Gregory Palamas: Knowledge, Prayer, and Vision

by M.C. Steenberg

from Monachos.net.

Three foundational aspects of the Theology of St Gregory Palamas

The theology of St Gregory Palamas, as expressed during the Palamite Controversy of the mid-14^th century, is far too extensive to be addressed in its full breadth in a paper such as this. Rather than attempt a manifestly impossible task, then, we will limit the focus of this essay to three central points in that theology: first, the idea of knowledge as expressed in the conflict between Gregory and Barlaam; second, the matter of prayer and the body; and third, the notion of the divine vision, which will lead naturally into a discussion of the energies and the essence of God.

A Knowledge Beyond Knowing: Barlaam’s Objection to Apodictic Theology

One of the first objections raised against St Gregory Palamas’ theology was brought forth by Barlaam of Calabria, and dealt specifically with the issue of knowledge. Two fundamentally different views on knowledge were involved in this dispute: first was that which Barlaam and others held, and which might broadly be termed, following Meyendorff, as the Dialectic Method of knowing God.¹ This was a largely philosophical view, based upon the position that knowledge of God might be gained by the use of discursive reason, dialectic, and rational investigation. As this very fact would suggest, the dialectic approach involved a strong element of kataphaticism. Yet, following the course of the great philosophers, it also readily admitted of the incapability of affirmative theology to truly apprehend the divine truths of God; and thus there was a strong, if not consuming trend towards apophatic theology present in this view. Barlaam himself seems to have based his own severe apophaticism on the model and example of Pseudo-Dionysius, with which he was quite familiar; yet his understanding of that writer was incomplete: where Dionysius was to stress certain positive elements of his apophatic reasoning (such as the positive experience of the divine darkness), Barlaam’s model seems to have been almost wholly negative—to the point of bordering on a certain agnosticism. God is transcendent, he taught, and thus to ascend to purer knowledge we must espouse negative theology and transcend our own perceptive reason; yet ultimately the Transcendent cannot be truly known, even with apophaticism used to its utmost. At the heart of Barlaam’s teaching is the significant idea that God cannot truly be perceived by man; that God the Transcendent can never be wholly known by man the created and finite.

Gregory, on the other hand, taught something quite different. This second conception of knowledge of God brought it out of the realm of mere dialectic—whether positive or negative, kataphatic or apophatic—and into the arena of demonstration; what Meyendorff terms Apodictic Knowledge of God.² Natural knowledge, believed Gregory, is one aspect of man’s relationship to his Creator; and yet it is quite a different thing to know about God, than it is to actually know Him. The great divergence between this view and that of Barlaam, was that Gregory believed the latter aspect to be not only a hypothetical possibility (which Barlaam would have denied), but a fully attainable reality. It was not a question of whether or not man could know God by direct, immediate knowledge, but whether or not he would, given the life he was leading.

Gregory’s view should not be seen to undermine a positive view of philosophical thought as a whole, which was a continual accusation made by Barlaam. Taken as a tool for the progression of the human person towards a state receptive to divine grace, Gregory saw philosophy and discursive knowledge as a perfectly reasonable set of aids for the Christian. It was only when philosophy, whose created end is the furtherance of knowledge of God,³ was misused by the philosophers and turned, in effect, into God, that Gregory raised his voice in ardent opposition. This was the ‘fallen’ state of knowledge, which did not betray an evil inherent in knowledge itself, but simply the misuse made of it by certain philosophical schools. Gregory understood natural knowledge within the metaphor of the natural world revealing aspects of God; to which revelation God Himself would add the grace to know Him intimately. He writes:

There is a knowledge about God and His doctrines. (…) The use and activity of the natural powers of the soul and of the body do shape the rational image of man, but that is not the same as the perfect beauty of the noble state which comes from above; that is by no means the supernatural union with the more than resplendent light, which is the sole source of sure theology.⁴

Thus Gregory viewed natural knowledge, in all its philosophical forms, as a tool leading to something greater, yet every bit as real as that very knowledge: the divine grace which brings about union, the true source of contemplative knowing.

