You are on page 1of 1

i8 j os ii io$ s s i

attain a state in which one could perceive the uncreated divine light with
ones bodily eyes.&% In Barlaams view Palamas was going too far in
making such denitive statements on the nature of God in relation to his
creation in general and to man in particular. Barlaam held that Palamas
ignored the fundamental distinctions between creator and creation and
between spirit and matter, which also had implications for Palamass
teaching on the Trinity. In return, Palamas and his supporters accused
Barlaam of rationalism. In their view he reduced the working of Gods
spirit to the human intellect, which could only grasp what God was not.
While the Palamites saw Barlaam as an enemy of the faith, who
sabotaged their eorts towards developing an orthodox doctrine, for
Barlaam it was rather Gregory and his adherents who were throwing
overboard such orthodox fundamentals as the principle of tradition
founded on Scripture and the doctrine of the primitive Church. Barlaam
was not the only one to criticise the new teaching on these grounds. His
concerns were shared by gures like Gregory Akindynos (c. 1oo8) and
Nicephoros Gregoras (1ii161).&& But Palamas would not recant.
Supported by his fellow monks on Mount Athos and the patriarch he was
appointed archbishop of Thessalonica in 1. In 11 his teachings were
ocially recognised as orthodox. He died in 1.
The renewed interest which Palamass teaching has attracted since the
early days of the twentieth century has shed fresh light on the controversy,
though some of its aspects may have also been obscured.&' Thus the
rejection of Palamass concept of divine energy has been seen as leading
to secularism, nihilism, irrationalism, materialism, atheism, the denial of
the fundamental orthodox teaching of cosmic sacredness and of salvation
as human and cosmic deication, a denial which has led in the west to a
concept of creation as subject to human domination, exploitation and
destruction. Such arguments, whether valid in themselves or not, are
purely modern. They largely fail to recognise the concerns behind the
debate in the fourteenth century, which were essentially theological. (For
&% On the same grounds Barlaam also turned against western theology, for example
against the epistemologically optimistic realist scholasticism of St Thomas Aquinas : J.
Meyendor: Les De! buts de la controverse he! sychaste, Byzantion xxiii (1), 81io at
pp. i1o; Introduction, o; and Un Mauvais The! ologien de lunite! au xive sie' cle:
Barlaam le Calabrais , in .c,,.,,,: leTglise et les eTglises, ii, Chevetogne 1, 6.
&& On Akindynos see Gregorii Acindyni Refutationes duae operis Gregorii Palamae cui titulus
dialogus inter orthodoxum et barlaamitam, ed. J. N. Can4 ellas, Turnhout 1 (lCCG xxxi),
esp. pp. xiiixxviii, 118. See also Nicol, The last centuries, i11. On Nicephoros
Gregoras see Meyendor, Les De! buts , ; Nicol, The last centuries, ii.
&' For a recent discussion see R. Flogaus, Der heimliche Blick nach Westen: zur
Rezeption von Augustins De trinitate durch Gregorios Palamas , JOB xlvi (16),
i, i6 (literature). On the following see now also his Theosis bei Palamas und Luther :
ein Beitrag zum oWkumenischen GespraWch, Go$ ttingen 1, esp. pp. 81o, 18, and the
review by G. Podskalsky, BZ xci (18), 118io (with further literature).

You might also like