Confession of the Orthodox Faith by Gregory Palamas

Contents A few introductory words. Universal meaning Saint Gregory Palamas. Confession of the Orthodox Faith About hypostasis About the procession of the Holy Spirit and the difference between languages “Preacher of grace” Essence and energy About the Transfiguration About the coming Kingdom About councils “The Kingdom of God is within you” We present to the attention of the pious reader an article by our contemporary - Hieromonk Hilarion from the Xiropotamian Monastery on Holy Mount Athos. Dutch by birth Fr. Hilarion, influenced by his acquaintance with Fr. Sophronius (Sakharov), and through him with the Monk Silouan of Athos, did great and difficult work. Having accepted Holy Orthodoxy, he went from being a famous symphony orchestra conductor to becoming an Orthodox monk and ascetic. This work (in a slightly different presentation) was previously published in French and English. We hope that the Orthodox reader, especially monks and theologians, will appreciate this work and receive spiritual benefit and edification. A few introductory words. Universal meaning In 1341, 1347 and 1351, three Local Councils were held in Constantinople to judge the charges against the hesychasts (the silent ones) and especially against the Jesus Prayer. To protect hesychasts from attacks on this not only monastic, but also pan-Orthodox prayer, the Councils proclaimed a number of definitions about spiritual life, about divine energies and grace, and about the deification of man. In 1351, Saint Gregory Palamas proposed his confession of faith to the Council Fathers, which was “read before the holy and divine assembly so that all could hear it” and was “approved by all and counted as completely Orthodox in everything.” Despite the fact that the authority of this confession is not on the same level as the authority of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which remains for all times the unchangeable expression of the Orthodox Faith, the text of Palamas is not only an important document in the defense of the hesychasts: its confession expresses with great accuracy and in a certain form the church teaching on the fundamental issues, not only old, but also those new ones that arose for the first time at the Council. Palamas expressed the Trinity theology with great power and strictly according to church tradition. The same can be said of his distinction between the Divine Essence, which is “exceeding every name, appearance and sacrament,” and, on the other hand, the Divine energies, “in which God partakes and is united by grace with holy angels and men” (see Confession). The theological theme that Palamas develops here closely follows the teaching of Sts. Basil the Great, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus. With the exception of a few points, the Confession is not the fruit of polemics with the Latins. Palamas's opponent at the Councils, the Calabrian philosopher Barlaam, was more a representative of Byzantine humanism than of Latin influence, despite the fact that he was imbued in his youth with the Italian Renaissance 1. Therefore, this text of St. Gregory Palamas is, firstly, a genuine expression of Orthodox tradition and its renewal over the centuries. Secondly, it constitutes, together with Palamas' other works, an Orthodox response to Byzantine and Western humanism, as well as to Roman Catholic theology of the fourteenth century. It must be added that the works and struggle of Palamas also have deep significance for the Orthodox faith in the present time 2. Saint Gregory Palamas. Confession of Orthodox Faith 3 There is one God before all and among all and in all and above all, believed and worshiped by us in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the One in the Trinity and the Trinity in the One, united by fusion and distinguished without division: the same Unit is identically the omnipotent Trinity. Father the Beginning, not only as the Timeless, but also as completely carrying reasons; Himself the only cause and root and source in the Son and Holy Spirit of the contemplated Divinity; Himself is the only original cause of all things; not the only Creator, but the one and only Son, the Father and the everlasting son, the only Father and Maker; greater than the Son and the Spirit, but this is only as a reason, in all other respects the same as They and of equal honor. Whose Son is one, Beginningless as Timeless, but not without beginning as having the beginning and root and source of the Father; from whom alone He proceeded before all ages, incorporeally, without expiration, dispassionately, through birth, but without division, this God is from God, not another as God, but another as the Son; the everlasting and everlasting Son, and the only Son, everlastingly present to God without fusion; not the cause and beginning of the Godhead in the conceivable Trinity, for the cause and beginning of His existence is the Father, but the cause and beginning of all created things, as all existing through Him. Whoever is in the image of God is not