Divine Simplicity and Predication in the Cappadocian Fathers

 

The following quotes are extracted from my published paper which deals much more in-depth with the topic at hand, and analyzes each of these texts. 

"For if you make change of names a sign of things having been named by men, you will thereby surely allow that every name has been imposed upon things by us, since the same appellations of objects have not obtained universally. For as in the case of Paul who was once Saul, and of Peter who was formerly Simon, so earth and sky and air and sea and all the parts of the creation have not been named alike by all, but are named in one way by the Hebrews, and in another way by us, and are denoted by every nation by different names. If then Eunomius' argument is valid when he maintains that it was for this reason, to wit, that their names had been imposed by men, that Peter and Paul were named afresh, our teaching will surely be valid also, starting as it does from like premises, which says that all things are named by us, on the ground that their appellations vary according to the distinctions of nations. Now if all things are so, surely the Generate and the Ungenerate are not exceptions, for even they are among the things that change their name. For when we gather, as it were, into the form of a name the conception of any subject that arises in us, we declare our concept by words that vary at different times, not making, but signifying, the thing by the name we give it. For the things remain in themselves as they naturally are, while the mind, touching on existing things, reveals its thought by such words as are available. And just as the essence of Peter was not changed with the change of his name, so neither is any other of the things we contemplate changed in the process of mutation of names." (Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, book VII, ch. 4)

"For all conceptions and terms which regard the divine are of equal dignity one with another, in that they do not vary in regard to the meaning of the subject matter to which they are applied. Our thought is not led to one subject by the attribution of good, and to another by that of wise, powerful, and just; mention any attributes you will, the thing signified is one and the same. And if you name God, you mean the same Being whom you understood by the rest of the terms. Granting, then, that all the terms applied to the divine nature are of equal force one with another in relation to that which they describe, one emphasizing one point and another another, but all bringing our intelligence to the contemplation of the same object; what ground is there for conceding to the Spirit fellowship with Father and Son in all other terms, and isolating Him from the Godhead alone?" (Basil of Caesarea, Letter 189)

"God, he says, has dominion over His own power. Tell me, what is He? Over what has He dominion? Is He something else than His own power, and Lord of a power that is something else than Himself? Then power is overcome by the absence of power. For that which is something else than power is surely not power, and thus He is found to have dominion over power just in so far as He is not power." (Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book IX, ch. 1)

"But let us still scrutinize his words. He declares each of these Beings, whom he has shadowed forth in his exposition, to be single and absolutely one. We believe that the most boorish and simple-minded would not deny that the Divine Nature, blessed and transcendent as it is, was 'single.' That which is viewless, formless, and sizeless, cannot be conceived of as multiform and composite. But it will be clear, upon the very slightest reflection, that this view of the supreme Being as 'simple,' however finely they may talk of it, is quite inconsistent with the system which they have elaborated. For who does not know that, to be exact, simplicity in the case of the Holy Trinity admits of no degrees. In this case there is no mixture or conflux of qualities to think of; we comprehend a potency without parts and composition; how then, and on what grounds, could any one perceive there any differences of less and more. For he who marks differences there must perforce think of an incidence of certain qualities in the subject. He must in fact have perceived differences in largeness and smallness therein, to have introduced this conception of quantity into the question: or he must posit abundance or diminution in the matter of goodness, strength, wisdom, or of anything else that can with reverence be associated with God: and neither way will he escape the idea of composition. Nothing which possesses wisdom or power or any other good, not as an external gift, but rooted in its nature, can suffer diminution in it; so that if any one says that he detects Beings greater and smaller in the Divine Nature, he is unconsciously establishing a composite and heterogeneous Deity, and thinking of the Subject as one thing, and the quality, to share in which constitutes as good that which was not so before, as another. If he had been thinking of a Being really single and absolutely one, identical with goodness rather than possessing it, he would not be able to count a greater and a less in it at all. It was said, moreover, above that good can be diminished by the presence of evil alone, and that where the nature is incapable of deteriorating, there is no limit conceived of to the goodness: the unlimited, in fact, is not such owing to any relation whatever, but, considered in itself, escapes limitation. It is, indeed, difficult to see how a reflecting mind can conceive one infinite to be greater or less than another infinite. So that if he acknowledges the supreme Being to be 'single' and homogenous, let him grant that it is bound up with this universal attribute of simplicity and infinitude. If, on the other hand, he divides and estranges the 'Beings' from each other, conceiving that of the Only-begotten as another than the Father's, and that of the Spirit as another than the Only-begotten, with a 'more' and 'less' in each case, let him be exposed now as granting simplicity in appearance only to the Deity, but in reality proving the composite in Him." (Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, book I, ch. 20)

