Bouyer on Hesychasm

From A History of Christian Spirituality, vol. 2.

The Origins of Hesychasm and the "Jesus Prayer"
There is no doubt that Orthodox piety in the following centuries was chiefly nourished by this liturgy; yet it was not in a liturgical Christianity, a mysticism above all ecclesiastical and hierarchical, that the spirituality of Byzantium was to realize itself in its deepest and most intimate form. This other path, a wholly interior one, was that of hesychasm. Its ultimate expression was a prayer as far removed as possible from the magnificent formulas of the Studites, even from the outbursts of personal lyricism that they succeeded in incorporating into the heart of their most hieratic mysteries. The "Jesus Prayer", in which all hesychasm is concentrated, is in fact simply the unwearying repetition of the invocation, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." It may even consist in the name alone: "Jesus!"

Are those dedicated to this form of Byzantine mysticism opposed to liturgical spirituality? I wonder if there is a connection between an extreme advocacy of hesychasm (and a overly "mystical" understanding of the liturgy) and a rejection of the writings of theologians like Fr. Schmemann (who advocate a certain form of the renewal of liturgical piety or spirituality) as being "modernist."

The Fathers of the desert had already recommended the monologistos prayer, whil eth eemphasis on hesychia (the rest in God which is the aim and end of apatheia itself) was certainly one of their major themes. In the preceding volume are quoted two apophthegms attributed to Macarius the Egyptian by a Coptic collectotion. If they are authentic, Macarius must be recognized as the originator of the Jesus Prayer and of its whole spiritual context. Otherwise, as has been said, the first distinct formulas of this prayer are found in Diadochus of Photike. After him, its use was taught by Barsanuphius and John the Prophet. Barsanuphius did not hesitate to put it on a level with psalmody. He did not draw the conclusion, as was done later, that it could with advantage replace the psalmody, but only siad that the two should be practised equally. John advised using it in time of temptation, opposing it to the "antirrhetic" method advocated by Evagrius, which consisted in confronting the temptations and criticising the sophisms they imply. "Nothing remains for us to do, weak as we are," he said, "but to tkae refuge in the name of Jesus."

Not until St John Climacus, however, does one find the "remembrance of Jesus" made into the monologistos prayer to banish the multiple thoughts (logismoi) that Evagrius excludes from pure prayer. Evagrius certainly never foresaw this interpretation of his thought! But, as has been said, it is chiefly in a text from the Ladder that for the first time, so far as we know, these three terms are directly connected: the remembrance of Jesus, the control of the respiration, and hesychia: "Let the remembrance of Jesus combine with your breathing; then you will understand the use of hesychia."

It has also been pointed out with truth that we find in John the theme of "the eye of the heart", which is able to see the divine "Sun of the intelligence" in a vision in which he who contemplates sees himself filled with light. But in the Ladder these two lines of thought are not yet formally associated. Yet the first spiritual treatise which, though not actually one on the Jesus prayer, still begins to concentrate the whole of spirituality on it, also came from Mount Sinai. This was the centuries ascribed to Hesychius of Jerusalem, though there is general agreement that it is to be attributed to an author, or group of authors, belonging to the monastery of Batos (the Burning Bush) on the slopes of the mountain of the theophany. They derive from St John Climacus, from whom they cite the text quoted above, but after "your breathing" interpolate the phrase "and your whole life". This addition si very characteristic of the all-embracing character which the "remembrance of Jesus" was beginning to take on. (576-7)

Ok, on to Gregory Palams...

St Gregory Palamas and the Hesychast Controversy
At about this time there broke out, in connection with hesychasm, a philosophico-theological controversy whose complexity was equalled only by its violence. It led to the thoroughly theological synthesis, by St Gregory Palamas (1296?-1359), who was first a monk of Athos and later bishop of Thessalonia. Unfortunately, the manner in which this controversy has been prolonged or unhappily revived down to our own times hardly tends to shed light on the exact significance of Gregory's spiritual theology. Not until quite recently has there been a scholarly study, patient and serene in tone. Fr Jean Meyendorff's work at last enables us to see the true origins of the Palamite controversy, and consequently to appreciate objectively the merits of this man who was the last great spiritual writer of medieval Athos, and certainly its most powerful theologian.

