Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age

by Norman Russell

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 thatit 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 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 whichPalamite thought can be used fruitfully by contemporary Western and Eastern theologians without the need to subscribe to what has been regarded as 'Palamism'.

286 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 21, 2019

About the author

Hello, reader! I hope that all's well with you. I am a graduate of Oxford and London universities, with the degrees of MA and PhD respectively. I served abroad in several regiments of the British Army before training as a teacher, and spending a very happy 26 years as Head of English in a comprehensive school in Liverpool UK. After accepting early retirement, I began a new career as an author, and to date I have had twenty novels published. My current publisher is the brilliant Joffe Books, who have just published the first of my Oldminster series of detective novels - more to follow!

My fiction leans towards the 'cosy' genre, though there are plenty of thrills and cunning plots to be found. I like to produce rounded characters who exist in their own right, rather than as just movers of the plot. My interests are mainly literary and academic, though I have plenty of time to observe the world as it is, and the countless wonderful people who inhabit it. If you like Agatha Christie, PD James and Catherine Moloney, then I think you'll like my work.