This book questions the extent to which knowledge and experience can be reasonably, if at all, separated in consideration of the divine. Gregory Palamas's dynamic patterning of unions and distinctions provides the context for a response to this question in which the breadth and depth of human functioning is explored - from the body to the passions to the intellect. In the course of close analysis of Palamas's writings, the author presents from Palamas a thoroughly apophatic and an iconic mode of understanding the whole human person so as to mark out a fully integrated theological anthropology.

James Blackstone studied at Peterhouse in the University of Cambridge for a first degree in Theology and Religious Studies and later completed doctoral research as Decani Scholar at Clare College, Cambridge, from which this book is derived. He has worked variously in education and is currently engaged in the field of iconography.