including the grace (Chapters 121), with other men who take his advice and his teaching, is paramount in this context. It is by it that Palamas was, in this spiritual transmission chain, the spiritual son of the Masters of the Byzantine hésychasme, like that before them of the Fathers and all the saints of the biblical literature.
Some quotations
On the gasoline imparticipable and energy participable
“Since there are three characters of God, the gasoline, energy, divine hypostases of the Trinity, those which were made worthy to be plain with God until being with him only one Spirit, like said it the large Paul: “That which sticks to the Lord is with him only one Spirit” (1 Co 6,17), because it was shown higher than those which of it are worthy do not link with God in his gasoline, and all the theologists, attest that God is not participable in his gasoline. The union according to hypostasis is being does it only Verb, the God-Man. Those which were made worthy to link itself with God thus link by energy. And the following Spirit which that which sticks to God is one with God, is and is called incréée energy of the Spirit, but not gasoline of God, even if that displeases with those which think the opposite. Because God predicted it by the Prophet: it is not my Spirit, but “of my Spirit, which I will spread on those which believe” (Jl 3,1) (transl. J. Malt kiln, Chapitres 75).
On the Incarnation, the eucharistic communion and the illumination of the heart
“Since the Son of God, in his incomparable love for the men, did not restrict himself to link his divine Hypostase with our nature, by endorsing an animated body and a gifted heart of intelligence, to appear on ground and to live with the men, but since it is linked, O miracle of an incomparable superabundance, with human hypostases themselves, by merging itself with each of faithful by the communion to its Corps saint, since it becomes only one body with us and made to us a temple of the very whole Divinity, because in the Body even of Christ corporally lives all the plenitude of the Divinity, how wouldn't it illuminate those which communient with dignity with the divine ray of its Body which is in us, in illuminant their heart as it illuminated the same bodies of the disciples on Thabor? Because then this body, source of the light of the grace, was not yet plain with our bodies: it illuminated outside those which approached some with dignity and sent the illumination to the heart via the sensitive eyes; but today, since it is confused with us and exists in us, it precisely illuminates the heart interior” (transl. J. Meyendorff, Triades 1,3,38).
On the vision of the incréée light and the God union
“The contemplation of this light is a union, although it does not last at the imperfect ones. But is the union with the light other thing that a vision? And since it is achieved with would the stop of the mental activity, how be achieved, if not by the Spirit? Because it is in the light which appears the light and it is in a similar light that faculty is visual; since this faculty does not have of another means of acting, having left all the other beings, it is that it becomes itself very whole light and compares so that it sees; it is linked there without mix, being light. If it looks at itself, it sees the light; if it looks at the object of its vision, it is also of the light; and if it looks at the means which it employs to see, it is there still of the light; it is that the union: that all that is one, so that which sees in can distinguish neither the means, neither the goal, nor the gasoline, but which it is only aware to be light and to see a light distinct from any creature” (transl. J. Meyendorff, Triads 2,3,36).
On the vision of God like real proof of his existence and finality of the pure prayer
“This contemplation exceeding the mental activities is the only means, the means most clearly, the means par excellence to show the real existence of God and the fact that it transcends the beings. How, indeed, the gasoline of God would not even exist it, since the glory of this divine nature is shown with the men who exceeded by the pure prayer all that, in the light, is sensitive and understandable? ” (transl. J. Meyendorff, Triads 2,3,38).
Selective bibliography
Some works translated into FrenchGREGOIRE PALAMAS, Defense of the saints hésychastes , introduction, critical text, translation and notes by J. Meyendorff, coll “Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense: studies and documents”, volumes 30-31, Leuwen, 1973 (undoubtedly the most important work, on which mainly rests the development which precedes).
GREGOIRE PALAMAS, Of the deification of the human being , translated per M. - J. Monsaingeon and J. Paramelle, coll " Sophia" , The Old one of Man-Lausanne, 1990, p. 13-41 (contents: Of divine and déifiante participation or divine and supernatural simplicity ).
GREGOIRE PALAMAS, Twelve homélies for the festivals , introduction and translation of Jerome Cler, coll " The scale of Jacob" , Paris, O.E.I.L. /YMCA-PRESS, 1987.
GREGOIRE PALAMAS, Treated indisputable on the procession of the Holy Spirit , introduction by Jean-Claude Larchet, translation and notes by Emmanuel Ponsoye, coll " The Tree of Jessé" , Editions of the Anchor, Paris-Suresnes, 1995.
Joy of Transfiguration according to the Fathers of the East , coll " Orientale" spirituality; 39, Abbey of BelleFontaine, 1985, p. 237-256 (contents: Two homélies on the Transfiguration of the Lord ).
Philocalie of the Fathers neptic. At the mystical school of the interior prayer , volume B, volume 3: Of Gregoire Palamas in Calliste and Ignace Xanthopouloi , notes and translation by Jacques Malt kiln, Abbey of Bellefontaine, 2005, p. 435-541 (contents: Letter with the moniale Xénée , Decalog , On the saints hésychastes , On the prayer and purity of the heart , 150 chapters physical, theological, ethical and practical , Tome cheese hagioritic on the saints hésychastes ).
Some important studies
LARCHET, J. - Cl., " Introduction" , in Holy Gregoire Palamas, Treaties indisputable on the procession of the Holy Spirit , coll “the Tree of Jessé”, Paris-Suresnes, Editions of the Anchor, 1995, p. 9-104 (the question of the Filioque studied closely).
LISON, J., the widespread Spirit. The pneumatology of Gregoire Palamas , foreword of J. Mr. R. Tillard, coll “Inheritances: orthodoxy”, Paris, Editions of the Stag, 1994 (an excavated overall study of the thought of Palamas, under the angle of pneumatology).
MANTZARIDIS, G.I., “doctrines of saint Gregoire Palamas on the deification of the human being”, translation per M. - J. Monsaingeon, in Holy Gregoire Palamas. Deification of the human being , coll “Sophia”, the Old one of man-Lausanne, 1990, p. 43-160 (Good development on a central theme at Palamas).
MEYENDORFF, J., Introduction to the study of Gregoire Palamas , coll “Patristica sorbonensia” 3, Paris, Editions of the Threshold, 1959 (an already old, but detailed presentation of the life and main themes of the theology of Palamas)
MEYENDORFF, J., “Palamas (Gregoire)”, Dictionary of Spirituality 12, Paris, Beauchesne, 1984, coll 81-107.
MEYENDORFF, J., Holy Gregoire Palamas and the orthodoxe mystic , coll “Points Wisdoms” 168, Paris, Editions of the Threshold, a 2002 (simpler presentation of Palamas and spiritual tradition in which it fits. To start well).
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