"Now these modes of generation being well known to men, the loving dispensation of the Holy Spirit, in delivering to us the Divine mysteries, conveys its instruction on those matters which transcend language by means of what is within our capacity, as it does also constantly elsewhere, when it portrays the Divinity in bodily terms, making mention, in speaking concerning God, of His eye, His eyelids, His ear, His fingers, His hand, His right hand, His arm, His feet, His shoes , and the like — none of which things is apprehended to belong in its primary sense to the Divine Nature, but turning its teaching to what we can easily perceive, it describes by terms well-worn in human use, facts that are beyond every name, while by each of the terms employed concerning God we are led analogically to some more exalted conception." (Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, book VIII, ch. 4)

“If you are asked to define the word judge, answer with the interpretation of ungeneracy; if to define justice, be ready with the incorporeal as your answer. If asked to define incorruptibility, say that it has the same meaning as mercy or judgment. Thus let all God's attributes be convertible terms, there being no special signification to distinguish one from another. But if Eunomius thus prescribes, why do the Scriptures vainly assign various names to the Divine nature, calling God a Judge, righteous, powerful, long-suffering, true, merciful and so on? For if none of these titles is to be understood in any special or peculiar sense, but, owing to this confusion in their meaning, they are all mixed up together, it would be useless to employ so many words for the same thing, there being no difference of meaning to distinguish them from one another. But who is so much out of his wits as not to know that, while the Divine nature, whatever it is in its essence, is simple, uniform, and incomposite, and that it cannot be viewed under any form of complex formation, the human mind, grovelling on earth, and buried in this life on earth, in its inability to behold clearly the object of its search, feels after the unutterable Being in various and many-sided ways, and never chases the mystery in the light of one idea alone. Our grasping of Him would indeed be easy, if there lay before us one single assigned path to the knowledge of God: but as it is, from the skill apparent in the Universe, we get the idea of skill in the Ruler of that Universe, from the large scale of the wonders worked we get the impression of His Power; and from our belief that this Universe depends on Him, we get an indication that there is no cause whatever of His existence; and again, when we see the execrable character of evil, we grasp His own unalterable pureness as regards this: when we consider death's dissolution to be the worst of ills, we give the name of Immortal and Indissoluble at once to Him Who is removed from every conception of that kind: not that we split up the subject of such attributes along with them, but believing that this thing we think of, whatever it be in substance, is One, we still conceive that it has something in common with all these ideas. For these terms are not set against each other in the way of opposites, as if, the one existing there, the other could not co-exist in the same subject (as, for instance, it is impossible that life and death should be thought of in the same subject); but the force of each of the terms used in connection with the Divine Being is such that, even though it has a peculiar significance of its own, it implies no opposition to the term associated with it. What opposition, for instance, is there between incorporeal and just, even though the words do not coincide in meaning: and what hostility is there between goodness and invisibility? So, too, the eternity of the Divine Life, though represented under the double name and idea of the unending and the unbeginning, is not cut in two by this difference of name; nor yet is the one name the same in meaning as the other; the one points to the absence of beginning, the other to the absence of end, and yet there is no division produced in the subject by this difference in the actual terms applied to it. Such is our position.” (Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius' Second Book; in NPNF2, 5:298)

"The life, he says, is not a different thing from the substance; no addition may be thought of in connection with a simple being, by dividing our conception of him into a communicating and communicated side; but whatever the life may be, that very thing, he insists, is the substance. Here his philosophy is excellent; no thinking person would gainsay this." (Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius' Second Book; in NPNF2, 5:298)

“He called himself ‘door,’ ‘way,’ ‘bread,’ ‘vine,’ ‘shepherd,’ and ‘light,’ even though he is not a polyonym. All these names do not carry the same meaning as one another. For ‘light’ signifies one thing, ‘vine’ another, ‘way’ another, and ‘shepherd’ yet another. Though our Lord is one in substrate, and one substance, simple and not composite, he calls himself by different names at different times, using designations that differ from one another for the different conceptualizations. On the basis of his different activities and his relation to the objects of his divine benefaction, he employs different names for himself….If anyone should examine each of the names one by one, he would find the various conceptualizations, even though for all there is one substrate as far as substance is concerned." (Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, 1.7)

"The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost alike hallow, quicken, enlighten, and comfort. No one will attribute a special and peculiar operation of hallowing to the operation of the Spirit, after hearing the Saviour in the Gospel saying to the Father about His disciples, sanctify them in Your name [John 17:17?]. In like manner all other operations are equally performed, in all who are worthy of them, by the Father and by the Son and by the Holy Ghost; every grace and virtue, guidance, life, consolation, change into the immortal, the passage into freedom and all other good things which come down to man….Identity of operation in the case of Father and of Son and of Holy Ghost clearly proves invariability of nature." (Basil of Caesarea, Letter 189; in NPNF2: 8:231)

“Moreover, in response to the objection that God will be revealed as composite unless the light is understood as the same thing as ingeneracy, we have the following to say: if we should understand ingeneracy as part of the substance, then there would be room for the argument which claims that what is compounded from different things is composite. But if we should posit, on the one hand, the light, or the life, or the good as the substance of God, claiming that the very thing which God is is life as a whole, light as a whole, and good as a whole, while, on the other hand, we should posit that the life has ingeneracy as a concomitant, then how is the one who is simple in substance not incomposite? For surely the ways of indicating his proprium will not violate the account of simplicity.” (Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, 2.29)

