A study on the anthropology of Saint Gregory Palamas
by Elder Efraim of Vatopaidi
From Pemptousia
Icon of St Gregory Palamas inside his shrine in Thessaloniki, Greece
The theology of the person, as this is revealed in the hesychast ascetic tradition, is the most significant counter-argument to post-modern individualism and relativism. The ascetics of introversion and of conscious tranquillity (hesychia) is not a psychological proposition but the authentic and only way of transforming the “repulsive mask” into a person.
It has been aptly remarked that what will best characterize the theology of the 21stcentury is its concern with anthropological questions. If we have not sufficiently investigated anthropological truths in the sphere of theology today, imagine what must be the case in the realms of philosophy, the intellect and the social and human sciences.
Today’s post-modern people do not know what a person is. They live, and project, the mask of a persona. What is a mask? It’s a guise which was used in Ancient Greece by actors to take on a variety of roles- personae- on stage in the theatre. So this mask is not something real, it’s artificial, it’s a virtual reality, to use modern IT terminology. We need to remove this false object and replace it with the real one, which, in this case is the person.
The Fathers of the Church did not define what a person is. But in order to refer to the magnificence, the enormous worth of the human being, they used the term “person”. Basil the Great writes that persons are the only animals who are God-made. Saint Gregory the Theologian says God made a creature- the person- who was a mixture of visible and invisible nature, who is a second cosmos, “great in miniature”. Saint John Chrysostom stresses that “the person is the most carefully made of God’s living things”.
Human beings are the crown of creation. The longing for perfection is innate. This can be seen in the execution of any academic activity, art or even profession. People try, to the best of their abilities, to achieve perfection, even in their everyday activities. And this is evidence of the potential God has given us for our personal perfection and completion as a psychosomatic entity and being.
In the created universe, there is nothing superior to us humans. “The lowest orders of beings, even though they have a kind of rationality, still do not have an independent aim, but rather their purpose is to be the material precondition of the existence of humankind. People yearn for a boundless, personal reality (God) Who is superior to them and can nourish them infinitely. They cannot possess this reality, because their potential is limited, but nor will they disappear into it”. It is this personal God Who gives meaning and purpose to our existence. Our human nature, with its countless hypostases, is able to communicate, by energy, with the distinct and mutually-penetrative persons of the Holy Trinity.
The late Elder Sophrony, in accord with the holy Fathers, offers no definition of the person. More important for his ascetic theology is his assertion that the person exists, which leads him on to a description of its capacities. The person cannot be defined, but it can be characterized, dynamically and existentially, by the manifestation of its energies”. The person lying in the “hidden being of the heart”, emerges when that being, through the Grace of God, discovers the sphere of the heart, the core of our being.
Saint Gregory Palamas says something very important and which is the central point of this article: When the nous, our highest faculty, distances itself, through Orthodox ascetic practice, from every perceptible thing, rises above the turmoil of concern for material matters and instead supervises the inner being, it will see the “repulsive mask”, that is the ugly, the hideous mask, which has been put together by passionate attachment to earthly affairs, which is nourished and inflated by sin. So the nous hastens to cleanse this mask with grief and repentance, to remove the unsightly cover through asceticism and observance of God’s commandments. Saint Gregory goes on to say that since the soul is not diverted by the diversity of sin, it discovers the peace of its psychosomatic powers, harmony of the mind, and genuine inner tranquillity, so that it comes to real knowledge of God and of itself. Then the “repulsive mask” is transformed into a face, the persona into person, in the image of the true and eternal face and person of Christ the God/Man.
It has been aptly remarked that what will best characterize the theology of the 21stcentury is its concern with anthropological questions. If we have not sufficiently investigated anthropological truths in the sphere of theology today, imagine what must be the case in the realms of philosophy, the intellect and the social and human sciences.
Today’s post-modern people do not know what a person is. They live, and project, the mask of a persona. What is a mask? It’s a guise which was used in Ancient Greece by actors to take on a variety of roles- personae- on stage in the theatre. So this mask is not something real, it’s artificial, it’s a virtual reality, to use modern IT terminology. We need to remove this false object and replace it with the real one, which, in this case is the person.
The Fathers of the Church did not define what a person is. But in order to refer to the magnificence, the enormous worth of the human being, they used the term “person”. Basil the Great writes that persons are the only animals who are God-made. Saint Gregory the Theologian says God made a creature- the person- who was a mixture of visible and invisible nature, who is a second cosmos, “great in miniature”. Saint John Chrysostom stresses that “the person is the most carefully made of God’s living things”.
Human beings are the crown of creation. The longing for perfection is innate. This can be seen in the execution of any academic activity, art or even profession. People try, to the best of their abilities, to achieve perfection, even in their everyday activities. And this is evidence of the potential God has given us for our personal perfection and completion as a psychosomatic entity and being.
In the created universe, there is nothing superior to us humans. “The lowest orders of beings, even though they have a kind of rationality, still do not have an independent aim, but rather their purpose is to be the material precondition of the existence of humankind. People yearn for a boundless, personal reality (God) Who is superior to them and can nourish them infinitely. They cannot possess this reality, because their potential is limited, but nor will they disappear into it”. It is this personal God Who gives meaning and purpose to our existence. Our human nature, with its countless hypostases, is able to communicate, by energy, with the distinct and mutually-penetrative persons of the Holy Trinity.
The late Elder Sophrony, in accord with the holy Fathers, offers no definition of the person. More important for his ascetic theology is his assertion that the person exists, which leads him on to a description of its capacities. The person cannot be defined, but it can be characterized, dynamically and existentially, by the manifestation of its energies”. The person lying in the “hidden being of the heart”, emerges when that being, through the Grace of God, discovers the sphere of the heart, the core of our being.
Saint Gregory Palamas says something very important and which is the central point of this article: When the nous, our highest faculty, distances itself, through Orthodox ascetic practice, from every perceptible thing, rises above the turmoil of concern for material matters and instead supervises the inner being, it will see the “repulsive mask”, that is the ugly, the hideous mask, which has been put together by passionate attachment to earthly affairs, which is nourished and inflated by sin. So the nous hastens to cleanse this mask with grief and repentance, to remove the unsightly cover through asceticism and observance of God’s commandments. Saint Gregory goes on to say that since the soul is not diverted by the diversity of sin, it discovers the peace of its psychosomatic powers, harmony of the mind, and genuine inner tranquillity, so that it comes to real knowledge of God and of itself. Then the “repulsive mask” is transformed into a face, the persona into person, in the image of the true and eternal face and person of Christ the God/Man.
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