Books by Tikhon Alexander Pino
Routledge, 2022
St. Gregory Palamas (ca. 1296-1357) is among the most well-known and celebrated theologians of la... more St. Gregory Palamas (ca. 1296-1357) is among the most well-known and celebrated theologians of late Byzantium. An Athonite monk, abbot, and later Metropolitan of Thessalonica, Gregory is remembered especially for his distinction between God’s essence and energies. Articulated in more than twenty-five treatises and letters written over a twenty-year period, Gregory’s celebrated doctrine still generates a great deal of debate. What does Palamas actually mean by the term ‘energies’? Are they ‘activities’ that God performs, and, if so, how can they be eternal and uncreated? Indeed, how could God be simple if he possesses energies distinct from his essence? This book explores Palamas’s answers to these longstanding questions by providing a comprehensive account of the essence-energies distinction across his entire corpus. Going beyond the Triads and the One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, it analyzes all of the treatises produced by Palamas between the years 1338 and 1357. It seeks to understand what Palamas actually means when he speaks of God’s ‘energies,’ how he seeks to prove that they are distinct from the divine essence, and how he explains that this distinction in no way violates the unity and simplicity of the one God in Trinity.
Edited volumes by Tikhon Alexander Pino
Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai: Theologia Orthodoxa 67.2 (2022)
A special Open Access issue edited by Mihail Mitrea and Tikhon Pino, with contributions from Met.... more A special Open Access issue edited by Mihail Mitrea and Tikhon Pino, with contributions from Met. Job Getcha, Oleg Rodionov, Basil Lourie, Marco Fanelli, Lev Lukhovitskiy, Ioannis Polemis, Georgi Kapriev, Fr Alexandros Chouliaras, Dom Ralph Greis, Fr Peter Vryzas, Fr Zacharias Zacharou, Fr Maximos Constas, David Bradshaw, and Norman Russell.
Articles by Tikhon Alexander Pino
Pp. 389-410, in Andreas Zachariou, Ὁ ἅγιος Γρηγόριος Παλαμᾶς καὶ ὁ Ἡσυχασμός. Ἱστορικὲς διαστάσει... more Pp. 389-410, in Andreas Zachariou, Ὁ ἅγιος Γρηγόριος Παλαμᾶς καὶ ὁ Ἡσυχασμός. Ἱστορικὲς διαστάσεις καὶ σύγχρονες προκλήσεις καὶ προοπτικές, Πρακτικὰ Διεθνοῦς Ἐπιστημονικοῦ Συνεδρίου (Ἱερὰ Μητρόπολις Τριμυθοῦντος, 1-3 Ἰουλίου 2022) [St Gregory Palamas and Hesychasm. Past and Contemporary Challenges and Perspectives, Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference (Holy Metropolis of Trimythous, 1-3 July 2022)], Θεολογικὲς παρεμβάσεις 7, (Idalio, Cyprus: Metropolis of Trimythous, 2024).
Μοναχισμός. Ἱστορικὲς καὶ θεολογικὲς προσεγγίσεις, 2022
Hesychasm and hesychia have become eminently recognizable terms. They have come to be synonymous ... more Hesychasm and hesychia have become eminently recognizable terms. They have come to be synonymous with a spiritual ‘system’ and a set of practices that flourished in Late Byzantium, especially in the cells of Mt Athos and the monasteries of Thessalonica and Constantinople. Yet the scope and meaning of these concepts, particularly in the theology of St Gregory Palamas, with whom they are most closely associated, are not always carefully defined. Much attention has been given to the hesychastic method more generally, and to the doctrines of deification and contemplation in Palamas. Yet the precise nature of hesychastic ‘stillness’ in Palamas’s spiritual theology, especially as it relates to the traditional dichotomy between praxis and theoria, allows for further exploration. This paper examines St Gregory’s understanding of hesychia as a bridge between action and contemplation, looking especially at his description of the Mother of God as the paradigm of hesychasm in Homily 53 and his conception of the soul’s Sabbath in Homily 17. By setting Gregory’s exposition of hesychasm in these sources within the context of his broader doctrine of the divine energies, this paper aims to show that hesychia is both a radical ‘rest’ from the created activities of human nature and a transitus into the eternal activity (energeia) of God, transcending ‘stillness’ and bridging the gap between action and contemplation.