equal to God by admiration; but in the fullness of the ages he took on the image peculiar to us, and, exhausting Himself, by the favor of the Father and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, according to the law of nature, He was conceived and born of the Ever-Virgin Mary, together God and Man, and, as truly incarnate, He became like us in everything except sin, remaining in what He was, the true God, uniting without confusion and change two natures and wills and actions and abiding one Son in one Hypostasis, and after incarnation, acting all Divine actions as God and everything human as man, and was subject to immaculate 4 human passions. Passionless and immortal and abiding like God, He freely suffered in the flesh like a man; and having been crucified and died and buried, and rose again on the third day, He appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, and declaring power from above, and commanding them to instruct all nations, and to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to observe and teach as He commanded, He Himself ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father, making our bodily clothing equal in honor and with the throne, as equally divine, with which he will return with glory to judge the living and the dead, or to give to each according to his deeds. Having ascended to the Father, He sent upon His holy disciples and apostles the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds (ἐκπορεύεται) from the Father, He is co-originating with the Father and the Son as Timeless, but not Beginningless, as having and He is the root and source and cause of the Father, not as begotten, but as proceeded (ἐκπορευετόν) for He also came forth from the Father before all ages, without expiration and dispassionate, not through birth, but through “ekporeusis” 5 (procession). Undivided from the Father and from the Son, as having come from the Father (προε ρ χόμενον) and resting in the Son, having together an unfused union and an inseparable distinction, this is God and He is from God, not another as God, but another as the Comforter; The Spirit is Self-hypostatic, proceeding from the Father (ἐκπορε υ όμενον) and sent through the Son, that is: revealed, the cause and He of everything created, as being accomplished in Him, the same as the Father and the Son and equal, except for ungeneracy and birth. He was sent from the Son to His disciples, which means: He was revealed; for in what other way could He who is omnipresent be sent? So, not only from the Son, but also from the Father and through the Son, he is sent, and will come, manifested from Himself, because sending, that is, the manifestation of the Spirit, is a common work. It appears not according to essence, for no one has ever seen or explained God's Essence, but according to grace and power and energy, which are common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Each of them is characterized by His own Hypostasis and everything that strives towards it. The general is not only the pre-existing Essence, which is absolutely nameless, unmanifest and uncommuned, as if above every name and appearance and communion, but also grace and power and energy and brilliance and the kingdom and incorruptibility and, in a word, everything with which God partakes and unites by grace with the holy angels and people, without depriving of its simplicity, neither by the particularity and difference of the Hypostases, nor by the particularity and variety of forces and energies. So, we have one omnipotent God in one Godhead. For from perfect Hypostases a composition never arises, nor can something powerful, because it has strength or powers, once because of this be sincerely called composed. Moreover, we venerate the holy icon of the Son of God, who became described as becoming human for our sake, raising our veneration from the image to the Prototype; and the honorable tree of the Cross, and all the symbols of His suffering, as real Divine Trophies against the common enemy of our race; We also honor the saving sign of the venerable Cross and the Divine churches and places and sacred vessels and God-given words because of the indwelling God. We also venerate the icons of all saints out of love for them and for God, whom they sincerely loved and served, lifting our minds in their veneration to the persons represented on the icons. We also venerate the very relics of the saints, because sanctifying grace did not abandon their holy bones, just as the Divinity was not separated from the Master’s body in His three-day death. We do not know any evil in essence, nor that there would be any other principle of evil than the corruption of intelligent beings who poorly used the freedom given to them by God. We hold all church traditions, written and unwritten, and above all the secret and all-holy service and communion and communion and assembly (synaxis), from which other services receive their perfection and where, in the remembrance of Him who exhausted Himself inexhaustibly and became incarnate and suffered for our sake, the most