Greetings to all in Lord Jesus Christ.
This from an exchange I had with a Catholic fellow -
QB:amen.However this does not address the issue of the glorified state of the individual in heaven for eternity:
Do the Cappodocian fathers or St. Gregory address this issue?
Love, luke
Hi Loukas, I hope this article helps.
The Cappadocian Fathers on Essence and Energy and the Knowledge of God:
The Process of Epinoia.
Au0to\ de\ tou=to ti/ pote/ e0stin h9 e0pi/noia, h9de/wj a2n e0rwth/saimi
'Of the character of this epinoia, I would presently like to speak.'
Basil of Caesarea, Adversus Eunomium 1.6
Epistemological questions concerning humanity and its ability to know God had long been a part of the Trinitarian Controversy, a fact which can hardly be surprising given the nature of the debate: Arius’ initial complaints in Alexandria had been born out of a belief that Alexander’s and others’ teachings on the nature of Christ were inconsistent with what is known of Jesus’ nature, and the response of Alexander and Athanasius was that a proper knowledge of God revealed precisely the teaching on His nature that was later to be enshrined as orthodox. It could not be long before the issue at hand spread from the narrower topic of the relationship of the Son to the Father, to include epistemological concerns of how the human person was to gain accurate knowledge of such things. This broadening of focus is readily apparent through even a cursory examination of the state of the debate from ad 360 onwards, when the Homoian Arians, the Neo-Arians and the pro-Nicenes were all to put forth quite distinct models of human comprehension of the divine. As it is the purpose of this paper to investigate the Cappadocian system based on a clarification of epinoia and ennoia, we can dismiss the Homoian Arian epistemological beliefs as outside the present scope. This is not to suggest that there is nothing of importance in the Homoian reflection on such matters, but in general their reflections on epistemology are less worked out than those of the Neo-Arians, and certainly they attracted far less attention in this regard from the Cappadocians.
The Cappadocian teaching on God’s intelligibility was largely formulated in reaction to Eunomius’ Apologia of 359, [1] to which Basil of Caesarea responded with his three-volume Adversus Eunomium in 364 [2] ; and again in response to Eunomius’ reaction to Basil’s critique, the Apologia Apologiae, [3] which evoked the lengthy Contra Eunomium [4] by Gregory of Nyssa, written between 380-383. Eunomius’ primary concern had been, of course, to put forth his views on the relationship of the Son to the Father (described more fully in A World Full of Arians ) which centred upon the Father’s being a0ge/nnhtoj , or ingenerate. To the application of this term to the Father, the Cappadocians had no serious objection, though they believed it to have been brought into the discussion by their ‘heretical foe’ in order to muddle the debate:
[They] have overlooked all those names supplied by Scripture for the glorification of God, and predicated in like manner of the Father and of the Son, and have betaken themselves to the word ‘ungenerate’ [sic.] , a term fabricated by themselves to throw contempt on the greatness of the Only-begotten God. [5]
Is not he an open Philistine who is introducing the terms ‘ingenerate’ and ‘generate’ into our faith? [6]
Still, whatever the origin of the term, its applicability to God the Father was hardly to be questioned. What was entirely open to debate, however, was the precise manner in which a term such as a0ge/nnhtoj , or any other attributive term for that matter, is to be related to an overall conception of God. For Eunomius, God’s ingenerateness is His essence. The two, essence ( ou0si/a ) and ingenerateness go together: ou0si/a a0ge/nnhtoj .[7] As summed up by Gregory of Nyssa:
They [the followers of Eunomius] say that […] if God, who is declared to be without composition is by His nature without composition, His title of Ingenerate must belong to His very nature, and that nature is identical with ingeneracy. [8]
This ‘theory of names’ [9] by which the ou0si/a of God is defined by the ‘names’ or terms by which He is known (e.g. a0ge/nnhtoj ) is foundational and essential to the larger Neo-Arian doctrine of the divinity, for from it Eunomius is able to formulate an entire system based upon the concept of God the Father as sole ingenerate essence, by which nature all His relationships—including that of the Father to the Son—have to be defined. It is only when the Father’s ou0si/a itself is defined as ingenerate, that Eunomius can say, for example:
He could never come into contact with generation, so as to communicate His own nature to something generated. [10]
But is this logical connection of a0ge/nnhtoj with the essential nature of the divinity an acceptable connection? Eunomius insists that it is; and more than simply acceptable, it is a required perception, a revealed and perceived truth ( e32nnoia ) about God, not simply a conclusion reached by the ‘human apprehension’ ( kat ’e0pi/noian , here translating the phrase with the pejorative flavour in which Eunomius took it) of His qualities. [11] Ingeneracy must not be seen as an attribute of God, but as God: God is The Ingenerate.