The contemporary debate over 'natura pura' is as much a battle about ressourcement as about metap... more The contemporary debate over 'natura pura' is as much a battle about ressourcement as about metaphysics. As theologians have sought to determine the limits and the potencies of human nature in light of the Fall and of grace, they have turned to the Fathers of the Church and the fontes of Thomistic thought in order to discover an authentic Christian anthropology. As is often the case, these conversations have tended to center on the inheritance of St. Augustine, whose anti-Pelagian writings have understandably dominated Western theological discourse. Yet, the problem of the nature-grace relationship also forms a central concern of the influential corpus of writings ascribed to Makarios-Symeon, which have the potential to broaden the scope of the present debate concerning the nature-grace distinction.
This paper argues that a conception of 'natura pura' is indeed present in Makarios, for whom it is an important metaphysical foundation supporting his ascetical theology. Though Makarios rejects any dichotomy between nature and grace that would fail to make creation wholly dependent on God, he does not see the ultimate synthesis and continuity between them as absolute. The ontological dimension of the nature-grace relationship in Makarios centers on the basic intelligibility of human nature as a discrete reality distinct not only from God’s sanctifying and saving operation, but from the evil which permeates fallen humanity and haunts it even after baptism. This basic distinction, which grants to nature a kind of autonomy, is intended to preserve both the gratuity of grace and the ultimate integrity of human nature in the face of both deification and the indwelling of evil. For this reason Makarios adheres in his ascetical teaching to a conception similar to 'natura pura,' which grants to human nature a qualified self-determination and independence even before its Creator. The result is a spirituality marked by the possibility of a true union of human and divine in the deified, without however resulting in a confusion of natures.
The integration of Makarios into the debate over natura pura has the potential to harmonize the extreme positions dependent, ostensibly, on the Greek Fathers, on one side, and the Thomistic commentators, on the other.
The Heythrop Journal 62 (2021): 1002-1012, 2019
Analogia: The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies 3.1 (2017): 53-73.
This paper seeks to clear the way for new historical-theological research into the corpus of St G... more This paper seeks to clear the way for new historical-theological research into the corpus of St Gregory Palamas and his followers in late Byzantium. While recognizing the immense impact and the extraordinary contribution of pioneering scholars such as Fr John Meyendorff, this paper examines the methodological and hermeneutic questions that dominated Neo-Palamite scholarship in the twentieth century.
Journal of Theological Studies 68.2 (2017): 551-571
This article advances a new interpretation of Philo of Alexandria’s ‘deification’ of Moses. Thoug... more This article advances a new interpretation of Philo of Alexandria’s ‘deification’ of Moses. Though previous scholarship has provided a variety of explanations for how the Jewish writer is able to extend the name ‘God’ to Moses, the present study attempts to improve upon earlier theories by rooting the language of deification in the philosophical distinctions that Philo himself espouses in his doctrine of God. Rejecting the notion that Philo was not a strict monotheist, and that the language of deification implies a mitigated monotheism, this paper argues that Philo’s God is indeed one, but that the singular Deity has both an essence, which remains transcendent and imparticipable, and an energeia, or activity, which is operative and present in the world and shareable with such biblical figures as Moses. The distinction, between ‘what’ God is and how he is present in creation, in turn accounts for the well-known but problematic concept of the Logos, which David Winston has properly called ‘the face of God turned toward creation’. That the name ‘God’ encompasses both dimensions of the Deity is what allows Philo to call Moses ‘God’ without attributing to him the very divine essence.
Never the Twain Shall Meet? Greeks and Latins Learning From Each Other in Byzantium (Byzantinisches Archiv - Series Philosophica) De Gruyter, 2017.
This paper examines the hylomorphic theory (the doctrine that body and soul constitute the Form a... more This paper examines the hylomorphic theory (the doctrine that body and soul constitute the Form and Matter, respectively, of a human being) espoused by Mark Eugenikos (1392-1445) in his treatise 'On the Resurrection.' It seeks, specifically, to determine whether Mark's anthropology here is influenced by the writings of Thomas Aquinas, whose impact on late Palaiologan theology was extensive. It compares Mark's metaphysics, including his angelogy, with the classic formulations of Thomistic thought, ultimately determining that there are important differences between the Latin Master and the future Archbishop of Ephesos. Yet even in spite of these differences, the treatise of Mark Eugenikos evinces many important points of contact with the basic sources and concerns of Aquinas, pointing to deeper commonalities between Byzantine and Scholastic thought than mere external influence.
Uncorrected proofs. Caveat lector.
Journal of Early Christian Studies 27.1, 2019
Basil of Ancyra, an important bishop and theologian in the decades following the Council of Nicae... more Basil of Ancyra, an important bishop and theologian in the decades following the Council of Nicaea, famously argued that the Son is like (homoios), but not identical, to the Father, just as Christ is like, but not identical, to other human beings. This article seeks to explain this complicated analogy between Christ’s humanity and his relationship with the Father by looking at the logic of Basil’s synodal letter of 358. Rejecting the argument that Basil saw consubstantiality in itself as the peculiar mark of passionate, material generation, this paper highlights the role of sin, rather than pathos, in Basil’s anthropology and christology. For Basil, the dynamic of sin serves to differentiate Christ from other human beings, just as the idiom of paternity, and an unoriginate mode of possessing divinity, distinguish the Father from the Son. As a way of navigating between the extremes of Heteroousian and Marcellan theologies, Basil’s theology was an important attempt at articulating what would become the hypostatic distinction between the Father and the Son.
Franciscan Studies 72 (2014)
Dionysius 31 (2013), Dec 2013
Studia Patristica 129 (2021): 243-365.
Christiaan KAPPES, Gregory Palamas’ Defense of Theology as Episteme: Historical Background and So... more Christiaan KAPPES, Gregory Palamas’ Defense of Theology as Episteme: Historical Background and Sources
Alexandros CHOULIARAS, Noera Aisthesis (Intellectual and Divine Perception): A Major Notion in St Gregory Palamas’ Anthropology
Jane SLOAN PETERS, Gregory Palamas’ Debt to Maximus the Confessor’s Dyenergist Christology
Dmitry BIRIUKOV, The Topic of the Divine Energies as Accidents in the Palamite Doctrine: Its Meaning, Historical Context, Including that of the Teaching about the Nature of Theological Language
Alessia BROMBIN, Historia brevis to Anne of Savoy: An Attempt to Rediscovering the Role of David Dishypatos on the Hesychast’s Controversy
Andreas ZACHARIOU, The Church Fathers in Gregory Acindynos’ Theological Conception: The Interpretation of the Term Meizon
Petros N. TOULIS, Reception and Interpretation of the Patristic Tradition in Theophanes of Nicaea’s Works
Церковь, Богословие, История (Вестник Екатеринбургской духовной семинарии), 2020
The English original appeared in S. Shumylo, ed. The Athonite Heritage: A Scholar’s Anthology. Ki... more The English original appeared in S. Shumylo, ed. The Athonite Heritage: A Scholar’s Anthology. Kiev-Chernihiv: International Institute of the Athonite Legacy in Ukraine, 2015. Pp. 409-419.
This paper looks especially at the Akoulouthia for St. Gregory Palamas composed by Philotheos Kokkinos, examining, especially, the themes of asceticism, light, and hierarchy.
This excerpt is posted separately to make it more readily available to readers interested in this... more This excerpt is posted separately to make it more readily available to readers interested in this specific topic
(Because sections of a paper may be of interest to readers who would otherwise not know, based on... more (Because sections of a paper may be of interest to readers who would otherwise not know, based on the title, that the paper contains such information, I have uploaded these sections as extracts from the larger paper)
(Because sections of a paper may be of interest to readers who would otherwise not know, based on... more (Because sections of a paper may be of interest to readers who would otherwise not know, based on the title, that the paper contains such information, I have uploaded these sections as extracts from the larger paper)
(Because sections of a paper may be of interest to readers who would otherwise not know, based on... more (Because sections of a paper may be of interest to readers who would otherwise not know, based on the title, that the paper contains such information, I have uploaded these sections as extracts from the larger paper)
Conferences and Lectures by Tikhon Alexander Pino
The Pappas Patristic Institute has partnered with the Medieval Institute at the University of Not... more The Pappas Patristic Institute has partnered with the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame to organize a Workshop at this year's upcoming Oxford Patristics Conference (5-9 August 2024).
The Workshop, which will feature papers from both senior and junior scholars, from the US and Europe, will discuss the writings of Church Fathers such as St John Chrysostom, St Gregory the Theologian, St Maximos the Confessor, and St John of Damascus as they were received and interpreted in later ecclesiastical writers like Gregory Palamas, Nicholas Cabasilas, and others.
If you are attending the Oxford Patristics Conference, please join us:
Examination Room 7: Wednesday, August 7
Examination Room 11: Thursday, August 8
Entangled Christian Polemics in the Late Byzantine Empire (13th–15th c.): Second Annual Academic ... more Entangled Christian Polemics in the Late Byzantine Empire (13th–15th c.): Second Annual Academic Symposium, St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary
Uploads
Books by Tikhon Alexander Pino
Edited volumes by Tikhon Alexander Pino
Articles by Tikhon Alexander Pino
This paper argues that a conception of 'natura pura' is indeed present in Makarios, for whom it is an important metaphysical foundation supporting his ascetical theology. Though Makarios rejects any dichotomy between nature and grace that would fail to make creation wholly dependent on God, he does not see the ultimate synthesis and continuity between them as absolute. The ontological dimension of the nature-grace relationship in Makarios centers on the basic intelligibility of human nature as a discrete reality distinct not only from God’s sanctifying and saving operation, but from the evil which permeates fallen humanity and haunts it even after baptism. This basic distinction, which grants to nature a kind of autonomy, is intended to preserve both the gratuity of grace and the ultimate integrity of human nature in the face of both deification and the indwelling of evil. For this reason Makarios adheres in his ascetical teaching to a conception similar to 'natura pura,' which grants to human nature a qualified self-determination and independence even before its Creator. The result is a spirituality marked by the possibility of a true union of human and divine in the deified, without however resulting in a confusion of natures.
The integration of Makarios into the debate over natura pura has the potential to harmonize the extreme positions dependent, ostensibly, on the Greek Fathers, on one side, and the Thomistic commentators, on the other.
Uncorrected proofs. Caveat lector.
Alexandros CHOULIARAS, Noera Aisthesis (Intellectual and Divine Perception): A Major Notion in St Gregory Palamas’ Anthropology
Jane SLOAN PETERS, Gregory Palamas’ Debt to Maximus the Confessor’s Dyenergist Christology
Dmitry BIRIUKOV, The Topic of the Divine Energies as Accidents in the Palamite Doctrine: Its Meaning, Historical Context, Including that of the Teaching about the Nature of Theological Language
Alessia BROMBIN, Historia brevis to Anne of Savoy: An Attempt to Rediscovering the Role of David Dishypatos on the Hesychast’s Controversy
Andreas ZACHARIOU, The Church Fathers in Gregory Acindynos’ Theological Conception: The Interpretation of the Term Meizon
Petros N. TOULIS, Reception and Interpretation of the Patristic Tradition in Theophanes of Nicaea’s Works
This paper looks especially at the Akoulouthia for St. Gregory Palamas composed by Philotheos Kokkinos, examining, especially, the themes of asceticism, light, and hierarchy.
Extracts (Paper Sections) by Tikhon Alexander Pino
Conferences and Lectures by Tikhon Alexander Pino
The Workshop, which will feature papers from both senior and junior scholars, from the US and Europe, will discuss the writings of Church Fathers such as St John Chrysostom, St Gregory the Theologian, St Maximos the Confessor, and St John of Damascus as they were received and interpreted in later ecclesiastical writers like Gregory Palamas, Nicholas Cabasilas, and others.
If you are attending the Oxford Patristics Conference, please join us:
Examination Room 7: Wednesday, August 7
Examination Room 11: Thursday, August 8
This paper argues that a conception of 'natura pura' is indeed present in Makarios, for whom it is an important metaphysical foundation supporting his ascetical theology. Though Makarios rejects any dichotomy between nature and grace that would fail to make creation wholly dependent on God, he does not see the ultimate synthesis and continuity between them as absolute. The ontological dimension of the nature-grace relationship in Makarios centers on the basic intelligibility of human nature as a discrete reality distinct not only from God’s sanctifying and saving operation, but from the evil which permeates fallen humanity and haunts it even after baptism. This basic distinction, which grants to nature a kind of autonomy, is intended to preserve both the gratuity of grace and the ultimate integrity of human nature in the face of both deification and the indwelling of evil. For this reason Makarios adheres in his ascetical teaching to a conception similar to 'natura pura,' which grants to human nature a qualified self-determination and independence even before its Creator. The result is a spirituality marked by the possibility of a true union of human and divine in the deified, without however resulting in a confusion of natures.
The integration of Makarios into the debate over natura pura has the potential to harmonize the extreme positions dependent, ostensibly, on the Greek Fathers, on one side, and the Thomistic commentators, on the other.
Uncorrected proofs. Caveat lector.
Alexandros CHOULIARAS, Noera Aisthesis (Intellectual and Divine Perception): A Major Notion in St Gregory Palamas’ Anthropology
Jane SLOAN PETERS, Gregory Palamas’ Debt to Maximus the Confessor’s Dyenergist Christology
Dmitry BIRIUKOV, The Topic of the Divine Energies as Accidents in the Palamite Doctrine: Its Meaning, Historical Context, Including that of the Teaching about the Nature of Theological Language
Alessia BROMBIN, Historia brevis to Anne of Savoy: An Attempt to Rediscovering the Role of David Dishypatos on the Hesychast’s Controversy
Andreas ZACHARIOU, The Church Fathers in Gregory Acindynos’ Theological Conception: The Interpretation of the Term Meizon
Petros N. TOULIS, Reception and Interpretation of the Patristic Tradition in Theophanes of Nicaea’s Works
This paper looks especially at the Akoulouthia for St. Gregory Palamas composed by Philotheos Kokkinos, examining, especially, the themes of asceticism, light, and hierarchy.
The Workshop, which will feature papers from both senior and junior scholars, from the US and Europe, will discuss the writings of Church Fathers such as St John Chrysostom, St Gregory the Theologian, St Maximos the Confessor, and St John of Damascus as they were received and interpreted in later ecclesiastical writers like Gregory Palamas, Nicholas Cabasilas, and others.
If you are attending the Oxford Patristics Conference, please join us:
Examination Room 7: Wednesday, August 7
Examination Room 11: Thursday, August 8
Opponents on both sides of the Palamite controversy (1338-1368) invoked the writings of the Church Fathers to support their theological claims and positions. Though scholars have long debated the patristic antecedents of the essence-energies distinction, research has tended to focus almost exclusively on the fidelity of St. Gregory Palamas to his patristic sources. This Workshop seeks, instead, to explore the use of the Fathers in the Palamite controversy more generally, from neglected influences on the writings of Palamas himself to the use of patristic authorities by Gregory’s opponents and subsequent defenders. Papers focus on individual Church Fathers or patristic sources and methodology in general—any aspect of patristic theology that enhances our understanding of Palamite and anti-Palamite theology in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
An important voice within this discussion is that of St. Gregory Palamas, whose defense of hesychasm advances an anthropology designed to connect body and soul and validate corporeality as an integral part of the human experience of God. The Palamite view of body serves to break down the dichotomy between the inner and outer man by incorporating the physical senses into the life of the intellect and assuming the material into the spiritual. Palamas, and advocates of his theology for a century after his death, argued that the experience of God in his uncreated operations was not an encounter of the immaterial intellect with its immaterial Creator, but a transcendence, in the Spirit, of both the physical and intellective powers. This transcendence, which attenuates the subordination of flesh to mind, also serves to transform the language of 'sensation,' which ceases to act as a corporeal metaphor for intellective or emotional apprehension. Rather, for Palamas and his followers, the seemingly contradictory terms 'spiritual sensation' denote a paradox of human experience whereby the human being encounters the divine energies in a realm that is neither mind nor body, even while affecting both.
This paper argues that the Palamite appropriation of sense language for spiritual experiences, flowing from a holistic view of body and soul, allows the Hesychasts to be florid without being sentimental, and affective without being carnal. Beginning with an examination of Hesychast piety and prayer, the paper proceeds to an analysis of the fourteenth and fifteenth-century sources in order to explicate their unique anthropology.
The translation also includes Symeon's 'Discourse against the Latins' as well as his hesychastic 'Chapters on Prayer,' in a longer version than what is found in the Philokalia.
https://www.pappaspatristicinstitute.com/
https://www.pappaspatristicinstitute.com/post/palamas-in-english-translations-from-norman-russell-liverpool-up-2020
Forum of the International Orthodox Theological Association, 4 May 2020
https://iota-web.org/2020/05/04/norman-russell-gregory-palamas/
Fr Bodgan's talk, which touches on the interaction between Greek and Latin theology in antiquity, is entitled "When the Most Blessed Athanasius was Opposing the Arians:" Athanasius' Defense of the Nicene Faith Refracted through an Augustinian Lens (Darkly).