The Capita 150 deserves special prominence in the Palamite corpus, equal to that of the Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts. It was written in a relatively tranquil period after the triumph of Palamism in the Council of 1347 and prior to Gregory's polemics with Nikephoros Gregoras. Gregory Palamas took this opportunity to stand back somewhat from the atmosphere of controversy and reflect at length on the larger doctrinal context of the debates and the relation of the detailed issues to this context. The Capita 150 thus opens with a discussion on the nature of human knowledge and its application to the natural and supernatural domains. These considerations lead into a profound reflection on the image of God in man. Here Gregory Palamas produces not merely a synthesis of the patristic doctrine but a genuine theological development within the Church's tradition to meet the needs of the controversy with which the Church was confronted. After dwelling on the consequences of the Fall and the subsequent quest for healing, Palamas then reviews the principal issues of his controversy with Gregory Akindynos and his followers.
The present study has arrived at a number of interesting conclusions that contribute to a fuller understanding of the works of Gregory Palamas. In spite of his hearty polemic against profane wisdom Palamas had considerable familiarity with the scientific revival of his time and was capable of discoursing on such subjects at least on the popular level. The inspected Augustinian elements in his Trinitarian theology derive not from Augustine but from the hesychast theology of the Jesus Prayer, particularly as it is found in the writings of Theoleptos of Philadelpheia. Finally, in composing the Capita 150 Palamas drew extensively on his earlier writings and even incorporated an entire work, namely, the Reply On Cyril.
The critical edition of the text is based on a detailed study of all the available manuscripts and represents a great improvement over the text of the Philokalia. A translation is offered both as an aid for the understanding and interpretation of the Greek text and also for the benefit of the general reader with an interest in Eastern Christian theology.
PrefaceUntil recently the Capita 150 was one of the few readily available published sources for the theology of Gregory Palamas. There were indeed other texts published in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their circulation had been limited and many of these books have become now very rare.[1] Jacques Paul Migne made the text of the Capita 150 widely available for the first time when he included the Philokalia edition of it in his Patrologia graeca.[2] Martin Jugie gave the work further notoriety by using it as one of the principal sources for his analysis of Palamite theology.[3] Jugie was an eminently learned scholar and Roman Catholic theologian who did much to make Eastern Christian theology better known in the West. Although he made extensive soundings in the manuscript sources and had some familiarity with the unpublished works of Palamas, Jugie saw his frequent recourse to the Capita 150 as justified by the fact that this was a work, «in quo totius suae doctrinae philosophicae, theologicae ac asceticae summam auctor conclusit.»[4] Because of his considerable stature as a scholar and as a theologian, Jugie's opinions and judgements on Palamite theology have had a lasting influence on Roman Catholic attitudes even to this day.[5]
Early in the 1950s Orthodox scholars began to make a concerted effort to edit the unpublished writings of Gregory Palamas. John Meyendorff and Panagiotes Chrestou were two of the prime movers in this enormous undertaking.[6] As these new texts were published, the Capita 150 understandably faded into the background of scholarly attention. But even during the time that this work had received some serious study, the focus was almost exclusively on the sections that were more concerned with the detailed issues of the Palamite controversy; the earlier chapters were largely ignored. Only two scholars, Kiprian Kern and George Mantzarides, treated the introductory section of the Capita 150 with any seriousness.[7] However, they turned to these chapters as a source for the theological anthropology of Palamas, but failed to see their essential connection with the rest of the work.
Two other factors have militated against a better understanding of the significance of the Capita 150. Firstly, the editors of the Philokalia had removed from the text all the references to Barlaam and Akindynos. But even more seriously, they had relied on a very inferior manuscript. The omissions and erroneous readings frequently leave the meaning obscure and at times indecipherable.[8] Secondly, the Capita 150 cannot be properly understood without an appreciation of the literary character of the work. Only when it is seen in relation to the earlier writings of Palamas can its structure be readily discerned and its significance evaluated.
This book is an attempt to remedy the situation and restore The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters to its rightful place in Palamite theology. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Most Revd Bishop Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia and the Revd Joseph Gill, S.J. who inspired and guided me in my first studies of Gregory Palamas. The microfilms that made this edition possible were purchased with the help of a minor grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
AbbreviationsBH J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Hesychasm
BZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
C. Caput/Capita (Capita 150)
CA Palamas, Contra Acindynum
CAG Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca
CFHB Corpus fontium historiae byzantinae
CSHB Corpus scriptorum historiae byzantinae
DOB/D Palamas, Dialogue of an Orthodox und a Barlaamite
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
DSp Dictionnaire de spiritualité
DTC Dictionnaire de théologie catholique
EEBΣ Έπετηρίς 'Eταιρείας Bυζαντινῶν Σπουδῶν
EEΘΣ Έπιοτημονική Έπετηρίς Θεολογικῶν Σπουδῶν (Thessalonica)
EO Échos d'Orient
Ep Epistula/e (Gregorii Palamae)
GCS Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller
H Palamas, Homily
JÖB(G) Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik (der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft)
K Palamas, Reply On Cyril
MM F. Miklosich, J. Miller (eds.), Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi sacra et profana
OCP Orientalia christiana periodica
OECT Oxford Early Christian Texts
PG Patrologia graeca
PLP Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit
PO Patrologia orientalis
PS Chrestou, Παλαμά Συγγράμματα
PTS Patristische Texte und Studien
SC Sources chrétiennes
T Palamas, Theophanes
TU Texte und Untersuchungen
Union/U Palamas, On Union and Distinction
1. The Early Chapters of the Capita 150
A. Introduction
Gregory Palamas gave to the Capita 150 the full title: «One Hundred and Fifty Chapters on Topics of Natural and Theological Science, the Moral and the Ascetic Life, Intended as a Purge for the Barlaamite Corruption.» The title purports to provide two pieces of information regarding the content of the work. First, the work is divided topically according to the subjects of natural science, theology, the moral and the ascetic life. Second, it is, at least in part, a polemical work written against the Barlaamite heresy. In several manuscripts there is a note attached to chapter 34 telling the reader that the section on natural science has come to an end and that the following section will treat matters relating to theology.[9] However, there are no further such notes to signal the subsequent divisions treating the moral and ascetic life, nor does any note indicate a special group of chapters dedicated to a refutation of Barlaam's heresy.
The modern reader who comes to this work hoping to learn more about the nature of Barlaam's heretical views and their refutation by Palamas will be disappointed. Barlaam’s name does not appear until more than one third of the way through the work. Both there and thereafter it appears only in conjunction with the name of Akindynos.[10] In fact, chapters 64–150 are directed almost exclusively against the 'Barlaamite' teachings of Gregory Akindynos and his followers.
The Capita 150 can be divided into two major sections: chapters 1–63, a general section which treats the divine economy of creation and salvation, and chapters 64–150 which constitute the anti-Akindynist section. The following schema presents an overview of the first section and its major divisions.
The Divine Economy of Creation and Salvation
I. The Non-Eternity of the Cosmos (1–2)
That the world had a beginning.
That the world will have an end: not a total annihilation but a transformation.
II. The Celestial Sphere (3–7)
3. The heaven revolves not by the nature of a World Soul but by its own nature.
Revolution is the proper natural motion of the heaven.
Since by its own nature the heaven is the lightest body, it has no upward motion.
6. There is no body beyond the heaven.
7. Further details on the natural motion of the heaven.
III. The Terrestrial Sphere (8–14)
The winds too move by their own nature.
The Hellene theory of four habitable zones of the earth.
There is no habitable zone beyond our own.
The eccentric location of the sphere of water.
Relation of the earth sphere centre to the water sphere centre.
Geometric diagram of the relation of the two spheres.
The rational and irrational animals inhabit only this zone.
IV. The Natural Human Faculties (15–20)
Sense perception (the five senses).
Imagination (Φαντασία)
Mind (Νοῦς).
Unreliability of sense perception.
A composite knowledge results from the use of the faculties of sense perception, imagination and mind.
This is the source of our knowledge of natural phenomena. Such knowledge cannot be called spiritual.
V. Spiritual Knowledge (21–29)
About God and creation. {H 6}
About the ordering of creation in six days. {H 6}
About the two bounds of the universe. {H 6}
About the creation of man. {H 6}
Superiority of the true wisdom and saving knowledge to Hellenic philosophy.
True knowledge of God and man's place before him.
All rational beings made in the Image of God.
The errors of Hellenic learning.
29. Saving knowledge: the mind's acknowledgement of its own weakness and the quest for its healing.
VI. Rational Nature (30–33)
30. Human nature possesses life not only essentially but as an activity; angelic nature posseses life only essentially but as capable of opposites (good and evil).
31. Irrational animals possess life only as an activity.
32. Immortality of the human soul.
33. The rational soul is susceptible of opposites and so does not possess goodness essentially.
VII. The Divine Nature and its Triadic Image in Man (34–40)
34. The divine nature possesses goodness essentially and transcendently.
35. Transcendent goodness is Mind, from which the Word proceeds by way of generation.
36. Procession of the Spirit from the Mind together with the Word; Spirit as love of the Begetter for the ineffably begotten Word.
37. The Triadic Image in man: the mind's relation of love to its own immanent knowledge.
The Triadic Image in angels and men.
Man's corporeity indicates that he is more perfectly in the Image of God than the angels.
40. Manifestation and preservation of the Triadic Image in the soul by means of grace.
VIII. Recognition of Human weakness and the Need for Healing (41–63)
41. The serpent as originator of evil, lowest in the hierarchy of beings through his own arrogance and free will. {H 31}
The serpent and the Fall.
Men and angels: there is no superior being but God to serve as man's counsellor.
Satan's motive – jealousy of man's dominion.
Sin as death of the soul even while the body lives.
The Fall of Adam and Eve. {H 31}
Death was not created by God. {H 31}
Responsibility for the Fall rests with each individual who transgresses God's commandments.
49. The Tree was forbidden to Adam and Eve because they were not yet mature enough to eat of it.
Beguilement of the senses as the secondary cause of the Fall.
Delay of the sentence of bodily death. {H 31}
Death is an ongoing process of passing away.
God delayed ultimate death in order to give man a second chance.
Felix culpa. {H 16}
We more than Adam bear a greater blame for the Fall {H 31}
Our Tree is the commandment of repentance. {H 31}
Exhortation to repentance {H 31}
Love for God and the virtues.
Worship in Spirit and Truth means worship of the Father through the Son and Holy Spirit. {H 19}
Worship in Spirit and Truth means conceiving the Incorporeal incorporeally. {H 19}
Angels and souls as incorporeal beings. {H 19}
Man is more perfectly in God's Image than the angels not only because he possesses a life-giving power but also because he exercises dominion.
Man is also superior to the angels by the fact of the threefold character of his knowledge.
B. The General Context of the First Section
The first section can be read at several different levels. On the first level, it constitutes a general introduction to the work as a whole, placing the later, more detailed questions, within the wider context of the divine economy of creation and salvation. Starting with the temporal origin of the universe, Palamas treated in turn the material and rational cosmos, discussed their relation to the Creator, and then produced a lengthy exposition of the Fall, its consequences and the process of salvation. Palamas may well have been concerned that the debate about the relation between God's substance and his energies had become too divorced from the rest of theology and from soteriology in particular.
On another, but closely related level, the first section deals with the question of knowledge and the distinction between natural science and theological science. The first twenty chapters cover what can be learned about the world and God through man's own natural powers. Chapters 21 to 63 discuss those truths «about God, about the world, about our own selves»[11] which can be known with certainty only through the teaching of the Spirit. The problem of knowledge had been an important one in the period prior to 1341 when Barlaam had raised certain questions about the nature of man's knowledge of God.[12] Although Barlaam had long departed from the scene by the time the Capita 150 was written, Palamas still had in mind the dangers posed by the Calabrian's views and their place at the origin of the debate on the divine substance and the energies.
There is one further level where Palamas, in certain chapters at least, envisaged a number of particular problems or problematic tendencies which he felt compelled to address.[13] The first fourteen chapters are devoted to the question of whether the world had a beginning, and to an examination of the two great spheres of the heaven and the earth. Behind this there are clearly detectable a number of the τόποι of the traditional Christian polemic against profane or Hellenic learning. The eternity of the world and the existence of a World Soul are two such τόποι and they appear not only here but also in a longer list of Hellenic errors in Palamas' first Triad.[14] The implication is not that Barlaam or Akindynos explicitly professed such doctrines; rather, Palamas believed that an inordinate pursuit of secular learning would inevitably lead to these or similar heretical errors. Or alternatively, an unorthodox theological position might have the same result. Thus in the Contra Acindynum Palamas demonstrated how Gregory Akindynos had fallen unwittingly into the Hellene error of an eternal cosmos:
That from creatures we acquire an understanding not of the divine substance but of the divine energies; and Akindynos, in denying this and in thinking creatures arc coeternal with God, is under the same charge as the Hellenes and Eunomius.[15]
In one sense the first 63 chapters of the Capita 150 have much the same intention as the opening section of the first Triad, namely to demonstrate the superiority of spiritual gnosis and to point out the error arising from an exclusive reliance on natural science for attaining certain knowledge either about God or even about creation. However, in the Capita 150 the treatment of certain areas of Hellenic learning is much more specific and detailed. The fourteenth century witnessed a revival of several areas of study among which were Platonism, astronomy and natural philosophy. Palamas may well have been concerned with the dangers and temptations which this revival posed for the Christian and so wrote a kind of mini-treatise Περὶ Κόσμου (c. 1–14). According to the long established definition of the word, «Cosmos means a system composed of heaven and earth and the natures contained in them.»[16] The schema has, of course, its parallel in the Judaeo-Christian worldview described in the Hexaemeron where God is said to have created heaven and earth and all that is in them.
About 1315 Nikephoros Choumnos had written his Refutation of Plotinus On the Soul.[17] Unfortunately, the reasons and circumstances of its composition are not known. Sometime before 1335 Nikephoros Gregoras wrote a commentary on the De insomniis of Synesius of Cyrene, a late fourth to early fifth century pagan convert to Christianity.[18] The commentary demonstrates Gregoras’ familiarity with some of the mure arcane interests of the Neoplatonists, and in particular, the Chaldean Oracles. Gregoras derived much of his material from Michael Psellos, the great Neoplatonist antiquarian of the eleventh century.[19] In fact, the writings of Psellos must have enjoyed considerable popularity in the time of Gregoras, since over one hundred manuscripts of his works date from the late thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries.[20] Even Proclus himself was read with some frequency in this period.[21]
Another area of profane learning which may have attracted Gregory's attention was the renewal of astronomical studies.[22] Theodore Metochites and Nikephoros Gregoras were leaders in this enterprise.[23] Barlaam, too, had written works on astronomy and his vociferous boasting on the subject was certainly known to Palamas.[24]
Physics, cosmography and natural phenomena also attracted the attention of fourteenth century intellectuals. Beyond the great Aristotelian compendia of Nikephoros Blemmydes (1197–1272), George Pachymeres (1242–c.1310) and Joseph the Philosopher (c. 1280–c.1330), there were many individual works covering specific topics.[25] The emperor Theodore II Laskaris (1254–1258) wrote a work called the Κοσμικὴ Δήλωσις in which the first two books treat the elements and the heaven.[26] Nikephoros Choumnos produced seven minor treatises on physics and natural phenomena.[27] Similar topics were covered by Nikephoros Gregoras in a series of solutiones quaestionum addressed to Helena Palaeologina.[28] Barlaam, too, touched upon this area in his Solutions.[29] In all these instances the discussion is primarily Aristotelian to its sources.
Because of their popularity in this period, two works of antiquity should also be mentioned here. There are 31 manuscripts for the work of Cleomedes De motu circulari corporum caelestium and 19 for Pseudo-Aristotle's De mundo.[30] Palamas himself quoted the latter in c. 10. The late fourteenth century manuscript, Paris, bn, ms gr. 2381, contains not only the Capita 150 of Palamas but also the work of Cleomedes, Pseudo-Aristotle's De mundo and several works of the Aratean corpus.[31] Their association in a single manuscript suggests that the scholar-owner of the codex appreciated some relevancy of the work of Palamas to these other treatises.
In the context of such an intellectual milieu, therefore, it would have been Palamas’ concern to assure the proper Christian point of view in the scientific questions which were gaining new currency in his days.
The Non-Eternity of the Cosmos (1–2)
To demonstrate that the world had a beginning, Palamas used a twofold argument, from nature and from history. It was the common Byzantine understanding that history begins with the creation story. Moses was the historian par excellence and his account of the world's origin and early history was incorporated into the Byzantine chronicle tradition together with supplementary material from the Book of Jubilees (Λεπτὴ Γένεσις) and from the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus.[32] This tradition makes references not only to the creation of the cosmos but also to the founders of the arts, the first lawgivers, the progenitors of the various races and nations, and the founders of cities. Abel was the first shepherd, Cain the first farmer and also the inventor of metrology and geodesy. Iobel established animal husbandry; Ioubal invented the first musical instruments; Thobel founded the art of working in metal; Seth invented the Hebrew alphabet and astronomy. Nebrod founded the city of Babylon, was the first hunter and taught astronomy and astrology. Syros, son of Agenor, founded the science of arithmetic, Prometheus that of grammar, and Epimetheus music. Moses, Draco and Solon are mentioned as law-givers.[33]
Gregory's argument from nature is simply stated as the ontological dependence of created reality on a first cause. The corollary to this argument is that the world will also have an end. If the individual parts of the world are subject to dissolution, the universe as a whole will suffer the same fate. Basil had argued similarly in his Hexaemeron.[34] Divine revelation adds its own prophetic witness to the end of the world.[35] The end, however, does not mean total annihilation, but rather a transformation. Basil elaborates more fully:
The world must necessarily change if the condition of our souls is to undergo a transformation to a different form of life. For just as this present life bears an affinity to the nature of this world, so in the future life our souls will enjoy a lot conformable to their new condition.[36]
The Celestial Sphere (3–7)
In chapter 3 Gregory challenged the Hellenic doctrine of a World Soul by raising four objections. In each case he attempted to show how philosophy contradicts itself, or, more precisely, how Plato stands in contradiction to Aristotle. According to Plato's theory, the revolution of the heaven is effected by the World Soul.[37] But if the World Soul permeates the entire universe, as the name implies, then all things must be moved by it at all times, since the soul is ever-moving. Aristotle, however, held the opposing view that the heaven revolves by its own nature and that the earth, again, by its own nature, is stationary.[38] Moreover, Palamas continued, since self-determination is part of the nature of a rational soul, the movements of the heaven could not be regular and unchanging, as they apparently are. Then, too, many parts of the universe exhibit no evidence of a rational soul. Even fire, the most mobile of the four elements, moves by its own nature and not that of some universal soul. Finally, according to Aristotle's definition, «soul is the actuality of a body possessed of organs and having the potentiality for life.»[39] Only composite bodies, therefore, can have souls. The heaven is a simple nature, possesses no potentiality for life, and thus cannot be animated by a soul.
For Palamas the conclusion was obvious. The doctrine of a World Soul is just another example of the foolish reasonings and senseless imaginings of the pagan philosophers. In the course of his closing tirade, Gregory explicitly associated this doctrine with Neoplatonism by his mention of the three hypostases, namely, God, the Mind, and the World Soul.
The next chapter continues the argument against the existence of the World Soul. The theological intention behind the argument is twofold. Besides the obvious datum of revelation that the governance of the universe belongs to God alone, Gregory is concerned with preserving the uniqueness of man as the sole possessor of a rational soul which has the character of a supernatural or «supercelestial» creation. Therefore, the revolution of the celestial body must be natural, by its own nature, and not by the nature of some mythical World Soul.
In the following chapters (5–7) Palamas delimited further the scientific views which are acceptable to orthodox Christianity. The heaven, again by its own nature, is the lightest body and therefore does not proceed upwards. As Aristotle taught, there is no body or place beyond the heaven, for the heaven encompasses all body absolutely.[40] And yet there must be some sort of 'region' beyond it, since God himself extends infinitely beyond the heaven and the pious Christian will one day pass through the boundary. Finally, Palamas closed his discussion of the celestial body in chapter 7 with some more details on its nature and movement.
The Terrestrial Sphere (8–14)
As a transition to his treatment of the terrestrial sphere, Gregory paused briefly to insist that the movement of the winds is natural and is not effected by a World Soul (c. 8). The winds are located in the region most proximate to the earth, for they are not as light or as mobile as the higher regions. Chapters 9–14 are devoted to the task of showing that there is a single habitable zone on the earth where alone is found the embodied rational soul. Here is further evidence of Palamas' emphasis on the uniqueness of man's place in the universe and in the divine economy of salvation. Palamas started out with an exposition of pagan cosmography (c. 9). Of the five zones on the earth, only two are temperate in climate and habitable. Each of these zones is further divided to produce a total of four inhabited regions. Palamas' understanding of the ancient Greek schema can be best illustrated by the following diagram.
A and B: 2 ἀντεύκρατοι καὶ οἰκήσιμοι ζῶναι
4 οἰκουμέναι and 4 γένη τῶν ἀνθρώπων
1: ἡ καθ’ ἠμᾶς οἰκουμένη
2: οί τὸ πρὸς αὐτοὐς δακοῦν ὑποκάτω τῆς ζώνης ταύτης οἰκοῡντες
3: οί ἑκ πλαγίου ἡμῖν
As he was probably describing the pagan position from memory, his report of their terminology does not correspond quite accurately with ancient usage.[41] Gregory pointed out that the Hellenic description of the earth runs contrary to the orthodox Christian doctrine that only one tenth of the earth sphere is habitable, while the rest is inundated by the abyss of the waters.
Palamas went through some unusual and very ingenious arguments in order to arrive at his version of the Christian view, which has little in common with earlier expositions, such as those of Basil's Hexaemeron or the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes.[42] Relying on a passage from Pseudo-Aristotle's De mundo, Palamas explained that the five elements occur in five spherical regions, one encompassed by the other. The elements are equal in mass but varying in density, and so the spheres are progressively greater in volume as you proceed outwards (c. 10). If the spheres were perfectly concentric, water would surround the earth making it completely uninhabitable. But since this is not the case, the water sphere must be eccentric, with its centre below that of the earth sphere (c. 11). The habitable part of the earth covers one half of the surface, that is, one half of one of the five (presumably equal) zones. The water sphere is twice the diameter and eight times the volume of the earth sphere, given that the centre of the water sphere is on the lowest point on the circumference of the earth sphere (c. 12). Illustrating this with a diagram, Palamas assured the reader that his explanation is susceptible of geometric proof (c. 13). Palamas himself probably learned his geometry from a Byzantine quadrivium textbook with its geometry section based on Euclid's Elements. The required proof can in fact be deduced from the proposition of Book 12.18: «Spheres are to one another in the triplicate ratio of their respective diameters.»[43] From this it is possible to derive the formula for the volume of a sphere, . With this formula it is a simple matter to determine that the two spheres of the diagram are in a proportion of 8:1. And so, one eighth of the water sphere is in contact with the earth sphere.
The Natural Human Faculties (15–20)
With the conclusion of his little treatise Περὶ Κόσμου, Palamas moved on to reveal his ultimate goal, which was to draw a clear distinction between natural knowledge and spiritual or supernatural knowledge. In the Περὶ Κόσμου section he had reviewed various items of natural knowledge and demonstrated how easy it was to fall into error, as many had done in the past, by relying exclusively on their own natural, «foolish» reasoning. In chapters 15–20 he explained the process of natural knowledge, φυσικὴ γνῶσις, and why it must be considered unreliable.
First of all, knowledge is acquired through the perceptions of the five senses. In each case the perception (μόρφωσις) is derived from bodies, or, more precisely, from corporeal forms. The impressions (ἐκτυπώματα) received from the corporeal forms are like images inseparably separate from the bodily forms (c. 15). At the next level, the imagination (φαντασἰα) appropriates the impressions (ἐκμαγεῖα) in the senses, separates the images from the corporeal forms and stores them in such a way that they can be recalled at will, even when the bodies are absent (c. 16). In rational animals the imagination serves as the link (μεθόριον) between the mind and the senses. The mind gazes upon the incorporeal images in the imagination and formulates thoughts (λογισμούς) in the process of reasoning.[44] Unfortunately, the passions and error can enter this process. Thus, most virtues and vices, true and false opinions enter the mind through the imagination. But this is not always the case, for certain objects of thought enter the mind apart from the senses (c. 17). The senses are thus unreliable sources of information and knowledge. They are ultimately connected with the transitory, material world, and, although the fruit of their knowledge may be beauty, richness and honour, it may equally be ugliness, poverty and dishonour: the senses have the capability of bringing us to the intelligible Light of eternal life, or, just as easily, to the intelligible darkness of chastisement (c. 18).
The knowledge assembled through the apprehension of particulars via the faculties of sense perception, imagination and mind must necessarily be a composite knowledge and not a direct vision of reality.[45] The natural sciences of astronomy and mathematics never pass beyond the realm of nature. They do not attain the realities of the Spirit (c. 19–20).
Spiritual Knowledge (21–29)
Palamas had now set the stage for the exposition of the principal thesis of the first part of the Capita 150: the only knowledge really worth having, the only knowledge of enduring value is spiritual or saving knowledge. Of all knowledge only the teaching of the Holy Spirit can be considered secure and free of all deception and error. As a counterbalance to the Hellenic Περὶ Κόσμου doctrine, which he had presented and criticized earlier, Palamas brought forward the Christian version in chapters 21–24.
At this point one of the principal literary characteristics of the Capita 150 comes to the fore. Much of the material in this work has direct verbatim parallels in the other works of Palamas. For the moment, it will be assumed that the material in the Capita 150 was taken from these other works. Later, when the date of the Capita 150 is discussed, this assumption will be examined in detail.[46] For chapters 21–24 the source in question was Homily 6: Προτρεπτική πρός νηστείαν. ἐν ᾖ και περί τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως ὡς ἐν ἐπιτόμῳ.[47]
In the beginning, that is, in a single atemporal instant, God created all things in potency. Earth would produce all things proper to it and heaven would do the same.[48] The possibility of pre-existent matter must be excluded absolutely (c. 21). The six days of creation saw the unfolding of created matter from formless chaos into form. God's work was one of ordering and adorning the universe, wherein the earth was fixed as the immovable centre around which all else revolves. And so the orthodox Christian will understand the universe as geocentric (c. 22). Not only do the heavenly bodies provide for the yearly changes of season and the measurement of time, but more importantly, their orderly arrangement can lead the wise to a knowledge of God the Creator (c. 23).[49]
Already Palamas had established that man alone possesses an embodied rational, intellectual soul, that he dwells in the only inhabited region of the earth, and that the earth is the centre of the universe.[50] Then, in chapter 24 he went still further. Man occupies a unique place at the summit of creation. Creation is placed in the service of man, under his stewardship, but he is not bound by the created world, since he is destined for the kingdom of heaven. The dignity of man derives from his creation in the image of God. As body and soul, he belongs to both the material and the immaterial order. He has the capacity for knowing God and for receiving him. Such is the dignity of man and of human nature that God became incarnate, the divinity united with the humanity in a single hypostasis.
In the following chapters Palamas drew out the implications of the Christian Περὶ Κόσμου doctrine. Since man is at the summit of creation with all placed in his service, knowledge must serve man in his true nature and according to his eternal destiny, if it is to have any real value. The saving knowledge (ή σωτήριος γνῶσις) bestowed by the teaching of the Spirit must then be counted superior to all the learning of the scientists and philosophers (c. 25).
This saving knowledge is the knowledge of God in truth and of man's place before him. The great enterprise of Hellenic philosophy failed because it was unable to recognize the proper hierarchy of God, Man, and Creation. The Greek philosophers endowed irrational creation with intelligence, and some even went so far as to deify insensate matter. In so doing they failed to recognize not only die true God but also their own human dignity (c. 26).
God's image in man has its locus in the mind. Gregory developed this notion in a significant way later in the Capita 150.[51] Since God created all intellectual being and not just our own, the angels are fellow servants with us before God. They too are in the divine image but they possess a greater honour than man, in that by their incorporeality they more closely resemble the divine nature. This is true of course only for the good angels and not for those who were alienated from him and who remain hostile to the human race (c. 27).
Before concluding this section Palamas returned once again to the follies of the pagan sages, but this time he may very well have had in mind a contemporary folly being committed by Nikephoros Gregoras and his associates. In chapter 28 the pagan sages are said to revere Satan and demons as God, honouring them with temples and sacrifices. These Hellenes submit to oracles, follow the guidance of prophets and prophetesses, and employ defiling purifications. This sounds very much like Proclan theurgy. This was known to Palamas from the Life of Proclus by Marinus.[52] In the same text where Palamas refers to and quotes from this work the phrase καθαρμοῑς χαλδαϊκοῑς is used.[53] Surely, these must be identical with the καθαρμῶν μολυνόντων mentioned in c. 28. As already noted above, Nikephoros Gregoras had revealed his interest in the Chaldean Oracles and Proclan theurgy in his commentary on the De insomniis of Synesius. Gregoras’ interest was probably not unique.[54]
Chapter 29 is both a recapitulation of this central section of the first part of the Capita 150 and an outline of what is yet to come. In chapters 30–33 Palamas would continue the discussion of the nature of man and his special place in creation. Then in chapters 34–40 he would add further weight to man's dignity by elaborating on the triadic character of the divine image. Finally, since saving knowledge includes man's knowledge of himself and in particular of his need for healing, Gregory would discourse at length on the origin of man's woundedness and the way to salvation (c. 41–63).
Rational Nature (30–33)
The next step for Palamas was to consider man in relation to other rational creatures, namely the angels. All rational natures, whether angelic or human, possess life as an essential part of their being, or, in other words, they are immortal. Man possesses life also as an energy or activity which passes on life and animation to his body. This does not apply to angels, because they are incorporeal (c. 30). Irrational animals are distinguished by the fact that they possess life only as an activity animating the body. They are therefore mortal, the soul dying together with the body (c. 31). Further, all rational souls are mutable with respect to good and evil, for they do not possess essential goodness. Palamas would even say that this implies a sort of composition involving the substance and either good or evil which inheres in the substance as a quality (c. 33). Finally, it should, be noted that Palamas placed a special emphasis on the immortality of the human soul, for he not only mentioned it in chapter 30 but he devoted all of chapter 32 to the subject.
The Divine Nature and its Triadic Image in Man (34–40)
a. The Doctrine of the Capita55
To continue the discussion of saving knowledge, Palamas shifted the focus for a moment to the divine nature and then back again to rational creatures and man. Chapter 34, which concerns the divine nature in its unity, displays a tightly woven fabric of Dionysian theology. It shows the degree to which Palamas had assimilated the doctrine of Pseudo-Dionysius and adapted it to his purposes.[56] Unlike rational creation the divine nature possesses goodness as its substance. The goods that we know from created realities are reflections of the divine goodness, although the divine goodness infinitely transcends the good that we conceive of. In the divine nature there is no distinction of goods, for the divine goodness embraces them all in its unity. The divine goodness is, therefore, both unknown in its transcendence, yet known through its energies directed towards creation. This is the tradition of the Church followed by Palamas in the development of the doctrine of the divine substance and the uncreated energies.
In passing from the Godhead in its unity to a consideration of the three persons, Gregory turned from Pseudo-Dionysius to the theology of the Alexandrian tradition, which understood The Godhead as Mind from which the Word proceeds as from a source. In order to clarify his meaning Palamas distinguished four senses of the word λόγος. First, there is the προφορικὸς λόγος, a word which is expressed externally in sounds. This does not belong properly to the mind but to the body moved by the mind. Second, the ἐνδιάθετος λόγος is the mental image of the sounds of a word before it is expressed externally. Third, the λόγος ἐν διανοίᾳ refers to a word in the sense of a concept or idea that takes shape gradually in the mind. Finally, there is the λόγος ἐμφύτως ἡμῑν ἐναποκείμενος τῷ νῷ, a word in the sense of the knowledge latent or immanent in the mind. Only this last meaning offers a fitting analogy for the relation of the divine Logos to the Godhead. It provides a way of reflecting upon the Word's derivation from the Father by way of generation, while the Word remains complete in his own perfect hypostasis. The Word is not inferior to the Father in substance, but perfectly identical with him (c. 35).
This analysis, brief as it is, appears at first to show a degree of sophistication that goes considerably beyond previous tradition. However, care must be exercised so as not to read into this analysis more than is really there. Palamas has merely associated a λόγος with each of the faculties of knowledge, which he mentioned later in c. 63: namely, the νοερόν, the λογικόν and the αἰσθητικόν. The προφορικὸς and the ἐνδιάθετος λόγος must both be associated with the αἰσθητικόν. There is nothing here that can be compared with Augustine's examination of the various mental acts. Nevertheless, Gregory's search for a suitable analogy did lead him to a more carefully nuanced notion of λόγος than that usually found in the patristic tradition.
Extending the analogy, Palamas noted that no word exists without πνεῦμα, and so the divine Logos possesses also the Holy Spirit, whale both have their origination in the Father. Here too, some distinctions are necessary in the various meanings of πνεῦμα. The breath which accompanies a word passing through our lips is not a suitable analogy because of its strictly corporeal reference. The incorporeal spirit accompanying the immanent or the discursive word is no more suitable because temporality is involved. The only fitting analogy is that of πνεῦμα as the ineffable love of the Begetter for the ineffably begotten Word. At this point, Palamas did not specify the exact nature of the human analogy, but rather went on to conclude that the Logos reveals to us the Spirit's distinctive ὕπαρξις and the fact that he belongs to both the Father and the Word. More precisely, the Spirit derives his being from the Father, but is sent from both the Father and the Word to those who are worthy (c. 36).[57]
In the next chapter Palamas clarified the analogy of the Spirit as love. In man this has its foundation in the divine image and likeness to be found in the mind. The relation of the mind to its immanent knowledge is described as ἔρως or ἔφεσις. Because of the similarities with Augustine's trinitarian analogies there is a great temptation to start reading Augustine's ideas into the text of Palamas.[58] The temptation should be avoided. Gregory spoke of the knowledge naturally inherent in the mind, but he did not equate this with the mind's knowledge of itself (notitia sui).[59] He spoke of the relation of the mind to the knowledge immanent in it as one of love, but he did not describe this as the mind's intending its self-knowledge (amor sui and voluntas sui).[60] Above all, Palamas very clearly did not conclude that the Holy Spirit is the relation of love between the Father and the Son. Faithful to the Church's tradition, Palamas maintained that the Holy Spirit is identical in every way with the divine goodness (i.e., the divine nature) and with the Father and the Son, except in hypostasis. The Spirit has his own perfect hypostasis, which is defined by its derivation from the Father by procession.
