Dispute with the Chions

The work “Dispute with the Chions” is a historical and theological document written down by the physician Taronitis, an eye-witness of the events. He describes a theological dispute that took place around 1355 between St. Gregory Palamas, who at that time was a prisoner of the Turks, and a group of “khions” (Muslim theologians) who arrived at the behest of Emir Orhan. 1. The nature of God (Trinity). In response to the strict Muslim monotheistic understanding, St. Gregory, using examples from the Old Testament, argues that God cannot be without His eternal Word and Spirit. He argues that the “Word” and “Spirit” are co-eternal with God and are His inseparable manifestations, citing analogies with the sun, its radiance and rays. 2. The God-manhood of Christ. Muslims recognize Christ as the "Word of God" and the "Spirit of God", but deny His Divinity and Incarnation, considering Him only a created man. St. Gregory Palamas refutes this, explaining the necessity of a sinless God-man for the redemption of mankind and the impossibility of the eternal Word of God being created. He also defends the Virgin birth of Christ, pointing out the incorporeality of God, who is capable of being everywhere and in everything. 3. Prophet Muhammad. Saint Gregory directly declares his refusal to accept Muhammad as a prophet, based on the words of Christ Himself about the coming false prophets and the apostolic warning against a different gospel. 4. Circumcision and the Old Testament law. St. Gregory Palamas points out the inconsistency of Muslims who, referring to the Mosaic Law (circumcision), do not observe its other regulations (Sabbath, sacrifices, Easter), which in Christian theology is explained by the passing of the Old Testament in Christ. 5. Icon veneration. Defending the Orthodox practice of venerating icons, the saint explains that icons are not idols, but serve as means for raising the mind to the Prototype, citing as an example the Old Testament images of cherubim in the tabernacle. See also: St. Gregory Palamas on Islam Recorded by self-witness doctor Taronitis The Chions came “at the command of the emir,” as they themselves said, “in order to argue with the Metropolitan of Thessalonica.” They were afraid, however, to start a dispute before him and, first of all, they tried to persuade me, the bishop and the emir’s friends so that there could be no confrontation on this issue. Unable to achieve this, they again tried to persuade us to at least not have such debates before the emir, in which they succeeded. And he (the emir) appointed a number of officials and some of the so-called Palapans. These people came with the chions to the place where the metropolitan was. So we sat down together and the Chions began long speeches. The main idea of ​​​​their conversation was as follows: “We were taught the ten commandments that Moses brought, carved on tablets of stone. We also know that the Turks have the same. That’s why we left the faith we had before, came to them and became Turks too.” The officials then asked the Metropolitan to answer and he began with these words: “I should not answer now, because who am I, in comparison with the height and greatness of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of my Christ, to try to defend it? I am only a small part of it and almost nothing. Secondly, these officials, who sit as judges, support the opposite side, and how can I hope that they will respond with their souls to the confirmations of faith, which are the inspired Scriptures and especially the books of the Prophets? Thirdly, I am kept in prison and I know from the example of the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ, Who, being accused, even when asked, did not answer anything. However, since this is the order of the great emir, and I comprehend that God has granted him the right to know what the ruler should know, for since the duty of a servant or any ordinary person is to know one faith and to know simply, it is necessary for one who has many nations under his rule to know about all faiths exactly - for this reason I want to talk about our faith, everything that the word of God will give me when I open my mouth. And in doing this I will not answer the Chions. They, as I have heard about them until now and from what I have heard from them now, are rather Jews, but not Muslims; My speech now is not to the Jews. So, the mystery of our faith is this: only God is an eternal Being and the One who abides forever, beginningless, unchanging, endless, immutable, without composition, unmixed, unlimited by anything. Each being, however, is a subject of decay and change. Even the beginning itself is a change that happens when a being arises from non-existence. God, therefore, is the only one without beginning, not without wisdom. Thus, the Word of God is also the Wisdom of God, for wisdom is in the word, and without the word there is no wisdom. This means that if there was a time when the Word or Wisdom of God did not exist, God would be without word and wisdom; to say this is blasphemy and something impossible. So the Word of God is also without beginning and the Wisdom of God is inseparable from Him. Also, there is no word without spirit, which is what you Turks profess. Thus, when you say that Christ is the Word of God, you also recognize Him as the Spirit of God, since He (the Word) is not separated from the Divine Spirit. Well, God has two: the Word and the Spirit, which are with Him and in Him, beginningless and inseparable. God has never been, and never will be, without the Spirit and the Word. Therefore, all Three are One and