Divine objects are sacredly performed and acted upon God, according to That Divine command and according to His own action, The Bread and the Cup become a life-giving body and Blood, and are given into unspeakable Communion and fellowship to those who piously approach. We reject and anathematize all those who do not confess and believe in how the Holy Spirit preached through the prophets, as the Lord commanded when He appeared to us in the flesh, as the Apostles sent by Him testified, and as our Fathers and their successors taught us, but those who invent their personal heresies or follow to the end those who taught them poorly. We accept all Holy and Ecumenical Councils: the Council of three hundred and eighteen God-bearing Fathers in Nicaea against the iconoclast Arius, who wickedly impoverishes the Son of God into creation and dissects the worshiped Divinity in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit into created and uncreated; A council of one hundred and fifty holy fathers, gathered in Constantinople against Macedonius of Constantinople, the evilly impoverishing Holy Spirit, cutting through this no less than the first, into the created and the uncreated, the one Divinity; after this, the Council of two hundred fathers in Ephesus against Nestorius the Patriarch of Constantinople, who divided in Christ the unity of His Divinity and humanity according to Hypostasis and never wanted to call the Mother of God the Most Holy Virgin, who truly gave birth to God; and the fourth Council of six hundred and thirty fathers in Chalcedon against Eutyches and Dioscorus, who maliciously taught that Christ had only one nature; and after this, the Council of one hundred and sixty-five fathers in Constantinople against Theodore and Diodorus, who thought the same as Nestorius, and supported his teaching with their works, and against Origen and Didymus and some Evagrius, who were from the ancients, and tried to introduce some myths into the Church of God; and after this the Council of one hundred and seventy fathers in this city against Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul from the rulers in Constantinople, who took from Christ His two energies and two wills, corresponding to His two natures; and the Council of the One Hundred and Seventy-seven Fathers, which was again held in Nicaea against the iconoclasts. We also accept all holy Councils, held by God’s grace in their time and place for the establishment of Piety and the Gospel life; to these belong those who were held in this great city in the glorious church of the holy Divine Wisdom (St. Sophia) against Barlaam of Calabria and against Akindinus, who was for him and thought like him, and hurried to justify him with cunning; who taught that the common grace of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and the light of the future age, in which the righteous will shine like the sun, as Christ presented when He shone on the mountain, and simply all the power and energy of the Trinitarian Deity, and everything that is in some way distinguished from the Divine nature - that all this is created, thereby wickedly dissecting the one Divinity into the created and the uncreated, and those who piously confess that this they call the divine uncreated Light and all the power and energy of the Divine - for nothing of all that belongs by nature to God recently - they call them ditheists and polytheists, just as the Jews, Sabelians and Arians know us. But we expel both the first and the last as real atheists and polytheists, and we finally cut them off from the fullness of the pious - as the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church did with the Synod and Tomos of Agiorite, who believe in the One, Trihypostatic and Almighty Divinity, never falling away from unity and simplicity because of powers or Hypostases. We combine all this with our hope for the resurrection of the dead and the endless life of the next century. Amen. When Palamas speaks separately about the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, he does not use the word “person” or “person,” but the word “hypostasis,” which for him not only means that Each of the Three has its own personal properties, but that Each has its own basis of being. Over the centuries, the word “hypostasis” has acquired many different meanings, both in the East and in the West. A special place among these meanings is occupied by the Western interpretation of the terms “essence” and “hypostasis,” an interpretation that is based on the distinction between the philosophical concepts of “essentia” (essence) and “existentia” (being). Varlaam, Palamas’ opponent at the Councils, explained his philosophical views based on the thesis “essence precedes being.” It would be a mistake, however, to assume that for Palamas his “existential” understanding of hypostasis as having its own basis of being would constitute some kind of counterbalance in relation to the thesis about the primacy of essence in Barlaam. Palamas's thinking is completely free from such philosophical rivalry between essence and existence, as between two autonomous elements 6. When Barlaam insists on his essentialism, Palamas does not oppose him with the concept of “hypostasis.” But, having communicated everything that Varlaam includes in the concept of essence, he answers him: “First we had to name this word that we received from the Church in order to call Him. When God spoke to Moses, He did not say: “I am the essence,” but “I am the One.” (The Existing One). So, not from the Essence the Existence, but from the Existence the Essence – ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ τοῦ ὄ ντο ς ἡ οὐσία – for the Existence concentrates in Himself a complete being, which did not begin and will not cease” 7 So, because Palamas’s faith is based on the ancient and original confession of the Church in the Holy Trinity, “He who is” is for him: God the Father, the eternal cause, the root and source of the Son and the Spirit, and his worship of the Being is inseparable from the worship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian Deity, the Three Perfect Ones. Unit. On the procession of the Holy Spirit and the difference between languages In the Greek text of the Creed, the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit is expressed in the words: “τό ἐκ τοῦ πατρό ς ἐ κπορευόμενον.” The meaning of these words is precisely preserved in the Russian translation: “Coming from the Father.” However, the word “proceeds” does not in itself indicate whether the cause of the procession is singular or multiple, and the Greek word “ἐκπορευόμενον,” which is often found in the Gospels, is used only for movement originating from a single source, place, cause, hypostasis. All Western translations of the word "ἐκπορευόμενον" in either the Orthodox Creeds or the non-Orthodox Creeds are based on the Latin word "procedit", which expresses forward movement but says nothing about the source of that movement. When using the word "procedit" it is possible - from a purely philological, and not dogmatic point of view - to define the eternal procession of the Spirit either with the words: "from the Father" or, as the Roman Catholic Church does, with the words "from the Father and the Son" (a Patre Filioque). Consequently, the Latin "I believe" with the addition of Filioque is closely related to the use of the word "procedit". Therefore, the Catholic Church is forced to omit the formula “a Patre Filioque” when it serves in Greek because of the word “ἐκπορε υ όμενον”, which invariably belongs to the Greek Creed and is inextricably linked with the procession from a single source - from the Father 8. In his Confession of Faith, Palamas contrasts the procession of the Son with the procession of the Spirit. In both cases he uses the word “προήλθεν” (occurred), which corresponds to the Latin “procedit”, but he expresses the image of the origin of the Son with the word “γεννητῶς” and (through birth), and about the Spirit he says that he is “ἐκπορευτῶς προήλθεν" (through ekporeusis - origin - occurred), complementing the uncertainty of the expression "happened" by adding "ἐκπορευτῶς". One may ask: why these philological explanations? Is the disagreement between Orthodox and Roman Catholic teaching about the Holy Spirit only a philological problem? It must be answered that this disagreement, which affects the depth of faith, cannot only be the result of a misunderstanding due to inaccurate translations, and that the differences between languages ​​​​that we have noticed here are not the causes of the disagreement, but signs and warnings reaching us from the mysterious depths of patristic theological thinking. These warnings show us that we must distinguish between errors and false teachings and the diversity of languages that is characteristic of the Church of Christ from the first day of its existence: starting from Pentecost, different languages - first Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, Latin, then Slavic and others - became by the grace of the Holy Spirit like some kind of God-given chariots of confession of a single faith, and each of the holy fathers rules his theological thinking, chariot our tongue, being ourselves guided by faith in Christ and grace. And we always need to delve again into the theological language of the fathers and thus into the richness and diversity of their spiritual experience, for through the language and through the experience of the holy fathers we become familiar with the Conciliar Reason of the Church. This was the case at the Council in 1351, where the fathers unanimously recognized that the Confession of Saint Gregory Palamas was truly a confession of the one faith of the Church of Christ. The purpose of Palamas's spiritual, dogmatic and philosophical exploits is neither to invent new theological horizons nor to enclose the Orthodox faith within the framework of a comprehensive system like Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica. The main goal of Palamas is to give the silent ones and, in general, all those who hope for a grace-filled union with God, a solid foundation for their