Barlaam’s Writings Against the Massalians Produced

¹ 8. Then it was decreed that the writings of Barlaam be brought forward, which, for the deception of his hearers, he had inscribed “Against the Massalians.” In these writings he spoke also concerning the unapproachable light of the Transfiguration of our Master and Savior Jesus Christ, and concerning his chosen disciples and apostles who were deemed worthy of the vision of this light, in these very words: “The light of the Godhead that shone on Tabor was not unapproachable; nor was it in truth a light of the Godhead, nor at all more sacred or more divine than the angels, but even worse and lower than our very intellection. For all our thoughts and all things thought are more venerable than that light, inasmuch as it falls upon the sight through the air, and is subject to the sensitive faculty, and shows only sensible things to those who behold it, being material and shaped, and appearing in place and in time, and coloring the air, and now composing itself and appearing, now dissolving and passing into non-being, as being a thing of fantasy, divisible and finite. Wherefore it was seen also by those who suffer privation of the noetic energies—or rather who have not yet acquired these at all and have not yet been purified, but are imperfect, even at that very vision upon the mountain, as not yet deemed worthy of the intellection of godlike things. But we are led up from such a light to thoughts and contemplations which, by a discerning judgment, are better than that light. Therefore those who call it beyond intellect, and true and unapproachable and the like, are utterly deceived, knowing nothing higher than the visible beauties, and for this reason repugnant, and bringing most destructive doctrines into the Church.” These things, then, did Barlaam set down—manifestly heterodox and contrary to the things said by the saints concerning this divine light.