One is Three. God does not have the Word and the Spirit as we have them, disappearing into thin air, but [has the Word and the Spirit] in a Divine manner. For example, the radiance of the sun is born from it, and a ray comes from it and descends on us, and neither the radiance nor the ray is separated from the disk - therefore, if we call them “sun”, we do not say that each of them is different from each other - in the same way, when we say that the Word of God, and the Holy Spirit too, is God, we do not confess another God, but only the One, Whom we know to exist without beginning and end, with coeternal with Him in the Word and Spirit. This is how the Word of God taught us to believe and confess; not only Christ, but also Moses in the Decalogue, which you Chions bring forward. That is why he said “There is one God” and said “one” three times. For he said the word “Lord” twice and the word “God” once, to show that three are one and one is three. Also, Moses, wanting to show from the beginning that God has the Word and the Spirit and that in them and with them He is One God, the Creator of all created things, said: “And God said: Let there be light. And there was light... He said: Let the earth produce greenery... and it was so” (Gen. 1:3, 11). And so that I don’t repeat everything like David said: “For He said, and it was, He commanded, and it was created” (Ps. 33:9). Therefore, the words “For He spoke, and it was, He commanded, and it was created” show that God has the Word, for it is impossible to say something without words. This also shows that everything that was created was created by thinking about them. So this Word of God exists before all created things and is not itself created. The Word of God, being uncreated, how can it not be God, since only God is uncreated? Moses, also teaching about man, said: “God breathed into his nostrils the spirit of life, and man became a living soul.” This means that, speaking about the inspiration of God and how man was created, he [Moses] shows that God also has a Spirit and this is the creative Spirit. But only God is the Creator of living beings. This is why Job says: “The Spirit of God created me” (Job 33:4). The Bishop of Thessaloniki also wanted to put together the rest of the arguments from the prophets and especially those through which it is shown that God is renewing man and the whole world, “by His Spirit,” as David says: “He sent His word, and healed them and delivered them from their destruction (corruption)” (Ps. 107:20), and also here: “You will send Your Spirit, and they will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth” ( Ps.103:30). These were the words that the bishop was about to quote when everyone who heard interrupted him, saying: “What you say is the truth and cannot be otherwise.” Then the bishop answered them: “God, therefore, there are three and one God, the Creator.” And they, all moved by divine power to do so, for they were unable to deny, agreed again, saying: “This is what you showed and this is the truth. This is what we also affirm.” The bishop said, “Okay. Glory to our God, who has willed this.” But they, too, said again: “But tell us, how do you confess Christ as God, when He was a man and born as a man?” Again the bishop said: “God is not only Sovereign and Almighty, but also righteous, just as David the prophet said” (Ps. 10:7). There is no work of God in which His righteousness is not present. Just as a ray from the sun has life-giving power, as well as lightness and warmth, so divine energy has in itself divine power and righteousness. God created man to do good deeds and [He] commanded him to live in accordance with His divine will. Then, however, this man obeyed and submitted to the devil’s will and sinned by transgressing the divine will and righteously fell under the condemnation of death, for it does not suit God to take a person away from him (the devil) by force; so He could not act unjustly towards [even] the devil, snatching from his hands a man whom he had taken possession of not through force. Also, the free will of man would then be crushed by force and might when God thus freed man; and it does not suit God to destroy His own creation. It was necessary, therefore, for a sinless person to appear, who would be without sin and who would live without sin and who, thus, could help a person who sins freely. About this it is said: “Who was born clean from an unclean thing? None. Even if his life is one day." ( Job 14:4–5 ). David the prophet says: “I was conceived in iniquities, and my mother gave birth to me in sins” (Ps. 50:7). For this reason, only the sinless Word of God became the Son of Man, was born of a Virgin, was witnessed by the voice of the Father from heaven, was tempted and fought by the devil, defeated the tempter, showed and confirmed through deeds, words and great miracles faith and the path of salvation and, in this way, He, Who was innocent and sinless, living (as a man) accepted the passions of all of us, those who were responsible for them, even to death, so that He could also descend into Hell and save those of those who were there who could believe. At this moment, when the bishop spoke about the resurrection and the descent of the Lord and about the testimonies of the prophets, which showed that Christ is also God and that this God is the one who is testified to us as one who became man through the Virgin and suffered for us and rose up, and so on, [then] the Turks began to worry and interrupted him, saying: “How can you say that God was born and the womb of a woman contained Him and other such things? Our God said that he, Christ, was