Mystical Knowledge and the Limits of Reason: A Comparative Study of al-Ghazālī and Gregory Palamas

Summary

Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and Gregory Palamas both critique the overintellectualization of theology influenced by Greek philosophy, advocating for knowledge of God through direct spiritual experience. Al-Ghazālī turns to Sufism, emphasizing kashf or 'unveiling,' while Palamas defends the practice of hesychia in Eastern Christianity. Their works highlight a distinction between speculative knowledge and spiritual certainty, asserting the significance of experiential engagement with the divine over abstract philosophical reasoning.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract This article offers a comparative study of the religious epistemologies of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī and Gregory Palamas, highlighting their shared resistance to the overintellectualization of theology through Greek philosophical categories. Both thinkers critique the limitations of Aristotelian and Platonic conceptions of knowledge, particularly their abstraction of the divine and the reduction of metaphysical inquiry to rational demonstration. Al-Ghazālī, disillusioned with kalām and falsafa , turns to Sufism and the epistemology of kashf (“unveiling”), grounding knowledge of God in direct, transformative spiritual experience. Similarly, Palamas, in response to Barlaam of Calabria, defends the Eastern Christian tradition of hesychia , asserting that divine energies can be encountered in contemplative prayer ( theōria ) as a step towards union or divinisation ( theosis ). The article explores the parallel between al-Ghazālī’s distinction between speculative knowledge and spiritual certainty, and Palamas’ essence-energies distinction, both of which affirm the possibility of real, albeit non-conceptual, participation in the divine. Drawing on the critique of metaphysics in Heidegger’s later thought, the article also considers both figures as pointing toward a renewed understanding of truth as “unconcealment” ( aletheia ) rather than an exercise aimed at propositional mastery, though without asserting that they had arrived at exactly the same conclusions as Heidegger. This study shows how al-Ghazālī and Palamas challenge Islamic and Byzantine philosophy as merely derivative of Greek thought, whilst advancing the distinctiveness and enduring relevance of their own mystical–theological epistemologies rooted in Christian revelatory experience. This is interpreted as a reassertion of revelatory experience over the growing dominance of philosophical theology; a move, however, not without its own difficulties.

Tags