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Controversial Contemplations 2

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The difference between these two conditions of the soul is like the difference between working, and enjoyment of the fruit of our work; between receiving a gift, and profiting by it; between the toil of travelling and the rest of our journey's end". Meditation is an activity of one's spirit by reading or otherwise, while contemplation is a spontaneous activity of that spirit. In meditation, man's imaginative and thinking power exert some effort. Contemplation then follows to relieve man of all effort.

Contemplation is the soul's inward vision and the heart's simple repose in God. An exercise long used among Christians for acquiring contemplation, one that is "available to everyone, whether he be of the clergy or of any secular occupation", [76] is that of focusing the mind by constant repetition a phrase or word. Saint John Cassian recommended use of the phrase "O God, make speed to save me: O Lord, make haste to help me". The Jesus Prayer, which, for the early Fathers, was just a training for repose, [83] the later Byzantines developed into hesychasm , a spiritual work of its own, attaching to it technical requirements and various stipulations that became a matter of serious theological controversy, [83] and are still of great interest to Byzantine, Russian and other eastern churches.

Sobriety contributes to this mental askesis that rejects tempting thoughts; it puts a great emphasis on focus and attention. The Hesychast is to pay extreme attention to the consciousness of his inner world and to the words of the Jesus Prayer, not letting his mind wander in any way at all. The Jesus Prayer invokes an attitude of humility essential for the attainment of theoria. The worldly, neurotic mind is habitually accustomed to seek perpetuation of pleasant sensations and to avoid unpleasant ones.

This state of incessant agitation of the mind is attributed to the corruption of primordial knowledge and union with God the Fall of Man and the defilement and corruption of consciousness, or nous. Theophan the Recluse , though the Jesus Prayer has long been associated with the Prayer of the Heart, they are not synonymous.

Methods of prayer in the Roman Catholic Church include recitation of the Jesus Prayer , which "combines the Christological hymn of Philippians 2: By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Saviour's mercy"; [87] invocation of the holy name of Jesus; [88] recitation, as recommended by Saint John Cassian , of "O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me" or other verses of Scripture; repetition of a single monosyllabic word, as suggested by the Cloud of Unknowing , such as "God" or "Love"; [82] the method used in Centering Prayer ; the use of Lectio Divina.

According to the standard ascetic formulation of this process, as formulated by Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite , [92] [93] there are three stages: Purification and illumination of the noetic faculty are preparations for the vision of God.

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La psicologia positiva (LB) (Catalan Edition).
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Christian contemplation - Wikipedia?
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contemplation | Definition of contemplation in English by Oxford Dictionaries.
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Without this preparations it is impossible for man's selfish love to be transformed into selfless love. This transformation takes place during the higher level of the stage of illumination called theoria, literally meaning vision, in this case vision by means of unceasing and uninterrupted memory of God. Those who remain selfish and self-centered with a hardened heart, closed to God's love, will not see the glory of God in this life. However, they will see God's glory eventually, but as an eternal and consuming fire and outer darkness.

In the advance to contemplation Augustine spoke of seven stages: Saint Teresa of Avila described four degrees or stages of mystical union:. The first three are weak, medium, and the energetic states of the same grace. The transforming union differs from them specifically and not merely in intensity.

It consists in the habitual consciousness of a mysterious grace which all shall possess in heaven: The soul is conscious of the Divine assistance in its superior supernatural operations, those of the intellect and the will. Spiritual marriage differs from spiritual espousals inasmuch as the first of these states is permanent and the second only transitory. In the Orthodox Churches, theosis results from leading a pure life, practicing restraint and adhering to the commandments, putting the love of God before all else. This metamorphosis transfiguration or transformation results from a deep love of God.

Saint Isaac the Syrian says that "Paradise is the love of God, in which the bliss of all the beatitudes is contained," and that "the tree of life is the love of God" Homily Theoria is thus achieved by the pure of heart who are no longer subject to the afflictions of the passions. It is a gift from the Holy Spirit to those who, through observance of the commandments of God and ascetic practices see praxis , kenosis , Poustinia and schema , have achieved dispassion. Purification precedes conversion and constitutes a turning away from all that is unclean and unwholesome.

This is a purification of mind and body. As preparation for theoria , however, the concept of purification in this three-part scheme refers most importantly to the purification of consciousness nous , the faculty of discernment and knowledge wisdom , whose awakening is essential to coming out of the state of delusion that is characteristic of the worldly-minded. After the nous has been cleansed, the faculty of wisdom may then begin to operate more consistently. With a purified nous , clear vision and understanding become possible, making one fit for contemplative prayer.

In the Eastern Orthodox ascetic tradition called hesychasm , humility, as a saintly attribute, is called Holy Wisdom or sophia. Humility is the most critical component to humanity's salvation.

By means of this stillness, the mind is calmed, and the ability to see reality is enhanced. The practitioner seeks to attain what the apostle Paul called 'unceasing prayer'. Some Eastern Orthodox theologians object to what they consider an overly speculative, rationalistic, and insufficiently experiential nature of Roman Catholic theology.

In the Orthodox Churches, noetic prayer is the first stage of theoria. In the Roman Catholic Church, in natural or acquired contemplation there is one dominant thought or sentiment which recurs constantly and easily although with little or no development amid many other thoughts, beneficial or otherwise. The prayer of simplicity [note 16] often has a tendency to simplify itself even in respect to its object, leading one to think chiefly of God and of his presence, but in a confused manner. In the words of Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori , acquired contemplation "consists in seeing at a simple glance the truths which could previously be discovered only through prolonged discourse": Similarly, Saint Ignatius of Loyola , in his day retreat or Spiritual Exercises beginning in the "second week" with its focus on the life of Jesus, describes less reflection and more simple contemplation on the events of Jesus' life.

These contemplations consist mainly in a simple gaze and include an "application of the senses" to the events, []: Natural or acquired contemplation has been compared to the attitude of a mother watching over the cradle of her child: The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:. What is contemplative prayer? It is Jesus, and in him, the Father. We seek him, because to desire him is always the beginning of love, and we seek him in that pure faith which causes us to be born of him and to live in him. In this inner prayer we can still meditate, but our attention is fixed on the Lord himself.