aspirations and a strong weapon in the fight against the enemies of the Orthodox teaching about the Divine gifts of the Spirit. Therefore, the Church glorifies him, calling him “Preacher of Grace” (Second Sunday of Great Lent, Troparion and Kontakion). Belief in the divinity of the uncreated gifts of the Holy Spirit is inextricably linked with the great mystery of the distinction in God between Essence and energies, a distinction that does not impair divine unity. In his Confession of Faith, Palamas collects the doctrine of divine distinctions and divine unity into one phrase: “The common” - to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - “is not only the pre-existent Essence, which is completely nameless, unmanifested and unparticipated ... but also grace and power and energy and radiance and the kingdom and incorruptibility - and, in a word, everything with which God partakes and is united by grace with holy angels and men, without losing Its simplicity, neither in the particularity and diversity of Hypostases, nor in the particularity and diversity of powers and energies.” Here the question arises: have not countless believers lived lives of grace, knowing nothing about Palamas or the distinction between Essence and energies? It must be answered that a certain intuitive consciousness about the unknowable God, Who “hid His darkness,” which is present in His actions, lives in every believer; that the fear of God, which prohibits any speculation about God’s Essence, can coexist with a strong sense of His gracious presence. And again: what Palamas expresses by the distinction between Essence and energies can take the form of reverent worship before the mystery of God's all-encompassing greatness. The most powerful evidence of this worship is the secret prayers of the priest during the anaphora in the Divine Liturgy. This is also evidenced by those church services where gratitude for the gifts of the Holy Spirit merges in one worship. Moreover, many saints testify to how the worship of the sacrament and the feeling of the closeness of God are closely combined in the love of God. In all these examples the difference between the Divine Essence and the Divine actions is not expressed, but is included silently in the deep surprise of man before the Divine revelations. But already Saint Basil the Great, in his struggle with the heretic Eunomius, emphasized the difference between the Essence of God and His actions: “... for His actions descend to us, but His essence remains unapproachable” 9. Palamas, in his theological expositions, relies mainly on Saint Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite and, above all, on Saint Maximus the Confessor. In his essay “The Sacrament of the Holy Trinity with St. Gregory Palamas” (Chapter 3: “Filioque and the Uncreated Trinity Energy”), Bishop Amphilochius Radovits gives six examples of the Palamite expression of distinctions in God: 1. The essence of the Holy Trinity is not identical to Her eternal energy; essence is not communicated, energy is communicated. 2. The existential origin (καθ ’ ὕπαρξιν) of the Son and Spirit belongs to the plane of the all-essential and Divine essence; it is accomplished essentially from the Father's hypostasis, that is, it is the work of the Father. 3. If being is not identical to its appearance, then this is precisely because essence as such is incomprehensible. 4. The energetic phenomenon is the general action of the Holy Trinity and is accomplished from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. 5. God and the existence of God is not (in relation to) another and is not given to someone. But he, too (ἀλλὰ καὶ) is uncaused, having (Or: when he has) the cause of the One from whom he exists without cause 10, but not from him existing because of the cause (δι ’ αἰτίαν). 6. The manifestation of the Trinity energy is due to cause (δι ’ αἰτίαν) and “in time”; it is a phenomenon related to the creature. However, the energy itself, common to the three Persons and pouring out from the common Tri-hypostatic Essence, pre-exists its manifestation, being the eternal, abundant wealth of the Tri-hypostatic consubstantial Deity. “This theological development,” continues Bishop Amphilochius, “gives greater depth, clarity and a solid basis for the distinction between the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son and a solid basis for the distinction between the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son in time and His eternal procession from one Father. This distinction is of great importance for comparison with the Western teaching about the Filioque. Indeed, one who does not accept two images of the origin of the Spirit on the basis of the distinction between essence and energy is brought, according to St. Gregory Palamas, inevitably to an agreement with the Filioque, for he is automatically forced to identify the causeless being of God with His manifestation, which has a cause. This means identifying the eternal image of existence (Τρόπος ὑπάρξεως) of the Holy Trinity with the image of Her manifestation, that