Introduction
St Gregory Palamas (1296-1359), Archbishop of Thessalonica, is reckoned (alongside St Photius and St Mark of Ephesus) one of the three Pillars of Orthodoxy; the second Sunday of Lent is dedicated to him. His life was a unrelenting struggle against slander, brought about by his utter conviction that those passages in the Bible which speak of angels or heavenly lights being seen by men actually mean what they say.
IN 1337, the monks of Mount Athos in Greece were subjected to a withering critique by monk Barlaam,* Abbot of the Monastery of the Holy Saviour in Constantinople.* The Athonites had talked confusedly of having glimpsed at times the uncreated light of God himself, but Barlaam was scornful. God is invisible, he reminded them;* even the light that the Apostles saw blaze from Christ at his Transfiguration on Mount Tabor* was not the light of heaven, but something earthbound, created as a momentary teaching aid. What then had the monks seen? ‘I must confess that I do not know what this light is’ Barlaam concluded. ‘I know only that it does not exist.’
Gregory Palamas, as spokesman for the Athonites, replied that there was more in heaven and earth than Barlaam imagined; and when he so pleases, the Holy Spirit may open our eyes to see it.* By the Spirit’s power the Apostles briefly saw heavenly light on Tabor; Moses saw it on Sinai;* and sometimes, monks see it on Athos.*
* Bernardo Massari (?1290–1348). He was Italian, born in Calabria, Italy, but the town was a Greek enclave and he was brought up in the Greek rites. The name Barlaam derives from the story of Barlaam and Josaphat, whose tale (thought to be a Georgian legend, ultimately drawing on Indian myth) was made popular in the West through the ‘Golden Legend’. A scene involving three caskets enters into Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice.’
* The Church of the Holy Saviour in the Fields, popularly known as the Chora, remains to this day, though it became a mosque after the Fall of the City in 1453, and is now a museum. See Chora Museum.
* See 1 Timothy 6:16. The Athonites never claimed to have seen God; they claimed to have seen the divine and uncreated light that radiates from him — much as one may see the light of the sun, but not look directly at the sun itself.
* See Mark 9:2-9.
* The English 14th-century author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing,’ echoed Gregory’s belief: “Then will he sometimes, perhaps, send out a beam of ghostly [spiritual] light, piercing this cloud of unknowing that is betwixt thee and him, and show thee some of his privity [intimate or secret life], of which man may not, nor cannot, speak.” See 2 Corinthians 12:2-4. Gregory Palamas cited 1 Corinthians 2:9 in support. On the ‘cloud of unknowing’ where God dwells, see Exodus 20:21.
* See Moses and the burning bush. See also the way that God opened the eyes of Elisha’s servant in the story of Elisha and the fiery horsemen.
* For an example from Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, see St Wilfrid and the Angel of Light.