In the Orthodox Churches, the highest theoria, the highest consciousness that can be experienced by the whole person, is the vision of God. Nothingness is a gulf between God and man. God is the origin of everything, including nothingness. This experience of God in hypostasis shows God's essence as incomprehensible, or uncreated. God is the origin, but has no origin; hence, he is apophatic and transcendent in essence or being, and cataphatic in foundational realities , immanence and energies.

This ontic or ontological theoria is the observation of God. A nous in a state of ecstasy or ekstasis, called the eighth day, is not internal or external to the world, outside of time and space; it experiences the infinite and limitless God. This theory , or speculation, as action in faith and love for God, is then expressed famously as "Beauty shall Save the World". This expression comes from a mystical or gnosiological perspective, rather than a scientific, philosophical or cultural one.

In the Roman Catholic Church, infused or higher contemplation, also called intuitive, passive or extraordinary, is a supernatural gift by which a person's mind will become totally centered on God. They include miraculous bodily phenomena sometimes observed in ecstatics. In the Roman Catholic Church, infused contemplation, described as a "divinely originated, general, non-conceptual, loving awareness of God", is, according to Thomas Dubay , the normal, ordinary development of discursive prayer , which it gradually replaces.

It is a wordless awareness and love that we of ourselves cannot initiate or prolong. The beginnings of this contemplation are brief and frequently interrupted by distractions. The reality is so unimposing that one who lacks instruction can fail to appreciate what exactly is taking place. Initial infused prayer is so ordinary and unspectacular in the early stages that many fail to recognize it for what it is.

Yet with generous people, that is, with those who try to live the whole Gospel wholeheartedly and who engage in an earnest prayer life, it is common. Dubay considers infused contemplation as common only among "those who try to live the whole Gospel wholeheartedly and who engage in an earnest prayer life". Other writers view contemplative prayer in its infused supernatural form as far from common. John Baptist Scaramelli , reacting in the 17th century against quietism , taught that asceticism and mysticism are two distinct paths to perfection, the former being the normal, ordinary end of the Christian life, and the latter something extraordinary and very rare.

In the Orthodox Churches, theoria is regarded to lead to true spiritual knowledge, in contrast to the false or incomplete knowledge of rational thought, c. Hence theoria, the experience or vision of God, silences all humanity. The most common false spiritual knowledge is derived not from an experience of God, but from reading another person's experience of God and subsequently arriving at one's own conclusions, believing those conclusions to be indistinguishable from the actual experienced knowledge. False spiritual knowledge can also be iniquitous , generated from an evil rather than a holy source.

The gift of the knowledge of good and evil is then required, which is given by God. Humanity, in its finite existence as created beings or creatures, can never, by its own accord, arrive at a sufficiently objective consciousness. Theosis is the gradual submission of a person to the good, who then with divine grace from the person's relationship or union with God, attains deification. Illumination restores humanity to that state of faith existent in God, called noesis , before humanity's consciousness and reality was changed by their fall.

In the orthodox Churches, false spiritual knowledge is regarded as leading to spiritual delusion Russian prelest, Greek plani , which is the opposite of sobriety. Sobriety called nepsis means full consciousness and self-realization enstasis , giving true spiritual knowledge called true gnosis. This includes damaging or vilifying the nous, or simply having a non-functioning noetic and neptic faculty. Evil is, by definition, the act of turning humanity against its creator and existence. Misotheism , a hatred of God, is a catalyst that separates humanity from nature, or vilifies the realities of ontology , the spiritual world and the natural or material world.

Reconciliation between God the uncreated and man is reached through submission in faith to God the eternal, i. The Trinity as Nous, Word and Spirit hypostasis is, ontologically , the basis of humanity's being or existence. The Trinity is the creator of humanity's being via each component of humanity's existence: Judging from the scantiness of his patristic quotations about prayer, it would seem that the so-called Evagrianizing Fathers were not much help to him.

Yet from this same quotation of Maximus it is quite obvious that in the practice of noetic or uninterrupted prayer there is a kind of ecstasy which made it very possible for Barlaam to make its association with the non-discursive ecstatic intuitions of the mysticism with which he was familiar, and which also made it possible for Meyendorff to imagine that something of an Evagrian tradition, which supposedly understood uninterrupted prayer as a passive state of disincarnation of the intellect, is somehow involved in the debate.

Let us demonstrate this fact by an examination of 'noetic prayer' as interpreted by the hesychast tradition.

According to this tradition, the noetic faculty is liberated by the power of the Holy Spirit from the influences of both the body and the discursive intellect and engages uninterruptedly and ceaselessly with prayer alone. The fascinating thing about this state of actual prayer, as described very clearly by Palamas, [ 16 ] is that, although the physical and intellectual faculties no longer exercise any influence whatsoever on the noetic faculty, they are themselves, however, dominated by the noetic faculty's unceasing prayer in such a fashion that they are spiritually cleansed and inspired and at the same time may engage in their normal activities.

It is exactly this position that upset Barlaam and which he bent all his energies to discredit, both by ridicule and by trying to prove that the patristic texts are really making reference to his understanding of noetic prayer. This is the very heart of the debate over prayer between Barlaam and Palamas. Yet one searches in vain the many pages written by Meyendorff for any description of it. The closest he comes to doing so is on pages of his book, where he quotes, and paraphrases Palamas without any notice or explanation of the simultaneous operation of the noetic faculty in prayer on the one hand and of the discursive intellect and the body in their normal activities on the other.

Instead, somewhat like Barlaam, Meyendorff understood such references to an ecstatic type state of the noetic faculty in terms of neo-Platonic disincarnation of the intellect and on the basis of this becomes repeatedly very apologetic about Palamas' faithfulness to Evagrian terminology. He keeps insisting that St. Gregory was really an adherent to a monistic Macarian anthropology, but was too Byzantine to make a formal repudiation of the Platoniv patristic tradition and so used this tradition's anthropological language also.

The clear distinction made by the hesychasts between the noetic and intellectual faculties of the soul undoubtedly strikes a very familiar neo-Platonic note. Nevertheless, the very sharp difference between I the Palamite noetic faculty NOYS engaging uninterruptedly in the Jesus prayer alone, while the faculties of the body and the discursive intellect both a participate in the fruits of, but without influencing, this uninterrupted prayer, and b act simultaneously in their normal capacities, and II the neo-Platonic noetic faculty NOYS in the state of non-discursive ecstasy, wherein the passions and the discursive intellect have no participation whatsoever, is obvious, especially when one takes into account that the hesychast noetic prayer itself is discursive.

