Stăniloae and Palamism

Stăniloae’s 1938 monograph The Life and Teaching of St Gregory Palamas was one of the earliest modern scholarly studies of Palamas anywhere, produced from the manuscripts and predating the celebrated Western rediscovery of Palamite theology by two decades. This file treats that study and the central place of the Palamite essence–energies distinction in Stăniloae’s own theology.

Tradition: Romanian Orthodox

The 1938 Monograph

While studying abroad in the late 1920s and 1930s, Stăniloae devoted himself to the works of St Gregory Palamas, the fourteenth-century Athonite monk and archbishop of Thessaloniki who had defended the hesychast monks and articulated the distinction between the unknowable divine essence and the participable divine energies (see St. Gregory Palamas). Much of Palamas’s writing was then still unpublished, surviving only in manuscript, and Stăniloae worked directly from these sources (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present, SPCK, 2015, ch. 6, on Stăniloae’s manuscript study of Palamas). The result was his book Viața și învățătura Sfântului Grigorie Palama (The Life and Teaching of St Gregory Palamas), published at Sibiu in 1938, which combined a study of Palamas’s life and doctrine with Romanian translations of a selection of his texts (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, dating the monograph to 1938 and noting the translated texts; Miller, The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae, T&T Clark, 2000, on the Palamas study).

The significance of the timing is hard to overstate. Modern scholarly interest in Palamas is often associated with the work of Russian émigré and other scholars of the mid-twentieth century — the studies of the 1930s–1950s that culminated in John Meyendorff’s influential Introduction à l’étude de Grégoire Palamas (1959) and his critical edition of the Triads (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, chs. 4–6, on the modern Palamas revival and Meyendorff’s role). Stăniloae’s monograph of 1938 stands near the very beginning of this recovery, and in some respects ahead of it: a young Romanian dogmatician had gone to the manuscripts and produced a substantial study of Palamas before the Palamite renaissance became a defining feature of Orthodox theology (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on the pioneering character of Stăniloae’s Palamas study). [Disputed: Stăniloae’s 1938 study is sometimes described as “the first” modern monograph on Palamas; more cautiously, it is one of the earliest and was produced independently from the manuscripts. Priority claims depend on how one counts earlier partial studies; the guide affirms only that it was pioneering and early, not that it was demonstrably first (see Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015).]

Palamas at the Center of His Theology

The Palamas study was not an isolated piece of historical scholarship but the acquisition of a framework Stăniloae would use for the rest of his life. The distinction between the divine essence (imparticipable, forever beyond the creature’s grasp) and the divine energies (the uncreated operations and glory of God, truly communicated to creatures) is one of the structural principles of his whole dogmatics (Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology: An Evaluation and Critique of the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae, Paternoster, 1999, on the Palamite essence–energies distinction in Stăniloae; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6).

It does at least three kinds of work for him. First, it grounds his apophatic theology: because God’s essence is imparticipable and unknowable, all knowledge of God is knowledge of his energies, and the deepest knowledge passes into the apophatic experience of a presence that exceeds all concepts (see The World as Gift and Apophatic Theology). Second, it grounds his doctrine of deification: theosis is real participation in God — not a metaphor, not mere moral improvement — precisely because the creature is united to the uncreated energies of God, while the distinction of essence preserves the abiding difference between Creator and creature (Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology, 1999, on the Palamite structure of Stăniloae’s doctrine of theosis; see Person, Communion, and Deification). Third, it grounds his theology of creation and grace: the world and the human person are open to the real presence and action of God through his energies, so that grace is God himself communicated, not a created intermediary (Stăniloae, The Experience of God, trans. Ioniță and Barringer, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, on the divine energies in creation and grace).

The Light of Tabor and the Hesychast Tradition

Stăniloae received from Palamas not only a conceptual distinction but a whole vision of the Christian life as ordered toward the vision of the uncreated light — the light of Tabor, seen by the hesychast saints, which is the uncreated glory of God truly perceived by the purified (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6, on Stăniloae, Palamas, and the uncreated light; see St. Gregory Palamas). This bound his Palamism to the Filocalia: the hesychast prayer of the heart that the Philokalia teaches is the practical path toward the very experience of God that Palamas defended theologically (see The Filocalia Translation and The Jesus Prayer). In Stăniloae the Palamite theology, the Philokalic practice, and the systematic dogmatics form one continuous whole — which is why his interpreters treat his Palamism not as one topic among others but as a key to his entire achievement (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6; Miller, The Gift of the World, 2000).

A Balanced Palamism

Stăniloae’s use of Palamas has been noted for its balance. He does not deploy the essence–energies distinction polemically, as a mere anti-Western weapon, nor does he isolate it as an abstract metaphysical thesis; he integrates it into a positive theology of the personal God who gives himself in love, so that the “energies” are understood as God’s own personal self-communication rather than an impersonal emanation (Bartoş, Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology, 1999, on the personalist integration of Palamism in Stăniloae; Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, 2015, ch. 6). This personalist reading of Palamas is one of Stăniloae’s distinctive contributions to the modern Palamite revival, and it connects his Palamism to his theology of the person and of the Trinity (see Person, Communion, and Deification).

See Also

References

  • Stăniloae, Dumitru. Viața și învățătura Sfântului Grigorie Palama [The Life and Teaching of St Gregory Palamas]. Sibiu, 1938. (The pioneering monograph, with translated texts, on the life and doctrine of Palamas.)
  • Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015. (Ch. 6: Stăniloae’s manuscript study of Palamas; the 1938 monograph and its pioneering, early character; Palamas, the uncreated light, and the hesychast tradition in Stăniloae; chs. 4–6 on the modern Palamas revival and Meyendorff’s Introduction of 1959.)
  • Bartoş, Emil. Deification in Eastern Orthodox Theology: An Evaluation and Critique of the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1999. (The essence–energies distinction in Stăniloae; the Palamite structure of his doctrine of deification; the personalist integration of Palamism.)
  • Miller, Charles. The Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000. (The Palamas study and its place in Stăniloae’s achievement.)
  • Stăniloae, Dumitru. The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Trans. Ioniță and Barringer. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994– . (The divine energies in creation and grace.)