"Now, if [the Holy Spirit] is divine, then certainly it is also good, powerful, wise, glorious, eternal, and all such names that lift our thoughts to a level appropriate to its grandeur. The simplicity of the subject ensures that it does not possess these names by participation (ἐκ μετουσίας), as if one could suppose that it is one thing in its own nature, but becomes something different through the presence of the aforementioned names. Such a situation is proper to those beings that have a composite nature. But all people equally confess that the Holy Spirit is simple; there is no one who would dispute it. So then, if the formula (λόγος) of its nature is simple, it does not possess goodness as something acquired (ἐπίκτητον). Rather, the very thing it is (αὐτὸ ὅ τι ποτέ ἐστιν), is goodness, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, eternity, incorruptibility, and all the names that are sublime and elevating." (Gregory of Nyssa, Against the Macedonians, §5)

Brief Thoughts on Deification

 

Oftentimes the Western understanding of deification/glorification is watered down by its opponents to a simple statement of “created grace.” However, at least within Thomism, our participation in God also includes things like the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity), the infused moral virtues, and the missions of the Trinity. This human participation in the divine pertains to all of our faculties, though sanctifying grace is the means in which it comes to the essence of the soul (John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus III, disp. 22, art. 1, n. 10  [Paris: Vivès, 1883-1886, 6:794]). 

“Hence it is necessary for man to receive from God some additional principles, whereby he may be directed to supernatural happiness, even as he is directed to his connatural end, by means of his natural principles, albeit not without Divine assistance. Such like principles are called "theological virtues": first, because their object is God, inasmuch as they direct us aright to God: secondly, because they are infused in us by God alone: thirdly, because these virtues are not made known to us, save by Divine revelation, contained in Holy Writ. A certain nature may be ascribed to a certain thing in two ways. First, essentially: and thus these theological virtues surpass the nature of man. Secondly, by participation, as kindled wood partakes of the nature of fire: and thus, after a fashion, man becomes a partaker of the Divine Nature, as stated above: so that these virtues are proportionate to man in respect of the Nature of which he is made a partaker.” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, Q. 62, art. 1)

When it comes to the writings of the patristics (particularly the Greek fathers), nearly everyone has some level of familiarity with Athanasius’ famous axiom “God became man, so that man might become God.” Indeed, the doctrine of deification was something that was presupposed by Athanasius in his polemical treatises against the Arians (Norman Rusell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition [Oxford University Press, 2004], pgs. 170-172). If the Son’s incarnation is the source of the deification of human nature, then the Son Himself has not been deified by the Father, and thus is not God “by participation”, as the heretics believed. He is God by essence and nature, being homoousios with the Father. 

But in what does the deification of human nature actually consist, for Athanasius? Russell points out two levels for understanding it: ontological and ethical (The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, pgs. 184-185). The following passage from Athanasius constitutes for us a concrete example of how these two “levels” of deification are juxtaposed in his theology, both with regard to anthropology and soteriology:

“But let them understand that one assimilated to God by virtue and will is liable also to the purpose of changing; but the Word is not thus, unless He is 'like' in part, and as we are, because He is not like [God] in essence also. But these characteristics belong to us, who are originate, and of a created nature. For we too, albeit we cannot become like God in essence, yet by progress in virtue imitate God, the Lord granting us this grace, in the words, 'Be merciful as your Father is merciful:' 'be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect Luke 6:36; Matthew 5:48.' But that originate things are changeable, no one can deny, seeing that angels transgressed, Adam disobeyed, and all stand in need of the grace of the Word. But a mutable thing cannot be like God who is truly unchangeable, any more than what is created can be like its creator. This is why, with regard to us, the holy man said, 'Lord, who shall be likened unto you ,' and 'who among the gods is like you, Lord ;' meaning by gods those who, while created, had yet become partakers of the Word, as He Himself said, 'If he called them gods to whom the word of God came John 10:35.' But things which partake cannot be identical with or similar to that whereof they partake. For example, He said of Himself, 'I and the Father are one ,' implying that things originate are not so. For we would ask those who allege the Ariminian Synod, whether a created essence can say, 'what things I see my Father make, those I make also.' For things originate are made and do not make; or else they made even themselves. Why, if, as they say, the Son is a Creature and the Father is His Maker, surely the Son would be His own maker, as He is able to make what the Father makes, as He said. But such a supposition is absurd and utterly untenable, for none can make himself.” (Athanasius, Synodal Letter to the Bishops of Africa, §7)

