Hesychasm: Definitions

Someone aske me for a defnition of "Hesychasm", to which
I responded as follows. I think I was pretty mainstream
in what I wrote, but would welcome comments.

******

To the plaint, after having read much about it, including
Pelikan, "I still do not know what `hesychasm' means, I respond


>Hesychasm means at least three things simultaneously:
>
> Õthe word itself derives from "hesychia" which means stillness, quiet,
> cf 1 Thess 4:1, 2 Thess 3:12, 1 Tim 2:2, 1 Pet 3:4þ
>
> 1. A psychosomatic method of prayer, probably dating back a long
> way in Byzantine monasticism Õto St. Symeon the New Theologian
> in the 11th century, and earlierþ. There is a possible, and speculative
> link to Buddhist methods Õas with the rosaryþ.  The method involved
> control of beathing, posture Õperhaps including navelgazing - hence
> the charge that the monks were "omphalapsychoi" - men (and it
> seems only to have involved men) with souls in their navels. The
> intended effect of this prayer was the vision of light, often
> compared with the light seen at the Transfiguration at Mt. Tabor.
>
> Thes methods, and in a sense monastic power, were attacked by Barlaam
> of Calabria Õlater in life Petrarch's Greek teacherþ in the early
> 14th century.
>
> 2. In response a distinct theological response, also known as Hesychasm, but
> also as "Palamism", was evolved by St. Gregory Palamas, an Athonite monk
> and later Archbishop of Thessalonica.  The essential point is that Palamas
> defended the reality of the monks' prayer experience. He did this
> by extablishing a theological distinction analogous to that between
> unity/trinity with respct to God and nature/person with respect to
> Christ. Palamas said the God can be considered as, by nature, having
> an unknowable essence Õa position required by the Neoplatonic
> paradigm of an infinite and perfect being, by definition ineffable to
> finite beingsþ and  Õthis is new, although Palamas would have denied
> itþ *knowable* "energies".  One way of thinking about this is to say
> that for Palamas, in some sense, an aspect God's grace was part of God. These
> energies were knowable, and were what the monks were seeing.
>
> ÕIn contrast Roman Catholic theologies of mystical experience, some
> of which is quite apophatic, have a real problem. Catholic theology
> also insists on God's ineffability, so how can mystical experience
> be understood? The one pope who insisted that the beatific vision
> was available on earth was castigated as being in error! Catholic
> writers vary between theories of some "special grace", or are willing
> to assert that mystics do not experience God at all, but that God's
> grace give them a simulcrum of the experience - at least that was the
> argument of my Dominican freind, Fr. Aidan Nichol's OPþ.
>
> Although Palamas method was to use language of negation, I would
> not get too carried away with that, or moderm mystagogy by some
> Orthodox writers. His project was in a sense related to that of
> Aquinas, who also faced the problem of the denial of possiblity
> of saying anything about God. Aquinas answer was to develop Õeven
> if textbook theology took this too farþ the notion of "analogy
> of being" ÕMaimonides took the same approach I gather.þ Like
> Aquinas, Palamas was insisting on the possibility of human knowledge
> of God: Aquinas through what amounts to a program of intellectation,
> Palamas through the reality of Mystical experience. Aquinas' late in
> life personal mystical experience may have meant that in the end, he
> would have agreed with Palamas!
>
> Palamas' theology representes intellectual footwork of a high order -
> completely analogous to that of the 4th and 5th centure theological
> and christological debate. The eventual adoption of Palamite theology
> and its significance is not always realized. One somtimes finds, for
> Orthodox writers who accuse the Latins of altering the faith by
> adding the "filoque", but do not recognize that the Orthodox also
> "developed" their theology just as much, perhaps more!. ÕThe whole issue
> was avoided at the Council of Florence, but by the late 19th and 20th
> centuries, this had become an area of dispute between Orthodox and Catholics,
> see for instance the very well informed, but incredibly hostile, writings
> of Martin Jugie, handily available in French in the Dictionaire de theologie
> Catholique.þ
>
> 3. Palamas theology, which brought about a huge conflict, got involved
> in Byzantine internal politics, which are particularly complex
> in the 14th century. There ended up being a Heyschast party, whose
> members might be neither monks nor theologians, and anti-Hesychasts
> who were extremely pious and even monastically inclined. Eventually
> in series of councils in the mid 14th centtury Palamite theology
> was adopted as the official position of the Orthodox Church.
>
> The represented a victory both for the particular theology of
> Palamas, and for the monastic, especially Athonite, party
> in general. The result was a veritable monastic takeover of the
> Church - all later patriarchs, and many later bishops were monks.
>
> In effect this made the church stronger: and this same monastic, or
> heyschast,  party was responsible, at least if you take my former
> mentor John Meyendorff's position, for pushing the spread of
> Orthodoxy in the Slavic world, along with its particualr theology
> of prayer, and prayer directed at mystical experience. ÕThis theme
> remained strong in Russia, for instance in the life of the mytsic
> Seraphim of Sarov.þ
>
> The heyschasts were not, in fact, hostile to the general population:
> the stress in their prayer methods on didactic repetition, and on
> physical approachs to grace, along with a new stress on the liturgy,
> stood the Orthodox church well under Turkish and Tsarist
> domination when preaching, as seen in Protestantism, was not possible
> due both to low education levels and state prohibition.
>
> So in the widest perspective "hesychasm" can be seen as the mystical
> aesthetic of the Orthodox church in its later byzantine and post-byzantine
> periods.
>
> In sum, there is not one definition of "hesychasm", rather a variety
> of meanings related to mystical prayer, Palamite theology, Byzantine
> politics and later Orthodox and monastic aesthetics.
>
> Paul Halsall