Kirsten H. Anderson

All Articles by Kirsten H. Anderson

University of Notre Dame

Gregory Palamas: On Divine and Deifying Participation (Περὶ θείας καὶ θεοποιοῦ μεθέξεως)

Volume 4 – St Gregory Palamas, Special series – Part 2
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Introduction1

On Divine and Deifying Participation2 was written by Gregory Palamas during the middle phase of the Hesychast Controversy, 1341–1347, between his two most important works, the Triads (1337–40) and the One Hundred Fifty Chapters (1350). Soon after the condemnation of Barlaam at the Patriarchal Synod of 1341, Palamas faced a new opponent in Gregory Akindynos, who had formerly supported and defended Palamas and the Athonite monks through 1341.3 Akindynos began to have misgivings about Palamas’ notion of grace at the Synod, and urged Palamas then to retract from his writings expressions Akindynos thought objectionable, such as referring to the divine ‘essence’ and ‘activities’ as ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ divinities. After the Synod, he began official proceedings against Palamas. In response to these new accusations, Palamas wrote six treatises from 1341 to 1342, sometimes called the Dogmatic Orations, of which On Divine and Deifying Participation is the third. These writings constituted an act of defiance against the prohibition in the Synodal Tome of 1341 of further debate on the subject. Consequently, Palamas was imprisoned for a time, and then temporarily excommunicated in November 1344.4

The first two of the six treatises written at this time (On Union and Distinction and Apology) address the ways we can speak of union and distinction with reference to the divine, arguing that a distinction between ‘essence’ and ‘activities’ does not entail a belief in two gods. The third (On Divine and Deifying Participation) focuses on the difference between the general participation in God that every creature

 

1.Special thanks go to Alexis Torrance, for whose doctoral seminar on the Hesychast Controversy I first translated this text in the fall of 2015, and who gave me many helpful comments on the translation in preparation for its publication.

 

2.Gregory Palamas, De participatione quae deos faciat, in Greek as Περὶ θείας καὶ θεοποιοῦ μεθέξεως, in Panagiotes Chrestou, ed., Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ Συγγράμματα (Θεσσαλονίκη, 1966), 2:137–63.

 

3.For a summary of Akindynos’ interaction with Palamas, and his later opposition to Palamas’ concept of grace, see the introduction in Angela Constantinides Hero, ed., Letters of Gregory Akindynos (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1983).

 

4.Robert Sinkewicz, ‘Gregory Palamas’, in La théologie byzantine et sa tradition, ed. Carmello Giuseppe Conticello (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 2:134–35.