Once attained to, hesychast spirituality makes it possible for one to go about engaging in his daily physical and mental activities while the noetic faculty, circumscribed within the body and in another sense outside physical and discursive rational activity is occupied uninterruptedly in prayer alone, even during sleep. This very fundamental difference between hesychast spirituality and mysticisms of the neo-Platonic kind brings out one of the most fundamental differences between the spiritualities of Eastern and Western Christendom. Whereas in the West a distinction is made between the contemplative and the active states of the Christian life, in the East there is no such distinction.

The greatest bishops of the Orthodox Church were ascetics. On the other hand, an Orthodox monk does not go into a monastery or into the desert in order to lead a life of contemplation, but rather in order to fight the devil by engaging in 'praxis' and meditation on Scripture, which, by the gift of the Spirit, may lead to THEORIAS EPIVASIN vision of the uncreated light , which, however, is not to be confused with the contemplations of mystics.

In a very real sense, one may say that there are no mystics in the Orthodox Church, since one is warned clearly to stick to praxis prayer, fasting, attention, vigils and guided meditation of Scripture, and carefully to avoid contemplation and the seeking of visions by keeping the noetic faculty from engaging in anything but prayer. In contrast to this, Father John seems to be under the impression that a hesychast engages in spiritual exercises because he is seeking contemplation. It should be mentioned at this point that Palamas, somewhat like Barlaam, also believes that in an ecstatic union with, or vision of, God not only are the activities of both body and soul transcended, but noetic prayer itself ceases.

However, unlike Barlaam, Palamas refuses to list this under the heading of prayer. Both believe that in ecstasy the faculties of the body and the soul are transcended. However, Barlaam understands this as an experience of the intellect itself, which becomes non-discursive, whereas Palamas believes that this experience is supra-intellectual. Nevertheless, this similarity of their respective positions in regard to the transcendence of discursive prayer in ecstasy is further proof of the fact that the bone of contention between them is not over the nature of uninterrupted prayer that is, whether it is some disincarnation of the intellect due to an anthropological dualism or a psychosomatic prayer prayer due to a monistic anthropology , but rather over the very existence of hesychast uninterrupted prayer.

It seems that Father Meyendorff was misled into spending much effort in trying to describe, as one of the very essential differences between the Calabrian and St.

Gregory, a clash between dualistic and monistic anthropologies by I his initial misunderstanding of the nature of the debate over prayer; II his failure to grasp the nature of Barlaam's theories concerning a uninterrupted prayer, and b noetic prayer; III his failure to grasp the meaning of noetic prayer in Palamas himself; and IV the fact that there actually was a lively debate over anthropology between our protagonists. However, this debate was neither over dualistic and monistic anthropologies, nor over the part of man which prays unceasingly, as Father John thinks, but rather over the mode of union between body and soul.

The occasion of the argument between Palamas and Barlaam over the question of the soul's mode of union with the body was supplied by the hesychast claim that the noetic faculty must be circumscribed within the body. Barlaam caricatured the hesychasts as people who were trying to get the essence of the intellect into the body and ridicules them on the ground that it is already united to the body. The mystic must rather get the intellect beyond the activities of the body and discursive thought. Following such Fathers as St. Basil the Great, Palamas explains that the noetic faculty is not the essence of the soul, but an energy.

It is the noetic faculty as an energy of the soul which must be circumscribed within the body and thus guarded against the wanderings of contemplation by being occupied with prayer alone. To Barlaam's claim that one should force the intellect to separate itself from bodily activities in noetic prayer, Palamas retorts that 'to cause the noetic faculty to wander outside the body in order to seek intelligible visions is the source and root of Greek errors and all heresies, an invention of demons.

Instead, he restricted himself to a very elementary discussion of the meaning of 'returning to oneself' [ 23 ] without mentioning Palamas' definition of the noetic faculty and without taking notice of Barlaam's contention that the mind should be forced out of the body and of Palamas' answer. Instead he invented a peculiar theory according to which the Palamite hesychasts are supposed to be concentrating their attention within the body because by virtue of baptismal grace they seek the kingdom of God and Jesus in their hearts.

Thus the question at hand is not an opposition between two anthropologies, a monistic and dualistic, but rather a debate over three Christian theories concerning the mode of union between body and soul. Since Palamas and Barlaam chose one apiece, the third theory was not debated, and perhaps it is for this reason that Meyendorff either did not notice it or simply did not mention it.

Gregory Palamas, [ 25 ] in imitation of St. Gregory of Nyssa, [ 26 ] discusses three theories. Some, like Macarius, believe that the soul is attached to and rules the body by means of the heart. Athanasius the Great, believe that this is done by means of the brain; and St. Gregory of Nyssa, rejecting both of these theories, although not completely, believes that the soul is united to and rules every part of the body at once. Gregory Palamas agrees with Macarius and Barlaam agrees with St. Gregory of Nyssa, at least for purposes of attacking the hesychasts. When one keeps in mind that both Barlaam and Palamas believed the soul to be incorporeal, and in this sense not contained by the body, or any one part of the body, although united to all of it at once, or especially to one part of it, one is led to the conclusion that Barlaam's anthropology is more monistic than that of Palamas.

Nevertheless, in his eagerness to demonstrate that Palamas is really an adherent of a Biblical monistic anthropology, Father Meyendorff seems to go overboard. He insists that for St. Gregory the heart is 'the center of all physical and spiritual life… The heart is in no way a metaphor for designating the affective center of man, but indeed it is a Biblical term which Macarius adopted to designate mainly the primary or first organ of life. It is certain … that … this mysticism corresponds to a physiological conception which has the heart as center. According to this conception, "the heart is the ruling part; it possesses the hegemony of the body, etc.

Palamas had written in the First Triad, Part 2, no. Gregory Palamas of saying that the intellect is directly united to the heart as to its primary organ, thereby contradicting, as Barlaam points out, St. Palamas accepts Barlaam's interpretation of Nyssa and complains of having been misrepresented. Palamas answers Barlaam by saying, 'But if you add the word "fleshly," O sophist, as we have said, you would completely remove the slanderous opposition and see the saints agreeing with each other and us with them, having been taught by them.

