This is the first in a series of reflections on several quotations from St. Gregory Palamas’ Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite.
At the beginning of this year, I lamented the lack of serious posts on my blog, particularly in the last seven or eight months of last year. One thing that I knew that could help that is by more intentionally blogging on the stuff that I’m reading. And since one of the goals I have this year is to intensify my classical and patristic reading, one would think that I should have plenty of opportunity to blog on these serious topics.
And such has been the case. Having read through St. Theodore the Studite’s On the Holy Icons, I was pleasantly surprised to find an almost one-to-one corresponding refutation of a modern (Protestant) iconoclast’s criticism of icon veneration, and was happy to share my ruminations on the interplay between the iconoclast critique and St. Theodore’s defense. (And here in a somewhat more focused way.)
In addition to St. Theodore, I have read St. Ephrem’s Hymns, and Egeria’s Diary of a Pilgrimage. And while each of them have interesting things to reflect on, there is a bunch of meaty stuff to chew on in two of the other works I’ve read: St. Gregory Palamas’ Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite and St. Photios the Great’s Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. I have posted several quotes from St. Gregory’s work on my other blog, and will be doing so with St. Photios’ work as well. I will use the St. Gregory postings on my other blog as the basis for my reflections.
Let me add this disclaimer: These are the reflections of a man particularly ignorant about such deep matters, let alone of these specific Church Fathers. There are others who are much more knowledgeable than me. Rather, what I will attempt with these reflections is to bring together the deep theology they explicate and some thoughts of a more practical, hopefully somewhat ascetical, bent. That is to say, what I want to attempt is to reflect on these things as a way to better my living of the faith, and my prayers. I’m happy to be corrected by those who discern errors in my thoughts here.
First a little taste of history to locate St. Gregory and his Dialogue in his time, go to OrthodoxWiki. Barlaam of Calabria, among other of his teachings which were condemned, held a confusion between the Trinitarian Persons and the divine nature. Whereas the hesychasts asserted that God could be experienced personally and in our bodily existence, including, as do the three Apostles on Mt Tabor, that of the uncreated divine light, Barlaam and his followers argued for a version of absolute divine simplicity: that God was utterly simple and since his essence could not be known, we could not so directly experience God. The difference is that while the hesychasts agreed with the Barlaamites that God’s essence could not be known, that God, in his activities (or energies), could so be known. In St. Gregory’s Dialogue the discussion between the Orthodox speaker and the Barlaamite, gives something of a recapitulation of this disagreement. It is thought that this Dialogue was written by St. Gregory after the series of synods known as the V Constantinople, and by some Orthodox (though not all), as the Ninth Ecumenical Council. (Even though not all Orthodox recognize the ecumenicity of this Council, its judgments are universally accepted throughout Orthodoxy.)
Now to my reflections.
One thing that I had begun to realize in my early days of encountering Orthodoxy, is that what I believed about God would be changed. Not, perhaps, in very many details, nor because I wasn’t such a clear thinking theologian (I wasn’t, but that’s beside the point), but, rather, because I had quite a bit of uncoordinated and contradictory flotsam and jetsam crammed in my head. Some of that was an unconscious and unexamined confusion between the Trinitarian Persons and the divine nature of God. In the last near-seven years, and more particularly in the last two or three, I have come face-to-face with these aporia and had the opportunity to correct my thinking.But while this has resulted in a certain amount of intellectual facility and pleasurable satisfaction, it has had a much more pragmatic wealth that has been given me. To say it simply: in correcting my wayward thoughts about God, I have come closer to God in daily living.
IV. . . . O[rthodox]. He who says that the divine nature [phusika ten theian] does not possess physical things [phusin] does not make it transcend all nature [phuseos], but demonstrates that it has no being whatsoever. For that which has absolutely no physical things [phusika] is not in a transcendental way, but is absolutely not. And how could it be characterized as being at all, if it has none of the things which characterize it, i.e., show it? But because you want to hear that from the fathers—though it is already quite clear since they acknowledge it explicitly—I will make it obvious to you by way of a common doctrine, lest we spoil our time in things which everybody acknowledges. We are taught, then, that our Lord Jesus Christ has two natures [phuseis] and two physical wills [phusika thelemata], one belonging to the human nature [phuseos], the other to the divine.
B[arlaamite]. I agree now; but are the physical things with God [ta phusika epi theou] different from nature [phuseos]?
O. Of course.
–St. Gregory Palamas, Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite which Invalidates in Detail the Barlaamite Error, 4 (Global Publications/CEMERS, n.d.; tr. Rein Ferwerda).
I have inserted, by way of transliteration, the Greek of the original terms nature and physical, since to read about the invisible God having physical characteristics seems a bit blasphemous. The Greek word phusis is the word for nature, and, from it, we get our word physics and physical. And Aristotle’s work Peri Phusis is his book the Physics. In other words, by physical, St. Gregory, and the translator, is not indicating material, as though God were made of matter. Rather, in a rough way, physical can be thought of as natural. Now, I am not trying to indicate that there is nothing material about God’s activity and our knowledge of it, because God’s natural characteristics do reveal themselves to us in the matter of nature. But it is probably better to first think of the word physical (which translates phusis) as natural, or, according to (a thing’s) nature, and then grant the nuances of the text.
Notice, now, what has happened.
St. Gregory, in the voice of the Orthodox speaker in his dialogue, has distinguished between the nature of God and its natural attributes. And, rather than get into a patristic prooftexting war with the Barlaamite, he appeals to the common agreement that Christ, in his Person, had two natures, human and divine, and two corresponding wills reflecting those natures.
So, how does St. Gregory, via the Orthodox speaker, make that distinction?
B. What’s the difference?
O. That the physical will [phusikon thelema] belongs to nature [phuseos] we conclude from nature and in the context of nature, since the will has nature as its beginning and, as it were, as a root and cause from which it proceeds. But nature does not belong to the physical will or otherwise we could speculate about it as if the will were its cause and as if it came forth from it. One could talk about many other things in which physical things differ from nature. But for now this will be enough.
–Ibid.
It’s important to notice the way St. Gregory frames this: the will is caused by the nature, it does not cause the nature. The will is a dynamic extension of the nature, not the nature of the will. While the nature and the will are inseparable (as Gregory says above, “For that which has absolutely no physical things [phusika] is not in a transcendental way, but is absolutely not”—i.e., without natural attributes, nature does not exist), they really are distinguishable.
And now, having made such a distinction, the question arises: is this true only of the relationship of the will to nature, or to other natural attributes as well. Note especially the distinction between will and foreknowledge that St. Gregory affirms in the Orthodox speaker.
V. B. Then, is only the will present in the divine nature in a physical way or other things as well?
O. A great many. For God has (His) foreknowledge in a physical way [phusikos] and that is different from His will. For He knows everything beforehand, but He doesn’t “will” all things that happen. He also has compassion and judgment which differs from each other and from those things; and simply put, to speak with the great Athanasius, “all things which God has by nature [phusei] and not as acquired.” [attr. Maximos the Confessor, About Divine Activities 9] Of all these things we know that they are uncreated. For according to the expert in divine things, Maximus, “there is nothing uncreated in the human nature [anthropine phusei] nor anything created in the divine nature [theia phusei].” [Maximus Confessor, To Marinus 91, 96A] And when you bring charges against us on account of these things, either you think that they are created or that they do not exist at all. If they are created, you make God a creature. For according to the divine John Damascene, “the physical things [phusika] must correspond to the natures [phusesin].” [The Orthodox Faith 3,15] And if you say that there are no physical things [phusika], you take away the divine nature [theian phusin]. For the same expert Maximus asks, “how there can be a God or a man when the physical will [phusikou thelematos] and the essential activity [ousiodous energeias]is taken away?” [To Marinus 91, 96a] Hence you don’t say that the uncreated is one, but nothing. But we say, appropriately, that the divine nature [theian phusin] itself is one, which, by showing those physical things [phusika], reveals its character through them.
–Ibid. 5
The key here is that God’s nature and his natural activities, his essence and energies respectively, are uncreated, and therefore united while ineffably distinguishable from one another. We know nothing of God’s essence, but we can speak of God’s activities, for these are extended to us in Christ. God sheds his grace upon us, and so we experience his saving acts in our life. God is mercy, and so we experience his forgiveness. God is just, and so, we experience God’s righteous demands. God foreknows our future acts, and so we experience God’s providential care for us. But while each of these activities are united to God’s nature, they are not identical to one another. God’s mercy is really, if ineffably and mysteriously, distinguishable from his justice, his foreknowledge from his providence, and so forth. If his mercy were identical to his justice, either universal salvation would necessarily result or universal damnation.
But this is for the theologians and the philosophers. For me, the realization of this teaching of the holy Church meant two things: that God was not so transcendent that he was not nearer to me than my own breath, and that my union with God was not one of thought but of my entire being. For if God were as immanent as the infinite variety of his energetic activities in all of his creation, then God was everywhere I was, and his grace was not simply a juridical activity of a change in classification, but a real participation in him. Prayer was no longer merely an activity of duty, called forth by his greatness, in which I was to somehow think and speak in ways that pleased God, but rather an invitation to union with him.
Think of it. Union. With. God.
My stumbling, half-focused prayers are the occasions in which God stretches out to me (and me to him), to join me to himself, and not me alone, but all his saints. My seemingly solitary prayers in the morning, while my household slumbers is the occasion for all the Church and all the hosts of the Kingdom of God to invade our cramped apartment. In this prayer, while the vigil lamp flickers, and while I struggle to keep my attention on the words of the prayer, is wrought an extensive community: me with the Trinitarian Persons through Christ, and in and through Christ all the saints of God. My most holy Lady and Mother of God is there with me as I seek her intercessions with her Kingly Son for us. My ascetical warrior, the blessed one himself, St. Benedict is present with me, as is that righteous American, Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim. God is not present because I am so pure and holy, though please God he is making me so, but because God is so loving and it is natural to him to stretch himself forth in this way, in this infinite variety of goodly ways, to be near me, even me, in my wretched state through his overwhelming mercy.
It is easy, and therefore tempting, I know, to caricature my former Protestant understandings of God, that somehow it was essential to Protestantism that it keep God at arm’s length. But at least for me, that was the experience. God is holy. That is his nature. I am not. And while I did believe in the love of God and of his grace, these were his dispositions toward me (dispositions that I was raised to believe that could change fairly rapidly based upon my own actions). But these dispositions were somehow not God, were impersonal.
Perhaps the onus ought be on me for a grave misunderstanding of the teachings given me as I grew up. But it is, nonetheless what I knew.
In any case, the Orthodox Church, and her son, St. Gregory, have given to me a God who is infinitely deeper, wider, further away and closer yet still, than ever I had previously known.
