Now, regarding the accusation of iconoclasm, and despite the total lack of evidence suggesting the Hesychasts were negatively disposed towards icons, it seems that Palamas's opponents started from a theoretical premise, and there seems to be also a practical reason behind their regarding the Hesychasts as iconoclasts. 

The theoretical premise would have been that if Hesychasts were Messalians then they would also be against icons: Because the Messalians were against icons. Every Messalian was an iconoclast by definition. Gregoras himself accuses the Hesychasts of being iconoclasts and of burning icons, and that's a rather fantastic accusation. He says that among the Messalians on Athos was George of Larissa, Joseph the Cretan and Moses the Painter. So Gregoras wants us to believe that Moses the Painter, or “Zografos”—the painter of icons—used to burn his own icons. None of this makes much sense but, as we mentioned earlier, perhaps there was a more practical reason as to why the Hesychasts were regarded as iconoclasts by their opponents. Of course, the Hesychasts were not like the Messalians, who rejected icons, since they were able to see God with their physical eyes. And since they were able to see God in this way, what need could there have possibly been for icons in the first place for a Messalian? How exactly they saw God, however, the Messalians never say. But the Hesychasts, it would seem, were against naturalist representations in icons. We said this before, but it bears repeating. 

At that time, the famous Macedonian School of Art, so called, these names don't always help you, but the Macedonian School of Art was in its prime, and it was based on the style of, or the chief exponent of which was, the great Panselinos. (His name means full moon.) Now, Panselinos was a brilliant iconographer, and you can see his iconography in the Cathedral Church of Mount Athos in the capital, Kariyes. His wall paintings are exquisite, they are remarkable. This is the famous Protaton of Kariyes. We see his work at Vatopedi and also at other monasteries on the Holy Mountain. 

It does seem that this style was not appreciated by the Hesychasts of the fourteenth century. Why? Why were the Hesychasts not attracted by this beautiful, wonderful, iconographic style of Panselinos? When you look at the examples of the Macedonian School, the iconography of Panselinos, take a look at the dynamic faces, the prosopography. In the frescoes of the Protaton, take a look at those of Christ, of Saint John the Theologian, and others, which were written by Panselinos himself. And there you will find dramatic movement, expression, and the use of natural colors in the countenances of the saints portrayed. Panselinos was first and foremost a prosopographer. 

Now take a look and compare the style of Panselinos and that of the depiction of another iconographer, this time an iconographer who became known in Russian as Feofan Grek, Theophanes the Greek, who went to Russia in the mid fourteenth century, and who develops a style which is an expression of Hesychasm. Take a look at his famous icon of Macarius the Egyptian—Macarius the Great. Theophanes the Greek, we said before, we have two El Grecos in history. We have the El Greco who went to Spain in the sixteenth century, whose name was Domenicos Theotokopoulos. And Feofan Grek, the other El Greco, went to Russia approximately two centuries earlier. And both of them brought the spirit of Hesychasm to the places where they flourished. 

The Hesychasm of El Greco, the El Greco of the West, was very different and could not be accepted in its fourteenth century form. The first El Greco went to Russia and became probably the greatest iconographer in Russian history and, as I'm sure you know, he was the teacher of Andrei Rublov. So in his famous icon of Macarius the Egyptian, Macarius the Great, we have a dark background with a barely discernible face in the middle, which is also rather dark, and using colors that are not natural, but at various points, such as from the saint’s beard, we see thin lines of light. These are illuminations, these are rays, rays of light. They are rays of the divine light. We don't see any of this in the style of Panselinos. These are the rays which shine forth from God in His divine energies, and it is, then, the energies of God that lend expression to the prosopography of Theophanes the Greek, Feofan Grek. It's clear, moreover, that this style of iconography comes from Mount Athos, and indeed from the Hesychast tradition. Of course, the names Macedonian School, Cretan School, as this style is often referred to, are misnomers, really, they're a little misleading. Both of the styles referred to above are products of Constantinople and Mount Athos. 

Now, here it should be noted that Theophanes the Greek was sent to Russia by a particular person, Philotheos Kokkinos, in 1374. And he did this deliberately. He was sent there much in the same way as bishops and abbots and others were sent, and, as an iconographer, Feofan was able to penetrate and influence in many and various ways. In other words, he was sent with the express purpose of conveying the spirit of Hesychasm, as a bearer of the Hesychast spirit. And it is a fact that, from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, there is nothing in the Church that is not deeply influenced by the Hesychast tradition. 

So let us turn now to some of the gnosiological aspects of the Hesychast controversy, and specifically to the knowledge of God. As Saint Gregory used to say, there's human knowledge and then there's divine knowledge. And the amazing thing about human knowledge is that it boils down to the same thing, and I know that's a long story, and you have the whole history of ideas. Ultimately, human knowledge searches for the essence of things, so it's essentialist in character. It's interesting that human reason, left to its own devices, the human “dianoia”, wants to discover what a thing is, no matter what that thing may be. In philosophical terms, you either tend towards a Platonic view of the scheme of things, or you tend towards an Aristotelian, and there are different shades between the two poles. These are the two poles of human knowledge, though, and they've been described in different ways by different cultures, and they have their own characteristics, but ultimately, it's all about what is reality. The human mind can only go so far, and it's limited by its rational approach to things, even when it attempts to be suprarational, even when it tries to be apophatic in the philosophical sense. For example, Barlaam actually argues against the filioque. But when he argues against the filioque, his argument is, “the Latins are wrong to introduce the filioque, because ultimately we don't know what the filioque means”. That's why Saint Gregory, when he writes his two treatises against the filioque, he calls them demonstrations. Saint Gregory's demonstrations do have a philosophical dimension in as much as he presents a reasonable argumentation, but his treatises are ultimately based on the experience of the saints. It's not a philosophical argumentation. 

I've been involved in examinations at the doctoral level, where I was the external examiner, and the other three examiners were Roman Catholics, and they really were upset when this PhD candidate was trying to follow the Orthodox line and saying, “this is not rational, this cannot be understood rationally or philosophically”. The three examiners, they were saying, “then, what's left?” What is left? There's nothing left. Take away the rational, we have nothing. That's what they really believe, because they're not aware of the empirical aspect. The empirical basis, not just the aspect, but the basis of Biblical and Patristic theology is empirical. It's based on experience. We experience God through our noetic principle, noetic faculty, and then we have the ability to describe that. The description is where the use of our reason comes in, but that description still cannot convey, by itself, the experience. So there's a tension between the experience and the description of the experience, because to understand the experience presupposes some experience. 

The approach of Gregoras represents the philosophical mindset found among certain intellectuals during the Byzantine Renaissance of this period. This is the renaissance that actually influenced the Italian Renaissance. So it's interesting how, when you take a philosophical or conceptual approach to these questions, you end up with the same basic conclusions, because by taking that approach, you have already assumed a set of presuppositions that will determine your conclusions. It sounds a bit abstract. I'll make it a bit more concrete. I'll try to explain to you how there's no analogia entis and there's no analogia fidei in the Orthodox tradition. Because, on the one hand, the analogia entis is based not on the created-uncreated distinction, but it's based on the philosophical distinction between spirit and matter, which became the primary distinction in the West, instead of the created-uncreated, even though in the fourteenth century in the West, William of Occam attacked the Platonic basis of Scholasticism and almost destroyed it. 

He made the argument that if we were supposed to believe, as the Scholastics taught, that all the ideas, the ideas of everything, were in the mind of God, then that would mean that there would be good ideas, or better ideas, in the mind of God and worse ideas. If we are to believe that there are worse ideas in the mind of God, then that means that in the very being of God there is imperfection. How can imperfection exist in God? Because the Scholastics, taking the Platonic approach, generally speaking, thought of God as a kind of architect who had the ideas in his mind, for everything that existed, the plan, the pattern, and then He implemented the plans of everything that you see. But if some of what you see is good and some of what you see is not good, where does the, where does the not good come from? Those lesser ideas: if they're in the mind of God, they mean that God contains imperfection. Quite a simple argument in the end, but it threatened to destroy the whole structure of Scholasticism and Thomism. 

Luther followed Occam on these questions. Can we know God through the creation? And this argument took away the analogis entis, it took away philosophy and it said, only revelation. Only by revelation can we know God, and by revelation Luther and his followers understood Holy Scripture. So only Holy Scripture can give you knowledge of God, sola scriptura, not analogia entis, only analogia fidei. But in the Orthodox tradition there's no analogia fidei either, because there's no similarity between God and creation on the one hand, analogia entis, and there's no similarity between God and the words and images that are contained on the pages of the Holy Scriptures. It's a language, it's a holy book, but it's only holy when there's a life connected to it, there's an experience connected to it. By itself, it is not illumination. If you look carefully, in the tradition of the Reformers, illumination is reading Scripture. That's how they understand illumination, and in the Roman Catholic tradition it's Scripture, and it's also studying the world. That's illumination. So illumination, either way, becomes intellectual. Because even if you just limit it to a book, actually analogia comes in through the backdoor anyway, because you're suggesting that there's a similarity between the words of Scripture and God Himself. 

