# The Triads (Gregory Palamas)



## RamistThomist (Jan 29, 2014)

Palamas, Gregory. The Triads. Ed. John Meyendorff. Paulist Press.

*Part 1: Philosophy does not save.*

In this first chapter (and by chapter that is the division that Pelikan and Meyendorrf are using, and so I will use) Palamas critiques the Baarlamite notion that we have to know in order to be saved. Or more precisely and better put, we have to have a good grounding in philosophy before we can understand God.

*Part 2: The Body and Prayer*

Mostly good section on how the body is good. I wish he would have taken it a step further and noted, if the body is good, and marriage is good, then is sexual intercourse a good? Here the anchoretic tradition has struggled in giving a hearty “yes.” The Orthodox writer Vladimir Moss capably documented the problem. I also agree with Palamas that the heart is the rational faculty (I.2.iii; p. 42). 

Further, I also agree that “the divine” (my words, not his) has penetrated all of created reality (1.ii.6; 45). 

Hyperousia: The essence is beyond the Godhead (2.iii.8; p. 57). 
*
Clarifications:*

Admittedly, Palamas does not go for a full apophatic theology. He writes, “Let no one think that these great men are here referring to the ascent through the negative way” (p. 37; 1.iii.20). This kind of makes sense. Anybody can merely deny propositions of God with no view towards holiness. Palamas is clear that apophatic theology is necessary to liberate the understanding, but it is not enough for union with the divine. 

Palamas says the energies are en-hypostatic (3.i.9, p. 71). This saves him from the immediate charge of Neo-Platonism. It raises the question: which hypostasis(es)? He answers: The Spirit sends it out in the hypostasis of another (ibid). 

With which we agree with Palamas:

To a certain extent I can accept his conclusions about the reality of the divine light. I just have problems with calling it a “hypostatic energy.” Further, he gives a very moving description of Paul’s own vision (p. 38; 1.iii.21). 

We agree with Palamas, and contra Barlaam and the Thomists, that in the eschaton we will not know God by created intermediaries. 


*Potential problems:*

transcending human nature: Palamas is suggesting something akin to knowing God beyond sense perception and discursive reasoning. The saints have “an organ of vision that is neither the senses nor the intellect” (p. 35, I.iii.17). 

*Open criticisms:*

I don’t know how seriously I can take Palamas’s claim that he isn’t dependent on philosophy like the West is. His doctrine of essence, energies, motion, salvation as transformation are all highly technical philosophical concepts. Even if “hyper-ousia” is a valid theological concept, it is taken from Plato’s Republic (Plato 549b). Further, on p. 105 Palamas refers to God as “Prime Mover.” How is this not using Aristotle? 

*Some questions:*

If the breathing technique is so important to prayer, how come none of the apostles ever mentioned it? Granted, one can agree that Scripture doesn’t say everything, but still, this is a rather important omission. 

To the degree that the hesychasts follow in the best of the Evagrian tradition (Meyendorff, 2-3), one must ask if this would have ever gotten off of the ground were it not for Origen. If this genealogy is true, then we are faced with the troubling implication that not only is this tradition of prayer not apostolic, but it comes from a rather suspect source!

If both Persons and Nature are hyper-ousia (cf. Triads III.iii.17-20, which this text doesn’t include), precisely how is it possible to know them? 

If grace is already inherent in nature, then what was originally wrong or inadequate with nature that it required grace? (And the distinction between prelapsarian and postlapsarian man is irrelevant.)
How coherent is it to call the energies “hypostatic” (p. 57, II.iii.8) while insisting that hypostasis does not mean what hypostasis means when it refers to the Trinity? I realize that Meyendorff glosses “hypostatic” to mean “real existence” (p. 131 n .2), but in the context of the Trinity we now have nature, hypostases, and hypostatic energies (which are not the same as hypostases. Is it any wonder that Latin critics drew the inference of a “fourth hypostasis?”

