Apodictic Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit

by Gregory Palamas, Gregory Heers (Editor), Christopher C. Moody (Translator)

This towering figure of Orthodox spiritual life and teaching, the boast of Thessaloniki and spokesman for the Holy Mountain of Athos, is well known to students of Orthodox theology for his defense of the Hesychasts and exposition of the teaching of the Fathers on the Divine Energies and Theosis. What is not known, and with regard to which there is often great ignorance, even among Orthodox theologians in the West, is that the great hesychast was also a great defender of the Faith and Dogma of the Holy Trinity and a strident polemicist against the heresy of the filioque . Now the divine wisdom of the theologian of Grace applied and embraced by the Church for more than half a millennium is available in the English language for all lovers of the Holy Trinity to be edified and enlightened. For the first time, St. Gregory’s masterpiece, Apodictic Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit , is available in English. "Having returned again to the queen of cities, he published his treatise in two books against the Latins on the procession of the Holy Spirit in a wonderful way. This treatise was something original and extraordinary; our Church had never seen anything like it before on the subject. Indeed, to tell the truth, without any dissemblance or pretense, it was such as to make all the treatises against the Latins before this one look like childish games and mere semblances of dialectical argument." - St. Philotheos Kokkinos, excerpt from Life of St. Gregory Palamas

Genres: Theology, Christianity, Nonfiction

358 pages, Paperback

Published September 17, 2022

About the author

Saint Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) was a monk of Mount Athos in Greece and later the Archbishop of Thessalonica known as a preeminent theologian of Hesychasm. He is venerated as a Saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Though he is not widely venerated in the Roman Catholic Church he is recognised as a saint. The second Sunday of the Great Lent is called the Sunday of Gregory Palamas in those Churches that commemorate him according to the Byzantine Rite. Some of his writings are collected in the Philokalia, a highly regarded book in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Palamas is perhaps most well-known for his central role in the defense of the doctrine of Hesychasm, which was upheld in 1351 at the Council of Blachernae.

Reviews

[Gary Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Filioque, But Not In a Nutshell

If you ever wondered why the split of the Latin West from the Orthodox Apostolic Church or have a hard time understanding the significance of the added filioque to the Symbol of Faith by the Latin West, then this is your treatise. In this book is the English translation and the original Greek as explained in the beginning of the book on the history of the first Greek pressing in the early days of the printing press.
As a true theologian, Saint Gregory exhaustively proves the danger of the addition to the Symbol. So, this read will be a labor for us in the 21st century to comprehend all at once. I found that when I came to a section that was hard to understand or I was distracted due to where I was reading that it was a good idea to put it away and come back later in the day. But don't give up! This book is a must to read for anyone who seriously wishes to understand the depths of not only the division of the Church over three words (English: "of the Son"), but also the magnificence of the Trinity.
I hope you not only enjoy, but are truly blessed by God when you read this wonderful book.

[Josh McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

The introductory material is well presented and useful, as are the notes throughout. The work itself is invaluable and this bi-lingual edition is a significant boon to the English-speaking Orthodox world. As with most Church writings, it is worthwhile to read as much of the Fathers as possible, especially on Pneumatology, but if one understands the Latin position this book helps explicate the Orthodox position in opposition to the West.