For some peculiar reason perhaps on the basis of his monistic-dualistic distinctions, or maybe because of his extraordinary persistence in trying to demonstrate the incarnational and sacramental nature of Palamas' mysticism , Father John attempts to describe the present controversy in terms of an opposition between a neo-Platonic 'intellectual mysticism' and a biblico-Stoic 'mysticism of the heart. Gregory of Nyssa with which we dealt in the last paragraph.

So we are asked to believe that Barlaam and Palamas were here arguing over the question of what part of human nature God unites Himself to, the intellect alone, or the heart also. This seems to be another aspect of Meyendorff's mistaken contention that for Barlaam uninterrupted prayer is an experience which belongs to the intellect alone. Now how Father John ever came to believe that these passages from Nyssa and Macarius, within the context of the debate in question, could be used as any demonstration of an opposition between 'intellectual' and 'heart mysticism' is difficult to understand.

As we saw, Barlaam and Palamas are not arguing over the manner of union between God and man, but rather the mode of union between body and soul. Here is the passage from Nyssa within context: Thus, since he did understand this text in terms of union between God and man, Father John should have spoken of three types of mysticism, Macarian 'heart mysticism,' Evagrian 'intellectual mysticism,' and Barlaamite 'sense mysticism. After having informed his readers of the importance of the anthropological issues to the debate in question, and having dealt with them as if he meant it, [ 35 ] Father John makes what may seem to be an about-face by admitting that they are not essential to Palamas' argument.

Nevertheless, this apparent about-face affords Father John the opportunity to switch the discussion from 'heart and intellectual mysticisms' to 'an Incarnation mysticism' [ 38 ] according to which all hesychast practices become tied to the Incarnation and baptismal grace. Thus Palamas supposedly applies Christological correctives to the Platonic Patristic tradition and its religious experiences and visions of the Divine independently of the Incarnate Son of God.

This position is the heart and core of Meyendorff's attempt to describe the differences between the supposed Evagrianism of Barlaam and the Macarian tradition of Palamas. Evidently Father John is embarrassed by the Greek Patristic insistence that the Old Testament prophets had reached high levels of spiritual perfection and in many instances had direct visions of God independently of the salvation-event of the Incarnation. This interpretation of the Old Testament prophetic experiences is sometimes referred to by scholars as an example of Greek Patristic Platonism which mitigates the significance of the unique revelation brought to the world in the historical person of Christ.

In accordance with what seems to be a complex created in him by this kind of interpretation of the Greek Fathers, Meyendorff attempts to show that Palamas is much more like what some modern scholars want a theologian to be. Thus, according to Father John, Palamas 'leads the contemplative life not toward a simple vision of the Divine as is done by the Platonizing Fathers who use the example of Moses to describe the spiritual ascent , but to the corporeal and intimate contact of the Incarnation.

He writes that 'this superiority of the Christian fact over all psychological aspiration or mysticism, outside the grace of the Incarnation, is certainly the essential idea underlying the whole theology of Palamas. More than the spiritual doctors who preceded him, he felt the reality of the radical change introduced into the relationship between God and man following the Incarnation; he thus gave to Christian mysticism an objective foundation independent of all psychology, and, even more, of all spiritual "technique.

Palamas integrates monastic spirituality into the history of salvation and thus liberates it from the last vestiges of Platonic idealism. Having stated his thesis, Father John goes on to speak of the true hesychast sense of 'returning to oneself' in terms of seeking the kingdom of God and Christ within the body now made possible because of the corporeal union between God and man effected by the Incarnation and baptismal grace. In order to prove his thesis concerning Incarnational and sacramental mysticism, Father Meyendorff makes use of a series of texts which he again either mistranslates or misinterprets.

The first of these texts [ 47 ] is to be found within the context of the above-mentioned debate concerning Barlaam's accusation that the hesychasts were trying to get the essence of the mind back into the body and Palamas' answer that it is not the essence but the noetic faculty as energy that must be circumscribed within the body. In proving this position, Palamas quotes St. John of the Ladder, who says that an 'hesychast is one who hastens to circumscribe the incorporeal within the body.

In this section Palamas is pointing out that it is impossible to interpret the aforementioned quotation from St. John of the Ladder as a description of an hesychast as one who hastens to get the essence of the mind into the body. Thus Palamas asks and here is the correct translation of this section , 'For if he the hesychast should not confine the noetic faculty as energy within the body, how should he make that which is clad in the body and which permeates, as natural form, the entirety of its informed matter, be in himself?

A very basic argument used by Barlaam is one based on the Augustinian tradition, which claimed that proof of its createdness is that it traveled to the senses by means of the air and only by the process of abstraction from the imagination did the intellect become aware of it. In view of this basic argument of Barlaam, one is puzzled by Meyendorff's use of the quotation we are now to examine in support of his theory concerning Incarnational sacramental mysticism.

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Before we proceed to the text itself, let us take a closer look at the main issue of the context within which it is found. Having been opposed by Barlaam's contention that the light of the Transfiguration flashed from the body of Christ and traveled through the air to the senses of the apostles, Palamas retorts by going to great trouble to prove that the light in question is not subject to the sense nor for that manner to the intellectual experience of man and neither travels through, nor is visible by means of, the air.

In proof of this, Palamas quotes St. Dionysius the Areopagite, who claims that in the future age 'we shall be illuminated by the visible Theophany of Christ, as were the disciples in the Transfiguration…' [ 56 ] For Palamas, at least, there can be no question of this light's being visible in the future age by means of air or any created light. Dionysius writes that both illuminations are the same. Also, if the light of the Transfiguration is created and made visible by means of the air, then, argues Palamas, the degree of visibility of this light would depend on the cleanliness and transparency of the air and not on the spiritual preparation of man.

Then Palamas climaxes his arguments by pointing out that it is not by any created means that the apostles saw the glory of Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration, but by the power of the omnipotent Spirit. Thus the elect apostles saw the light on Mount Thabor, 'not only flashing from the flesh bearing within itself the Son, but also from the Cloud bearing within itself the Father of Christ. Thus there can be no question of the glory of the Transfiguration traveling from the body of Christ through the air and into the minds of the apostles by means of the senses. The body of Christ illumined the apostles from without only because the same illuminating light of the body was already illuminating them from within.

