Gregory Palamas Research Articles

The Classical Education of St. Gregory Palamas Through Indicative Examples

The Classical Education of St. Gregory Palamas Through Indicative Examples

FEMALE MONASTICISM IN THE BORDER LINE (Monastery of Saint Archangel Michael – Berovo)

The subject matter of this paper is a review of the key moments of the foundation and daily life at the female monastery within the church St. Archangel Michael in Berovo. The female monastic life in the monastery is an activity which has been taking place continuously for more than one and a half century. The religious services in this monastery besides the nuns from Berovo are attended by the nuns from the monastery of Veljusa. The monastery is open for visitors. They can also use the library of the monastery, which keeps the memory of enlightening work of Joakim Krchovski, the founder of the first cell school. Life in the monastery takes place following the hesychastic typikon (svetogorski), although it has an urban location and it is much visited. The monastery functions as an intensive hesychasm, hesychasterion. Inside the church, there is a small chapel dedicated to St. Gregory Palamas and Elder Joseph the Hesychast. Religious services and liturgies are held every day in the monastery. The monastery is headed by an abbess. The functioning of the monastery is organized by duties, which are called obediences. The specific characteristic of this monastery is the preparation of food products which are traditional for this region, as well as the creation of mosaics. Although MOC - OA is not recognized by the orthodox churches throughout the world, the nuns at this monastery have frequent communication with the nuns who are not from their immediate vicinity, but from Romania and Greece.

Triune God. Incomprehensible but Knowable—the Philosophical and Theological Significance of St Gregory Palamas for Contemporary Philosophy and Theology

Triune God. Incomprehensible but Knowable—the Philosophical and Theological Significance of St Gregory Palamas for Contemporary Philosophy and Theology

The Ways of Byzantine Philosophy. Edited by Mikonja Knežević.

In the past, Byzantine philosophy has not been taken seriously enough by Western scholars, in spite of the obvious influence of Byzantine thinkers on medieval philosophers such as Eriugena. Now that an increasing number of critical editions of Byzantine authors are being published, there has been, since the end of the twentieth century, a renewed interest. It should be stressed that Byzantine philosophy is not monolithic; one should rather think of a gemstone with many facets. This limited edition of 1,000 copies is published by the Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Many of the contributors are Serbian or Bulgarian; most of the others are either Russian or Greek. There is a section at the end of the book containing useful biographical details of the 24 contributors, although this is unfortunately not shown in the list of contents. These scholars have a wide experience in the field. In the Eastern churches there are no philosophical schools in the sense that there have been in the West, hence there is a variety of different teachings and ways of life. The authors of the papers presented here cover all periods of Byzantine thought, from Gregory of Nyssa up to the fifteenth century. The topics range from ontology to the icons at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, including, of course, Ps.-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, John Damascene, and Gregory Palamas.

The vision of divine light in Saint Gregory Palamas’s theology

The Hesychast debates of the 14th century between the representatives of the Western and Eastern tradition over the issue of the light seen in the experience of prayer are still relevant nowadays. Gregory Palamas – who was the central figure of these debates – was rediscovered in the 20th century by Orthodox Theology and is still in the process of reception in Western theology. The present study represents a synthesis of Saint Gregory Palamas’s teaching on the vision of Divine Light as it was articulated in the debate with his adversaries. Directly linked to this topic are other adjacent issues, namely the Transfiguration of Christ, the intellectual and the mystical knowledge, the nature of the divine energies, the purpose of the Christian life, and so on. The entire study in couched in the frame of a personal reflection over the type of spirituality fit for contemporary man – a contemplative one of a mystical type or a much more practical one, based on social virtues?

‘Old wine in new bottles’? Gregory Palamas’ Logos on Saint Peter of Athos (BHG 1506)

In this article I attempt to enter the less studied ‘working room’ of the hagiographer and metaphrastes Gregory Palamas by contextualizing and analyzing, both on its own terms and comparatively, Palamas’ literary debut, the Logos on Saint Peter of Athos (BHG 1506). The article shows to what extent the hagiographer used, changed, supplemented, departed from his source—the tenth/eleventh-century Vita of Saint Peter (BHG 1505) written by a certain Athonite monk Nicholas—and refashioned the image of the saint when (re)writing his life.

Ontological and Gnoseological Questions in Gregory Palamas according to the Christian Theory on Unions and Distinctions

Ontological and Gnoseological Questions in Gregory Palamas according to the Christian Theory on Unions and Distinctions

A Celebration of Living Theology: A Festschrift in Honour of Andrew Louth by Justin A. Mihoc and Leonard Aldea

Reviewed by: A Celebration of Living Theology: A Festschrift in Honour of Andrew Louth by Justin A. Mihoc and Leonard Aldea Robin Darling Young Justin A. Mihoc and Leonard Aldea A Celebration of Living Theology: A Festschrift in Honour of Andrew Louth London: Bloomsbury, 2014 Pp. 260. £70.00. Throughout his career, Andrew Louth has expertly and eloquently insisted that contemporary Christian theology must constantly draw from its sources in ancient and medieval works. His thesis on Karl Barth signaled an early interest in the crisis of modern theological thinking. Two books in the early 1980s made his position clear and encouraged many like-minded readers. The Origins of the [End Page 452] Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (1981) both diagnosed and attempted to overcome the “divorce” between mystical theology (which, for Louth, held priority) and dogmatic theology. Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (1983) employed Gadamer and other philosophers in its critique of the “historical-critical method” imposed by the Enlightenment, and proposed—based on a sympathetic reading of patristic authors and some modern philosophers—that theology is “the apprehension of the believing mind combined with a right state of the heart, to use Newman’s terms. It is tested and manifest in a life that lives close to the mystery of God in Christ, that preserves for all men a testimony to that mystery which is the object of our faith, and, so far as it is discerned, awakens in the heart a sense of wondering awe which is the light in which we see light” (147). Both works, and many subsequent monographs, articles and editions, established Louth as both a thoughtful and eloquent theological critic of modernity, a guide to the sympathetic reading of and guidance by the fathers of the church, and an heir to an earlier learned English divine, John Wesley. Thanks to his early works, Louth gained many admirers across the spectrum of Christian thinkers, particularly among those who valued the earlier proposals of Catholic ressourcement scholars such as Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou. His conversion to Russian Orthodoxy increased his appeal to Eastern Orthodox thinkers, as well. That rare scholar of early Christian texts who is also familiar with Byzantine theology and fully conversant with modern philosophical and theological works, his turn to Orthodoxy enabled this Festschrift. The book has five parts. Each one reflects Louth’s double concern—of examining in detail the development of particular thinkers or movements in eastern orthodox thought, and of engaging them to reflect critically upon contemporary views. For instance, in the first part, Thomas Graumann takes up the question of the Council of Ephesus’s nuanced reception of the Nicene Creed, while John Behr begins his essay entitled “Reading the Fathers Today” by following in the footsteps of Louth: regretting the limitations of the critical-historical, socially-contextualized reading of early Christian thinkers and proposing alternatively their appreciative reception based in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. Three essays treat the Byzantine period: Mary Cunningham traces the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in eighth-century Byzantine theologians; Krastu Banev the expansion of thought on the themes of the church and the Virgin Mary in Byzantine psalmody and hymns; and Jane Baun surveys and recommends the neglected, “more modest lights” of Byzantine theology between the deaths of John of Damascus in 749 and Gregory Palamas in 1359. In the book’s third part, “Dialogue Between East and West,” a huge, 53-page essay by John Milbank compares the Christian reception of Platonism in eastern and western Christianity and resolves their apparently opposed views of final beatitude, while Augustine Casiday proposes Boethius was not merely a philosopher, but a theologian. Parts four and five of the book move to the modern period. In “Modern Theology,” Antoine Arjakovsky outlines alternative historiographies of Orthodoxy, particularly in light of the Orthodox school of Paris; Paul Gavrilyuk describes the relationship between Vladimir Lossky and Georges [End Page 453] Florovsky, both exiled Russians formed in the Parisian community and eager to represent Orthodoxy in and to the West. The final section is “The Future of Patristics”; in “Patristics after Neo-Patristics” Cyril Horovun allows...