is, identifying theology with economics. However, it is necessary to strictly separate such a conscious non-acceptance of the difference between essence and energies from that worship of the Divine sacraments, which, while confessing the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, is reverently silent about the differences in God. Palamas argues that not only the Divine Essence is without beginning, but also all definable realities surrounding it, for example: hypostases, relationships, distinctions and simply all the phenomena of supernatural theogony (Θεογόνια) (Third Triad 2, 4). Palamas also asserts that foreknowledge, will, providence, and contemplation of oneself are based on beginningless, pre-eternal Divine actions. Likewise, St. Maximus calls being (ἡ ὀντότης) and life and holiness and virtue Divine actions that have no beginning in time. But so that no one thinks that he (Saint Maximus) calls our own qualities without beginning, he adds that everything that has a beginning exists by participating in that which is without beginning, for the Creator of all life and immortality, holiness and virtue means the Creator of what naturally exists in us is God. (Third triad 2, 7). In addition, he insists that the dogma of two wills in Christ presupposes the doctrine of the uncreated Trinity energy: “What is the Divine will of Christ, if not the energy of the Divine nature?.. Is the will of the Uncreated created?” (Third triad 3, 7). When the Son became man and the Church was created as the fruit of His sufferings, actions and teachings, then the fullness of Divine energies descended on it, making the saints “gods by grace,” that is, “beginningless and uncreated by grace” (Third Triad 1, 31 and 2, 12). But in order to warn believers against the heretical idea that the union with the grace of the Holy Spirit was some kind of confusion of human nature with the Divine Essence and, on the other hand, to affirm the authenticity of the grace-filled union with God, Saint Gregory Palamas says: “Grace is uncreated and it is the Son who gives it, sends it and bestows it on His disciples; it is not the Spirit itself; this is an adoring gift, which is not only uncreated energy, but also inseparable from the All-Holy Spirit” (Third Triad 1, 8). So, “the power from above the Divinity,” which clothed the apostles at Pentecost, was an eternal power that is inseparable from the Tripostasis, from the One who “never falls away from Unity and Simplicity because of powers or hypostases.” Saint Gregory Palamas fought with all his might for faith in the Divinity of the Tabor Light. To his opponents, who defended the thesis that the light that shone from the Face of Christ on Tabor was some kind of reflection in the air or a symbol of the Divine, Palamas replied: “If there are still symbols, more mirrors, more riddles - about cunning and betrayal - then we were deceived in our hopes and we were blinded by sophisms and, thinking that the promise leads us to the acquisition of the Divine, we did not even come close to the vision of the Divine... How was it possible to call this symbol light? (Third triad 1, 11). In one of Palamas’ sermons on the Transfiguration we read: “Do you understand that the bodily eyes are blind to this light? Consequently, the light itself is also not sensory, and the chosen apostles who saw it did not see it simply with their bodily eyes, but with eyes that were prepared for this by the Holy Spirit. This means that only when the eyes of the apostles changed did they see the change that our composite nature underwent from the time when Christ accepted it, and when it became deified, uniting with the Word of God.” Where God’s grace is, there is the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, mysteriously penetrating temporary life: “If I cast out demons through the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God will come upon you” (Matthew 12:28); and: “Therefore the Kingdom of God is unshakable, so that the Imams may receive grace” (Heb. 12:28); and the Apostle John the Theologian saw “a new heaven and a new earth: first, heaven and earth passed away... without requiring the sun and the moon, let them shine in it: for the glory of God give it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Rev. 21:1; 21:23). Saint Seraphim of Sarov also speaks about the coming Kingdom, calling the goal of Christian life the acquisition of the Holy Spirit during the stay of the Son of God on earth, when “the Kingdom of Heaven has approached”? So, Saint Gregory Palamas, the “preacher of grace” is thereby the preacher of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom whose gospel is the alpha and omega of the New Testament. In the last part of his Confession of Faith, Palamas briefly enumerates the main heresies and the Ecumenical Councils that condemned them, adding to this enumeration the condemnation by the local Councils in Constantinople of his opponents, who taught that the common grace of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and in general all divine powers and energies