The teaching of St. Gregory Palamas was based on the understanding that man, the greatest of all God’s creatures, had been called to enter into direct and unmediated communion with God even from this present life. The chief manner by which this is achieved is through the grace of God and noetic prayer, that is, through the Prayer of the Heart, also known as the Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me. For Gregory and his fellow Hesychasts, true theology, true knowledge of God, is given not to those whose minds have been exercised in lofty concepts about God, but to those who, through prayer and ascetic striving in accordance with the commandments of Christ, have been made worthy to behold the vision of Christ in glory, to those who have seen God face to face and who share in His very life.

St. Gregory is, above all, the theologian of the Transfiguration: the great New Testament Theophany, which gives us, in a graphic and concrete manner, the vision of God’s purpose in creating man. In Christ’s resplendent form, as it appeared before the three chosen disciples on Mount Tabor not long before His crucifixion, we see our future hope: Human nature filled with divine glory; human nature suffused with the grace of God, the very Life of the Most Holy Trinity.

But in the vision of Christ Transfigured, Peter, James and John first and foremost, behold Christ as God, consubstantial and equal in every respect with God the Father, Whose exact image He is.

St. John wrote: No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.

Our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ teaches us that He is the image of the Father: He that has seen me has seen the Father, and that No man comes to the Father but by me. This has tremendous consequences for our understanding of the divine economy, and for our reading of Holy Scripture.

So the Eastern Church sees Christ as God’s revelation to us about our own humanity. Because God is joined, through Jesus, to human nature, so we are joined to God. This is how He chose to create us. It is not something that we can merit or to which we are entitled. God chose to infuse His life into all creation and then also create a portion of His creation, humanity, in His own   image and unto His likeness.