Barlaam Refuted Palamas Defense Of Hesychasm

The term hesychast was “used to designate a ‘hermit’ or an anchorite” and they often followed the teachings of Evagrius who taught that constant mindful prayer was the goal of humanity and the eremitic lifestyle. This is because constant prayer reestablishes the relationship between God and humanity and helps them to experience the union with God that was intended. Through this union they are able to experience the true presence of God. This insures that through a life of constant prayer one can achieve theosis. Palamas’ defense of Hesychasm drew deeply from the writings of St. Macarius and for him “the goal of prayer is not the disincarnation of the mind, but a transfiguration of the entire person- soul and body- through the presence of the incarnated God, accessible to the conscious ‘certitude of the heart’.” (3, Palamas). Barlaam refuted Palamas’ use of philosophy in religious matters, Palamas’ position on how the body can participate in prayer and transformation and Palamas’ distinction between the essence and energy of God. For Matthew the Poor, Prayer begins on

Gregory’s theology of the essence and energies of God is a way for him to express that God remains completely transcendent in his unknowable essence, but God also is known, and can be experienced by God’s energies in the world. The energies that God has; omnipotence, providence and deification, must have been God’s from the beginning. If not then there must have been a time when God was not these things and then, not God. God’s essence caused all of God’s energies and so God is able to surpass all of these energies with God’s own essence. In this way, God is present in these energies and yet is so much more than them. Barlaam disagrees, he argues that if something can be participated in then it must be created. Therefore God’s energies, that Palamas explains, are created realities of God and not experiences of