John Farina

The construction of any theology is a secularization, which is necessary but risks distorting the distinctive experience that birthed it. Gregory Palamas holds that Christian morality must be based in asceticism. The mediation of Christ, conceived as a series of reconciliations, requires participation in the divine energies through a life of repentance. My project is to suggest that Gregory offers a corrective to much of the Christian social justice industry.

Introduction

In part one of what follows, I will share some philosophical and historical reflections on Christian social theory in the context of secularization. In part two, I will offer specific observations on Gregory Palamas’ thought. I will contend that Christian social theory must be moral. That it must argue from the ‘is’, which is the revelation of God in Christ, to what ought to be. That Gregory holds that the moral is inseparable from the ascetical. Efforts to create mediating moral languages need always to be measured against individual witness. The implications of this are that the Church must practice virtue, not just talk about it, and that Christian witness without a commitment to asceticism runs the risk of losing its distinctiveness. In the end, the Christian life is not just about what we ask of others but about what we ask of ourselves.

Part One: Some Philosophical and Historical Reflections on the Construction of Christian Social Theory

Religion begins with a personal experience of what Rudolf Otto called simply, the numinous.¹ That primitive experience of awe and reverence in the presence of the totally other is not primarily an experience of dread or fear. Paradoxically, there is an attraction to the unknown, a familiarity of the other that draws the individual into a relationship in which she feels herself suddenly in communion. She is part of some larger scheme. She transcends her isolation and experiences the social in its