International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Eirini Artemi
Athens, Greece; 
[e-mail] 
The Pneumatology of Great Basilius in His Treatise to Amphilochius Ikonium
St. Basil’s contribution to pneumatology is best comprehended within the historical milieu 
of the Arian controversy that pervaded much of the fourth century Roman Empire religiously 
and politically. It is a study which focuses on Basil’s understanding of the role and the Person of 
the Holy Spirit, particularly as found in his treatise to Amphilochius Ikonium. The distinctive 
character of the Holy Spirit can be defined in the light of the trinitarian relationship of the Spirit. 
Basil, like Athanasius, defines the distinctiveness of the Holy Spirit in terms of His relation to God 
the Father and the Son. The status and position in their relationship defines the distinctiveness of 
each member of the Trinity. The definition of this kind occupies the major part of Basil’s treatise of 
pneumatology. Basil’s pneumatology cannot be understood, however, apart from his thoughts on 
salvation and baptism, which themselves are bound together. Basil’s argument for the divinity of the 
Holy Spirit works by illustrating what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit illumines and sanctifies 
the baptized. The Holy Spirit completes and perfects creation from the beginning of time to its 
end and illumines the mind of the believer to understand the message of its order. The Holy Spirit 
inspires the Scriptures and governs their understanding in the church. Making no claim to know 
the essence of God, Basil also leaves no doubt that the Holy Spirit has revealed his divinity through 
his actions. Only God does what only God can do.

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Nichifor Tănase
Eftimie Murgu University, Resita, Romania; 
[e-mail]
Shining Light Shedding from Earthen Vessels. ‘Brightening Face’ Christology of 
the Desert Fathers – As Ascetic Interiorization, Somatic Experience and Outward 
Luminosity of Christ Who Radiates within Them
This study is about the Desert Fathers’s contemplative experience of an outward luminosity, a 
physical radiance, similar to that of the hesychasts Athonite of the 14
th
century in late Byzantium. 
So, there is a convergence of desert wisdom with the Palamite hesychast theology. On these unveiled 
shining faces, the divine energy of the ‘Christ the Image and Glory of God’ is being revealed. Christ 
will radiate within us like to the desert Fathers: Pambo, Sisoe, Silvanus. Christology of the Desert 
Fathers overlaps with pre-Nicene Christology. In anthropological terms of the theosis, man is the 
mirror of divine glory (δόξα). So, just as the light of the transfiguration the light-bearing robe of the 
unfallen Adam has a equally teological importance for theosis. 
Speaking of the hesychast method of prayer and transformation of the body, Gregory Palamas 
also uses this Pauline theology of 2 Corinthians in Triad 1.2.2: ’’Paul says, ‘God, who has ordered light 
to shine from darkness, has made His light to shine in our hearts, in order that we may be enlightened 
by the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. 4:6); but he adds, ‘We carry 
this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7). So we carry the Father’s light in the face (prosōpon) of 
Jesus Christ in earthen vessels, that is, in our bodies, in order to know the glory of the Holy Spirit.” 
We could grasp the convergence between the desert ascetic spirituality and the hesychast spirituality 
in the work of Gregory Palamas. For him, Moses the lawgiver, Stephen the protomartyr, and Arsenius 
the desert ascetic are examples from the Bible and the Fathers are men who were visibly transformed 
by divine light (Triad 2.3.9). God transcends the senses yet the knowledge of God is experiential. 
The monks know this. They see the hypostatic light spiritually – in reality not in a symbolic fashion. 
During the hesychast controversy, St Gregory Palamas defend the reality of the encounter with God of 
those monks who reported seeing a vision of light at the culmination of intense period of prayer. For 
the light is nothing less than the uncreated radiance of God – a divine energy accesible to the senses. 
This manifestation of Christ is not something external to ourselves. ’’It is only by having Christ radiant 
within us that we can enter into the truth which even in the Gospels is veiled from ordinary eyes” (N. 
Russell 2009, p. 103). Abba Pambo, Sisoes, Silvanus, St Seraphim of Sarov, were man whose radiance 
was the product of inward openess. Transfiguration becomes an interior experience to St. Seraphim of 
Sarov (1759-1833) and Archimandrite Sophrony (1896-1991). 
Deification to the Desert Fathers acquire a specific anthropological content as Christification, 
that find its fulfillment in a face-to-face encounter who, ’’is both a theological theme and a spiritual 
teaching, both the goal of the divine economy and the process by which the economy is worked out in 
the believer” (Russell 2009, p. 21). To Palamas, deification is, also, a supernatural gift that transforms 
both mind and body, making divinity visible (Triad 3.1. 33). Likeness also means a radiation of the 
presence of God within man, a ’’reciprocal interiority” (Stăniloae). In the saints this communion is 
expressed in the way God’s glory is reflected in their faces, in anticipation of the age to come.

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