Saint Gregory Palamas
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Search complete. 12 mentions across 6 episodes found for "Saint Gregory Palamas".
Oct 21, 2026
speaker_1HOST
All right? Now, you had others...
speaker_1HOST
Uh, Irenaeus of Lyon and Gregory, oh man, Nazanias, I don't know where he was from.
speaker_1HOST
Uh, he, he developed related, I, they, I should say they developed ideas about humanity's restoration and participation in God's life.
speaker_1HOST
All right.
speaker_1HOST
We are united with Christ and this is salvific, not about change, if that makes sense.
speaker_1HOST
All right.
speaker_1HOST
Now, um, if we go to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, like 1289, 1359, um, Gregory, I think it was from Palamas.
speaker_1HOST
I think is, is, is where, I think it's Gregory Palamas is how it's typically said.
Jay DyerHOST
saying that it's stupid paganism.
Jay DyerHOST
And this is the whole debate between Barliam, Akandinos, and Palamas.
Jay DyerHOST
Palamas says that this is Platonism and paganism, and ultimately atheism.
Jay DyerHOST
So guess what happens? As Byzantium falls and collapses, and this comes to the fore, it spills over from Plethon's influence.
Jay DyerHOST
Guess where it goes? Italian Renaissance.
speaker_2GUEST
And so that, that's what I mean, is we have to step outside of ordinary language in order to make a, a, a model like this.
speaker_2GUEST
Um, and a- another objection I'd probably bring up is that, um, this relative identity model, uh, kind of as a reductio here against you, uh, personally as an Orthodox Christian, this is com- like, this is a com- this is a commensurate model for Western and Eastern Christians, and that's a problem because in the Eastern Orthodox view, the Western Trinity is, um, if not demonic, then at least heretical, right? 'Cause it's like Palamas says, it's like on the first or second page of the Apodeictic Treatise.
speaker_2GUEST
It's on the, on the Holy Spirit.
speaker_2GUEST
He says that it was the serpent that gave, um, the Latins their, their doctrine of the Filioque, right?
David Patrick HarryHOST
And so when you look at, for example, the divine simplicity attributes that goes back to Plato himself or the Neoplatonist, we can see that this was a prominent part of the scholastic philosophical theological process.
David Patrick HarryHOST
And Palam- Palamas, Gregory, St. Gregory Palamas in the Eastern Orthodox said as soon as you tie action to God's essence, which is pure actus purus, which is part of the scholastic, the Catholic theology, he said this is only gonna lead to atheism in the Western world, and that's exactly what it does.
David Patrick HarryHOST
And I see, I see Nietzsche as that process that becomes vocalized in the Western psyche, in the Western mind.
David Patrick HarryHOST
And so because its theology itself undermined the tenets of what Christianity's actually proclaiming, that's why in Eastern Orthodoxy, God's actions, God's energies are separate from his essence.
Jay DyerHOST
But that's listed as one of those seven spirits.
Jay DyerHOST
So the apocalypse talking about the seven spirits of God, classic St. Gregory Palamas argument for the energies.
Jay DyerHOST
Those are uncreated energies that are really different things.
Jay DyerHOST
There really are seven.
51 MINS LATER
Jay DyerHOST
Did Jesus's grace that he grants and communicates to the human nature that he assumes, is that a created thing? Calvinists probably would
Jay DyerHOST
say, maybe it is, or maybe it's not, right? Guess what? This debate's already been had.
Jay DyerHOST
This is the debate between Barliam and Gregory Palamas, which I recommend you should read that.
Jay DyerHOST
It's only 80 pages.
Jay DyerGUEST
and so i'm not trying to foist everything on the papacy obviously life is more complex than that but the religious sentiment of the west goes in a very different direction than the ethos of the orthodox church and what you get there eventually manifests as a kind of a choice between what you're either going to be a protestant or you're going to be a papist a roman catholic And this, if you go to the key disputes in Byzantium where St. Gregory Palamas is arguing with a lot of the Western-minded thinkers and theologians, the Barleomites, the Akandinos, Prokhoros, he says, if you adopt this ideology, what will happen is this theological aberration will result in mass atheism.
Jay DyerGUEST
So very few people go to San Gregorio Palamas to locate, I think, this prophetic prediction.
Jay DyerGUEST
We're talking Byzantium in the 14th century of warning that the West, if it adopted this theological mistake that it would lead to mass atheism, but that's exactly what happened.
Jay DyerGUEST
And so not too long after that, I mean, there's other really great books as well that detailed the spiritual ideological.