Peace, passion and virtue: basic concepts in the theology of Saint Gregory Palamas and elements for a catechetical philosophy
Peace, passion and virtue are the three crucial coordinates of the spiritual symbiosis. The passion offers the illusion of a reality which in fact is a pseudo-reality based on an illusion, on the existential burden which becomes perpetual. Illusion doesn’t feed and, although it may be temporary and it brings a feeling of fulfilment, it doesn’t make something else than deepen man in lie. The challenge of a non-reality developed on an illusion is not a challenged addressed to the Christian morality, but to the ontology on its form. To which degree does the man find himself in a world of illusion? To which degree he could really have an answer to his questions, given the fact that his entire universe or a considerable part of it is grounded on the distorted reality, which barely has any connection with the reality in se? The definition itself of humanity could suffer if the rapport is made exclusively to the pseudo-reality and not to the concrete facts present in the real structure of the world, of the consciousness and of faith. The theology of Saint Gregory Palamas warns us on the risk of abandoning the reality and on the inappropriate feeding with the fruit of the illusion. The present study brings a decryption for the meanings of the „real” realities by comparing them with mechanisms of the pseudoreality proposed to the contemporary human being.