On Uncreated Grace

When in the 14th century, the Western monk Barlaam came to Byzantium and preached created Grace of God, the Orthodox faithful with Saint Gregory Palamas confessed that divine Grace is uncreated.

This is also an important difference.


If divine Grace is created, it cannot divinize man. The purpose of the life in Christ, if divine Grace is created, cannot be theosis but ethical improvement. For this reason, the westerners do not speak about theosis as the aim of the life of man, but about ethical perfection—that we ought to become better men, not, however, gods by grace. As a result, the Church cannot be a communion of theosis, but a foundation affording to men justification in a nominalist and legal manner by means of a created grace. In the final analysis, the very truth of the Church as real theanthropic communion is abolished.


In this case, the Mysteries of the Church are not signs of the presence of God in the Church and of the communion with the uncreated Grace of God, but in some way, “faucets” which the Church opens and out flows created grace, with which men wait to benefit and to be legally justified. Thus, even the Mysteries are interpreted legally and not ecclesiologically. Ascesis also lapses into ethical gymnastics. The struggling Christian cannot receive experience of the uncreated Grace. He does not behold the uncreated Light of Tabor. And so, according to the divine Palamas, he remains inconsolable and untouched by the Divine Light. He does not participate in the glory, the brightness, and the Kingdom of the Trinitarian God. Thus, theology without experience of the uncreated Light becomes scholastic and discursive. Man remains closed off in the dark prison of the present world without an opening or a foretaste of the coming Kingdom.


- Archimandrite George of Grigoriou Monastery, Mount Athos, Catholicism in the Light of Orthodoxy, Uncut Mountain Press, 2022.

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