True, Palamas explains this by saying the light is “enhypostatic” . Robert Jenson has suggested that Palamas places the divine energies outside the gospel narrative (Jenson 157). I do not think Palamas’s move is as crass as Jenson suggests, but the problems are there. Following Maximus, it appears that Palamas sees the events in the gospel narratives as symbols of higher reality (3.i.13, p. 74). 
Does it really make sense to say that God is both beyond knowledge and beyond unknowing (p. 32; 1.iii.4)? I realize Meyendorff glosses this as a Ps. Dionysian move, which it is, but that only raises further problems. If God is ineffable (Meyendorff, 121 n.9), then what’s the point of even speaking of God? I simply do not accept that the “knowledge-which-transcends” apophatic and cataphatic knowledge is not merely another form of cataphatic knowledge, for it ends with positive descriptions of God. That’s not a problem, but we need to call it what it is. 

And a common criticism of Palamas: If God’s essence is unknowable, how does Palamas know that it is unknowable (Lacugna)? To be fair, Palamas does anticipate this criticism. Palamas notes that any answer he gives must be “tentative.” He then gives a very important answer--we know God “by the disposition of created things” (2.iii.68, p. 68). In other words, we know God by his works, not by peering into his nature. There is an important truth to this, and Palamas would have done well to finish the thought: if we are truly to know God by his works then we must look to his covenant and to the finished work of Christ. Of course, such a move is counter to any talk of apophaticism and essence-beyond-essence. Palamas does not continue the thought. 

Can simplicity be maintained? A common Thomist critique of Palamas is that it compromises God’s simplicity. Palamites are quick to respond that they do not hold to the Thomistic version of simplicity. However, Palamas himself thought he held (and one should hold) to simplicity. He asserts, quoting Maximus: “These realities, though numerous, in no way diminish the notion of simplicity.” They may not, but it’s hard to see how they don’t beyond merely asserting it.
Strangely, Palamas break with the Pseudo-Dionysian ontology at a key point: Said model posits a number of descending hierarchies from The One. Each hierarchy mediates to the one below it. And for the most part Palamas, and much of East and West at this time, do not challenge this model (for a very beautiful application of it, see John Scotus Eriguena). Barlaam raises an interesting question, though: If the divine energies are fully God, then how can they appear to the saint without the mediation of hiearchies? Palamas answers with an analogy: An Emperor can speak to a common soldier without raising him to the rank of general (3.iii.5; p. 103). Palamas’ analogy shows us that we can’t simply accuse the essence/energies distinction of being fully neo-Platonic. It’s not. Still, if Palamas is right, and I think he actually makes a perceptive point here, it’s hard to see how he can simultaneously affirm Pseudo-Dionysius’s model. If fact, it’s hard to see how he doesn’t completely negate it. This is indeed Colin Gunton’s argument in The Triune Creator. 

Now to the heart of the criticism: ousias do not have “interiorities.” In other words, there is not a subsection of ousia apart from the life of that ousia. As Heidegger reminds us, “ousia” is always “par-ousia,” being present. If Palamas wants to say that the energies make the ousia present, fine. But if he says that, then one really doesn’t have warrant to speak of a superessential, ineffable ousia by itself, for the very point of the energies and of ousia in general is that it is not by itself.

Perhaps the most damaging criticism of Palamas is the divorcing of economy and ontology. Related to this is that the energies seem to replace the role of the Persons in the divine economy. For example, the energies are not unique to a single person but common to all three who act together. This is not so different from the standard Western opera ad intra indivisible sunt. Catherine Lacugna, quoting Wendebourg, notes, “the proprium of each person...fades into the background” (Lacugna, 195). By contrast, the Cappadocians would say we distinguish the Persons by their propria--by their hypostatic idiomata. In Palamas, though, this role has been moved to the energies. This is further confirmed by the fact that Palamas has the persons as hyperousia. 

Apropos (above), and echoing Robert Jenson, if the Persons are eclipsed by the energies and remain in the realm of hyperousia and “above” the biblical narrative, in such case that we can no longer identity the persons by their hypostatic propria, we can only conclude that Palamism, despite its best intentions, is a more frozen form of modalism than anything Augustine or Aquinas ever dreamed of.

Without endorsing his theology, Paul Tillich made a pertinent comment regarding East and West. For the former, reality and salvation is vertical--union with the divine. For the latter it is horizontal--the kingdom of God in history. Perhaps an overstatement, but certainly a warranted one.


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