"Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica in the middle of the fourteenth century, is the outstanding figure of later Byzantine theology, a writer who may well be compared with the greatest theologians of the medieval West. This book is the first full study of his life and work to be available in English."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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.

"This richly documented and lavishly illustrated study of Orthodox spirituality traces the development of "Orthodox mysticism" from the desert fathers through the patristic tradition to Byzantine hesychasm and its heritage in Russian monasticism. It shows how the work of Palamas transcends the limits of one school of spirituality and renews in its deepest essence the life of the Christian Mystery."--Jacket.

This study presents a new perspective on an important fourteenth-century Greek theologian, Gregory Palamas.

Gregory Palamas (1296-1359)-monk, archbishop and theologian-was a major figure in 14th-century Orthodox Byzantium. This, his greatest work, presents a defense in support of the monastic groups known as the "hesychasts," the originators of the Jesus Prayer.

Explores a fourteenth-century debate over man’s knowledge of God.

The foremost Roman Catholic theologian of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, was hugely popular in the last days of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire, in contrast to his largely negative reception by later Orthodox commentators.This book is the first to explore the long history of Orthodox fascination with Aquinas.

Mary the Mother of God is the first volume in the series Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas, the purpose of which is to bring the life and teaching of this remarkable fourteenth century saint (12961359) to a wider readership, to the layperson interested in the rich Biblical tradition of the Church Fathers.Arranged thematically, the work in hand consists of six sermons devoted to the Mother of our Lord, including the most celebrated of all Palamas' writings, his second sermon "On the Entry of the Mother of God into the Holy of Holies", Homily 53 in the surviving corpus of sixty-three homilies. The other sermons in this edition, in liturgical sequence and with their corresponding numbers in the corpus, are on the Holy Virgin's Nativity (Homily 42), the first sermon on the Entry (Homily 52), on the Annunciation (Homily 14), on the First to See the Risen Christ (Homily 18), and on the Dormition (Homily 37).

This book attempts to resolve some of the oldest and most bitter controversies between the Eastern and Western Christian churches: those concerning the doctrine of God, the nature of salvation, and theological method, all of which converge in the doctrine of deification. Deification was the dominant patristic model of salvation and remained the essential paradigm in the East but was thought to have disappeared from Western theology by the Middle Ages. A. N. Williams examines two key thinkers, each of whom is championed as the authentic spokesman of his own tradition and reviled by the other side. Taking Thomas Aquinas as representative of the West and Gregory Palamas for the East, she presents fresh readings of their work that both reinterpret each thinker and show an area of commonality between them much greater than has previously been acknowledged.