My Thoughts on the Essence-Energies Distinction

The doctrine of a real ad intra distinction between God's essence (ousia) and His energies (energeia) is the linchpin of the entire Eastern Orthodox system. It is the foundation for their asceticism, liturgy, understanding of the sacraments, and of salvation itself. Along with the filioque, it is perhaps the chief point of disputation between the West (the Reformation and medieval Roman Catholicism) and the churches of the East (especially in Greece and Russia today, and many other parts of eastern Europe). It is also a part of Eastern dogma since Palamas' official canonization in the Synod of Constantinple (1368). This doctrine has received more attention in online apologetics and polemics with the rise of figures such as Jay Dyer, Ubi Petrus, Perry Robinson (who I have had the privilege to correspond with via email a few times), Deacon Ananias, and many other defenders of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Most of the Western responses to the essence-energies distinction come from Roman Catholic thinkers, with not much attention given to it within Protestantism (aside from a short video by Gavin Ortlund, which did not engage with primary sources as much as I'd personally hope for). I hope to provide such an engagement and critique in this article, relying on Palamas' own writings, some of the work neo-Palamites shortly after Gregory's death in 1357. The colossal work of Dr. Tikhon Pino has also proven a great help to me in understanding the Eastern doctrine of God.

I will begin with working through some of Palamas’ primary writings: particularly the Triads, Dialogue between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite, the One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, and his correspondence with Gregory Akindynos. I will also take the statements of the Palamite synods in Constantinople (1341 and 1351 respectively) as being a standard representation of Eastern theology concerning the nature of deification, participation in God through His “uncreated energies”, and the nature of the Old Testament theophanies and the glory of Christ on Mount Thabor. 

In his Triads, Gregory Palamas begins his defense of the Byzantine hesychasts. His first discussion unravels his view of the relationship between philosophy (particularly that of the Greek Neo-Platonists, whose views he mentions in Triads, 1.18) and man’s knowledge of God. Palamas takes issue with the entire method of the anti-Hesychasts, noting their extreme obsession with natural philosophy, it being one of the grounds which has led them to their “erroneous” notions of God.

“By examining the nature of sensible things, these people have arrived at a certain concept of God, but not at a conception truly worthy of Him and appropriate to His blessed nature.” (Gregory Palamas, Triads, 1.18)

This is not to say that Palamas condemns all philosophy simpliciter. He brings forth the analogy of a physician/apothecary who uses the flesh of a serpent to make medicine, separating the good from the bad. “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.” (Triads, 1.19). It is a gift of nature, not of divine grace. Palamas’ approach is in sharp contrast to that of Barlaam, who believed that even the pagan philosophers received “divine illumination.”

The chief concern of Palamas is to preserve the unknowable nature of God while also affirming man’s participation in Him. Thus the glory of Christ during the Transfiguration on Mount Thabor became his chief impetus for defending a distinction between the divine essence and energies. Since the glory of Christ was accessible to the human senses of the disciples, it could not have been the divine essence. However, the divine essence and energies are not two separate “things”, but two modes in which God is wholly present (Norman Russell, Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam, pg. 23). 

It is worth noting in passing that the statement that “we know God by His operations, and do not know His very essence” is uncontroversial, and agreed upon by the Western churches as well. For example, Aquinas himself wrote “We cannot know him naturally except by reaching him from his effects [energies], it follows that the terms by which we denote his perfection must be diverse, as also are the perfections which we find in things. If, however, we were able to understand his very essence as it is, and to give him a proper name, we should express him by one name only. And this is promised to those who will see him in his essence." (Summa Contra Gentiles, I.31). This observation is not limited to the medieval scholastics. John Calvin said that “Indeed, his essence is incomprehensible; hence his divineness far escapes all human perception. But upon his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory, so clear and so prominent that even unlettered and stupid folk cannot plead the excuse of ignorance.” (Institutes, 1.5.1)

Grace (charis) is both created and uncreated. In his Letter to Athanasios of Kyzikos, Palamas discuss different senses in which the word “grace” might be used, referring both to the giving of the gift by the Holy Spirit and man’s reception thereunto. Thus, we see a fundamental Palamite distinction between the gift as the act of giving and the gift as something received. The former is uncreated, while the latter is obviously created. “Sometimes being deified is called deification, and sometimes that whereby the object of deification is deified, by receiving it, is called deification.” (Against Gregoras, 3.21)

In his second Triad, Palamas begins to bring forth a distinction between essence and energies, albeit not using that exact terminology as of yet. 

“But you who introduced the methods of definition, analysis, and distinction, come to know, and deem us the ignorant worthy to teach. For [the light] is not the essence of God, for the latter is both inaccessible and imparticipable. It is not an angel, for it bears the marks of the Master, and sometimes it goes out from the body—or it is not borne up to the unspoken heights without a body—and at other times it transforms the body and gives it a share of its own proper splendor . . . In this way, therefore, it also deifies the body, becoming visible—O the miracle—to bodily eyes.” (Gregory Palamas, Triads, 2.3.8)

Peter Totleben contends that Palamas’ early framing of the distinction in terms of the divine essence and the “uncreated light” tends to lean more into a real distinction, with his defense of hesychast mysticism lurking closely in the background. However, the framing of the distinction with the categories of essence and energies belong more to the realm of speculative philosophy (The Palamite Controversy: A Thomistic Analysis, pg. 32n63)

In the second Triad, Palamas clarifies multiple times that he is not teaching mere apophaticism simpliciter:

“Thus the perfect contemplation of God and divine things is not simply an abstraction; but beyond this abstraction, there is a participation in divine things, a gift and a possession rather than just a process of negation….If one speaks of them, one must have recourse to images and analogies—not because that is the way in which these things are seen, but because one cannot adumbrate what one has seen in any other way.” (Gregory Palamas, Triads, 1.3.18)

This contemplation of God’s energies is not done through the intellect or senses simply. Rather, it consists in mystical experience: “Following the great Dionysius, one should perhaps call it union, not knowledge.” (Gregory Palamas, Triads, 2.3.20). During this contemplation, one does not directly know through what medium he sees the divine energies. Palamas cites the Apostle Paul: “whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth.” (2 Corinthians 12:2-3)

In terms of the divine names, they do not properly describe God. Even the term “essence” is only improperly given to God, since He is ύπερόυσια:

“It is therefore not lawful, for anyone acquainted with the truth beyond all truth, even to name it ‘essence’ or ‘nature’ when naming it in the proper sense. Since, again, it is the cause of all things, and all things are around it and for it—and since it is itself before all things, having conceived them all in itself in a simple and uncircumscribed manner—it is named from all of them catachrestically, but not properly.” (Gregory Palamas, Theophanes, 17)

Therefore, when “the essence is known from the energy” this only pertains to “the fact that it is, not what it is….The essence is what is known through the energy as to the fact of its existence.” (One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, 141). To me, it seems that Palamas’ system completely renders it impossible for us to have any knowledge of what God is (quid est). You can see here that Palamas also posits some sort of distinction between essence and existence in God, claiming that a real identity between them would make a statement like “God exists” redundant (e.g., ‘existence has existence’). Being (το όν) is itself one of the divine energies, according to Palamism, since God in Himself is υπερούσιος. This misunderstanding is based on a conflation of material and formal identity. A simple study of Aquinas on the divine relations or of Scotus of the formal distinction would erase this difficulty quite easily.

In fact, Palamas even says that there is no difference of signification between the divine names we ascribe to God based on the energies. 

“The divine essence, then, is altogether nameless, since it is also inconceivable. But it is named from all its inherent energies—none of the names there differing from one another in signification. For from each one of all the things said of God nothing else is denominated but that Hiddenness, which is in no way known as to what it is.” (Gregory Palamas, Against Gregoras, 4.48)

When it comes to defining what exactly are the divine “energies”, Palamas’ most important point of reference is the light of Christ on Mount Thabor, witnessed by the disciples during the Transfiguration. While Barlaam posited it as a created effect, Palamas firmly denied this, saying instead that it was “the effulgence, glory, and radiance of his nature, proceeding from him by nature.” (Against Gregoras, 4.40)

Q: Do the energies inhere in God, according to Palamism?

A: “Even the things said apophatically of God inhere (πρόεστι) in God naturally and are not nature, according to the divine Cyril [of Alexandria].” (Contra Akindynos, 4.11.25). Elsewhere, Palamas identifies these negations (timelessness, uncreatedness, etc.) with “the things around the essence (περι την ουσιαν).” Tikhon Pino describes Palamas’ view as being that there are “‘all things said of God cataphatically and apophatically’ are not essence but attributes inhering in the divine nature.” (Essence and Energies: Being and Naming God in St. Gregory Palamas, pg. 57). He explicitly describes the energies at one point as “those things that inhere in God by nature.” (Contra Akindynos, 4.7.13)

Palamism is unequivocally clear in its denial of the pure actuality of God. This is why Gregory refers to the energies/dynamis as “nothing other than a readiness to act.” (Gregory Palamas, Letter to Daniel of Ainos, 21). The energies of creation and providence and rendered as simply God’s ability to perform these respective acts whenever he so chooses (Tikhon Pino, Essence and Energies: Being and Naming God in St. Gregory Palamas [New York: Routledge Press, 2023], pg. 62). 

“it is not acting and energy but being acted upon and passivity which causes composition.” (The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, 145)

Palamas distinguishes between an energy and its ad extra effect (αποτελεσμα). These “created signs” are actualized (ένεργηθεντα) by the energy, and therefore distinct (Contra Akindynos, 1.4.9). Not every spiritual gift bestowed by the Holy Spirit is to be identified with the uncreated energies per se (Tikhon Pino, Essence and Energies, pg. 87). For example, the miracle of Christ walking on water in itself is a created phenomenon, but the divine grace and power through which that miracle is performed is the uncreated energies (Gregory Palamas, Against Gregoras, 4.30). 