The next step in the discussion was to consider in greater detail the nature of the divine image in rational creatures (c. 38). The intellectual nature of the angels also possesses mind, a word from the mind, and a spirit which is also from the mind, which ever accompanies the word, and which is constituted by the love of the mind for its word. Bui in the angelic nature the spirit has no vivifying power: it is not ζωοποιόν. In man, on the contrary, the spirit does have this life-giving capacity for the sake of the body. This human spirit or life-giving power in the body is an extension of the intellectual love (νοερὸς ἔρως). It is from the mind, belongs to the word, lies in the word and in the mind, and has the word and the mind in itself. It forms the soul's loving conjunction with the body (ἐραασμίαν … τὴν πρὸς τὸ οὶκεῖον σῶμα … συνάφειαν). Here again, any real similarity with Augustine's trinitarian analogies vanishes into thin air.
Taking his analysis one step further, Palamas concluded that the human soul is more truly in God's image than the intellectual nature of the angels. The reason for this comes as something of a surprise: it is because man is a corporeal being. Strangely enough, Palamas left this statement suspended in a vacuum and offered no hints of an explanation until chapter 63. Gregory's meaning can be reconstructed as follows. Because the angels are incorporeal and so possess no vivifying power, they reflect only the image of the immanent Trinity in its internal relations. But in man the life-giving spirit communicates outside the intellectual sphere towards the sensible world of the body, just as the life-giving Spirit in the Trinity communicates life beyond the interior domain of the Godhead to the realm of the saving economy.
When he came to chapter 63, Palamas explained that man is more in the image of God than the angels because of the threefold character of human knowledge (τὸ τριαδικὸν τῆς ἡμετέρας γνώσεως). This threefold character is defined as the product of the intellectual or intuitive faculty, the rational or discursive faculty, and the faculty of sense perception.[61] As he had shown elsewhere, the rational-discursive faculty is closely associated with that of sense perception.[62] Man, therefore, has the capacity to externalize the invisible word of the mind: he can speak it out loud, put it down in writing, and express it through the arts and sciences. In this way the divine image in man reflects not only the immanent life of the Trinity, but also God's self-manifestation in the economy of salvation. The Word of God became flesh, entering the sense perceptible world of creation.
Although the angels do not possess the divine image to the same degree as men, Palamas had been careful to note that the angels are indeed more worthy of honour because of their incorporeal nature and, as such, are nearer than we are to the uncreated nature (c. 27). Moreover, the angels, or at least the good angels, surpass us by far in dignity inasmuch as they have preserved the perfection of the divine likeness (c. 43 and 64).
Back in chapter 39, Palamas added that the divine image is indefectible and cannot be lost, even after the ancestral Fall and the subsequent death of the soul through separation from God. If the soul rejects inferior attachments and clings to the better through the practice of virtue, it will receive eternal life and ultimately immortality for the body. But if it fails to do this and dishonours the divine image, it will be alienated from God.
The high dignity of the human person is founded on the triadic character of the divide image which places man in the hierarchical rank immediately after God. This dignity and this rank in the created order must be preserved by continual remembrance and contemplation of God. Only then will the soul receive the mysterious and ineffable radiance of the divine nature (i.e. the divinizing energy) which will enable it to manifest fully the divine image and grow once again into God's likeness which was lost in the Fall. If, however, man chooses the love of wrongdoing over the love of God and of neighbour, he wreaks havoc on the triadic cosmos of his own soul (c. 40).
Thus, the threefold structure of the divine image in the soul has a distinctly dynamic character. It was created by God but is made manifest and preserved by grace. The man who loves virtues returns to himself[63] through the continual remembrance of God effected by practice of the Jesus Prayer in conjunction with the hesychast psycho-somatic method.[64] Then, graced by the divine radiance, the soul recognizes the image of God within itself and is drawn ever closer to his likeness.
Although chapter 34 shows that Gregory Palamas was highly attuned to the intricacies and the spirit of Dionysian theology, there is clear evidence in chapter 40 that Palamas had no hesitations about applying correctives to the teaching of Pseudo-Dionysius whenever he believed these to be necessary. Prior to 1341 Barlaam had maintained that God's self-communication to man in knowledge and in grace was effected solely through created intermediaries. He left man without any direct, unmediated knowledge or experience of God. To support his teaching, the Calabrian turned to the Pseudo-Dionysian doctrine of the hierarchies through which all transmission of the divine outpourings (πρόοδοι) was mediated. Palamas countered Barlaam's arguments by applying a christological corrective to the Areopagite's teaching. The hierarchies pertain only to the natural order, considered apart from the incarnation; the advent of Christ upset the hierarchies and granted man direct access to God.[65] The same christological corrective is operative in Gregory's doctrine of the divine image. Man's τάξις in the hierarchies is placed immediately after God and above the angels. The angelic nature reflects only the image of the immanent Trinity, but in the case of man his corporeity adds to the triadic character of the image an incarnational dimension. In this, as Palamas says, «the angels have no part at all.» In addition, man's place above the angels in the hierarchical order is based on the special pneumatological character of the trinitarian image in the soul. Because man possess a body and for its sake, his spirit manifests a life-giving energy.[66] This aspect of the triadic image mirrors the Father's gift of the life-giving Holy Spirit (viz. his energy, not the hypostasis) to the worthy. The soul of man, therefore, is a microcosm reflecting both the immanent life and the economic processions of the Trinity.
b. Patristic Background
Very early in the Christian tradition there were attempts at using human analogies to support the belief in a triune God. By the end of the second century the Apologists were describing the relation between the first two persons of the Trinity in terms of that between the mind and the word which proceeds from the mind, at first internally and then through external expression by means of the voice. The internal word was called the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and in its externalized form it became a λόγος προφορικὸς. In his treatise Ad Autolycum Theophilus of Antioch wrote:
For before anything came into existence God had this (i.e., τόν λόγον τόν ὄντα διά παντός ἐνδιάθετον ἐν καρδίᾳ θεοῦ) as his Counsellor, his own Mind and Intelligence (νοῦν και φρόνησιν). When God wished to make what he had planned to make, he generated this Logos, making him external (τοῦτον τόν λόγον ἐγέννησεν προφορικόν).[67]
The Νοῦς-Λόγος analogy was especially favoured in Alexandria. Origen had spoken of the Godhead as «intellectualis natura simplex» and «mens ac fons, ex quo initium totius intellectualis naturae uel mentis est».[68] Thus, it was natural for him to use the Mind-Word analogy, as for example in his commentary on the Gospel of John.
The Word can also be the Son because he announces the secrets of his Father, who is Mind, in a manner analogous to the Son's being called Word. For just as with us the word is a messenger for the things seen by the mind, so the Word of God, since he knows the Father whom no creature is able to approach without a guide, reveals the one whom he knows, the Father.[69]
This tradition is carried on in Alexandria throughout the patristic period and can be found in such writers as Dionysius of Alexandria, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria.[70]
In the fourth century, when the problem of the Holy Spirit entered the trinitarian debates, the analogy was extended to include πνεῦμα. Gregory Nazianzen, in his Second Irenic Discourse, explains that the analogy is made possible because of the relation between sensible and intelligible realities.
We so think and are so disposed that the manner in which these are related and ordered with respect to one another can be known solely by the Trinity itself and by those who have purified themselves (either now or in the future) to whom the Trinity might reveal it. But we do know one and the some nature of the Godhead, recognized by the characteristics unoriginate, generacy and procession, on the analogy of our mind, word and spirit, to the extent that intelligible realities resemble sensible ones and the most significant the least, whereas no image quite arrives at the truth.[71]
The discussion is more developed still in Gregory of Nyssa's Catechetical Oration.[72] He treats first the analogy of the human mind and word: the word is from the mind, not entirely identical with it, nor entirely distinct. God too cannot be without his Word (οὐδὲ ἄλογον εἶναι τὸ θεῖον).
As we have come to a knowledge of the Word by proceeding anagogically from matters that concern us to the transcendent nature, in the same way we can be brought to a conception of the Spirit, by contemplating in our nature certain shadows and resemblances of his unspeakable power.[73]
For both the Word and the Spirit, Gregory of Nyssa goes to great lengths to explain exactly how the analogy can be applied in an orthodox manner, while at the same time he details its inadequacies.
When John Damascene comes to the Word and Spirit of God in his Expositio fidei,[74] he draws heavily upon Gregory of Nyssa’s Oratio catechetica and adds to it what he has learned from his other patristic sources. However, in another work, the De imaginibus, John Damascene adds a further development to the subject by suggesting that the foundation of the resemblance between the human mind, word, and spirit, and the Trinity lies in man's creation in the image of God.
The third kind of image is that made by God as an imitation of himself: namely, man. Haw can what is created share the nature of him who is uncreated, except by imitation? For just as the Father who is Mind and the Son who is Word, and the Holy Spirit are one God, so too mind and word and spirit constitute one man.... For God says, «Let us make man in our image and likeness.»[75]
The association of the trinitarian analogy with the image of God in man was never common, but it had been mentioned earlier by Theodoret of Cyr and by Pseudo-Anastasius the Sinaite. In the Genesis section of his great commentary on the Octateuch, Theodoret wrote:
But one might find in turn still another more accurate imitation in the soul of man, for it possesses within itself both a rational and an animating faculty (και τό λογικόν και τό ζωτικόν). The mind begets the word and a spirit comes forth together with the word, noе begotten like the word but always accompanying the word and coming forth together with the one begotten. These things belong to man as in an image, tor which reason the word and the spirit have no independent individual existence. But in the holy Trinity we consider three hypostases, united without confusion and subsisting in themselves.[76]
Note how the spirit is here given the attribute ζωτικόν or 'vivifying', just as in the Capita 150 of Palamas. Commenting on the Hexaemeron, Pseudo-Anastasius claimed that man's creation in the image of God means that the impress of each trinitarian person is to be found in the human soul.[77]
At least two reasons can be brought forward to explain why the notion of a triadic character of the image was not well accepted during the patristic period. Firstly, the theology of the divine image in man already had a long history prior to the fourth century debates on the Trinity. Much of the discussion focused on where it was located (soul or mind only, or with the body included) and what was its principal characteristic (free will, rationality, or stewardship over creation).[78] Secondly, when Eunomius claimed full knowledge of God's inner being, the Cappadocian Fathers emphasized the orthodox approach of a cautious, apophatic reverence for the mystery of God. As a result, they may have been wary about suggesting that a reflection of the processions of the trinitarian persons could be found in the divine image in man. In the fourteenth century Barlaam the Calabrian went to the opposite extreme from Eunomius and denied to man any direct knowledge of God. To counter such a claim, Palamas may have seen it necessary to develop and emphasize further a theme that was latent in earlier theology. The Palamite doctrine of the image thus underlines the high dignity of man, setting him above the angels and granting him direct access to God.
It should now be clear that Palamas' teaching on God's image in man is thoroughly patristic in its foundation, for it draws upon a commonly used analogy for understanding the Trinity and associates this with the doctrine of the image, as certain earlier writers had done, at least tentatively. Gregory's doctrine is also clearly a development both in certain details and in its general thrust. The analysis of the four meanings of λόγος in chapter 35 goes beyond the common distinction between internal and external word.[79] Most importantly, Gregory determined that there is a difference between the divine image in man and the divine image in the angels, and this difference gives to man a place in the hierarchy next after God and above the angels.
c. Two Contemporary Parallels
i. Gregory of Sinai
There is one further passage from the works of Gregory Palamas which mentions the triadic character of the divine image in man. This text appears near the beginning of Homily 60, which bears the rubric, Ρηθεῖσα ἐν τῇ ἁγίᾳ ἑορτῇ τῶν φώτων, ἐν ᾖ και κατά τό ἐγχωροῦν ἔκφρασις τοῦ μυστηρίου τοῦ Χριστοῦ βαπτίσματος. Pronounced on the Feast of the Theophany celebrating Christ's baptism, this homily provides a possible link between Gregory Palamas and Gregory of Sinai. The passage in question is the following.[80]
Μέγα και ὑψηλόν, το τοῖς ὀλίγοις τούτοις ρήμασιν ἐμπεριειλημμένον μυστήριον τοῦ Χριστοῦ βαπτίσματος, δυσθεώρητόν τε και δυσερμήνευτον, και οὐχ ἦττον δυσκατάληπτον. ἀλλ' ἐπεί σωτήριον διαφερόντες, τῷ τάς γραφάς ἐρευνᾶν προτρεψαμένῳ πεισθέντες και θαρρήσαντες ἀνιχνεύσωμεν ἐφ' ὃσον ἐφικτόν τοῦ μυστηρίου τήν δύναμιν καθάπερ οὖν τήν ἀρχήν μετά τό εἰπεῖν τόν θεόν, Ποιήσωμεν ἄνθρωπον κατ' εἰκόνα διά τοῦ πρός αὐτόν ἐμφυσήματος τό ζωαρχικόν πνεῦμα ἐκφνέν τε και δοθέν συνεξέφηνε τό καθ΄ ὑπόστατασιν τῆς δημιουργοῦ θεότητος τριαδικόν, ἐπί τῶν ἄλλων κτισμάτων ἄτε μόνῳ ρήματι προαγομένων τοῦ λόγου και τοῦ λέγοντος πατρός ἐκφαινομένων μόνον. οὓτω νῦν τῆς ἡμετέρας φύσεως ἀναπλαττομένης ἐν Χριστῷ, φανερωθέν τό πνεῦμα τό πνεῦμα τό ἃγιον διά τῆς ἐκ τῶν ὑπερουρανίων πρός αὐτόν ἐν Ἰορδάνῃ βαπτιζόμενον καθόδου, τό σωστικόν τῶν λογικῶν κτισμάτων τῆς ἀνωτάτω τε και παντουργοῦ τριάδος ἐφανέρωσε μυστήριον. τίνος δ΄ ἓνεκεν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου πλαττομένου τε και ἀναπλαττομένου τό τῆς ἀγίας τριάδος φανεροῦται μυστήριον : οὑ μόνον ὃτι μόνος μύστης και προσκυνητής ἐπίγειός ἐστιν αὐτῆς, ἀλλ΄ ὃτι και μόνος κατ΄ εἰκόνα ταύτης. τα μέν γάρ αἰσθητικά και ἄλογα τῶν ζώων πνεῦμα μόνον ἔχει ζωτικόν, ἀλλ΄ οὑδέ τοῦτο καθ΄ ἐαυτό ὑφίστασθαι δυνάμενον. νοῦ δέ και λόγου τελέως ἀμοιρεῖ. τά δέ ὑπέρ αἴσθησιν παντάπασιν, ἄγγελοί τε και ἀρχάγγελοι, ἄτε νοεροί και λογικοί, νοῦν ἔχουσι και λόγον, ἀλλ΄ οὑχί και πνεῦμα ζωοποιόν, ἐπεί μηδέ σῶμα τό παρ΄ αὐτοῦ ζωοποιούμενον. ἄνθρωπος δέ μόνος κατ΄ εἰκόνα τῆς τρισυποστάτου φύσεως νοῦν ἔχει και λόγον και πνεῦμα τοῦ σώματος ζωοποιόν, ἐπεί και σῶμα τό ζωοποιούμενον. ὡς οὖν ἀναπλαττομένης τῆς ἡμῶν φύσεως ἐν Ἰορδάνῃ φανερωθείσης τῆς ἀνωτάτω τε και παντουργοῦ τριάδος, οἴά τινος ἀρχετύπου τῆς κατά ψυχῆς ἡμῶν εἰκόνος, οἱ μέν κατά Χριστόν μετά Χριστόν βαπτίζοντες εἰς τρεῖς βαπτίζουσι καταδύσεις, ὁ δέ Ἰωάννης ἐν τῷ Ἰωάννης ἐν τῷ Ἰορδάνῃ εἰς μίαν κατάδυσιν ἐβάπτιζε και τοῦτο ἐπισημαινόμενος ὁ εὐαγγελιστής ἐβάπτιζε. και τοῦτο ἐπισημαινόμενος ὁ εὐαγγελιστής Ματθαῖος, Βαπτισθείς, φήσιν, ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἀνέβη εὐθύς ἀπό τοῦ ὕδατος.Great and lofty, my brothers, is the mystery of Christ's baptism, combined in these few words (Mt 3.16–17), hard to fathom and to explain, and no less difficult to comprehend. But since this mystery has special salvific significance, and persuaded by the one who has urged us to examine the scriptures (Jn 5.39), we shall boldly investigate the mystery insofar as this may be possible. In the beginning, therefore, after God said, «Let us make man in our image and likeness (Gen 1.26),» and at the time when our nature was formed in Adam, the life-giving Spirit was revealed and bestowed through the divine insufflation and at the same time the Spirit manifested the tripersonal reality of the Creator's divinity. But in the case of other creatures, inasmuch as they were brought forth by a word alone, the Word and the Father who spoke the Word were alone made manifest. Similarly, now that our nature has been formed anew in Christ, the Holy Spirit, revealed through his descent from the supercelestial regions to the one who was baptized in the Jordan, has manifested the mystery of the supreme and omnipotent Trinity as salvific for rational creatures. For what reason was the mystery of the holy Trinity revealed when man was formed and also when he was formed anew? It was not only because he alone of earthly creatures is an initiate and worshipper of the Trinity,[81] but also because he alone is in the image of the Trinity. The sensate and irrational animals, on the one hand, possess only a vivifying spirit, but this is unable to subsist of itself, and they are deprived completely of mind and word. Beings that transcend the senses absolutely, on the other hand, namely, angels and archangels, inasmuch as they are intellectual and rational, possess mind and word but not a vivifying spirit, since they have no body to be vivified by it. Man alone, in the image of the trihypostatic nature, possesses mind and word and a spirit to vivify the body, since the body is the object vivified. Therefore, since our nature was formed anew when the supreme and omnipotent Trinity was manifested in the Jordan as a sort of archetype for the image in our soul, those after Christ who baptize in Christ baptize with three immersions, whereas John baptized in the Jordan with one immersion. And this is what the evangelist Matthew indicated when he said, «After he was baptized Jesus went up immediately from the water» (Mt 3.16).
The homily thus presents a neat and succinct expression of the more important features of the image doctrine in the Capita 150.
D. Balfour recently published for the first time a Homily On the Transfiguration by Gregory of Sinai.[82] Paragraphs 18–21 offer a close parallel to the Palamite image doctrine. The discussion opens with the scripture text, «This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased» (Mt 17.5). The very same quotation introduces the passage from Palamas’ Homily 60, except that it was taken from the narrative of Christ's baptism (Mt 3.17b) and the preceding verse and a half is also given.[83]
Most of paragraph 18 in the Transfiguration homily consists of a somewhat wordy, extended paraphrase of the scripture verse. For the purposes of comparison with Palamas’ Capita 150 only three phrases are of interest here. Firstly, the Father of the Word is described as the transcendent Mind beyond mind (νοῦς ὁ ὑπέρ νοῦν ὑπερούσιος).[84] Secondly, it is said that we shall see the archetype in the image and from our own selves the transcendent one (ἐν τῇ εἰκόνι τό ἀρχέτυπον, ἐξ ἑαυτῶν τό ὑπερούσιον).[85] And thirdly, no one shall see and know the Father unless the Son reveal him, «as the word reveals the mind hidden in it and the mind reveals in the spirit the word which proceeds from it.»[86]
The next two paragraphs develop this last statement in detail. The mind contains naturally the word which reveals it; the word possesses by nature the mind which begets it; and voice makes the word known, for it is a living and revelatory energy of the word. This constitutes an analogy for the Trinity, where in the Spirit the Son is known, in the Son the Father is known by nature and substance, and in the Father the Son is known by causal relationship and the Spirit by procession. But the Sinaite notes that certain qualifications are necessary. It must be understood that the mind experiences no dissipation in its association with the word but rather belongs to the word naturally and hypostatically. The word does not go form and dissolve into the air. Rather it refers to rationality itself, as it inheres hypostatically in the mind. Nor does spirit refer to a mere movement of the air.[87] It is an essential living power which is self-subsistent, comes forth in word and produces sound in the air.[88]
For Gregory of Sinai this analogy is linked directly to the image doctrine. «Man is the image and glory of the Trinity in that he possesses essentially and hypostatically a mind and word and spirit which belong to a single nature and which are inseparable.»[89] However, great care must be exercised in using natural phenomena as paradigms for understanding divine realities in an orthodox manner. This is especially true for examples which we may draw from our own human nature. And yet, Gregory insists, such examples can be more secure and are a true means of proof (para. 21). The remaining developments in paragraphs 21 and 22 are of less interest for comparison with Palamas' doctrine.
The same teaching is summarized in the Acrostic Chapters of Gregory the Sinaite:
In every aspect God is known and referred to as triadic. He is uncircumscribed; he upholds all things and his foresight provides for them through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. There is no way that can be named, in which any one of the persons can be spoken or thought of apart from the other two.
In like manner there is in man mind, word and spirit. Neither can mind exist without word nor without spirit; and they exist in one another and of themselves. For mind speaks through the word and word is made manifest through the spirit. According to this model man bears an obscure image of the ineffable and archetypal Trinity, thus indicating the divine image in which he was made.[90]
The teaching on the divine image in man in the Capita 150 and in the other writings of Gregory Palamas is clearly more sophisticated than that found in the works of Gregory of Sinai. Nevertheless, the parallels are striking, especially given the historical contemporaneity of the two writers. In another of his recent articles on the Sinaite, D. Balfour has re-examined the evidence for an association of Gregory Palamas with Gregory of Sinai as his spiritual father (between 1323–1325).[91] The arguments in favour of this relationship are convincing. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that there was a direct dependence of Palamas on Gregory of Sinai in the case of the doctrine of God's image in man.
ii. Theoleptos of Philadelpheia
The second contemporary parallel offers a possible solution to the vexing problem of finding a source for Palamas' analogy for the Holy Spirit as the mind's love for its own immanent word. The relevant texts are found in a work by Theoleptos of Philadelpheia entitled Μερική διατράνωσις πρός ὑπόμνησιν ἄγουσα τῶν παρά τοῦ ταπεινοῦ Φιλαδελφείας Θεολήπτου διαφόρως λαληθέντων τῇ σεβασμιωτάτῃ βασιλίσσῃ Εὐλογίᾳ μοναχῇ και τῇ μετ΄ αὐτῆς και ὑπ΄ αὐτῆς και ὑπ΄ αὐτήν Ἀγαθονίκῃ μοναχῇ. At first in an ascetical context and later in a theological one Theoleptos referred to the triad of mind, word and love (νοῦς, λόγος, ἔρως / ἀγάπη). The first set of texts appears at the very beginning of the work:[92]
Ὁ νοῦς λογιστικήν ἔχων δύναμιν και ἐρωτικήν, διά μέν τῆς λογικῆς δυνάμεως ἐργάζεται τούς τρόπους τῶν ἀρετῶν, θείοις λόγοις και διανοήμασιν ἐμμελετᾷ, διασκέπτεται τά ὄντα ἀπταίστως, διαλαμβάνει τήν ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν ἀλήθειαν ἀπλανῶς, και διά τῆς ἀληθείας εἰς θεογνωσίαν ἔρχεται. διά μέν οὗν τῆς λογικῆς δυνάμεως διακρίνων τά κακά ἀπό τῶν καλῶν και ποιῶν τά καλά, και ζητῶν και εὑρίσκων τόν θεόν, ὡς εἴρηται, ἑνοῦται αὐτῷ διά τῆς ἐρωτικῆς δυνάμεως, διά τῆς ἀγάπης αὐτῷ συναπτόμενος και τῷ κάλλει τῆς θεωρίας αὐτοῦ μόνης ἐνευφραινόμενος... Οὓτω μέν οὗν ἐνεργεῖ ὁ νοῦς τῇ τοῦ λόγου δυνάμει παρέχων τό κῥάτος. και οὃτως ἐνεργεῖται τῷ πρός θεόν θερμοτάτῳ ἓρωτι συνδεόμενος... Φεύγων γάρ ὁ νοῦς τά ἔξω και συναγόμενος ἐπί τά ἔνδον. πρός ἑαυτόν ἐπανάγεται. εἴτουν τῷ φυσικῶς κατά διάνοιαν κρυπτομένῳ ἑαυτοῦ λόγῳ συγγίνεται, και διά τοῦ συνόντος αὑτῷ οὐσιωδῶς λόγου συνάπτεται τῇ εὐχῇ, και διά τῆς εὐχῆς εἰς γωῶσιν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀναβαίνει ὃλης τῆς ἀγαπητικῆς δυνάμεώς τε και διαθέσεως... Ὁ θεός λόγος τόν ἀνθρώπον νοῦν λογικόν διαπλάσας, συνέζευξεν αὐτῷ και τήν τοῦ ἔρωτος δύναμιν, ὃπως ὁ τῆς φύσεως λόγος τῷ πόθῳ τῆς ψυχῆς συνεργῷ χρώμενος ἐπιτελεῖ τάς ἀγαθάς πράξεις, ἳνα αἰ ἀρεταί ἐπιτιθέμεναι τῇ ψυχῇ καθάπερ χρώματα τῇ εἰκόνι τήν ἀκριβῆ μίμησιν τῆς θείας ὁμοιώμεναι διασώζωσι, και οὔτω τό κατ΄ εἰκόνα και καθ΄ ὁμοίωσιν διαφυλάττηται.
The mind is endowed with the powers of reason and love, and through its rational power the mind devotes its labour to the ways of virtue, meditates on divine words and thoughts, conducts precise examination of beings, inerrantly distinguishes the truth in beings and through the truth attains to knowledge of God. Thus, when the mind uses its rational power to discriminate between good and evil and does the good, when it seeks and finds God, as scripture says (Mt 7.7–8), the mind enters into union with him through its power of love, joining itself to him by means of love and finding its joy in the beauty of contemplating God alone... (Theoleptos proceeds to mention the effects of this union)… This, then, is how the mind operates when it provides strength to the power of reason and this is how it is operated upon when it becomes bound to God by a most fervent love... (Theoleptos then notes the deleterious effects of the mind's relation to the senses)... When the mind flees externals and gathers itself inwards, it returns to itself: that is, the mind holds converse with its own word naturally hidden within the discursive intellect, and through the word essentially associated with it the mind joins itself to prayer, and through prayer it ascends to knowledge of God with all its power and disposition of love... (Further development of the same theme)... When God the Word fashioned the human mind with a faculty of reason, he joined to it also the power of love so that the natural word might use the soul's desire as an aid in performing good deeds, in order that the virtues affixed to the soul, like colours on an icon, may assure the exact imitation of the divine likeness, and thus the image and likeness may be preserved.
Later, towards the end of the work, Theoleptos produced a sort of meditation on the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. The descent of the Saviour into the water and his emergence point to the way of moral virtue. The sight of the heavens split asunder initiates us into the natural contemplation of beings (τήν φυσικήν θεωρίαν τῶν ὄντων). The Spirit's descent upon Christ in the form of a dove and the Father's witness to his Sonship introduce us to true theology (τήν ακριβῆν θεολογίαν). Christ is the accomplishment of virtue, the guide to the knowledge of beings and the supreme interpreter of theology. He who is in the bosom of the Father both knows the Father and is known by the Father.[93]
The Spirit's descent from above upon the Son indicates the hypostatic procession of the Spirit from the Father and his natural relationship (οἰκειότητα φυσικήν) to the Son. The Father is cause of the Son as the begetter (γεννήτωρ) and of the Spirit as the one who sends forth (προβολεύς).[94]
The teaching of the Saviour in the Gospels accords with this mystagogy revealed in the baptism of Christ. The Spirit of Truth (i.e., of the Son) proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son as his Spirit. He is not separated from the Father from whom he proceeds nor distanced from the Son in whom he rests; rather, the Spirit remains with him and accompanies him as consubstantial and proper to him by nature.[95]
All should drink and receive illumination from the waters of the Jordan and from the spring of the Gospel. But with every effort the Italian appendage (ἰταλικήν προσθήκην, viz. the filioque) must be eschewed as a disturbance troubling the pure spring of theology.[96] At this point Theoleptos introduced his triform analogy.[97]
Ὤσπερ τι κάτοπτρον διαυγέστατον δέδωκεν ἡμῖν ὁ θεός τόν τῆς φύσεως λόγον, ὃπως ἀπό τῆς τοῦ κόσμου διαχύσεως πρός αὐτόν κεκαθαρμένον ὄντα ἐπιστρεφόμενοι, δι΄ αὐτοῦ πρός τόν θεόν ἀναγόμεθα. μακάριοι, γάρ, φήσι, οι καθαροί τῇ καρδίᾳ ὃτι αὐτοί τόν θεόν ὄψονται. πρῶτον ὁ νοῦς ζητεῖ και εὑρίσκει, εἶτα ἑνοῦται τῷ εὐρεθέντι. και τήν μέν ζήτησιν ποιεῖται διά τοῦ λόγου, τήν δέ ἓνωσιν διά τῆς ἀγάπης. και ἡ μέν διά τοῦ λόγου ζήτησις γίνεται διά τήν ἀλήθειαν, ἡ δέ τῆς ἀγάπης ἓνωσις διά τό ἀγαθόν. τούτων τήν ἀνάγνωσιν διέρχου, μή ἀργῶς ἀλλ΄ ἑναργῶς, μή παροδικῶς ἀλλ' ἐπιστημονικῶς. μή ρήματα ἐπισκεπτομένη διανοίας ἐκτός, ἀλλά βαπτίζουσα τόν νοῦν εἰς τό βάθος τῶν νοουμένων, ἴνα ἐκεῖθεν ἑλκύσῃς πνεῦμα.
God has given to us the natural word as a very clear mirror so that when we turn away from the dissipation of the world towards that word which has been purified we are led to God. For scripture says, «Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God» (Mt 5.8). First, the mind seeks and finds (Mt 7.7–8). Then, it is united to the one it has found. The seeking is effected through the word and the union through love. The seeking through the word is for the sake of the truth and the union of love for the sake of the good. Read through these things carefully, not in idleness but with perspicacity, not cursorily but with understanding. Do not examine the words apart from their meaning, but rather baptize your mind in the depths of these considerations in order that you may draw forth from them the Spirit.
Several points should be noted. First, the baptism of Christ is the occasion for the discussion, as in the text from Palamas' Homily 60 quoted above. Second, Theoleptos' interest centres upon the orthodox doctrine of the trinitarian processions and he introduces his analogy as a means of approaching this mystery. Without any detailed explanation, he simply refers the reader to the mind's pursuit of virtue and of God through its own natural word and its attainment of union through love. The reader is left to ponder this carefully and so penetrate the meaning.
Through another treatise written by Theoleptos, it is possible to delve still further into his theology of the divine image in man. The work in question is relatively well-known: it appears in the Philokalia and was analyzed in detail by S. Salaville.[98] It bears the title: Λόγος τήν ἐν Χριστῷ κρυπτήν ἐργασίαν διασαφῶν. και δεικνύς ὡς ἐν βραχεῖ τοῦ μοναδικοῦ ἐπαγγέλματος τόν σκόπον. The relevant passages are as follows:[99]
Προσευχή δέ ἐστι διαλογή διανοίας πρός κύριον, ρήματα δεήσεως διανύουσα μετά τῆς νοῦ πρός τόν θεόν ὁλικῆς ἀτενίσεως. τῆς διανοίας γάρ συνεχῶς ὑπαγορευούσης τό τοῦ κυρίου ὄνομα και τοῦ νοῦ ἐναργῶς τῇ ἐπικλήσει τοῦ θείου ὀνόματος προσέχοντος, τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ γνώσεως τό φῶς καθάπερ φωτεινή νεφέλη πᾶσαν ἐπισκιάζει τήν ψυχήν. ... νοῦ δέ και λόγου και πνεύματος προσπιπτόντων τῷ θεῷ, τοῦ μέν διά προσοχῆς, τοῦ δέ δι΄ ἐπικλήσεως, τοῦ δέ διά κατανύξεως και ἀγάπης. ὃλος ὁ ἔνδον ἄνθρωπος λειτουργεῖ τῷ κυρίῳ... και ὀρᾶται ἡ προσευχή ἐκ τοῦ ὑπαγορεύειν ἀσιγήτως τό θεῖον ὄνομα συμφωνία και ἓνωσις νοῦ και λόγου και ψυχῆς. ὃπου γάρ, φησίν, εἰσί δύο ἢ τρεῖς ἐν τῷ ἐμῷ ὀνόματι, ἐκεῖ εἰμι ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν. οὖτως οὑν ἡ προσευχή τάς τῆς ψυχῆς δυνάμεις ἀπό τοῦ διαμερισμοῦ τῶν παθῶν ἀνακαλιυμένη και πρός ἀλλήλας και πρός ἑαυτήν συνδέουσα, τήν τριμέρῆ ψυχήν τῷ ἐν τρισίν ὑποστάσεσιν ἑνί θεῷ οἰκειοῖ... και ἡ καθαρά προσευχή, νοῦν και λόγον και πνεῦμα πρός ἑαυτήν συνάπτουσα, διά μέν τοῦ λόγου τό ὃνομα τοῦ θεοῦ ὑπαγορεύει και τήν δέησιν ἀναφέρει, διά δέ τοῦ νοῦ τῷ παρακαλουμένῳ θεῷ ἐνατενίζει ἀρεμβάστως, διά δέ τοῦ πνεύματος τήν κατάνυξιν, τήν ταπείνωσιν και τήν ἀγάπην ἐμφανίζει, και οὔτω δυσωπεῖ τήν ἄναρχον τριάδα, τον πατέρα και τόν υἰόν και τό ἂγιον πνεῦμα, τον ἓνα θεόν.
Prayer is a dialogue of the discursive intellect with the Lord. The discursive intellect runs through the words of supplication with the mind's gaze fixed entirely on God. It repeats the Name of the Lord without ceasing and the mind devotes its well-focused attention to the Invocation of the Divine Name and the light of the knowledge of God, like a luminous cloud, overshadows the entire soul... When mind, word and spirit are prostrate before God, the first by attention, the second by Invocation, the third by compunction and love, then the entire inner man serves the Lord... Prayer, which consists of the silent repetition of the Divine Name, can be seen as the harmony and union of mind, word and soul, for «where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them» (Mt 18.20). In this way, then, prayer calls the powers of the soul back from their dispersion among the passions and binds them to one another and to itself, uniting the tripartite soul to the one God in three hypostases…. Pure prayer, which joins together within itself mind, word and spirit, invokes the Name of God by means of the word and offers up supplication, gazes without distraction upon God by means of the mind, manifests its compunction, humility and love by means of the spirit, and thus importunes the one God and eternal Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
In the Μεριχἡ Διατράνωσις Theoleptos described the activity of the three parts of the soul. Fleeing external things and dissipation among the senses, the mind seeks God through its own natural word, which helps it discriminate between good and evil. Then, using prayer as the means, the mind with its word attains union with God in love. Later, in a meditation on Christ's baptism in the Jordan, Theoleptos appealed to the triform image in man as an obscure reflection of the Trinity. Then, in his Discourse On the Hidden Life in Christ, Theoleptos associated this doctrine of the image with the Jesus Prayer. The mind directs its attentive gaze towards God, while the word repeats the Invocation of the Divine Name and the spirit evokes in the soul compunction, humility and love. In this way, pure prayer guides the soul towards union with the one God in three persons.
The coincidences are so felicitous that there can be little doubt regarding the dependence of Gregory Palamas on the teaching of Theoleptos of Philadelpheia. Nor is the direct historical association lacking. In the course of his discussion on the hesychast method of the Jesus Prayer, Palamas explicitly referred to Theoleptos as one of his teachers.
Certain men, who have born witness shortly before our time and who have been recognized as possessing the power of the Holy Spirit, have passed these teachings on to us by word of mouth (διὰ στόματος οἰκείου); in particular, this theologian, this veritable theologian and surest visionary of the true mysteries of God, who was famous in our day; I refer to the well-named Theoleptos, bishop of Philadelpheia, or rather, one who from there illumined the world as from a lampstand (cf. Rev 1.20, 3.7–13).[100]
The same information is given by Philotheos Kokkinos in his biography of Gregory Palamas.
Gregory received these and other teachings besides from Theoleptos, that truly famous luminary of Philadelpheia, who moved on, or rather went up from the sacred hesychia and community of the Holy Mountain to assume the leadership of the Church (of Philadelpheia). Theoleptos served Gregory as the very best of spiritual fathers and guides, and from him Gregory received an excellent initiation in sacred vigilance and intellectual prayer. In a marvellous way, Gregory attained the habitual practice of this prayer even while he was still living in the midst of the tumults of the world.[101]
Palamas entered monastic life sometime between 1314 and 1316 and so the period of his tutelage under Theoleptos would have been immediately prior to this, during his late teens.[102] At this time when Theoleptos was metropolitan of Philadelpheia, he was probably in Constantinople on occasion, for he was spiritual director to the Monastery of Christ the Philanthropic Saviour.[103] Presumably, Palamas had been in contact with him during such visits or perhaps by correspondence. The implication of Palamas’ statement in the Triads and that of Philotheos point to direct personal contact.[104]
Recognition of Human Weakness and the Need for Healing (41–63)
Back in chapter 29 Palamas had mentioned the three elements of saving knowledge: man's knowledge of God, his understanding of himself and his proper rank, and the mind's knowledge of its own weakness and of its need for healing. The focus of chapters 41–63 is on the third element. Palamas set this section firmly in the context of the image doctrine by using the literary device of inclusio. The last chapter (c. 40) of the previous section closes the discussion of the image doctrine and announces the topic of the next section: man must learn to know and preserve his own dignity and rank. Then, in the concluding chapters (c. 62–63), Palamas returned to the subject of the divine image and man's proper τάξις in the hierarchy.
Another thread that runs through this section is the importance attached to μνήμη and θεωρία as both the means and the end of man's search for healing. The triadic nature of man must adorn itself with the continual remembrance and contemplation of God (c. 40). The ancestors of our race wilfully removed themselves from the remembrance and contemplation of God (c. 46). They should never have forgotten God, but rather, they should have grown into the perfect contemplation of God (c. 50). For Palamas the Jesus Prayer was the means par excellence for restoring man to continual remembrance of God.
The chapters of this section do not require a detailed commentary. They are straightforward and even homiletic in character. Indeed, in several cases there is a direct association with Gregory's homilies, in particular, Homilies 16, 19 and 31. Chapters 41–44 cover the temptation by Satan and the fall of Adam and Eve. Their sin was ultimately the free choice to abandon their rank and serve creation instead of the Creator. The result was separation from God and death of the soul (c. 45–48). The forbidden tree of paradise may be seen to represent the allurements of sensible realities which readily draw the immature away from the remembrance of God (c. 49–50). God in his mercy and love delayed the sentence of bodily death in order to give man a second chance through the saving economy of the incarnation (c. 51–56). As our ancestors did, so we too have our tree and our command from God. We must repent and touch forbidden things no more (c. 56–58). Chapters 59–61 are a commentary on Jn 4.23–24: «True worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.» Palamas wanted to stress here the importance of a right understanding and worship of God, or, in other words, man's knowledge of God and of his own self. Finally, the image doctrine comes round once again. Men are more perfectly in the image of God because God has granted to man a stewardship over creation, and so man is not only ruled by God but also rules over earthly creation (c. 62). The superiority of the divine image in man also appears in the threefold character of human knowledge (νοερόν, λογικόν, αἰσθητικόν), which therefore encompasses every form of knowledge (c. 63).[105] With this return to the image doctrine Palamas concluded the first section of the Capita 150.
2. The Later Chapters of the Capita 150
A. Introduction
With chapter 64 Gregory Palamas turned to the specific problems presented by the doctrinal errors of Barlaam the Calabrian and Gregory Akindynos. The transition is noted in c. 64: ἴνα γάρ τἄλλα νῦν ἀφῶ. The divisions in this section of the Capita 150 are not always as easily discernible as in the first section. At times, a division is clearly marked off because it represents a single source: the best example is c. 113–121, which were taken entirely from Palamas' Reply on Cyril. At other times, the structure is loose and the relation between chapters is not very evident (e.g., 72–84). For the reader's convenience, but at the risk of oversimplification, I offer the following schematic overview.
Refutation of the Doctrines of Barlaam and Akindynos
I. Divine Illumination (64–67)
64. The perfection of the likeness is effected by illumination.
65. Divine illumination is an uncreated reality distinct from the substance of God. {CA}
66. The Light of Tabor and the Light of the future age. {H 16}
67. Adam's garment of Light in paradise and Paul's illumination on the Damascus Road. {H 16}
II. Multiplicity of the Divine Energies (68–71)
68. The uncreated energy is indivisibly divided.
69. Divine illuminations and graces can be understood as plural in number.
The ‘seven spirits’ mentioned in Is 11.1–2. {CA}
These refer to the uncreated, divine energies. {CA}
III. Basic Doctrines (72–84)
The energies and powers of God are pre-eternal and uncreated.
Not the divine energy, but its product is a creature.
74. The divine energy, accessible to all, is distinct from the divine substance, and from the hypostasis of the Spirit.
Union with God means union with the uncreated energy of the Spirit.
Quotations from Maximus, Psalms, Basil.
Quotations from Gregory Nazianzen, Pseudo-Dionysius and John Chrysostom.
78. The absolute transcendence of God's nature and the participability of his energy.
79. The infinite gap between God and man can be bridged only by the practice of virtue.
80. Divine truths have no adequate human expression.
81. Indivisibly distinct and dividedly united.
82. The divine substance remains unknowable while the realities around it can be known from creatures. {U}
83. The Eunomianism of Barlaam and Akindynos.
84. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium.
IV. The Dionysian Doctrine of Union and Distinction (85–95)
85. There is another distinction in God beyond that of the hypostases.
86. The incomprehensible processions and communications of God are uncreated. {U}
87. The uncreated character of the divine participations and exemplars. {U}
88. The absolute participations cannot be ranged among creatures any more than can the Spirit.
89. Absolute existence and the other transcendent ‘participations’.
90. The creative providences and goodnesses must be uncreated. {U}
91. The divine providences and goodnesses constitute the uncreated energy of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. {U}
92. The divine communications are natural and essential energies of God; their effects are created. {U}
The divine energy and grace of the Spirit. {CA}
94. No creature can participate in the divine nature. {CA}
95. Neither is the energy created nor is it identical with the substance of God.
V. Absurdities Deriving from the Akindynist Doctrines (96–103)
96. Either creatures are God by substance or the Son and Spirit are creatures.
97. Creating, begetting and sending forth are effected by the Father, through the Son. in the Spirit.
98. The Son is created from the Father's will.
99. There are not only many energies in God but many substances.
100. The energies (i.e., will and foreknowledge) are identical and so God must will evil or not possess foreknowledge.
101. If creating and foreknowledge are identical, the latter will be limited by time.
102. Or, creatures will be without beginning just as God is.
103. Or, creating will proceed from God's nature and not his will.
VI. The Imparticipability of God’s Substance (104–112)
104. All beings participate in God's sustaining energy, but not in his substance.
105. Those worthy of divinization participate in the divine energy in another way.
106. The transcendence of the divine nature and the problem of attributing names to it. {T}
107. The substance is imparticipable; the energy is participable. {T}
108. Absurdities that would result from participation in God's substance. {T}
109. Participation in God's substance would render the latter multi-hypostatic. {T}
110. Because it is indivisible, the substance of God is imparticipable.{T}
111. Participation in a substance implies a certain identity of substance. {T}
112. The divine energy, the three persons and the one God. {U}
VII. The Reply on Cyril (113–121)
113. There is one life and power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. {K}
114. The triune God possesses life absolutely, while being also our life by cause. {K}
115. The Son is the sole uncreated energy. {K}
116. The Son is called life and bestows life, but the life he bestows is not the divine substance. {K}
117. The one divine substance and its many attributes are not identical. {K}
118. The positive attributes of God do not divulge the divine substance from which they are distinct. {K}
119. Identification of substance and attributes would introduce composition in God. {K}
120. The Sabellianism of the Akindynists. {K}
121. In effect, the Akindynists attempt to show that Cyril contradicts himself. {K}
VIII. The Contra Acindynum (122–131)
122. The enhypostatic energy and power of the Spirit. (CA)
123. Apophatic and cataphatic theology.
124. The Akindynists and the Eunomians. (CA)
125. Similarities in their arguments. (CA)
126. Their similarities – continued. (CA)
127. The divine energy is neither substance nor accident. (CA)
128. Gregory Nazianzen on the same subject (CA)
129. The witness of John Damascene. (CA)
130. A false interpretation of Gregory Nazianzen by the Akindynists. (CA)
131. No disagreement between John Damascene and Gregory Nazianzen. (CA)
IX. Distinction of the Divine Substance and the Divine Energy (132–145)
132. ‘Relationes ad intra’ and ‘relationes ad extra’.
133. Creating and acting are proper attributes of God alone.
134. God is a transcendent substance in which there are observed only relation and creation.
135. God possesses more than substance alone.
136. The divine substance without an energy would be reduced to a mere abstraction.
137. The Akindynists deny to God a natural energy distinct from his substance.
138. One common, uncreated energy of the three hypostases.
139. The Akindynists insist that God's energy is created.
140. Only the effects of the divine energy can be called creatures.
141. The Akindynists are ultimately denying God's self-revelation.
142. The Akindynists are similar to the followers of Sabellius.
143. The witness of the Fathers on the distinction of the divine substance and energy.
144. The Akindynists fall into the absurdity of making God a creature.
145. The substance-energy distinction in God does not compromise the divine simplicity.
X. The Light of Tabor (146–150)
146. Scriptural and patristic testimonia on the Transfiguration.
147. The Akindynists call the Light of Tabor created and the Palamites they call ditheists.
148. The synodal condemnation of the Akindynists.
149. At times, the Akindynists say the Light is uncreated but identical with the divine substance.
150. They would thus have God's substance visible; or in turn they would make the Light created.
Divine Illumination (64–67)
The first topic in this new division of the Capita 150 is divine illumination. As far as concerns the divine image in man, we are superior to the angels, but the angels are superior to man, in that they possess a greater degree of illumination and, in this sense, likeness to God (c. 64). For both men and angels, one of the principal gifts bestowed by illumination is knowledge of beings (c. 65). Adam was clothed in a garment of divine illumination while he dwelt in paradise under God's command, but he lost this gift in the Fall. Access to this grace was restored to man in the incarnation and manifested anew by Christ on Mount Tabor, revealing what we shall become in the future age. The apostle Paul, who himself received a pledge of this illumination in his vision on the road to Damascus, referred to it as «our heavenly dwelling place» (2Cor 5.2: c. 66–67).
In view of the gifts bestowed by illumination and the patristic and scriptural witnesses to it, Palamas concluded that it must be an uncreated reality distinct from the divine substance. By teaching a contrary doctrine Barlaam and Akindynos were clearly in the wrong.
Palamas seems to have put these chapters together from rather disparate sources. C. 64 and 65 were based at least in part on Contra Acindynum 6.9, but the focus of interest in the latter is not illumination but the nature of the light of the angels. ca 6.8–9 bear the following titles:[106]
8. God himself is the light of the eternal angels, which exists before the world and transcends it. Further, by declaring this to be created, Akindynos proves God to be created as well.
9. Demonstration that, not we, but Barlaam and Akindynos are the ones who are teaching that there is a light between God and angels which is neither God nor angel. Further, God is called light not by substance but by energy.
Chapters 66 and 67 are taken almost entirely from Homily 16: On the Economy in the Flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ;
Multiplicity of the Divine Energies (68–71)
In this brief section Palamas sought to show that, while the substance of God is always referred to as one, the divine and uncreated energies can be considered as multiple, for they are indivisibly distinct from the divine substance. Chapters 68–69 form an original introduction to the subject, while the next two chapters constitute a résumé of an earlier discussion in the Contra Acindynum.[107]
Demonstration that the seven spirits which have come to rest upon Christ according to the prophecy are identical with the Holy Spirit; and that Akindynos calls the Spirit a creature in affirming that these are creatures.
Concerning the fear of the Spirit, both as to what it is and how it arises in those deemed worthy.
Further concerning these seven spirits, that they are uncreated. An explanation or the proof text maliciously advanced by Akindynos against these. Also concerning creation and operation.
This discussion in fact dates back to 1341, when Palamas wrote his third letter to Akindynos:[108]
For the deifying gift of God is his energy, which the great Dionysius and all the other theologians everywhere call divinity, while insisting that the title of divinity belongs to the divine energy rather than to the divine substance. And according to Gregory the Theologian, «Isaias was fond of calling the energies of the Spirit spirits.» Then, just as the prophet was not compromising the unity of the Spirit when he called the energies of the Spirit seven spirits, so too, as shown above, also providence is given the name divinity for it is an energy of God (as also the power of vision and the divinizing grace of God, i.e., divinization), and the unity of the Godhead is not destroyed.
The same discussion is continued in Union 33 (PS 2:1–12) and dob 27 (PS 2:189.12–14).
Basic Doctrines (72–84)
These chapters contain the essentials of Gregory Palamas’ position against Akindynos and his supporters. The argumentation from chapter to chapter is very involved, but it can be summarized as follows.
The divine energy is uncreated, distinct from the divine substance and from the trinitarian hypostases. The divine energy alone is accessible to creatures, while the substance of God, his inner life and being, remains forever inaccessible and utterly transcendent to all created reality. For both men and angels, union with God means participation in the energy which is truly God, yet distinct from his substance which is imparticipable. The distinction between God's substance and energy is necessary to explain the fact that God in his aseity is totally beyond nature and being but still, at the same time, intimately close to the realm of creation. There is both a natural participation in the divine energy common to all created beings and a participation granted solely to rational beings who have freely chosen the good.
One of the consequences of the antinomy of God's remoteness and intimacy with respect to the created realm is the real inadequacy of human concepts and language in expressing the realities of God. Many divine truths are beyond human expression and those that are not must be expressed in accord with the guidance of the Spirit, i.e., with the aid of grace. Starting with created realities, no one can attain any idea or concept of God as he is in himself: only those realities or truths surrounding the substance are attainable.
The Akindynist party held doctrines diametrically opposed to these. They emphasized the divine unity, simplicity and transcendence to the point of compromising the presence of any distinction in God, including that of the persons. Everything in God must be the divine substance, alone uncreated. Anything distinct from the substance cannot be God and must consequently be created. Therefore, union with God must mean union with his substance or with some sort of created energies. And since the Akindynists analyzed Palamite statements entirely on a human level without allowing them their proper, spiritual and theological sense, they were unable to understand the meaning given to union and distinction in the Godhead by the orthodox tradition of the Fathers which Palamas faithfully followed. Moreover, they were left in the contradictory position of defending God's transcendence, while at the same time insisting that concepts about God derived from the contemplation of creation can refer only to the divine substance, and not to any uncreated energies. God then became knowable and even participable in his very inner being, just as the Eunomians had once claimed.
The Dionysian Doctrine of Union and Distinction (85–95)
Union, an earlier work of Palamas, is the principal source for chapters 85–95. The full title of the treatise provides a good description for the contents of these chapters:[109]
The different meanings of union and distinction in God: namely, that we have been taught that there is distinction in God, not only according to the hypostases, but also according to the common processions and energies; and that in each of the two senses of union and distinction our tradition understands God as uncreated, even if Barlaam and Akindynos should be displeased by this.
The treatise was devoted to righting the misinterpretation of certain texts taken from Pseudo-Dionysius by Barlaam and Akindynos.[110]
Chapter 85 is an introductory chapter newly written for this section of the Capita 150. The texts from Pseudo-Dionysius cited here were discussed at several points in Union. Chapters 88 and 89 were not taken directly from Union but they do continue the same discussion of Dionysian theology. Chapters 93–95 are less evidently connected to the preceding chapters, yet they seem too brief to form an independent section. Their basic contention is that there is no participation in the divine substance, but only in the divine energy. Chapters 93 and 94 are taken from ca 5.27 which bears the title:[111]
Since distinction in God has a twofold reference, as the theologians have proved, whenever the whole is referred to one of these, it does not include the other. Further, beings that participate in God participate in the divine energy but not in the divine substance.
The first section of ca 5.27 is thus not unlike the discussion in Union and in c. 85–92. Moreover, the analogy of the sun and its ray, found in c. 92, is carried over into the following chapters. These last three chapters might therefore be considered as a sort of appendix to those preceding.
Absurdities of the Akindynist Doctrines (96–103)
Starting with the Akindynist denial of any distinction between the divine substance and the divine energies, Palamas used a string of syllogisms to reveal the absurdities that result from such a doctrinal position.
Creation cannot be distinguished from generation and procession, with the result that creatures become God (in substance, not by grace), or that the Son and Spirit must be creatures (c. 96).[112] There can be no distinction between creation and the processions of the persons in the Trinity (c. 97). Substance and will would not be distinct and thus the Son would be not only begotten from the Father's substance but also created from his will (c. 98). As there are many energies in God, there must also be many substances (c. 99). If the energy is identified with the divine substance, then the energies themselves cannot be distinguished from one another. God's will and his foreknowledge are thus identical. But if he possesses foreknowledge of all things, he must will evil. Or, if God does not will evil, he can no longer possess foreknowledge (c. 100). If creation and foreknowledge are not distinct, and if God's creating has a beginning, so too must his foreknowledge, and God will not possess foreknowledge of all things from eternity (c. 101).[113] Further, creatures will be coincident with God's foreknowledge (c. 102). And since God's foreknowledge is not subject to his will, neither shall creation be, and then creating will proceed not from God's will but from his nature (c. 103).
The Imparticipability of God's Substance (104–112)
The central chapters of this section are taken directly and verbatim from Theophanes 17–21 where Palamas focuses primarily on the absolute transcendence and the imparticipability of the divine substance.[114] Participation in God is strictly limited to participation in the divine energies which are uncreated and as such are truly God though distinct from his substance. The first two chapters and the final one constitute a sort of inclusio for the lengthy excerpt from the Theophanes. This seems clear from the fact that the first lines of c. 104 are nearly identical with the first lines of c. 112.[115] The first chapter describes God's relation to the created universe through his sustaining energy. By this energy all things participate in God, though not in his substance. The following chapter touches on the topic of participation in God by grace. This too takes place by means of the divine energy in the divinization of the worthy. The final chapter of this section is taken to a large extent from another treatise by Palamas, Union 21, where the discussion centres on the one common energy of the three persons of the Trinity.
The Reply on Cyril (113–121)
This section is a near verbatim reproduction of Gregory's Reply on Cyril edited and discussed below in the appendix.[116] However, in taking over the text certain modifications were made. The last two sections of the Reply (8 and 7, in that order) were placed at the beginning, so that in the Capita 150 the general exposition of the Palamite position comes first. At the end of the general résumé Palamas appended a quotation from Pseudo-Athanasius (c. 114.14–19). Then, as he introduced the disputed text from Cyril of Alexandria's Thesaurus he added a brief statement of the Akindynist position not found in the Reply: the Akindynists reject the divine energy, claiming either that it is created or denying that it is distinct; and they even invent a new heresy in holding that the only uncreated energy in God is the Son (c 115.1–4). When Gregory reproduced the disputed text used by the Akindynists to support their position, he gave, not the whole text as in the Reply, but only the second half (c. 115.6–9).
The next significant addition to the Reply comes in c. 119.14–18 where the quotation of a text from Cyril is extended a few lines further. Later, in c. 120.20–27 Palamas made another digression from the Reply to add Sabellianism to the list of heresies to which the Akindynists have succumbed.
There are several instances where small sections of the Reply are not reproduced in the Capita 150. None of them are very significant. A citation from Cyril's Thesaurus is omitted (Reply 4.15–20) and also a specific reference to the historical circumstances of the pamphlet (Reply 6.1–5). The remaining omissions are brief interjections or introductory comments. The only other alteration to the text of the Reply was some minor rearrangement of portions of Reply 1 and 3.
The Contra Acindynum (122–131)
Although chapters 122–131 constitute a distinct division within the work, this section is not as cohesively organized as others. Its distinctiveness is based on the derivation of most of the material (though not verbatim) from the sixth book of the Contra Acindynum. Four chapters depart from this organizational schema.
Chapter 123 has no apparent relation to the rest of the section. Akindynos and his cohorts had been appealing to apophatic theology to support their contention that God cannot possess both an uncreated substance and an uncreated energy. Palamas replied with an explanation of the proper meaning and use of apophatic theology and its relation to cataphatic.
Chapters 124–126 form a subsection in which Palamas established the equation of the Akindynists with the Eunomians. Both heretical groups refused to recognize in God anything but the divine substance. Thus anything distinct from the divine substance could not be uncreated. Then for the Eunomians the Son had to be a creature and for the Akindynists the energy had to be created.[117] Palamas started from the orthodox position established against the Eunomians whereby each of the hypostases is divine and uncreated but distinct from each other and from the substance, while at the same time there is no compromise to the divine simplicity. In this, Palamas saw a clear patristic precedent for the doctrine of the uncreated divine energy. The fourth century Fathers used the argument that a relational name (e.g., son or father) cannot denote a substance and must refer to another reality with which it is not identical. In this way they were able to establish that the hypostases of the Godhead are distinct from one another and from the substance. And so, not everything in God is identical with the substance, as the Eunomians claimed.[118] Palamas took up the same argument and applied it to the energy, for this is God's relatio ad extra in the divine economy of creation and salvation. As a relation it cannot denote God's substance but must be distinct from it (c. 125).
Chapters 124–126 are not entirely unrelated to the rest of the section because c. 124 draws on material from ca 6.17. The other two chapters might be considered as an excursus.
Contra Acindynum 6.17–22 focuses on a text of Gregory Nazianzen which was being used by the Akindynist party in support of their doctrinal claims. The passage reads:[119]
The Holy Spirit belongs either in the category of those beings that subsist of themselves or in that of things observed in another. Those with skill in these matters call the first of these options substance, the second option accident. If then he were an accident, he would be an energy of God. For what else, or of whom else, could he be, for this is surely what also avoids composition? And if he is an energy, clearly he will be actuated and will not actuate and at the moment of his actuation he will cease.
Palamas organized his response under the following chapter headings:[120]
6.17 The orthodox understanding, by which each of the three revered persons is called a power and an energy. Also concerning the common power and energy of the three.
6.18 The theologians say that God both is and is not an energy, and each of these in a distinct sense, and further they indicate that the uncreated power and energy is common to the three persons; but Akindynos, save for mentioning a power and energy, denies everything else.
6.19 Demonstration that the energy observed in the substance of the Holy Spirit is, according to the Theologian, uncreated and involves no composition, even if it is distinct from the substance.
(6.20 By openly teaching that the energy is created, Akindynos is completely rejecting the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils.)[121]
6.21 Demonstration that even if the energy is called a quasi-accident, it is not as if it were not a proper attribute of God. Also abundant proof that the uncreated energy is distinct from the uncreated substance.
6.22 The theologians witness to the fact that the energy is an essential attribute of God and that it actuates. Also, when Akindynos expressly calls the energy a creature, he makes God into a creature.
Thus, drawing upon ca 6.17, Palamas discussed in c. 122 the senses in which the term energy can be used of the Holy Spirit.[122] It could refer to the hypostatic or personal reality of the Spirit in that he possesses energies and powers, although he does so in conjunction with the Father and the Son. The reference might be to the uncreated energies of the Spirit, which are distinct from creatures and are not individually subsistent realities. Finally, the term could also be applied in an extended sense to the created effects of the Spirit's energies.
The Akindynists were insisting that when God is referred to as 'alone uncreated' the substance is indicated in distinction from all else, and therefore the natural properties of God are created. In chapter 124 and in the corresponding section of ca 6.17 Palamas maintained that since, in the proper sense of the terms, the uncreated power and energy could be equated neither with the hypostases nor the hypostatic properties nor the nature, they must be the natural properties of God. Μόνος ἄκτιστος then refers to God in contradistinction to creation, and not to his natural properties.[123]
The Akindynists used the text of Gregory Nazianzen as their source for claiming the divine energy is a mere accident and cannot therefore be a proper attribute of God because change would thereby be introduced into the immutable nature. Palamas agreed that the term accident was not a proper description of the divine energy. However, some of the Fathers did use the term quasi-accident, but with the sole purpose of indicating that the energy is in God but is not the substance.[124]
Chapters 129–131 are devoted to the Akindynists' claims regarding the latter part of the quotation from Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 31.6.[125] They had concluded that if the energy is effected or actuated it must be created. Referring in particular to several passages of John Damascene's Expositio fidei, Palamas explained that the substance of the Holy Spirit is not in any sense actuated. The energy is actuated but not in an absolute sense, i.e., not as creatures are, and because the energy is not only actuated but also actuates in divine fashion.
Both in these last three chapters and throughout this whole section of the Capita 150 the digest and reworking of the arguments lose something of the coherence and clarity of their original form in the Contra Acindynum.
Distinction of the Divine Substance and the Divine Energy (132–145)
In this section Palamas presented his defence of orthodox doctrine against the Akindynist denial of any distinction between the divine substance and the divine energies. Listing the ten categories of Aristotle, Palamas insisted that only three can be applied to the divinity. God is a transcendent substance possessed of only action and relation (c. 134). Under το ποιεῖν Palamas included both δημιουργεῖν and ἐνεργεῖν. The energies do not introduce any passivity, increase or diminution into God, but they do allow for potentiality, at least insofar as concerns the energy of creating, for God can add to his creation whenever he should wish (c. 133). Relation, as Palamas understood it, did not bear the more developed meaning found in Western theology from the time of Augustine.[126] When applied to the trinitarian persons, it is the simple concept used by die Cappadocian Fathers who spoke of the relation of the Father to the Son as that between Begetter and Begotten, or of the Father to the Spirit as that of πρόβλημα to his αἰτιατά, or of the Father to the Son and the Spirit as that of αἰτία to αἰτιατά. Nothing more than this is intended. In its other sense, the term relation is applied to the activities of God ad extra in the divine economy of creation and salvation (c. 132). Thus, when the Akindynists refused to recognize in God anything but the substance, they eliminated in effect both the three hypostases and the divine economy (c. 134.14–23).
Another important aspect of Palamite theology is the practice of referring to the distinction of the hypostases from the substance as justification for allowing a similar distinction of the energy (c. 132, 142). If there is no compromise to the divine simplicity in the first instance, why should there be any in the second? Further, the existence and reality of the energies are intimately tied with that of the hypostases because the energies are observed in the three persons. Without the energies God would have no individual subsistence. He would exist only on the level of a universal or a secondary substance, in Aristotle's terms. The result would be a return to the heretical theory of Sabellius in which God is an undifferentiated monad (c. 136–137, 142). When Gregory spoke of the energies observed in the three hypostases, he did not neglect to add that in the Godhead these are numerically one, for there is one common energy of the three persons. The divine energies are spoken of as plural in reference to God's activities ad extra, in relation to us (c. 138, 144).
Even in such a technical discussion as this, Palamas maintained his ultimate perspective, namely, the preservation of the reality of God's self-revelation and the divine economy of creation and salvation. When the Akindynists disallowed any distinction between God's transcendent substance and his activities ad extra, they sealed the divine being within itself and rendered the gap between the reality of man and the transcendent reality of God forever unbreachable.
The Light of Tabor (146–150)
In the final chapters of his work Palamas summarized the position he had taken against Akindynos and his supporters on the subject of the nature of the Taboric Light seen by the chosen apostles at the time of Christ's Transfiguration.[127]
Palamas began by setting out his favoured scriptural and patristic witnesses to the Taboric Light. These all point to the divine and uncreated character of that Light and its intimate association with the Godhead (c. 146). The Akindynists opposed Palamas on this point, claiming that the Light was merely a created phantom and that Palamas and his followers were ditheists because of their insistence on the uncreated nature of both the divine substance and the divine energies (c. 147). Chapters 148–150 are devoted to a brief summary of the more salient absurdities that result from the Akindynist doctrines.
B. The Date of the Capita 150
In his well-known article in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, M. Jugie made the tentative suggestion that Gregory Palamas wrote the Capita 150 towards the end of his life.[128] Jugie no doubt made the reasonable assumption that a work bringing together the principal teachings of an author would naturally fall in the later part of his career. J. Meyendorff examined the problem of date in much greater detail and concluded that the work was written between 1344 and 1347.[129] The reference to the Contra Acindynum in c. 70 provides a terminus ante quem of 1344 (i.e., when the ca was completed). The only anti-Palamites mentioned are Barlaam, Akindynos and their followers. If the Capita 150 had been written after 1351, there would certainly have been some reference to Nikephoros Gregoras, In c. 148 there is reference to only one Synod. If the work had been written after 1347, there would have been reference to the second Synod, held in February 1347. Finally, the exhortation in c. 150 is a call to flee the κοινωνία of the heretics. This expression would be more appropriate prior to 1347; afterwards, Palamas would have called for union with the Church.
The present study has uncovered further evidence which must be taken into account in order to determine the date of the Capita 150. Not only did Palamas refer to the Contra Acindynum by name in c. 70. but he also quoted verbatim passages from this and from two earlier works, namely Union (1341–1344) and Theophanes (1343).[130] This does not present any problems for Meyendorff's dating of the Capita 150 between 1344 and 1347. However, the inclusion of virtually the entire text of the Reply On Cyril in c. 113–121 necessarily pushes the date forward to the period between 1347 and 1351, probably soon after the composition of the Reply.[131] This accords with the codicological evidence: the Capita 150 appears in Book 3 manuscripts, which give those works of Palamas written before 1341 and after 1347.[132]
The dating question is further complicated by the numerous verbatim parallels between the Capita 150 and Homilies 6, 16, 19 and 31.[133] If Palamas was drawing together a presentation of his theological teachings by reviewing his earlier works and selecting representative passages, it is reasonable to suppose that the material from these four homilies was taken into the Capita 150. Unfortunately, this is difficult to prove: the flow could have been in the other direction, with the Capita 150 serving as a source for these homilies. But if my original assumption is true, it might at first seem that an even later dating of the Capita 150 is necessary. Meyendorff places most of the homilies of Palamas during the last period of his life when he was metropolitan of Thessalonica from 1351 to 1359.[134] However, Meyendorff rightly made an exception for Homily 16 which he dated between 1347 and 1351.[135] Palamas referred in this homily to Barlaam and Akindynos but not to Gregoras. Yet even so, Palamas was not overly preoccupied with theological polemics, as he might have been if the work were written earlier than 1347.
According to Meyendorff, Homily 31 contains a reference to the illness of which Palamas died in November 1359.[136] The reference in fact need not be personal at all. After mentioning the prevalence of pestilence during the summer months, especially August. Palamas noted:[137]
ζέσασα γάρ ἐκ τῆς προλαβούσης θέρμης και τῶν κευμάτων ἡ ἐν ἡμῖν ὃλη, πᾶν ὃ τί περ ἄν ἑνός ἢ δυοῖν εεὔροι τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν στοιχείων, πρός πᾶν ἀναχεῖ τό σῶμα, και οὓτω τούς ἄλλους τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν ἀχρειοῦσα, τάς νόσους ποιεῖ.
The three pronominal references (ἡμῖν) should more naturally be taken as general and not personal. It is clear however that the homily was pronounced on the 1 August in a year when some form of pestilence was particularly severe. Palamas' central concern is with the origin of death and disease. It would seem that the situation was so grave that many people were blaming God for the outbreaks of sickness and the resulting deaths. Some were resorting to witches and sorcery in their desperate search for cures.
In the very middle of the homily Palamas rather abruptly switched from the topic of death and illness to a discussion of the Beatitude, «Blessed are the poor in spirit» (Mt 5.3). Then, just as abruptly he turned back again to his original topic.[138] The intrusion appears odd and somewhat mechanical, although it can be rationalized. Death, both in soul and body, has its origin in sin and, therefore, repentance is required of us. To live a life of repentance we must learn to be poor in spirit. This was very likely Palamas' intended meaning, but he could have made the transition from topic to topic a lot smoother.
But there is another possible explanation for the intrusion of this Beatitude into the homily. In 1345–1346 Palamas wrote a spiritual treatise which he addressed to the nun Xene.[139] One section of this work is devoted to a meditation on the very same Beatitude as that discussed in Homily 31.[140] Although the similarities are not word for word, the emphasis is the same: true poverty, poverty 'in spirit' must be founded on humility. A little later in Xene, Palamas turned to the second Beatitude as the source for his reflections on πένθος (μακάριοι οἱ πενθοῦντες Mt 5.4).[141] In Homily 31 Palamas quoted the first four Beatitudes just before introducing the subject of poverty and later at the conclusion he apologized that there was not sufficient time to discuss the other Beatitudes.[142] Furthermore, the treatment of poverty in Xene is preceded by a reflection on death of the soul and death of the body.[143] Again the emphasis is virtually identical with that found in Homily 31. These factors argue in favour of bringing the date of Homily 31 close to that of Xene.
Homily 31 was addressed to a lay audience. At one point Palamas made reference to monks as «those who welcome that poverty of body born of abstinence and who consider want of possessions more desirable than wealth.» Then he added, «If we do not choose to become poor in such a way, let us partake of the fellowship of such poor men at least through almsgiving and sharing our possessions.»[144] The Black Death descended upon Constantinople in the fall of 1347 and devastated the population of the city throughout the following year.[145] During August of 1348 the plague would probably have been at its worst. This may very well have been the occasion for Gregory's homily. He was present in the Synod in September 1348 and so he could easily have been in Constantinople that same August.[146]
As already noted, the primary emphasis in both Xene and in Homily 31 falls on the distinction between death of the body and death of the soul and the origin of both in sin. The secondary emphasis is on the sin of Adam and Eve in paradise together with its consequences. In the Capita 150, however, the situation is reversed. The focus is on the original state of man in paradise and the transgression of our first parents. The discussion is also more elaborate and contains additional material related to the central theme of this section of the work. I would maintain, therefore, that Homily 31 is the earlier work upon whiсh Palamas relied when he brought together the résumé of his doctrine in the Capita 150. This work he wrote a year or two later during a more tranquil period, just before he was able to enter his episcopal see of Thessalonica. The Capita 150 were written then in 1349 or 1350. This would also presume the dating of the remaining two homilies (6 and 9) at least to the period immediately after the Civil War or perhaps even earlier.
The most serious obstacle to my date of 1349–1350 is the reference in c. 148 to a single Synod where the Akindynists were formally excommunicated and anathematized for holding that the Taboric Light is a phantasm and a creature.[147] Meyendorff identified the Synod with that of 1341 on the grounds that only one Synod was mentioned, and thus the Capita 150 must have been written prior to the Synod of February 1347.[148] This argument is not without its problems. The Tome of 1341 mentions only Barlaam and says nothing of Gregory Akindynos. Moreover, back in 1341 Akindynos was not attacking Palamas’ doctrine on the Light of Tabor; rather, his criticisms focused on some of the more radical terminology which Palamas was using to describe the relationship between the divine substance and the divine energies (e.g., superior and inferior θεότητες).[149] There are, however, two clauses in the Tome of 1341 which would later implicate Akindynos in the 'Barlaamite heresy'. These forbade any further accusations against the hesychast monks and any further doctrinal discussions on the disputed questions.[150] There is no evidence that the Synodal session of 10 June 1341 even considered Akindynos. However, in July there was a second session at which he was placed under some form of censure. Unfortunately, there were no official records kept of this meeting and so the exact nature of this censure remains in doubt.[151] Darrouzès believes that there was never any official condemnation formulated in writing; it was pronounced orally and was neither voted upon nor publicly promulgated. This is the only way of explaining the omission of Akindynos’ name from the Tome.[152]
All this makes it difficult to take the formal terminology which Palamas used in c. 148 (ἀφορισμῷ ἐγγράφῳ και ἀναθέματι καθυπεβλήθησαν) as a reference to the Synod(s) of 1341. Such a formula would correspond better to the condemnation of Akindynos at the Synod of 1347.[153] However, it is necessary to remember that this latter Synod brought in, not a new condemnation, but merely applied that of 1341 to Akindynos and his followers in explicit terms. Indeed, it had always been the contention of the Palamites that these opponents of orthodoxy were subject to condemnation under the two clauses of the Tome of 1341. Thus, there was in this sense only one Synodal condemnation and thereby no necessity of mentioning more than one Synod in c. 148. We can suggest, then, that the historical reference in this chapter does not preclude a dating of the Capita 150 after the year 1347.
Meyendorff also argued that Gregory's counsel to flee the κοινωνία of the heretics applies to the situation prior to the Council of 1347. After that, he would have called for unity with the Church.[154] Although the opposition was dealt a near mortal blow in 1347, there were survivors: principally, Neophytos of Philippes, Joseph of Ganos, Matthew of Ephesus, Theodore Dexios and Nikephoros Gregoras.[155] The latter had begun to write against Palamite theology as early as the winter of 1346/47. It would still then be possible to speak of a κοινωνία of the heretics even after 1347.
Unless some further evidence should come to light, the way now seems clear enough to permit the dating of the Capita 150 to the years 1349–1350.
C. Conclusion
From 1341 to 1347, during the second phase of the Palamite controversy, Gregory Akindynos was the dominant figure among the anti-Palamites.[156] Without his intervention the controversy would almost certainly have died out after Barlaam’s return to Italy. The Calabrian monk had presented a most dangerous challenge to orthodox theology. His acquaintance with philosophy and theology was considerable and his skill in logical argumentation surpassed the abilities of most of the Byzantine literati. Although thoroughly Greek, his South Italian origins made him something of a foreigner to the strictures of Byzantine traditionalism. Perhaps for this reason his thinking shows certain un-Byzantine qualities of originality and innovation. But in the sphere of theology innovation is just another word for heresy.
In comparison with the wily Calabrian, Gregory Akindynos was clearly the lesser intellect. He is a good example of the formalistic theological traditionalism of most Byzantine intellectuals. Akindynos probably never fully understood the real issues at stake in the controversy with Barlaam. Too preoccupied at the level of formal expression, he latched onto the language and terminology of Palamas and interpreted it out of context. Although Palamas was at times less than careful in his choice of theological terms, Akindynos was obstinate in his insistance on giving to these terms the most radically unorthodox interpretation possible. In his arguments Akindynos could seldom offer more than sophistic refutations and an armoury of patristic quotations.
Palamas responded with a series of minor treatises, each covering specific areas of disagreement: the problem of two θεότητες, the ditheist tendency of his opponents' theology, participation in God, union and distinction in God. Finally, in the Antirrhetics Against Akindynos Palamas replied point for point to the major work written by his adversary.[157]
The end of the civil war in 1347, the Palamite victory at the February Synod, the exile and subsequent death of Akindynos, and the great tragedy of the Black Death all served to create a definite hiatus in the theological debates. The second phase of the Palamite controversy had come to an end. The final phase had not yet begun. The anti-Palamite forces had suffered a defeat and the dissenters were quiet for a short while until Nikephoros Gregoras rose to become their leading spokesman.
In this relatively tranquil hiatus between two periods of polemic, Gregory Palamas wrote the Capita 150 in an attempt to recapture the larger vision that had become obscured by the minutiae of the debates. To this end he elaborated on the broader theological framework that always lay in the background of the positions which he adopted on specific issues. His final and only goal was to preserve the realism of man's participation in the life of God. Any attempt to introduce an unbridgeable gap between God and man roused Gregory's opposition. As he reviewed his writings of the preceding years, he brought together in an organized arrangement, representative statements on the particular issues of the debates. Under the umbrella of his larger framework these could now be better appreciated in their essential relationship to Gregory's primary goal.
Among the polemical writings of Gregory Palamas the Capita 150 is comparable in importance only to the Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts. The Triads are indeed a more varied and fuller work, but the complexity can at times be baffling, at least to the modern reader. The work is in reality three works, each revising and developing the previous one, all in response to similar changes and developments in the positions taken by Barlaam the Calabrian. In contrast, the Capita 150 is a more mature work organized in a roughly systematic manner. The theological framework of Gregory's thought is now clear and well-developed and certainly no less profound. The Triads and the Capita 150 stand side by side as the two works most representative of the theological contribution of Gregory Palamas. Both are eloquent proclamations that the natural, the theological, the moral and ascetical are not separate or even separable compartments of human experience: they must all have God as their ultimate horizon or we risk ultimate peril.
3. The Text
A. Previous Editions of Palamas' Works
The two foremost editorial efforts in recent years have been John Meyendorff’s edition of the Triads and the three volumes of the Thessalonica edition of Palamas’ works under the general direction of Panagiotes Chrestou.[158] While both are laudable enterprises and important contributions to Palamite studies, the reviewers were quick to note certain deficiencies.[159] Although these are major works of Palamas, the editors have not produced critical editions by modern standards. Codicological study of the Palamite corpus as a whole was broached very briefly by Meyendorff in his Introduction but not adequately pursued for the indispensable information it provides regarding the relationship of the manuscripts.[160] Chrestou reserved such a study for a final volume.[161] Selection of manuscripts for collation was somewhat arbitrary. The best manuscripts were chosen, but we are never informed about the factual bases for such judgements. At times, manuscripts early in date and easily accessible were not included in collations. No attempt was ever made to establish stemmatic relationships. The principles for including or excluding variant readings in the apparatus were left for the reader to guess. Finally, the constitution of the text appears to have been based largely upon the subjective judgement of the editor.
B. Manuscripts of The Capita 150
C = Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Fonds Coislin 100.[162] Fifteenth century, paper, i+342 folios, 298x221 mm. This codex was formerly vol. 3 of the official collection of Palamite documents deposited in the κατηχουμενεία of the Great Lavra on Mount Athos, the monastery to which Gregory Palamas was once attached.[163]
The volume contains, in chronological order, first the works of Palamas prior to 1341 and then those from the later period of his life. The treatises appear in the following order: (Ep Damianus)[164]
Apodictic Treatises (fols. 13r–63v)
Against Bekkos (fols. 64r–68v)
Ep 1 Akindynos (fols. 69r–75r)
Ep 2 Akindynos (fols. 75v–77r)
Ep 1 Barlaam (fols. 77r–90r)
Ep 2 Barlaam (fols. 90r– 103r)
Triads (fols. 103v–225v)
George Phakrases, Dialogue (fols. 226r– 232r)[165]
Contra Gregoram 1–4 (fols. 232r–287r)
Reply on Basil (fols. 287v–289v)
Capita 150 (fols. 290r–321r)
Synodal Tome 1351 (fols. 321v–342r)[166]
P = Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ancien fonds grec 2381.[167] Fifteenth century, paper, 109 folios, 295x220 mm. The text was transcribed by one copyist throughout except for fols. 3r–12v (Planudes) and a portion of fol. 88v (same hand as 3–12). Several folios bear dated astronomical notices ranging from 1335 to 1392.[168] The identifiable watermarks in the manuscript can all be placed in the second half of the fourteenth century: e.g., fols. 3, 4, 8 – Briquet, Cercle 3231 (1371);[169] fols. 42, 44, 45 – Briquet, Deux Clefs 3848 (1370–79); fols. 15–84 – Briquet, Fruit 7347 (1341) or Harlfinger, Fruit 11 (1363).[170]
The general character of the codex is that of a scholar's handbook or manual of scientific treatises, mostly astronomical in content. The primary hand is cramped, idiosyncratic and highly abbreviated. The original owner and primary copyist are probably identical. Among the treatises found in the manuscript are the following: Maximus Planudes, The so-called Great Calculus according to the Indians (fols. 3r–12v), ed. A. Allard, Maxime Planude. Le grand calcul selon les Indiens (Travaux de la faculté de philosophie et lettres de l’université catholique de Louvain 27; Centre d'histoire des sciences et des techniques, Sources et travaux 1; Louvain-la-Neuve, 1981); Barlaam the Calabrian, Logistica (fols. 13r–30r), ed. J. Chambers, Barlaami monachi Logistica (Paris, 1600); idem, Demonstratio arithmetica, excerpt (fols. 30v–32r), ed. J. L. Heiberg, Euclidis Elementa (Leipzig, 1888; repr. 1977) 5:351–362; ibid., Refutation of the three additional chapters (14–16) of Ptolemy's Harmonics, Book 3 (fols. 32r–35r), ed. I. Düring, Die Harmonielehre des Klaudios Ptolemaios (Göteborgs Högskolas Årsskrift 36.1; Göteborg, 1930), pp. 112–121; Cleomedes, De motu circulari corporum caelestium (fols. 37r–62r), ed. H. Ziegler (Leipzig, 1891); the Sphere of Empedocles (fol. 64r–v), ed. E. Maass, Commentariorum in Aratum reliquiae (Berlin, 1898), pp. 154–170; Leontius Mechanicus, De sphaerae Arateae constructione and De zodiaco (fols. 64v–65v), ed. Maass, pp. 561–570 (De zodiaco, new edition by J. Martin, Scholia, pp. 529–532); preface to the Phaenomena of Aratus (fol. 66v), ed. Maass, pp. 102–122; extracts from John Lydus, De ostentis (fols. 70r–71v, 74r–75v), ed. K. Wachsmuth (Leipzig, 1897); Demetrius Triclinius, On Lunar Theory (fols. 78r–79v), ed. A. Wasserstein, «An Unpublished Treatise by Demetrius Triclinius On Lunar Theory,» jöbg 16 (1967) 153–174; Adamantius the Sophist, De ventis (fol. 80v), ed. V. Ross, Anecdota graeca et graecolatina (Berlin, 1864), 1:49–52; John Pediasimus, Epitome de mensura et divisione terrae (fols. 81r–86r), ed. G. Friedlein, Die Geometrie des Pediasmus (Programm der Studienanstalt Ansbach; Ansbach, 1866); Pseudo–Aristotle, De mundo (fols. 86r–88v), ed. W. L. Lorimer, Aristotelis qui fertur libellus De mundo (Paris, 1933); Pseudo-Alexander of Aphrodisias, Problemata physica, selections (fols. 93r–96v), ed. I. L. Ideler, Physici et medici graeci minores (Berlin, 1841) 1:3–80; Philo, De aeternitate mundi (fols. 96v–99r), ed. L. Cohn, P. Wendland, Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt, 6 vols. (Berlin, 1896–1915) 6:72–119; Theophylactus Simokattes, Quaestiones physicae, selections (fols. 99v, 102r–v), ed. Ideler 1:168–177.
The Capita 150 of Gregory Palamas is found on fols. 35v–41r. This work is followed on fols. 41v–46v by another work by Palamas, Triad 1.2–3, ed. J. Meyendorff, Défense, pp. 71–223. As Fr. Meyendorff decided not to collate the entire text of Paris gr. 2381 in his edition, he failed to note that Triad 1.3 in this manuscript carries the florilegium missing from all other known manuscripts of the Triads. Cf. Meyendorff, Défense, pp. xlix and 222 n. 5.
The moral and theological interests of the scholar-owner of the codex are represented elsewhere in the manuscript: Pseudo-Aristotle, De virtutibus et vitiis (fol. 99r–v), ed. F. Susemihl, Aristoteles, Ethica Eudemia (Leipzig, 1884; repr. Amsterdam, 1967), pp. 181–194; several unidentified theological texts on fols. 108v-109v; there are also theological scholia on several of the Capita 150 of Palamas and in one instance there is a series of invocations addressed to the Mother of God (fol. 39v, mg. inf.). Unfortunately, water damage, faded ink and the tight binding of the codex make these scholia almost impossible to decipher in their entirety. Beyond the fact that they indicate that the owner of the codex had Palamite theological interests, these scholia are not especially significant in themselves. The following examples give some idea of their general tenor. My transcription is tentative at best.
Scholion on c. 108 (fol. 39r, mg. inf., partial transcription): ὡς γάρ ὁ μετέχων φωτός αὐτός τε φωτεινός και τοῖς ὁρῶσιν τοιοῦτος ὁρᾶται και μή μόνον ὡς τοσοῦτον, ἀλλά και ἀντιλάμπει προσελαγγίζον () ἐκ τῆς διαυγείας τοῦ κατά μέθεξιν ἐνόντας αὐτῷ φωτός. οὗτος ὁ λόγος πατρικοῖς συζῶν ὁλοσχερῶς.
«For he who participates in light is himself luminous and appears as such to those who can see, not only to this extent, but he also reflects the flash of brilliance of the light inhering in him by participation. This statement is in complete accord with the sayings of the Fathers.»
Scholion on c. 109 (fol. 39v, mg. ext., complete): ὡς τό πῦρ ἄλλο και ἡ αὐτοῦ ὑπόστασις ἄλλη, οὓτως ἄρα και ἡ θεῖα οὑσία ἄλλη πως και ἄλλαι αἱ ὑποστάσεις μακάριαι γίνονται, ἐν αἷς μία οὐσία αὐτή τις και θεότης, μᾶλλον δέ μία ἐστίν αὔτη και οὐκ ἄλλη.
«As fire is one thing and its hypostasis is another, so too therefore the divine substance is somehow one thing and its blessed hypostases are others, in which there is one and the same substance and Godhead; or rather, it is one identical reality and nothing else.»
Invocation #3 (fol. 39v, mg. inf., partial): φεῖσαι μου, Δέσποινα, και ἀπόσμηξαι τούς σπίλους. βλέπω ἀμυδρῶς, τό δ΄ εὐαγές πάλιν και ἀβέβηλον τῆς ἐποπτείας αὐτῇ παράσχου. ὡς οὐρανόν βλέπω ὃλην τήν θεοπρεπῆ σου γαστέρα φωτός καταλάμπουσαν τῆς ἀσπροσίτου θεότητος. ὡς σκηνήν ὁρῶ, βασιλικῶς ἐσταλμένου τοῦ ἐπί πάντων βασιλέως, ἐν αὐτῇ ἐνσκιτῶντος, και οἶον ἐν ἡδονῇ τῷ κάλλει και τῷ πρός αὐτοῦ ὑποδοχόν ἐπιτηδειότητι σου.
«Spare me, O Lady, and wipe away my stains. I see darkly, but restore clarity and purity to my sight. As heaven I see your entire divinely-fitting womb shining forth with the light of the inaccessible Godhead. I see it as a tent with the King of all royally garbed, leaping within it and as though with pleasure at your beauty and fitness as a receptacle for him.»
X = Istanbul, Βιβλιοθήκη τοῦ Οἰκουμενικοῦ Πατριαρχείου: olim Μονή τῆς Ἁγίας Τριάδος Χάλκης, ms 138.[171] Fifteenth century, paper, 378 folios,[172] 290x210 mm, text written in two columns with 36 lines each. On fol. 246r there is a note in a late hand indicating that the manuscript was given to the Monastery τοῦ Δουσίκου, perhaps in 1580.[173] In 1936 it was transferred to the Library of The Ecumenical Patriarchate. Today the manuscript is in poor condition. On fols. 206–245 only one column remains intact; from fol. 246 to the end there is increasing deterioration.
The treatises of Palamas appear in the fallowing order:
Apodictic Treatises 1 (fols. 1ra-3rb = last section only, ps 1:72.5–77.end); 2 (fols. 3rb-29rb)
Against Bekkos (fols. 29rb-33ra)
Ep 1 Akindynos (fols. 35ra-40vb)
Ep 2Akindynos (fols. 41ra-42va)
Ep 1 Barlaam (fols. 43ra-54vb)
Ep 2 Barlaam (fols. 54vb-66va)
Triads (fols. 67ra-180va)
Phakrases, Dialogue (fols. 180vb-187ra)
Contra Gregoram 1–4 (fols. 187ra-241vb)
Reply on Basil (fols. 241vb-244ra)
Capita 150 (fols. 244rb-294va)
Hagioretic Tome (fols. 296va-302rb)
13. Synodal Tome 1341 (fols. 302va-?)
14. Unidentified text (fols. ?–378)[174]
G = Mount Athos, Μονή τῶν Ἰβήρων 386 (Athon. 4506).[175] Sixteenth century, paper, 274 folios. The text was transcribed by one copyist throughout except for 2 folios in a later hand between 125 and 127. Throughout the manuscript there are frequent marginal quotations, also in a later hand, set out to signal the subjects under discussion.
The Palamite documents in the manuscript appear in the following order:
Apodictic Treatises 1–2 (fols. 7r-31v)
Against Bekkos (fols. 68v-74v)
Capita 150 (fols. 74v-117r)
Hagioretic Tome (fols. 117v- 121r)
Synodal Tome 1341 (fols. 121v-132v)
Ep 1 Akindynos (fols. 135r-145r: note separation from preceding texts)
Ep 2 Akindynos (fols. 145v-149r)
Ep 1 Barlaam (fols. 149r-169v)
9. Phakrases, Dialogue (fols. 208r-219r: note separation)
10. Ep 2 Barlaam (fols. 219v-243v)
The manuscript bears also two works by George Gennadios Scholarios, Against Gemistes Plethon (fols. 193v-l96r) and On the Difference between Venial and Mortal Sins (fols. 196v-198r), ed, L. Petit, X A. Siderides, M. Jugie, Œuvres complètes de Georges Scholarios, 8 vols. (Paris, 1928–1936) 4:155–172 and 4:274–284 respectively; selections from the works of Maximus the Confessor and his pseudonym(s) (fols. 169v-174r, 198v-199r, 200r-201r, 244r-274r); anon,. Capita geographica et alia (fols. 132v-134v); gnomic texts (fols. 174v- 193r). Brief and miscellaneous theological texts without apparent significance occupy the remainder of the manuscript.
A table of contents is found on fols. 3v-5v but this bears little relation to the actual contents of the codex. Five Palamite documents are listed: Apodictic Treatises 1–2, Capita 150, Hagioretic Tome; John Cantacuzene, Antirrhetics Against Prochoros Kydones; George Gennadios Scholarios, Reply to John of Trebizond On a Quotation from Theodore Graptos used by the Akindynists and also On their Opinions regarding the Holy Spirit (Œuvres 3:204–288). The remaining works in the list are mostly anti-Latin treatises by Scholarios (2:269–87, 3:1–21), Matthew Monotropos, Manuel the Great Rhetor of St. Sophia (Refutation of Friar Francescus, O.P., of Old Rome), Andronikos Doukas Sgouros, and Niketas of Byzantium.
A = Athens, Εθνική Βιβλιοθήκη 2092 (olim Thessalonica, Γυμνάσιον 23).[176] Sixteenth century, paper, i+485 pages. The manuscript is written throughout by a single copyist.
It contains two major sections, namely, a collection of Palamite documents in the first half and a collection of anti-Latin writings in the second half.
I. Palamite section:
Apodictic Treatises (pp. 1–47)[177]
Against Bekkos (pp. 48–52)
Ep 1 Akindynos (pp. 52–59)
Ep 2 Akindynos (pp. 59–60)
5 Ep 1 Barlaam (pp. 60–73)[178]
Ep 2 Barlaam (pp. 73–86)
Triads (pp. 86–212)
8. Phakrases, Dialogue (pp. 213–219)
9. Contra Gregoram 1–4 (pp. 219–276)
Reply on Basil (pp. 276–279)
Capita 150 (pp. 279–314)
Hagioretic Tome (pp. 314–318)
Synodal Tome 1351 (pp. 323–347)[179]
II. Anti-Latin section:
Mark Eugenikos of Ephesus, Oratio ad Eugenium papam quartum (pp. 351–353), ed. L. Petit, PO 17:336–341.
Idem, Capita syllogistica contra Latinos (pp. 353 – 370), ed. L. Petit, po 17:368–415.
Ibid., Syllogistic Chapters Against the Heresy of the Akindynists and Against the Latins (pp. 370– 377), ed. W. Gass, Die Mystik des Nikolaus Cabasilas vom Leben in Christo (Greifswald, 1849; repr. Leipzig, 1899), pp. 217–232.
Ibid., Πρός τούς ἐν τῇ συνόδῳ τότε. inc. Τοῦτο τό ἃγιον σύμβολον ἀπαιτοῦμεν ὑμᾶς …; des. … δοξάσωμεν τό πάντιμον και μεγαλοπρεπές ὃνομα τοῦ πατρός και τοῦ υἰοῦ και τοῦ ἀγίου πνεύματος (p. 377), unedited (?).[180]
Gregory (George) of Cyprus, De processione Spiritus sancti (pp. 378–396), ed. Dositheos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Τόμος Ἀγάπης (Jassy-Moldavia, 1698), pp. 387ff. = pg 142:269–300.
Barlaam the Calabrian, Antilatin Treatises 1–6 and 20 (pp. 396–443), unedited.[181]
Scholarios, First Treatise on the Procession of the Holy Spirit, excerpts (pp. 443–451), ed. L. Petit et al., Œuvres 2:5–71.22. (The text breaks off in mid-sentence.[182])
Matthew Monotropos, Adversus Latinos (pp. 455–471), unedited.
9. Nikephoros Blemmydes, Reply to John Doukas (pp. 471–473), ed. A. Heisenberg, Nicephori Blemmydae curriculum vitae et carmina (Leipzig, 1896), pp. 110ff.
10. Symeon of Thessalonica, Expositio sacri symboli (pp. 473–485), ed. Dositheos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, Κατά Αἱρέσεων... (Jassy-Moldavia, 1683) = PG 155:752–801.[183]
On folio i/r-v there is a table of contents for the Palamite section, but not the anti-Latin section, thus confirming the originally separate character of the two collections. The table of contents does not accord entirely with the documents actually found in the manuscript. The table lists the Hagioretic Tome before the Capita 150 and gives the title and incipit for the Synodal Tome of 1341, not that of 1351 which is the text in the manuscript.
S = Moscow, Gosudarstvenniy Istoricheskiy Muzey, Sinodalnoe Sobranie 249 (70/LXXI).[184] Sixteenth century, paper, i+292 folios, 265 x 185 mm. On fol. 1r there is a note indicating that the codex once belonged to Neophytos of Thessalonica (και τοῦτο σύν τοῖς ἄλλοις κτῆμα ἐστίν Νεοφύτου Θεσσαλονίκης). It travelled to Moscow via Jerusalem and the agency of Patriarch Dositheos in 1692.[185]
The manuscript is identical in contents with Athens 2092 described above.
I. Palamite section:
Apodictic Treatises (fols. 4r-35v)
Against Bekkos (fols. 36r-38v)
Ep 1 Akindynos (fols. 39r-43r)
Ep 2 Akindynos (fols. 43r-44r)
Ep 1 Barlaam (fols. 44r-52v)
Ep 2 Barlaam (fols. 52v-61r)
Triads (fols. 61r-145v)
Phakrases, Dialogue (fols. l46r-150r)
9. Contra Gregoram 1–4 (fols. 150r-184v)
10. Reply on Basil (185r-185bisv)
11. Capita 150 (fols. 185bisv-204v)
Hagioretic Tome (fols. 204v-206r)
Synodal Tome 1351 (fols. 207r-219v)
II. Anti-Latin section:
Mark of Ephesus, Oratio (fols. 221r-222r)
Idem, Capita contra Latinos (fols. 222r-231v)
Ibid., Chapters Against the Akindynists (fols. 231v-235r)
Ibid., To the Participants at the Council (fol. 235r)
Gregory of Cyprus, De processione (fols. 235v-245v)
Barlaam, Antilatin Treatises (fols. 245v-269r)
Scholarios, On the Procession (fols. 269r-273r)
Matthew, Adversus Latinos (fols. 274r-282v)
9. Blemmydes, Reply to Doukas (fols. 282v-283v)
10. Symeon, Expositio (fols. 283v-290v)
Athens 2092 and Moscow 249 have a number of important characteristics in common. The contents are identical, as is their arrangement. In both, the table of contents lists the Hagioretic Tome before the Capita 150, but the order is reversed in the text itself.[186] Both list Synodal Tome 1341 in the table but give the text of Synodal Tome 1351 in the main body of the manuscript. In the middle of Apodictic Treatise 1 the same section of the text is missing. In Athens 2092 two and a half pages are left blank at this point (the amount of missing text fits this space exactly). The copyist of Moscow 249 may have thought this a waste of good paper, for he left only half a page blank (fol. 8v). The same brief note is appended to the title of Ep 1 Barlaam in both manuscripts. Just above the title for the Capita 150 there is the note: Τέλος τῶν δογματικῶν λόγων και ἀρχή τῶν κεφαλαίων. This note occurs nowhere else apart from these two manuscripts. Between the Hagioretic Tome and the Synodal Tome Athens leaves three pages blank and Moscow 249 leaves one folio. The text of Scholarios in both breaks off at the same word, with Athens leaving three blank pages and Moscow one and a half pages.
The conclusion should be clear: there is such a codicological similarity between the two manuscripts that one must be a copy of the other. Given the reduction of blank spaces in the Moscow manuscript, it is likely that this is the copy. The collation of the text of the Capita 150 in the two manuscripts removes all doubt: Moscow 249 is a direct copy of Athens 2092.
Manuscripts Not Consulted[187]
L = Mount Athos, Μονή τῆς Μεγίστης Λαύρας, ms 1907 (Ω 95).[188] Eighteenth century, paper, 1464 pages, 200x140 mm. At some point a portion of the manuscript became detached and is now to be found in Urbana, Illinois, University Library, ms 2 (olim 882 C 685). This is a composite manuscript containing 14 folio groupings from independent manuscripts. Fols. 128r-170v belonged originally to Lavra 1907. They bear indications that the manuscript was originally prepared for publication. Fol. 129r gives the title of the publication (a lengthy title indicating in effect, «The Collected Works of St. Gregory Palamas»); fols. 131r-133v provide the preface and fols. 134r-136v, the table of contents. Fols. 137r-153v and 155r-170r bear Palamas' Letter to his Church from Captivity and Phakrases, Dialogue. These two works belong to pp. 1231–1264 and 1465–1495 of the original manuscript.[189]
Contents:[190]
Philotheos Kokkinos, Encomium on Palamas
Palamas, Homilies (60)
Xene
Decalogue
Capita 3
Life of St. Peter the Athonite
Capita 150
Synodal Tome 1341
Hagioretic Tome
M= Mount Athos, Μονή τῆς Μεγίστης Λαύρας, ms 1945 (Ω 133).[191] Eighteenth century (a.d. 1708), paper, 265 folios, 320x210 mm. The colophon at the end of the manuscript reads: μετεγράφη ἀναλώμασι και ἐπιμελείᾳ Μαυροκορδάτου Κωνστανινουπολίτου τοῦ μεγάλου Λογοθέτου τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ μεγάλης ἐκκλησίας και γενικοῦ ἑρμηνέως τῆς τῶν Ὀθωμανῶν αὐταρχίας κατά τό αψη (1708) ἔτος τό σωτήριον.
Contents:
t. Against Bekkos
Ep 1 Akindynos
Ep 2 Akindynos
Ep 1 Barlaam
Ep 2 Barlaam
Triads
Phakrases, Dialogue
Contra Gregoram 1–4
Reply on Basil
Capita 150
Hagioretic Tome
Synodal Tome 1341
Synodal Tome 1347 (Darrouzès, Regestes N. 2270)
Synodal Tome Against Matthew of Ephesus (N. 2289)
Synodal Tome 1351
O = Mount Athos, Μονή τῆς Μεγίστης Λαύρας, ms 2150 (M 137).[192] Fifteenth century, paper, 72 folios, 200x140 mm. The manuscript is unbound and partially worm-eaten. It may be only a portion of a much larger manuscript.
Contents:
Mark of Ephesus, Chapters Against the Akindynists[193]
Phakrases, Dialogue
Palamas, Capita 150
C. Printed Editions
I. The Philokalia Edition (Ph)
v = ΦΙΛΟΚΑΛΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΙΕΡΩΝ ΝΗΠΤΙΚΩΝ συνερανισθεῖσα παρά τῶν ἁγίων και θεοφόρων πατέρων ἡμῶν ἐν ᾖ διά τῆς κατά τήν πρᾶξιν και θεωρίαν ἡθικῆς φιλοσοφίας ὁ νοῦς καθαίρεται, φωτίζεται, και τελειοῦται ἐμελείᾳ ἐπιμελείᾳ μέν ὃτι πλείστῃ διορθωθεῖσα, νῦν δέ πρῶτον τύποις ἐκδοθεῖσα διά δαπάνης τοῦ τιμιωτάτου, και θεοσεβεστάτου κυρίου Ἰωάννου Μαυρογορδάτου εἰς κοινήν τῶν ὀρθοδόξων ὠφέλειαν (Venice, 1782), pp. 964–1009.
a[1] = ΦΙΛΟΚΑΛΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΙΕΡΩΝ ΝΗΠΤΙΚΩΝ ... και εἰς ἣν προσετέθησαν τά ἐκ τῆς ἐν Βενετίᾳ ἐκδόσεως ἐλλείποντα κεφάλαια τοῦ μακαρίου Πατριάρχου Καλλίστου (Athens, 1893).
a = ΦΙΛΟΚΑΛΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΙΕΡΩΝ ΝΗΠΤΙΚΩΝ... 5 vols. (Athens, 1957–1963) 4:134–187.
m = J. P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia graeca 150 (Paris, 1865; repr. Turnhout, 1978), cols. 1117–1226.
II. The Uspensky Edition
u = Bishop Porfiry Uspensky (ed.), Istoriya Athona, vol. 3: 'Athon monashesky', part 2 ‘Opravdaniya’, edited posthumously by P. A. Syrku (St. Petersburg, 1892), pp. 797–806.
The Philokalia is a well-known collection of spiritual writings by authors ranging in date from the patristic age to the Late Byzantine period. The collection was assembled and edited by Makarios Notaras (1731–1805), bishop of Corinth, and the monk Nikodemos (1749–1809) of Mt. Athos.[194] The Capita 150 of Palamas may have been taken from Lavra 1907 (Ω 95), a manuscript which was associated with a publication project for the complete works of Gregory Palamas.[195] The first edition of the Philokalia was published in Venice, 1782, at the expense of John Maurogordatos of Smyrna. In 1893 a second edition was issued in Athens under the supervision of Panagiotes Tzelates who included in the new edition the Supplementary Chapters by Patriarch Kallistos (or more likely, Kallistos Angelikoudes). Otherwise this was a simple reprint of the Venice edition. More recently a new printing was prepared by Deacon Epiphanios I. Theodoropoulos on the basis of the previous Venice and Athens editions. When Jacques Paul Migne produced his Patrologia graeca he reprinted the Capita 150 of Palamas from the Venice edition of the Philokalia sent to him by the good graces of J. Sgouta. A Latin translation ('quantus labor') was provided by a learned gentleman named J. Lecomte, the curé of Bannay in the diocese of Orléans.[196]
The Venice edition alone counts as an independent witness to the text of the Capita 150. The others are mere reprints with alterations in the punctuation and with the addition of further errors.
In his study of Mount Athos Bishop Porfiry Uspensky published a number of Palamite documents. Unfortunately for us these are mostly in the form of extracts. Meyendorff has indicated that Uspensky took these texts from the manuscript Lavra 1945, viz.: no. 26.683–688 Hagioretic Tome; nos. 27–28.688–691 Triads; nos. 33–34.710–713 Eps 1 and 2 Akindynos; nos. 41–43.737–741 Contra Gregoram; no. 47.787–806 Capita 150.[197] This is quite certain for items 27–28 and 41–43, for Uspensky himself noted that he took them from a manuscript of Mavrogordatos in the Athonite Lavra dated 1708. Items 26 and 33–34 bear no indication of origin. For item 47, the Capita 150, Uspensky noted that it was taken from a manuscript of the Great Lavra which was bound together with a printed book containing saints' lives. Lavra 1945 is not, or at least is no longer, bound with such a printed book. Thus it may be that the Capita 150 is derived from some other manuscript.
D. Indirect Witnesses
Since Palamas quoted extensively from his own works, their text can be used as an indirect or external witness to the Capita 150. These parallel texts must be used with some caution because Palamas frequently made changes in order to adapt these passages to their new context. I have therefore followed the practice of citing the indirect witnesses only when they agree or disagree with an existing set of readings. Because it is quoted in full in c. 113–121, the Reply on Cyril (K) constitutes the most valuable of the indirect witnesses.
D Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite
H Homily 31
K Reply on Cyril
T Theophanes
U On Union and Distinction
Meyendorff’s survey of the manuscripts of Palamas' works has suggested that there was originally no systematic arrangement of the Palamite corpus apart from the homilies.[198] By the early fifteenth century a systematic grouping of the works into three ‘books’ or volumes had emerged. The first two books contained the works of the civil war period, 1341–1347, while the works prior to 1341 and posterior to 1347 were collected together in the third book. The homily collection might be considered as a fourth book, but it was not actually given this title in the manuscripts and it enjoyed a separate and more prolific circulation in its own right.
The Capita 150 appears in Book 3 of the systematic collection, i.e., among those works written before 1341 or after 1347. C, X, A, S and M are full representatives of Book 3. G is a partial representative, probably copied from a Book 3 manuscript: there are several dislocations but the order in which the works appear is basically the same. P is an interesting anomaly but the Capita 150 is associated with an excerpt from the Triads and the collations show that P cannot be separated from the textual tradition of C and X. However, the presence of the missing florilegium attached to Triad 1.3 leaves some doubt about whether P was copied from a Book 3 manuscript. L is another anomalous case in that it is the only instance where the Capita 150 is attached to Palamas’ homily collection.
There are several minor variations that occur in the Book 3 manuscripts. Some of these omit the Capita 150, for example, Oxford, Bodleian, ms Laud. gr. 87. The Hagioretic Tome is missing from C. G, X, L and M all give the text of Synodal Tome 1341. The πíναξ in A and S promises the tome of 1341 but the body of the manuscripts gives that of 1351. C, M and perhaps X give the tome of 1351. X was written in a two column format like that of Coislin 98 and 99 (Book 1 and 2 manuscripts respectively) but there is no similarity in the hands. Although these codicological details may not be directly useful for the purposes of the present edition, they are worth noting because they suggest that there is more to be learned about the early history of the transmission of the Palamite corpus.
E. The Tradition of the Text
In the collation of the mss and editions certain types of variation proved to be of little value. This was particularly true for accentuation and word division: e.g., τ΄ ἄλλα – τἄλλα, οὐ δέ – οὐδέ μία – οὐδεμία, διά τοῦτο – διατοῦτο, ἀπ΄ ἀρχῆς – ἀπαρχῆς, την_αρχήν – την_ἀρχήν – τήν ἀρχήν, ταυτό – ταὐτό.. Such variations therefore were not considered in the study of the text and are not included in the apparatus.
The interrelationships of the mss and printed editions can be illustrated in a stemma as follows:[199]
Hyparchetypal Variants
The principal variants of the mss can be grouped together neatly in two families which witness to the text of the alpha and beta hyparchetypes. In the alpha family C, P, and X are independent witnesses. In the beta family G, A, and v are distinct but closely related witnesses. The hyparchetypal variants are as follows:[200]
Archetypal Errors
There are 6 readings which reflect errors found in the archetype:[201]
Alpha Family
There is no discernible relationship between the three members of the alpha family.
(i) The C Text
C presents 36 peculiar variations where it stands alone against all other witnesses. These variations fall into three categories, namely, misspellings, errors and possibly genuine alpha family readings.
There are 7 misspellings unique to C: 6.11, 8.2–3, 35.19, 90.1, 96.10, 108.12, 137.14. These are usually easy to detect: e.g., 8.2–3 κινημένους, 35.19 ἀπαραλάκτως, 90.1 συφθεγγέσθω. In the case of 6.11 and 108.12, judgement of a spelling error was based on the grammatical context. In 5 further cases there was a coincidental agreement of C spelling errors with other witnesses: 7.5, 37.21, 51.15, 68.10, 109.10.
Unique C readings turn out to be errors in 11 instances: 32.6, 36.25, 37.14, 69.7, 71.2, 75.10, c.77 before c.76, 87.9, 91.6, 135.3, 135.22. These can easily be detected when C is found in disagreement with PX-GASvam (or at least PX or PG). Examples of this type are 32.6 τήν in PXGASvam, om. C; 36.25 τοῦ in PXGASvam, om. C; 91.6 και in PGASvam/U, om. C. But sometimes it was necessary to resort to the grammatical context in order to determine a C error: e.g., 135.3 μείωσιν PGASvam: ὁμοίωσιν C, 135.22 τις PGASvam: om. C. In 2 further cases C shares errors with other witnesses: 45.6 ᾗ ut uid. P (recte): εἶ CGAS, 149.7 οὐσίᾳ PXGAS: οὐσίᾳν Cvam. As already noted, C reports 6 archetypal errors.
There still remains a residue of 18 peculiar variations in C. In 9 of these, C is supported by some external witness. This suggests that in most of these 18 cases C may be reporting the genuine alpha family readings or a closely related and possibly older tradition.
Beta Family
The beta family splits into two sub-groups, in which the individual members share a large number of common variations. These sub-groups are represented by Gvam and AS.
(i) The Gvam Sub-group
These witnesses share 73 common variations in which they depart from the text of the beta hyparchetype. Here the beta text has suffered serious corruption. There are 10 omissions of half a line to a full line in length: 7.6, 19.4–5, 30.6, 36.6–7, 42.19, 45.15–16, 67.3–4, 110.11–12, 113.11–12, 137.8–9. Eleven inflection changes occur: 7.12, 14.3, 25.12, 29.13, 33.4, 48.1, 62,9, 70.7, 88.16, 94.3, 99.2. Many of the other changes also affect the reading of the text: e.g., 26.5, 28.5, 36.1, 85.11, 91.5, 109.8, 120.20, 125.8, 134.15. There are at least 30 instances in which the understanding of the text is compromised to a greater or lesser degree.
The Philokalia text taken by itself (i.e., vam) introduces a further 213 peculiar variations. The Venice edition has over and above this 45 minor spelling and typographical errors which were recognized and corrected by a and m. Thus, the first edition of the Philokalia departs from the beta text in 340 cases.[203] If the 32 beta variants are added in, we have a grand total of 372 instances where the Venice Philokalia differs from the critical text edited below.
A number of the Philokalia variations have a special character. In 36 places ranging from c. 65 to 149 and including the title explicit references to Barlaam and Akindynos were removed from the text and replaced by more general terms such as ἐναντίοι, ἀντικείμενοι, κακοδόξοι, αἱρετικοί, etc. On 4 occasions the Philokalia reverts to the correct reading either by chance or conjecture: 51.15, 62.24, 135.26, 147.8. Five further readings, assuredly conjectures, are noteworthy, since they could go back beyond the archetype:
The Uspensky Edition
Collation of this text yielded only 8 cases of common variation with other witnesses:
Constitution of the Text
The text presented below is that of the hyparchetype of the alpha family. This in turn must be very close to the archetype of both families. All indications suggest that the archetype manuscript was a member of the systematic collection of the works of Palamas. There is, however, some problem in determining the text of the alpha family. P has numerous peculiar variations. X has the same fault and, furthermore, its text is poorly preserved. I have, therefore, chosen to present the text of C as the most reliable witness to the alpha family.
In the title I give in brackets the most common form of the author attribution. The column references to pg 150 are given in the margin. The upper apparatus gives the references to the other works of Palamas quoted directly in the Capita 150. Other testimonia, both direct and indirect, are given as footnotes to the translation in order to allow for brief commentary where necessary.
In the lower apparatus all the textual witnesses (i.e., CPXGASvam) are presumed available, unless otherwise indicated. Because of the fragmentary state of X, its presence or absence is indicated explicitly for every chapter. Textual evidence taken from the testimonia is separated from the evidence of the manuscripts and editions by an oblique slash (/). For the title all the available witnesses are noted. I have departed from the archetypal readings in 4 places in order to correct orthographic errors 3.20, 17.3, 108.7 (twice). Accentuation, punctuation and word division follow the modern norms. In the apparatus I report all readings except the peculiar variations of S. The more significant readings are given in bold type: archetypal errors, hyparchetypal variants and peculiar variations of C.
F. Sigla and Abbreviations
St. Gregory Palamas Capita 150
(Τοῦ αὐτοῦ μακαριωτάτου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Θεσσαλονίκης Γρηγορίου)
Κεφάλαια ἑκατόν πεντήκοντα φυσικά και θεολογικά, ἠθικά τε και πρακτικά και καθαρτικά τῆς Βαρλααμίτιδος λύμης
Ἧρχθαι τόν κόσμον και ἡ φύσις διδάσκει και ἡ ἰστορία πιστοῦται, και τῶν τεχνῶν αἱ εὑρέσεις και τῶν νόμων αἱ θέσεις και τῶν πολιτειῶν αἱ χρήσεις ἐναργῶς παριστᾶσι . σχεδόν γάρ τεχνῶν ἀπασῶν ἴσμεν τούς εὐρετάς και τούς νομοθέτας τῶν νόμων και τούς τήν ἀρχήν κεχρημένους τα ς πολιτείαις. ἔτι γε μήν και τῶν συγγραωαμένων περί ὁτουδήποτε τήν ἀρχήν ἀπάντων, και οὑδένα τούτων ὁρῶμεν ὑπερβαίνοντα τήν τοῦ κόσμου και τοῦ χρόνου γένεσιν, ἣν ἱστόρησεν ὁ Μωϋσῆς, ὁ τήν ἀρχήν τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως συγγραψάμενος, διά τοσούτων ἔργων και λόγων ἐξαισίων ἀναντιρρήτους παρέσχετο παρέσχετο πίστεις τῆς καθ' ἑαυτόν ἀληθείας, ὡς σχεδόν ἃπαν γένος ἀνθρώπων καταπειθές ἐξειργάσθαι και καταγελᾶν ἀναπεῖσαι τῶν τἀνατία σοφισαμένων. ἐπεί και ἡ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου φύσις ἀεί προσφάτου τῆς καθ΄ ἓκαστον ἀρχῆς δεομένη και χωρίς αὐτῆς μηδαμῇ συνίστασθαι δυναμένη, τήν πρώτην ἑαυτῆς, ἣτις οὐκ ἐξ ἄλλης ἦν. ἀρχήν. δι΄ αὐτῶν παρίστησι τῶν πραγμάτων.
Gregory, the Most Blessed Archbishop of Thessalonica
One Hundred and Fifty Chapters On Topics of Natural and Theological Science, the Moral and the Ascetic Life, Intended as a Purge for the Barlaamite Corruption
1. That the world had a beginning both nature teaches and history confirms; the discovery of the arts, the introduction of laws and the governance of states also clearly affirm this. For we know the founders of almost all the arts, those who established the laws, and those who first administered the states. Furthermore, we see none of the first writers on any subject whatever surpassing the account of the beginning of the world and of time, as Moses recorded it.[207] And Moses himself, who described the beginning of the generation of the world, provided irrefutable proofs of his veracity through such extraordinary words and deeds that he convinced virtually every race of men and persuaded them to deride the sophists who have argued the contrary. Since the nature of this world is such that it always requires a new cause in each instance and since without this cause it cannot exist at all, we have in these facts proof for an underived, self-existent primordial cause.
2. The nature of the contingent existence of realities in the world proves not only that the world has had a beginning but also that it will have an end, as it is continually coming to an end in part. Sure and irrefutable proof is also provided by the prophecy of Christ, God over all, and of other men inspired by God,[208] whom not only the pious but also the impious must believe as truthful, when they see that they are right also in all the other things which they have predicted. From these men we can learn that this world will not in its entirety return to utter non-being, but, like our bodies and in a manner that might be considered analogous, the world at the moment of its dissolution and transformation will be changed into something more divine by the power of the Spirit.[209]
3. The Hellene sages say that the heaven revolves by the nature of the World Soul and that it teaches justice and reason.[210] What sort of justice? What reason? For if the heaven revolves not by its own nature but by the nature of what they call the World Soul, and if the World Soul belongs to the entire world, why does the earth not revolve too, and the water, and the air? But yet, although in their opinion the soul is ever-moving,[211] by its own proper nature the earth is stationary with the water taking up the lower region;[212] likewise the heaven too by its own nature is ever-moving in a circular motion, while occupying the upper region. Whatever sort of thing is the World Soul by whose nature the heaven moves? Is it rational? Then it would be self-determining and it would not move the celestial body in the same perpetual movements, for self-determining bodies move differently at different times. And also, what trace of a rational soul do we see in this lowest sphere, I repeat, of the earth, or in the most proximate parts about it, namely, those of water and air, or even fire itself, for the World Soul belongs also to these? Furthermore, why according to them are some things animate and others inanimate?[213] And these are not things taken at random, but every stone, every metal, all earth, water, air, fire; for they say that fire too is moved by its own nature and not by a soul.[214] If then the soul is universal, why is the heaven alone moved by the nature of this soul but not by its own nature? But how is the soul not rational which according to them moves the celestial body, if indeed the same soul according to them is the source of our souls? But if it were not rational, it would be sensible or vegetative. But we see no soul of any kind moving a body without organs and we see no member serving as an organ, either for the earth, or for the heavens, or for any other of the elements in them, since any organ is composed of different natures, but each of the elements and also the heaven especially consists of a simple nature.[215] «The soul then is the actuality of a body possessed of organs and having the potentiality for life.»[216] But since the heaven has no member or part to serve as an organ, it has no potentiality for life. How then could that which is incapable of life ever possess a soul? «But those who became foolish in their reasonings» have fashioned «out of their senseless hearts»[217] a soul which neither exists, has existed, or will exist. And this they proclaim the Creator, the guide and the controller of the entire sensible world, and of our souls, or rather, all souls, like some sort of root and source which has its generation from mind. And that so-called mind they say is other in substance than the highest one whom they call God.[218] The most advanced in wisdom and theology among them teach doctrines such as these. They are no better than those who deify beasts and stones; rather they are much worse in their cult, for beasts and gold and stone and bronze are real, though they are among the least of creatures, but the star-bearing World Soul neither exists nor possesses reality, for it is nothing at all but the invention of an evil mind.[219]
4. Since, they say, the celestial body must be in motion but there is no further place to which it might proceed, it turns back upon itself and its advance is a revolving motion.[220] Well enough, Then, if there were a place, it would be borne upwards just as fire is and even more so than fire itself, since it is naturally still lighter than fire.[221] But this movement belongs not to the nature of a soul but to the nature of lightness. If then the advance of the heaven is a revolving motion, and if it possesses this by its own nature but not by the nature of the soul, the celestial body, therefore, revolves not by the nature of the soul but by its own nature. Thus, it does not have a soul, nor does there exist any heavenly or pancosmic soul; rather, the only rational soul is the human one, which is not celestial but supercelestial, not because of its location but by its own nature, inasmuch as it is an intelligent substance.[222]
5. The celestial body has no forward movement and extension upwards. The reason for this is not that there is no further place beyond, for even the adjacent sphere of aether enclosed within it does not proceed upwards. It is not because there is no place to which it might proceed, for the celestial expanse embraces this sphere of aether. It does not extend further upwards, since this upper region beyond the aether is lighter than it. And so, the celestial body is higher than the aether by its own nature.[223] Thus, it is not because it has no place higher than itself that the heaven does not proceed upwards, but because there is no body more rarefied or lighter than it.
6. No body is higher than the celestial body. But if is not for this reason that the region beyond is not capable of admitting a body, but because the heaven encompasses all body and there is no other body beyond.[224] But if it were possible to pass through the heaven, as is our pious belief, that region beyond the heaven would not be without access. For the God ‘who fills all things’[225] and extends infinitely beyond the heaven existed even before the world, filling even as now he fills every place in the world. And this in no way resulted in there being a body in him. Therefore, there will be no obstacle to the absence of any kind of place outside of the heaven which surrounds the world or is in the world with the result being the presence of a body in God.
Since there is no hindrance, why then is the movement of the celestial body not directed upwards but rather turns back upon itself in a circular motion? Because it is located at the top as the most rarefied of all bodies, it is the highest body of all[226] and also the most mobile. For just as that which is compressed to the utmost degree and most heavy is lowest and at the same time most stable, so that which is very low in density and most light is highest and at the same time most mobile.[227] Thus, since it moves while located on the upper surface by nature, and since, owing to its own nature, the body in this upper location cannot be separated from the surface on which it is located, and since the regions on which the celestial body is located are spherical, it necessarily runs around these without ceasing,[228] not by the nature of a soul but by its own proper nature as a body.[229] (This must be the case,) since it changes in part from place to place, which is the movement most proper to bodies, just as the opposing state is most proper to the opposite bodies.
You should note also in the proximate regions about us the winds which are naturally situated at the top, moving about these regions without being separated but in no way proceeding further upwards, not because there is no place but because the regions beyond the winds are lighter than they. They remain in the regions where they are situated at the surface, inasmuch as they are lighter in nature than these. And the winds move around these regions, not by the nature of a soul but by their own nature. And I think, Solomon, wise in all things, wishing to indicate this partial likeness, gave the celestial body the same name as the winds when he wrote about this: «The wind proceeds round in circles and on its circuits the wind returns.»[230] The nature of the winds surrounding us is as different from that of the upper regions and their very rapid movement, as it is distinct also from their lightness.
9. According to the Hellene sages, there are two opposing temperate and habitable zones on the earth, and when each of these is divided into two inhabited regions they produce four.[231] And so, they assert that there are also four races of men on earth, which are unable to cross over to one another. For according to them there are those inhabiting the opposing temperate region on our flank, who are separated from us by the torrid zone of the earth. And dwelling opposite the people just mentioned are those who live, from their viewpoint, below this zone of ours; just as among those who are in identical relation to us, they say some are opposite and some are antipodal and reversed in relation to us. For they were unaware that except for a tenth part of the terrestrial sphere almost all the rest is inundated by the abyss of the waters.
10. You should know that apart from the region we inhabit there is no other habitable part of the earth, since it is inundated by the abyss, that is, if you bear in mind that the four elements which make up the world stand in equal proportion, and that in proportion to its proper density each of these occupies its own extent of the sphere to a much greater degree than the other,[232] as Aristotle also agrees. «For there are five elements,» he says, «located in five spherical regions, the lesser element always being encompassed by the greater, earth by water, water by air, air by fire, fire by aether, and this constitutes the world.»[233]
11. Aether then is very much brighter than fire, which is also called combustible fuel,[234] and fire is many times greater in volume than the sphere of air, and air in turn more than water, and water more than earth, which, as it is the most compressed, is the least in volume among the four elements under the heaven. Since the sphere of water is many times greater in magnitude than the earth, if it bad been spread around the entire circumference of the earth so that both spheres (namely, earth and water) were drawn around one centre, the water would not allow the use of any part of the earth to land animals, for the water would cover all its ground area and extend in great measure beyond its entire surface. But since it does not encompass the entire surface of the earth (for the dry land of the region we inhabit is not covered), the sphere of water must necessarily be eccentric. Therefore, we must ascertain how eccentric it would be and where the centre would be, whether below or above us. But being above us is impossible, for we see the surface of the water in part below us. In relation to us then the centre of the sphere of water lies below even the centre of the earth itself. But we must still ascertain how far this centre is from the centre of the earth.
12. You should know how far below (from our viewpoint) the centre of the earth lies the centre of the sphere of water, if you bear in mind that the surface of the water visible to us and beneath us, just as the ground of the earth we walk upon, coincides almost exactly with the surface of the terrestrial sphere which we inhabit. Our habitable portion of the earth is about a tenth of its circumference, for the earth has five zones, and a half of one of these five is inhabited by us. If then you should wish to fit a sphere around the earth onto this tenth part of the surface, you will find that the diameter of the exterior sphere which encompasses also the interior one is almost twice that of the latter, and that the exterior sphere is eight times greater in magnitude, with its centre at what seems to us the lowest extremity of the earth. This is clear from the diagram.
13. Let the sphere of the earth be a circle on the inside of which is written A B Γ Δ, and around this let there be described, in place of the sphere of water, another circle coinciding along the surface with the upper tenth of the circle within it on which is inscribed E Z H Θ. Now, below us the extremity of the inner circle will be found to be the centre of the circle described on the outside. And since the latter is twice the former in diameter, and since there are geometric proofs to show that the sphere with twice the diameter is eight times the size of the sphere with half the diameter,[235] it follows then that the eighth part of this moist sphere is merged with the earth. And so, a great many springs burst up from it and abundant, ever-flowing river streams issue forth, and the gulfs of not a few seas pour into it, and a multitude of marsh waters seep upwards. And there is scarcely anywhere on earth where you can dig and not find water welling up.
14. Both the diagram and the argument prove that besides the world-region we live in there is no other. For if there were the same centre for both earth and water, the entire earth would be completely uninhabitable. Likewise, even more truly, if the water has as its centre the extremity of the earth furthest below us, apart from the region where we live which fits into the upper part of that sphere, no other part can possibly be inhabited, because they are all awash in water. And it has already been proved that the embodied rational soul is found in the only inhabited region of the earth, which by the fact that it is one and the same as ours alone now constitutes additional proof. It follows then that among the irrational beasts the land animals dwell solely in this region.
15. Sight is formed from the manifold dispositions of colours and shapes, smell from odours, taste from flavours, hearing from sounds, touch from things rough or smooth according to position.[236] The formations that occur in the senses arise from bodies but are not bodies though corporeal, for they do not arise from bodies in an absolute sense, but rather from the forms which are associated with bodies. They are not themselves the forms of bodies but the impressions left by the forms, like images inseparably separate from the forms associated with bodies. This is more evident in the case of vision and especially in the case of objects seen in mirrors.
16. The imaginative faculty of the soul, which in turn appropriates these sense impressions from the senses, completely separates not the senses themselves but what we have called the images in them from the bodies and their forms. And it holds them stored there like treasures, bringing them forward interiorly for its own use, one after another, each in its own time, even when a body is absent;[237] and it presents to itself all manner of things, objects of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
17. This imaginative faculty of the soul in the rational animal constitutes an intermediary between the mind and the senses. For when the mind beholds and dwells upon the images received within itself from the senses as separated from bodies and already incorporeal, it formulates thoughts in various ways by distinctions, analyses and syntheses. This happens in different ways: with and without passion and somewhere between passion and apatheia, both with and without error. And these are the situations from which are born most virtues and vices, as well as both good and evil opinions.[238] Since not every thought comes to the mind from these and concerns these, but you could find some things which cannot fall under the observation of the senses since they are passed on to thought by the mind, for this reason I said that in thoughts not every truth or error, virtue or vice has its origin in the imagination.
18. It is a great wonder and worthy of consideration, how beauty or ugliness, wealth or poverty, honour or dishonour, and, in a word, either the intelligible light which grants eternal life[239] or the intelligible darkness of chastisement becomes fixed in the soul through transitory and sensible things.
19. When the mind lingers over the imaginative faculty of the soul and thereby becomes associated with the senses, it produces a composite knowledge. For on the basis of sense perception, imagination and intellection you could arrive at an understanding that the moon gets its light from the sun, and that the moon's orbit is quite near the earth and is much below that of the sun: that is, if you should gaze with your senses at the moon which follows upon the setting sun and which is illuminated in that small part which is turned towards the sun and which then recedes little by little in the following days and is illuminated to a greater extent until the process becomes reversed, and in turn, as the moon little by little draws near the other part, it gradually diminishes in its light and moves away from the place where it originally received illumination.[240] These sights you examine through the mind, in that you have previous ones in the imagination and the one which is always present to the senses.
20. We know not only the phenomena of the moon but also those of the sun, both the solar eclipses and their nodes, the parallaxes of the other celestial planets and the distances separating them and the manifold configurations formed thereby, and the phenomena of the heavens in general. And further, the laws of nature and all its methods and arts, and in general all knowledge of anything collected from perception of particulars, we have gathered together from the senses and the imagination through the mind, and no such knowledge could ever be called spiritual but rather natural, which does not attain the things of the Spirit.
21. Where can we learn anything certain and free from deceit about God, about the world as a whole, about our own selves? Is it not from the teaching of the Spirit? For this teaching has taught us that God alone is true being, eternal being and immutable being, that he neither received being out of non-being nor returns to non-being, and that he is trihypostatic and omnipotent. In six days he brought forth beings from non-being by a word, or rather, as Moses says, he established everything at once, for we have heard him say, «In the beginning God created heaven and earth»;[241] not absolutely void nor without any intermediary bodies at all, for the earth was mixed with water and each was pregnant with air, and with animals and plants according to their species, while the heaven was pregnant with the various lights and fires in winch he established the universe.[242] In this way then God created heaven and earth in the beginning as a sort of all-containing receptacle of matter, bearing all things in potency.[243] Thereby, he rightly drives far off those who wrongly hold that matter preexisted of itself.
22. Afterwards, embellishing even as he adorns the world, the one who brought forth all things from nothing allotted in six days the proper and appropriate order to each of those which are his and make up his world. He distinguished each by command alone and brought forth into form as from hidden treasuries the things stored therein, disposing and arranging them in harmony, excellence and aptness, one to the other, each to all and all to each. With the immovable earth as a centre-point he arranged the ever-moving heaven in a circle in the uttermost heights and bound the two together with great wisdom through the middle regions. And so, the same world continues to be both stationary and mobile at the same time. For since the bodies in very rapid and perpetual motion have been arranged all in a circle, the immovable body necessarily had to occupy the middle region as its portion, counterbalancing the motion with its stability, so that the pancosmic sphere would not change position as a cylinder does.[244]
23. Thus, after assigning such positions to each of the two bounds of the universe, the master craftsman[245] both fixed and set in motion this entire, orderly world order, so to speak, and to each of the bodies between these bounds he in turn allotted what was fitting. Some bodies he positioned above and enjoined them to move about in the upper regions and to revolve round the uppermost, boundary of the universe in a constant and right orderly fashion for all time. These are the light and active bodies which transform substances into what is useful. Quite understandably, they are situated so far above the middle region that, flaming all round, they are able to break down sufficiently the excess of cold there and restrain in its place their own excess of heat. Somehow they stay also the excessive motion of the uppermost bounds because they have their own opposing movement and they hold those bodies in place by their opposing rotation, providing us with the beneficial, yearly changes of season, the measures of temporal extension, and to the wise the knowledge of God who created, ordered and adorned the world.[246] Thus, for a twofold purpose did he permit some bodies to dance round in the upper air in fast rotation, namely, for the sake of the beauty of the universe and for manifold benefit. Other bodies he set below around the middle region. These possess weight, are passible in nature and naturally come into being and change, decomposing and coming together again, or rather, they are able to change to a useful purpose. He established these things and their proportion to one another in due order so that the All may truly be called Cosmos.
24. Thus was the first of beings brought forth in creation and after the first another and after that still another, and so forth, and after all things man. He was deemed worthy by God of such honour and providential care that before him this entire sensible world came into being for his sake, and before him right from the foundation of the world the kingdom of heaven was prepared for his sake[247] and counsel concerning him was taken beforehand[248] and he was formed by the hand of God and according to the image of God. He did not derive everything from this matter and the sensible world like the other animals but the body only; the soul he derived from the realities beyond the world, or rather, from God himself through an ineffable insufflation,[249] like some great and marvellous creation, superior to the universe, overseeing the universe and set over all creatures, capable of both knowing and receiving God, and, more than any, capable of manifesting the exceeding greatness of the Artificer; and not only is the human soul capable of receiving God through struggle and grace, but also it was able to be united with God in a single hypostasis.[250]
25. Here and in such things lie the true wisdom and the saving knowledge which procure blessedness on high. What Euclid, what Marinos, what Ptolemy could understand? What Empedocleans, Socratics, Aristotelians or Platonists with their logical methods and mathematical proofs?[251] Or rather, what sort of sense perception has grasped such things? What mind apprehended them? If the spiritual wisdom seemed earthbound to those natural philosophers and their followers, consequently the one who stands supereminently superior to it turns out also to be such. For almost as the irrational animals are related to the wisdom of those men (or, if you wish, like little children for whom the pancakes they have at hand would seem superior to the imperial crown, or even to everything known by those philosophers), just so are these philosophers to the true and most excellent wisdom and teaching of the Spirit.
26. Knowing God in truth to the extent that this is possible is not only incomparably better than Hellenic philosophy, but also, knowing what place man has before Cod, alone of itself, surpasses all their wisdom.[252] For of all earthly and heavenly things man alone was created in the image of his Maker, so that he might look in him and love him, and that he might be an initiate and worshipper of God alone and might preserve his proper beauty by faith in him and inclination and disposition towards him, and that he might know that all other things which this heaven and earth bear are inferior to himself and completely devoid of intelligence. Since the Hellenic sages have not been able to understand this at all, they have dishonoured our own nature and acted impiously towards God; «They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator,»[253] endowing the sense-perceptible and insensate stars with intelligence, in each case proportionate in power and rank to its corporeal magnitude. And worshipping these in their sorry manner, they address them as superior and inferior gods and entrust them with dominion over the universe. On the basis of sensible things and philosophy on such have these men not inflicted shame, dishonour and the ultimate penury on their own souls, and also the verily intelligible darkness of punishment?
27. The knowledge that we are made in the image of the Creator does not permit us to deify even the intelligible world, for it is not the bodily constitution but the very nature of the mind which possesses this image and nothing in our nature is superior to the mind. If there were something superior, that is where the image would be. But since our superior part is the mind – and even though this is in the divine image, it was nevertheless created by God -, why then is it difficult to understand, or rather, how can it not be self-evident that the maker of our intellectual being is also the maker of all intellectual being? Therefore, every intellectual nature is a fellow servant with us and is in the image of the Creator, even though they be more worthy of honour than we because they are without bodies and are nearer to the utterly incorporeal and uncreated nature. Or rather, those among them who kept to their proper rank and longed for the goal of their being, even though they are fellow servants, are honoured by us and because of their rank are much more worthy of honour than we are. But those who did not keep to their rank but rebelled and denied the goal of their being have become utterly alienated from those who are near God and they have fallen from honour. But if they try to draw us too towards a fall, they are not only worthless and without honour but also opposed to God and harmful and most hostile to our race.
28. But natural scientists, astronomers, and those who boast of knowing everything have been unable to understand any of the things just mentioned on the basis of their philosophy and have considered the ruler of the intelligible darkness and all the rebellious powers under him not only superior to themselves but even gods and they honoured them with temples, offered them sacrifices, and submitted themselves to their most destructive oracles by which they were fittingly much deluded through unholy holy things and defiling purifications, through those who inspire abominable presumption and through prophets and prophetesses who lead them very far astray from the real truth.
29. Not only are man's knowledge of God and his understanding of himself and his proper rank (which knowledge now belongs to those who are Christians, even those considered uneducated laymen) a more lofty knowledge than natural science and astronomy and any philosophy in these subjects, but also our mind's knowledge of its own weakness and the search for its healing would be incomparably superior by far to the investigation and knowledge of the magnitudes of the stars and the reasons for natural phenomena, the origins of things below and the circuits of things above, their changes and risings, their fixed positions and retrograde motions, their disjunctions and conjunctions, and, in general, the entire multiform relation that results from their considerable motion in that region. For the mind that realizes its own weakness has discovered whence it might enter upon salvation and draw near in the light of knowledge and receive true wisdom which does not pass away with this age.
30. Every rational and intellectual nature, whether you should call it angelic or human, possesses life essentially, whereby it subsequently perdures as immortal in its existence and incapable of destruction. But our rational and intellectual nature possesses life not only essentially but also as an activity, for it gives life even to the body joined to it. And so, life might be predicated of the body as well. And whenever life is predicated of the body, this life is so predicated as dependent upon something else and is an activity of that substance, for as dependent upon something else life could never be called a substance in itself. The intellectual nature of the angels, on the other hand, does not possess life as an activity of this sort, for it did not receive from God an earthly body joined to it, so as to receive in addition a life-giving power for this purpose. However, it is susceptible of opposites, namely, good and evil. The evil angels confirm this in that they experienced a fall because of their pride. Thus, in a sense, even the angels are composite on the basis of their own substance and one of the opposing qualities, I mean virtue and vice. And so, not even these are shown to possess goodness essentially.
31. The soul of each of the irrational animals constitutes the life for the body it animates and so animals possess life not essentially but as an activity, since this life is dependent on something else and is not self-subsistent. For the soul is seen to possess nothing other than the activities operated through the body, wherefore the soul is necessarily dissolved together with the passing of the body. The soul is no less mortal than the body, since everything which it is relates and refers to mortality, and so it dies when the body does.
32. The soul of each man is also the life of the body it animates, and it possesses a life-giving activity seen as directed towards something else, namely, to the body which it vivifies. But the soul possesses life not only as an activity but also essentially, since it lives in its own right, for it is seen to possess a rational and intellectual life which is manifestly distinct from that of the body and its corporeal phenomena. For that reason, when the body passes away, the soul does not perish with it. In addition to the fact that it does not perish with the body, the soul also perdures immortally, since it is not seen as directed towards another but possesses life essentially of itself.
33. The rational and intellectual soul possesses lift essentially but is susceptible of opposites, namely, good and evil. Whence it is shown not to possess goodness essentially, just as it does not possess evil in this way, but as a sort of quality, being disposed according to either one, whenever it might be present. The quality is not spatially located, but rather it is present when the intellectual soul, having received free will from the Creator, inclines towards the quality and wills to live in accordance with it. Thus the rational and intellectual soul is composite in a sense, but not on the basis of the above-mentioned activity, for since that activity is directed towards something else it does not naturally produce composition; but rather on the basis of its own substance and of whichever one of the just mentioned opposite qualities, I mean virtue and vice.
34. The supreme mind, the highest good, the nature possessed of supernal life and divinity,[254] since it is utterly and absolutely incapable of admitting contraries, manifestly possesses goodness not as a quality but as a substance.[255] Therefore, any particular good that one might conceive of is found in it, or rather, the supreme mind is both that good and beyond it. And anything in the supreme mind that one might conceive of is a good, or rather, goodness and a goodness which transcends itself.[256] Life too is found in it; or rather, the supreme mind is itself life, for life is a good and life in it is goodness. Wisdom too is found in it; or rather, it is itself wisdom, for wisdom is a good and wisdom in it is goodness; and similarly with eternity and blessedness and in general any good that one might conceive of.[257] And there is no distinction there between life and wisdom and goodness and the like, for that goodness embraces all things collectively, unitively and in utter simplicity;[258] and it is subject to both thought and expression on the basis of all good things. It is both one and true, which are good things that one might both conceive and say concerning it. But that goodness is not only identical with that which is truly conceived by those who think with a mind endowed with divine wisdom and speak of God with a tongue moved by the Spirit;[259] as ineffable and inconceivable, it is also beyond these things, and is not inferior to the unitive and supernatural simplicity, in that the absolute and transcendent goodness is one. For according to this fact alone, namely, that he is absolute and transcendent goodness possessing goodness substantially, the Creator and Lord of creation is subject to both thought and expression and, in this, only on the basis of those of his energies which are directed towards creation. Therefore, he is utterly and absolutely incapable of admitting contrariety in this respect, for no substance possesses a contrary.