are created. This addition is not accidental: the definitions of the seven Ecumenical Councils, which are focused mainly on Triadological and Christological themes 11, are supplemented by Palamas's teaching on the uncreated grace of the Holy Spirit. In addition, the definitions of the Local Councils of Constantinople in the fourteenth century on distinctions and unions in God not only complement the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils, but also guard the Orthodox faith against philosophical temptations. Thus, the Palamite teaching about Divine qualities, such as wisdom and creative power, qualities that he calls “beginningless, the actions of God,” protects believers, on the one hand, against those heretical currents that identify these qualities with the unknowable Essence of God or with the Divine Hypostases themselves - or, on the other hand, they are defined as created elements that rule life and development in the world. “The Kingdom of God is within you” Just as Saint Simeon the New Theologian protested with indignation against those who diminished life in Christ, claiming that in their times (in the 9th century) it was not possible to fulfill the commandments of the Gospel, as it was in the first centuries, so Saint Gregory Palamas protested against those who diminished the patristic tradition about the deification of man and the real presence of the Kingdom of God in the saints. The testimony of Palamas about the coming Kingdom has a deep significance precisely for the present time, where the “world” has acquired great power over countless people, not only because of the power of scientific and technological achievements, but above all because of the insane pride of those who contrast the fruits of their scientific research with the “inherent power and Divinity” of the One about whom it is said: “In wisdom you have created all things,” and Who Himself said: “I have overcome the world,” that is, the passions of this world (see Rom. 1:20; Ps. 103:24; John 26:33). Like all the Fathers of the Church, Palamas contrasts the power of “this world” with the commandments of Christ, and mainly the monastic renunciation of the world for the sake of the Kingdom of God. But here it should be noted that by calling the Tabor light not a symbol, but the actual presence of the uncreated light of the Kingdom of God, Palamas at the same time gives this light a certain preliminary character in relation to the final coming of the eternal Kingdom, when God will be all in all 12. In this he will follow Saint Maximus the Confessor, as well as Saint Basil the Great, who calls the Light of Tabor a prelude 13 to the coming Kingdom. Consequently, Palamas’ thinking does not cross the boundary that Christ set when he said: “You cannot understand the times and places which the Father has ordained in His power: but receive the power of the Spirit that has come upon you...” (Acts 1:7–8). Palamas testifies to this Divine power with his teaching about the Light of Tabor and his defense of the silent ones, in whom the word of Christ is realized: “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). See I. Meyendorff “Introduction à I’étude de Grégoire Palamas”, Ed. du Seuil, Paris. See Archbishop Vasily Krivoshein “The Ascetic Theology of St. Gregory Palamas." //Bulletin of the Russian Western European Patriarchal Exarchate. Paris, 1987. pp. 109–151 (in Russian). His “Symbolic texts in the Orthodox Church” // Bulletin, 1964. pp. 214, 216. For the relationship between tradition and development, see p. 199 and 205 (in French). Greek text: Karmyris. “Dogmatical and symbolical documents of Orthodox Catholic Church”, 2° Ed. Athems 1960, vol. 1; pp. 407–410. PG. 763–768. The immaculate passions of Christ: first, on the Cross, as well as hunger, thirst, fatigue from the road and tears over Lazarus. ἐ κπορε υ τ ῶ ς προήλθεν – literally: “ekporevno” came. See the introduction: “On the procession of the Holy Spirit.” Plato's thesis: “essence precedes being,” on which the theocentric image of the world was built, was later adopted by St. Augustine. According to the German philosopher Heidegger, the distinction between essence (essentia) and being (existentia) dominated the entire spiritual history of the West. See Heidegger "On Humanism". P. 18 (in German), as well as Chr. Yannaras “On the Absence and Ignorance of God.” P. 97, ed. "Cerf", Paris, 1971 (in French) Triad three, 2, 12; Ref. 3:14. Wed. Saint Gregory the Theologian. Word 43, 3. See Revue “Istina”, 1983, 3. Paris, 45 Rue de la Glanciére. "Instruction de l'Episcopat Catholique de Grèce". Epist. 234, PG 32, 869 AB. These words refer to the procession of the Spirit from the Father. See "Λόγοι ἀποδ.", B 48; ed. Chrest "Γρ. Παλαμά, ἐργα I.”S. 275; Thessaloniki. 1981. The condemnation of the iconoclasts at the Seventh Council was, firstly, a statement of the depictability of Christ: “The icon exists, is contemplated and revered in its relation to the Prototype” (PG 99, 433D). See Matins. Stichera after the Gospel: “Your Divinity, O Savior, having revealed little to the dawn.”