 |
| Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos. |
The knowledge
of God According to St. Gregory Palamas is the vision of God. Deification,
union and knowledge of God are closely bound together. They cannot be
understood apart from one another. Breaking this unity takes man further away
from knowledge of God. The basis of Orthodox epistemology is illumination and
God’s revelation within the purified heart of man.
We must pray fervently for God to
grant us to reach this knowledge of God.
Come, let us ascend into the
mountain of the Lord, even to the house of our God, and behold the glory of His
transfiguration, glory of the Only-begotten of the Father. Let us receive light
from His light, and with uplifted spirits let us forever sing the praises of
the consubstantial Trinity.
When a person rises from bodily
knowledge to the soul’s knowledge and from that to spiritual knowledge, then he
sees God and possesses knowledge of God, which is his salvation. Knowledge of
God, as will be explained further on, is not intellectual, but existential.
That is, one’s whole being is filled with this knowledge of God. But in order
to attain it, one’s heart must have been purified, that is, the soul, nous
(intellect) and heart must have been healed. “Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God” (Matt.5,8).
We find the central teaching of St.
Gregory in this passage: “One who has
cleared his soul of all connection with things of this world, who has detached
himself from everything by keeping the commandments and by the dispassion that
this brings, and who has passed beyond all cognitive activity through
continuous, sincere and immaterial prayer, and who has been abundantly
illuminated by the inaccessible light in an inconceivable union, he alone,
becoming light, contemplating by the light and beholding the light, in the
vision and enjoyment of this light recognizes truly that God is transcendently
radiant and beyond comprehension; he glorifies God not only beyond his nous’s
human power of understanding, for many created things are beyond that, but even
beyond that marvelous union which is the only means by which the nous is united
with what is beyond intelligible things, “imitating divinely the
supra-celestial minds”.
 |
Saint Gregory Palamas.
(Monastery of Vatopaidi.
Mont Athos).
|
In order to attain vision of the
uncreated light, a person must cut off every connection between the soul and
what is below, detach himself from everything by keeping Christ’s commandments
and through the dispassion which comes from that, he must transcend all
cognitive activity “through continuous and sincere and immaterial prayer”.
Therefore he must have been healed already, through keeping Christ’s
commandments and through freeing his soul from all sinful connection with
created things. He is illuminated by the inaccessible light “abundantly through
an inconceivable union”. He sees God through union. Thus he becomes light and
sees by the light. Seeing the uncreated light, he recognizes God and acquires
knowledge of Him, because now “he recognizes truly that God is above nature and
beyond comprehension”.
This deification is union and
communion with God. According to St. Gregory, “Vision of the uncreated light is
not simply abstraction and negation, it is a union and a divinization which
occurs mystically and ineffably by the grace of God, after the stripping away
of everything from here below which imprints itself on the nous, or rather
after the cessation of all noetic activity; it is something which goes beyond
abstraction”. The contemplation of uncreated light is “by the divinizing
communion of the Spirit”. “So the contemplation of this light is a union, even
though it does not endure in the imperfect: but is the union with this light
other than a vision?”
Vision, deification and union with
God are the things which offer man existential knowledge of God. Then man
possesses real knowledge of God. The deifying gift of the Holy Spirit, which is
a mysterious light, transforms into divine light those who have attained it and
not only fills them with eternal light, “but also grants them a knowledge and a
life appropriate to God”. In this state a person possesses knowledge of God. In
reply to Barlaam’s teaching that God is known by the greatest contemplators,
the philosophers, and that knowledge of God transmitted “by noetic
illumination…is by no means true”, St. Gregory Palamas declares: “God makes
Himself known not only through all that is but also through what is not,
through transcendence, that is, through uncreated things, and also through an
eternal light that transcends all beings”. This knowledge, he says, is offered
today as a kind of pledge to those who are worthy of it and which “illuminates
them unendingly in the unending age”. That is just why the saints’ vision of
God is true, “and he who calls it false has strayed from the divine knowledge
of God”. Thus anyone who ignores and disregards the vision of God, which offers
true knowledge, is in reality ignorant of God.
Vision of the uncreated Light and
the knowledge which comes from it transcend not only nature and human
knowledge, but virtue as well. Virtue and the imitation of God prepare us for
the divine union, but the mysterious union itself is affected by grace.
Thus deification, which is the goal
of the spiritual life, is a manifestation of God to the pure heart of man. This
vision of the uncreated Light is what creates spiritual delight in the soul.
For, according to St. Gregory, evidence of that light is that the soul ceases
to give itself over to wrong pleasures and passions, and that it acquires peace
and stillness of thoughts, and rest and spiritual joy, contempt for human
glory, humility joined with secret rejoicing, hatred of the world, love of
heavenly things, or rather love of the God of Heaven alone, and a vision of uncreated
light even if one’s eyes should be covered or plucked out .
 |
Fresco of the Transfiguration.
Saint John the Baptist monastery.
Douma, Lebanon.
|
At this point we may also look at
the teaching of St. Peter of Damascus about the eight stages of theoria
(Philokalia 3,108). The first seven belong to this age, while the eighth
belongs to the age to come. The first theoria is knowledge of the trials and
tribulations of this life. The second is “knowledge of our own faults and of
God’s bounty”. The third is knowledge of the terrible things before and after
death. The fourth is deep understanding of the life led by our Lord Jesus in
this world and of His disciples and the other saints, that is to say, the words
and actions of the martyrs and the holy Fathers. The fifth is knowledge of the
nature and flux of things. The sixth is theoria of created beings, or knowledge
and understanding of God’s visible creation. The seventh is understanding of
God’s spiritual creation, that is to say, of the angels. The eighth is
knowledge concerning God, or what we call `theology’.
Consequently theoria has many
stages and degrees, and many must come before vision of the uncreated light,
which is “the beauty of the age to come”, “the food of the heavens”. Among the
degrees of theoria are remembrance of death, which is a gift from God,
unceasing prayer, the inspiration to keep Christ’s commandments fully,
knowledge of our spiritual poverty, that is to say, understanding of our sins
and passions, and the repentance following it. All these things come about
through the operation of divine grace. Certainly perfect theoria is vision of
the uncreated light, which itself is differentiated into vision and continuous
vision, as Palamas says.
So the purification which takes
place by the grace of God creates the necessary preconditions for attaining
that theoria which is communion with God, deification of man, and knowledge of
God. The ascetic method of the Church leads to this point. It is not based on
human criteria and it does not aim to make the person `nice and good’, but to
heal him perfectly and for him to achieve communion with God. As long as a man
is far from communion and union with God, he has not yet attained his
salvation. The spiritually trained person who sees the uncreated light is said,
in the language of the Fathers, to be “deified”. This expression is used by St.
Dionysios the Areopagite, St. John of Damascus, and repeatedly, as we have
seen, by St. Gregory Palamas.
The healing of the soul, nous and
heart leads a person to the vision of God and makes him know the divine life.
This knowledge is man’s salvation.
You were transfigured upon the
mountain, O Christ our God, showing to Your disciples Your glory as much as
they could bear. Do also in us, sinners though we be, shine Your everlasting
light, at the intercession of the Theotokos, O Giver of light. Glory to You.
Reference:
“Orthodox Psychotherapy”, Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos (2005).