Orthodoxy against Platonism - A. F. Losev

So, Platonic mysticism, in principle, does not distinguish man from God-man, nor the rite from the sacrament, neither praying of the heart from other body parts, nor inner, intelligent and spiritual life as a result of a prolonged feat and struggle against the normal-natural state and pacification of spiritual-spiritual forces. What could such mysticism give to Byzantine Orthodoxy? Of course, it was impossible to dwell directly on this soil and remaining a Christian. Yes, it would be just a transition to a new religion, and not just a "heresy." Barlaam and Akindin were just heretics. Therefore, they wanted to unite Orthodoxy and Platonism. But Orthodoxy teaches the transcendence of God and its irreducibility to created being, Platonism does not distinguish between divine being and created being. So it happened that for Barlaam God as an independent object and essence remained in Himself, in the form of absolute unknowability, and energy, in view of their cognition and dismemberment, had to be completely separated from God and considered to be created. This immediately preserved the Christian transcendence of God, i.e. His uncreatedness, and the platonic indistinction of the created and the uncreated in mystical experience. Therefore, the hardening of barlaamites against the whole practice of the holy hesychia with its absolutely clear distinction between man and the God-man, the rite from sacrament, with its mystical technique of self-testing, self-indulgence, confession, respiratory and cardiac sensations was made quite understandable and justified. It is clear that the Barlamites could only be anathematized. Barlaamites are the Renaissance people or their immediate predecessors (there is sufficient material about Barlaam himself as personal instructor of Boccaccio and Petrarch). The revival, and, consequently, in the future and the whole of Protestantism - in this way wanted to combine Christianity and paganism. It fell into the same dualism and agnosticism as Barlaam, into the same naturalism and rationalism as all Barlaamites. In the person of Barlaam and Akindin, the Orthodox Church anathematized all the impending Renaissance, which all Western nations had surrendered, probably until the end of their existence, for, ceasing to be a revival, the Western man would cease to be Western. The dualism of Barlaamitism with the strengthening of rationalism becomes Cartesianism and occasionalism, with the intensification of subjectivism (God - the unknowable "thing-in-itself", and that is known, is generated by the subject) - Kantianism, with the weakening of transcendental heart is weakened (and it can not but be, because from the very beginning the most important thing said unknowable) - positivism; etc. etc. In short, or the Light of Tabor is inseparable from the essence of God and therefore is God Himself (although God is not Light itself) - then Orthodoxy is saved, or Light is separated from the essence of God and therefore is created- then the apocalyptic convulsions of the Renaissance West begin.