This is also true, as we shall see, for the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament who saw the glory of the fleshless Christ, being themselves, by deifying or divinizing grace, in glory. This is the basic argument of Palamas against Barlaam's Augustinian contention that the glory of the Old Testament also traveled to the senses of the prophets by means of the air and was therefore created. In view of the fact that Barlaam's contention that the glory of God revealed in the Old and New Testaments and to certain of the saints is created was the immediate cause of his synodical condemnation as a heretic, and also in view of the fact that the correct approach to this question is an important key to understanding the theology of Palamas, one would have expected that Meyendorff would have taken serious notice of these epistemological principles underlying the debate.

Instead he presents an explanation based on his theories concerning Dionysius the Areopagite and the Platonic nominalistic humanism of Barlaam. In actuality, however, Meyendorff interprets this passage in such a way that he turns it against Palamas' whole defense of hesychast theology and in favor of Barlaam's refutation of this same position. The passage in question is the climax of Palamas' argument in answer to Barlaam's claim that this glory of the body of Christ was revealed directly to the senses only and is therefore inferior to revelation made directly to the intellect.

Palamas is quite indignant at the idea that the uncreated light should be seen by the senses alone and argues that this vision is proper neither to the senses nor to the intellect, but rather transcends both, being at the same time a knowing and an unknowing [ 64 ] in which the whole man participates, having thus been divinized in body and soul by this same light of grace. To the lengthy exposition of these ideas, Palamas adds the information that on Mount Thabor the body of Christ, source of glory by virtue of the Incarnation, illumined the apostles from without, whereas now this same body illumines Christians from within.

Thus it is to be understood as proof that this same Body, by virtue of being now within us, shines forth its glory directly to the mind. Barlaam is, therefore, wrong in his contention that this light from the body of Christ can be experienced directly by the senses alone. Furthermore, this passage cannot be understood in isolation from the context of the debate, and especially from Palamas' defense of the uncreatedness of the light, by pointing out that it shone not only from the body of Christ but also flashed from the cloud and was not seen by means of the air. By ignoring the whole context within which Palamas speaks of the body of Christ illuminating the apostles from without on Mount Thabor and later from within, and by ignoring the fact that the cloud which descended upon the apostles was also source of this same glory, and by ignoring all the references in Palamas to the illumination, sanctification, and deification or divinization of the prophets from within, prior to the Incarnation, Father John thinks that this passage proves that for Palamas the hesychast prayer practices and theology of grace, sanctification, and deification or divinization have as their source the Incarnation and the sacraments of the Church.

Five years prior to the publication of his major work on Palamas, Father John wrote an article [ 66 ] in which he developed his theory concerning incarnational and sacramental mysticism. Since the theories of his major work are to a large extent an outgrowth of this article, it may be instructive to extract some of its main ideas. After quoting [ 67 ] the passage of Palamas concerning the body of Christ which shone upon the apostles from without on Mount Thabor and later from within those who became members of His Body, [ 68 ] Father John goes on to say [ 69 ] that, 'The apostles themselves, the day of the Transfiguration, were not favored by the true vision [ 70 ] which is accessible to ourselves after the death and resurrection of Christ NIN , after His Body and our bodies have entered into an ineffable communion.

This spirituality is, therefore, centered totally on the Body of Christ: Hesychast spirituality, in the Palamite perspective, is not, therefore, a sickly esotericism, but finds its basis in an altogether Pauline perspective of the human body as "temple of the Holy Spirit" and "member of Christ" I Cor. It is thus that certain passages of Palamas concerning the "discernment of spirits" are to be explained. It is not in accord with the rolling up and return of the noetic faculty unto itself. For this rolling up and return always guides without error toward the divine. In view of what we saw of the debate between Palamas and Barlaam, Meyendorff's lack of touch with the realities of the issue is odd.

No one could be more in agreement with Meyendorff's claim that the apostles on Mount Thabor searched for God outside of themselves than Barlaam, since this would be sure proof that the light of the Transfiguration is created. Barlaam would also agree that on Mount, the apostles 'were not favored by the true vision.

Instead, he intimates that it is in the light of such things as the apostles' search for God outside of themselves on Mount Thabor that Palamas' warning about demonic visions of light from without is to be understood. It is difficult for this writer to believe that Father John is actually saying that the apostles on Mount Thabor had a demonic experience, but how does one avoid this conclusion?

Palamas says that all visions of light outside oneself are demonic. Meyendorff says that for Palamas the apostles on Mount Thabor had a vision of light outside themselves. Therefore the vision of light of the apostles on Mount Thabor was - demonic? Meyendorff clearly accepts both the major and minor premises as descriptions of Palamas' theology. Does he accept the conclusion? If not, how does he avoid it? This difficulty does not exist for Palamas, since the minor premise is not his, but that of Barlaam.

It is interesting to note that within the context of his exposition of his theories on the difference between the light shining from the body of Christ from without on Mount Thabor and from within after the death and resurrection of Christ, Father John had used the aforementioned passage concerning the vision had by certain saints after the coming of Christ in the flesh who saw 'this light as an open sea without end, flowing paradoxically from a disc, that is from the adorable Body…' [ 74 ] But Father John omitted to quote the rest of this sentence, which says, 'as the apostles saw on the Mount.

That Meyendorff is mistaken is also obvious from the above-mentioned use by Palamas of the Areopagitic identification of the vision in the future age with the experience of the apostles on Thabor. Gregory goes on to say that this is exactly what happened to St. In defending the doctrine of uncreatedness of the glory of Christ and the Trinity revealed to the Old Testament prophets and to the apostles on Thabor, Palamas, as we saw, argued that this light is not subject to the experiences of either the senses or the intellect; it is not seen by means of the air or any other creature and it cannot be seen or known by man's natural faculties.

