Chapter I. The Ascetic-Ognoseological Basis of the Teaching of St. Gregory Palamas

Religious life, whether we understand it as man's communion with God or as his understanding of Him, can always be defined as the mutual and two-sided relationship and action of God and man, of the Creator and creation. Therefore, for a correct understanding of the teaching of a spiritual writer, in this case St. Gregory Palamas (November 129614, 1359), it is important to first clarify in what form he thinks of the possibility of mutual communion between God and man, and what he thinks about the ways of knowing God and about our ability to do it. This will constitute, so to speak, the ascetic-ognoseological basis of the theological system that interests us. Let us therefore try to expound this aspect of the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas in the most essential features before passing on to his purely theological ideas.

The question of the possibility of knowing God and the ways of knowing it occupies a relatively significant place in the works of St. Gregory Palamas. It should be noted, however, at once that the starting point of all his teaching is the complete incomprehensibility of God for reason and His inexpressibility in words. This idea of the incomprehensibility of God for reason is connected with St. Gregory Palamas with his entire teaching on the nature of the Godhead, but we will now confine ourselves to the epistemological side of the question. However, there is nothing new in this assertion of the rational incomprehensibility of the Godhead, and St. Gregory Palamas stands here on the basis of apophatic theology, so characteristic of Eastern Orthodoxy, continuing the theological tradition of St. Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite. Together with them, he likes to emphasize the complete ineffability of God in any name and His complete indefinability.

Thus, having called God "the abyss of goodness," he immediately corrects himself and says: "Rather, he embraces this abyss as surpassing every nameable name and conceivable thing." Therefore, true knowledge of God cannot be achieved either through the study of the visible created world, or through the intellectual activity of the human mind. The most refined and abstract theology and philosophizing cannot give a true vision of God and communion with Him. "Even if we theologize," writes St. Gregory Palamas, "and philosophize about the things of perfection separated from matter, then although this may approach the truth, is far from the vision of God and is as different from communion with Him as possession differs from knowledge. Talking about God and communicating with Him is not the same thing." In this regard, the attitude of St. Gregory Palamas to individual scientific disciplines, logical or empirical, is understandable; he recognizes their relative usefulness in the study of the created world and justifies in this field their methods of cognition: syllogisms, logical proofs, examples from the visible world. But in the matter of knowing God, he affirms their insufficiency and even speaks of the inexpediency of using them.