35. This absolute and transcendent goodness is itself also the source of goodness, for this too is a good and the highest of goods, and it could not be lacking in perfect goodness.[260] Since the transcendently and absolutely perfect goodness is mind, what else but a word could ever proceed from it as from a source?[261] But it is not a word in the sense we use of a word expressed orally, for that does not belong to the mind but to the body moved by the mind. Nor is it in the sense we use of a word immanent in us, for that too is so disposed within us to correspond to types of sounds. But nor is it in the sense of a word in our discursive intellect, even though it be without sounds and is produced entirely by incorporeal mental impulses, for that too is posterior to us and requires both intervals and not a few extensions of time since it comes forth gradually and is brought from incompletion in the beginning towards its completion in the end. Rather, it is in the sense of the word naturally stored up within our mind, whereby we have come into being from the one who created us according to his own image, namely, that knowledge which is always coexistent with the mind. The knowledge also present there in a special way in the supreme mind of the absolutely and transcendently perfect goodness, in which there is nothing imperfect except that this knowledge is derived from it, is indistinguishably all things that goodness is. Therefore, the supreme Word is also the Son and is so named by us, in order that we may recognize him as being perfect in a perfect and proper hypostasis,[262] since he is derived from the Father and is in no way inferior to the Father's substance but is indistinguishably identical with him, though not in hypostasis, which indicates that the Word is derived from him by generation in a divinely fitting manner.
36. Since the goodness which proceeds by generation from intellectual goodness as from a source is the Word, and since no intelligent person could conceive of a word without spirit, for this reason the Word, God from God, possesses also the Holy Spirit proceeding together with him from the Father. But this is spirit not in the sense of the breath which accompanies the word passing through our lips (for this is a body and is adapted to our word through bodily organs); nor is it spirit in the sense of that which accompanies the immanent and the discursive word within us, even though it does so incorporeally, for that too entails a certain motion of the mind which involves a temporal extension in conjunction with our word and requires the same intervals and proceeds from incomplete on to completion. But that Spirit of the supreme Word is like an ineffable love of the Begetter towards the ineffably begotten Word himself. The beloved Word and Son of the Father also experiences this love towards the Begetter, but he does so inasmuch as he possesses this love as proceeding from the Father together with him and as resting connaturally in him.[263] From the Word who held concourse with us through the flesh we have learned also the name of the Spirit's distinct mode of coming to be from the Father, and that the Spirit belongs not only to the Father but also to the Son. For he says, «The Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father,»[264] in order that we may recognize not a Word alone but also a Spirit from the Father, who is not begotten but who proceeds, but he belongs also to the Son who possesses him from the Father as Spirit of truth, wisdom and word. For truth and wisdom constitute a word appropriate to the Begetter, a Word which rejoices together with the Father who rejoices in him, according to what he said through Solomon, «I was the one (i.e., Wisdom) who rejoiced together with him.»[265] He did not say «rejoiced» but «rejoiced together with,» for this pre-eternal joy of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit in that he is common to them by mutual intimacy.[266] Therefore, he is sent to the worthy from both, but in his coming to be he belongs to the Father alone and thus he also proceeds from him alone in his manner of coming to be.
37. Our mind too, since it is created in the image of God, possesses the image of this highest love in the relation of the mind to the knowledge which exists perpetually from it and in it, in that this love is from it and in it and proceeds from it together with the innermost word. The insatiable desire of men for knowledge is a very clear indication of this even for those who are unable to perceive their own innermost being. But in that archetype, in that absolutely and supremely perfect goodness wherein there is no imperfection, leaving aside the being derived from it,[267] the divine love is indistinguishably identical in every way with that goodness. Therefore, this love is the Holy Spirit and another (name for the) Paraclete and is so called by us, since he accompanies the Word, in order that we may recognize him as perfect in a perfect and proper hypostasis, in no way inferior to the substance of the Father but being indistinguishably identical with both the Son and the Father, though not in hypostasis – a fact which indicates to us that he is derived from the Father by way of procession in a divinely fitting manner – and in order that we may revere one true and perfect God in three true and perfect hypostases, certainly not threefold, but simple. For goodness is not something threefold nor a triad of goodnesses; rather, the supreme goodness is a holy, august and venerable Trinity flowing forth from itself into itself without change and abiding with itself before the ages in divinely fitting manner, being both unbounded and bounded by itself alone, while setting bounds for all things, transcending all things and allowing no beings independent of itself.
38. On the one hand, then, the intellectual and rational nature of the angels also possesses mind, and word from the mind, and the love of the mind for the word, which love is also from the mind and ever coexists with the word and the mind, and which could be called spirit since it accompanies the word by nature. But the angelic nature does not possess this spirit as life-giving, for it has not received from God an earthly body joined with it in order that it might receive also a life-giving and conserving power for this purpose. But, on the other hand, the intellectual and rational nature of the soul, since it was created in conjunction with an earthly body, received this spirit from God as also life-giving, through which it conserves and gives life to the body joined to it. Thereby, it is shown to men of understanding that man's spirit, the life-giving power in his body, is intellectual love; it is from the mind and the word, and exists in the word and the mind, and possesses both the word and the mind within itself. Through it the soul naturally possesses such a bond of love with its own body that it never wishes to leave it and will not do so at all unless force is brought to bear on it externally from some very serious disease or trauma.
39. The intellectual and rational nature of the soul, alone possessing mind and word and life-giving spirit, has alone been created more in the image of God than the incorporeal angels. It possesses this indefectibly even though it may not recognize its own dignity nor think or act in a manner worthy of the one who created him in his own image. Therefore, we did not destroy the image even though after our ancestor's transgression through a tree in paradise we underwent the death of the soul which is prior to bodily death, that is, separation of the soul from God, and we rejected the divine likeness. Thus, on the one hand, if the soul rejects attachment to inferior things and cleaves in love to one who is superior by submitting to him through the works and the ways of virtue, it receives from him illumination, adornment and betterment, and it obeys his counsels and exhortations from which it receives true and eternal life. Through this life it receives also immortality for the body joined to it, for at the proper time the body attains to the promised resurrection and participates in eternal glory. But, on the other hand, if it does not reject attachment and submission to inferior things whereby it inflicts shameful dishonour upon the image of God, it becomes alienated and estranged from the true and truly blessed life of God, since if it has first abandoned the one who is superior, it is justly abandoned by him.
40. The triadic nature posterior to the supreme Trinity, since, more so than others, it has been made by it in its image, endowed with mind, word and spirit (namely, the human soul), ought to preserve its proper rank and take its place after God alone and be subject, subordinate and obedient to him alone and look to him alone and adorn itself with perpetual remembrance and contemplation of him and with most fervent and ardent love for him. By these it is marvellously drawn to itself, or rather, it would eventually attract to itself the mysterious and ineffable radiance of that nature. Then, it truly possesses the image and likeness of God, since through this it has been made gracious, wise and divine. Either when the radiance is visibly present or when it approaches unnoticed, the soul learns from this now more and more to love God beyond itself and its neighbour as itself[268] and from then on to know and preserve its own dignity and rank and truly to love itself. For he who loves wrongdoing hates his own soul and, in tearing apart and disabling the image of God, he experiences suffering similar to that of madmen who pitilessly cut their own flesh to pieces without feeling it. For he unwittingly inflicts the most miserable sort of harm and rending upon his own innate beauty, and mindlessly breaks apart the triadic and supercosmic world of his own soul which was filled interiorly with love. What could be more wrong, what more ruinous than to refuse to remember, to look upon and to love perpetually the one who created and adorned in his own image and thereby granted the power of knowledge and love and also lavishly endowed those who use this power well with ineffable gifts and with eternal life?
41. One of the creatures inferior to our soul and inferior by far to others is the spiritual serpent and author of evil, who is now become an angel of his own wickedness as a result of his evil counsel to men; he became lower than and inferior to all to the extent that he aspired in his arrogance to become like the Creator in power. By the Creator he was justly abandoned to the same degree that he had previously abandoned him. So great was his defection that he became opposed, contrary and manifestly adversary to him. If then the Creator is living goodness bestowing life on the living, plainly this other one is mortal evil bestowing death. For if the former possesses goodness substantially and is a nature incapable of admitting the contrary, namely, evil, inasmuch as those who have any part in evil whatsoever must not approach him, how much more does he drive as far as possible from himself the creator and originator of evil and its motivation in others? But the evil one possesses not evil but life as his substance and so he lives on immortally in it. However, he possessed life with a capacity also for evil and was honoured with free will in order that by accepting a subordinate status of his own accord and by clinging to the ever-flowing spring of goodness he might have had a share in true life. Since he willingly deserted to evil, he was deprived of true life, justly expelled from that which he had previously fled, and he is become a dead spirit, not in substance (for there is no substance of «deadness») but by rejection of true life. But unsated in his impulse to evil and by his increased state of wretchedness, he made himself into a spirit who confers death in that he eagerly draws man too into fellowship with his own death.
42. As one crooked in his ways and mighty in treacheries, the mediator and agent of death once clothed himself as a crooked serpent in the paradise of God.[269] It was not that he himself became a serpent (for that is impossible except in appearance, which at that time he did not know he had to use for fear of possible discovery), but rather, not daring an open encounter, he chose a deceitful one.[270] And he chose that whereby he was more confident of escaping notice, in order that by appearing friendly he might secretly introduce most hateful things and by the extraordinary fact of his talking cause stupefaction (for the sensible serpent was not rational, nor did he previously appear able to speak); and in order that he might lure the attentive Eve completely to himself and by his devices easily manipulate her that then he might immediately accustom her to submit to inferior things and become enslaved to those things which it fell to her lot to rule worthily, as she alone among sensible living beings had been favoured by the hand and word of God and made in the image of the Creator.[271] But God allowed this in order that man, seeing the counsel coming from that inferior creature (for how much inferior is a serpent to man, and clearly so!), might realize how completely worthless it is and be indignant with his subjection to what is obviously inferior end preserve his proper dignity and at the same time his faithfulness to the Creator by keeping his command. Thus, he will readily become victor over the one who fell from true life; he will justly receive blessed immortality and will abide forever in life divine.
43. No being is superior to man that it should give him counsel or propose an opinion and thereby know and provide what is fitting for him. But this is so only if he guards his own rank, knows himself and the one who alone is superior to him, and if, on the one hand, he gives heed to what he might learn from that one who is superior to him, and if, on the other hand, in what he might learn is not from him, he resolutely accepts God alone as his counsellor. The angels, too, though they surpass us in dignity, yet serve those counsels of his made on our behalf, for «they are ministers sent for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.»[272] This is true not for all the angels, but for those who are good and who preserved their own rank. They possess from God mind, word and spirit, three connatural realities, and they are obliged, as we are, to give their obedience to the Creator, who is mind, word and spirit. They surpass us in many ways, but there are some in which they are inferior to us, namely, as we have said and will say again, with respect to being in the image of the creator, whereby we have come to be more in the image of God than they are.
44. The angels were emphatically ordained to serve the Creator and destined only to be ruled but were not appointed to rule those after them, unless perhaps they should be sent for this purpose by the ruler of the universe. But Satan aspired in his arrogance to rule contrary to the will of the Creator and, when he left his proper rank in the company of his fellow apostate angels, he was justly abandoned by the source or true life and light and he arrayed himself in death and eternal darkness. But since man was appointed not only to be ruled but also to rule all things on earth,[273] the archevil one, viewing this with envious eyes, employs every device to depose man from his dominion. While he is unable to do so by force, inasmuch as he is prevented by the Lord of all who created rational nature endowed with both freedom and free will, he treacherously proffers counsel to deprive him of dominion. Thus he robs man, or rather, he persuades him to disregard, treat as nothing and reject, or, rather, to oppose and do the opposite of the command and counsel given by the superior one, and, as man shared in his apostasy, he persuades him to share also in his eternal darkness and death.
45. The great Paul has taught us that the rational soul can exist in such a way that it is dead, though it possesses life as its being; he writes, «The self-indulgent widow is dead even while she lives.»[274] He could not have said worse than this about the present subject, namely, the rational soul. For if the soul deprived of the spiritual bridegroom is not sobered, mournful and effectively leading 'the difficult and hard life' of repentance,[275] but rather becomes dissipated, abandoned to pleasures and self-indulgent, «it is dead even while it lives» (for in substance it is immortal). It has the capacity for death which is the worse, just as for life which is the better. But even though he speaks of the widow deprived of the corporeal bridegroom, he says she is utterly dead in soul, though self- indulgent and alive in body, since Paul also says elsewhere that «even when we were dead through our trespass, he made us alive together with Christ.»[276] And what is it that St. John said: «There is sin which is unto death and there is sin which is not unto death»?[277] But even the Lord, who commanded a man to leave the dead to bury the dead, declared those grave diggers to be utterly dead in soul, though alive in body.
46. The ancestors of our race wilfully removed themselves from the remembrance and contemplation of God and by disregarding his command they became of one mind with the deathly spirit of Satan and contrary to the will of the Creator they ate of the forbidden tree.[278] Stripped of the luminous and living raiment of the supernal radiance, they too – alas! – became dead in spirit like Satan. Since Satan is not only a deathly spirit but also brings death upon those who draw near to him and since those who shared in his deathliness also possessed a body through which the fell counsel was realized, they communicate those deathly and fell spirits of deathliness to their own bodies. This is the case whenever the human body is dissolved, returning forthwith to the earth from which it was taken,[279] unless, conserved by a superior providence and power, it patiently suffers the sentence of the one who bears all things by his word alone, for without his decree nothing at all can be accomplished and it is always carried out justly. For, as the divine psalmist says, «The Lord is just and loves justice.»[280]
41. According to Scripture, «God did not create death,»[281] but rather he prevented its inception insofar as it was necessary and as it was possible in justice to hinder those he had created with free will. For from the beginning he introduced his plan to confer immortality and with a most firm and life-giving counsel he established his commandment. Both the prohibition and the threat were clear: he had stated resolutely that rejection of the living commandment would mean death.[282] He did this so that they would preserve themselves from the experience of death either by reason of desire or knowledge or fear.[283] For God loves, knows and is able to effect what is good for each one of his creatures. On the one hand, then, if God only knew what was good but did not love it, perhaps he would have stopped and left undone what he knew to be good. On the other hand, if he loved but did not know what was good or was not able to effect it, perhaps, without his willing it, what he desired and knew would remain undone. But since in a special way God loves and knows and is able to effect what is for our good, whatever happens to us through his agency, even without our willing it, happens entirely for our benefit. In whatever we willingly involve ourselves by our natural endowment with free will, great is the fear that it should turn out to be for our misfortune. Whenever in God's providence some one thing among all others is emphatically forbidden -as, for example, in paradise and in the Gospel by the Lord himself, among the offspring of Israel through the prophets, in the law of grace through his apostles and their successors – it is clearly most unprofitable and destructive to desire that thing for itself and eagerly seek after it. And if someone proffers it to us and urges us to seek it eagerly, using persuasive words and luring us with attractive forms, he is clearly inimical and hostile to our lives.
48. Therefore, either out of desire, since God desires us to live (for why would he have created us living unless he particularly wanted it so?), or because we recognize that he knows what is good for us better than we do (for how could the one who granted us knowledge not be the Lord of knowledge[284] to an incomparably greater extent?), or out of fear for his all-powerful might, we ought not to have been misled, lured and persuaded at that time into rejecting God's command and counsel. And the same is true now for the saving commandments and counsels given to us after the first one. Just as now those who high-mindedly refuse to stand opposed to sin and who set at nought the divine commandments attain the contrary, namely, that which leads to interior and eternal death, unless they regain their souls by repentance, so in the same way our two ancestors, by not opposing those who persuaded them to disobey, disregarded the commandment. Because of this the sentence announced to them beforehand by the one who judges justly immediately went into effect and accordingly as soon as they ate of the tree they died. Then they understood in reality what was the commandment of truth, love, wisdom and power given to them and which they had forgotten. In shame they hid themselves,[285] stripped of the glory which grants a more excellent life to the immortal spirits and without which the life of the spirits is believed to be and is indeed far worse than many deaths.
49. That it was not yet to our ancestors' benefit to eat of that tree is shown by the quotation: «The tree, in my opinion, represented contemplation, which can be safely approached only by those with a more perfect disposition, but it is not good for those who are still quite immature and greedy in their desires, just as 'perfect food is of no use for those still immature and requiring milk'.»[286] But even if you do not want to transfer the significance of that tree and its fruit anagogically to contemplation, it is not very hard, I think, to see that it was not yet of benefit to those who were still imperfect. In my opinion, as far as the senses were concerned, among the trees in paradise that one was the most pleasant to look upon and to eat from. But the food most pleasant to the senses is not truly and necessarily good, nor always good, nor good for everyone. Rather it is good for those who are able to enjoy it in such a way that they are not overcome and who do so when it is necessary, to the extent that it is necessary and for the glory of the one who has created it. But it is not for those unable to enjoy it in this way. For this reason I think that tree was called ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’[287] For it belongs to those with a perfect disposition of divine contemplation and virtue to be familiar with the most pleasant of sensible things without also drawing their mind away from contemplation of God and from hymns and prayers addressed to him. It also belongs to these to make the most pleasant of sensible things the material and the starting point for the ascent to God and to overcome sensible pleasure completely through the movement of the intellect towards superior things, even though such a movement may be strange, considerable and quite violent, still more because of its strangeness, namely, the effort not to deprive the soul of its rationality for the sake of what at that time is evil yet thought to be good by one who is captured by it and overcome utterly.
50. Therefore, while they lived in that sacred land, it was to the profit of our ancestors and it was incumbent upon them never to have forgotten God, to have become still more practised and, as it were, schooled in the simple, true realities of goodness and to have become accomplished in the habit of contemplation. But experience of things pleasant to the senses is of no profit to those who are still imperfect, those who are in mid-course and who, compared with the strength of the experienced, are easily displaced towards good or its opposite. And the same applies to those who by nature greatly degrade these things and who dominate and draw down the entire mind in company with the senses and give way to the evil passions and prove the persuasiveness of the originator and creator of such passions of which the origin, after Satan, was the impassioned eating of the sweetest victuals. For if sight alone of that tree, according to the account, rendered the serpent an acceptable and trustworthy counsellor, how much more would the sense of taste do so for subsequent generations? And if this is true for taste, how much more for eating to satiety? Is it not clear that it was not yet to the advantage of our ancestors to eat of that tree by way of the senses? Because they did not eat from it at the proper time, was it not needful that they be expelled from the paradise of God[288] lest they make that divine land into a counsel chamber and workshop of wickedness? Would it not have been fitting if the transgressors had experienced death also of the body immediately at that time? But the master was forbearing.
51. The sentence of death for the soul which the transgression put into effect for us was according to the Creator's justice, tor without compulsion he abandoned those who abandoned him when they became self-willed. That sentence had been announced by God beforehand out of his love for man,[289] for the reasons we have mentioned. But he restrained and deferred at first the sentence of bodily death and when he pronounced the sentence, out of the depth of his wisdom and the abundance of his love for man he postponed its execution for a future time: he did not say to Adam, 'Return from whence you were taken!,' but rather, «You are earth and unto earth you shall return.»[290] Those who listen intelligently can see from these words that God did not make death, neither for the soul nor for the body.[291] For neither did he at the first give the command saying, 'Die on the day that you eat of it!’ but rather, «You shall die on the day you eat of it.»[292] Nor thereafter did he say, 'Return now unto the earth!,' but rather, «You shall return.»[293] After the prior announcement he let the matter go, but without hindering its just outcome.
52. Death, then, was to follow our ancestors just as it is laid up even for those who outlive us, and our body was rendered mortal. There is also a lengthy process which in a manner of speaking is a death, or rather, ten thousand deaths following one after the other in succession, until we should come to the one final and long-lasting death. For we come into being in corruption and while coming to be we are passing away until we cease both passing away and coming to be. We are never truly the same even though to the inattentive we may seem to be. Just as with the flame of a thin reed held at the end – for that too changes from one moment to the next – the length of the reed is the measure of its existence, similarly with us too in our transience the span of life given to each man is the measure of his existence.
53. Lest we be entirely unaware of the abundance of his love for man and the depth of his wisdom, God deferred the execution of death on this account and granted man to live for a long time still. In the beginning he showed compassion in his discipline, or rather, he permitted a just discipline lest we despair completely. He also granted a time for repentance and a new life pleasing to him. He alleviated the sorrow of death by a succession of generations. He increased the race with successors so that the multitude of those begotten would initially exceed by a large measure the number of those who died. In place of the one Adam, who became pitiable and poor because of the sensible beauty of the tree, God displayed many who proceeded from sensible things to become blessedly rich in knowledge of God, in virtue, in knowledge and in divine favour: witness Seth, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Melchisedek, Abraham, and those who have appeared between, before and after them, who were like them or nearly so. But since among so many no one lived entirely without sin so as to be able to revoke that defeat of our ancestors and to heal the wound at the root of our race and to suffice for the sanctification, blessing and return of life for all who followed, God provided for this and made a choice from the nations and tribes whence there would arise the celebrated staff from which would come the flower[294] whereby he would accomplish the saving economy of the entire race.
54. ‘O the depth of God’s riches, wisdom and love for mankind!’[295] For if there had been no death, and if prior to death our race had not been mortal because of such a root, we would not in fact have gained the riches of the first fruits of immortality, nor would we have been summoned up to heaven, nor would our nature have been enthroned above every principality and power ‘at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens,’[296] Thus, by his wisdom and power and out of love for mankind God knows how to change to the better the falls which result from our freely willed deviation from the course.
55. Many people perhaps blame Adam for the way he was easily persuaded by the evil counsellor and rejected the divine commandment and through such a rejection procured our death. But it is not the same thing to want a taste of some deadly plant prior to testing it and to desire to eat of it after learning by the test that it is deadly. For a man who takes in some poison after testing it and wretchedly brings death upon himself is more culpable than the one who does this and suffers the consequences prior to the test. Therefore, each of us is more abundantly culpable and guilty than Adam. But is that tree not within us? Do we not, even now, have a commandment, from God forbidding us to taste of it? This tree is not found in us in the same way as the former one, but the commandment of God is with us even now. On the one hand, if we obey it and set our will to live by it, it frees us from the punishment for all our sins and from the ancestral curse and condemnation. But, on the other hand, if we reject it even now and prefer to it the temptation and counsel of the evil one, we cannot but be banished from that life and society in paradise and fall into the Gehenna of eternal fire with which we were threatened.
56. What then is this commandment now laid before us by God? It is repentance, of which the principal characteristic is to touch forbidden things no more. For we were cast out of the land of divine delight and justly shut out from the paradise of God, and we have fallen into this pit and have been condemned to dwell and live out our lives in the company of the irrational animals and have rendered beyond hope the advent of our recall to paradise. Because of this, God, who at that time rendered his judgement in justice, or rather, allowed this to come upon us justly, now out of his goodness and love for mankind, for the sake of his mercy and compassion,[297] has come down to us for our sake. According to his good pleasure he became a man like us except for sin that he may teach us anew and rescue like by like, and he introduced the saving counsel and commandment of repentance, saying to us, «Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.»[298] Prior to the incarnation of the Word of God the kingdom of heaven was as far from us as the sky is from the earth. But when the King of heaven sojourned among us and was pleased to become one with us, the kingdom of heaven drew near to us all.
57. Now that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near to us through the condescension of God the Word unto us, let us not remove ourselves far from it by living an unrepentant life. Rather, let us flee the wretchedness of «those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.»[299] Let us acquire the works of repentance: a humble attitude, compunction and spiritual mourning, a gentle heart full of mercy, loving justice, striving for purity, peaceful, peacemaking, patient, glad to suffer persecutions, losses, disasters, slander and sufferings for the sake of truth and righteousness. For the kingdom of heaven, or rather, the King of heaven – O the unspeakable munificence! – is within us.[300] To him we ought always to cling by works of repentance and perseverance, loving as much as possible him who loved us so much.
58. The absence of passions and the presence of virtues establish love of God, for hatred of evil things and the consequent absence of the passions introduce instead the desire for and the acquisition of good things. How could one who loves and possesses good things not love in a special way the master who is goodness itself and who alone is both provider and preserver of all good? In him he has his being in a singular manner and him he bears within himself through love, according to the one who said, «He who abides in love abides in God and God in him.»[301] You should know not only that love for God is based on the virtues, but also that the virtues are born of love. And so the Lord says at one point in the Gospel, «He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me»;[302] and on another occasion, «He who loves me will keep my commandments.»[303] But neither are the works of virtue praiseworthy and profitable for those who practise them without love, nor indeed is love without works. Paul at one time makes ample demonstration of this when he writes to the Corinthians, «If I do such and such but have not love, I gain nothing.»[304] And in turn, at another time, the disciple specially beloved by Christ does likewise when he says, «Let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.»[305]
59. The supreme and worshipful Father is Father of Truth itself, namely, the Only-Begotten Son. And the Holy Spirit has a spirit or truth, just as the Word of Truth demonstrated previously. Therefore, those who worship the Father in spirit and truth and hold to this manner of belief also receive the energies through these. ‘For the Spirit,’ says the Apostle, ‘is the one through whom we offer worship and through whom we pray’;[306] and the Only-Begotten of God says, «No one comes to the Father except through me.»[307] Therefore, 'those who thus worship the supreme Father in spirit and truth are the true worshippers.'[308]
60. «God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,»[309] that is, by conceiving the incorporeal incorporeally. For thus will they truly see him everywhere in his spirit and truth. Since God is spirit, he is incorporeal, but the incorporeal is not situated in place, nor circumscribed by spatial boundaries. Therefore, if someone says that God must be worshipped in some definite place among those in all earth and heaven, he does not speak truly nor does he worship truly. As incorporeal, God is nowhere; as God, he is everywhere. For if there is a mountain, place or creature where God is not, he will be found circumscribed in something. He is everywhere then, for he is boundless. How then can he be everywhere? Because he is encompassed not by a part but by the whole? Certainly not, for once again in that case he will be a body! Therefore, because he sustains and encompasses the universe, he is in himself both everywhere and also beyond the universe, worshipped by true worshippers in his spirit and truth.[310]
61. The angel and the soul, as incorporeal beings, are not located in place but neither are they everywhere, for they do not sustain the universe but rather are dependent upon the one who sustains them. Therefore, they belong in the one who sustains and encompasses the universe in that they are appropriately bounded by him. The soul therefore as it sustains the body together with which it was created is everywhere in the body, not as in a place, nor as if it were encompassed, but as sustaining, encompassing and giving life to it because it possesses this too in the image of God.
62. Not in this respect alone has man been created in the image of God more so than the angels, namely, in that he possesses within himself both a sustaining and life-giving power, but also as regards dominion. Contained in the nature of our soul there is on the one hand a faculty of governance and dominion and on the other hand one of natural servitude and obedience. Will, appetite, sense perception and generally those things subsequent to the mind were created by God together with the mind, even though we are sometimes disposed towards sin in our will and rebel not only against our God and universal sovereign but also against the ruling power belonging to us by nature. Nevertheless, because of the faculty of dominion within us God gave us lordship over all the earth.[311] But angels do not have a body joined to them so that it is subject to the mind. The fallen angels have acquired an intellectual will which is perpetually evil, while the good angels have acquired one that is perpetually good and required no charioteer at all. The evil one did not own, rather he stole power over the earth, whence it is clear that he was not created as ruler of the earth. The good angels were appointed by the universal sovereign to keep watch over the affairs of earth after our fall and the reduction of our rank that ensued, even though it was not complete because of God's love for mankind. As Moses says in the Ode, 'God established bounds for the angels when he divided up the nations.'[312] This division had taken place after Cain and Seth, with the posterity of Cain being called men while the descendants of Seth were called sons of God. As it seems to me, the name thereafter distinguishes and foretells the race from which the only-begotten Son of God would take flesh.
63. In company with many others you might say that also the threefold character of our knowledge shows us to be more in the image of God than the angels, not only because it is threefold but also because it encompasses every form of knowledge. For we alone of all creatures possess also a faculty of sense perception in addition to those of intellection and reason. This faculty is naturally joined to that of reason and has discovered a varied multitude of arts, sciences and forms of knowledge: farming and building, bringing forth from nothing, though not from absolute non-being (for this belongs to God), he gave to man alone. Scarcely anything at all effected by God comes into being and falls into corruption but rather, when one thing is mixed with another among the things in our sphere, it takes another form. Furthermore, God granted to men alone that not only could the invisible word of the mind be subject to the sense of hearing when joined to the air, but also that it could be put down in writing and seen with and through the body. Thereby God leads us to a clear faith in the visitation and manifestation of the supreme Word through the flesh in which the angels have no part at all.
64. But even though we possess the image of God to a greater degree than the angels, even till the present we are inferior by far with respect to God's likeness and especially now in relation to the good angels. Leaving other things aside for now, the perfection of the likeness of God is effected by the divine illumination that comes from God. I should think that no one who reads the divinely inspired scriptures carefully and intelligently would be unaware that the evil angels have been deprived of this illumination and therefore are under darkness, whereas the divine minds are informed thereby and so are called «a secondary light and an emanation of the First Light.»[313] Thence the good angels possess also knowledge of sensible things, for they apprehend these things not by a sensible and natural power but rather know them by means of a divine power, from which nothing present, past or future can be hidden.
65. Those who participate in this illumination, possessing this to a certain degree, possess also the knowledge of beings to a proportionate degree. All who have read the divinely wise theologians with some care know that the angels too have a share in this illumination, that it is uncreated and that it is not identical with the divine substance. But those who hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos blaspheme against this divine illumination, since they maintain either that it is a creature or that it is the substance of God, and when they call it a creature they do not allow this to be a light belonging to the angels. So let the divine revealer of the Areopagus now come forward to clarify briefly these three matters, for he says, «As the divine minds move in a circle they are united with the illuminations of the good and the beautiful which are without beginning and without end.»[314] It is clear to everyone, then, that he is calling the good angels divine minds, and by presenting these illuminations in the plural he has distinguished them from the substance of God for that is one and altogether indivisible. And when he adds «without beginning and without end» to his statement, what else has he indicated to us but that the illuminations are uncreated?[315]
66. Now that our nature has been stripped of this divine illumination and radiance as a result of the transgression, the Word of God has taken pity on our disgrace and in his compassion has assumed our nature and has manifested it again to his chosen disciples, clothed more remarkably on Tabor.[316] He indicated what we once were and what we shall become through him in the future age if we choose here below to live according to his ways as much as possible, as John Chrysostom says.[317]
67. Before the transgression Adam too participated in this divine illumination and radiance, and as he was truly clothed in a garment of glory he was not naked, nor was he indecent because he was naked. But he was far more richly adorned, it is not too much to say, than those who now wear diadems ornamented with much gold and shining stones. The great Paul calls this divine illumination and grace our heavenly dwelling place when he says, «Here we groan and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked.»[318] On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus Paul too received from God the pledge of this divine illumination and of our investiture – to use the words of the Gregory who has been aptly named after Theology – «before he was cleansed of his persecuting, when he conversed with the one he was persecuting, or rather, with a brief flash of the great Light.»[319]
68. The divine transcendent being is never named in the plural. But the divine and uncreated grace and energy of God is divided indivisibly according to the image of the sun's ray[320] which gives warmth, light, life and increase, and sends its own radiance to those who are illuminated and manifests itself to the eyes of those who see. In this way, in the manner of an obscure image, the divine energy of God is called not only one but also many by the theologians. For example, Basil the Great says, «As for the energies of the Spirit, what are they? Ineffable in their grandeur, they are innumerable in their multitude. How are we to conceive what is beyond the ages? What were his energies before intelligible creation?»[321] Prior to intelligible creation and beyond the ages (for also the ages are intelligible creations) no one has ever spoken or conceived of anything created. Therefore, the powers and energies of the divine Spirit are uncreated and because theology speaks of them in the plural they are indivisibly distinct from the one and altogether indivisible substance of the Spirit.
69. As it has been made clear above by Basil the Great, the theologians treat the uncreated energy of God as multiple in that it is indivisibly divided. Since therefore the divine and divinizing illumination and grace is not the substance but the energy of God, for this reason it is treated not only in the singular but also in the plural. It is bestowed proportionately upon those who participate and, according to the capacity of those who receive it, it instills the divinizing radiance to a greater or lesser degree.
70. Isaias named these divine energies as seven, but among the Hebrews the word seven indicates many: he says, «There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse and a flower shall come forth from it. And seven spirits shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, piety, counsel, might, fear.»[322] Those who hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos foolishly contend that these seven spirits are created. This opinion we examined and refuted with clarity in our extensive Antirrhetics Against Akindynos. But Gregory the Theologian, when he called to mind these divine energies of the Spirit, said, «Isaias was fond of calling the energies of the Spirit spirits.»[323] And this most distinguished voice among the prophets clearly demonstrated through this number not only the distinction with respect to the divine substance but also indicated the uncreated character of these divine energies by means of the word ‘rested upon,’ for 'resting upon' belongs to a pre-eminent dignity. As for those spirits that rested upon the Lord's human nature which he assumed from us, how could they be creatures?
71. According to Luke, our Lord Jesus Christ says he casts out demons by the finger of God,[324] but according to Matthew it is by the Spirit of God.[325] Basil the Great says that the finger of God is one of the energies of the Spirit.[326] If then one of these is the Holy Spirit, the others too certainly are, since Basil has also taught us this. But on this account there are not many Gods or many Spirits, for these realities are processions, manifestations and natural energies of the one Spirit and in each case the agent is one. When the heterodox call these creatures, they degrade the Spirit of God to a creature sevenfold. But let their shame be sevenfold, for the prophet again says of the energies, «These seven are the eyes of the Lord that range over the whole earth.»[327] And when he writes in Revelation, «Grace to you and peace from God and from the seven spirits which are before the throne of God, and from Christ,»[328] he demonstrates clearly to the faithful that these are the Holy Spirit.
72. Through Micah the prophet our God and Father foretold the birth of the Only-Begotten in the flesh and wishing to show as well the inoriginate character of his divinity said, «His goings forth have been from the beginning, from an eternity of days.»[329] The divine Fathers explained that these 'goings forth' are the energies of the Godhead, as the powers and energies are identical for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet word is being passed around about their being created by those who eagerly hold and defend the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos. But let those who have lately come to their senses understand who is the one from the beginning, who it was to whom David, said, «From eternity (which is the same as saying 'from an eternity of days') and unto eternity you are.»[330] And let them consider intelligently, if they will, that God, in saying through the prophet that these goings forth are from the beginning, in no way said they came into being or were made or were created. And Basil, when, in the Spirit of God, he made the theological statement, «The energies of the Spirit existed before intelligible creation and beyond the ages,»[331] did not say ‘they came into being.’ God alone, therefore, is active and all-powerful from eternity since he possesses pre-eternal powers and energies.