So, in being divinized in revelation, man receives the self-seeing uncreated light and thus, having acquired this 'divine eye,' which he did not have before, he, the whole man, body and soul, sees God in His glory. However, as we saw, Meyendorff restricts this divinization not only to the Incarnation, but also to the sacraments of the Church, [ 81 ] thus excluding from it even the apostles at the time of the Transfiguration on Mount Thabor. In such a case, Meyendorff is under obligation to explain how Palamas defended the reality of the vision of God in the Old Testament and on Mount Thabor against the attacks of Barlaam.

Palamas clearly points out that the apostles on Thabor could not have seen the uncreated light 'had they not received eyes which they did not have before…so that even though it the light became accessible to the eyes, yet to such as had become above eyes and perceived by the spiritual power of the spiritual light. Elsewhere Palamas identifies the experiences of Moses and Paul. One of the clearest statements by Palamas on the existence of deifying grace in the Old Testament is to be found in his Third Letter to Akindynus [ 89 ] in which he speaks of both St.

The closest he comes to doing so is on pages of his book, where he quotes, and paraphrases Palamas without any notice or explanation of the simultaneous operation of the noetic faculty in prayer on the one hand and of the discursive intellect and the body in their normal activities on the other. Instead, somewhat like Barlaam, Meyendorff understood such references to an ecstatic type state of the noetic faculty in terms of neo-Platonic disincarnation of the intellect and on the basis of this becomes repeatedly very apologetic about Palamas' faithfulness to Evagrian terminology.

He keeps insisting that St. Gregory was really an adherent to a monistic Macarian anthropology, but was too Byzantine to make a formal repudiation of the Platoniv patristic tradition and so used this tradition's anthropological language also. The clear distinction made by the hesychasts between the noetic and intellectual faculties of the soul undoubtedly strikes a very familiar neo-Platonic note. Nevertheless, the very sharp difference between I the Palamite noetic faculty NOYS engaging uninterruptedly in the Jesus prayer alone, while the faculties of the body and the discursive intellect both a participate in the fruits of, but without influencing, this uninterrupted prayer, and b act simultaneously in their normal capacities, and II the neo-Platonic noetic faculty NOYS in the state of non-discursive ecstasy, wherein the passions and the discursive intellect have no participation whatsoever, is obvious, especially when one takes into account that the hesychast noetic prayer itself is discursive.

The quest for and the gift of uninterrupted prayer is not a life of contemplation and is not a seeking after ecstatic experiences, and it in no way hinders, but rather makes possible, a very high level of inspired spiritual activism. Thus in traditional Eastern spirituality it is not the administrator as over against the contemplative who makes for the ideal bishop, but rather the hesychast. Such is the bishop, e. The greatest bishops of the Orthodox Church were ascetics. On the other hand, an Orthodox monk does not go into a monastery or into the desert in order to lead a life of contemplation, but rather in order to fight the devil by engaging in 'praxis' and meditation on Scripture, which, by the gift of the Spirit, may lead to THEORIAS EPIVASIN vision of the uncreated light , which, however, is not to be confused with the contemplations of mystics.

It should be mentioned at this point that Palamas, somewhat like Barlaam, also believes that in an ecstatic union with, or vision of, God not only are the activities of both body and soul transcended, but noetic prayer itself ceases. However, unlike Barlaam, Palamas refuses to list this under the heading of prayer. Both believe that in ecstasy the faculties of the body and the soul are transcended. However, Barlaam understands this as an experience of the intellect itself, which becomes non-discursive, whereas Palamas believes that this experience is supra-intellectual.

Nevertheless, this similarity of their respective positions in regard to the transcendence of discursive prayer in ecstasy is further proof of the fact that the bone of contention between them is not over the nature of uninterrupted prayer that is, whether it is some disincarnation of the intellect due to an anthropological dualism or a psychosomatic prayer prayer due to a monistic anthropology , but rather over the very existence of hesychast uninterrupted prayer.

It seems that Father Meyendorff was misled into spending much effort in trying to describe, as one of the very essential differences between the Calabrian and St. Gregory, a clash between dualistic and monistic anthropologies by I his initial misunderstanding of the nature of the debate over prayer; II his failure to grasp the nature of Barlaam's theories concerning a uninterrupted prayer, and b noetic prayer; III his failure to grasp the meaning of noetic prayer in Palamas himself; and IV the fact that there actually was a lively debate over anthropology between our protagonists.

However, this debate was neither over dualistic and monistic anthropologies, nor over the part of man which prays unceasingly, as Father John thinks, but rather over the mode of union between body and soul. The occasion of the argument between Palamas and Barlaam over the question of the soul's mode of union with the body was supplied by the hesychast claim that the noetic faculty must be circumscribed within the body.

Barlaam caricatured the hesychasts as people who were trying to get the essence of the intellect into the body and ridicules them on the ground that it is already united to the body. The mystic must rather get the intellect beyond the activities of the body and discursive thought. Following such Fathers as St. Basil the Great, Palamas explains that the noetic faculty is not the essence of the soul, but an energy.

The fact that Barlaam argues that the essence of the intellect is already within the body, plus the fact that the Calabrian uses St. Gregory of Nyssa against Palamas on the question of the mode of union between body and soul, plus the further fact that Barlaam never says that the body is the prison of the soul, or that there will be no resurrection, are indications that Barlaam is not to be identified with Platonic anthropological dualism. Thus the question at hand is not an opposition between two anthropologies, a monistic and dualistic, but rather a debate over three Christian theories concerning the mode of union between body and soul.

Since Palamas and Barlaam chose one apiece, the third theory was not debated, and perhaps it is for this reason that Meyendorff either did not notice it or simply did not mention it. Gregory Palamas, [ 25 ] in imitation of St. Gregory of Nyssa, [ 26 ] discusses three theories. Some, like Macarius, believe that the soul is attached to and rules the body by means of the heart.

Athanasius the Great, believe that this is done by means of the brain; and St. Gregory of Nyssa, rejecting both of these theories, although not completely, believes that the soul is united to and rules every part of the body at once. Gregory Palamas agrees with Macarius and Barlaam agrees with St. Gregory of Nyssa, at least for purposes of attacking the hesychasts.

When one keeps in mind that both Barlaam and Palamas believed the soul to be incorporeal, and in this sense not contained by the body, or any one part of the body, although united to all of it at once, or especially to one part of it, one is led to the conclusion that Barlaam's anthropology is more monistic than that of Palamas.