But this conception clashed harshly with that of Barlaam, who seems firmly to have espoused the neo-Platonic tradition as he interpreted it from Dionysius, and could not find common ground between his own rationalist views and those of Gregory. Much of the earlier arguments in the Palamite conflict centred in this very issue of knowledge, and apart from being an interesting debate in its own right, this dispute led Gregory into the formative stages of the theological conceptions he would bring forth later in the controversy. The relationship of apophaticism to human knowledge, and that to God’s nature as transcendent Being, would come into play with great importance a short time later, and, as we shall see, would have direct bearing on Gregory’s famous argument for the distinction of energies and essence.

The Metaphysical & Theological Implications in the Difference Between Ens Simpliciter & Ens Moblile

Through the natural light of reason by which we come to know the causes of things and through divine revelation gratuitously given for the benefit of corrupted man we know that we composite creatures are not our own existence. However, man sees things even in the material order darkly and dimly, and his powers of perception beyond the material order are feeble at best. Further to work past the material order is a struggle most tedious and tiresome leaving many an individual holding such exercises as distasteful with the result that many resist such attempts to come to understand anything beyond the natural order of things. We are often like the poor souls in Plato’s cave analogy:

And if, said I, someone should drag him thence by force up the ascent which is rough and steep, and not let him go before he had drawn him out into the light of the sun, do you not think that he would find it painful to be so haled along, and would chafe at it..?¹

But as distasteful as this exercise can be, it is worth it. What we can know is perhaps little, but what we can know is also certain when understood within their (and our) proper limitations. We exist -this we know. We need not undergo a Cartesian meditation to achieve certitude in this claim. We change -this we also know. Experience shows this to be the fact. But what implications are there in the consideration that existence is not the same as material being, or that there is existence apart from material being? What implications come with the consideration of motion/change? The consequences are literally beyond measure that forces an intellectual concession of a perennial truth accompanied by a moral consequence that necessarily follows upon such an intellectual concession. The fact that ‘to be’ (ens simpliciter) and ‘to be changeable’ (ens mobile) are not the same leads to the metaphysical and theological implication that there is an unchangeable being which we call God and that He is our last end for which we must act. Let us proceed, then, in this exercise by considering changeable being, motion, and then unchangeable being.

Changeable Being.

To maintain any solidity in the endeavor, let us proceed in ways more secure and assured for our purposes by considering first the things we know and then moving to the the things that we either know not, or know very little, or know with less certainty. For as is the common experience of a man when faced with a problem that he must solve and who will analyze the object as a general whole and work back through more particulars until he ultimately reaches that which he was investigating, so let us also proceed from those things more generally known to us to those things more known by nature. As Aristotle says:

The natural way of doing this is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are not ‘knowable relatively to us’ and ‘knowable’ without qualification.²

Proceeding thusly we first come to know those things which present themselves to the five senses, for it is through the senses that the soul is informed. Those things that we perceive are first those things which are in some way whole and therefore general in a qualified sense, for it is not usually the case that we first experience the constituent parts of things before we come to know the whole, but that we first have a general perception of the whole and then work toward the constituent parts. In those instances where we encounter parts before the whole, we often walk confusedly until the general whole has been assembled in the mind before we rest in any certitude. Therefore, the wisdom of the Philosopher’s counsels are manifest:

Thus we must advance from generalities to particulars; for it is a whole that is best known to sense perception, and a generality is a kind of a whole, comprehending many things within it, like parts.³

But those general/whole things that we encounter are, quite frankly, things, which is to say that we encounter beings that exist, whether it be ‘man’, ‘dog’, ‘rock’, ‘cup’, etc. The first thing present to the mind via the senses is not so much the ‘thisness’ of the thing as it is the thing itself. Thus the first thing we know is not the existence of the thing but the existent thing. Therefore, we perceive a whole being without necessarily an initial and immediate consideration of the existence of the thing apart from the thing itself, for we could know it otherwise lest somehow we come first know things apart from senses. Furthermore, it can be added that what is first known is known without distinction between the material being and its act of existence. This, then, is our first understanding of being, viz. material being, which can only be known if its is real and is sensed. Thus the Common Doctor asserts that, “nothing can be called a being unless it is something positive in reality.”⁴

After the first experiences of material beings, we come to know them through the experiences of the senses as changeable or movable. We observe growth and diminution, coming to be and passing from existence, but we are still left with the concept of existence long after the material things’ existence has changed. For example, long after a subject has passed from being, as in death, we can still consider the subject and its act of existence, not only as the subject it was, but as the kind of subject it was, as when we consider Socrates, not as dead or as Socrates, but as man. Further, we notice not only substantial changes but accidental ones as well where the subject persists after the change. An example of this is the man who at one point is ignorant of geometry and later comes to know geometry. The man, as the subject, persists after the change from ignorance to knowledge, but his existence is now of a different quality, viz. that of the geometer. Another example of this is when we consider locomotion. A subject was once at A and is now at B; but after the subject is at B, its previous existence at A can still be considered and ruminated upon, not only as once being at A but as potentially being at A in the future. Finally, where it is that with sense perception also comes imagination whereby sensible things are brought to the intellect via phantasms, man has the ability to contrive things in the imagination that have no substantial existence in physical reality. Such is the case with Aristotle’s famous ‘goat-stag’ or the architect’s future cathedral. It is not real or not yet real; but its existence can be imagined. In these and in nigh-to-innumerable experiences like these, consideration of the experiences themselves and through themselves reveal that existence can be considered apart from material beings, that ‘to be’ is not the same as ‘to be changeable’.

Motion.

To be a changeable being is to be a being in potency under a certain aspect. In short, it is to be a movable being. But what is motion? Aristotle defines motion as “the fulfillment of what exists potentially, insofar as it exists potentially.”⁵ St. Thomas states more simply that “motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.”⁶ By these definitions, motion encompasses all change and is not merely reduced to locomotion. Therefore, insofar as a being has the potentiality of being something else (qualitatively, substantially, or otherwise), and insofar as that same being is in the process of becoming that something else, it is in motion. Examples of this are easy to come by. The block of marble being carved into a statue, the man walking across the room, the tree that starts as a sapling but is growing into a full oak -these are all examples of motion as each are in potency to what it is becoming and is in the process of being actualized. In short, they are being reduced from potentiality to actuality.

To consider change or motion, one must consider not just the act of motion, which is a coming to be, nor just the thing moved, but one must also consider the mover, for to be a material being, which is to say a changeable or movable being, is to be a moved being. It is therefore clear and manifest that there are things in the world that are moved, either by a mover or, apparently, by itself. However, Aristotle and St. Thomas both assert that whatever is moved is moved by another. Certainly this is clear in the cases of material beings which do not possess a principle of motion in themselves. However, what of those beings that do possess a principle of motion in themselves? Are they moved by another? In short: yes.

In his cogent and concise summation of Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas points out a pithy and packed reality pregnant with meaning and implication in his question on the existence of God. The Common Doctor says:

Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality. Thus that which is actually hot, as fire, makes wood, which is potentially hot, to be actually hot, and thereby moves and changes it. Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects. For what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot; but it is simultaneously potentially cold. It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e. that it should move itself. Therefore, whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again.⁷

So as stated before, those things which have not a principle of motion in itself are obviously moved by another. But in the quotation above, St. Thomas includes all movables, both those which have a principle of motion in themselves and those which have not, as being subject to a mover apart from the moved. This is better understood when one considers that whatever is moved must itself be divisible.⁸ In short, those things that are called self-moving are not primarily self moving because they must move in virtue of their parts, for they cannot move through themselves simply. If these self movers could move themselves through themselves primarily, their motion would not be dependent upon the motion of another. But movables are divisible and the moved are so moved through their parts. So, in movable beings, if the part is moved, so is the whole. If the part is at rest, so is the whole. If a man moves by virtue of his feet and legs, the whole man is moving. If the man is to be truly at rest, all of his parts must truly be at rest. But his motion and rest depend on his parts. Thus he moves himself secondarily, as it were, and not through himself primarily. His motion, then, must primarily come from another. Therefore, whatever is moved is moved by another.⁹

This can be illustrated by an example most pertinent to our designs. Coming to be is a motion for artificial and natural material beings alike. In the case of an artifice such as a cathedral, its motion is received from the architect and the workers. Similarly, the coming into existence of a man and his sustainment therein is not a motion found in the man, for the man does not exist nor is he his own existence. The primary motion is therefore from another.

