REFLECTIONS ON PALAMISM - As Impediment
To The Reunion of The Churches

Many Catholic authors have acknowledged the genuine spiritual and theological riches found in the writings of the 14th century Byzantine monk and Archbishop of Thessalonica, Gregory Palamas. Despite some aspects of Palamas' theology remaining problematic, his mystical spirituality and teachings have been favored by some Western and Eastern Catholics⁽¹⁾ both here and abroad who, surprisingly, venerate Palamas as a Saint, especially following the confusing 1974 decision of the Congregation for Eastern Churches allowing Byzantine Catholics to celebrate the "Feast of St. Gregory Palamas".

Some writers took advantage of a November 30, 1979, homily in Ephesus by St. John Paul II which referred to "St. Gregory Palamas". They appear unaware that in the official Acta Apostolicae Sedes of the Holy See, this was corrected to "the Orthodox bishop Gregory Palamas". They also appear unaware that questionable teachings of Palamas have been heartily utilized by Eastern Orthodox writers to refute the "heresies" of the Catholic Church and to resist ecumenical efforts to restore full communion between the Orthodox Churches and the See of Rome. Gregory Palamas was one of the leading Byzantine ecclesiastics who opposed Unity with Rome. In my books, "Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism" (1992) and "The Divine Primacy of the Bishop of Rome: Letters to a Greek Orthodox on the Unity of the Church" (2002), can be found brief critiques of Palamas' key doctrinal positions. This paper will summarize serious objections to what has been termed, the major doctrinal teachings of Palamas, as "Palamism".

It is interesting that contemporary scholarly debate continues whether aspects of Palamas' teachings (intended to safeguard the reality of deification/divinization/theosis - that is, the genuine communion of God with the soul, represent an authentic development of the ancient Greek Fathers and Saints or whether he indeed innovated in matters of doctrine. This was charged by his 14th c. Byzantine contemporaries (e.g;. Barlaam of Calabria, Gregory Akindynos, Nicephoros Gregoras, Theodore Dexios, Isaac Argyros, Demetrios and Prochoros Cydones, etc.). The resultant controversy shook the Byzantine Greek Church with theological consequences to this day. Interestingly, both 14th century Byzantine Greek unionists seeking the restoration of Unity with Rome and intransigent anti-unionists challenged Palamas' philosophical and theological teachings as "novelties" and "heresies". Palamas was especially charged with falsifying the teaching of the Fathers on "Essence" and "Energy" which are, in fact, identical in God. In placing a real distinction between the Essence and energies of God, he was accused of endangering the Church's doctrine on God's Absolute Simplicity. In Contra Palamas, the operations and energies of God are held to be the created effects of the divine Essence.

After some centuries' eclipse of Palamism among Orthodox theologians (the Russian Church even removed Palamite elements in its 1769 revision of the Synodikon and expunged anathemas against Palamas' chief opponents), the 1900's saw a revival of Palamite hesychastic spirituality prepared for by the publication of the Philokalia, a collection of 14th c. and earlier mystical writings. The 1930's saw an emergence of a neo-Palamite school of theology among Greeks, Russians, and Romanians: e.g., George Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, Jean Meyendorff, Cyprian Kern, Basil Krivoscheine, John Romanides, Dumitru Stanisloe, Metropolitan Hierotheos, George Barrois, George Mantzaridis, Christos Yannaras, and others, who sharply reacted to the critical examination and evaluation of the writings of Gregory Palamas made by the erudite Catholic scholar Martin Jugie, A.A. in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique. Such neo-Palamites regarded Palamas' distinctive teachings as "dogma"⁽²⁾ and have utilized them polemicallly either to distance themselves further from the Catholic Church or to outrightly denounce it for rejecting Palamas' teaching on the absolute unknowability of God's essence and the real distinction he posited between God's Essence and "uncreated divine energies".