(J. Meyendorff, Introduction a l'etude de Gregoire Palamas and Saint Gregoire Palamas et la mystique byzantine)

It is impossible to enter here into the details fo the polemic stirred up by the Calabrian monk Barlaam who called the hesychasts Messalians and omphalopsuchoi (that is, people for whom the soul is situated in the navel). The directly spiritual motives involved were mingled with a concern, at least equally strong, for a humanistic philosophy. In addition, sociological problems--even economic ones--played their part in the background. It is enough to say that the first modern scholar in the West who applied himself to the study of these disputes, Fr Martin Jugie, A.A., contributed not a little to obscure their exact import by supposing that Barlaam was in fact an intrepid defender, in the East, of Aristotelian and Thomistic thought.The most obvious result of this simplification was not only to make Gregory Palamas appear, quite gratuitously, a heretic in the eyes of modern Catholics, but also to give the Eastern Christians the most fantastic misconceptions of what authentic Thomism really is.

Indeed, the greatest merit of Jean Meyendorff's study is to have made it clear that Barlaam, though he was a latinizer, was for all that not in the least a Thomist, but rather a Platonizing humanist, radically nominalist and anti-mystical. By comparison, Gregory Palamas appears as a strong realist and, like most of the later Byzantine theologians (despite the cliche reiterated in the West), much more of an Aristotelian than a Platonist. But what strikes us most about him is his defence--very well informed, and at the same time very conscious of the spiritual values at stake--of a spiritual tradition that was not only Byzantine but patristic. Even if his theological system bristles with difficulties for us, we can at last understand the real import, for the Greeks, of the decisions by which the controversy was closed. Barlaam was condemned at the imperial council of Sancta Sophia in 1341. In 1355, the Palamite doctrine was proclaimed as the official doctrine fo the Byzantine Church. Furthermore, in 1351, the council of the Blachernae had incorporated, in the Synodikon for the Feast of Orthodoxy, anathemas against Gregory's other adversaries, including the archaizer Akindynos and the humanist philosopher Nicephorus Gregoras. In these circumstances, it becomes difficult to see, in the canonization fo Gregory Palamas in 1368 by the patriarch Philotheus, a mere anti-Latin manifestation, schismatical and more or less heretical. The Byzantine church itself certainly saw it as a fresh proclamation and more precise definition of a spiritual tradition whose substance comes from the great Greek Fathers, through the intermediary of what was best in Byzantine spirituality.

In the Tomus hagioreticus, which was also signed by all the hegumenoi of the Holy Mountain in 1340-1, Palamaqs sums up as follows against Barlaam's anti-hesychast accusations the arguments that he had already developed in his Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts:

The doctrines which today are a common heritage, known by all and openly proclaimed, were, under the Mosaic law, but mysteries, accesible in advance only in visions to the prophets. On the other hand, the good things of the world to come, whihc are prophesied by teh saints, constitute the mysteries of the evangelical community, for the Spirit makes the saints worthy of this vision. They receive these good things and behold them in advance, as first-fruits.

Some of them, indeed, have been initiated by actual experience: all those who have abandoned the enjoyment of material goods, human glory, and the sinful pleasures of the body, and have preferred the life of the Gospel, and who have furthermore confirmed that abandonment of the world by embracing obedience to those who have attained maturity in Christ. With no other care than themselves, by rigorous attention and pure prayer, having attained to God by a mystical and supra-intellectual union with him, they have been initiated into that which surpasses understanding.... This deifying grace of God is said by th edivine Maximus, speaking of Melchisedech, to be uncreated and eternal, proceeding from the eternal God.