The unknowability of God by reason, however, does not lead St. Gregory Palamas to the conclusion that He is completely incomprehensible and inaccessible to man. The possibility of communion with God is substantiated by him on the properties of man's nature and on his position in the universe. Let us, therefore, dwell a little longer on the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas on man. His main idea, expressed by him more than once in various places of his creations, is the creation of man by God in His image and likeness and his central place in the entire universe. Man, created in the image of God and uniting in himself, as consisting of soul and body, the material and immaterial worlds, is, according to the thought of St. Gregory Palamas, a kind of small world, a microcosm, reflecting in itself the entire universe and uniting it into a single whole. "Man," writes St. Gregory Palamas, "this greater world (enclosed) in the small, is the concentration of all that exists, the head of God's creations; for this reason it was produced later than all others, just as we draw conclusions from our words; for this universe could be called the composition of the Self-hypostatic Word." This teaching about man, which is already fundamentally found in St. Gregory of Nyssa, is developed in a peculiar way by St. Gregory Palamas in connection with the question of the relationship between the angelic world and the human world and the meaning of the human body. Contrary to the rather widespread ideas about the superiority of the angel as a pure spirit over man, St. Gregory Palamas definitely teaches that man is endowed with the image of God to a greater degree than an angel. "Though (the angels), he writes, are superior to us in many ways, yet in some respects they are inferior to us... (for example) in existence in the image of the Creator; in this sense we were created in the image of God more than they were." This greater possession of the image of God by man is revealed first of all in the fact that, while the angels are only simple executors of God's commands, man, precisely as an earthly soul-corporeal being, was created for dominion and dominion over all creation. "While the angels," writes St. Gregory Palamas, "are ordained to serve the Creator and have as their only destiny to be under power, they are not given to rule over the creatures below them, unless they are sent to do so by Him Who contains all things... man is destined not only to be under power, but also to rule over all (being) on earth." This idea of man's predominant possession of the image of God is further revealed in the teaching about the human body and its significance in the spiritual life of man. It should be noted that St. Gregory Palamas was a resolute opponent of the opinion that the body, as such, is an evil principle and the source of sin in man. Such a view seemed to him to be a slander against God, the Creator of the body, and a Manichaean dualistic rejection of matter. St. Gregory Palamas even wrote a very curious and brilliant dialogue devoted to the refutation of one-sided Manichaean spiritualism, according to which the soul is carried away to sin by the body, the connection with which is the cause of the soul's sinfulness. It is also affirmed with great force that the body, like the soul, is God's creation, and man is not one soul, but a union of soul and body. "It is not only the soul or the body alone that is called man," we read in this dialogue, "but both together, created in the image of God." This idea that the image of God is expressed not only in the soul, but also in the bodily composition of man, is found in the works of St. Gregory Palamas quite often and is combined by him with the assertion that man, precisely because of his corporeality, is more imprinted with the image of God than the pure spirits of the angels, and that he is closer to them to God (as a creature, as a plan of God), although after the Fall he lost his likeness to Him and in this sense became lower than the angels. And the very possession of corporeality often gives a person the opportunity to communicate with God in a way that is inaccessible to angels. "Which of the angels," asks St. Gregory Palamas, "could imitate the passion of God and His death, how could man?" "The intellectual and verbal nature of the angels," he writes in another place, "possesses both the mind and the word proceeding from the mind... and could be called a spirit... but this spirit is not life-giving, for it has not received from God from the earth a body united to it, in order to receive for this purpose both life-giving and substantial power. And the intellectual and verbal nature of the soul, as created together with the earthly body, received from God the life-giving spirit... it alone possesses the intellect, the word, and the life-giving spirit; only this, and to a greater degree than the angels, was created by God in His image." Of course, the image of God is seen here not in corporeality itself, but in the life-giving spirit inherent in man, but the possession of corporeality not only does not serve as an obstacle for him, but, on the contrary, serves as a reason for discovery; and the angels, as incorporeal, are devoid of life-giving spirit. And this image of God in man was not lost even after the Fall: "After the ancestral sin... having lost the life in the divine likeness, we have not lost the life in His image." Generally speaking, it is proper for "heretics" to see the evil principle in the body, for heretics "who call the body evil and an evil creature," while for the Orthodox it is "the temple of the Holy Spirit" and "the dwelling place of God." From this it can be understood that, according to the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, the body is capable of experiencing certain "spiritual dispositions" under the influence of the soul, while impassibility itself is not a simple mortification of the passions of the body, but its new better energy, and in general, the body, not only in the future age, but already now, can participate in the grace-filled life of the spirit, "for," writes St. Gregory Palamas, "if then the body participates with the soul in ineffable blessings, then it will undoubtedly now participate in them as much as possible... and it will experience the Divine, after the passionate power of the soul has changed and sanctified in accordance with it, but is not put to death."

Further, in connection with the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas on man, which we have expounded, it is also important to note what importance he attaches to the heart in the matter of his spiritual and intellectual life. St. St. Gregory Palamas considers the heart as the primary center of man's spiritual life, as an organ of the mind through which it dominates the whole body, and even as the source and guardian of man's mental activity. "We know for sure," writes St. Gregory Palamas, "that our thinking faculty is in the heart, as in an organ; we have learned this not from man, but from Him Who created man, Who says in the Gospel, "Out of the heart proceedeth thoughts." Therefore, "our heart is the treasure of thought" and at the same time, as it were, the innermost part of our body.

