THANK YOU!
I was Going to request his removal, St.Grogory Palamas pray to God for us!
On the Future Harvest of Men - St. Gregory Palamas
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Incognito1583
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Starman wrote:I have problems with some of the teachings of Gregory Palamas which contradict the doctrines of the Catholic Church (I am not Catholic). I am in good company with the Bishops,theologians, and monks of the 14th century who decried Palamas as a heretical innovator in doctrine. You might think about the patriarch of Constantinople John Kalekas excommunicating Palamas in 1344 for disobedience to patriarchal authority with the patriarchs Ignatius of Antioch and Gerasimos of Jerusalem joining in the excommunication. A major Greek Orthodox theologian, Panayotis Trembelas, some years ago wrote two articles rejecting the Palamite teaching concerning the essence and energies of God.
Only God is uncreated. If there are other uncreated energies in God, then there are multiple Gods.
From a scholar, not me:
the thinking you describe is characteristic of a man named Eunomius of Cyzicus. That is that God can be grasped adequately by language, syllogisms, and philosophy and be distinguished by the opposition in the linguistic terms (i.e. Essense is NOT energy, etc.). If we follow out your syllogisms we could come with any number of nonsensical statements that even the Scholastics would not feel well about. For instance let’s consider the Scholastic Triadological model and its structural order:
(1) God exists.
(2) God is essence.
(2) God’s existence is his essence.
(3) God’s essence is absolutely simple.
(4) The will of God is the essence of God.
(5) The Father is identical to the divine essence.
(6) The Son is not the Father.
(7) Ergo…The Son is not the essence of the Father.
This was the thinking of the Arians because they identified the divine essence as simple and the Father was merely another attribute of the essence (i.e. ingenerate), But notice I could also footnote each of these statements (except for the very last one no.7) in logical order of the summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas.
This hints at a very structural problem in which questions are being asked, though not necessarily the questions themselves.
I give a very detailed argument on the categories of hypostasis, energeia/dynamis, ousia (and in saying that, I’m already hinting at that order) with reference to Eunomius and Gregory of Nyssa in a paper that I wrote called “Breaking from the Dialectical Method: The Trinitarian Structure of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium.” .................. Once you get your head around that and understand the principles being employed. I would invite you to read Dr. Farrell’s magnum opus, God, History, and Dialectic which can be found here: http://dialectic.wordpress.com/ghd/ I make extensive argumentation in that paper that I think the good Dr. would feel quite comfortable with.
Don’t lose your faith in St. Gregory Palamas. There is no where else to go. I would be so bold to claim that a rejection of Palamas would result in a rejection of the Trinity itself. The full refutation of Arianism was predicated on the same types of distinctions that Gregory Palamas made. The Hesychasts were concerned with taking THOSE distinctions and contextualizing them in theological anthropology (deification), and in doing so it brought the question back again of how the Barlaamites and the Orthodox were considering the Trinity. The end result was that they did not have the same view of God. Palamas was vindicated in 1341, 1347 and 1351 which is Constantinople V, which some Orthodox consider as the 9th Ecumenical Council since the subject was of a dogmatic nature and the decisions were incorporated into Roman Law by the Emperor. These deliberations were so special that they were exonerated in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy and Palamas was given an extra feast day after the Sunday of Orthodoxy where the anathemas against Barlaam and Akindynos are read.
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Incognito1583
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