Clear and Uncreated: The Experience of Inner Light in Gelug-pa Tantrism and Byzantine Hesychasm

Clear and Uncreated:The Experience of Inner Light in Gelug-pa Tantrism and Byzantine Hesychasm Christopher Emory-Moore In an essay collection dedicated to the religious experience of light, editor Matthew Kapstein asserts: “Among the themes sometimes taken to suggest that there is a universal basis for religious intuition and experience, images of light must hold pride of place.”1 The section of the book concerned with “the role of light in the mystic’s progression to the culmination of his or her path”2 includes two essays of particular interest: Andrew Louth’s treatment of the light mysticism of Eastern Christianity’s Hesychast tradition, and Kapstein’s own study of the “rainbow body” of light in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Dzogchen (dzogs chen). Each describes particular meditative methods taught to produce one very similar experience: a blissful vision of inner light located in the region of the heart. Louth and Kapstein describe these similar religious phenomena independently, but the book includes no sustained comparative study. It is to this task that this essay turns. Following generally their selected religious traditions of study, my subject matter will differ significantly from the aforementioned essays. While Louth’s explication of the “uncreated light” of Hesychasm is based in the writings of Saint Maximos, Saint Symeon, and Theophanes of Nicae, mine will be drawn exclusively from the work of the Eastern Church’s foremost theologian of Hesychasm, Saint Gregory Palamas. And whereas Kapstein discusses Mahayana Buddhism’s “clear light” only as background for his discussion of Dzogchen’s rainbow body, I will make the clear light my sole object of study, relying principally on the teachings of the Gelug-pa (dge-lugs-pa) rather than the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism for its explication. Through a comparative analysis of the Hesychast’s uncreated light and the Gelug-pa’s clear light, I will investigate the extent to which their affinity might be said to intimate “a universal basis for religious intuition and experience.” The analysis will conclude with my suggestion that while the inner light experience represents for each tradition its own form of ultimate spiritual transformation, the Gelug-pa’s clear light [End Page 117] soteriology offers its adept the hope of a transformation, which, due principally to its naturalism, is more complete than that offered to the Hesychast by his church’s theology of uncreated light.3 This will be argued on the basis of two doctrinal points. First, while the Hesychast’s experience of the uncreated light is a mysterious gift from a self-willing God, the Gelug-pa’s clear light is presented as the reproducible result of a specific meditation methodology. Second, while the uncreated light experience is understood by the Hesychast as something that cannot be maintained, the Gelug-pa’s clear light is taught to hold the potential for systematic cultivation leading finally to permanent awakening. The inner light experiences of the Gelug-pa and Hesychasm will be studied principally as they are described in the popular orthodox theologies of each tradition and not in their devotional or mystical literature. A focus on theology rather than mysticism will, I believe, help naturally strike the balance between constructivism and perennialism advocated by Kapstein: “What is needed, surely, is a reopening of comparative work on religious experience, but without insisting upon a single ‘common core,’ and now fully alive to the dialectical relationship among cultural, historical, and linguistic constructions and the universal possibilities of human experience.”4 I hope the reader is struck by the remarkable parallels that exist between the experiences of inner light in these two disparate contemplative traditions, for it was precisely this sense that drew me to the subject. A sober comparative study of the Palamite and Gelug-pa literatures should, however, avoid any perennialist tendency to equate their respective goals, largely because their authors have presented them in the highly systematic terms of their own orthodox faith traditions. While showing the experience of inner light to be of central importance for both Gelug-pa and Hesychast, I will also explore the ways it is defined and prescribed in relation to the specific and elaborate value systems of Tibetan Buddhism and Eastern Christianity...

Communion with God: An Energetic Defense of Gregory Palamas

Communion with God: An Energetic Defense of Gregory Palamas

Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought by Torstein Theodor Tollefsen (review)

Reviewed by: Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought by Torstein Theodor Tollefsen Lucian Turcescu Torstein Theodor Tollefsen Activity and Participation in Late Antique and Early Christian Thought Oxford Early Christian Studies Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2012 Pp. ix + 229. $125.00. The present volume is a study of the concepts of activity (energeia) and participation in late antique and early Christian thought with the aim of showing that Gregory Palamas was a traditional thinker and no innovator in the Byzantine tradition. Tollefsen, a philosophy professor interested in the philosophy of the Greek church fathers within the period of 300–900, does not want to engage in the Palamitic debate per se. Instead, in six of the book’s eight chapters, he explores the concepts of activity and participation in non-Christian thought (Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus), two of the Cappadocian fathers (Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa), pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and Maximus the Confessor. Only in the seventh chapter does he deal with Gregory Palamas proper. Chapter Three deals with the Trinitarian generation as the internal activity of the godhead, while Chapters Four and Five deal with two examples of external activities of the godhead—cosmology and incarnation, respectively. The concepts of participation and activity go back to the Neoplatonic and early Christian idea that lower strata of being depend on higher principles, in the sense that these same lower levels are constituted by some kind of participation in these higher principles. While this sounds like abstract philosophy, Orthodox Christianity has developed a practical understanding of this in its doctrine of salvation that is conceived as deification (theosis)—that is, participation in God and becoming godlike. The most well-known expression of this doctrine is encountered in the theology of Gregory Palamas (14th century), who provided a defense of the hesychast practice of participation in God’s uncreated divine energies (or activities). Tollefsen contends that the modern reception of the controversial distinction between God’s uncreated essence, the divine activity, and participation tended “to blur the fact that the distinction and relationship between such concepts … originally belonged to a central philosophical consideration partly developed to highlight the relationship between higher and lower reality, God and what comes ‘after’ God; originally in pagan thought and later in Christian thought” (3). [End Page 133] Going into individual details about the arguments of this book is too complex a task for a book review. But we should note, for example, that Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor share Plotinus’s view of participation, according to which an intelligible principle is received by “a power of the activity ad extra of the principle that is made present according to the receptive capacity of the recipient” (31). Also, while engaging some of the older research on participation, the book is conversant with some of the newer research and complements the latter with serious analysis. In regard to cosmology as an external activity of the godhead, both Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus hold similar views that God, like an artist who left his stamp on his work, has left his stamp on his work, the cosmos, and we may observe the ineffable wisdom of God in the orderly arrangement of the world. Unlike Aristotle, however, for whom the human activity of building has no existence beyond the completion of the structure built (perhaps with the exception of a few outcomes), for Maximus and Gregory, the wisdom and goodness observed in the cosmos are not just the stamp left by the artist, but testify to the permanent and sustaining presence of God in the world. When it comes to Gregory Palamas, Tollefsen argues that his thinking with regards to the philosophical ideas of essence, activity, and participation are in line with those of Gregory of Nyssa, pseudo-Dionysius, and Maximus. Unlike his predecessors, however, who used those concepts without being too concerned that they would be misunderstood, Palamas saw himself attempted to explain them using the difference between essence and activity, a vocabulary which was not easily accepted during his time and by his adversaries. While the book is complex (and I must admit a few times even unclear) and...

All Eye: A Metaphor from Ezekiel in the Desert Fathers, The School of Gaza, and Gregory Palamas

ABSTRACTEzekiel's imagery of the four living creatures being all eye proved to be a useful metaphor for such diverse characters as the desert fathers, the ascetics of Gaza, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Gregory Palamas. This study interposes between these thinkers the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus who used the similar metaphor of all face in his sixth Ennead. In the case of the figures not greatly influenced by Plotinus the metaphor often took on connotations of supersensible glory, dispassion, and watchfulness, but for the figures more affected by him the metaphor referred solely to the first two concepts. This lessening of interpretative riches for Ezekiel's vision was likely due to Plotinus' basic lack of interest in ethical questions.

Gregory Palamas and our Knowledge of God

Abstract Although Gregory wrote very little about this. he acknowledged that natural reason can lead us from the orderliness of the physical world to the existence of God; in this, he followed the tradition of Athanasius and other Greek fathers. Unlike Aquinas, he did not seek to present the argument a; deductive: in fact his argument is inductive, and of die same kind as - we now realize - scientists and historians use when they argue from phenomena to then explanatory cause. Gregory wrote hardly anything about how one could obtain knowledge of the truths of the Christian revelation by arguments from non-question-beggining premises; but in his conversations with the Turks he showed that he believed that there are good arguments of this kind. Almost all of Gregory's writing about knowledge of God concerned how one could obtain this by direct access in prayer: this access, he held is open especially to monks, but to a considerable degree also to all Christians who follow the divine commandments.

Palamas and Florensky: The Metaphysics of the Heart in Patristic and Russian Philosophical Tradition

Тhis paper focuses on the philosophical issue known as the metaphysics of the heart within Orthodox Christianity – both Russian and Byzantie versions. Russian religious thought is based on patristic tradition. Influences and connections can be seen in Florensky’s philosophy of All-Unity. This Russian philosopher was highly inspired by Gregory Palamas, fourteenth-century Eastern Church. These two Orthodox thinkers, mainly their metaphysics of heart are objects of interests.

