Introduction

The person and theology of St Gregory Palamas achieved remarkable popularity in the twentieth century. A once esoteric name in a neglected period of ecclesiastical history, Gregory Palamas has today become a central figure of academic and ecumenical theology. Beginning in 1337, Gregory had appealed, in his response to Barlaam the Calabrian’s anti-Latin treatises, to the category of ‘things around God’ to show that, although God was indeed inconceivable in his essence, there was nevertheless a category of divine realities that could be known and demonstrated. In modern scholarship, it has sometimes been argued that the work of St Gregory Palamas seeks rather to defend the foundations and principles of spiritual experience than to expound an exhaustive and systematic metaphysics of divine being. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.