St Gregory Palamas

Another great Father of the Eastern Church is, of course, Gregory Palamas. Like Maximus the Confessor, the Transfiguration of Our Lord was at the very center of his theology. The vision of the Divine Light of Tabor stands at the epicenter of his theology, permeating and informing his every word. Many of the Fathers wrote about the meaning of the Lord’s Transfiguration before him and he regarded himself as but a faithful exponent and continuator of their spiritual theology. None, however, integrated the Taborian theophany into the very fabric of their theological vision in quite as comprehensive a way as he did. It is, indeed, this all-encompassing Taborian perspective which truly constitutes his greatest contribution to the subject and which justifies the   Eastern Church’s appellation of him as Theologian par excellence of the divine Light of Tabor.

Gregory’s fundamental concern, evident in all his works, is to affirm that even in this present life man is called to work for an unmediated communion with God Himself. Prayer is at one and the same time the chief means by which this communion is attained, and, in its truest form, the communion itself. Prayer as the true communion with God, prayer as true theology, is nothing less than the face to Face encounter with the theandric Christ, resplendent in His pre-eternal and divine glory as He was revealed to His three disciples on Mount Tabor.

For Gregory the divine Light of Tabor is unequivocally uncreated. It is a light, therefore, but a light that is radically unlike any created light known to man. Though perceptible to both the senses and the intellect, in the human experience of deification the Uncreated Light of Christ transcends every aspect of our createdness, including the human senses and the human intellect. Hence it is both suprasensible and supra-intellectual. Gregory accuses those who wage war against the Light, that is, those who consider the Light to be both sensible and created, base their understanding not on Scripture and   Sacred Tradition but on the rational word of the Greeks, on the wisdom, that is, of the world.

So what he is saying is that as we grow deeper in our relationship with God, the Light we experience is beyond human understanding. The saints have told us of their experience of God as an over-whelming feeling of being totally enveloped in a field of intense light. This same experience is reported by those with near-death experiences.