The teaching about man as a God-like being, as the bearer of the image of God, manifested by his entire spiritual-bodily personality, and as a kind of small world containing the entire universe, makes clear the possibility of real communion of our being with God and a deeper knowledge of Him than that which is acquired only by intellectual activity or the study of the external world. And indeed, proceeding from his teaching on the likeness of man to God, St. Gregory Palamas affirms the possibility of attaining communion with God first of all on the path of fulfilling His commandments, by the creation of which man restores and reveals the image of God that is in him, darkened by sins, and thereby approaches unity with God and to the knowledge of Him, to the extent accessible to him as a created being. This common and obligatory way of fulfilling the Lord's commandments can be briefly expressed as love for God and neighbor. Outside of this, there can be no communion with God. The idea of the obligatory and universal nature of the commandments lies at the basis of the entire ascetic teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, he even considered it necessary to write a commentary on the Decalogue of the Old Testament and, as something self-evident, is often not even expressed by him in the exposition of this or that detail of his teaching on the paths of the inner life. But in understanding the meaning and manner of doing the commandments, St. Gregory Palamas, like all the most profound ascetic writers of the Orthodox Church, was inclined to attach primary importance not so much to the external work itself or even to the acquisition of this or that virtue, as to the internal cleansing from the passions. In order to attain this purity of heart, it is necessary first of all to embark on the path of repentance and humility, in which our abhorrence of sin and love for the Lord Who loved us are manifested: "We acquire works of repentance," teaches St. Gregory Palamas, "humble wisdom, tenderness and spiritual weeping, a meek heart full of mercy, loving truth and striving for purity... for the Kingdom of God, or rather the King of Heaven... there is within us, and we must always cling to Him by works of repentance, loving, as much as we can, Him Who loved us so much." But for St. Gregory Palamas, an even more powerful means of inner purification and at the same time the most vivid expression of love for God and neighbor was prayer, combined, of course, with other inner activity of man and with his entire life in general. Prayer for him is higher than the acquisition of individual virtues. Therefore, recognizing that unity with God is achieved either through communion in virtues or through communion in prayer, St. Gregory Palamas attaches great importance to communion in prayer, asserting that only by its power can creation truly unite with the Creator. "The power of prayer," he says, "sacredly acts his (unity)... being the connection of rational creatures with the Creator." Further, St. Gregory Palamas speaks (like Dionysius the Areopagite) about a certain trinitarian action of the mind, by means of which it ascends to God. "When the one mind becomes triune," he writes in the same "Sermon on Prayer," "while remaining one, then it is united with the Divine Trinitarian Unity." This threefold action of the mind consists in the fact that the mind, usually directed to external objects (the first action), returns to itself (the second action) and from there prayerfully ascends to God (the third action). "But the one mind becomes trinitarian, remaining one, in its conversion to itself and in its ascent through itself to God." Both of these actions are also designated as "twisting" and its "stretching upwards" with the explanation that "turning the mind to itself is its preservation... and his ascent to God is accomplished in prayer." In this state, the mind of man "attains the ineffable" and "tastes the age to come." However, we should not attach too much importance to the enlightenment that we achieve at the beginning, for since it is not yet accompanied by a complete purification of the soul, it can be deceptive and gives rise to delusion. At the beginning of the podvig, one must confine oneself to a vision of one's own sinfulness of the heart, which is revealed in this enlightenment of the mind. A complete purification of a person can occur only when each of his spiritual powers is given a spiritual medicine corresponding to it. Only by "purifying his active (power) by action, cognitive by sight and contemplative prayer" can man attain the purity necessary for the knowledge of God. "It can never be assimilated by anyone, except through perfection in activity, through persistent marching (along the path of asceticism), through contemplation and contemplative prayer." It is also necessary to know that it is necessary and spiritually fruitful not only to attain the threefold action of the mind, but to constantly and for a long time abide in this action, which gives rise to a certain "intellectual feeling." At the same time, St. Gregory Palamas insists on the need to constantly keep the mind within the confines of our body. In support of this ascetic rule, he refers to the well-known saying of St. John of the Ladder: "A silent person is one who strives to limit the incorporeal (i.e., the mind) in the body," and in accordance with it he sees in this confinement of the mind within the body the main sign of a true hesychast. On the contrary, the presence of the mind outside the body is for him the source of all error. "To create the mind," writes St. Gregory Palamas, "which is... outside the body, so that he may attain intelligent visions there, is the greatest of the Hellenic errors, the root and source of all evil thoughts." St. St. Gregory Palamas foresees that his teaching about keeping the mind within the confines of the body, or even about "sending" it there, can easily raise objections about the uselessness and even impossibility of this kind of ascetic practice, since the mind is already naturally united with the soul, which is inside the body, and is therefore there without any participation of our will. But this perplexity arises, in the opinion of St. Gregory Palamas, from the confusion of the essence of the mind with its activity. The mind, of course, is by its nature united with the soul; the task of the silent is to direct his activity inward. This kind of prayerful guarding of the mind, however, requires great effort, tension and labor from a person. "The labor of any other virtue," writes St. Gregory Palamas, "is small and very easy to endure in comparison with this." From this we see how wrong are those who see in the mental prayer of the hesychasts some kind of attempt at an easy path to salvation, a desire to avoid the labors of good deeds and, so to speak, to achieve mystical "enthusiasm" "cheaply" and "mechanically." In reality, however, there can be no question of an easy path, and mental prayer is depicted by St. Gregory Palamas as the most difficult, the narrowest and most sorrowful path to salvation, although it leads to the very heights of spiritual perfection, if only prayerful activity is combined with all other human activity (this necessary condition for the success of prayer will not make it possible to see in it something "mechanical"). That is why St. Gregory Palamas, although he recommends this path to all those who wish to be saved and considers it accessible to all, points out, however, that only in the monastic life, far from the world, can one encounter favorable conditions for its passage. "It is possible, of course," he writes, "for those who live in marriage to strive to achieve this purity, but only with the greatest difficulties."