73. In outright opposition to the saints, those who advocate the opinion of Akindynos say, «The uncreated is unique, namely, the divine nature, and anything whatsoever distinct from this is created.»[332] Thus do they make into a creature the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for there is one and the same energy for the three, and that of which the energy is created cannot itself be uncreated. For this reason it is not the energy of God that is a creature – certainly not! – but rather the effect and the product of the energy. Thus, the holy Damascene taught that the energy which is distinct from the divine nature is an essential, that is, a natural movement.[333] And since the divine Cyril said that creating belongs to the divine energy,[334] how can this be a created reality, unless it shall have been effected through another energy, and that in turn through another, and so on ad infinitum; and the uncreated cause of the energy is always being sought after and proclaimed?
74. Because the divine substance and the divine energy are inseparably present everywhere, the energy of God is accessible also to us creatures, for according to the theologians it is indivisibly divided, whereas the divine nature remains utterly indivisible according to them. Thus, the Church Father, Chrysostom, says, «A drop of grace filled all things with knowledge; through it wonders took place, sins were loosed.»[335] When he indicated that this drop of grace was uncreated, he then hastened to show that it was an energy and not the substance; and, further, he added the distinction of the divine energy with respect to the divine substance and the hypostasis of the Spirit when he wrote: «I am speaking of this part of the operation for indeed the Paraclete is not divided.»[336] The divine grace and energy at least is accessible to each of us since it is itself divided indivisibly, but since the substance of God is utterly indivisible in itself how could it be accessible to any creature?
75. There are three realities in God, namely, substance, energy and a Trinity of divine hypostases. Since it has been shown above that those deemed worthy of union with God so as to become one spirit with him (even as the great Paul has said, «He who clings to the Lord is one spirit with him.»[337]) are not united to God in substance, and since all theologians bear witness in their statements to the fact that God is imparticipable in substance and the hypostatic union happens to be predicated of the Word and God-man alone, it follows that those deemed worthy of union with God are united to God in energy and that the spirit whereby he who clings to God is one with God is called and is indeed the uncreated energy of the Spirit and not the substance of God, even though Barlaam and Akindynos may disagree. For God foretold through the prophet not ‘My Spirit’, but rather, «Of my Spirit I will pour out upon those who believe.»[338]
76. Maximus says, «Moses and David and those who have become fit for the divine energy by laying aside their carnal properties were moved at a sign from God»;[339] and, «They became living icons of Christ and the same as he is, more by grace than by assimilation»;[340] and, «The purity in Christ and in the saints is one»;[341] and, «The radiance of our God is upon us,» sings the most divine of melodists.[342] For according to Basil the Great, «As souls that bear the Spirit are illumined by the Spirit they become spiritual themselves and send forth grace to others. Thence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of things hidden, distribution of spiritual gifts, citizenship in heaven, the dance with the angels, joy without end, divine distribution, likeness to God, and the summit of our longings, namely, to become God.»[343]
77. In this grace and radiance and with respect to union with God the angels have precedence over men. And so they are secondary radiances, ministers of the supreme radiance; and, «The intellectual powers and ministering spirits are secondary lights, effulgences of the First Light»;[344] and the angels are said to be «a primary luminous nature subsequent to the first in that they are illumined thereby»;[345] and, «An angel is a secondary light, a kind of emanation or communication of the First Light»;[346] and, «When the divine minds move in a circle they are united with the illuminations of the good and the beautiful which are without beginning and without end.»[347] «For God himself and no other is light for the eternal beings.»[348] «What the sun is for sensible beings, God is for intelligible beings. He is the primal and supreme Light that illumines all rational nature.»[349] The Church Father, Chrysostom, says, «Whenever you hear the prophet saying, 'I saw the Lord seated upon a throne,' do not suppose that he saw the substance but rather the condescension, and this even more obscurely than the supreme powers.»[350]
78. Every nature is utterly remote and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature: just as he is not a being, if others are beings, and if he is a being, the others are not beings. If you accept this as true also for wisdom and goodness and generally all the things around God or said about God, then your theology will be correct and in accord with the saints. But God is the nature of all beings and is referred to as such, since all participate in him and receive their constitution by this participation, not by participation in his nature, far from it, but by participation in his energy. Thus is he the very being of beings and the form in the forms as the primal form and wisdom of the wise and generally all things of all things. He is not nature because he is beyond all nature, and he is not being because he is beyond all beings, and he is not nor does he possess form because he is beyond form. How then can we draw near to God? By drawing near to his nature? But not one of all created beings possesses or will possess any communion in, or affinity to, the supreme nature. If then anyone has drawn near to God, he has surely approached him by means of his energy. How then? Is it by a natural participation in that energy? But this is common to all created beings. Therefore, it is not for those who are near by nature but for those who approach by free choice to be near to or far from God. Now free choice belongs to rational beings alone. So only these among all other beings are either far from or near to God, either by drawing close through virtue or by drawing away through evil-doing. Therefore, these beings alone are capable of wretchedness or blessedness. But let us hasten to attain blessedness.
79. One creature compared with another is said to be akin or alien to God by nature. By akin to the Godhead is meant the intellectual natures apprehended by the mind alone, and by utterly alien, those natures that are subject to sense perception, and among the latter further still from God are those which are inanimate and unmoved. Therefore, when creatures are compared with one another they are said to be akin or alien to God by nature. But all these are in themselves and by nature alien to God. For it is no more possible to say how distant intellectual nature is from God than how far sense perception and sensibles are from intellectual beings. Therefore, this is how far from God we are by our nature – woe unto us indeed! – at least, if we should not draw near to him out of free choice for the good by means of good works and ways.
80. The inspired and common tongue of the divine theologians, the godly Damascene, says in the second of his theological chapters; «One who would speak or hear about God must know clearly that in what concerns the theology and the economy not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things knowable nor are they all unknowable.»[351] We know that whatever divine realities one desires to speak of are beyond words, since these realities are according to a transcendent word, for they are not beyond words by deficiency but beyond the words which we have within our innermost being and which we bring forth from ourselves into the hearing of others. For neither could the latter explain them by interpretation, nor could the former attain them of its own accord by investigations. Thus, we should not have recourse to ourselves to say anything about God, but rather we should direct ourselves to those who speak of the things of the Spirit in the Spirit, even when our adversaries require a word of us.
81. They say that on the portals of Plato's school there was the inscription: «Let no one enter who is ignorant of geometry.»[352] One who is unable to conceive and speak of inseparable realities as separate is a man absolutely ignorant of geometry. For a limit without something limited belongs to the realm of the impossible. In the case of geometry virtually all discussion concerns limits, and even apart from actual limited things limits are sometimes defined and proposed per se because the mind separates inseparables. If a man has never learned to separate in his mind the body from the properties around it, how can he entertain nature in itself? Nature as it inheres in bodies is not only inseparable from the natural properties, but it can never exist without them. How can he entertain the universals which exist as such in particulars bur are distinguished from them by the mind and reason alone and are conceived prior to the many though they have no existence at all apart from the many, in true reasoning at least. How can he entertain intelligibles and intellectuals? How will he understand us when we say that each mind possesses also thoughts and each of the thoughts is our mind? Will he not laugh and cry out accusing us of saying that each man possesses two or many minds? If in such instances he is unable to speak of or entertain indivisible realities as distinct, how will he be able either to speak of or be taught any such thing in God's case, where according to the theologians there are and are said to be many unions and distinctions. But since «the unions prevail and have precedence over the distinctions,»[353] neither eliminating them nor being hindered in any way by these. The Akindynists do not accept nor are they capable of knowing the indivisible distinction in God, even when they hear us saying of the divided union in accord with the saints, that one aspect of God is incomprehensible and another is comprehensible; that God is one, the same being incomprehensible in substance but comprehensible from his creatures according to his divine energies, namely, his eternal will for us, his eternal providence over us and his eternal wisdom concerning us, and, to use the words of the divine Maximus, «his infinite power, wisdom and goodness.»[354] When Barlaam and Akindynos and those who follow in their footsteps hear us saying that these are necessary truths, they accuse us of speaking of many gods and many uncreated realities and making God composite. For they do not know that God is indivisibly divided and united divisibly and experiences neither multiplicity nor composition.
82. The great Paul, the mouth of Christ, the vessel of election, the most famed bearer of the divine name, says, «Since the creation of the world the invisible realities of God, namely, his eternal power and divinity, are perceptible to the eye of the mind in created things.»[355] Is the substance of God, then, perceived by the mind in created things? Certainly not! This is the sort of thing you find in the delirious thinking of Barlaam and Akindynos and in the madness of Eunomius before them. In his discourses Eunomius, prior to these men but in the same manner, wrote that from creatures nothing other than God's substance itself is conceived. The Divine Apostle was far from teaching such notions. For he had just taught that «what can be known about God is clear,»[356] and he showed that there is also something else beyond that which is knowable about God and which he himself made manifest to all men of intelligence, and then the Apostle added, «For since the creation of the world his invisible realities are perceptible to the mind in created things.»[357] In this way you could learn what it is that is knowable about God. The godly Fathers say in their explanations: 'In God one aspect is unknowable, namely, his substance, but another aspect is knowable, namely, all the realities which are around the substance, that is, goodness, wisdom, power, divinity or grandeur.'[358] These Paul calls invisible, though perceived by the mind in created things. As for the realities around the substance of God known by the mind from creatures, how could they in turn be creatures? Therefore, the energy of God known by the mind from creatures is uncreated and is not the substance, because it is presented not only in the singular but also in the plural.
83. «Created things manifest wisdom, art and power but not the substance,» Basil the Great says in reply to Eunomius who was claiming to disclose the substance of God on the basis of creatures.[359] Therefore, the energy of God manifest from created things is uncreated and not the substance. And the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos who say the divine energy is not distinct from the divine substance are clearly Eunomians.
84. In the Antirrhetics his fraternally minded brother rightly says, «When we consider the beauty and grandeur of the wonders in creation and from such as these derive other concepts concerning the divinity, we interpret each of the concepts which arise within us with its own proper name. 'For from the grandeur and beauty of creatures the Creator is contemplated by analogy.' We call the Creator Demiurge; and we call powerful the one who had sufficient power to make his will reality; and just, the impartial judge. But the word θεός we have understood to have taken its force from the activity of providential overseeing. And so, although we have been taught concerning a partial energy of the divine nature, we have not attained comprehension of the substance itself through this word.»[360]
85. Dionysius the Areopagite, toe most prominent of theologians next to the divine apostles, after clarifying the distinction of the hypostases in God, says, «If the beneficent procession is a divine distinction because the divine unity in transcendent manner compounds and multiplies itself with goodness...»;[361] and later, «We give the name divine distinction to the beneficent processions of the thearchy. For in bestowing abundantly upon all beings participation in all good things it is distinguished, in its unity and multiplied in its oneness and it enters a multiplicity inseparable from the One»;[362] and later on, «To the best of our ability we try to praise these common and unified distinctions or beneficent processions of the whole Godhead.»[363] Thus he clearly shows that there is another distinction alongside that of the hypostases and a distinction belonging to the Godhead, for the distinction of the hypostases is not a distinction belonging to the Godhead. And he says that according to the divine processions and energies God is multiplied and enters multiplicity and at this point he says that the same procession is also processions; but at another point, the Divnity does not enter multiplicity – certainly not! – nor as God is he subject to distinction. For us God is a Trinity but he is not threefold. Dionysius demonstrates also the uncreated character of these processions and energies, for he calls them divine and says they are distinctions belonging to the whole Godhead; he mentions also that the very thearchy itself is compounded and multiplied in these divine processions and energies while it does not assume anything external – certainly not! But this most prominent of divine hymnodists announces he will praise these processions and adds «as far as possible» to show that these transcend our praises.
86. The same divine revealer who said above that the beneficent procession is a divine distinction adds, «The incomprehensible communications are united according to the divine distinction.»[364] Thus he took here all the processions and energies together and called them communications and he added that they are incomprehensible lest anyone think them to be created effects, such as the substance of each being or the sensible life of animals or the reason and intellect inhering in rational and intellectual beings. For how could these realities be incomprehensible in God while being created? How could the incomprehensible processions and communications of God be creatures, if the incomprehensible communication inheres naturally in the one who bestows it, just as we see in the case of light?
87. This great man goes on to praise such processions and energies of God with other divinely fitting names and calls them participations and absolute participations. In many places in his treatises be shows that they are beyond beings and are exemplars of beings with a preexistence in God according to a transcendent unity. How then could these be creatures? And further, to teach what these exemplars are he adds, «We call exemplars those concepts or beings which pre-exist unitively in God and which bring forth the substances of things, concepts which theology names predeterminations and divinely good volitions which are responsible for the determination and creation of beings; in accordance with these the transcendent one predetermined and brought forth all beings.»[365] How then can the predeterminations and divine volitions responsible for the creation of beings be created? As for those who posit these processions and energies as created, how can they not be manifest when they drag God's providence down to the level of a creature? The energy which bestows substance, life and wisdom and which in general creates and conserves created beings is identical with the divine volitions and the divine participations themselves and the bestowal of the goodness which is cause of all things.
88. Therefore, participation in absolute being in no way participates in anything, as the great Dionysius says.[366] Other participations, in that they are participations and principles of beings, participate in nothing at all, for neither has providence participated in providence nor life in life. But in that they possess being they are said to participate in absolute being, since without this they neither exist nor possess participation, just as there is no foreknowledge without knowledge. Therefore, as absolute participations they are in no way created. Thus, according to the divine Maximus these realities never had a beginning of being and they are contemplated around the substance of God and there never was a time when they were not.[367] But when the Barlaamites impiously consider absolute life, goodness and so forth as created because they share the common appellation of beings, they do not realize that although they are called beings they are also beyond beings, as the great Dionysius says himself.[368] Those who for this reason would facilely range the absolute participations together with creatures would also consider the Holy Spirit created, although Basil the Great says that the Spirit shares in names befitting the divinity.[369]
89. If someone should claim that absolute existence is a participation since it alone does not participate but is only an object of participation, for the other participations participate in it, he should know that his notion regarding the other participations is devoid of understanding. That which is living, holy and good is said to be living, holy and good by participation, not because of absolute being and participation in absolute existence, but because they participate in absolute life, holiness and goodness. Absolute lift and other such things do not become absolute life by participation in another absolute life. And so, as absolute life, it belongs among the objects of participation but not among the things which participate. As for that which does not participate in life but is itself an object of participation and which bestows life, how could it be a creature? One can argue in similar fashion in the case of the other participations.
90. Now, the divine Maximus must agree with us that the providence responsible for the creation of beings is identical with those processions of God, since he writes in the Scholia: «The creative providences and goodnesses are common to the trihypostatic unity in its distinction» (that is, «the bestowals of substance, life and wisdom»).[370] Thus, by saying that these are many and distinct, he showed that these are not the substance of God, for that is one and utterly indivisible. But since he said that they are also common to the trihypostatic unity in its distinction, he did indicate to us that they are not identical with the Son and the Holy Spirit, for none of these is an energy common to the three. But by saying that these are not only providences and goodnesses but also that these are creative, he showed that they are uncreated. For if they are not, the creative power therefore will have been created by another creative power and that in turn will have been created by another; and to drive this to the ultimate absurdity, 'It will not come to a stop by proceeding on forever.'[371] The processions and energies of God, therefore, are uncreated and they do not come under the categories of substance or hypostasis.
91. But since the one who brought forth and adorned the universe established it as multiform by an incomparable superabundance of goodness and willed that some possess only being but that others should acquire also life in addition to being, that some should relish the possession of intellectual life while others would enjoy only sensible life; and there are some beings whom he wished to possess life compounded of both. And when these received from him rational, intellectual life, he wished that by the inclination of their will towards him they should attain union with him and thus live in a divine and supernatural manner, having been deemed worthy of his divinizing grace and energy. For his will is creation for beings, either as they are brought forth from nothing or as they are changed for the better, and this takes place in different ways. On account of this difference in the divine will for beings, that unique providence and goodness, or, in other words, the return of God towards more inferior things for the sake of goodness, both is and is referred to by the divinely wise theologians as many providences and goodnesses, for they are indivisibly divided and made manifold among divisible things. And so, it is sometimes called God's power of foreknowledge and sometimes his power of creation and conservation, and for these in turn, according to the great Dionysius, there are the bestowals of substance, life and wisdom.[372] Each of these is common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And according to each good and divine volition in our regard the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are identical with the energy and power which bestows substance, life and wisdom, and these he has called illimitable and undiminishable communications, both removing them from all created things and teaching that they inhere by nature in the one who grants participation.
92. Just as the sun, in that without diminution it bestows a measure of warmth and light upon those who participate, possesses these activities as natural end essential energies, so too the divine communications, in that without diminution they inhere in the one who bestows participation, are natural and essential energies of God, and therefore are also uncreated. Even as there is not a trace left of the sun's light when the sun is under the earth and abandons those upon the earth, it is impossible for the eye that once enjoyed this ray not to be mingled with it and through it to be united with what causes the light to pour forth. The warmth of the sun and the effects brought about by it for the generation and growth of sensible creatures when it brings together the manifold differences of the humours and qualities do not abandon these creatures even when there is no contact with the sun through the ray. In the same manner as in an obscure sensible image, only those who set their path towards the supernatural and most divine Light participate purely in divinizing grace and are thereby united with God. All other things are effects of the creative energy, brought forth from nothing by grace as a free gift but not made resplendent by the grace which is a name for the radiance of God.
93. This very radiance and divinizing energy of God, by which the beings that participate are divinized, is a certain divine grace but not the nature of God. This does not imply that God's nature is distant from those who receive grace as the nonsensical slander of Akindynos would have it, for the nature of God is omnipresent, but rather it is not participable, since no created being, as previously shown, would be capable of participating in it. The divine energy and grace of the Spirit, while it is everywhere present and is inseparable from him, remains imparticipable, as though absent, for those who are unfit for participation on account of their lack of purification. For he says, «Just as the manifestations of the persons do not occur in other sorts of matter but in those that have acquired a certain refinement and transparency, so the energy of the Spirit is not manifest in all souls but rather in those that have no perversity or deviousness»;[373] and again, «The Holy Spirit is present to all, but to those who are purified of the passions he manifests his own power, while he does not yet do so for those who have left their intellect troubled by the stains of sin.»[374]
94. The light of the sun is inseparable from its ray and the heat produced by it, but among those who enjoy the sun's rays the light is imparticipable to those who have not acquired eyes, who share only in the warmth from the ray, for those without the benefit of eyes have no perception of light at all. So too, and much more, will there be no participation in the substance of the Creator by any of those who enjoy the divine resplendence, for there is not, nor does there exist any creature who has a power capable of perceiving the nature of the Creator.
95. Now may John, the Baptist of Christ, bear witness together with us here, in the company with John more beloved by Christ than the other disciples, and John Chrysostom, that neither is the participated energy created nor is it the substance of God. The one will do so in his account and writing, the Precursor and Baptist of Christ in saying that ‘it is not by measure that the Spirit is given to Christ by God the Father,’[375] and Chrysostom as he writes in his exegetical homily, «By Spirit he means here the energy. For we all receive the energy of the Spirit in measure, but Christ possesses the entire energy without measure, in its wholeness. But if his energy is without measure, much more so is the substance.»[376] By calling the energy Spirit, or rather, the very Spirit of God, as the Baptist said, and by saying that the energy is without measure he indicated its uncreated character. But by saying we receive it by measure, he indicated the difference of the uncreated energy with respect to the uncreated substance. For no one ever receives the substance of God, not even if you should understand all men taken together, each one receiving these gifts in part according to the proportion of his own purification. Chrysostom, the Church Father, goes on to point out still another difference of the uncreated substance with respect to the uncreated energy, when he says, «If the energy of the Spirit is without measure, much more so is the substance.»[377]
96. If, according to the nonsense of Akindynos and those who share his opinions, the divine energy is not in any sense distinct from the divine substance, then creating, which belongs to the energy, will in no way differ from generation and procession, which belong to the substance. But if creating is not distinct from generation and procession, then creatures will in no way differ from the one begotten and the one sent forth. And if according to them this is the case, both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit will in no way differ from creatures, all creatures will be begotten and sent forth by God the Father, creation will become divine, and God will share his rank with creatures. For this reason the divine Cyril pointed out the distinction between the substance and energy of God when he said that «begetting belongs to the divine nature but creating to his divine energy,» adding the wise statement, «Nature and energy are not identical,»[378]
97. If the divine substance is not in any sense distinct from the divine energy, then generation and procession are not distinct from creating. God the Father creates through the Son in the Holy Spirit, and so, according to the opinion of Akindynos and his followers, he both begets and sends forth through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
98. If the divine substance is not in any sense distinct from the divine energy and has not been distinguished from his will, the Only-Begotten of the Father's substance will have been created, so it seems according to them, from his will.
99. If the substance of God is not in any sense distinct from the divine energy and if there is witness among theologians that God possesses many energies since as shown above he has creative providences and goodnesses, then God has also many substances – an opinion which no one of the Christian race has ever uttered or held!
100. If the energies of God are not in any sense distinct from the divine substance, neither will they have any distinction with respect to one another. Therefore, God's will is not at all distinct from his foreknowledge, with the result that either God will not know all things beforehand for he does not will everything that happens, or he wills also evil things because he has foreknowledge of all things, and either he has not had foreknowledge of all things, which is the same as saying he is not God, or he is not good, which is the same as saying he is not God. Therefore, the divine foreknowledge is distinct from the will, and thus each of these is distinct from the divine substance.
101. If the divine energies have no distinction with respect to one another, then also the creative power is not at all distinct from his foreknowing. Since then God began to create at a particular time, his foreknowledge thus also had a beginning. But how can he be God if he did not have foreknowledge of all things before the ages?
102. If the creative energy of God is in no sense distinct from the divine foreknowledge, created things will be coincident with God's foreknowledge, created without beginning as he himself creates without beginning, since his foreknowledge is also without beginning and the objects of his foreknowledge are foreknown without beginning. But how can he be God if his creatures are in no way posterior to him?
103. If the creative energy is in no way distinct from God's foreknowledge, creating is not subject to his will since not even his foreknowledge is so subject, and God creates not by willing but by nature alone. But how can he be God if he creates without will?
104. On the one hand, God himself is within himself since the three divine hypostases are connaturally and eternally related to one another and they coinhere in one another without confusion. On the other hand, God is within the universe and the universe is within God, the one sustaining, the other being sustained by him. Therefore, all things participate in the sustaining energy but not in the substance of God. Thus, the theologians maintain that these constitute an energy of God, namely, his omnipresence.
105. Those who have pleased God and attained that for which they came into being, namely, divinization – for they say it was for this purpose that God made us, in order to make us partakers of his own divinity[379] – these then are in God since they are divinized by him and he is in them since it is he who divinizes them. Therefore, these too participate in the divine energy, though in another way, but not in the substance of God. And so the theologians maintain that 'divinity' is a name for the divine energy.
106. The transcendent, supremely living, divine and good nature, in that it is supremely good and divine and suchlike, is neither spoken of, nor conceived, nor contemplated in any way at all because it transcends all things and is supremely unknowable and established beyond the supercelestial minds by an incomprehensible power and is always utterly inapprehensible and ineffable for all. For it has no name in this present age nor does it receive one in the age to come, since no word is formed in the soul nor expressed in speech; there is no contact and participation, sensible or intelligible, nor any imagining at all. And so the theologians prefer to posit as closer to it the most complete incomprehensibility by apophasis, since it is transcendently apart from all things which exist or are spoken of at all. And therefore, anyone who possesses knowledge of the truth beyond all truth, if he is to name it correctly, cannot legitimately name it substance or nature. But on the other hand, since it is cause of all things and all things are around it and exist for its sake, and since it is prior to all things, and since the divine nature has conceived all things within itself beforehand in a general and indeterminate manner, its name must be derived from all things inexactly and not in a proper sense. Thus, it must be called both substance and nature, but properly the substance-bestowing procession and energy of God, for the great Dionysius says that this is «the proper way for theology to name the substance of the One Who Truly Is.»[380]
107. One might find the name nature imposed also on natural attributes, both in the case of created beings and in the case of God, as the most theological of the Gregorys says somewhere in his poems, «The nature of my king bestows happiness.»[381] For bestowing is not the nature of anything but rather this is a natural attribute of one who is beneficent. And in the case of fire someone might say that it has as its nature upward momentum and the instilling of light in those who see, but the motion in itself is not the nature of fire, nor is the production of light in a general sense; rather, its nature is the principle of motion as such. Natural objects are therefore called nature, as the great Dionysius himself says somewhere in his writings, «Bringing forth and saving constitute the nature of the Good,»[382] namely, this belongs to it by nature. And therefore whenever you hear the Fathers saying that the substance of God is imparticipable, understand the substance as inaccessible and without manifestation. And in turn, when they say it is participable, take it as the procession, manifestation and energy belonging to God by nature. And thus by embracing both you will be in agreement with the Fathers.
108. A part of the substance, even the smallest, contains all of its powers – just as a spark is radiant and illuminating, capable of penetrating and burning those who come close, self-moved by nature and possessing upward momentum, and in general those powers which fire also possesses, of which it is a small part, and as a drop possesses all those qualities which water also has, of which it is a drop, and as a nugget possesses all those qualities which the metal has, of which it is a fragment. Therefore, if indeed we participate in that undisclosed substance of God, whether in all or part of it, we will be all powerful, and thus each being will be all powerful. But not even all together do we possess God's substance, even if you speak with the intention of including all creation. Paul demonstrated this abundantly when he witnessed to those in happy possession of the divinizing gifts of the Spirit that not all the Spirit's gifts belong to each individual: «But to one, he says, is given a word of wisdom and to another a word of knowledge and to another some other gift of the same Spirit.»[383] The Church Father, Chrysostom, clearly anticipates the error of Barlaam and Akindynos when he says, «One does not possess all the gifts, lest he think that grace is nature.''[384] But no intelligent person would consider the grace here distinguished from the divine nature to be created, because no one would ever worry that someone might take a creature to be the nature of God, and because, even if it were distinct from the divine nature, the grace of the Spirit does not sunder the worthy from this but rather attracts them towards union with the divine Spirit.
109. A substance has as many hypostases as it has participants. And as many torches as you light from a single one, just that many hypostases of fire have you created.[385] Therefore, if indeed according to our opponents the substance of God is an object of participation for all even in these respects, it will turn out to be no longer trihypostatic but multi-hypostatic. Who among those nurtured on the divine doctrines does not know that this is the nonsense of the Messalians? According to the Messalians those who have attained the height of virtue have achieved participation in the substance of God, but the followers of Akindynos in their zeal to surpass this blasphemy say that not only those among men who have excelled in virtue but also all beings in general participate in the substance of God on the very foolish pretext that this is present everywhere. Long ago Gregory, mighty in theology, refuted the mad opinions of both Akindynists and Messalians, saying, «He is Christ on account of his divinity: for this is the anointing of the humanity which the divinity sanctifies not by energy, as with the other christs, but by the presence, whole and entire, of the one who bestows the anointing.»[386] The divinely wise Fathers have declared by common agreement that the Godhead dwells in those who are suitably purified but not as regards nature. Therefore, one becomes a participant in God neither by substance nor by any sort of hypostasis, for neither of these can be divided in any way whatsoever nor can either be communicated to anyone at all. And so God is utterly inaccessible in some respects even though he is everywhere present in other respects. But the energy and power common to the trihypostatic nature is variously and proportionately divided among its participants and for this reason it is accessible to those who have received grace. For according to what Basil the Great says, «The Holy Spirit is not in a single measure an object of participation for those who are worthy, but rather he divides his energy in proportion to their faith: while remaining simple in substance, he is varied in his powers.»[387]
110. What is said to participate in something possesses a part of that in which it participates, for even if it participates not in a part but in the whole, it would be held to possess this in a genuine sense but not to participate in it. Thus, the object of participation is divisible if indeed what participates must participate in a part. But the substance of God is absolutely indivisible and therefore it is absolutely imparticipable. At many points in his writings the Church Father, Chrysostom, declares that divisibility is a property of the divine energy.[388] This is therefore the object of participation for those deemed worthy of divinizing grace. Listen then once again to Chrysostom who taught both doctrines most clearly, namely, that it is the energy and not the substance which is participated and that it is the energy which is indivisibly divided and participated, and not the imparticipable substance from which the divine energy proceeds. Positing first the statement in the Gospel, «Of his fullness we have all received,»[389] he says, «For if in the case of fire that which is divided is a substance and a body, and if we both do and do not divide it, how much more so will this be true in the case of the energy, indeed the energy from an incorporeal substance?»[390]
111. Further, that which participates in something by substance must possess a common substance with that in which it participates and be identical with it in some respect. Who then has ever heard of there being one substance shared by God and us in any respect? Basil the Great says, «The energies of God come down to us but his substance remains inaccessible.»[391] And the divine Maximus affirms, «The man divinized by grace will be everything that God is, apart from identity of substance.»[392] Thus it is not possible to participate in the divine substance, not even for those divinized by grace, but it is possible to participate in the divine energy. «For to this the measured light of truth here below leads me, namely, to see and experience the radiance of God,» says Gregory the Theologian;[393] and, «The radiance of our God is upon us,» according to the prophet of the Psalms;[394] and, «There is one energy of God and the saints,» with all clarity writes Maximus who is one of the latter;[395] and, «These are living icons of Christ and identical with him more by grace than by assimilation.»[396]
112. God is identical within himself since the three divine hypostases are related to one another and coinhere in one another naturally, wholly, eternally and inaccessibly, but at the same time without mixture and without confusion, just as they have also a single energy. This you could not find among any creatures. For there are similarities among creatures of the same genus, but there is an energy proper to each created hypostasis which acts on its own. This is not the case for those three divine and revered hypostases. There the energy is truly one and the same, for the motion of the divine will is unique in its origination from the primary cause in the Father, in its procession through the Son and in its manifestation in the Holy Spirit.[397] This is clear from the created effects, for every natural energy is known in this way. Therefore, in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit a proper created effect is not noted for each of the hypostases in the same manner as for similar created objects on the one hand, or on the other hand as different nests are made by different swallows, and as different pages are copied by different scribes even though they are made up of the same letters; rather, all creation is a single work of the three. Hereby we have been instructed by the Fathers to consider the divine energy as one and the same for the three revered persons and not as a similar energy allotted to each.
113. Since the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit copenetrate one another without confusion and without mixture, whence we know that they have genuinely one motion and energy, the life or power which the Father possesses within himself is not other than the Son since he possesses a life and power identical with the Father, and similarly in the case of the Son and the Holy Spirit As for those who think the divine energy is in no way distinct from the divine substance, since not another but God himself is our life and since he is eternal life not in dependence upon another but in himself, they are heretics and ignorant men. They are ignorant, because they have not yet learned that the supreme Trinity is none other than God himself and that the supreme unity is none other than God himself; and this presents no obstacle to the distinction of the unity from the Trinity. They are heretics, because they eliminate both the substance and the energy, the one through the other, for what is dependent, on another is not a substance and that which is self- subsistent is not dependent on another. If then these are in no way distinct from one another, they are eliminated by one another, or rather, they remove from the number of the pious those who say that these are in no way distinct.
114. But we confess that Son of God to be our life by cause and energy and the same to be life in himself absolutely and without qualification, and we say he possesses both uncreatedly; and similarly for both the Father and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, our very life, from which we receive life as cause of living beings, is none other than the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for it is by cause that our trihypostatic God is said to be our life. And that which is not by cause nor in dependence on another, but which, absolutely and in itself, is called in theology divine life is none other than the Father and also the Son and the Holy Spirit. Such doctrines in no way offend against those who believe God to be uncreated not only in substance and hypostasis but also in the divine energy common to the three. «We hold in our theology one God in three hypostases, possessing a single substance, power and energy, as well as those other realities contemplated around the substance, which are also called in scripture assembly and fullness of Godhead and which further are observed and recognized by theology in each of the three holy hypostases.»[398]
115. Those who reject this divine energy, saying sometimes that it is created and sometimes that it is not at all distinct from the divine substance, concoct at other times a new heresy, teaching that the Only-Begotten of the Father is the sole uncreated energy. With the intention of establishing this opinion they bring forward statements of the venerable Cyril: «The life which the Father possesses within himself is nothing other than the Son. And because the life in the Son is nothing other than the Father, he speaks truly who says, 'I am in the Father and the Father is in me'.»[399] Briefly and as far as we are able we shall indicate what the saint meant by these words and refute the impiety of those who oppose us in their undiscerning darkness. In their wickedness they say that the Son is not only unlike the Father but is also posterior to the Father, because he possesses living and life not by nature but externally and by participation and addition, and because he receives and accepts this from the Father, according to the scripture text, «As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.»[400] Thus, the divine Cyril counters those who hold so impious an understanding of this Gospel passage: «Since God is referred to as life also by energy because he bestows life on living beings, for he is life for those who possess life by nature as the Creator of nature and also for those who possess divine life as he is the provider of grace. But he is also said to be life in himself, not in dependence on another but independently and utterly without qualification.»[401] The divine Cyril wanted to show that in each of these two cases the Son is not at all distinct from the Father and that receiving something from the Father does not indicate the Son is posterior to the Father nor that the Son is temporally second according to substance. In addition to many others, Cyril made this statement: «It is not in receiving something that he possesses being, but rather, as a being he receives something»; and he adds by way of conclusion, «Therefore, receiving something from the Father will not entail the necessity of the Son being temporally second in substance.»[402] Here, the life which the Father has and which the Son receives from the Father, he does not take to be the substance.
116. Further, the divine Cyril demonstrated that even though the Son of God is referred to by his energy as life for living beings because he bestows life upon them and is called their life, not even in this is he unlike the Father; rather, being their life and bestowing life upon them belongs to the Son by nature, just as these belong also to the Father. Then, continuing on, he wrote, «If the Son is not life by nature, how can it be true when he says, 'He who believes in me has eternal life'; and again, 'My sheep hear my voice and 1 give them eternal life'»;[403] and further on, «Since he promises to give those who believe in him the life which belongs to and inheres in him substantially, how then is it possible to think that the Son did not have this but received it from the Father?»[404] They should therefore be ashamed, those who in their madness say that this life is identical with the substance of God, whenever they hear that it belongs to him by nature. For neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit offers his substance to us believers. Away with such impiety!
117. And in what follows the great Cyril no less opposes those who are infected with the opinions of Barlaam, saying, «When the Son proceeds from the Father he appropriates to himself all the Father's natural attributes; and life is one of the attributes proper to the Father.»[405] Thus by saying 'one of the attributes proper to the Father,' he clearly demonstrated that his attributes are many. If, then, life is identified with the substance of God, God possesses many substances, according to those with such opinions. Apart from the impiety, to say that being and attribute are identical (unless of course it be in some particular respect) lacks no excess of ignorance. And still more senseless by far is it to say that being and attributes (which is the same as saying 'one and the many beyond the one') are in no way distinct. For it is utterly and absolutely impossible and irrational to say that something is one and many in the same respect.
