'Rooted in the Tradition'—St Gregory Palamas & Modern Theologians

Last year, on the Sunday of St Gregory Palamas, I did one of my usual hagiographic posts (here), and followed that up with a brief reflection St Philotheos Kokkinos’s account of the family of St Gregory Palamas (here), and finally, a passage from my own advisor’s book on St Gregory’s teaching on the passions and virtues (here). This year, I’d like to do something much simpler, but very important.

Some of the contemporary theologians in the Orthodox world, although they may be talented scholars and thinkers, and although they may have the best of intentions, have not only departed from the ethos of St Gregory Palamas, they have begun directly and willfully to contradict him. Let us recall Fr Georges Florovsky’s faithful summary of the place of St Gregory in the Orthodox Tradition:

St Gregory begins with the distinction between ‘grace’ and ‘essence’: e theia kai theopoios ellampsis kai charis ouk ousia, all’ energeia esti Theou [the Divine and Divinizing illumination and grace is not the essence, but the energy of God; Capita Phys., Theol., etc., 68-9]. This basic distinction was formally accepted and elaborated at the Great Councils of Constantinople, 1341 and 1351. Those who would deny this distinction were anathematized and excommunicated. The anathematisms of the council of 1351 were included in the rite for the Sunday of Orthodoxy, in the Triodion. Orthodox theologians are bound by this decision. [1]

Now let’s consider the following from Norman Russell’s recent popular-level study on theosis in the Orthodox Tradition:

Turning now to [Metropolitan] John Zizioulas [of Pergamon], we find that he does not define theosis in terms of participating in the divine energies. . . . Unlike Lossky, Yannaras and most other Orthodox theologians, he has serious reservations about the whole concept of the energies. Palamas’ teaching seems to him to make the energies ‘an ontological notion’—to give them a reality apart from the divine being. . . . His idea of theosis is therefore centered on the concept of personhood, not on participation in the energies. [2]

But it wasn’t enough for Russell simply to state Met. John’s highly dubious position of claiming to ‘know better’ than the ‘light of Orthodoxy, support and teacher of the Church’, [3] as we chant in the Troparion of St Gregory. Russell had to try to defend Met. John by making St Gregory’s teaching into a theologoumenon:

Those who found it helpful to use his thinking were free to do so, and the mid-fourteenth century synods of Constantinople pronounced it Orthodox. Other approaches, however, could coexist with it provided they did not attack it. [4]

Now, in light of Fr Florovsky’s observations, it’s wrong enough to say that the Hesychast Synods simply gave those who ‘liked’ St Gregory ‘permission’ to use his theology, but even were we to allow this licentious interpretation, this is no defense of Met. John. For to say that St Gregory’s teaching has some kind of negative theological consequence is to attack it. If Russell has accurately represented him, Met. John and St Gregory cannot simply ‘coexist’. In vindicating the latter it seems to me that the Hesychast Synods actually place the former under anathema, and those anathemas are pronounced by the entire Church every Sunday of Orthodoxy. It is a dangerous business to second guess such a teacher. The very first sticheron about him at Vespers for this Sunday says of St Gregory Palamas:

He is the trumpet of theology, the herald of the fire of grace, the honoured vessel of the Spirit, the unshaken pillar of the Church, the great joy of the inhabited earth, the river of wisdom, the candlestick of the light, the shining star that makes glorious the whole creation. [5]

The next two stichera call him ‘the fervant protector of the Faith, the great guide and teacher, the well-tuned harp of the Spirit’, and ‘the teacher of the Church, the herald of the light of God, the initiate of the heavenly mysteries of the Trinity’. [6] In the doxasticon from the Aposticha at Vespers, we chant, ‘Thy words, inspired by God, are a ladder leading us from earth to heaven.’ [7] Finally, consider these troparia from the Fifth Ode of the canon of the Saint at Matins:

Gregory most wise, thy words and sacred writings are dew from heaven, honey from the rock, the bread of angels unto those that hear or read, sweet nectar and ambrosia, and a fount of living water.

Earth and sea acknowledge thee as their common teacher, as the holy pillar of Orthodoxy and the sacred armoury of divine dogmas, as a wise and saintly theologian, as the comrade and companion of the apostles. [8]

Is this how one treats ‘dew from heaven’—parsing and questioning it on the basis of some philosophical technicality? If earth and sea acknowledge St Gregory Palamas ‘as their common teacher’, is it appropriate for us mere academic, intellectual ‘theologians’ to presume to correct such a teacher, an ‘initiate of the heavenly mysteries of the Trinity’? Can we improve upon words ‘inspired by God’?

Let us rather strive to follow earth and sea in acknowledging him. Fr Florovsky emphasises that St Gregory Palamas ‘was rooted in the tradition’, [9] and as he asks of those who would practise theology, ‘Should we not stand, conscientiously and avowedly, in the same tradition also as “theologians”, as witnesses and teachers of Orthodoxy? Can we retain our integrity in any other way?’ [10]


[1] Fr Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View, Vol. 1 in The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky (Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987), p. 117.

[2] Norman Russell, Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2009), p. 139

[3] The Lenten Triodion, tr. Mother Mary & Archim. [now Met.] Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STS, 1994), p. 316.

[4] Russell, p. 173.

[5] Triodion, p. 314.

[6] Ibid., p. 314.

[7] Ibid., p. 315

[8] Ibid., p. 322.

[9] Fr Florovsky, p. 114.

[10] Ibid., p. 113.