We have purposely dwelt above for quite a long time on the views of St. Gregory Palamas on the significance of the heart and the body in general in the spiritual life of man, views found in ancient ascetic writers and only expressed by St. Gregory Palamas with special distinctness and characteristic philosophical systematicity, so that in connection with them it would be easier for us to understand the true meaning of the most peculiar aspect of his ascetic teaching. We have in mind the so-called "artistic" mental prayer and its methods. The description of the methods of "artistic" prayer, which is absent in all details in the ancient Fathers, although some references to them can be found already in St. John of the Ladder (6th century) and Hesychius of Sinai (6th century), is given in the most detailed way in the Sermon of St. Symeon the New Theologian "On the Three Forms of Prayer" (beginning of the 11th century), in St. Nicephorus the Monastic (13th century) and in St. Gregory the Sinaite (14th century). No matter how one can explain the silence of the ancient Fathers about these methods, either by the fact that these methods did not exist at all at that time, or by the fact that, being the subject of direct personal instruction of the disciples by the elders, they were not fixed in writing, until, as a result of the impoverishment of the elders, there arose the danger of their complete oblivion, which prompted experienced figures of prayer to devote them to writing, at any rate, without a doubt, one thing is that these methods of "artistic" mental prayer were relatively widely known in the Orthodox East long before St. Gregory Palamas and the Athonite hesychasts of the fourteenth century, and formed part of his ascetic tradition. And it seems absolutely incredible, both from the historical and from the religious-psychological point of view, that the opinion expressed by some that the very appearance of these artistic devices was the work of an individual "invention" of some individual person, moreover, almost a contemporary of St. Gregory Palamas. The misunderstanding of their meaning and significance, which is so often found even among Orthodox scholars, is based mainly on the fact that they usually take as an essential aspect of mental prayer that which in reality is nothing more than an auxiliary means. It must also always be remembered that the ascetic writers who described "artistic" prayer did not intend to give in one or another of their works an exhaustive exposition of the entire Orthodox ascetic teaching as a whole, but usually limited themselves to an exposition of what was either insufficiently developed by others, or for some reason caused bewilderment. In any case, it would be a mistake to assume that the particular rules we indicate (for example, "artistic" prayer) in their eyes replaced all the rest of the ascetic teaching of the Church; In fact, this doctrine, which is a single harmonious whole, was supposed to be so generally known to them that they did not consider it necessary to constantly mention it in the exposition of particular questions of interest to them. Finally, it should be borne in mind that the sometimes seeming contradictions between various ascetic works are often explained by the fact that they were written for persons standing at different stages of spiritual progress.