The Triads


Book Description

Gregory Palamas (1296-1359)-monk, archbishop and theologian-was a major figure in 14th-century Orthodox Byzantium. This, his greatest work, presents a defense in support of the monastic groups known as the "hesychasts," the originators of the Jesus Prayer.




Knowledge and Experience in the Theology of Gregory Palamas


Book Description

This book questions the extent to which knowledge and experience can be reasonably, if at all, separated in consideration of the divine. Gregory Palamas's dynamic patterning of unions and distinctions provides the context for a response to this question in which the breadth and depth of human functioning is explored - from the body to the passions to the intellect. In the course of close analysis of Palamas's writings, the author presents from Palamas a thoroughly apophatic and an iconic mode of understanding the whole human person so as to mark out a fully integrated theological anthropology.




Orthodox Readings of Aquinas


Book Description

The foremost Roman Catholic theologian of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, was hugely popular in the last days of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire, in contrast to his largely negative reception by later Orthodox commentators.This book is the first to explore the long history of Orthodox fascination with Aquinas.




The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas


Book Description

How are we to regard our body? As a prison, an enemy, or, maybe, an ally? Is it something bad that needs to be humiliated and extinguished, or should one see it as a huge blessing, that deserves attention and care? Is the body an impediment to human experience of God? Or, rather, does the body have a crucial role in this very experience? Alexandros Chouliaras' book The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body argues that the fourteenth-century monk, theologian, and bishop Gregory Palamas has interesting and persuasive answers to offer to all these questions, and that his anthropology has a great deal to offer to Christian life and theology today. Amongst this book's contributions are these: for Palamas, the human is superior to the angels concerning the image of God for specific reasons, all linked to his corporeality. Secondly, the spiritual senses refer not only to the soul, but also to the body. However, in Paradise the body will be absorbed by the spirit, and acquire a totally spiritual aspect. But this does not at all entail a devaluing of the body. On the contrary, St Gregory ascribes a high value to the human body. Finally, central to Palamas' theology is a strong emphasis on the human potentiality for union with God, ?theosis: that is, the passage from image to likeness. And herein lies, perhaps, his most important gift to the anthropological concerns of our epoch.




Everywhere Present


Book Description

Most Christians living in a secular society have unwittingly relegated God and all things spiritual to the "second storey" of the universe: a realm we cannot reach except through death. The effect of this is to banish God, along with the saints and angels, from our everyday lives. Fr. Stephen Freeman makes a compel­ling case for becoming aware of God's living and active presence in every moment of our lives here and now. Learning to practice your Christian faith in a one-storey universe will change your life--and make possible the living, intimate relationship with God you've always dreamed of.




Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age


Book Description

The fourteenth-century Greek hesychast and controversialist, Gregory Palamas, has been so successfully cast as 'the other' in Western theological discourse that it can be difficult to gain a sympathetic hearing for him. In the first part of this book, Norman Russell traces the historical reception of Palamite thought in Orthodoxy and in the West, and investigates how 'Palamism' was constructed in the early twentieth century by both Western and Eastern theologians (principally Martin Jugie and John Meyendorff) for polemical or apologetic purposes. Russell argues that we need to go behind these ideological constructions in order to gain a true perception of the teaching of Gregory Palamas. In his recent survey of Palamite scholarship, Robert Sinkewicz noted that it is now time to raise the larger questions. The second part of the book attempts to do this, following the contours of Palamas' thinking in three areas: his relationship to tradition, his philosophy, and his theology. Russell shows that Palamite thought, when freed of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, has the potential to enrich our understanding of divine-human communion. This study contributes to the changing paradigm of scholarship on Palamas, nudging it towards the point at which Palamite thought can be used fruitfully by contemporary Western and Eastern theologians without the need to subscribe to what has been regarded as 'Palamism'.




Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite


Book Description

Explores a fourteenth-century debate over man’s knowledge of God.




Be Still and Know


Book Description

Early Christian spirituality is a topic of enduring fascination today among scholars and general readers alike. Stories of hermits living in the desert in their pursuit of God catch our fancy. What motivated them and drew them to silence on their path to God? In this gracious tour through our tradition, Norris J. Chumley (Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer, HarperOne 2011) introduces us to Hesychasm, or silence and the lives of its early practicioners. Then, as only a teacher and mentor can, he opens up those important meanings for today.




Essays in Ecumenical Theology 2


Book Description

In the second volume of her Essays in Ecumenical Theology, Ivana Noble engages in conversation with Orthodox theologians and spiritual writers on diverse questions, such as how to discover the human heart, what illumination by the divine light means, how spiritual life is connected to attitudes and acts of social solidarity, why sacrificial thinking may not be the best frame for expressing Christ’s redemption, why theological anthropology needs to have a strong ecological dimension, why freedom needs to coexist with love for others, and why institutions find the ability to be helpful not only in their own traditions but also in the Spirit that blows where it wills.




The Ground of Union


Book Description

This book attempts to resolve some of the oldest and most bitter controversies between the Eastern and Western Christian churches: those concerning the doctrine of God, the nature of salvation, and theological method, all of which converge in the doctrine of deification. Deification was the dominant patristic model of salvation and remained the essential paradigm in the East but was thought to have disappeared from Western theology by the Middle Ages. A. N. Williams examines two key thinkers, each of whom is championed as the authentic spokesman of his own tradition and reviled by the other side. Taking Thomas Aquinas as representative of the West and Gregory Palamas for the East, she presents fresh readings of their work that both reinterpret each thinker and show an area of commonality between them much greater than has previously been acknowledged.