It is certain … that … this mysticism corresponds to a physiological conception which has the heart as center. According to this conception, "the heart is the ruling part; it possesses the hegemony of the body, etc. Palamas had written in the First Triad, Part 2, no. Gregory Palamas of saying that the intellect is directly united to the heart as to its primary organ, thereby contradicting, as Barlaam points out, St.

Palamas accepts Barlaam's interpretation of Nyssa and complains of having been misrepresented. Palamas answers Barlaam by saying, 'But if you add the word "fleshly," O sophist, as we have said, you would completely remove the slanderous opposition and see the saints agreeing with each other and us with them, having been taught by them.

Palamas is, therefore, saying very clearly that the heart is not the primary organ , as Meyendorff thinks, but the primary fleshly organ.. It seems that Father John was misled not only because of his commitment to his monism-dualism theories, but also because he understood this section of the debate as a quarrel over the mode of union between God and man instead of between soul and body. For some peculiar reason perhaps on the basis of his monistic-dualistic distinctions, or maybe because of his extraordinary persistence in trying to demonstrate the incarnational and sacramental nature of Palamas' mysticism , Father John attempts to describe the present controversy in terms of an opposition between a neo-Platonic 'intellectual mysticism' and a biblico-Stoic 'mysticism of the heart.

Gregory of Nyssa with which we dealt in the last paragraph. So we are asked to believe that Barlaam and Palamas were here arguing over the question of what part of human nature God unites Himself to, the intellect alone, or the heart also. This seems to be another aspect of Meyendorff's mistaken contention that for Barlaam uninterrupted prayer is an experience which belongs to the intellect alone.

Now how Father John ever came to believe that these passages from Nyssa and Macarius, within the context of the debate in question, could be used as any demonstration of an opposition between 'intellectual' and 'heart mysticism' is difficult to understand. As we saw, Barlaam and Palamas are not arguing over the manner of union between God and man, but rather the mode of union between body and soul. Here is the passage from Nyssa within context: Thus, since he did understand this text in terms of union between God and man, Father John should have spoken of three types of mysticism, Macarian 'heart mysticism,' Evagrian 'intellectual mysticism,' and Barlaamite 'sense mysticism.

After having informed his readers of the importance of the anthropological issues to the debate in question, and having dealt with them as if he meant it, [ 35 ] Father John makes what may seem to be an about-face by admitting that they are not essential to Palamas' argument. Nevertheless, this apparent about-face affords Father John the opportunity to switch the discussion from 'heart and intellectual mysticisms' to 'an Incarnation mysticism' [ 38 ] according to which all hesychast practices become tied to the Incarnation and baptismal grace.

Thus Palamas supposedly applies Christological correctives to the Platonic Patristic tradition and its religious experiences and visions of the Divine independently of the Incarnate Son of God. This position is the heart and core of Meyendorff's attempt to describe the differences between the supposed Evagrianism of Barlaam and the Macarian tradition of Palamas. Evidently Father John is embarrassed by the Greek Patristic insistence that the Old Testament prophets had reached high levels of spiritual perfection and in many instances had direct visions of God independently of the salvation-event of the Incarnation.

This interpretation of the Old Testament prophetic experiences is sometimes referred to by scholars as an example of Greek Patristic Platonism which mitigates the significance of the unique revelation brought to the world in the historical person of Christ. In accordance with what seems to be a complex created in him by this kind of interpretation of the Greek Fathers, Meyendorff attempts to show that Palamas is much more like what some modern scholars want a theologian to be.

Thus, according to Father John, Palamas 'leads the contemplative life not toward a simple vision of the Divine as is done by the Platonizing Fathers who use the example of Moses to describe the spiritual ascent , but to the corporeal and intimate contact of the Incarnation. He writes that 'this superiority of the Christian fact over all psychological aspiration or mysticism, outside the grace of the Incarnation, is certainly the essential idea underlying the whole theology of Palamas.

More than the spiritual doctors who preceded him, he felt the reality of the radical change introduced into the relationship between God and man following the Incarnation; he thus gave to Christian mysticism an objective foundation independent of all psychology, and, even more, of all spiritual "technique. Palamas integrates monastic spirituality into the history of salvation and thus liberates it from the last vestiges of Platonic idealism.

Having stated his thesis, Father John goes on to speak of the true hesychast sense of 'returning to oneself' in terms of seeking the kingdom of God and Christ within the body now made possible because of the corporeal union between God and man effected by the Incarnation and baptismal grace. In order to prove his thesis concerning Incarnational and sacramental mysticism, Father Meyendorff makes use of a series of texts which he again either mistranslates or misinterprets.

In proving this position, Palamas quotes St. John of the Ladder, who says that an 'hesychast is one who hastens to circumscribe the incorporeal within the body. In this section Palamas is pointing out that it is impossible to interpret the aforementioned quotation from St. John of the Ladder as a description of an hesychast as one who hastens to get the essence of the mind into the body. Thus Palamas asks and here is the correct translation of this section , 'For if he the hesychast should not confine the noetic faculty as energy within the body, how should he make that which is clad in the body and which permeates, as natural form, the entirety of its informed matter, be in himself?

There is nothing here even remotely related to any hint of an Incarnational and sacramental mysticism. In moving on to the second text Father John claims that 'the thought of Palamas is also completely clear in another passage of the Triads. Palamas argued that this light is uncreated, while Barlaam argued that it is created. A very basic argument used by Barlaam is one based on the Augustinian tradition, which claimed that proof of its createdness is that it traveled to the senses by means of the air and only by the process of abstraction from the imagination did the intellect become aware of it.

In view of this basic argument of Barlaam, one is puzzled by Meyendorff's use of the quotation we are now to examine in support of his theory concerning Incarnational sacramental mysticism. Before we proceed to the text itself, let us take a closer look at the main issue of the context within which it is found.

Having been opposed by Barlaam's contention that the light of the Transfiguration flashed from the body of Christ and traveled through the air to the senses of the apostles, Palamas retorts by going to great trouble to prove that the light in question is not subject to the sense nor for that manner to the intellectual experience of man and neither travels through, nor is visible by means of, the air.

