Gregory Palamas
1296-1359 · Eastern Christianity · Prominent
Palamas was a Byzantine monk and later an archbishop. Hesychast monks on Mount Athos, who repeated the Jesus Prayer as their whole practice, said they saw the uncreated light of God, and he defended them with a distinction: God's essence stays beyond all knowing, while his energies are God himself in action, reaching the saints and uniting them to him. Councils affirmed the distinction as Orthodox doctrine.
Signature
The position Palamas is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence
- Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- strongly leans Beyond Brain (100 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (96 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (100 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ignorance
- mildly leans Bondage (38 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Palamas refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Transfiguration
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Receptive Intellect
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Divine Command
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Synergism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Sacred Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Divine Revelation / Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Logos
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?