Though whatever is moved is moved by another, we cannot go on to infinity lest we have that infinite regress by which we would never have the moved. Thus St. Thomas says in the Summa Contra Gentiles:

If it is moved, it is moved by another mover. We must, consequently, either proceed to infinity, or we must arrive at some unmoved mover. Now, it is not possible to proceed to infinity. Hence, we must posit some prime unmoved mover.¹⁰

He further states in the Summa Theologica:

But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God.¹¹

With the understanding that whatever is moved is moved by another, we rapidly come to the unmoved mover, the cause of all motion.

The Unchangeable Being.

As stated earlier, Aristotle’s use of the term motion encompasses all change. But we have come to the unmoved mover. If the mover is Himself unmoved, we have then come to a being that does not admit of change. If He does not admit of change, then He does not admit of potentiality. A potentiality in material beings is that they potentially could ‘not be’ for they are not the same as their existence. As the unmoved mover does not admit of potentiality in any respect, non-existence is therefore impossible for Him. St. Thomas confirms this:

…The first being must of necessity be in act, and in no way in potentiality. For although in any single thing that passes from potentiality to actuality, the potentiality is prior in time to the actuality; nevertheless, absolutely speaking, actuality is prior to potentiality; for whatever is in potentiality can be reduced into actuality only by some being in actuality. Now it has been already proved that God is the First Being. It is therefore impossible that in God there should be any potentiality.¹²

However, it was also stated that ‘to be’ is not the same as ‘to be changeable’. For God, the unmoved mover, to be the first cause of motion, He must of necessity be. But in all other cases, coming to be as a motion must be caused by another. In God there is no motion which is to say, as above, He admits of no potentiality. Therefore, God does not differ from His existence. The Common Doctor demonstrates this well:

Existence is that which makes every form or nature actual; for goodness and humanity are spoken of as actual, only because they are spoken of as existing. Therefore existence must be compared to essence, if the latter is a distinct reality, as actuality to potentiality. Therefore, since in God there is no potentiality, as shown above (S.T. I, Q.3, a.1), it follows that in Him essence does not differ from existence. Therefore His essence is His existence.¹³

There are more necessary conclusions to be drawn about the existence of God, and those relate to the response of rational material creatures to this sublime reality of His existence. In other words, there are moral consequences that necessarily follow upon the recognition of the existence of God. For if God exists -and He does of necessity- and if God is the cause of all things -and He is- then it follows that God is the proper and final end of the entire material order, including that of man. For as all nature acts for an end¹⁴ so too does the rational nature of man¹⁵ and this he does by the operation of his will. Therefore, as all creatures have their existence by way of a participation, and as the highest object of the intellect of man is the unmoved mover, the first being, God, so too the highest object of the will of man and that for the sake of which man must act must be God. For, as St. Thomas asserts:

It is impossible for any created good to constitute man’s happiness. For happiness is the perfect good, which lulls the appetite altogether; else it would not be the last end, if something yet remained to be desired. Now the object of the will, i.e. of man’s appetite, is the universal good; just as the object of the intellect is the universal true. Hence it is evident that naught can lull man’s will, save the universal good. This is to be found, not in any creature, but in God alone; because every creature has goodness by participation. Wherefore God alone can satisfy the will of man, according to the words of Psalm 102:5: “Who satisfieth thy desire with good things.” Therefore God alone constitutes man’s happiness.¹⁶

Conclusion.

This exercise provides just the briefest of sketches into the implications of existence as apart from material being from the philosophical perspective and serves as merely the rudimentary summation of a few concepts whose profundity has filled countless volumes of works by intellects of the highest of calibers. It is enough to show that differences between what it is ‘to be’ and ‘to be changeable’ have profound implications that can be knowable from the natural progression of philosophical reasoning which leaves man with little room for excuses. Further, considering the end for the sake of which these considerations show, it makes that steep climb out of Plato’s cave every bit worthwhile, for we can now see the prophetic truth in Plato’s words about the one who escapes the cave:

Well then, if he recalled to mind his first habitation and what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow bondsmen, do you not think that he would count himself happy in the change and pity them?¹⁷

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aquinas, St. Thomas. Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. Notre Dame, Indiana: Dumb Ox Books, 1999.

_______. On Being and Essence. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968.

_______. Summa Contra Gentiles. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

_______. Summa Theologica (in English, 5 vols., Notre Dame, Indiana: Christian Classics,

1981).

Aristotle. Physics. (Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle, New York: Random

House, 1941.

Plato. Republic. (Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato,

Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989.

1Plato. Republic, VII, 515e.

2Aristotle. Physics, I, 184a15.

3Aristotle. Physics, I, 184a25.

4St. Thomas Aquinas. De Ente et Essentia, Chapter 1, paragraph 2.

5Aristotle. Physics, III, 1, 201 a10.

6St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, I, Q.2, a.3.

7St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, I, Q.2, a.3.

8Aristotle. Physics, VI, 4.

9St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, Chapter 13.

10 ibid.

11 St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, I, Q.2, a.3.

12 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q.3, a.1.

13 St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, I, Q.3, a.4.

14 Aristotle. Physics, II, 5.

15 St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, I-II, Q.1, a.2.

16 St. Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica, I-II, Q.1, a.8.

17 Plato. Republic, VII, 516 c.

The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas. By A.N. Williams

I’ve been asserting this for years. Now someone has done a scholarly work supporting it. God bless A.N. Williams! — Antiochian-Thomist

From AccessMyLibrary.com.

THE GROUND OF UNION: DEIFICATION IN AQUINAS AND PALAMAS. By A.N. Williams. New York: Oxford University, 1999. Pp. 222.

(Partial Review)

Any effort toward understanding and union between Christian Churches of the East and the West involves an objective examination of the central issues and theological concepts. Williams explores the main writings of two representative medieval thinkers and theological spokesmen whose image and method have generally been misinterpreted or misused, whether out of sincere ignorance or deliberate polemics. Conventional academic scholarship and ecumenical dialogue have sharply differentiated between the “Palamite” and “Scholastic” ways.

From an Orthodox perspective, it is improper that certain authors employ the term “heart” as a stick to brandish against the allegedly “rationalistic” West. Aquinas contrasts “cordis affectus” with “intellectus,” but it would be unfair to attribute to him a narrow use of “affectus.” Furthermore his use of “intellectus” implies the Greek “noesis,” which is certainly not identical with discursive reasoning. Whether the heart is or is not neglected in the West, it should not be used as an antonym for “reason.” The charge of “rationalism” leveled against Western theology, in contrast to the alleged “heartfulness” of Eastern theology, is as tenuous as it is paradoxical. Any simplistic condemnation or justification of one theological method over or against another will invariably reveal deeper complexities and essential exceptions.

W. obliges both Orthodox and Western theologians to review their critical attitude and apologetic approach toward one another’s methodology. She offers a sharp criticism of contemporary writers whose tone is negative, even “bitter,” often “determined to misread the texts and authors [they] purport to analyze” (14). She is even critical of “more nuanced and sophisticated [theologians, who are] no less hostile to what they suppose to be Western theological method” (18). She has read and researched numerous monographs and articles by modern theologians, and her access to more remote writers and publications is admirable.

W.’s purpose is to address in a comparative fashion, even to challenge “the charges of opposition of East and West in the doctrine of deification” (33). She has selected one or more major texts from each of her authors: the Summa theologiae of Aquinas, and the Triads and Capita physica of Palamas. Though aware of the dangers of a selective …

From Amazon.com.

Review
“Williams makes a significant contribution [towards] enabling [. . .] a recognition of the extent to which the theme and sometimes the language of deification recur throughout the history of Christian theology. [This] could prove to be a major step in overcoming misunderstanding between East and West, [. . .] an invaluable service [. . .] well worth the effort of careful reading.”–St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly

Product Description
This book attempts to resolve one of the oldest and bitterest controversies between the Eastern and Western Christian churches: namely, the dispute about the doctrine of deification. A. N. Williams examines two key thinkers, each of whom is championed as the authentic spokesman of his own tradition and reviled by the other. Taking Aquinas as representative of the West and Gregory Palamas for the East, she presents fresh readings of their work that both reinterpret each thinker and sho an area of commonality between them much greater than has previously been acknowledged.