St. Gregory Palamas on Philosophy

I have heard it stated by certain people that monks also should pursue secular wisdom, and that if they do not possess this wisdom, it is impossible for them to avoid ignorance and false opinions, even if they have achieved the highest level of impassibility; and that one cannot acquire perfection and sanctity without seeking knowledge from all quarters, above all from Greek culture, which also is a gift of God — just as were those insights granted to the prophets and apostles through revelation....

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By examining the nature of sensible things, these people [philosophers] have arrived at a certain concept of God, but not at a conception truly worthy of Him and appropriate to His blessed nature. For their "disordered heart was darkened" by the machinations of the wicked demons who were instructing them. For if a worthy conception of God could be attained through the use of intellection, how could these people have taken the demons for gods, and how could they have believe the demons when they taught polytheism? In this way, wrapped up in this mindless and foolish wisdom and unenlightened education, they have calumnated both God and nature. They have deprived God of His sovereignty...

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... In my estimation, this "wisdom" is not even worthy of the appellation "human," since it is so inconsistent as to affirm the same things to be at once animate and inanimate, endowed with and deprived of reason, and it holds that things by nature without sensibility, and having no organs capable of sensation, could contain our souls....

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But if one says that philosophy, insofar as it is natural, is a gift of God, then one says true, without contradiction, and without incurring the accusation that falls on those who abuse philosophy and pervert it to an unnatural end. Indeed they make their condemnation heavier by using God's gift in a way that is unpleasing to Him.

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What then should be the work and the goal of those who seek the wisdom of God in creatures? It is not the acquisition of the truth, and the glorification of the Creator? This is clear to all. But the knowledge of the pagan philosophers has fallen away from both these aims.

Is there then anything of use to us in this philosophy? Certainly. For just as there is much therapeutic value even in substances obtained from the flesh of serpents, and the doctors considers there is not better and more useful medicine than that derived from this source, so there is something of benefit to be had even from the profane philosophers...

It is thus with the "iconognosts," who pretend that man received the image of God by knowledge, and that this knowledge conforms the soul to God. For, as was said to Cain, "If you make your offering correctly, without dividing correctly....But to divide well is the property of very few men. Those alone "divide well," the sense of whose souls are trained to distinguish good and evil.

What need is there to run these dangers without necessity, when it is possible to contemplate the wisdom of God in His creatures not only without peril but with profit? A life which hope in God has liberated from every care naturally impels the soul towards the contemplation of God's creatures. Then is struck with admiration, deepens its understanding, persists in the glorification of the Creator, and through this sense of wonder is led forward to what is greater. According to St Isaac, "It comes upon treasures which cannot be expressed in words"; and using prayer as a key, it penetrates thereby into the mysteries which "eye has not seen, ear has not head, and which have not entered into the heart of man," mysteries manifested by the Spirit alone...

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..."The arrogance of philosophy has nothing in common with humility" as the saying goes..."