Palamas' present followers adhere to the definitions of the Byzantine Councils of 1347 and 1351 held in Constantinople which endorsed the theology of Palamas. The Council of 1351 was imposed on the Byzantine Church by imperial force and the persecution of opponents. It issued a Tome in defense of Palamism which can be summarized as follows:

1. There is in God a distinction (diadkrisis) between the Essence and the energies or energy (It is equally legitimate to refer to the latter either in the singular or in the plural);
2. The energy of God is not created but uncreated (akistos);
3. This distinction between the uncreated Essence and the uncreated energies does not in any way impair the divine simplicity [of God]; there is no 'compositeness' (synthesis) in God;
4. The term 'deity' (theotis) may be applied not only to the Essence of God but to the energies;
5. The Essence enjoys a certain priority or superiority in relation to the energies but not in His Essence;
6. Man can participate in God's energies but not in His Essence;
7. The Divine energies may be experienced by men in the form of light - a light which, though beheld through men's bodily eyes, is in itself non- material, 'intelligible' (noeron) and uncreated. This is the uncreated light that was manifested to the Apostles at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, that is seen during prayer by the saints in our own time, and will shine upon and from the righteous at their resurrection on the Last Day. It thus possesses an eschatological character: it is 'the light of the Age to Come';
8. No energy is to be associated with one divine Person to the exclusion of the other two, but the energies are shared in common by all three Persons of the Trinity.

Palamas thus stressed that the transcendent God remains eternally hidden in His Essence, but communicates with man through His "uncreated divine energies". Thus, man CANNOT participate in God's imparticipable Essence, but can be divinized by partaking in His "uncreated divine energies". God, in His Divine Simplicity is at the same time both personally imparticipable and personally participable to us.

In defense of this Palamite teaching on the nature of God which was attacked by 14th century Byzantine Greek humanists (as well as by some Catholic Dominican Thomists of the period ) as a heretical novelty, neo-Palamite theologians have proceeded to contend that all the Catholic "heresies" (especially the 'Filioque' and the Petrine supremacy of the Pope) as well as the secular humanism and nihilism of the West flow from the rejection of Palamas' "dogma" concerning the nature of God. For the majority of Orthodox theologians in Europe and North America, the heart of the doctrine of Gregory Palamas is "the REAL distinction in God of the Essence and the uncreated energies". Dr. Jeffrey D. Finch has written that:

"the Defense of the Palamite Essence-energies distinction [has been] a touchstone of Orthodox identity in the West for most of the remainder of the twentieth century, even until the present time." ⁽³⁾

Moreover, to such Orthodox hierarchs as the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, Ierotheos Vlachos:

"the basic distinction between the Orthodox Church and Papism is found in the doctrine concerning the uncreated nature and uncreated energy of God."

This doctrine (paraded as the key to all the alleged doctrinal deviations of Catholicism) appears to have even replaced the centuries old 'Filioque' dispute as the most serious obstacle in the way of the Reunion of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The classic theological teaching of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, the pillars of traditional Western and Catholic theism, and who affirmed Catholic teachings opposed to Palamas' major theses, resulted in much fierce Neo-Palamite polemical invective against them. Palamas (canonized by a synod in Constantinople in 1368) became exalted as the East's "universal Doctor" and the Anti-Augustine/Aquinas who vindicated the apophatic and mystical theology of the East against the godless Rationalism, Legalism, and arid Scholasticism of the West.

Acting as the authentic spokesman for the monastic hesychasm of the 14th century, Palamas sought therefore to justify theologically with his Essence-energies distinction the avowed goals of those practicing the ascetic and spiritual life familiar to the monks of Mt. Athos. Oftentimes, after the long repetition of the famous "Jesus Prayer" ("Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner"), and striving for unitive deification [theosis] of union with Christ, this "prayer of the heart" is given a reaffirming vision of God's Uncreated Light or Energy. This Light, as previously noted, was declared identical with the "Taboric Light" seen by the Apostles at His Transfiguration and was one of the eternal energies. As Palamas stated in his "Triads":

"He who participates in the divine energy... becomes himself, in a sense, light; he is united with the light and with the light he sees in full consciousness all that remains hidden for those who have not this grace; for the pure of heart sees God [the light]."

