Knowing God: By Analogy or Participation

St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) and Gregory Palamas (1296-1356) are two great Doctors or Teachers of the Roman and Orthodox Churches, respectively. These two highlight the great theological divide that separates the Roman and Orthodox Churches. Aquinas, the scholar, saw study and learning a way to God and to Palamas, the mystic, experience is instrumental to knowing God, whereas reason in a fallen intellect is held suspect.

Aquinas might be the most influential theologian in the Christian era. His thought was deemed orthodoxy in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. Palamas although held in the highest esteem in the Eastern Church is virtually unknown outside the Eastern Church for a variety of reasons. The Eastern Church suffered horrific persecution under the Turks for centuries and under the Soviet Communists for most the 20th Century. The presence of the Eastern Church thus was silenced for the most part.

Aquinas was a university Scholar, a member of the Dominican Order, the teaching order of the Roman Church, who wrote the Summa Theologica, a massive tome on all things about God and His nature, soul, knowledge, ethics and law.

Palamas was monk of Holy Mount Athos, the Hesychast monastic spiritual center of Greece. Later he became Bishop of Thessalonica, Greece. He lived, during a time of a period of decline of the Byzantine Empire, the last remnant of the Roman Empire that eventually fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1456, a full thousand years after the Western fell.

Hesychasm believes a direct experience of the God’s Uncreated Light was possible. This is the Light by which Moses’ face glowed, upon descending Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments and the dazzling light that Christ shown on Mount Tabor at His Transfiguration. St. Thomas and Barlaam would ascribe these events to atmospherics, created phenomena. These were important spiritual events but nothing fallen man could participate in.

Hesychasm means stillness. The Hesychast monk prays the brief Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, being watchful of his thoughts, while controlling his breathing. Strict asceticism is also undertaken, including frequent fasting and the adherence to celibacy.

As indication of the West’s belittling of this tradition, the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) derides this mystical experience. Beside the characterization cast in doubt, it gives a good description of Hesychasm.

“In itself an obscure speculation, with the wildest form of mystic extravagance…”

Hesychasts (hesychastes — quietist) were people, nearly all monks, who defended the theory that it is possible by an elaborate system of asceticism, detachment from earthly cares, submission to an approved master, prayer, especially perfect repose of body and will, to see a mystic light; which is none other than the uncreated light of God. The contemplation of this light is the highest end of man on earth; in this way is a man most intimately united with God. The light seen by Hesychasts is the same as appeared at Christ's Transfiguration. This was no mere created phenomenon, but the eternal light of God Himself. It is not the Divine essence; no man can see God face to face in this world (John i, 18), but it is the Divine action or operation. For in God action (energeia, actus, operatio) is really distinct from essence (ousia).

This dismissive view highlights the ancient antipathy of the West with the East’s characterization in experiencing the knowledge of God. No less than, Anglican Church’s Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, recently, dismissed Orthodox theology as something akin to pan-theism. Per Williams, the ability to experience the Uncreated Light defied the simplicity of God; God who is utter perfection can not share his essence; otherwise He would no longer be the One True God.

As an aside I find it ironic that Bishop Williams sees fit to allow non-Apostolic innovations such as female clergy and homosexual marriage, but doesn’t see fit to permit an ancient mystic way to experience God, that has roots, some would argue, before the formulation of the Trinitarian doctrine. It’s more tragic since it’s this loss of the mystical that leads many Westerners to traditions outside of the Christianity, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. It’s this unapproachable God that has led the West to secularism and alienation.

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As I have written Gregory’s nemesis was Barlaam, an Eastern Orthodox later to become Roman, from Calabria, in southern Italy, who espoused Thomistic philosophy, if you will. Barlaam dismissed all this talk about Uncreated Light and the Hesychast meditation or navel gazing as he saw it, the monks on Mount Athos were practicing.

Barlaam would say that we can only know God’s creation here; imputed Grace is administered through the Church’s Sacraments, of course, so humanity is not bereft of His care. Besides, Truth was revealed through the Incarnation and the Holy Scriptures. And in a broad meaning of reason, not simply logic mind you, this reason will lead us to knowledge of God, albeit analogical one. We can not experience God’s one and only Essence. Of course Palamas would counter that the Hesychast experiences God directly, not analogically, not of his essence but his energies or operations.

The crux of the argument is one for the West, God is his essence, his perfection a formulation largely first given by Plato and much expanded with St. Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas, God, being perfection, is Pure [complete] Act, in the meaning Aristotle would employ, and in whom his creation can not participate.

To Palamas and the East any idea of God can only be apophatic, that is one can only describe what he is not. In contrast, Aquinas goes to great length to conceptionalize God and His Qualities; the Summa discusses at length God’s attributes and how God is His perfections. To Palamas His essence is unknowable, just as Aquinas would assert, but our reason is no guide to understanding the mind of the Almighty; reason here is mere speculation. The Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit represents itself to us as God. And thus God has freedom to participate in his creation through the energies of his Uncreated Light, yet sharing not of His Essence.

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It is only through ascetic struggle against our fallen sinful condition and simultaneous building virtues that we can prepare for the Eyes of our Heart to be opened to experience this Light, by God’s Grace.

The East considers the human condition in a state in which the true image and likeness of God is veiled. We are subject to soul destroying passions and idle occupations. Ordinary consciousness is something to transcend; something to struggle against. Each Orthodox Christian is meant to be on a path of theois, divination, where the image and likeness of God become increasingly vivified. Thus it is the experience that’s paramount not philosophical speculation.

Aquinas, in contrast, was surprisingly optimistic about human nature and will and reasoning. Just to note this contrasts sharply with the Protestant Reformers, who had quite a dim view of human nature. In contrast Aquinas wrote, no natural desire is in vain; a shocking allegation as far as the Eastern Church is concerned. What are called natural desires; the East would deem in large part passions; passions are the seat of sin. True natural state of humanity is sight by the Eyes of Heart, a state of stillness and sinless perfection. Ordinary consciousness is lost in sinful condition, being subject to sinful passion and pre-occupations.

Aquinas argued that reason was participation of the divine reason, due to our reason’s likeness of God’s reasoning Mind. Thus we could participate in the divine reason, just as we participate in the sun by viewing the reflection of sun; when we reason we use divine sunlight.

As optimistic as Aquinas was, he argued we could not have perfect understanding of God. We can know his creation and so know God, the creator, by analogy, only. Nonetheless, there is the Church, Her Sacraments and Her Scriptures that grant access to Grace and salvation, mind you. The truth of God also could be discovered through nature and Aquinas saw fit to give proofs for His Existence, that the East would not find compelling. And for Aquinas knowledge was informed by the senses, not mystic experience.

A last word on recent studies on brain activity, some have found the God spot, an area of the brain that “lights up” in meditating nuns and the like who report transcendent experiences. From this view it appears that the Aquinas and Palamas argument was discussing which part of the brain best understands God. The Hesychast strives to starve the conceptual filter ordinary consciousness uses to view the world to allow a deeper more profound view of reality. The Eyes of the Heart represent this “transcendent” part of the brain that is seen lit up under brain imaging in monks and nuns during meditation. It is the Eyes of Heart that sees the Uncreated light, transcending channels of conventional sensory perception. So fundamentally it’s the mind itself, God’s creation and portal to spirituality that informs us, not the senses, filtered by ordinary consciousness.