Most interestingly, we sometimes find Palamas speaking of the “beginning” and “end” to the energies. “Palamas is insistent that it is the acts themselves—creation, providence, foreknowledge—that come to be or pass away (or both), not merely their effects.” (David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, pg. 262). This is, of course, in continuity with 20th-century Eastern theology: “God himself changes for our sake in his operations, remaining simple as the source of these operations and being wholly present in each one of them.” (Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God [Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1994], pg. 126)

Elsewhere, Palamas distinguishes between the energies and their temporal manifestation, ascribing a temporal beginning and end only to the latter:

“The essence of the Spirit is completely hidden, while the energy of the divine Spirit, manifested through its effects, begins and ceases at the level of manifestation, without the creatures, as we have said, attaining to eternality….But the energy of God does not, for this reason, begin and cease unqualifiedly. For God, who is always active, has an unceasing energy, ever seeing all things and providing for all things. For my Father until now is working, and I am working [John 5:17].” (Gregory Palamas, Contra Akindynos, 6.21.78)

“What is manifested from the acting is not the essence of the one acting, but his power and energy, which was in him even before the manifestation.” (Letter to Damianos, sect. 16)

This distinction made by Palamas should give great caution to Eastern Orthodox apologists who wish to insist that Thomistic divine simplicity leads to the necessity of creation. Might their argument just as easily be leveled against Palamas when he distinguishes the uncreated energy from its manifestation in time? Is creation an uncreated energy of God? If it is simply that God has a power to create which is only acted out in the beginning of the world, then this seems to lead to a passive potency being in God. “For even if there has been no beginning and end of the creative power, still, there has been a beginning and end of its activity, that is, the energy at the level of what has been created.” (Triads, 3.2.8). Perhaps this is why there are a few occasions in which Palamas differentiates between dynamis and energeia: “Power advances into energy, and from the energy the creature comes to be.” (Triads, 3.2.19). In fact, Palamas even is willing to speak of actualization in God ad intra, by using the analogy of the “inner” and “outer” word, the former being the movement of the rational intellect, the latter being an external vocalization (Contra Akindynos, 5.13.55). 

The energies are also often described as the “things around God.” (ta peri Theou), including both affirmations and negations. Under this label include things like immutability, incorporeality, and invisibility (Against Gregoras, 2.7). This would also be an accurate label for the light of Christ at Mount Thabor (Triads, 3.1.20). 

When it comes to discussing the nature of the essence-energies distinction, the concept of “antimony” comes into the light. It may also be aptly termed the “coincidence of opposites.” Throughout Palamite literature, we see an attitude of comfort and complacency in affirming seemingly blatant contradictory statements about God, as for example that He is both seen and unseen, participated and unparticipated.

“The divine nature must be said to be at the same time both exclusive of and in some sense open to participation. We attain to participation in the divine nature, and yet at the same time it remains totally inaccessible. We need to affirm both at the same time and to preserve the antinomy as a criterion of right devotion.” (Gregory Palamas, Theophanes, in PG 150:932D)

“[Anti-Palamites] base themselves upon a rational, philosophical notion of divine simplicity, and fail to allow properly for the fact that in God the opposites coincide; he transcends our man-made conceptions of unity and multiplicity, which cannot be applied to him without qualification.” (Kallistos Ware, “The Debate about Palamism,” Eastern Churches Review 9 [1977], pg. 51)

It is this need to affirm both unity and multiplicity in God (the classic problem in philosophy of the one and the many) that is a chief reason for the East’s insistence on a real distinction between ousia and energeia. “It is completely impossible and utterly irrational for something to be both one and many in the same sense.” (Gregory Palamas, One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, 117.11-13)

Once again conflating material and formal predication/identity, Palamas says that the difference of signification with divine names entails a real distinction between them ad intra:

“In the case of the energies, each of the names has a different signification. For who does not know that creating, ruling, judging, providing, and God’s adoption of us by his grace, differ from one another?” (Gregory Palamas, One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, 144.7-9) 

It is obvious from Palamas’ own writings and from the Synodol Tomos that the East does indeed teach a real distinction between essence and energies. However, another instance of this teaching is found in the dialogue between John Kantakouzenos and the Latin legate Paul of Smyrna: 

“We believe in the essence of God, as possessing the energy which proceeds from it without division. The energy does not exist as separate from the essence (οὐ διϊσταμένην) but differs from it according to the notion (διαφέρουσαν ἐπινοίᾳ) as warmth differs from fire or brightness from light….According to the teaching of the theologians and the decision of the Synod, the essence and the energy of God are, I assume, neither totally identical nor  totally distinct. In actual fact, both statements are true according to a different logical  criterion (οὐ μὴν τῷ αὐτῷ λόγῳ). True, an object cannot be both the same and different according to the same logical criterion (κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον). However, the union as well as the inseparability and the indivisibility are accorded to the reality ( τῷ πράγματι), whereas the distinction (διάκρισις) is merely accorded to the notion (μόνῃ τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ).” (Ep. Cant. 3.5.15, 17, in Iohannis Cantacuzeni Refutationes duae Prochori Cydonii; et, Disputao cum Paulo Patriarcha Lano: epistulis septem tradita, ed. Edmond Voordeckers & Franz Tinnefeld, [Turnhout: Brepols; Leuven: University Press, 1987]).

“There are three realities in God (Τριών όντων του θεού), namely, substance, energy and a Trinity of divine hypostases.” (Gregory Palamas, The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, 75.1-2)

Another facet which proves that the Palamites taught a distinctio realis is the accusation made by his opponents, particularly Barlaam and Akindynos, that Palamas’ doctrine led to some form of ditheism, in which there is a “higher” and “lower” divinity (θεότης) in God (Gregory Palamas, Contra Akindynos, 2.5.13; 6.3.6). Palamas gave further fuel to these accusations by insisting that the uncreated Light is subordinate to divine essence (how this does not introduce composition given Palamas' own criterion of passivity is quite the mystery to me!).

“The fact that there is a cause as well as something caused; participability and imparticipibility; something that characterizes and something characterized, etc. —the one transcendent and the other subordinate (ύπερκείμενον και ύποβεβηκός) - presents no obstacle to God’s being one and simple, having a single, equal, and simple divinity.” (Gregory Palamas, Third Letter to Akindynos, 3.7)

“The things contemplated essentially around God are many and yet do not in any way impinge on the profession of simplicity, all the more will this ‘symbol’ having the form of light, which is one of them, do it no harm.” (Triads, 3.1.19)

“When we call some divine power or energy of God ‘divinity,’ there are many divine energies that take this appellation. These include the energies of vision, purification, deification, and oversight, God’s being everywhere and nowhere, which is to say his being ever-moved, as well as the light that shone forth on Thabor around his elect disciples.” (Gregory Palamas, Theophanes, sect. 9)

“Just as the many Spirits do not do away with the unity, simplicity, and non-synthesis of the Spirit, since they are his energies, so, in the same way, even if someone should speak, in accordance with the saints, of many divinities, meaning the energies of the one Divinity (μιᾶς θεότητος), he does not do away with its unity, simplicity, and lack of synthesis. Beyond this, even if the name ‘divinity’ should signify many things, still none of the things signified is unsuited to the three Persons, so that even in this way there is a single divinity of the three.” (Gregory Palamas, Letter to Arsenios, sect. 4, in PS 2:317.25-318.5)

When it comes to this particular dispute, the most oft-quoted and studied passage is from the aforecited Third Letter to Akindynos (3.15), which technically has two versions which ought to be cited here in parallel format:

“There is, according to the theologians wise in God, a subordinate divinity (θεότης ὑφειμένη), as the great Dionysios says there, namely, deification, the gift of the transcendent essence of God (τῆς ὑπερκειμένης οὐσίας τοῦ θεοῦ).”  This is John Meyendorff’s translation based on 12 of the 17 extant manuscripts of this text from Palamas.

“There is, according to the theologians wise in God, a subordinate divinity: the gift of the transcendent [divinity] (τῆς ὑπερκειμένης).”  This is how the text is cited by Akindynos himself (Orientalia Christiana Periodica, vol. 40 [1974], pg. 233)

From my point of view, this is a troubling terminology by Palamas whichever translation or version one chooses to uphold as authentic. The Russian Orthodox scholar and archimandrite Cyprian Kern (1899-1960) refers to Palamas’ language as “undeniably problematic.”  (Антропология свт. Григория Паламы [Moscow, 1960], pg. 313). 

 

“There should not be any wonder for us that, in God’s case, essence and energy are in some sense one and are one God, and at the same time essence is the cause of the energies and, in virtue of its being their cause, is superior to them. For the Father and the Son, too, are one thing and one God, and yet “the Father is greater” (Joh. 14,28) than the Son in terms of His being the cause. And if there [sc. in the case of the Holy Trinity], for all the self-subsistence of the Son and for all His being co-substantial [with the Father], “the Father is” nevertheless “greater” [than the Son], all the more will the essence be superior to the energies, since these two things are neither the same nor different in substance, as these properties [sc. being of the same or of different substance] regard self-subsistent realities and no energy at all is self-subsistent.” (Gregory Palamas, On the Divine Energies and Participation in Them, §19, in Γρηγορίου τοῦ Παλαμᾶ συγγράματα. ed. Panagiotes K. Chrestou, 5 vols. [Thessaloniki: Kyromanos, 1962-1992], 2:111)

It is obvious that Palamas is saying that the distinction between the essence and energies is the same as the distinction between the divine Hypostases, both relying on a common basis, i.e. causal relations. Just as the Father is superior to the Son by virtue of being His eternal cause (αἰτία) as Begettor, so also is the transcendent essence superior to the energies by being their cause, and yet they are still one God. 

Palamas seems to even be saying here that the superiority of essence over energies is even greater than that between the Father and the Son, since “these two things are neither the same nor different in substance,” since speaking of identity and distinction in substance pertains only to that which is self-subsistent, which is obviously not applicable to God’s uncreated energies. 

One rather curious observation made by John Dematracopoulos is that some of Palamas’ Byzantine supporters made great use of the concept of επίνοια to soften the essence-energies distinction (“Palamas Transformed: Palamite Interpretations of the Distinction between God’s ‘Essence’ and ‘Energies’ in Late Byzantium,” in Greeks, Latins, and Intellectual History 1205-1500, ed. M. Hinterberger & Ch. Schabel [Leuven: Peeters, 2011], pgs. 281-292). I will attempt here to give a detailed outline of this phenomenon as observable in Byzantine Palamism of the mid-14th century:

[1]. “To see that essence and energy are not in every aspect one and the same thing, but are united and inseparable and yet are distinguished only conceptually, pay attention to how the saints state that these things are two and testify both to their unity and distinctiveness. … Hence we do not state that there are two deities or Gods, as they [sc. the antiPalamites] slander us; instead, what we state on the basis of what we have learnt from the saints is that this Deity, which is participated in by those who are deified, is not a proper essence or substance, but a natural power and energy present within God Himself, the Holy Trinity, absolutely inseparable and indivisible [from Him], the difference [between them] being only conceptual… The holy Fathers and Doctors, as we have already said, even if they say that God’s essence is one thing and His energy is another thing, conceive of the energy—and they write thus—as inseparable and indivisible from the essence, as proceeding from it and as having existence and being present only in this very essence, since the separation (or, better, the difference) is construed only conceptually. Thus, in the case of those things which have their existence in other things, but do not subsist or exist autonomously in themselves, one does not speak of composition, as we have said.” (Philotheos Kokkinos, Κεφαλαια της αίρεσεως Άκινδυνου και Βαρλαάμ, §4, 8-9, cited by Demetracopoulos, 283-84)

[2]. “That substance is one thing whereas hypostasis is another does not entail that substance exists in separation from hypostasis; nor does the fact that essence and energy are not the same entail that the divine energy is separated from the divine essence; on the contrary, the distinction between them is conceptual, whereas their unity is real and indivisible.” (Neilos Cabasilas, Oratio brevis de Gregorii Nysseni dicto; “Increatum nihil nisi…”, §12)

[3]. “We believe that God’s essence has energy, which emanates indivisibly from it and does not lie at a local distance from it, but just differs from it conceptually, in the manner that heat differs from fire and shine from light, to use the examples put forward by the theologians, e.g., by Cyril (of Alexandria) and Basil (of Caesarea), who have verbatim as just mentioned.” (John Kantakouzenos, First Epistle to Paul, 1.13-18)

[4]. The most succinct neo-Palamite explanation of the concept of επίνοια in relation to the essence-energies distinction comes from Theophanes of Nicaea, who applied the language of a “conceptual distinction” only to the notion of separability, while also maintaining a distinctio rationis:

“The divine essence and energy differ from each other in reality, because, as has been sufficiently shown, they are both real things; on the other hand, they are divided and separated from one another only conceptually, not really; for, according to the divine Anastasius, ‘they cannot be separated from each other’, just like the heatness in the fire cannot be separated from the fire and the sunlight from the sun. Even more, these things form a unity only partially (indeed, the sunlight is connected with the disk and its source only as far as some part of it, whereas its largest part runs through the end of the world), whereas in the case of the divine essence and energy the connection is not regarded as partial, but, since each of them is “incircumscribable”, exists in each other in its totality.” (Theophanes of Nicaea, Ἐπιστολὴ ἐν ἐπιτομῇ δηλοῦσα τίνα δόξαν ἕξει ἡ καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἐκκλησία περὶ τῶν παρὰ Παύλου προενηνεγμένων ζητήσεων, in MS. Barocci 193, ff. 86r)

I understand myself that it is quite difficult to put all of this data into one coherent critique of Palamism, and so I have chosen to conclude this article with a series of questions which I hope will pave the way further in East-West dialogue, and perhaps spark renewed interested in Eastern theology amongst the confessional Reformed folk, of whom I am a humble part.

[1]. Is simplicity itself an energy of God which is distinct from the essence? If so, then how can Palamas continue to claim any notion of simplicity whatsoever? We would then have an essence which is non-simple in itself but "is simple" through a distinct energeia. If simplicity is not distinct from the essence, then this is a case in which some attribute or perfection which is predicated of God is admitted to be really identical to His essence.

[2]. Why do later Palamites seem to soften the "realness" of the distinction between essence and energies?

[3]. Is the Palamite notion of ἐπίνοια the same as what we find in St. Basil of Caesarea (see Radde-Gallwitz and Delcogliano).