So the difficulty is that when you look at the Orthodox tradition from a Western standpoint, you are looking for your reference point, you are looking for your authority, auctoritas. Where do you look? So there's a tension between the experience, and the description of the experience. That's the difficulty. We feel very uncomfortable because we again, the human mind, wants to put things in nice, neat, manageable categories, and the Orthodox faith says no, it doesn't have anything to do with that. It has to do with repentance. It has to do with humility, Christlike humility. It has to do with who loves God the most. Who is a greater saint, the patriarch or a simple layperson? In the Orthodox tradition, it depends on who loves God the most. There's no ontological difference between the patriarch and the layperson. 

What we have said demonstrates why there are similarities between a Gregoras and a Barlaam, and that, whatever differences they might have in the details of their critique, the fact is that both of them are not coming from within the Orthodox tradition, to the questions that they're trying to address. Again, the approach is the same. What is different? The details. There are some significant, quote unquote, differences in detail. But in response to the Eunomian question, what did the Cappadocian fathers say? And in response to the early Arians, what did Athanasius appeal to? When he said to Arius, “who told you this has anything to do with Aristotle?” Athanasius, who comes from the tradition of the desert, with St. Anthony, the Cappadocians, who appeal to the mystery experience of God. St. John Chrysostom, the same. And we see now people coming out of a similar set of presuppositions arguing against St. Gregory's defense of the tradition of the Church. 

Knowledge of God. It's about prayer. How do we know God? We pray. In the Orthodox tradition we pray. We don't think our way into the kingdom of Heaven. We pray, we worship, and that teaches us everything we need to know. 

But first take a look, if you will, at the homilies of St. Gregory Palamas, in which is contained all of his ascetico-theological vision. So I would suggest that you read Homily 53, On the Entry of the Mother of God into the Holy of Holies, wherein he presents the Mother of God as the Archetypal Hesychast, the model of Hesychasm, and pay especial attention to the notes that accompany that homily. It is in fact today a theological treatise. St. Gregory originally wrote it as his homily on the Entry of the Mother of God into the Holy of Holies, and it was preserved as such. But he worked on it over the years and it turned into a treatise. So it's about three times the length of a long homily by St. Gregory, and there is a lot to it. It's a wonderful hymn to the Mother of God, it's a prayer. It's a prayer to the Mother of God. It’s an offering to her in language which is, quite frankly, astounding. But he also pushes the language of theology to its very limits, and in his description of what the Mother of God accomplished when she entered the Holy of Holies. What was that about? What did she do there? What happened to her? And you'll find there, as I said, very important points which will help you to understand the whole ascetic ethos of the Hesychasts, of those people, in other words, who represent the life of prayer. When we say, for example, that this was a remarkable period, we had a series of three or four patriarchs of Constantinople who were Hesychasts. What that means is not just that they belonged to a certain party, or a group of people who espoused certain theories, and who strove to impose their way of thinking on others. What that means is that we had a series of patriarchs, one after another, who were men of prayer. They were men of prayer, and you know what? That transformed the whole of that period into something amazing. It transformed the whole period into something majestic, but not only that. The legacy that that produced is with us to this very day. It's a wonderful thing. 

We know from St. Simeon the New Theologian and others, the challenges that we have in the life of the Church. That we are—not just bishops, but we—are not what we should be. And if we were, the whole world would change, the whole world would be transformed, if we were truly disciples of Christ. And this period in the life of the Church, in the history of the Church, the real history of the Church, the history of the saints, has had a tremendous impact. I mentioned just one example last week, the effect of sending Feofan Grek into the Russias, and thereby transmitting the whole spirit and ethos of the life of prayer throughout the Slav lands. Such was the influence of Feofan Grek. So, tremendously important to appreciate this, when we have leaders who are men of prayer, look at what happens. Look at how wonderful it is, that the Church truly becomes a paradise on earth, and many blessings are bestowed upon all the members of the body of Christ.