Sophia – God’s wisdom. Quality, energy or separate divine person in the theology of the eastern church (to the 15th century)

The representation of Sophia – personified God’s Wisdom, based on the text of old-testament Sapiental Books, took quite an important place in the spiritual culture of Byzantium. What should be noted is the Empire inhabitants’ striving to identify Wisdom with one of the persons of Trinity. A vast majority of the Church Fathers and later East Christian thinkers inclined towards christological interpretation of Sophian images. The Second Hypostasis – the Word Incarnate, was identified with Sophia by Justin Martyr, Athenagoras of Athens, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Methodius of Olympus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus, Anastasius of Sinai, Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople, St. Theodore of Stoudios, Symeon the Metaphrast, St. Simeon the New Theologian, and Philotheos Kokkinos – author of three extensive educational works devoted to Sapiental metaphors, presented in the Book of Proverbs. Several other apologists preferred to identify God’s Wisdom with the Holy Spirit (Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Paul of Samosata). At the same time in the Byzantine theology emerged a completely abstract interpretation of Sophia, based on the views of Saint Basil the Great, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor. Its highlight was to be a theory, proposed by Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century, according to which Sophia should be understood primarily as one of the uncreated energies of God.

Prawosławie i Islam. Dialog św. Cyryla i Grzegorza Palamasa z muzułmanami

The purpose of this study is to present the role of the Holy Fathers in the dialogue between the Orthodox and the Muslims. The first part of the article talks about the mission of St. Cyril in Baghdad Caliphate in historical perspective. It deals with his dialogue with Islam and presents an analysis of the arguments used by both sides. In the second part I talk about the dialogue of St. Gregory Palamas with Muslims in the context of the mission of Cyril, comparing the arguments of both fathers and their attitudes towards the dialogue with Islam. Finally, the theory of the “biblical roots of Europe” is addressed, drawing on the example of the abovementioned Holy Fathers. In the article some excerpts from Palamas’works are published in Polish for the first time.

Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, by Efthymios Nicolaidis

Science and Eastern Orthodoxy: From the Greek Fathers to the Age of Globalization, by Efthymios Nicolaidis, translated by Susan Emanuel. Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context Series. Baltimore, Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. xx, 252 pp. $55.00 US (cloth). An ambitious and wide-ranging project covering a long chronological period, this book is translated with attention by Susan Emanuel and, apparently, is not a translation of an earlier monograph but the first appearance of the title. Given that most of the writing appears to have been completed by 2010, the processes of translation and production have been remarkably swift and efficient. Greek Fathers of the subtitle could be either referring to: a) all Hierarchs roughly up to the Palaiologan era, with the pinnacle of theological thought being attributed by many to the Athonite Gregory Palamas (1296-1359, Archbishop of Thessalonica 1347-59), especially for his theology of the uncreated light corresponding to the Sixth Beatitude: Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God, Matt. 5:8, KJV. (Gregory Palamas is featured in chapter seven, True Knowledge and Ephemeral Knowledge: Hesychast Debate, pp. 93-105). Or, b) specifically the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil the Great (c. 330-79), Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 395), and their friend Gregory the Theologian or of Nazianzus (329-91) to the first two of whom the author dedicates the opening chapter (pp. 1-23). In it, Basil's and Nyssa's contrasting commentaries on Genesis are highlighted. Commentaries on Genesis were known as Hexaemerons or Hexaemera and they are a pre-Christian genre with a famous example, being that by the profoundly influential Philo of Alexandria (c. 12 BC-c. 54 BC), while the first Christian Hexaemeron was written by Origen (c. 185-c. 254), the great Alexandrian Neo-Platonist who believed in the eventual restoration of all souls (apokatastasis) as opposed to eternal suffering. Hexamera of Basil and Gregory follow in that tradition. They were, however, not only contrasting in their ideas, which no doubt the reader will enjoy, but also in their intended audiences, with Basil addressing the multitudes and Gregory a select circle of brilliant scholars. Gerhart D. Ladner, The Philosophical Anthropology of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 12 (1958), pp. 59-94 and C.W. Macleod, Allegory and Mysticism in Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, Journal of Theological Studies, 22 (1971), pp. 362-79 accentuate the philosophical prowess of Gregory. linking of Basil with Gregory Palamas in chapter seven in relation to their respective perceptions of the uncreated light gives the first part of the book a pleasing sense of purpose. Within the bookends of Basil and Palamas several more elements of Byzantine culture are explored. second part of the book addresses some enormous topics, each of which could justify a monograph in themselves. After regressing chronologically to look at Persian, Latin and Jewish sources, the book tunas to the much-discussed Exodus to Italy and the creation of the post-Byzantine world, relations with the Slavic Churches and the Greek (or Neo-Hellenic) Enlightenment. …