Palamas' claim that God's "Uncreated Light" can be seen by bodily eyes in the world as an experience of theosis would mean that the glory of God can be seen with the eyes of our flesh in this life.

But this was denied by all those who held the traditional teaching of the Church that the direct vision of God in the full glory of His divinity is beyond the sight of any mortal creature in this world. For the Transcendent God dwells in "inaccessible light" (1 Tim. 6:16) and the Beloved Disciple wrote: "No man at any time has seen God" (Jn. 1:18). Certainly, for Catholics, in the supernatural 0rder of grace revealed by God, the immediate face-to-face vision of God has been reserved to the Beatific Vision in Heaven where, as St. John disclosed: "We shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He really IS." (1 Jn. 3: 2). Traditional Eastern and Western teaching held that the Saints see God directly but not completely or comprehensively. Not even with the supernatural aid of the "light of glory", was there a comprehensive vision of the Tri-personal Essence of God, for it is beyond the complete grasp of any created intellect.⁽⁴⁾ The opponents of Palamas, moreover, vigorously denied that Tradition had any place for his theory of energies.

Interestingly, past Orthodox Confessions of Faith departed from Palamism when they taught:

"After their death the Saints behold clearly the Holy Trinity"
("Confession of Dositheos - 1672")

"...The joy and gladness of Heaven will be no other than the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity... Every desire of wisdom and all goodness will cease in this vision; for by gazing attentively upon God we will see all things in Him and we will experience all joy."
("Orthodox Confession of Faith of Peter Mohila, 1640")

In Palamas' doctrine, the Essence of God is forever unknowable; in heaven we will not see the Essence of God, we will not see "face-to-face" the Blessed Trinity in the glory of Heaven. What the beatified human being sees in Heaven is not the divine Essence of God but rather its uncreated energies. Writing in 1969, A. Karpozilos of Yale University explained that:

"the doctrine of the divine Energies ineffably distinct from the divine Essence, is the dogmatic basis of the real character of Eastern Orthodoxy and its doctrine of grace.... The [Palamite] distinction in no way divides God's nature in two parts-knowable and unknowable - but signify two different modes of the divine existence in the Essence and outside of the Essence." ⁽⁵⁾

It is the "uncreated energies" of God which come into contact with man in the process of divinization (sanctification) and not the very Persons of God Who remain inaccessible as belonging to the divine absolutely unknowable and imparticipable Essence. In his "Logoi apikeitikoi" (ii, 48) Palamas specifically wrote:

"The Person of the All-Holy Spirit is not from the Son, nor is he given by the Son, nor does anyone receive Him, but rather the divine grace and energy."

Palamas' opponents held to the traditional teaching that what St. Peter meant by our being "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1: 4) is being indwelt by the Persons of the Holy Trinity, NOT "participating in the divine energies". The Scriptures and Fathers speak of the Divine Persons dwelling in the just. There is NO NOTION of "uncreated divine energies" dwelling in us but rather the Divine Persons themselves.

Palamas' tampering with traditional doctrine is further reflected in his teaching that on Pentecost it was not the Person of the Holy Spirit which descended on the Apostles and other disciples but rather the "uncreated energies of the Holy Spirit". For the neo-Palamites, these "uncreated energies" are declared many, infinite, eternal, and knowable. But NO Ecumenical Council has in its Trinitarian definitions ever predicated any plurality in God other than that of the Trinity. Only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is uncreated. In his extreme apophaticism, Palamas posited God as a Supra-Essence who is absolutely unknowable and is above and beyond the Trinity, treating the Persons of the Trinity as distinct from the substance of God, and thereby departing from the patristic tradition.

The best scholars on Palamism seem to agree that it was a real ontological distinction between God's Essence and His attributes which Palamas made. This conclusion flows from the neo-Palamites' assertion of an infinite multiplicity of divine energies which are not to be identified with His Superessential Essence (a Super- Essence above or beyond the Trinity). In making this real distinction (one that is not merely mental, notional, or conceptual) between the unknowable Essence and knowable "uncreated energies" of God, Palamas was seen by his critics (both in the14th century and now) to endanger the Absolute Divine Simplicity of God by bringing composition into the Godhead, into His very Being. As Demetrios Kydones who introduced the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas into Byzantium by his translations of St.Thomas' Summas, noted:

"What reasonable person could bear with those who say that the essence of the one God is one thing and [the attributes of] His goodness, power, life, wisdom and all that the Holy Scripture and the common arguments of all people ascribe especially to God, are another thing?... In this way we shall think that God does not have the utmost simplicity, but that he is a multiplex being and a mixture; that he contains within Himself so many things and so different from each other?"

Interestingly, C.S. Lewis once wrote that he considered Palamas' teaching on the Essence of God and His Energies "strange" and that it made no sense to him. The Catholic theologian, Adrian Nichols, O.P., has asked a key question:

"How can there be an aspect of God not included in the divine essence?"

Catherine La Cugna noted in a sympathetic account of Palamism that Palamas was a "poor philosopher" and that the Palamites in their excessive "apophatic theology of the Unknowability of God":

"do not explain how we KNOW that God's Essence is unknowable. If we cannot know the Essence of God, then we cannot know that it is an unknowable Essence. Nor do the Palamites explain how we KNOW that through the energies we know 'God as such' though not 'God as He is in Himself'" ⁽⁶⁾

Other scholars have noted that Palamas lacked a "metaphysics of substance" resulting in much confused terminology. He felt the need to posit a "Super Essence" for God but this resulted in the three Persons of the Holy Trinity NO longer being "of One substance" with whom man can participate in the divine nature by grace. It is not surprising that his early opponent Barlaam of Calabria keenly observed that if God is communicable in His energies BUT NOT in His Essence of substance, it follows that His energies ARE NOT identical with His Essence. There are therefore TWO Gods, one communicable, and the other, incommunicable.

With regard to the interminable centuries-old controversy between Latins and Greeks regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit, Palamas is seen to deviate in some degree even from the previous Byzantine polemicists who held that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father alone. According to Palamas, it is not the person of the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father but the Holy Spirit as an uncreated divine energy that proceeds from or through the Father and the Son (this last an accommodation to the Western doctrine of 'Filioque' but one remaining unacceptable to Catholics). Here again, we see the Holy Spirit regarded as inaccessible to us as belonging to the divine Essence. It is painfully evident that Palamas used his real distinction in God as well as his abuse of the Fathers' use of the term 'energy' for a polemic purpose, namely, to explain why the Person of the Holy Spirit could not eternally proceed from or through the Son as the Catholic Church teaches.

It is also interesting that Palamas' modern disciples share Palamas' denial (and that of many of his Byzantine contemporaries) of a Particular Judgment at death wherein the souls of the departed immediately enter Heaven, or undergo a temporary purification in the state called Purgatory, or the Hell of the damned. Medieval Byzantine and some Western theologians were influenced by some of the Greek Fathers who were ambiguous in expression concerning the state of souls between death and the Last Judgment or outright postponed the bliss of Heaven for the saved until after the Last Judgment. However, the Latin tradition became more and more explicit concerning:
(1) the existence of purgatorial punishments;
(2) the just receiving beatitude immediately after death; and
(3) that heavenly happiness consisted in the "face-to-face" Beatific Vision of the Holy Trinity.

For Catholics, Pope Benedict XII's dogmatic pronouncement in "Benedictus Deus" (1336) concerning the Beatific Vision and the Reunion Council of Florence's dogmatic decree (1439) which saw both Greek and Latin bishops repudiating false teachings spread concerning Purgatory, the Particular Judgment, and the Beatific Vision awarded the just – ended much confusion in these matters. Neo-Palamites, however, reflect the denial and confusion of their Byzantine ancestors in denying the Particular Judgment at death. As one neo-Palamite (Fr. Michael Azoul) wrote: "There is no soul in Heaven or Hell". This ostensibly occurs only after the Last Judgment. This IS NOT Catholic Doctrine. Unfortunately, most Orthodox continue to deny the existence of the Particular Judgment, delaying divine retribution until after the Last Judgment.

Perhaps the best explanation for Palamas' philosophical errors and consequent flawed theology offered by various scholars is that he read into the ancient Greek Fathers his own confused concepts and categories (inextricably mixing Aristotelian and Platonic philosophical notions) in order to justify his distinguishing, the Essence of God from His "uncreated energies". His philosophical language further distinguishing God's "Superessential Essence" from His Essence, only created further problems as with his notion of knowable and participable "uncreated energies". Neo-Palamites who in their attacks on Catholic teaching persist in rejecting any "created Grace" (blaming St. Augustine for that and other various "heresies") ignore that Palamas himself wrote of "created Grace" and even drew (secretly) upon Augustine's famous treatise on the Trinity.

The Anglican bishop Rowan Williams has commented trenchantly on the linguistic and philosophical problems encountered in reading Palamas' theology:

"Palamas has come to be presented as THE doctrine of the Eastern Church on the knowledge of God, and any critical questioning of Palamism is interpreted as an attack upon the contemplative and experiential theology of Orthodoxy. However, scholars, by no means unsympathetic to the Eastern tradition, have cast serious doubts upon whether the Palamite distinction of "ousia" from "energeiai" is really a legitimate development of the theology of the Cappadocians or Maximus the Confessor... Against the Eunomian heretics, Basil and the Gregories insist that God's energeia are inseparable, the energeia is one... The patristic defense of Trinitarian dogma points us toward an identification of ousia and energeia... Palamism is philosophically a rather unhappy marriage of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic systems; the characteristic extreme realism of Neoplatonic metaphysics coloring (and confusing) a terminology better understood in terms (inadequate though they may be) of the Aristotelian logic already applied to Christian trinitarianism." ⁽⁷⁾

Contrary to the claims of recent neo-Palamites and other Orthodox, the distinctive tenets of Palamism, cannot (fortunately) be said to constitute dogma. There are Orthodox theologians in the past and present who distanced themselves from key Palamite tenets knowing that the 14th c. Councils of Constantinople sanctioning Palamism, lack the Ecumenical character for the determination of immutable dogma. There are Orthodox theologians who regard the chief tenets of Palamism not to be dogma but rather "theologumena" (weighty theological opinions). They question the wisdom of Orthodoxy's apparent dogmatization of the real distinction between God's Essence and energy. Some Catholic writers believe that if Palamas' Essence-energy distinction were merely nominal or metaphorical, it would be reconcilable with Catholic teaching. But as a real distinction placed in the very Being of God, it results in causing and reinforcing fatal doctrinal errors which constitute impediments to the Reunion of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

The fact remains that the followers of Palamas continue to promote errors which are part of the theological system of Palamism:

1. the denial of the eternal hypostatic Procession of the Holy Spirit from (or through) the Father and the Son;
2. the defense of the existence of "uncreated energies" in God which are "divinities", thereby destroying the Unity of God;
3. the denial that it is the Person of the Holy Spirit who indwells the souls of the just;
4. the doctrine that one can see with one's bodily eyes in this life the "uncreated" Light of Tabor;
5. the denial of the reality or possibility of the Beatific Vision and that the just in heaven possess the Beatific Vision of the One and Trine God;
6. the denial of an immediate Particular Judgment at death;
7. the questionable Palamite-hesychastic teaching on grace and insistence on the "felt-experience of God". (Example from a contemporary monk on Mt. Athos: "When man unites with God by grace, he also receives the experience of God, he feels God. For otherwise, how could we unite with God without feeling His grace?";
8. the denial of the universal authority and jurisdiction of the Successor of Peter as "Vicar of Christ" and visible head of the entire Church, East and West. In an explanation of how the 14th c. Palamite controversy brought Orthodox ecclesiology into direct conflict with the rise of Papal 'monarchy', the Greek Old Calendarist Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna has written: "Whereas for the Palamites, each individual may attain to the status of "Vicar of Christ", by virtue of his transformation, purification, union with God, and identification by Grace, the Papal monarchy came to claim for the person of the Bishop of Rome alone, and this by virtue of his election to that See, what was for the Orthodox the universal goal of the Christian faith, that criterion of spiritual authority that brought Patriarch and pauper into a oneness of spiritual authority and charismatic power. Here was manifested the collision between Papism and Hesychasm..." ⁽⁸⁾

The above involves a strange replacement of the dogmatic Infallibility of the Church. It is no longer centered on the supreme hierarchical authority of the Successor of Peter (united with the Bishops in communion with him) but now exercised by an elite mystical collectivity of Saints who claim to have communion with God through the vision of the "Uncreated Light of Tabor".

THIS IS SIMPLY AN INCREDIBLE PERVERSION OF THE ECCLESIOLOGY OF THE FIRST THOUSAND YEARS. It is to ignore absolutely the teachings of the Fathers, Saints, Ecumenical Councils, and Popes of the First Millennium who testified to the Popes' exercising a juridical and universal supremacy over all the Churches of East and West - one instituted, moreover, by Christ Himself to safeguard the visible Unity of His "One and only” Church built on the Rock of Peter.

 

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FOOTNOTES

1. See : Maloney, George, S.J., "A Theology of Uncreated Energies". Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1976.
   Raya, Archbishop Joseph. "The Face of God". (Mckees Rocks, PA: God With Us Publications, 1984.
   Zimany, Roland D. "The Divine Energies in Orthodox Theology". Diakonia. Vol. 11, no. 3 (1973) 281-285.
   Rev. David Hester, S.S. "St. Gregory Palamas-Defender of Orthodoxy". Diakonia, vol. 15, no. 2 (1980), 174-184.
2. The well known ecumenist Greek Orthodox Archbishop Kallistos Ware of Diokleia (author of the classic "Introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy: The Orthodox Church", New Edition, Penguin Books, 1993) observed that the Byzantine Councils of 1341 and 1351 which confirmed the teaching of Gregory Palamas "possess a doctrinal authority in Orthodox theology scarcely inferior to the seven general councils themselves". In an important article he emphasized: "For Orthodox Christendom, therefore, the distinction between essence and energies is not merely private speculation or an 'optional extra' but an indispensable part of the faith". ("God Hidden and Revealed: The Apophatic Way and the Essence-Energies Distinction". Eastern Churches Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (1975) 125-136.
3. Finch, Jeffrey D. "Neo-Palamism, Divinizing Grace, and the Breach Between East and West" in Christensen and Wittings' "Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition" (2007).
4. For a refutation of the Palamite view of the Light of Tabor, see : Journet, Charles : "The Wisdom of Faith" : Newman Press, Westminister, Maryland (1952) 26-27; 198-199.
5. Karpozilos, Apostolo D. , "St. Thonas and the Byzantine East" (1969)
6. La Cugna, Catherine Morwy: "God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life" (Harper Collins /San Francisco, 1991); 191.
7. Williams, Rowan: "The Philosophical Structures of Palamism" in Eastern Churches Review, Vol. IX, no. 1-2 (1977); 41.
8. The Old Calendarist Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna: "Orthodox and Roman Catholic Relations from the Fourth Crusade to the Hesychastic Controversy" (2001).

 

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