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13.  Abstract of: An introspective exact science

Here we will take a preliminary look at a different way of understanding the history of Christianity. To understand the importance of doing this, we need to see how this will change our whole understanding of Christianity, past and present. It seems as if the original first millennial form of the Christian faith - the inner tradition of the early fathers - is now beginning to re-emerge into the Western world, and if this is so, it is necessary to see the importance of this event in the historical pattern - an event which has a true social significance. Like binocular vision, the second viewpoint given by studying Palamas gives added depth to our understanding of the faith.

This shows us more of what has changed over two long millennia of the Christian era, and gives us a surprising view of how much has been lost by those changes. It reveals to the careful reader just how much of this re-emergence of the inner tradition of the early church is a re-emergence of what was once an important part of the mainstream of the church. 

This important aspect of church teaching was discredited as an accidental result of the persecution and often destruction of Western monasticism that culminated in Britain with Henry VIII. It was finally to all intents eliminated with the Reformation. But now many of the teachings of the fathers are becoming available for the first time in English. For example, an English translation of the Greek classic The Philokalia, a book that originated in the monastic republic of Mount Athos, is now in print, and other even more inaccessible sources are also available, and with these books we find that ancient Christian world-view beginning to re-emerge.