NOTES ON THE PALAMITE CONTROVERSY and RELATED TOPICS Part-2

Thus there can be no question of the glory of the Transfiguration traveling from the body of Christ through the air and into the minds of the apostles by means of the senses. The body of Christ illumined the apostles from without only because the same illuminating light of the body was already illuminating them from within. This is also true, as we shall see, for the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament who saw the glory of the fleshless Christ, being themselves, by deifying or divinizing grace, in glory.

This is the basic argument of Palamas against Barlaam's Augustinian contention that the glory of the Old Testament also traveled to the senses of the prophets by means of the air and was therefore created. In view of the fact that Barlaam's contention that the glory of God revealed in the Old and New Testaments and to certain of the saints is created was the immediate cause of his synodical condemnation as a heretic, and also in view of the fact that the correct approach to this question is an important key to understanding the theology of Palamas, one would have expected that Meyendorff would have taken serious notice of these epistemological principles underlying the debate.

To the lengthy exposition of these ideas, Palamas adds the information that on Mount Thabor the body of Christ, source of glory by virtue of the Incarnation, illumined the apostles from without, whereas now this same body illumines Christians from within. Thus it is to be understood as proof that this same Body, by virtue of being now within us, shines forth its glory directly to the mind.

Barlaam is, therefore, wrong in his contention that this light from the body of Christ can be experienced directly by the senses alone. Furthermore, this passage cannot be understood in isolation from the context of the debate, and especially from Palamas' defense of the uncreatedness of the light, by pointing out that it shone not only from the body of Christ but also flashed from the cloud and was not seen by means of the air. By ignoring the whole context within which Palamas speaks of the body of Christ illuminating the apostles from without on Mount Thabor and later from within, and by ignoring the fact that the cloud which descended upon the apostles was also source of this same glory, and by ignoring all the references in Palamas to the illumination, sanctification, and deification or divinization of the prophets from within, prior to the Incarnation, Father John thinks that this passage proves that for Palamas the hesychast prayer practices and theology of grace, sanctification, and deification or divinization have as their source the Incarnation and the sacraments of the Church.

After quoting [ 67 ] the passage of Palamas concerning the body of Christ which shone upon the apostles from without on Mount Thabor and later from within those who became members of His Body, [ 68 ] Father John goes on to say [ 69 ] that, 'The apostles themselves, the day of the Transfiguration, were not favored by the true vision [ 70 ] which is accessible to ourselves after the death and resurrection of Christ NIN , after His Body and our bodies have entered into an ineffable communion.

It is not in accord with the rolling up and return of the noetic faculty unto itself. For this rolling up and return always guides without error toward the divine. In view of what we saw of the debate between Palamas and Barlaam, Meyendorff's lack of touch with the realities of the issue is odd. No one could be more in agreement with Meyendorff's claim that the apostles on Mount Thabor searched for God outside of themselves than Barlaam, since this would be sure proof that the light of the Transfiguration is created.

Barlaam would also agree that on Mount, the apostles 'were not favored by the true vision. Instead, he intimates that it is in the light of such things as the apostles' search for God outside of themselves on Mount Thabor that Palamas' warning about demonic visions of light from without is to be understood. It is difficult for this writer to believe that Father John is actually saying that the apostles on Mount Thabor had a demonic experience, but how does one avoid this conclusion? Palamas says that all visions of light outside oneself are demonic.

Meyendorff says that for Palamas the apostles on Mount Thabor had a vision of light outside themselves. Therefore the vision of light of the apostles on Mount Thabor was - demonic? Meyendorff clearly accepts both the major and minor premises as descriptions of Palamas' theology. Does he accept the conclusion? If not, how does he avoid it?

This difficulty does not exist for Palamas, since the minor premise is not his, but that of Barlaam. It is interesting to note that within the context of his exposition of his theories on the difference between the light shining from the body of Christ from without on Mount Thabor and from within after the death and resurrection of Christ, Father John had used the aforementioned passage concerning the vision had by certain saints after the coming of Christ in the flesh who saw 'this light as an open sea without end, flowing paradoxically from a disc, that is from the adorable Body…' [ 74 ] But Father John omitted to quote the rest of this sentence, which says, 'as the apostles saw on the Mount.

As Meyendorff himself points out very correctly by quoting some important passages, [ 80 ] for Palamas the only possible means by which both the body and the soul can have a vision of the uncreated light is by both being deified or divinized. The uncreated light is invisible to the senses and the intellect, but not invisible to itself. So, in being divinized in revelation, man receives the self-seeing uncreated light and thus, having acquired this 'divine eye,' which he did not have before, he, the whole man, body and soul, sees God in His glory.

However, as we saw, Meyendorff restricts this divinization not only to the Incarnation, but also to the sacraments of the Church, [ 81 ] thus excluding from it even the apostles at the time of the Transfiguration on Mount Thabor. In such a case, Meyendorff is under obligation to explain how Palamas defended the reality of the vision of God in the Old Testament and on Mount Thabor against the attacks of Barlaam.

Christian contemplation

One of the clearest statements by Palamas on the existence of deifying grace in the Old Testament is to be found in his Third Letter to Akindynus [ 89 ] in which he speaks of both St. Paul and Melchisedek becoming uncreated by deifying grace. Paul, therefore, was created only as long as he lived the life created from non-being by the command of God.

But when he no longer lived this life , but that which is present by the indwelling of God, he became uncreated by grace, as did also Melchisedek and everyone who comes to possess the Logos of God, alone living and acting within himself. According to Palamas' interpretation of St.

For Palamas it is only by becoming God by grace that one can see God by means of God, not only in the future age, or in the next life, but also in this life, both before and after the Incarnation and formation of the Church. In his attempt to demonstrate the Incarnation-centered nature of Palamas' theology, Meyendorff even goes so far as to claim that St. Gregory restricts the immediate vision of the uncreated light in the Old Testament to 'certain isolated elect, like Moses …' [ 92 ] However, Palamas claims exactly the opposite when he writes that 'the prophets and patriarchs were not deprived of tasting of this light, but rather, apart from a few, all their visions, and indeed the most divine, were not lacking in this light.

One may also point out that in his defense of the simultaneity of uninterrupted noetic prayer and intellectual and physical activity, Palamas appeals as an example to Moses.

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NOTES ON THE PALAMITE CONTROVERSY and RELATED TOPICS Part-2

Christian contemplation