The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas
The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body
By (author) Alexandros Chouliaras
How are we to regard our body? As a prison, an enemy, or, maybe, an ally? Is it something bad that needs to be humiliated and extinguished, or should one see it as a huge blessing, that deserves attention and care? Is the body an impediment to human experience of God? Or, rather, does the body have a crucial role in this very experience? Alexandros Chouliaras’ book The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body argues that the fourteenth-century monk, theologian, and bishop Gregory Palamas has interesting and persuasive answers to offer to all these questions, and that his anthropology has a great deal to offer to Christian life and theology today. Amongst this book’s contributions are these: for Palamas, the human is superior to the angels concerning the image of God for specific reasons, all linked to his corporeality. Secondly, the spiritual senses refer not only to the soul, but also to the body. However, in Paradise the body will be absorbed by the spirit, and acquire a totally spiritual aspect. But this does not at all entail a devaluing of the body. On the contrary, St Gregory ascribes a high value to the human body. Finally, central to Palamas’ theology is a strong emphasis on the human potentiality for union with God,?theosis: that is, the passage from image to likeness. And herein lies, perhaps, his most important gift to the anthropological concerns of our epoch.
How are we to regard our body? As a prison, an enemy, or, maybe, an ally? Is it something bad that needs to be humiliated and extinguished, or should one see it as a huge blessing, that deserves attention and care? Is the body an impediment to human experience of God? Or, rather, does the body have a crucial role in this very experience? Alexandros Chouliaras’ book The Anthropology of St Gregory Palamas: The Image of God, the Spiritual Senses, and the Human Body argues that the fourteenth-century monk, theologian, and bishop Gregory Palamas has interesting and persuasive answers to offer to all these questions, and that his anthropology has a great deal to offer to Christian life and theology today. Amongst this book’s contributions are these: for Palamas, the human is superior to the angels concerning the image of God for specific reasons, all linked to his corporeality. Secondly, the spiritual senses refer not only to the soul, but also to the body. However, in Paradise the body will be absorbed by the spirit, and acquire a totally spiritual aspect. But this does not at all entail a devaluing of the body. On the contrary, St Gregory ascribes a high value to the human body. Finally, central to Palamas’ theology is a strong emphasis on the human potentiality for union with God,?theosis: that is, the passage from image to likeness. And herein lies, perhaps, his most important gift to the anthropological concerns of our epoch.
- By (author) Alexandros Chouliaras
Other Titles in this Series
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Volume 2: Self-catholicization, Meta-narcissism, and Christian Theology
Volume 57
Seeking the Face of God
The Reception of Augustine in the Mystical Thought of Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St Thierry
Volume 11
The ‘Universal Prayer’ in the Ancient Latin Liturgies. Patristic Evidence and Liturgical Texts
Volume 56
Inventio meditativa
The Rhetoric and Hermeneutics of Meditation in Hugh of Saint-Victor, Guigo II, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio
Volume 58
Analogical Identities
The Creation of the Christian Self: Beyond Spirituality and Mysticism in the Patristic Era
Volume 28
Friendship as Ecclesial Binding
A Reading of St. Augustine's Theology of Friendship from his In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus
Volume 48
The Christian Topography of Early Islamic Jerusalem
The Evidence of Willibald of Eichstatt (700-787 CE)
Volume 2
Through the Bone and Marrow
Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe
Volume 45
Removing Masculine Layers to Reveal a Holy Womanhood
The Female Transvestite Monks of Late Antique Eastern Christianity
Volume 13
‘The Letter Killeth’
Redeeming Time in Augustine's Understanding of the Authority of Scripture
Volume 51
Saints and Sinners in Early Christian Ireland
Moral Theology in the Lives of Saints Brigit and Columba
Volume 3
The Spirit, the World and the Trinity
Origen's and Augustine's Understanding of the Gospel of John
Volume 40
‘The loss of a minute is just so much loss of life’
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith in the Holy Land
Volume 39
Similar Books
«Solazoxa festa, stradolze e stracomplia»
Festschrift für Raymund Wilhelm zum 65. Geburtstag mit Beiträgen zu Diskurstraditionen und mittelalterlicher Philologie
Volume 249
A Collaborative Tapestry in Honour of Shirley Ann Brown / Une fresque brodée en l’honneur de Shirley Ann Brown
The Bayeux Tapestry Seen by her Colleagues and Friends / La Tapisserie de Bayeux vue par ses collègues et amis
A Companion to Christianity and Sport in Europe and North America (19th-21st centuries)
Volume 1: Western and Eastern Europe
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes – Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies
Volume 51
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