118. The divine Cyril then, in saying that life too is one of the attributes proper to the Father, indicated that he was naming life here below, not the substance of God. Well then, let us have him come forward with his own words to say that these attributes of God are many. Thus, continuing on the same subject, he says, «The supreme attributes of the Father are said to be many but the Son cannot be stripped of these.»[406] How then could these many things attributed to God be the divine substance? Wishing to point out some of these supreme attributes of the Father, he brought forth Paul who says, «To the incorruptible, invisible, only wise God.»[407] Hereby he gave still further proof that none of the attributes of God is equated with the substance. For how could incorruptibility and invisibility and in general all the privatives and negations, either taken together or individually, be equated with substance? For there is no substance unless there is a real object or objects. As for the positive attributes of God ranged together with these by the theologians, none of them can be shown to divulge the substance of God, even though, whenever necessary, we use all these names for that transcendent being who is utterly nameless.
119. With attributes one necessarily seeks what they belong to. And if to nothing, they are not attributes. Therefore, the attributes are not attributes. But if the attributes belong to any one thing, and if this is the substance, and if according to them this substance differs in no way at all from each attribute and from all together, and if the attributes are many, that one substance will be many substances and that which is one in substance will be many in substance and therefore will possess many substances. But if it is one and possesses many substances, by every necessity it is composite. The divine Cyril, removing the faithful from such greatly impious and ignorant opinions, says in his Treasures, «If what belongs to God alone is certainly also his substance, he will be composed of many substances as we are. For many are the attributes which belong by nature to him alone but to no other being; for example, King, Lord, incorruptible and invisible. And in addition to these, the divine scriptures say many thousands of other things concerning him. If then each of his attributes lies in the order of substance, how can the simple one not be composite? This is a most absurd conception to hold.»[408]
120. Cyril, wise in divine truths, showed through many demonstrations that, even though the Son is life and is said to possess life by energy because he bestows life on us and is life for the living, the Son is not unlike the Father even in this for the Father too bestows life. He wanted also to show that even if the Son is life and is said to possess life not in dependence on some other but absolutely independently and unconditionally, he is not in this way dissimilar to the Father with respect to life. This is true because, when we are speaking of God, not as our life in that be bestows life on us, but absolutely freely and without qualification, in this case we are naming his substance on the basis of the energy which belongs to him by nature, such as wisdom, goodness and all the rest. Thus, with the intention of proving this he says, «Whenever we say in this way that the Father possesses life in himself, then we are naming the Son life for he is other than the Father only in hypostasis but not in life. And so there is no consideration of any composition or duality in his regard. And again, when we say that the Son possesses life in himself and when that is understood without qualification, we are naming the Father life, for as he is life not in dependence on another but independently in himself, the Father and the Son coinhere in one another. For he has said, ‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me’.»[409] Such then are the proofs the divine Cyril proposes so as to show that the life in the Father (namely, the Son) is somehow other and not other than the Father. But they say that the life in the Father is in no way other than him and is identical with him in all things since it is in no way different. By proposing such things and by affirming that the Only-Begotten of the Father is this life, in ail necessity they range themselves not with the doctrines of the venerable Cyril but with those of Sabellius.
121. But if the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos present the divine Cyril in contradiction with himself, does this not recommend the greatest condemnation? For to say now one thing, now another, with both being true, is characteristic of an orthodox theologian, but to contradict oneself is characteristic of no intelligent person. If then someone states correctly that the Son by nature possesses life, which he gives to those who believe in him, and if he then proves that not only the substance of God, which no one receives, but also his natural energy is referred to as life, which those thus vivified by him receive by grace (and so through themselves they are able to save or, putting it in other words, to render immortal in spirit those who were previously not alive in spirit and to raise up some of those who were dead in some member or even in their whole body), how then could someone who has produced such fine and wise proofs subsequently propose calling the substance of God life with the intention of eliminating this divine energy? Similarly, those who now do violence to the opinions of this saint, or rather, denounce them as false, are making senseless affirmations.
122. Not solely the Only-Begotten of God but also the Holy Spirit is called energy and power by the saints, just as they possesses the same powers and energies in exactly the same way as the Father, since according to the great Dionysius God is called power «in that he possesses beforehand in himself, and transcends, every power.»[410] And so the Holy Spirit possesses each of these two as understood or expressed together with him whenever the enhypostatic reality is called an energy or power, just as Basil, who is great in every way, says, «The Holy Spirit is a sanctifying power which is substantial, real and enhypostatic.»[411] Also in his treatises on the Holy Spirit he demonstrated that not all the energies derived from the Spirit are enhypostatic;[412] and thereby he in turn clearly distinguished these from creatures, for there are realities derived from the Spirit which are enhypostatic, namely, creatures, because God made created substances.
123. Apophatic theology does not contradict nor does it deny cataphatic theology; rather, with respect to cataphatic statements about God, it shows that they are true and are made in an orthodox manner, and that God does not possess these things as we do. For example, God possesses knowledge of beings and we too possess this in some cases, but our knowledge refers to things in the present and in the past, whereas God's does not, for he knows these no less even prior to their coming to be. Thus, the man who says that God does not know beings as such does not contradict one who says that God does know beings and knows them as such. There is a cataphatic theology which has the force of apophatic theology; as when someone says all knowledge is applied to some object, namely, the thing known, but God's knowledge is not applied to any object, for in that very regard he says that God does not know beings as such and he does not possess knowledge of beings, that is, as we do. In this way God is referred to as non-being in a transcendent sense. But one who says this for the purpose of showing that those who say God exists are not speaking correctly is clearly not using apophatic theology in a transcendent sense but rather in the sense of deficiency to the effect that God does not exist at all. This is the acme of impiety, suffered alas by those who attempt through apophatic theology to deny that God possesses both an uncreated substance and energy. But we hold on lovingly to both without having one eliminated by the other, or rather, by means of each we confirm ourselves in an orthodox understanding.
124. To destroy utterly all the idle sophistries of the Barlaamites and to show them up as expansive trumpery, I think a short patristic quotation will suffice. For he says, «The one without beginning and the beginning and the one with the beginning constitute one God. And the beginning is not, because it is a beginning, separated from that which has no beginning. For the beginning is not its nature, any more than the being without beginning is the nature of the other. For these are around the nature, not the nature itself.»[413] What, therefore, shall we say? Because the beginning and that which is without beginning are not the nature but around the nature, will someone say these are created, unless he should be mad? But if these are uncreated and belong to God's nature, is God on this account composite? Certainly not – not as long as they are distinct from the divine nature. But along with the other Fathers, the great Cyril offers abundant teaching to show that if the natural attributes of God should rather be identified with the nature, the divinity is composite.[414] But go through for me the writings against Eunomius by Basil the Great and by his brother who held fraternal opinions, for there you will find the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos clearly in accord with Eunomius and you will have ample refutations against them.
125. The Eunomians held the opinion that the Father and the Son do not have the same substance because they think that every attribute of God refers to substance, and they argue contentiously that because there is a difference between begetting and being begotten, there are also on this account different substances. The Akindynists hold the opinion that it is not the same God who possesses both the divine substance and the divine energy because they think every attribute of God refers to the substance, and they argue contentiously that if there is some difference between the divine substance and energy, there are also many different Gods. For the sake of these people proof is provided that not everything said of God refers to substance; rather, the reference can be made relatively, that is, in relation to something which God is not. For example, the Father is spoken of in relation to the Son, for the Son is not the Father: and Lord, in relation to subject creation, for God rules over creatures in time and eternity and over the ages themselves. Dominion is an uncreated energy of God distinct from his substance because it is spoken of in relation to something else which he is not.
126. The Eunomians hold that anything said of God is substance, in order that they can teach that ingeneracy is the substance and thence they degrade the Son, at least as far as they are concerned, to a creature because he is distinct from the Father. And their purpose, they claim, is to avoid a position where there would be two Gods, the first unbegotten and the second begotten. In imitation of the Eunomians, the Akindynists hold that everything said of God is substance in order to degrade to a creature, in their impious manner, the energy which is not separate but is distinct from the substance of God because it is from the substance, though it is participated by creatures – for he says, «All things participate in the providence pouring forth from the Godhead that is cause of all.»[415] And their purpose, they claim, is to avoid a position where there would be two Godheads, namely, the triohypostatic substance beyond name, cause and participation, and the energy of God proceeding from the substance, yet participated and named. For they do not understand that just as God the Father is called Father in relation to his own Son and being Father belongs to him as an uncreated reality even though 'Father' does not denote the substance, so too God possesses also the energy as an uncreated reality even though the energy is distinct from the substance. And when we speak of one Godhead we speak of everything that God is, namely, both the substance and the energy. Therefore, they are the ones who are impiously splitting the one divinity of God into created and uncreated.
127. An accident is that which comes into being and passes away again, whereby we understand also inseparable accidents.[416] But there is a sort of accident and natural attribute such as can increase and decrease, like knowledge in the rational soul, but there is no such thing in God because he remains absolutely immutable and for this reason nothing could be predicated of him as an accident. Nor indeed does everything predicated of him denote the substance, for relation is predicated of him, which is relative and refers to relationships with another but is not indicative of substance. Such also is the divine energy in God, for it is neither substance nor accident, even though it is called a quasi-accident by some theologians who are indicating solely that it is in God but is not the substance.
128. Gregory, named after theology, in writing on the Holy Spirit, teaches us that the divine energy, even though it is referred to somehow as an accident, is nevertheless contemplated in God but does not bring about composition. For he says, «The Holy Spirit belongs either in the category of those beings that subsist of themselves or in that of things observed in another. Those with skill in these matters call the former substance, the latter accident. If then he were an accident, he would be an energy of God. For what else, or of whom else, could he be, for this is surely what also avoids composition?»[417] He is clearly saying that if he is in the category of things contemplated in God, and so is not a substance but is an accident and is named Spirit, he cannot possibly be anything else except an energy of God. He made this clear by saying, «For what else or of whom else could he be?» In order to prove, as well, how he could be nothing else, not a quality, not a quantity, or any such thing observed in God, but an energy alone, he adds, «For this is surely what also avoids composition.» But how does the energy observed in God avoid composition? Because he alone possesses an energy completely void of passion, for by it he is active only but is not also acted upon, neither coming into being nor changing.
129. The Theologian demonstrated a little earlier that he knew this energy to be uncreated when he set it in contradistinction to creation. For he says, «Of the wise men amongst ourselves, some have conceived of the Spirit as an energy, some as a creature and some as God.»[418] Now he is here speaking of the hypostasis itself as God. And by pointing out the energy as distinct from creation, he clearly proved that it is not a creature. And a little further on he described this energy as a motion of God.[419] How then could God's motion not be uncreated? The godly Damascene wrote on this question in his fifty-ninth chapter: he says, «Energy is the efficient and essential motion of nature. The capacity for energy is possessed by the nature from which the energy proceeds. The product of energy is that which is effected by the energy. And the agent of energy is the person, or hypostasis, which uses the energy.»[420]
130. The Akindynists have supposed and declared the divine energy to be created on the basis of what the Theologian says here: «But if he is an energy he will be actuated but will not actuate and will cease to exist as soon as he has been actuated.»[421] For they were unaware that being actuated can also refer to uncreated realities, as the Theologian points out elsewhere in his writings: But if ‘Father’ is the name of an energy, «the homoousion would be the result of this action.[422] The godly Damascene also says, «Christ sat down at the right hand of the Father, divinely effecting universal providence,»[423] but he did not apply the term ‘he rested’ to the uncreated character of the energy. For in creating, God initiates and ceases, as Moses says, «God ceased from all the works which he had begun to create.»[424] However, this act of creation, wherein God makes a beginning and an end, is a natural and uncreated energy of God.
131. After he had stated that «Energy is the efficient and essential motion of nature,»[425] the divine Damascene wanted to show that the Theologian had said that such an energy is activated and ceases, and added, «Note that the energy is a motion and is activated rather than activates, as Gregory the Theologian says in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, 'If he is an energy he will manifestly be actuated and will not actuate and will cease to exist as soon as he has been actuated'.»[426] Thus, it is obvious that by teaching that the energy is created, those who hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos are in their madness degrading to the level of a creature what Gregory the Theologian has called here an energy, namely, the natural and essential energy itself of God, which the holy Damascene demonstrated to be uncreated after showing that it is not only actuated but also actuates. There is abundant demonstration in my treatises showing how there is nonetheless no disagreement on this matter between the Damascene and the Theologian.
132. In God the hypostatic properties are referred to as mutual relations and the hypostases are distinct from one another but not in substance. But sometimes God is also referred to in relation to creation. For it is not as eternal, pre-eternal, mighty and good that God the all-holy Trinity can be referred to as Father, for not each of the hypostases but one of the three is the Father, from whom and unto whom subsequent realities are referred. However, he could be called Father and Trinity in relation to creation because there is one work of the three brought forth into creation from absolute nothingness and for the sake of the adoption of sons by the grace given in common by the three. For the scripture texts, «The Lord your God is one Lord»[427] and «Our Father who art in heaven,»[428] call the Holy Trinity our one Lord and God and also our Father who brings us to new birth by his grace. But, as we have said, the Father alone is referred to as Father in relation to the consubstantial Son. In relation to the Son and the Spirit he is also called principle. The Father is also principle in relation to creation but as Creator and master of all creatures. Thus, whenever the Father is called these things in relation to creation, the Son too is principle and there are not two principles but one. For the Son too is called principle in the capacity of his relation to creation, just like a master in relation to his servants. Therefore, the Father and the Sun, together with the Spirit, in their relation to creation constitute one principle, one master, one Creator, one God and Father, provider and ruler, etc. – and not one of these is a substance, for it would not have been referred to in relation to another if indeed it were his substance.
133. Dispositions, states, positions, temporality or any such thing are not genuinely but rather metaphorically attributed to God. But creating and acting should be attributed in the truest sense to God alone. For God alone creates, but he does not come into being nor is he acted upon as far as concerns his own substance, and he alone in all respects creates each being and he alone creates out of absolute nothingness with his all-powerful energy. And according to this energy he is referred to in relation to creation and possesses potentiality. For he can admit no experience at all within his own nature, but he can add to his creations if he should wish. To possess the potentiality for experiencing, possessing or receiving anything by substance is an indication of weakness, but to possess the potentiality for creating, possessing and adding to creatures whenever one should wish belongs to the divinely fitting and all-powerful might.
134. Although all beings, as well as those realities that are subsequently observed in substance, can be included within ten categories, namely, substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, action, affection, possession and situation,[429] God is a transcendent substance in which there are observed only relation and creation, which do not produce within it any composition or alteration. For God creates all things without being affected at all in substance. He is also Creator, principle and master in relation to creation in that it has its origin in him and is dependent on him. But he is also our Father because he grants us rebirth by grace. He is Father, too, in relation to the Son who has no temporal origin whatever, and Son in relation to the Father, and the Spirit as one sent forth from the Father, coeternal with the Father and the Son, belonging to one and the same substance. Those who assert that God is substance alone with nothing observed in him are representing God as having neither creation and operation nor relation. But if the one they consider God does not possess these things, he is neither active nor Creator nor does he possess an energy. But neither is he principle, Creator and master, nor is he our Father by grace. For how could he be these things if he does not have relation and creation observed in his own substance? The trihypostatic character of the Godhead is eliminated if relation is not observed in God's substance. And one who is not trihypostatic nor master of the universe is not even God. Therefore, those who thus hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos are atheists.
135. God also possesses that which is not substance. Yet it is not the case that because it is not a substance it is an accident. For that which not only does not pass away but also admits or effects no increase or diminution whatever could not possibly be numbered among accidents. But it is not true that because this is neither an accident nor substance it belongs among totally non-existent things; rather, it exists and exists truly. It is not an accident since it is absolutely immutable, but it is not a substance for it is not one of those things that can subsist on its own. And so it is called a quasi-accident by some theologians who wish to indicate only that it is not a substance. What then? Since each of the hypostatic properties and each hypostasis is neither a substance nor an accident in God, are they each on this account ranked among non-existent things? Certainly not! Thus, in the same way, the divine energy of God is neither a substance nor an accident nor is it classed among non-existent things. And, to speak in accord with all the theologians, if God creates by will and not simply by nature, then willing is one thing and natural being is another. If this is true, the divine will is other than the divine nature. What follows then? Because the will is distinct from the nature in God and is not a substance, does it on this account not exist at all? Definitely not so! Rather, it exists and belongs to God who possesses not only substance but also a will whereby he creates, whether someone wishes to call this a quasi-accident because it is not a substance, nor is it an accident, as it produces no composition or alteration at all.[430] Therefore, God possesses both what is substance and what is not substance, even if it should be called an accident, namely, the divine will and energy.
136. If the substance does not possess an energy distinct from itself, it will be completely without actual subsistence and will be only a concept in the mind. For what we call the universal 'man' does not think, does not hold opinions, does not see, does not smell, does not speak, does not hear, does not walk, does not breathe, does not eat – and, to put it simply, does not have an energy which is distinct from the substance and shows that he has individual subsistence. And so the universal 'man' is entirely lacking actual subsistence. But when a man possesses an inherent energy distinct from his substance, whether one or more or all those we have mentioned, it is thereby recognized that the man has an individual subsistence and is not lacking actual subsistence. And since such energies are not observed in one or two or three but in numerous individuals, it is proved that man exists in a great many hypostases.
137. According to the orthodoxy of God's Church which we hold by his grace, God possesses a natural energy which makes him manifest and in this respect is distinct from his substance. For he has both foreknowledge and forethought of inferior beings. He creates, preserves, rules and transforms them according to his own will and knowledge. And so he is shown to possess individual subsistence, rather than being solely a substance without such individual subsistence. And since all such energies are contemplated in not one but three persons, God is known to us as being one substance in three hypostases.[431] When the Akindynists say that God does not have a natural energy which makes him manifest, and in this respect is distinct from his substance, they are saying that God does not possess individual subsistence and they completely deprive the trihypostatic Lord of real subsistence. Their excesses surpass the heresy of Sabellius the Libyan to the extent that their irreligion surpasses the wickedness of his impiety.
138. There is one energy of the three divine hypostases not in the sense of similarity as in our case, but in the sense of truly one even in number. Those who hold the opinions of Akindynos are unable to admit this because they say that there is no common uncreated energy of the three; rather, they claim that the hypostases are energies of one another since according to them there is no common divine energy. And so they are unable to speak of one energy of the three, but in eliminating now one, now another, they thereby deprive the trihypostatic God of actual subsistence.
139. Those who are diseased in soul with the error of Akindynos are saying that the energy distinct from God's substance is created and hold the opinion that God's creating, that is, his creative power, is created. For it is impossible to be active and create without an energy, just as one cannot exist without existence. Therefore, as one cannot speak of God's existence as created and think he possesses being in an uncreated manner, so one cannot speak of God's energy as created and think that he possesses the power of operating and creating in an uncreated manner.
140. Unlike the nonsensical opinions of Akindynos, the energy of God is not and is not referred to by orthodox thinkers in terms of God's creations (Perish such a heresy!); rather, the effects of the divine energy are creatures. For if the energy is in the category of creatures or if these are uncreated (What madness!) in that they exist before they have been created or before creatures (What impiety!), God would not have an energy. But indeed he is eternally active and all-powerful – it is certainly not the energy of God, but its products and effects, however they might be named, which are creatures. God's energy is uncreated and coeternal with God, according to the theologians.
141. With respect to the fact of its existence but not as to what it is, the substance is known from the energy, not the energy from the substance. And so, according to the theologians, God is known with respect to the fact of his existence not from his substance but from his providence. In this the energy is distinct from the substance, because the energy is what reveals, whereas the substance is that which is thereby revealed with respect to the fact of existence. The advocates of Akindynos' impiety, in their haste to convince people that the divine energy is not at all distinct from the divine substance, deny God's self-revelation and eagerly try to persuade us that we cannot know that God exists, because not even they have certain knowledge. One who does not have this knowledge would be the most godless and senseless of all men.
142. When these people say that God possesses an energy but one which in no way at all differs from the substance, they are in this way trying to obfuscate their impiety and mislead and deceive their listeners with sophisms. For thus the Libyan Sabellius used to say that God the Father possesses a Son who differs from him in nothing. Therefore, just as he was accused of speaking of the Father without the Son in denying their difference in hypostasis, so too these people today, because they are saying that the divine energy differs in nothing from the divine substance, are being exposed for thinking that God does not at all possess an energy. If these things are in no way different, God possesses no capacity for creation and operation, for according to the theologians, it is impossible to act without an energy, just as, according to them, it is impossible to exist without existence. Hence it should be clear to those who think rightly that the divine energy is distinct from the divine substance for the energy effects something else, not identical with the operator. God effects and makes creatures but is himself uncreated. Relation is always spoken of in reference to another, for a son is spoken of in relation to his father but a son is never father of his father. Therefore, as it is impossible for relation not to differ in any way from the substance, and not be observed in the substance but rather be the substance, so it is entirely impossible for the energy not to differ from the substance but rather be the substance, even if Akindynos should be displeased with this.
143. Basil the Great, when he treats of God in his Syllogistic Chapters, says, «The energy is neither the one operating, nor what is operated. Therefore, the energy is not indistinct from the substance.»[432] The divine Cyril also in treating of God makes the theological statement: «Creating belongs to the energy but begetting to the nature. Nature and energy are not identical.»[433] And the godly Damascene: «Generation is a work of the divine nature but creation is a work of the divine will»;[434] and elsewhere again he says with clarity, «Energy and the capacity for energy are different. For energy is the essential motion of nature. The capacity for energy is possessed by the nature from which the energy proceeds.»[435] Thus, according to the divine Fathers, the energy is in many ways distinct from the divine substance.
144. The substance of God is entirely unnameable since it is completely incomprehensible. Thus it is given names on the basis of all its energies although one of the names there differs from another in its denotation. For on the basis of each and all the names nothing other is named than the Hidden One, while 'what it is' is in no way known. But in the case of the energies each of the names has a different meaning, for who does not know that creating, ruling, judging, guiding providentially and God's adopting us as sons by his grace are different from one another? Therefore, those who say that these natural divine energies are created because they differ from one another and from the divine nature, what else but God do they drag down to the level of a creature? For things that are created, ruled, judged and all such things in general are creatures, but not the Creator, and Ruler and Judge, nor even judging, ruling and creating in themselves, which are realities observed in his nature.
145. Just as the substance of God is absolutely unnameable since it is beyond names according to the theologians, so also is it imparticipable since it is beyond participation according to them. Therefore, those who now disobey the teaching of the Spirit through our holy Fathers and revile us who agree with them, say that either there are many gods or the one God is composite, if the divine energy is distinct from the divine substance even if it be observed entirely within the substance of God. They are unaware that it is not acting and energy but being acted upon and the passivity which constitute composition. But God acts without being acted upon and without undergoing change. Therefore, he will not be composite on account of the energy. God is also described in terms of relation and is related to creation as its principle and master, but he is not numbered among creatures on this account. And further, how will there be many gods because of God's possessing an energy, if it belongs to one God, or rather, if the same God is equated with the divine substance and the divine energy? This is therefore a clear instance of the nonsense resulting from their demented state.
146. The Lord said to his disciples, «There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power,»[436] and ‘after six days, he look Peter, James and John, and having ascended Mount Tabor he shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light,’[437] for they were not able to look at it any more; rather, when they did not have the strength to gaze at this radiance, they fell to the ground with their faces downwards.[438] Nevertheless, according to the promise of the Saviour they saw the kingdom of God, that divine and ineffable Light. The great Gregory and Basil called it divinity, saying, «Light is the divinity manifested to the disciples on the Mount»;[439] and «A beauty of the truly Mighty One is his intelligible and contemplated divinity,»[440] Basil the Great also says that that Light is the beauty of God contemplated by the saints alone in the power of the divine Spirit.[441] And so he says in turn, «Peter and the sons of thunder saw his beauty on the Mountain, surpassing the brightness of the sun in its radiance. And they were deemed worthy to receive with their eyes a foretaste of his advent.»[442] Damascene the Theologian together with John Chrysostom called the Light a natural ray of the divinity. The former wrote, «The Son without beginning, begotten from the Father, acquired from the divinity the natural ray without beginning. And the glory of the divinity became also the glory of the body.»[443] Chrysostom says, «The Lord appeared on the Mountain more luminous than himself when the divinity disclosed its rays.»[444]
147. This divine and ineffable Light, the divinity and kingdom of God, the beauty and radiance of the divine nature, the vision and delectation of the saints in the age without end, the natural ray and glory of the divinity – this the Akindynists say is an apparition and a creature. And those who refuse to share in their blasphemy against this divine Light but rather think that God is uncreated both in substance and in energy, they in their calumny declare to be ditheists. But they should be ashamed, for though the divine Light be uncreated there is for us one God and one Godhead since, as has many times been proved above, both the uncreated substance and the uncreated energy (that is, this divine grace and illumination) belong to one God.
148. Since at the time of the Synod[445] the Akindynists were audaciously talking about and attempting to establish their opinion that the divine Light which shone from the Saviour on Tabor is a phantom and a creation, and since, though many times confuted, they were not won over, they were placed under a writ of excommunication and an anathema. For they blaspheme against the economy of God in the flesh and in their madness say that the divinity of God is created and they drag down to the level of a creature, at least insofar as they are able, even the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, for one and the same is the divinity of the three. And if they are saying they revere the Godhead also as uncreated, they clearly hold that there are two divinities in God, one created and the other uncreated. In this way they contend to surpass in their impiety all the heretics of old.
149. At other times contriving to cover up their heresy in this matter too, they say that the Light which shone on Tabor is both uncreated and is also the substance of God, and in this they blaspheme mightily. For since that Light was seen by the apostles, they consequently think in their evil fashion that the substance of God is visible. But they should listen to the one who said: «No one ‘has stood in the being’ and in the substance 'of the Lord' and has either seen or divulged the nature of God,»[446] not only no man but also none of the angels, for even the six-winged Cherubim themselves covered their faces at the abundance of the illumination which was sent forth from it.[447] Since therefore the transcendent being of God has never appeared to anyone, whenever the Akindynists say that the Light is equated with it, they bear witness that this Light is entirely invisible, and that not even the chosen apostles attained this vision on the Mount, nor did the Lord truly promise this to them, and he did not speak truly who said, «We saw his glory when we were with him on the Holy Mountain,' and: 'Peter and those with him stayed awake and saw his glory.'[448] And another says that John, the one most beloved by Christ, «saw the divinity itself of the Word disclosed on the Mountain.»[449] Thus they saw and saw truly the uncreated and divine illumination of the God who remains invisible in his transcendent hiddenness, even if Barlaam and Akindynos and those of like mind should protest.
150. But whenever one questions the Akindynists who say that the Light of the Godhead is the substance, and consequently the substance of God is visible, they are forced to reveal their deceit because they say that the Light is the substance, since through the Light the substance of God is made visible, for through creatures the substance of God is visible; and in turn these wretches maintain that the Light of the Lord's Transfiguration is a created thing. But as it is seen through creatures, it is not the substance but the creative energy of God. Thus, in agreement with Eunomius, they heretically say that the substance of God is visible through creatures. So the harvest of their impiety is abundant. We should therefore flee them and their company as one would a soul-destroying, many-headed serpent, or the manifold corruption of orthodoxy.
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Appendix. St. Gregory Palamas The Reply On Cyril
The proponents of the Akindynist position had been circulating a carefully modified version of a text taken from the Thesaurus de sancta trinitate by Cyril of Alexandria.[450] An associate of Gregory Palamas obtained a copy of the text and sent it to him for comment.[451] There are two points worth noting here. First, Gregory Akindynos is not specifically mentioned, only the advocates of his position. Second, Gregory Palamas was absent from the immediate scene of events and had to be reached by courier. Since Constantinople was the locale where agitation against Palamite doctrines would have been most effective, we can assume, with some hesitation, that certain anti-Palamites were circulating their falsified text of Cyril in Constantinople at a time when Palamas was elsewhere.
Careful comparison of the disputed quotation from Cyril in Palamas’ pamphlet and the text of the Thesaurus in Migne reveals very little difference.[452] The omission of the words εἰ δέ τοῦτο before διπλόη (T 6) obscures the meaning of the citation, but it does not much support the Akindynist position. The quotation does not appear elsewhere in the works of Palamas (apart from the Capita 150), nor can it be found in the writings of Gregory Akindynos. To my knowledge, the Cyril text reappears only in the systematic florilegium of the Palamite monk, Mark Kyrtos.[453] It is found in the first section of that work under the rubric: Μαρτυρίαι τοῦ ἁγίου Κυρίλλου, ἐν αἷς δοκεῖ τό οἰκεῖον δόγμα συνιστᾶν ὁ Ἀκίνδυνος («Testimonies from St. Cyril with which Akindynos thinks he can establish his own doctrine»).[454] The quotation from Thesaurus 14 is given as follows:[455]
Εἰ ἄλλο μέν αὐτός ὁ θεός ἐστιν. ἃλλο δέ ἡ ἐν αὐτῷ ζωή, διπλόη τις καί σύνθεσις περί αὐτόν θεωρηθήσεται. πῶς οὖν ἁπλοῦς καί ἀσύνθετος; ζωή ἄρα ἢν ἔχει ὁ πατήρ ἐν ἑαυτῷ αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός, ὑπάρχει δέ καί αὐτός ἐν υἱῷ ὡς ζωή κατά φύσιν ὤν.
If God himself and the life within him are distinct realities, a certain duality and composition will be observed in his regard. How then can he be simple and incomposite? Therefore, the life which the Father has in him is the Son himself, and the Father is in the Son since he is life by nature.
This is almost certainly the version of the text circulated by the Akindynists. In this form it could easily be used to show that any Palamite attempt to distinguish God (the divine substance) and the life in him (the divine energy) would lead necessarily to the heretical assumption of composition in God. It was probably Gregory's intention to provide his correspondent with the correct version of the quotation, since the latter was already familiar with the corrupt text.
At the head of the first section of Mark's systematic florilegium containing the Cyril quotation there is a dogmatic treatise against the followers of Gregory Akindynos.[456] The treatise is addressed to an unnamed emperor who must be John Kantakouzenos. This strongly suggests that the treatise and the following florilegium were composed sometime during the period 1347–1351.[457] Since the Cyril text does not appear in any earlier discussions there is good reason to suspect that Gregory's Reply On Cyril is close in date to Mark's florilegium. It could then have been written sometime between 1347 and 1351.[458]
Gregory's pamphlet follows a familiar pattern. He takes the abused quotation, gives its original form, explains the context and true meaning of the statement and supports his interpretation with other references to Cyril's Thesaurus. The Akindynists refused to accept any distinction between God's substance and the divine energies, and in support of this contention they cited the text from Thesaurus 14. Palamas thus had to explain that the Son could be named life in two senses: firstly, in an absolute and transcendent sense, in which case the reference is to the divine substance; and secondly, by cause or energy for the Son bestows both natural and divine life ad extra upon creatures. Because of the coinherence of the divine persons in the Trinity the name life can be applied in the same way to the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Akindynist identification of the divine energy with God's substance will eventually lead to a variety of absurd and contradictory conclusions: a multiplicity of substances in God, the communication of the divine substance to creatures, and the elimination of the divine energies. After treating the details of Cyril's theology, Palamas concluded with a résumé of his doctrinal position.[459]
D = Mount Athos, Ἱερά Μονή Διονυσίου, ms 194 (Athon. 3728).[460] Fourteenth century (a.d. 1363), paper, 414 folios, 210x145 mm. Since the Catalogue of Lambros, the order of the folios has been disturbed, perhaps in the course of rebinding: the Λόγος διασαφῶν (Meyendorff #52) which was n° 43 in Lambros now appears at the head of the ms, and the dated colophon together with Psellos' treatise addressed to Michael Doukas (n° 48 in Lambros) have disappeared.[461] The ms contains a non-systematic collection[462] of Palamite and anti-Latin writings.[463] The principal Palamite works in the ms are the following:
Palamas, Λόγος διασαφῶν (fols. 1r-12r)
Palamas, Reply On Cyril (fols. 13v-16v)
Phakrases, Dialogue (fols. 17r-23v)
Matthew Blastares, On Divine Grace (fols. 41r-61v)[464]
David Dishypatos, Against Barlaam and Akindynos (fols. 61v-93v)[465]
Neilos Kabasilas, Ἀντίγραμμα Against Nikephoros Gregoras (fols. 95r-95v)[466]
7. Palamas, Against Bekkos (fols. 97r-102v)
8. Synodal Tome 1341 (fols. 161r-172r)
9. Palamas, Hagioretic Tome (fols. 172r-177r)
Synodal Tome 1351 (fols. 177r-208r)
Palamas, Dialogue of an Orthodox and a Barlaamite (fols. 209r-228v)
Neophytos Prodromenos, Refutation of Barlaam and Akindynos (fols. 327r-338r) and Against Akindynos (fols. 338r-352v)[467]
Z = Mount Sinai, Monastery of St. Catherine, ms gr. 1671.[468] Fifteenth century, paper, 343 folios, 211x 145 mm. Meyendorff has suggested that the ms originally belonged to the Great Lavra on Mt. Athos. It is an important witness to the text of the Triads. The ms contains the following works of Gregory Palamas.
Apodictic Treatises (fols. 1r-118v)
Against Bekkos (fols. 119r-129r)
Reply On Cyril (fols. 129v-134r)
Triads (fols. 136r-327v)
Treatise on the Economy (i.e., Hom. 16; fols. 328r-343r)
In addition to the two mss D and Z there is a further witness to the text, namely Palamas, Cap. 113–121 (=Pal).
Wherever D and Z are in agreement (even if Pal is not) I give this as the text. The one exception is 3.4 τῷ Pal recte: τὸ DZ. When the Reply On Cyril was incorporated into the Capita 150 the various sections of the work were rearranged and the text was altered in minor ways, and so many of the variations between DZ and Pal are stylistic and intentional. D is the older of the two mss but it does not always carry the best readings: e.g.,
3.11 αὐτό D: αὐτόν ZPal
4.11 πυθομένους D: πειθομένους ZPal
6.22 συγκοφαντοῦντες D: συκοφαντοῦντες ZPal
I have chosen the ZPal readings in cases where they differ against the D readings. Where Pal readings are not available I have given preference to the D readings, unless the Z reading is clearly superior.
To facilitate comparison the corresponding sections of Cap. 113–121 are noted in the margins.
Selected Bibliography
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