Grzegorz Palamas wobec kontrowersji hezychastycznej

This paper is an attempt of characteristics concerning theological phenomena called Hesychast Controversy. The presentation includes analysis of history of hesychasm and important facts from Gregory Palamas biography. The main source for research on that field is work of Palamas entitled Triads. Many of the orthodox theologians state that Triads appears as the most important work of orthodox spirituality. In my opinion the problem of fourteenth-century hesychasm and controversy around this spiritual movement, as an interesting field of research, is worth exploring.

Meditations of the Heart: The Psalms in Early Christian Thought and Practice. Essays in Honour of Andrew Louth. Edited by ANDREAS ANDREOPOULOS, AUGUSTINE CASIDAY, and CAROL HARRISON

Andrew Louth is one of the most perceptive Christian minds of our time. His spiritual journey from Anglicanism into Orthodoxy, and more recently into the Orthodox priesthood, has represented a long quest for intellectual and spiritual authenticity. The issue for him has always been how to be both a scholar and a disciple; how to live Evagrius’ maxim that the theologian is the one who truly prays, the one who prays is a theologian. This has not been a journey that has taken place in solitude. The sixteen essayists in this volume are Orthodox, Anglican, and Roman Catholic and represent a world of study, friendship, prayer, and collegiality. It is always difficult to pick out particular gems from such a rich collection, especially when the authors have interpreted their brief in very diverse ways. The essays which stick closest to the title are perhaps the most satisfactory, demonstrating the seminal role of the Psalms in the development both of Christology and the language of prayer. Rowan Williams offers a densely argued and rewarding exploration of the interpretation of Psalm 45, showing that different and sometimes conflicting perspectives contributed to a Trinitarian language which was both dogmatic and prayerful—of all the essays this one most closely mirrors Andrew Louth’s theological agenda. In the same spirit is a fine essay by John A. McGuckin on Origen’s bold appropriation of the Psalms as the place in the Old Testament in which the Logos could be heard to speak most directly. The Psalms were as close to the heart of revelation for Origen as John’s Gospel or the Pauline epistles. Norman Russell takes as his text Ps. 81:6, ‘I said, you are gods, sons of the most high’, and shows the part it played in the theology of Gregory Palamas and his opponents: the issue here is how human beings participate in the divine nature; and whether this is to be understood as a reality in this life or as a reward in the next.

The Influence of Thomas Aquinas on Late Byzantine Philosophical and Theological Thought: À propos of the Thomas de Aquino Byzantinus Project

This article discusses the extent of influence Thomas Aquinas’ teachings exercised on Byzantine intellectuals by examining Greek translations of, and commentaries on, his writings produced between the mid-fourteenth and mid-fifteenth century. These writings provided the Byzantines with a ‘dialectical’ model of discussion, which implied a positive answer to the question of the dignitas hominis; contrary to the ‘obscurantism’ inspired by Gregory Palamas, man was seen as a being able to reach truth and attain happiness in his own terms. After Nicephoros Gregoras, Thomas’ theonymical doctrine was adopted by most Palamites and all anti-Palamites in their attempt to reconcile the notions of simplicity and multiplicity in God. Aquinas’ apologetics against Islam were also adopted by many Byzantine authors, whereas his apologetics against paganism-especially Averroism-were used by Scholarios, a fervent Aristotelian, against the fervent Platonist Plethon. Aquinas’ metaphysics and interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy were put in the service of this objective. Finally, several specific theological issues with philosophical implications, such as God’s providence and predestination and the nature and knowledge of the angels, were treated by some Byzantines in the light of Aquinas’ ideas.