The Meaning of Reality in Palamite Doctrine

Gregory Palamas developed a realistic doctrine of supernatural knowledge, independent of any sensible experience, a knowledge given to the whole human, soul and body. If we can talk about two versions of medieval realism (Aquinas` and Palamas` descriptions), consider that one expressed by Palamas to be the strong version of realism. The reason is that Palamas does not precluded spiritual to material but supernatural to created world. Palamas oppose a supra-rational knowledge to the humanist rationalism of some Byzantine intellectual circles, as well as to that one of Barlaam, his opponent in several famous controversies. Gregory affirms that the beings own condition is state of creature, but when they transcend their own status communicating with God, they participate to the uncreated life. Knowing God does not require certain exteriorization between subject of knowledge and the object known, but a union in the uncreated light; man has no faculty able to see God; to have a vision of God becomes possible because God unites with man, sharing the knowledge that He has about himself. Any revelation, any participation, any deification, is thus a free act of the living God: a divine energy. But Palamas had to use the language in another way, because he had to describe a concrete and immediate mystical experience, so he necessarily used the words as signs, as pointers. This is an experiential attitude.

That`s why Palamas finds himself in the situation of signifying again and again the meaning of certain terms. That`s because in terming the unmediated experience of God a vision of divine light, Palamas clearly understood that such language is a “pointer”, and not a strict description. He regards the terms light and darkness as both appropriate: light indicates the supreme positive character of the experience, darkness indicates it`s radical transcendence vis-à-vis all else that we know. When talking of divine reality, you cannot speak with exact precision but only by the way of symbol, image and analogy, asserts Palamas.

The palamite signification of energeia was the landmark in supporting his strong realism.Looking for a proper term for the Light of Transfiguration, Palamas decides to use Aristotle`s concept of energeia. For Aristotle, energeia is that kind of activity that is its own goal and can exist only in a state of fulfillment: it is both the substance`s cause and the thorough reality, regardless of the appearances it takes. Aristotle finds energeia worthy of the highest appellation he can give it, that of divinity. By using the notion of energeia to create a distinction from essence or nature, Palamas does it cautiously because the theological vocabulary of that time was too deeply marked by the essentialist categories of the Greek philosophy in order to express the existentialist reality of the Supreme Being. Paradoxically, in the context of using this concept, he was been preoccupied to release the theological discourse from Aristotle’s philosophical categories due to their inadequacy in expressing the mystery. For example, Palamas refuses to call the energies “qualities of God”, because the quality notion cannot contain the liberty dimension in any way, whereas these energies are the expression of God’s sovereign will. The doctrine of the immanent energies implies an intensely dynamic vision of the relationship between God and the world. The whole cosmos is a vast burning bush, permeated but not consumed by the uncreated fire of the divine energies. These energies are “God with us”. They are the power of God at work within man, the life of God in which he shares. Thus we understand better the stake of the term usage by Gregory Palamas in explaining a critical aspect of his doctrine:the signification of the ultimate reality. When discussing about the divine light, described as energeia, Palamas states that it is a natural symbol, by denying that it is a created symbol. If energeia or the divine light has this meaning, then what we call a natural (or physical) reality has a much enlarged signification. The physical reality is not a static, inert one, but matter plus energy: it is something that can be described as an active alive process where we find the presence and the intentionality of a Person and that as a natural dimension. On the other hand, we can state that in this description the reality is constituted by the experience in the most radical way: the ultimate reality is the human experience of the uncreated energies. Any statement that would aim at something beyond the content of this experience, such as the direct knowledge of an essence, is rejected. In the same time the gnoseological pessimism is rejected: the Supreme Personal Reality is not unknowable due to its transcendence, because it makes itself known by these manifestations called energeia. Palamas choose to signify the radical transcendence of the inaccessible aspect of the Ultimate Reality by qualifying “essence” with “super-essential”. It’s a way of explaining the vertical relationship between God and created being culminating in deification. The hierarchy of God`s noetic, linguistic, and experiential relationship with the created world illustrates the interplay between God`s accessibility and inaccessibility. Divine energies are not things different from an ultimate ‘thing’ that would be the essence of God. Grace is not an object with what God would reward his creatures, but the very manifestation of the Living One. Palamas gives an answer regarding the problem of link between Absolute divine and the world. Between God and His creatures there is no independent reality, but God himself, through a free condescension, it is this reality. Gregory`s understanding of the possibility of knowing the ultimate reality surpasses this dilemma. Because there is no need to postulate an independent reality between God and His creatures: God himself it is this reality. In my presentation I will discuss the exceptional importance of the Palamite doctrine on reality for today philosophy and science.

Edrisi de Araujo Fernandes

Universidade de Brasília; Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil