Thanks for this glimmer of hope, Eirenikon, and the many other lamps you have lit in the darkness. If only the rest of us, myself included, could exhibit this same Spirit we now witness between Benedict and Bartholomew.

As with the interpretation of Scripture, we Christians need to acknowledge that we are always approaching realities with one hermeneutic or another. There is a distinction to be made between the “objective reality” and the always-subjective way in which we choose to see it. Some ways of seeings are closer to the reality itself; others are further. But to acknowledge that there is a distinction is itself a very helpful step, I think.

Perhaps what Fr. Florovsky observes in the quotation above (I couldn’t locate the full text) is that the integrated Christian hermeneutic has been fractured by the events of time, with each of its pieces flying away from the other. Not only that, each of the fragments has with time developed its own distinct features and peculiarities, perhaps to ensure its own survival independent of the whole, such that it has become more difficult for an observer to see that the fragment belonged to a larger object in the first place. This is why, while I do not deny that Eastern and Western theologies have developed into perhaps mutually irreconciliable (“ontologically different” forms), I believe that that at their respective cores they are in fact not only “in harmony” with each other—they are essential pieces of a lost whole. Our reconciliation as a people, then, lies in re-integration, not loosely stringing the broken pieces into a necklace.

In other words, read Palamas first before reading interpretations of what he means.

The same principle applies to other Patristic theologians.

Origen is not Origenism, Augustine is not Augustianism.

I do know that’s it’s now used by many to describe not the thought not of Palamas per se but of theologians writing or commenting on Palamas.

I think there’s quite a difference between the two, ( Palamas and Neo-Palamism).

Exactly. Florovsky’s point seems to be that it takes two to tango: both sides of the schism have made distinctions, which due to the heat of polemics, have “stiffened into contradictions” – and therefore both sides have to do a fair amount of crow-eating, or, at least, declare a mutual cease-fire, e.g. not being so quick to call each other’s developments “heresies” (see the Ratzinger formula).

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to where the notion of Neo-Palamism comes from. I am far from an expert in this area, but I have heard the term used by both Catholic and Orthodox scholars – and not necessarily in a polemical manner.

Since Neo-Thomism itself is a distortion of Aquinas’ theology, the result was also a distortion of Palamas.