created” (Quran, Sura, 3.59). Then he told them: “God is not some big body that cannot fit into something small because of its size. On the contrary, being incorporeal, He is capable of being everywhere, above everything and in every small thing. It can fit into even the smallest thing imaginable.” They, however, protested again noisily, saying: “Our God said that he, Christ, was created!” the bishop said again: “You confess that Christ is the Word of God. But a word was created by another word? In this case, this means that the word of God is not co-eternal with God Himself. But I showed this at the beginning and you also confessed that God has the Word and the Spirit co-eternal with Him. That is why you call Christ not only the word, but also the spirit of God. God spoke and everything appeared, like this stone - he pointed to the stone lying nearby - grass and even reptiles. This means that if Christ is the word and spirit of God, since he was created by the word of God, then the stone and the grass, and each of the creeping things are also the word and spirit of God, for in their case He also spoke and they came into being! Do you see how meaningless it is to say, “Our God said that he, Christ, was created”? The Eternal Word of God, even when He became man and took on flesh, without mixing (the two) or acquiring the properties of flesh, is the Spirit and Word of God. It was later, as we said, that It took human nature from us and for our sake. It was always God, as His eternal Word, “through whom He also made the worlds” (Heb. 1:2). At that moment, the chions interrupted him again and the presiding Palapan, after calling everyone to silence, said to the bishop: “The Bishop demands from you an answer to the question, how do we accept Christ, love him, respect him, confess him with the Divine Word and breath, and we also place his mother next to God, and you still do not accept our prophet, nor love him?” Then the bishop said: “Whoever does not love the words of the teacher does not love the teacher himself, that is why we do not love Muhammad. Our Lord and God Jesus Christ told us that He will come again to judge the whole world. He also commanded us not to receive anyone until He Himself returns to us again. He also said to those who did not believe in Him: “I have come in the name of My Father, and you do not receive Me; But if another comes in his own name, you will receive him” (John 5:43). That is why the disciple (sic!) of Christ writes to us: “But if an angel from heaven were to preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8). Then the Chions, together with the Turks, said to the bishop: “Circumcision was ordained by God from the beginning. Even Christ was circumcised. How then are you not circumcised?” To this the bishop said: “Since you refer to the Old Law and what was sent down by God for the Jews at that time - for the Tradition from God was also the keeping of the Sabbath, the Passover, sacrifices that should only be performed by priests, the altar inside the church and the dividing veil - since all this and other similar things were also sent down by God, why do you not observe any of them and do not do you do them? Since the Chions and Turks did not answer this, the bishop wished to bring again those prophets who clearly predicted the passing of the Law and the Old Testament and (which they also predicted) that the passing would be through Christ; and he began by saying: “What you call old... [text here is incomplete].” They interrupted him again, saying: “Why do you place many images in your churches and honor them, when God wrote and said to Moses: “You shall not make for yourself an idol or any image of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth below, or that is in the waters under the earth” (Ex. 20:4).” But the bishop said again: “Friends honor each other, but do not deify each other. It is obvious to everyone that this is, of course, what Moses received from God and this is what he then taught to the people. However, this same Moses at the same time did not leave anything prohibiting the making of images. He made the room behind the veil similar to and representing the heavenly. Also, since there are Cherubim in heaven, he made images of them and placed them in the Holy of Holies of the church. As for the external structure of the church, he arranged it to represent earthly things. If someone had asked Moses: “Why did you still do such things when God forbade icons [images] and likenesses of those [things] that are in heaven and those [things] that are on earth?”, he would, of course, answer like this: “Icons and images are prohibited so that someone would not serve them as gods. However, if someone is raised to God through them, that’s good!” The Greeks also served creatures, but as if they were gods. We also honor them, but through them we are raised to the glory of God.” Then the Turks said again: “Did Moses really do such things?” Many responded: “Yes, of course he did that.” At this moment, the Turkish officials stood up, bowed respectfully to the bishop, and began to leave. One of the chions, however, remained behind and, making an attempt on the life of the great servant of God, rushed at him and hit him in the eye. The remaining Turks, who saw him, took him, rudely reprimanded him and threw him in front of the emir, to whom they told about everything that had been said. We didn’t hear exactly what they said to the emir. As for what is described here, we were eye-witnesses. We wrote everything that we saw and heard as before the eyes of God. “...He lived only one day on the earth” You might be interested in: