Truth Unites - The Essence-Energies Distinction: A Protestant Reflection

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

In this video I offer a Protestant perspective on the essence-energies  distinction in Eastern Orthodox theology, exploring points of agreement  as well as disagreement between the Thomist and Palamite traditions.   Here is my article on divine simplicity: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ijst.12068  Here is my article on the beatific vision:  https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/will-we-see-gods-essence-a-defence-of-a-thomistic-account-of-the-beatific-vision/9BAA85479C70DC24CA75F1691BC0BC3E  Here is my video on divine simplicity: https://youtu.be/wlpdpAnVwgI  Here is my video on the beatific vision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uGkwPJkWmI Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

One of the points of difference between Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity as they develop is this tendency in the East to make a distinction between the essence of God and the energies of God. And I find this so fascinating. I put a lot of research into this. So let's start with some just clear definitions. So in the East, you have this tradition of thought kind of pinnically represented by Gregory Palamis in the 14th century. So we'll call that the Palomite tradition. And in the West, you have a tradition kind of pinnically represented by Thomas Aquinas. So we'll call that the Thomist tradition. This is not an East versus West absolute contrast.

Of course, you can find Palamites in the West and so forth. But there's these two different understandings of the nature of God and God's relationship to the world, how God can be known that are so interesting. So this is going to be a longer video about this difference and specifically about the distinction between the essence and energies of God that's in the Palomite tradition in the East. I've put a lot of work into this. I hope it's helpful for people. This is definitely a neglected area, especially for like evangelical Protestants.

You know, a lot of times we don't get into these conversations. So hopefully this will be helpful for people. Here's what you can expect. If you follow me throughout the end, you watch the whole thing through. First, you'll get an overview of what the differences are on this issue. Second of all, you'll get an overview of where we agree and can learn from one another, from my vantage point, at least, in the palomite and Thomist traditions.

Thirdly, you'll get an overview of where some of the remaining differences are, as I see them. And then I'll conclude with a few kind of where we go from here type comments. Now, this is a very difficult topic. It's very abstruse and difficult to understand. So I'll use big words throughout. I'm not going to reduce anything. I'm not going to dumb anything down. But what I'll try to do is just explain things as clearly as I can to make

it as clear as possible. And the goal here is not to definitively settle every question that comes up here. Like I said, this is very complicated. Rather, the goal is more to sort of introduce people to this and make some progress in terms of ecumenical work in this area. And I've collapsed a lot of research down into about this one video, which will be about an hour or so probably, maybe a little more than an hour. So I hope this will be helpful. Let me lay my cards on the table right up front so you know what I'm coming from and what I'm going to be arguing for. So on the one hand, I'm not naive or overly optimistic about the progress we can make here. There are real substantive material differences between the Thomist and Palomite traditions that remain. Some people say, oh, these differences are just a matter

of vocabulary. And I don't think that's true. People are saying, some people say, it's just, we're talking about the same thing. We're just using different language and concepts and so forth. I don't think that's true. I think there are real differences at the same time. The angle that I've approached this from is kind of where can I learn as an evangelical Protestants and where can we make progress? And I think we can make a lot of progress. I'll talk about that. So, you know, I'm coming into this thoroughly Western in my instincts. I'm kind of on record for affirming a divine or a Western account, a tomistic account of divine simplicity. I'll get into that. I'm going to link to my article on that topic.

I wrote an article defending such an account in the International Journal of Systematic Theology. I've also made a video on that, so I'll link to that as well. And in there, I just go through, you know, starting with early voices like Athenagoras, up through the medieval era, trying to look at neglected texts like Bonaventure's Journey of the Mind unto God, and trying to look at some of the philosophical influences upon that tradition, especially Plotinus and Pseudodionysius, and trying to just get clarity about what divine simplicity is and trying to defend it from a historical angle. So I'm on record for that, and then I've also defended a tomistic account of the beatific vision,

which is one of the issues that's going to come up as a point of difference here. And I'll link to my article. I have an article in the Scottish Journal of Theology. Sorry to talk about my writings. I'm not trying to draw attention to them, but they're going to come up a lot here. So I'm going to quote them. So, you know. But anyway, so I'm in that article, and I made a video on that too. So I'll link to the video. But there I'm just defending a tommistic account of the beatific vision. So I'm going to be drawing. So I'm kind of on record for being basically a tomist in my understanding of God and our relation to God, both of those things. But coming from that angle, I find there is so much I can learn from the Palomite tradition. And I respect this tradition. I respect Eastern Christian. Christianity of all varieties, I think it's so fruitful for me, especially for those of us who grew up in evangelical contexts, to engage with those traditions. There's just so much fruitful interaction because so often there's kind of a different mentality in the East. I mean this in a good way. Just in that, you know, they're not just getting to different answers. So often they're asking different questions. They just have a different mindset about so many different theological issues.

issues and I just think there's a lot to learn. There's a lot of possibility for fruitful interaction when you're engaging with the tradition that's really, we're somewhat historically disconnected from, you know. So I find this really exciting, this whole area really fascinating and it was so fun to get into it. You know, I'm reading Palamas himself through this book. I didn't read through all of the triads, we'll talk about this book, but I gave a real thorough reading of this set of selected passages from the triads. And there's moments in reading Gregory where it was like a spiritual experience. I mean, I'll talk about this, this profound kind of mystical emphasis in the Eastern tradition

that I just find so interesting and so intriguing. So I'll talk about my appreciation for that. And then another one of the books I've been reading through very carefully is this, it's kind of a collection of responses to David Bradshaw's scholarship. It's called Divine Essence and Divine Energy's Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy. And some of the scholars here, the Eastern Orthodox scholars in particular, are really high-powered. I mean, this is a fascinating area to get into, and you just feel like you're, it's like walking into a museum. You know, there's all these ornate, beautiful pieces of architecture, and there's so much to explore, you know. There's an essay in here by Nicholas Ludovicose.

I'd never heard of him before, but I found his essay in particular really interesting and instructive and so I just have a lot of respect for this tradition that I'm engaging, and I want to make that clear. That's kind of my angle of approach here. So having said that, there's four sections to this video. First, we'll give an overview of what the essence energy's distinction is for those who don't have any background. Second, we're going to explore areas of agreement and overlap, and I'll have five points of appreciation personally for the Palomite tradition. Excuse me. Third, I'll try to target and clarify the remaining points of difference and disagreement.

And I'll have three concerns that I have myself about the essence energy's distinction. And then lastly, I have a few practical thoughts on how to keep the conversation moving forward. So I'll try to go quick here. I've got about 17 pages of notes. And I'll try to keep your interest and keep it moving. First, what is the essence energy's distinction? Some of us may not even be familiar with that. I'll start with some historical backdrop and I'll put up a picture of Gregory Palomis here.

He was a 14th century monk and theologian and eventually became an archbishop and he's considered a saint within orthodoxy. And he was born in Constantinople, but he became a monk at Mount Athos in Greece. I'll put up a picture of where that is. It's this fascinating, kind of isolated place. And his practice there, you know, I found it so interesting just to learn about, again, when you're coming from a west, perspective, and I'm sure it's the same vice versa, although if you're most of the Eastern Orthodox Christians I know already live in the United States, so they're probably already familiar with Western Christianity more. But coming the other direction, there's just this massive tradition

of spirituality that was so interesting to learn about. So Gregory spent most of his time as a monk in prayer. He reminded me of Anselm a lot in many ways. Ansal was also a monk. And if you've heard of the word Hesikasm, I'll put that one up as well. This is a tradition of contemplative prayer that Gregory is associated with, typically, ideally, for five days a week, Monday through Friday, you're spending most of your time praying what's called the Jesus prayer, which the probably most widely accepted version of that is, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Or sometimes the words a sinner are not included. And the goal in this tradition of contemplative prayers to attain union with God, what is sometimes called deification

through this kind of retreat into oneself beyond the senses. And I'm going to nuance this a little bit more in just a second, but I'm just trying to get it out there, so that you're acquiring this kind of experiential knowledge of God. And there's a focus upon the role of the body, so there's breathing techniques that are a part of the process and so forth. Part of the reason I find Gregory so interesting is engaging his theology draws us into this broader question of the relationship between spirituality and theology.

And that's something that comes up with Anselm as well. Anselm is very experiential as well. And also a monk. So, you know, there's the same question I've had with Anselm a lot of, to what extent is the monastic context kind of driving the theology here? And I'm very sympathetic to this way of thinking that theology should always be intimately associated with spirituality. We should never divorce those two. Anyway, so Gregory did a lot of things in his life, but the important point for us, as we're trying to get into the essence energy's distinction, is that he came under criticism

from another theologian of his day, and he calls the philosopher, a man named Barlam. And their disagreement has to do with this practice of hesicastic prayer, but there's lots of other questions that come up along the way, faith versus reason type questions. you know, and one of the points of dispute is this idea of a distinction between God's essence and energies. And leads to a great controversy. There's a series of councils held in Constantinople in 1341 that side with Gregory, and then there's subsequent disputes, but ultimately Gregory's position is vindicated. So the official Orthodox view becomes this distinction between God's essence, which is incomprehensible, and God's energies by which he communicates himself to us.

This is part of what Gregory's, this is a big part of Gregory's whole understanding of prayer and his theology. And the common metaphor he will use is of the sun and the rays of the sun, with the sun being like God's essence and the rays of the sun being like God's energies. And the key to understand here, I think, is that this is a usually, there are some people who dispute this, but usually this is understood as a real distinction. It's not just a conceptual distinction or a formal distinction. distinction. So in other words, this is more than just how we understand God or how we experience God.

This is a distinction that obtains even apart from creation. And also then there are distinctions between the various energies of God or works of God. So this is really interesting because this is one of the great differences between the East and the West. Generally, the West rejects this distinction as a real problem. Now that's changed a little bit in more recent times, and you can have contemporary Roman Catholics who are more positive about Gregory. But historically, it's been kind of one of the cardinal points of difference. You think of the East versus West, you think of the filiocque and the papacy and purgatory, and, you know, I've talked about various other issues, points of difference. This is one of them. Here's how David Bradshaw,

who wrote a very significant book in this whole area, puts it at the beginning, He says the distinction of essence and energy has long been recognized as the most important philosophical tenet distinguishing Eastern Christian thought from its Western counterpart. So we're kind of here, you know, if you think of like the papacy and, you know, views of whether priests need to have beards and things like this, there's other things that are more surface level visible in the East-West split. This is more kind of at the philosophical level. And so it's a really fascinating point of different.

All right, why is this important? How does this play out if we distinguish between God's essence and energies? Some of the differences have to do with our doctrine of God or theology proper, and the biggest area this surfaces is in two different conceptions of divine simplicity. Okay? You have two very different ways in which both sides want to say God is simple, but it's understood very differently. In the West, you have what is sometimes called a divine identity account. sometimes people will use the phrase absolute divine simplicity, though I don't find that language as helpful. And the idea here is that God's essence is identical with his attributes. In the East, you don't have that. You have a softer version of divine simplicity, and the essence energy's distinction funnels directly into that. There's also practical differences that come about. So the essence

energy's distinction is related to a whole vision of spirituality. and prayer, as we've noticed, and just the more basic question of how do creatures meaningfully relate to God and know God? Because what both traditions are trying to wrestle with is how is God transcendent and at the same time meaningfully related to creatures? We're trying to talk about God's presence and activity in the world in a responsible way, where we can acknowledge that God remains transcendent and yet has a meaningful relation to creatures and can be meaningfully known by creatures. And these two traditions are different ways of wrestling with that tension.

So there are differences, for example, in how we understand the beatific vision. That is the sight of God. That is thought to be the ultimate human experience and it's associated with union with God. Now that's, so if people are interested they can read my article on this where I, or watch my video on this where I defend a to mystic account, but some of the differences are, basically I walk through six distinctions in Thomas's thought to try to defend Thomas' view, which is that we will see God's essence. And that is denied in the Palomite tradition. They say we see God's energies. And they also affirm that that can happen in this life. Whereas Thomas insists that the beatific

vision is restricted for the next life. So there are these fascinating stories of the monks at Mount Athos seeing the uncreated light. Or sometimes it's called the Tabor light or taboric light, which is from the Mount of Tabor where the transfiguration occurred, this light that shone down and radiated from the body of Christ during his transfiguration, or it's associated with, you know, at Paul's conversion or Moses, his face shining after talking face to face with God. And there's other passages in scripture where we have this idea. First Timothy 6 talks about God dwelling in unapproachable light. So the idea here is that's, that light, can be seen. But it says it's God's energy, not God's essence. It's not, the light is not from angels.

One Eastern Orthodox theologian calls it the food of angels. So the angels dwell in this light, but it's not from angels. It's sometimes described as a limitless sea pouring forth from the body of the incarnate Christ. So this is why the transfiguration is so central, which we'll talk about more. The key here is that this is not just an ordinary sight. This is not just ordinary bodily vision. It's kind of nuanced because Gregory will say it, like at one point he says, those who are united to God and deified, quote, see with a sense that exceeds the senses and a mind that exceeds mind for the power of the spirit penetrates their human faculties and allows them to see things which are beyond us. So there's this kind of mystical apprehension of God, but the body is

involved. That's what's so interesting. It's not, it's a transcending of the senses of the body by the spirit, but at the same time, they're sort of elevated. So at one point, Gregory says, when, however, the seeing eye does not see as an ordinary eye, but as an eye opened by the power of the spirit. It does not see God by means of an alien symbol, and it is then we can speak of sense perception transcending the senses. And elsewhere, he, makes the same point, he speaks of, quote, accessible to sense perception, yet transcending sense perception. So there is this emphasis upon the body and the role of the body in the beatific vision. And the key is the incarnation.

Okay. So the idea is that through the incarnation, God has made himself accessible to human experience in this way. and this sight of God is not, it's a gift of grace, it's not an intellectual achievement. It's kind of this experiential knowledge that is yielded by God's grace. And there's a strong emphasis just upon the experiential. I mean, you know, there's points in the triads where Gregory will just say, don't try to understand this, you know, don't be over-curious about this. He likes to say, don't be over-curious.

At one point he says, when you speak of the deifying energy of God and the theurgic, now the word theurgy has to do with divine activity through human activity, a supernatural effect through a human act. So the theurgic grace of the Holy, of the Spirit, do not busy yourself or seek to know why it is this or that and not something else. For without it, you cannot be united to God. attend rather to those works which will allow you to attain it. For thus you will know it according to your capacities. For as St. Basil tells us, he alone knows the energies of the spirit who has learned them through experience. So in other words, you kind of get a flavor of it there.

He's saying, don't wonder why it's this way or that way. Just focus on getting it. You know, it's kind of the, and the quotation from Basel there introduces a point that's really important that we can't fully get into here is to what extent Gregory is just summarizing earlier Eastern thinkers like the Capadocian theologians, Maximus the confessor, pseudo Dionysius, those are the ones he quotes the most in the triads. And that's a big question. To what extent is he sort of just codifying what they already said and to what extent is he going a little further. So that gives you a little bit of a sense. Just of that was probably oversimplified here or there,

but I'm trying to give a just a drive-by of what we're talking about here. What is this, what is Hasicastic Prayer? What is this vision of God and why the essence, energy, 's distinction is so important? All right. Let's now ask which of these traditions is right, the Palomite or the Thomist? And is there a distinction between God's essence and energies? Is that right? Let me start by saying, this is the second section of the video, let's talk about where we can have overlap, where the two are not necessarily totally mutually exclusive, and where we might be able to learn from each other as well. What's driving my thought here is, it just seems to me that it's really easy for Orthodox Christians to summarize Aquinas too simply, and for Western Christians,

Protestant, Catholic, whatever, to summarize Palamis too simply. And you can isolate certain statements and not really read them as sympathetically as you should. And so it's really easy to have a caricature of the other side. And both of these traditions, the Palomite and Tomist, these are heavy-duty traditions. They're not to be summarized and dismissed too quickly. Okay. So one of the important things is to read Thomas and Gregory themselves because it's a honestly, it is astounding how often there are these massive caricatures even at the level of scholarship where you can just tell that there's not really a sympathetic understanding of the other side. So that's what I've tried to do and just very carefully work through this. I'm not an expert on Gregory.

I mean, this is just a selection from the triads, which is something he wrote in the context of that dispute with Barlam. But I've read it through very carefully and have also been in the secondary literature, just trying to get an understanding. So one of the good questions we can ask is where can the differences between these two traditions be mitigated? if not resolved, by asking, are they trying to say the same thing in different language, at least here or there? Do they have similar concerns here and there? And I think that that's true to an extent. So here, I can share about this myself. I went into my study of Gregory with three concerns already on the table just wondering about, you know. One of them is di-theism.

So di-theism is, you've probably heard of the term tri-theism. Di-theism means belief in two gods or belief in two principles in God. So we should probably call it like a quasi-diotheism, not diethism proper, but just this sense of, is there a two-ness here that we're attributing to God, whereas we want to say, no, God is one. But we're introducing these two things, essence and energies. That's a kind of open question on my mind, as I'm getting into it. Another is divine agnosticism. This is the concern that we're making God's essence unknowable. and our contact with him is wholly limited to the energies. So we're always relating to the energies and there's just always going to be something beyond them that we never can touch in the essence.

And then the third concern is about divine simplicity. Are we rupturing divine simplicity, which means that God has not made of, there's no ontological composition in God. God is not made up of different parts. And are we rupturing that if we have uncreated plurality in God? If we say that God has all these energies and they're uncreated and they're distinct from the divine essence, how can we retain divine simplicity? How we don't have parts in God. And I want to say that in reading through Gregory trying to be sympathetic, these concerns were alleviated to a large degree. Because as I read him carefully, Gregory is aware of these concerns, especially the first two.

And he's very careful to try to hold the essence and energies together. So for example, he says at one point, how could one think that the glory of God is the essence of God of that God who, while remaining imparticipable, invisible, and impalpable, becomes participable by his superessential power? And communicates himself and shines forth and becomes in contemplation, one spirit with those, who meet him with a pure heart. Now that's a lot of big words there. Just two quick observations to try to break it down. This is one of many passages where Gregory clearly wants to maintain a tight correlation between essence and energies. He doesn't want to split them up too much. So you see this in the language of while remaining imparticipable, that's a big word meaning unable to be

participated in. So God's remaining, God is remaining unable to be participated in, but he becomes. So this is Gregory's tendency is to communicate through paradox. The relation, and he's drawing from pseudo-dionysius here, the relationship between energies and essence is this kind of paradoxical dynamic relationship. So when we relate to God's energies, we are really relating to God himself. Okay? This gets really nuanced and really tricky. In other words, the distinction between essence and energy is not an absolute divorcing of the two. They have this kind of complicated interplay. So, for example, Gregory can even say things like this. God is entirely present in each of the divine energies. I see right there alone, that quote alone pushes back against some of the more

blunt statements of di-theism. Okay, it already shows those are wrong. Because when you're relating to the energies, you're relating to God. God is present in the energies. Elsewhere, Gregory will say that God's essence transcends his energies and is their source, and it brings them into unity, but then he'll clarify with the sun and ray's metaphor. Quote, but this is in no way opposed to the veneration of a unique God and a unique divinity, since the fact of calling the ray sun in no way prevents us from thinking of a unique sun and a unique light. So you see the word unique there is positioned explicitly against any kind of di-theism. He's saying that there's one God, and just like there's one son, but the rays of the

sun, we can call them the sun. So that metaphor of the sun and the rays might help people understand this a bit. Now, one of the ways that Gregory responds to the charge of diethism from Barlam, because Barlam, that's what he was saying. He's saying, you have two principles in God here. One of the ways he responds is by saying that the energies are n-hypostatic. Now, I'll put up these on the screen, these words, and hypostatic, and hypostatic. I told you this was going to get complicated, but I'll try to break this down and make it really clear. These words come up a lot in discussions about the incarnation. If you're studying Carl Bart on the incarnation, you can't avoid this, for example. Basically, they describe how the word relates to his human nature. And the word

an antipostatic with an A is used to make clear that the Son of God did not assume a pre-existing human nature that had reality apart from him, but at the same time, it is a real human nature. And so the word n hypostatic is used to emphasize Jesus did assume a real human nature. His human nature is personalized through its union with the divine nature, so that the result is Christ's human nature is not personal in itself apart from his divine nature, but it's personalized through its union with the divine nature. Gregory is going to use the word n hypostatic

to refer to the energies of God to establish that they're not separate from God. They're not some separate thing that has its own ontological status apart from God. So referencing Barlam, he says, since the saints here speak of an n hypostatic reality, but not of a hypostasis existing on its own, how could the light be an independent essence

or a second God, since it does not possess an independent existence. So the idea here is the energies are not hypostatic. They're not individuated. And so they don't result in a second principle in God. So he's trying to hold the essence and energies together. So Gregory can even say this. I mean, this is how far he can go. I couldn't believe when I found this quote.

This is not from the triads. This is from elsewhere. He says, if you think that through this energy, it is the very divine essence that expresses itself, even not thoroughly, you are not out of the terms of piety. Okay? So in other words, he's saying, if you think that through the divine energy, it is the divine essence expressing himself, though it's not a full expression, you're okay. That's safe.

That's within the boundaries of what's acceptable. So that really helps us. Ludovico's, the scholar that I referenced earlier, draws attention to elsewhere in Gregory's writings where he'll say, quote, it is possible to use the name of divine essence even for the energies, end quote. So hopefully we can see that there's no conception of the energies existing apart from the essence. Here's how Ludovico's himself summarizes it. He says there is a fundamental ontological identity between essence and energies which it is absolutely necessary to know of, if we want to avoid any separate ontologization of the latter.

That means making it into a separate being. Here's how Mayendorf puts it in the introduction to this book. He is a great introduction. He's a orthodox scholar. He says the distinction in God between essence and energy, that focal point of Palomite theology, is nothing but a way of saying that the transcendent, God remains transcendent as he communicates himself to humanity.

Hopefully that will raise the question for us. to ask was, okay, that sounds a lot like some of the things Thomas will say, as I'm going to show from the Summa Theologica. So to what extent are Gregory and Thomas simply saying the same thing with different words and categories? Now, I don't think that's fully the case, but I think that's partially the case. I think we could say that, you know, as I work through, because one of my six distinctions that I work through in my article in the Scottish Journal theology is Thomas will say we see God's essence, but then he'll distinguish and he'll say, but we see it not comprehensively. Okay. So comparing that idea with what I just read from Gregory, it's like, oh, you can see these

aren't totally far off. Gregory is saying, we see God's energy, but not God's essence. But then Gregory says, well, but the energies are a communication of the essence, right? And Thomas is saying, well, we see God's essence, but we don't see it comprehensively. So depending on how you cash those out, you can see they're kind of trying to negotiate similar concerns. They're both trying to preserve God's transcendence, while at the same time establishing a meaningful communication of God to creatures via the beatific vision. They're both trying to say, we don't attain God comprehensively, but we do attain God truly. The way that Ludovicos puts it is, God is not exeatific. exhaustively expressed to creatures, but it is God in his totality that is expressed.

So the differences, I'm going to talk about the difference, there are differences, but I'm just trying to say there's a basic framework that both the Palomite and the Thomist tradition read sympathetically are operating within. When all is said and done at the end of the day, when it comes to my three concerns, I think that I raised, Ditheism, divine agnosticism, a puncturing of divine simplicity, I think the Palomite tradition has resources to ward off the flat-out charge of diethism or divine agnosticism. There are individual passages that can be read in ways that might make those worries seem very alive. But if you read charitably and sympathetically, it seems like you can harmonize them with other passages such that they are neutralized.

I'll keep thinking about that. I'll keep giving consideration to all of that, but that's my provisional kind of take at this point. But on the question of divine simplicity, my third concern, that concern is still on the table for me, and I'll come back to that in the next section of the video. But let me just real quickly articulate five points of personal appreciation for the Palomite tradition. As I read Gregory, there's so much that I find enriched by, even though I'm not ultimately finally persuaded of the essence, energy's distinction, as I'll talk about, in the third section of the video. Before that, let me just say five things I appreciate about this tradition. Number one is there's such a profound emphasis upon experience in theology.

And I find that really wonderful. And again, it connects to my appreciation for Anselm, who's also very experiential in his approach to theology. It's very hard to articulate this, but there's this aroma or quality while reading Gregory Palomis that I just find so intriguing and so captivating. You know, in the preface to this book, Yaroslav Pelican compares Gregory to an existential You know, he's comparing him to Kierkegaard and people like this. And reading Gregory, I understand something of why. You know, you have these moments where you're reading and you kind of get caught up into an alternative way of looking at things.

And it's really interesting. It's like stepping into a different universe for a few seconds, you know. And so I, that's why I call this video, I thought about maybe calling this video, the essence, energy's distinction, a Protestant meditation rather than a Protestant reflection. I don't know what I'll call it, but probably just call it a reflection, but meditation because, you know, all of our theology should be done in a spirit of fear and trembling before God and leaving room for an experiential aspect to our thought about God, because we're creatures and we, there's no, it's like, you know, picture a mosquito flying toward the Niagara Falls. There's no way to do that without this absolute sense of, don't get too close, you know,

I'm tiny and the object is huge. It could destroy me without even noticing me. All theology should be done in this spirit, fear and trembling before, especially when we're talking about the divine essence. We should come to it with this deep reverence to stack up 10 more Niagara Falls on top, and you're the mosquito, right?

And you're flying at this massive thing. That's how we should do theology when we're talking about the divine essence. And there's something in Gregory that communicates something of the spirit of that, this spirit of humility and reverence. And it really helped me to appreciate that more. Reading through Gregory, you know,

there's these six sections that Mayendorf has in this particular edition of the triads. The last one is on the essence energy's distinction. So I read that one first. When I did that, I had one understanding of it. Then I went back and I reread the first five and that I read the sixth a second time and I had a totally different perception of it. Because as you read through the first five sections, it's talking about kind of the experiential and spiritual and epistemological context in which you have to

appreciate the essence energy's distinction. And it has this kind of prayerful foundation to it, that you can't understand it without understanding that. So I'm not really drawing any conclusions from this. I'm just kind of stating my appreciation for this kind of aroma to Gregory's theology that I think is it has points of connection with Western theologians that I particularly admire like Anselm, and I think it's worth reflecting upon further. A second point of appreciation is Gregory's understanding of the knowledge of God

is this unique and paradoxical thing. His famous statement I'll put up, God is not only beyond knowledge, but also beyond unknowing. And he also talks about elsewhere about how he says, God is ignorantly known. Think about that. It also has points of resonance with what I've gotten from Anselm in his book, the proslogian.

And it's just you get this sense that when we relate to God, when we do theology, we're relating to subject matter that is totally different from everything else we relate to. And I find that really interesting to think about. And that also is something that's kind of a theme in Gregory. A third point of appreciation is kind of a point of interest in learning from engaging with him is just his clear concern about over rationalizing in theology. And specifically with respect to God, the concern of making God into an abstraction, you know, just this intellectual idea. And this is a theme in Gregory that the scholarship picks up on a lot, too. The way Bradshaw puts it is, quote, if one were to summarize the differences between the Eastern and Western traditions in a single word, that word would be synergy. For the East, the highest form of communion with the divine is not primarily an intellectual act, but a sharing of life and activity.

Now, in a bit, I'm going to come back and push back against that East versus West contrast as too absolute in a bit. But, I mean, there's still so much to appreciate and learn from in terms of this caution. Because I do think there are times, especially in the Western tradition, where there is too much of an emphasis upon rationality as the means of our engagement with God. And so there's a real concern here to take seriously. And this is where the famous quote from Gregory's triads is so poignant. He says, when God was conversing with Moses, he did not say, I am the essence, but I am the one who is. Thus, it is not the one who is who derives from the essence, but essence which derives from him, for it is he who contains all being in himself.

And whatever else you might want to say about this, you may not fully agree with the contrast there, There's a valid concern we can appreciate here of making God an abstraction. I'm going to come back to that in the final minute of this video. A fourth point of appreciation is just the emphasis in Hessecast spirituality on bodily spirituality, which, you know, Gregory has a lot to say about the goodness of the body throughout the triads. He says there's nothing bad in having a body. The problem with you and me is not that we're bodily, it's that there's sin. and he talks about the role of the body in our spirituality and our prayer.

I mentioned the role of breathing and the Jesus prayer. He talks about, you know, participation in God does not mean we float out of our body. Deification elevates our body. At one point, he says the flesh is transformed and elevated. And he's relating to that. This is why Christ's transfiguration is so central. And I just find that really interesting. It raises all kinds of questions about the relationship between psychology and spirituality.

which is interesting. And it helps me think about the role of the resurrected body in heaven. We know that we're not going to be floating as ethereal spirits in heaven. We'll have resurrected bodies, but why is that important? Why does that matter? Gregory, you know, his theology helps induce reflection on that. And I think it's an important theme in his work. A final point of appreciation would be his focus on the transfiguration.

This is a huge point of emphasis for him. the uncreated light is often called the taboric light from this event. And there's all kinds of fascinating points of reflection on here on this event in Christ's life. I'm sympathetic to this because in my book, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, and I'm sorry to talk about my own writings again, but I have a chapter on the Atonement, and I talk a lot about the Transfiguration. And I say this is a neglected episode in Christ's incarnate life. it's telling us something about who Christ is.

And I go through three different ways you could understand the transfiguration. I draw from a Thomas to basically argue for something that I didn't realize had already been argued for by Maximus the Confessor. And David Bradshaw pointed that out to me. So Maximus is basically saying it wasn't Jesus, properly speaking, who was transfigured. It was the disciples. They were enabled to see who he really is. And that's basically similar to what I'm arguing in my retrieval book.

And so I just found that so interesting. And I think there's a lot, I think it's a valid instinct to reflect upon the transfiguration for what it reveals about the incarnation. Because what we have to do at that point when we see the transfiguration and the divine voices, this is my son, we have to realize that what happened at Easter, the glory that came on to Jesus's physical body on Easter was not entirely. unanticipated, but it was connected organically to who Jesus is as God, because he's already has this glorious body. So anyway, I talk a lot, but I didn't summarize that well, and I talk about it a lot more in the book, but it's just a point of appreciation. And I think also the orthodox way of the centrality of the transfiguration causes the Orthodox to interpret the Old Testament theophonies or appearances of God in a more Christocentric way.

And I'm very sympathetic to that. I think there's a lot of validity to that. All right. To keep it moving, let's go to the third section of the video, areas of difference. And my point, my position would be that while we can see that the palomite and tomistic traditions have important overlap, they're not totally different in every way. They have similar concerns and they're similar on some points.

Nonetheless, an even-handed look at all of the relevant statements in Gregory and Thomas and their respective traditions reveals that there are important differences that remain at the end of the day. So let me mention three points of remaining concern for me that I have about the essence energy's distinction and why I could not affirm it myself. First, on the question of divine simplicity, I'm still convinced that the Thomist view is correct. And just to tease this out a little bit, a little bit, it helps to remember that the distinction between God's essence and energies is not introduced by creation. Gregory is very clear that creation presupposes that distinction. God's work is prior to creation. So he talks about God's

providence and God's knowledge as divine energies that pre-exist creation and yet are distinct from the divine essence. And it seems to me that this introduces modal distinctions to God. So, for example, if we say, you know, we could say, if God hadn't created the world, then God's knowledge would be different than it is now, whereas his power wouldn't be different. And that does seem to me to puncture the very things that divine simplicity is trying to protect, namely divine aseity and absoluteness. Aseity means God lives from himself entirely. Absoluteness means God is not conditioned by anything external.

to himself. And if you have these modal distinctions, you know, if God would have created, then some of his works would be different than they are. I have a concern about that. And I think that that does, so far as I can see, puncture God's absoluteness and imperil it. What we have to remember is that the essence energy's distinction is not simply how we experience God. it's a distinction that obtains even apart from if God never made the world. So this is, you know, some people try to downplay that. So some, you know, there are Orthodox scholars in that multi-author book I held up and elsewhere that will want to say that the essence and energies are the same in reference and only difference in sense.

Okay, so in other words, essence and energies refer to the same thing. They're just doing it in different senses. But I think David Bradshaw is right to argue against that and say, you know, if that's all it is, it would make no sense why Gregory assigns causal priority to the essence over the energies. And that's an emphasis throughout the triads. He regularly says the essence transcends the energies and binds them together in unity. The essence is the cause of the unity of the energies. Okay.

And that implies a distinction of reference as well as one of sense. So, you know, I've thought of various metaphors by way to communicate this. But just to make the basic point is, I mean, I'm not alone in the concern here. I think there's a long tradition in the West, a long tradition of people up to the modern scholars like Rowan Williams and John Milbank and others who worry that Palomite theology does puncture divine simplicity and possibly divine unity. because you have this real distinction in God. What you could put it is, on a palomite view, that which is uncreated is not singular. Rather, that which is uncreated is plural or multiple.

The way Gregory puts it is, quote, it is thus not true, that the essence of God is the only unoriginal reality or uncreated reality, you could say. So, and he talks about other unoriginal, originate or uncreated works of God and so forth. And I'll keep reflecting upon this topic, but at this point, I'm persuaded that the kind of classical Western concern about that is it does sort of rupture the divine simplicity

is a valid concern so far as I can see. A second worry that is related to that is that many of the theological inferences that lead to the essence energy's distinction seem to me to assume a univocal reasoning about the divine essence. So univocal means kind of having a direct correlation in terms of your language about something, as opposed to analogical language where a comparison is drawn or equivocal language where there's an absolute divide. And many of Gregory's arguments in the triads reminded me of contemporary philosophical arguments that tend to assume that God and creation are on the same scale of being. Whether they say that or not, it tends to assume that so that, you know, an inference will be

drawn that could apply to a creature, but it's not necessarily the case that it would also thereby apply to the Creator, because God is utterly unique. And so, I'll give a few examples here in the context of when he's arguing that God's essence is uncreated, that not only God's essence is uncreated, but God's faculties are uncreated, like God's knowing and his providence and so forth. He says, if the divine essence possessed these faculties, eternity, it follows that not only is the divine essence unoriginate, but each of its powers is also.

And I say, well, does it follow? I would say more caution is needed for logical inferences like this. You can't assume that the Creator will relate to his properties in the same way that a creature relates to its properties. Because God is qualitatively unique and is the source of all reality. so he doesn't necessarily function the same way that created things do. Just a bit later in the context of arguing that some of God's works are without beginning, he says,

was it not needful for the work of Providence to exist before creation? So as to cause each of the created things to come into being out of non-being? Was it not necessary for our divine knowledge to know before choosing, even outside of time? This is a common theme in the triads. Gregory wants to say that creation presupposes the energies of God. And then he draws from this that the essence of God is not alone unoriginated. And so in other words, he's saying because creation presupposes God's knowledge and God's providence and so forth, therefore there are these other faculties that are distinct from God and uncreated.

And once again, there's a worry here about applying creaturely categories to the divine essence, assuming that it functions and it relates to its faculties like a temporal creature would, that is functioning in time. And I have a worry about that, and I think more caution is needed in drawing an inference like that. Later in the triads, when he's responding to Barlam's position, that only the essence of God is uncreated, he says, what impiety? It follows from this, that God has no natural and essential energies,

this amounts to openly denying the existence of God. But I'm not sure that does follow. He goes on to then argue that no nature can exist or be known unless it possesses an essential energy. So Gregory seems to think that without the essence energy's distinction, God becomes this sort of inert, passive deity that can't meaningfully relate to creatures. And again, I don't see that that follows. I think there's other ways we could conceptualize how God could relate to creatures. Okay, a third concern, and this is probably the deepest one, so this would be the kind of climactic point of the video.

Moving from just Gregory to the whole Palomite tradition and contemporary scholarship, I worry of a deep worry about simplistic narratives that present the East as overcoming all the problems of the West. There at times seems to be a strong anti-Western, anti-Augustin, anti-Thomas Aquinas mentality. And the idea is that Augustine introduced these various errors that kind of spoiled the West, whereas the East, and then Thomas sort of cemented them or codified them, but the East has kept pure from those errors. And I think the contrast here is too absolute and too simple, and I think that the Western views and the Western tradition can be read more charitably.

Now you see this way of thinking especially bad at the street level or sometimes among apologists where you'll find the most appalling caricatures of Augustine and of Aquinas. People claiming that for Aquinas, you know, God is identical with his activity and therefore creation is a necessity and there's no freedom. And you can tell they have no awareness of how Atomist would respond to that charge. Or people saying things like, well, because Thomas, reasons to God is the first cause. Therefore, God, the first cause must be impersonal, as though the first cause must be nothing other than the first cause, which obviously does not

follow. And just problems like this where you can tell it's not, it's not really a careful criticism of the best of Toma's thought. Among the scholars, it's usually not that bad, but you can still find these overly simple contrasts between East and West. For example, one of the ones you find a lot is that the West intellectualizes God, whereas the East has this sense of a living experience of God. So the God of Augustine is this sort of static deity, and the God of the East is more dynamic. And, you know, how do I say this? Like, for example, one of the contributors in this book summarizes what he calls the AAA tradition, Anselm, Augustine, Aquinas, as entailing that, quote, God is an abstract property and therefore not an agent.

He goes on to say that on such a view, God cannot love the world, God cannot become incarnate. You know, God is this frozen deity and so forth. And that particular scholar thinks that the reform tradition, interestingly, though it's in the West, escapes that. But that is not hard to find language like that at all. The God of Augustine, the God of Aquinas is this inert, passive deity that, can't have meaningful relationship with and so forth. And I just think that many of these criticisms just amount to total caricature that couldn't survive a sympathetic and careful reading of Thomas.

It often feels as though the interpreter is pushing certain statements in Thomas to conclusions that they think follow. But Thomas does not think follow. And within the context of Thomas' way of thinking, they wouldn't follow. So in effect, it's sort of putting words in his mouth. For example, one of the things that I discovered, Ludovico's pointed me to this. If you go back to the Sumo Theological, which I have over here, and you start reading the very first section, you're talking about the five ways you prove God, you're talking about divine simplicity, God's goodness, God's perfection. Very early on, I think it's question eight.

You get to the question of whether God is in all things. and his said contra there, which is where he gives the answer, is that a thing is wherever it operates, and God operates in all things. So he's saying, yes, God is in all things. So if you have this idea that the East has the essence energy distinction, and therefore they're able to have this meaningful communication between creator and creation through the energies, but the West doesn't have that distinction, so they can't account for a meaningful relationship and so forth, you get into passages like this in Thomas where he sounds exactly like a palomite. He sounds exactly.

He even uses the same metaphor of the sun and the rays. Because he's saying that God is in all things because his work or operation, or we could say, his energy is in all things. This is Thomas. Quote, God is in all things, not indeed as part of their essence or as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. Then he goes on and he uses the metaphors. See if this sounds familiar. Since God is very being, by his own essence, created being must be his proper effect as to ignite is the proper effect of fire.

Now, God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being as light is caused in the air by the sun, as long as the air remains illumined. He goes on to talk about how God is in all things by his power. Okay. There's so many statements you can find in Thomas. that sound just like the way Gregory would talk. Just as Gregory, just as we have to be sympathetic to Gregory and admit and recognize how tightly he wants to maintain essence and energies,

so also we have to be sympathetic to Thomas and recognize how much he thinks that God's essence can be present and act upon creation through his power, which is very similar. So you can find statements in Thomas that sound like Gregory, You can find statements in Gregory that sound like Thomas. And what that shows is both sides are more subtle than they appear in these kind of drive-by caricatures.

We need to be careful. Here's how Bradshaw makes the contrast between the East and the West. He says, quote, the East has no concept of God. It views God not as an essence to be grasped intellectually, but as a personal reality known through his acts and above all by one self-sharing in those acts. And this is another example of where I just find two absolute and simple, a contrast, and I think the Western tradition can be read more charitably. There is in the West an awareness that we relate to God, not just at an intellectual level, but by participation.

And I was amazed, and so in my book on Augustine, I spend a lot of time on Augustine's doctrine of deification. You find a lot of people saying things like, well, in the West, you know, Augustine intellectualizes God, but in the East we have this more synergistic conception of participation in God. But that's really... You know, the contrast is not so absolute. Augustine's whole framework for salvation is sin is privation. Sin pulls us toward nothingness. Salvation is deification.

It pulls us toward God, the source of all being. And I'll give some examples of this. He uses all kinds of terms for deification, identification, assimilation, adoption, participation. He's got a very robust notion that we participate in God. And one of the things I point out in my book, along with others like Gerald Bonner, is that for all his debt to Plato and to a platonic ontology or view of being, Augustine's notion of deification is distinguished by his emphasis upon the incarnation. And I'll just give one example here. In 1990, a French medievalist discovered a bunch of previously lost sermons in a library in Germany.

and one of them is a sermon on Psalm 81, where he starts off basically saying that our greatest hope is to be deified. God wishes to deify us. And he says, and he ties that in with the incarnation. Augustine writes, we mustn't find it incredible, brothers and sisters, that human beings become gods. That is, that those who were human beings become gods. More incredible still is what has already been bestowed upon us that one who was God should become a human being. And indeed, we believe that that has already happened, but we wait for the other thing in the future. The son of God became a son of man in order to make sons of men into sons of God. The maker of man was made man so that we might be made a receiver of God. Well, that sounds

a lot like Athanasius. You know, God became man so that man might become God. And so in the book, I unfold all of this more. But the point is there's room for more continuity between east and west on this point. And the idea of deification is a part of our common heritage. Similar with Aquinas as well, much more carefulness is needed. One of the claims that Bradshaw and others will make is criticizing Thomas on the beatific vision. And there's all kinds of critiques.

The claim is that we have no conception of progress in the beatific vision, that there's no role upon the body in the beatific vision. I don't know if Bradshaw says that, but I've read that elsewhere, that the relationship between God and creatures is merely extrinsic for Thomas. And a lot of these criticisms, again, it's just too absolute a contrast. I mean, I don't want to make Thomas beyond criticism, but if you read him carefully, there is a conception of, that he has of progress in the beatific vision, for example. And he does have a role for the body in the beatific vision. A lot of these east-west contrasts are unfair and not accurate to Thomas. For example, one of the things I point out in my article on Thomas and the Scottish Journal of Theology is he says that our

beatitude in heaven passes, he does say it's primarily a vision of the soul. Then he says the beatitude from the vision of God passes from the soul onto the body by a kind of overflow. And he says that in heaven the glory of God will be, in some respects, also attained by bodily vision. Quote, our body will have a certain beatitude from seeing God in sensible creatures and especially in Christ's body. So he does distinguish this bodily vision from the beatific vision proper, but they're both important for him. They're both a part of glorification. So ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm just not persuaded by this claim that, you know, the Eastern distinction between essence and energies represents this superior way of kind of solving all the problems that the West falls into.

And I could just say that I don't think it's fair. Sometimes you'll find this language like, you know, the East, the West has a conception of God, but the East just has this dynamic experience of God. But there's no way to get beyond intellectual concepts of God. even to try to articulate that idea, you start getting into some kind of conception of God. And I often bump into this mentality among some Eastern Orthodox Christians that seems to, it comes across like any criticism from the West is just because you don't understand the Eastern way of thinking, as though somehow they've like risen above the intellectual challenges we face in articulating how God is both transcendent and present to creatures. And it's just, it feels like giving oneself a free pass,

kind of, to be above criticism. So that's a concern that I have there. And I would say my final point related to this is the concern, this concern about an unnecessarily kind of anti-Western, anti-Augustin mentality is related to their view of all of Western history. And for example, And so they say that Augustine's theological errors play out in all kinds of ways. And the conclusion of Bradshaw's book, which Bradshaw's book is a great piece of scholarship. It's a very well-written, very compelling book. I want to keep thinking about a lot of the main arguments in the book, but in the final sections of the book, he tackles this correlation between the social and the theological.

And I find this problematic. He's basically saying that the Enlightenment and other events in Western history, violent events, you know, from the Crusades, all the way up to like modern secularization, all of this in the West is related to the theological errors, okay, of the West. So like, you know, you get this criticism a lot that Augustine bequeathed to us modernity. You know, you start with Augustine and then you end up with secularization, that kind of way of thinking. And in the final paragraph of his book, he says, we children of the Enlightenment pride ourselves and our willingness to question anything, let us now ask whether the God

who has been the subject of so much strife and contention throughout Western history was ever anything more than an idol. We may find that Nietzsche was wrong, that the sun still rises, the horizon still stretches before us. We have not yet managed to drink up the sea. So that's the famous Nietzsche quote from the gay science where he's talking about the death of God. So he's basically saying this idolatrous understanding of God

associated with Augustine and Aquinas in the West results in the death of God that Nietzsche was talking about. And so we need to go back and undo that. And I just would say that I think the logical connection from the theological to the social is not established. The connection between cause and effect there

is not as compellingly established as the earlier sections of Bradshaw's book. And to me, It's kind of a superficial connection to go from Augustine's conception of God up through, you know, the Crusades and Nietzsche and things like this. And in the book, I deal a little bit with those criticisms of Augustine's influence a little more fully. But here, let me just say, by way of summary, I think we can read the Western tradition more charitably. There's too little appreciation for the positive developments in the West. Too little appreciation for the positive aspects of the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment did a lot of good things, too. wasn't just bad. And I think, you know, even if someone was an Orthodox Christian who affirmed the essence energy's distinction, one need not go so far as to say that the Western God was never anything more than an idol. I mean, that raises the question of, are the Western saints and martyrs even Christians? How could they be if their God was never anything more than an idol? I mean, the language there at least raises that question, and I think that's unhelpful. I think, again, I think it's more helpful to see this difference as one within Christianity, and the Palomite and Thomas traditions are both fully Christian.

Neither one is an idol or idolatrous. So at least in my final comments, which are more of an ecumenical nature, let me conclude with this. I really feel this in my heart. I hope people would hear me clearly on this. I think there are two different instincts to have on this question. many of the other questions that divide us within Christianity, Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, other traditions. One instinct is to figure out which side is right, which side is wrong, and then denounce the wrong side. This is a more common instinct in apologetics. The other instinct

is to appreciate the depth and richness of the diversity within Christianity and to try to understand one another. That's more common in ecumenism. So we've got the apologetics instinct, the ecumenist instinct. Now, I think both are valid. There's a place for both. There are times where you need the apologetics instinct to say, this is an error and this is the truth. But there are other times where you can look at a difference and say there are these two different emphases within the Christian tradition, and we can hold them together, or at least we can recognize that they do not rupture basic Christian identity and fellowship. And I think the weakness in the apologetics instinct is being too triumphalistic and simplistic.

There is a weakness in the ecumenist instinct, too. If that's all we ever have, then we become too soft. And, you know, the fact is that the law of non-contradiction means that sometimes there is a right side and a wrong side. But on this issue, the Palomite versus Thomist tradition question, I think there has historically been too much of the apologetics instinct and not enough of the ecumenism instinct. I think there is space to try to understand one another. I know that people on both sides will disagree with that, some of them, but I just believe

that there's a lot of overlap, not total, but a lot of overlap to where we can try to learn from one another, and that at the very least, I'm thoroughly convinced that both of these traditions are within Christian orthodoxy. And so I think it's helpful to not approach this debate in a spirit of triumphalism, but in a spirit of trying to understand each side. That's not to say there's no boundaries, you know, like if someone is a pantheist, that is outside. But these traditions, I think, are both within Christianity. So that means the conversation must go on and we keep working at this.

And I'm certainly excited to keep learning about it myself because it's so interesting. In the meantime, let me reiterate one aspect of the Palomite tradition that I respect profoundly, and that's this spiritual, existential, undercurrent to its thought. And what it really made me think of is the final quote I'll put up in the word fire in Pascal's summary of his famous experience with God, which he stitched onto his clothing, when he says, fire, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars. When I think about that or I think about Moses bowing down before the burning bush and God says, I am, there's something that sends shivers down my spine. There's something that's just enthralling, you know.

And there's something profoundly helpful to remember that our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers and scholars. And there's something in the Gregory Palomus. and his emphasis upon this vivid experience of the sheer reality of God that I find helps me remember this and helps me appreciate this. So I hope this video has been helpful for you. Let me know what you think about this in the comments. Don't forget to like the video. Subscribe to my channel.

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