The doctrine that was more and more firmly adopted by teh Byzantine Church, in the course of the conciliar and patriarchal decisions noted above, was, properly speaking, that of this Tomus. It is important therefore clearly to see its significance. The first point to be emphasized is its general affirmation fo the orthodoxy of hesychast spirituality, without going into the details of the technique which had developed, little by little on Mount Athos. The second is the noteworthy statement that mystical experience is the normal counterpart of a properly oriented ascetical life. The third is the very strong consciousness of the continuity of this experience, in monastic tradition, with prophetic experience, and of its character of a foretaste of that experience of heaven which is promised in the gospels. Finally must be mentioned the emphasis placed by the Tomus on the fact that mystical experience, however mysterious it may be, is (as the Fathers and notably St Maximus bear witness) a direct experience of God in himself, and not merely of his created effects.

As for the theology developed by Palamas to defend and illustrate this doctrine, especially in his homilies on the Transfiguration, only such aspects of it as bear directly upon spirituality will be discussed here.

In the first place, it is interesting to note that, unlike his contemporary St Gregory of Sinai, Gregory is not concerned with the details fo the psycho-physiological technique of Athonite hesychasm. He adopts one element of it, and one alone: the possibility of a vision of God, a vision in which the body is in some way involved. This is what led him systematically to connect the luminous vision of "Macarius", Simeon and the hesychasts with the light of Thabor (that is, with the vision of the transfigured Christ) and, more generally, with all the scriptural visions of God that are expressed in terms of light and fire.

It also led him to re-appraise the expressions used in the Macarian tradition, as opposed to the Evagrian, by which religious anthropology was again centred on the "heart" in the biblical sense of the word, rather than on the nous, that is, pure intelligence. What is more, he drew from it not only a very prudent justification fo the idea that a method of spirituality in which the body has a share is entirely scriptural and Christian, but he also developed the more precise notion that, in the mystical vision, our whole being, body and soul, is associated in a manner mysterious but real, with those first-fruits of the resurrection which are constituted by that experience. This idea, it will be remembered, is already found in more than embryonic form in Diadochus of Photike.

At this point, to reply to Barlaam's accusation tha tthe hesychasts claimed to see the essence of God with their bodily eyes, Palamas put forward the famous distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies. He certainly did not invent this distinction, but he developed it and probably gave it a new precision. According to him, no creature can participate in the essence of God, which is invisible not only to the eyes of the body but also to those of the soul itself--indeed, to any created spirit whatever. On the other hand, the energies of God, although they are uncreated and are inseparable from his essence, can be participated in by the whole man. Thus the light of Thabor can be called "uncreated", even though the apostles saw it shining from the very face of the transfigured Christ, as the first-fruits of his resurrection and their own.

What are we to think of this distinction? It must be admitted it is foreshadowed, at least, by teh Cappadocians, particularly St Gregory Nazianzen, in a text which is quoted in the preceding volume and there commented upon. What is more, it seems to be in direct line with the Jewish conception of God's transcendence and immanence. In that conception, God in himself is distinguished (though never separated) from his Face, his Angel, his Presence, or his Word, through which he enters into contact with his creatures.

This is not to say that such a distinction does not raise the thorniest metaphysical problems. We shall not, however, discuss them here, but it seems difficult to deny, after the work of Jean Meyendorff, that Gregory Palamas himself never emphasized the philosophical aspect of his thought. Still less did the Church of Byzantium when it approved his doctrine and canonized him. Like the Cappadocians, or the rabbis before them, all that he sought to affirm was the possibility of a real and immediate contact between man and God in divine grace, whlie rejecting any sort of pantheism or "divinization" which would make us "gods" in the pagan hellenistic sense. (584-8)

Dr. Michael Liccione believes that the essential points of Gregory Palmas' teachings can be reconciled with Latin theology. See, for example, his comments here, in response to Stephen Todd Kaster and Photios Jones.

I wonder if there is an Orthodox equivalent of Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolorum.