The following excerpts come from:
Gregory of Palamas (1296-1359), Apodictic
Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit (trans. Christopher C.
Moody; Uncut Mountain Press, 2022)
Treatise One, “Preamble”:
Once
again the subtle serpent and source of vice rears his own head against us,
whispering things opposite to the truth. Or rather, since he has been crushed
in his head by the Cross of Christ, he makes those who obey his destructive
counsels in every generation each take the place of his own head, and similar
to a hydra he has sprouted many heads instead of the one, relentlessly speaking
utter unrighteousness through them. Thus he attached to his coiled body of the
Arians, thus the Apollinarians, thus the Eunomians and Macedonians, thus the
host of many others who rant to him, spewing his venom through their speech
against the sacred Church. In lieu of fangs, he has used their words and sunk them
into the source of piety, as into the root of a plant that had youthfully grown
virtue, burdened with the best of fruit; yet he was not able to utterly lay
waste to it. For, his fangs were in turn shattered by those who had been bitten
by him, meaning, by those who have truly made Christ their own Head.
Accordingly,
this serpent, which is noetic and, because of this, all the more accursed, the
first, middle, and final evil, the wicked one, always feeding off of serpentine
and earthly wickedness, the vigilant stalker, tirelessly looking out for the
heel, that is to say, deception, the sophist, most resourceful and incomparably
ingenious in every opinion obnoxious to God, not having at all forgotten his
own evil art, introduces, through the Latins which were obedient to him,
innovative expressions concerning God. While these innovations seem to make but
a small change, they actually create the occasion for many evils and bring in
many things that are subtle, foreign to piety, and logically absurd. In doing
this he clearly displayed to all that even the smallest thing is not small in
matters concerning God. For if, with each of our arguments, when one fallacious
thing has initially been premised many absurdities ensue, how can it not be
that, when one uncustomary premise has been made in relation to the common
principle of all and to the indemonstrable first principles, from this more absurdities
will not irreverently ensue?
Into
these absurdities the race of the Latins would have also fallen manifestly, had
we not stripped away the greatest part of the cacodoxy by contradicting this
novel dogma. Indeed, on occasion they recoil to such a degree that they even claim
that they are of the same mind as us, disagreeing only in words, lying against
themselves on account of their awkwardness. For while we say that the existence
of the Holy Spirit is not also from the hypostasis of the Son, they say that He
is also from the hypostasis of the Son, making it impossible for us to be
united in one concept. For, one is the only-begotten and the existence of the
Spirit is one. In any event, since the denial is always the contrary to its
affirmation, the one proposition is always false if the other is true, and it
is not possible to affirm and deny the very same thing about the same subject
and be with the truth. (pp. 57, 59)
Treatise Two, 1:
Earlier,
to the best of our ability, we went through the things that were necessary even
to the register of the pious themselves, both for clarification and for confirmation
of the correct mindset, and by which in short course the entire impiety of the
objecting Latins comes to light, but as for the things which the Latins
themselves propose both against us and against piety and by which they claim
that they do not innovate at all but think and speak in harmony with the divine
words of Christ Himself and not out of harmony at all with those who have
theologized according to Christ, we have not yet brought all these things into
the light nor refuted them in order. Let us now individually look at what
things they assert and that rationales or even scriptural expressions and
concepts they used, or rather abused, and so have fallen from the God-chosen
(θεολεκτου) confession (ομολογιας) which was handed down from the Fathers. And
the most fearful things of all is that they do not desire to return and safely
hold on to that from which they have fallen. Instead, likely truly ill-bred
men, they are displeased to the highest degree and gainsay those giving their
hand, the power of the word of truth leading up to the truth, unto correction.
(p. 187)
