Gregory Palamas and Islam

The fact that yesterday, on the Gregorian paschalion, was the second Sunday of Lent when Gregory Palamas is commemorated, and this coming Sunday the same feast of the same figure for those on the Julian paschalion, means that the father of hesychasm will be on a lot of minds this week. What better time to draw your attention to a book set for release next month by the widely respected scholar and theological translator Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam (Liverpool University Press, April 2020), 544pp.

Published as part of the Translated Texts for Byzantinists series of LUP, this collection, the publisher tells us, offers

--the first English translation of a dozen key texts by or relating to Gregory Palamas;
--fascinating first-hand accounts of fourteenth-century Christian debates with Muslim scholars;
--first English translation of all the Synodal Tomoi issued in defence of the hesychasts;
--detailed exposition of the historical context of a theological controversy that is still alive today.

Gregory Palamas, a monk of Mount Athos and metropolitan of Thessalonike from 1347 to 1357, was a leading fourteenth-century Byzantine intellectual. He was the chief spokesman for the hesychasts in the controversy bearing that name, which began when a charge of heresy was laid against him in 1340 and ended with his proclamation as a saint in 1368. Although excellent English translations of some of Palamas' theological writings are available, very few texts relating to his historical role have yet been translated. This book contains the first English translation of the contemporary Life of Palamas by Philotheos Kokkinos, which is our principal source of biographical information on him. Also translated into English for the first time are the Synodal Tomoi from 1341 to 1368, which chart the progress of the hesychast controversy from the viewpoint of the victors, together with the corpus of material relating to Palamas' year of captivity among the Turks, which offers a unique insight into conditions for Christians and Muslims in the early Ottoman emirate. The translations, all of which are based on critical texts, are preceded by introductions which set Palamas in his historical context and propose some changes to the conventional chronology of his life.

Inventing Gregory Palamas

I just received in the mail Oxford University Press's catalogue of forthcoming works. As always, there are lots of interesting books in the works, but none more so, it seems to me, than this book, not due out for nearly a year, but well worth the wait both because of the author (who is a widely respected translator and author of many books) and especially the timeliness of the topic: Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age by Norman Russell (OUP, 2019).

For those who have followed Orthodox constructions of identity in the West in the last three decades, as well as Orthodox apologetics, the figure of Gregory Palamas looms large, almost always as a cipher and a rock against whom the horrors of (inter alia) Thomism, rationalism, and scholasticism can be dashed to pieces in triumphalist fashion. But that narrative construction, always shaky at best as far as real scholars were concerned, really began to fall apart when Christiaan Kappes (interviewed here) published his book on the Immaculate Conception; and when, a few months later, Marcus Plested published his book on Orthodox Readings of Aquinas. Both showed that Palamas was far from the anti-Western figure he had been made out to be; both showed that he engaged, often quite positively, with Thomism and other Western schools of thought. (For an interview with, engagement of, and lecture by Plested, go here and follow the links.)

To be fair, it is not only Orthodox apologists who got into this act. As Russell's forthcoming book notes, a key figure in Western distortions of Eastern thought, a key figure in Western polemics and triumphalism of an equally repellent variety, is Martin Jugie, who had an obvious hatred of Palamas and did everything he could to poison Western Catholicism against him. As Jaroslav Pelikan once archly said of Jugie, his tragedy was that he knew so much but understood so little.

Jugie and others figure prominently in Russell's forthcoming book, for which the publisher has given us this table of contents:

List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I THE HISTORICAL RECEPTION OF PALAMITE THEOLOGY
1. The Orthodox Struggle to Assimilate Palamite Thinking
2. Martin Jugie and the invention of Palamism
3. John Meyendorff's Response to Jugie
4. New Directions since Meyendorff
Part II RAISING THE LARGER QUESTIONS
5. What Does Doctrinal Development Mean?
6. How is a Participatory Understanding of the Divine Mystery to be Attained?
7. What is the Reality of Divine-Human Communion?
8. Could Palamas Become 'the Inheritance of all Christians'?
Bibliography

And this description:

The fourteenth-century Greek hesychast and controversialist, Gregory Palamas, has been so successfully cast as 'the other' in Western theological discourse that it can be difficult to gain a sympathetic hearing for him. In the first part of this book, Norman Russell traces the historical reception of Palamite thought in Orthodoxy and in the West, and investigates how 'Palamism' was constructed in the early twentieth century by both Western and Eastern theologians (principally Martin Jugie and John Meyendorff) for polemical or apologetic purposes. Russell argues that we need to go behind these ideological constructions in order to gain a true perception of the teaching of Gregory Palamas. In his recent survey of Palamite scholarship, Robert Sinkewicz noted that it is now time to raise the larger questions. The second part of the book attempts to do this, following the contours of Palamas' thinking in three areas: his relationship to tradition, his philosophy, and his theology. Russell shows that Palamite thought, when freed of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, has the potential to enrich our understanding of divine-human communion. This study contributes to the changing paradigm of scholarship on Palamas, nudging it towards the point at which Palamite thought can be used fruitfully by contemporary Western and Eastern theologians without the need to subscribe to what has been regarded as 'Palamism'.

When the book is published next year, I will have more to say about it then. 

The Oxford Handbook of Christology

As I've noted on here many times, we are living in a time when "handbooks of" or "companions to" are all the rage: major publishers continue to bring them out on a variety of topics, including sacramental theology. Set for November release is a hefty collection of articles devoted to that most controverted of topics that so riled and divided early Christianity and led to such complex and often maddening debates: Francesca Aran Murphy, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Christology (Oxford UP, 2015), 704pp.

About this book we are told:

The Oxford Handbook of Christology brings together 40 authoritative essays considering the theological study of the nature and role of Jesus Christ. This collection offers dynamic perspectives within the study of Christology and provides rigorous discussion of inter-confessional theology, which would not have been possible even 60 years ago. The first of the seven parts considers Jesus Christ in the Bible. Rather than focusing solely on the New Testament, this section begins with discussion of the modes of God's self-communication to us and suggests that Christ's most original incarnation is in the language of the Hebrew Bible. The second section considers Patristics Christology. These essays explore the formation of the doctrines of the person of Christ and the atonement between the First Council of Nicaea in 325 and the eve of the Second Council of Nicaea. The next section looks at Medieval theology and tackles the development of the understanding of who Christ was and of his atoning work. The section on "Reformation and Christology" traces the path of the Reformation from Luther to Bultmann. The fifth section tackles the new developments in thinking about Christ which have emerged in the modern and the postmodern eras, and the sixth section explains how beliefs about Jesus have affected music, poetry, and the arts. The final part concludes by locating Christology within systematic theology, asking how it relates to Christian belief as a whole. This comprehensive volume provides an invaluable resource and reference for scholars, students, and general readers interested in the study of Christology.

If you peruse the table of contents, you will see such well known and highly respected scholars of the Christian East prominently featured among the contributors as Brian Daley, Khaled Anatolios, Norman Russell, and Andrew Louth.