A FASCINATING SYNTHESIS OF SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND SPIRITUALITY: ST. GREGORY PALAMAS

Abstract

As a prominent Church father, mystical theologian and incisive polemicist, St. Gregory Palamas has realized a «Summa Theologica» of his epoch, but one that has surpassed not only the thinking of contemporaries, but remained, to this day, a synthesis of philosophical and theological knowledge, at least for the Eastern Christianity. He pointed out with clarity the independence of theology from philosophy or from any other field of research. One of the most important instruments with a view to knowing God is prayer and Palamas began to write under the pressure of defending the hesychastic method of prayer. He proves that true communion with God was possible through sanctification and that God's vision through prayer was a sign of this spiritual communion. In Palamas' very coherent theological thinking, Christology corresponds to his anthropology, and both to his mysticism. St. Gregory strongly depreciated the value of intellectual effort, maintaining the primacy of direct illumination over scientific reasoning. Thus, prayer and asceticism engender love, which leads to illumination by God and participation in the divine life. He tries to make sense of mystical experience in the scientific and philosophical language of his day. Paradoxically, almost every attempt arrives at establishing that the spiritual cannot be grasped by man's natural intellectual capacity, nor expressed in philosophical language. But the spiritual man can be the partaker of this experience through the experience of grace, as divine uncreated energy, the true "face" of God accessible to human contemplation. The Archbishop of Thessaloniki, who realized a synthesis of Science, Theology, and Spirituality outlines the relation between them as follows: Science explores the world and leads to technological inventions; Theology interprets reality within the Christian framework, evidencing the glory of God as reflected throughout his creation; and Spirituality is the privileged path toward personal transformation. The debate about Palamism is likely to continue for some time. His version of theosis (deification) was enshrined in Orthodox teaching as a result of his canonization, but among the intellectuals for whom it was intended it remained controversial, despite its grandeur.