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Owing to
popular demand—okay, two people—I have decided to post my 2011 review of the
English translation of St Gregory Palamas’s homilies from Orthodox Life. So this is that.
St Gregory
Palamas, The Homilies, ed. and trans.
Christopher Veniamin with the assistance of The Monastery of St John the
Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009). ISBN 978-0977498345.
The last
fifty years or so have seen a growing interest in St Gregory Palamas in the
English-speaking world. But because professional theologians and patristic
scholars have led that interest, much of it has focused on St Gregory’s
polemical and theological works, and these works have been the primary object
of translation efforts into English. Such translations are undoubtedly
important: they have led to marked Western reevaluations of St Gregory’s
teaching and have become a source of theological enrichment for Anglophone
Orthodox readers.
But a
translation of St Gregory’s extant homilies has been long overdue, and Mount
Thabor Publishing it to be roundly applauded for producing this beautifully
bound, hardcover edition of all sixty-three of them. Devoted to the Great
Feasts and Sunday Gospel readings of the Church year, the homilies have the
potential to serve as a real aid to the spiritual life. It is here that we see
St Gregory Palamas as the great pastor of the Church that he was, and it is
here that Orthodoxy laymen of the English-speaking world, especially converts,
will find a proper point of contact with the saint’s teaching. These homilies
were given to provide spiritual nourishment to Orthodox Christians living in
the world, who did not necessarily grasp the Aristotelian subtleties of
theological polemic and whose experience of the spiritual life had not yet
risen to the heights attained by monastic hesychasts. These homilies feed the
souls of working men and women. In them we see St Gregory ‘rightly dividing the
word of truth’.
That is
clearly not to say, however, that this translation will hold no interest for
the scholar or theologian. The homilies are, as one would expect, models of
theological oratory and patristic exegesis, and afford a fascinating glimpse
into the religious life at the height of the Palaiologan Renaissance. To aid
the scholarly reader, this edition contains extensive endnotes (continuously
numbered) that often provide lavish quotations from the Greek, besides offering
deeper insights into St Gregory’s theology. There are also indexes of
Scriptural references, of names and subjects, and of Greek words, all of which
greatly increase the book’s value as a reference tool.
The initial
labour of this translation was undertaken at the Monastery of St John the
Baptist in Essex, England, by Sister Pelagia (Selfe) under the direction of
Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou), being finally revised and furnished with
notes by Christopher Veniamin of St Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in
South Canaan, PA. Sr Pelagia and Dr Veniamin should be commended for their very
readable and elegant rendering. The cover price may seem a bit steep, but it is
well worth it for a treasure of this magnitude. Perhaps my only complaint is
the editor’s decision to use the Masoretic names and numbering for Scriptural
citations. But such a quibble should hinder no one from acquiring this
important volume. Let us, as St Gregory says, open our ‘ears to the Spirit’s
teaching and be persuaded by what we preach and put forward to you for the good
of all’ (Homily 56.3).
(Orthodox Life Vol. 62, No. 3 [May-June
2011], pp. 53-5)
