Saints Cyril and Methodios of Thessaloniki, Teachers of the Slavs

By Panagiotis K. Chrestou,
Professor of the Theological School 

of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

THESSALONIKI IN THE NINTH CENTURY

By the beginning of the 9th century, more than one thousand one hundred years had passed since the establishment of the city of Thessaloniki (315 BC). During this period, the city had undergone days of great glory and terrible suffering, still, it remained glorious and proud.

As it was the capital of Illyria during the Byzantine period, it came great battles to protect Hellenism and Christianity from the barbarians that continuously arrived from the North: the Goths, Huns, Avars and Slavs.

Protector in those battles was the all-glorious martyr Demetrios, would appear over the city walls in a white mantle and continuously empower the defenders when the raiders narrowed the siege. That's why the Thessalonians never missed a chance to express their gratitude towards their saviour Saint.

Maximos Confessor on the Infinity Of Man (Panagiotis Chrestou)

 By Panagiotis Chrestou

I have chosen my subject for this conference, stimulated by my studies on the writings of Gregory Рalamas, which I have edited with the help of a group of my students in Thessaloniki.

Palamas in his attempt to emphasize the difference between knowledge of a thing and participation in it, pretended in one of his treatises that those who praise God through knowledge of his uncreated energies are merely pious, while those who participated in them become without beginning and without end by grace άναρχοι and ατελεύτητοι. He bases his optimistic perspective mainly on Maximos the Confessor, whose thought rules on a high level over his argumentation during the middle period of his literary activity. Gregory Akindynos, against whom that treatise was addressed, of course rejects this aspect and ironically questions how Palamas succeeded in becoming a man without beginning, since all men have a physical beginning. In the sequel he refers to that heresiarch, who was expelled from the Church on the grounds that he merely had said that the human body of Jesus Christ was without beginning and heavenly. He obviously meant Apollinarius.

The Incarnation (Panagiotis Chrestou)

By Panagiotis Chrestou

 

The Incarnation is a paradox and, in a way, an antinomian process which transfers the Creator to the position of the creature. The Incarnation creates, according to human data and standards, an unexpected adaptation of the archetype to the antitype. This is a reversal of the regular course of affairs, but is a necessity because of the antitype’s inability to adapt to the archetype, as demanded by his destiny. By an inconceivable process, this movement transfers the eternal to the sphere of time and eliminates the temporal, that is, it really abolishes the restrictions of time and space. And this is the greatest mystery – the greatest miracle in the history of the world. The fact that God created the world is within the boundaries of the comprehensible. The fact that fire goes upward is within the boundaries of the natural, but if it went downward, like the heavy bodies, this would be unnatural and incomprehensible. Therefore, the fact that the divine presence directs itself downward, deigning to become like that which lives there (without being transposed, of course), is the most incomprehensible event and, also, the greatest manifestation of power. How can that which is sublime be manifested within that which is lowly without losing its grandeur? Gregory of Nyssa asked: "How is the sublime seen in the lowly and, yet, does not descend from its height? How can the Deity, entwined as it is with the nature of man, become this and still be that."