Here the Cappadocian Fathers could not agree. While it may be acceptable to say that God is ingenerate, to say that God is ingeneracy crosses the boundary of proper expression. To describe the Father’s attributes is one thing; to consider any of His attributes to be equal to His essence is quite another. Gregory of Nyssa leaves no room for equivocation:
As the essence is simple and not simplicity, so also the essence is ingenerate and not ingeneracy. [12]
A distinction is to be drawn between how God exists , which can be known through his activities and described through attributive adjectives, e.g. simple, ingenerate, good; and what God is , i.e. His essence, which cannot be known at all nor can it be described in words (‘no suitable word has been found to express the Divine nature’ [13] ). This insistence upon the unintelligibility of God’s ou0si/a is in fundamental opposition to Eunomius’ belief that the divine essence can be known easily and, in fact, fully by means of human apprehension: [14] by his view, one simply needs accurate terminology. Hanson, in summarising Daniélou’s study on the theory of names in Eunomius, says quite succinctly, ‘As each ousia [i.e., of the Father and the Son] is clearly denominated by its name ( proshgori/a ), so the ousia of the Father and the Son must be different, because they have different names’. [15] In such a framework, the ou0si/a of the Father is discernable and knowable through the precision of the terminology applied to it. It is precisely this idea that the Cappadocians will so fiercely attack.
Absolute transcendence, including transcendence of human knowledge, is a defining characteristic of the divine ou0si/a in Cappadocian thought. From this it must not be assumed that Basil and the two Gregories believed God to be unknowable in all respects, but simply that they believed His essential nature to be beyond the limits of human comprehension. God’s inner nature is ineffable. While humanity may discern much about the divinity ‘both from the wonders which manifest themselves in His works and from the names which express the manifold variety of His power’, [16] it nonetheless remains true that ‘there is no faculty in human nature adequate to the full comprehension of the divine essence ( ou0si/a )’. [17] This distinction between God’s intelligibility in certain respects on the one hand, and His complete unintelligibility on the other, is at the very heart of a fundamental conception shared by the three Cappadocians: that God’s essence is distinct from His actions, His attributes, or His energies.
Here it is that a discussion of the Cappadocian understanding of the process of e0pi/noia must begin, with the essence/energy distinction—an approach not always embraced by modern commentators on the subject. It is in this distinction that the Cappadocians found a means by which to differentiate between those things which are, in fact, knowable about God, whether by observation and contemplation (hence e0pi/noia , see below) or by revelation, from the inner nature of God which is always beyond the scope of the intellect. God is manifest in his activities, but what is thereby manifest is not God in His essence ( kat ’ou0si/an ) but God in His energies ( kat ’e0ne/rgeian ). Says Gregory of Nyssa:
He makes Himself known that He is ‘by the greatness and beauty of His creatures proportionately’ to the things that are known, vouchsafing to us the gift of faith by the operations of His hands, but not the comprehension of what He is .[18]
And Basil:
Created things manifest wisdom, art and power, but not essence. [19]
And Gregory of Nazianzus, having stressed that one cannot know ‘[God’s] primal and pure nature ( fu/sij ) in itself’, [20] states that man must come to
Recognize God through the beauty and order of things that are seen, and to use our vision as a guide to that which is above vision, but not to be deprived of God because of the magnificence of what is seen. [21]
This sharp distinction between God Himself and God as He is manifest through His activities within creation will be taken up and further refined by the much later Byzantine hesychasts, who hearkened back to the Cappadocians for the foundations of their own doctrine. Writes St Gregory Palamas in the mid-1300s:
In refuting Eunomius, who claimed that the essence of God is revealed by created things, St Basil the Great writes that ‘created things manifest wisdom, art and power, but not essence’. Thus the divine energy made manifest by created things is both uncreated and yet not God’s essence. [22]
This quotation reveals, also, the Byzantine correction of what must be admitted as a weakness in the Cappadocian definition of e0ne/rgeiai , namely that it is unclear whether the Cappadocian Fathers regarded God’s energies as having any actual reality of their own, or if they believed ‘energies’ simply to refer to the activities of God within the created order. The ‘operations of God’s hands’, as Gregory of Nyssa terms the discernable energies of God, is not a phrase which necessarily warrants an interpretation of energies as anything possessing real existence; rather, it might only suggest the results of an interaction between the divine ou0si/a and creation, these visible results being called ‘energies’. Gregory Palamas, on the other hand, could speak of very real things (to call them ‘substances’ would risk confusion with ou0si/a ) which are God’s divine, uncreated energies manifested through creation: the divine light of Tabor seen in prayer with material eyes being the most pertinent in his day. [23] The Cappadocians seem never to make such a clarification of the character of God’s energies, referring to them simply as the perceivable attributes of God in creation without substantial further refinement.
But keeping to the immediate discussion, the distinction between God in His unknowable ou0si/a and God in his discernable energies or activities, provides the framework within which the Cappadocians can precisely define the essentials of an orthodox epistemology: the ou0si/a remains ever transcendent, unknowable, unintelligible, invisible, unperceivable in any way, yet the divine energies are open to human perception ( e2nnoia ) and reflection upon these perceptions leads to the formation of conceptions ( e0pi/noiai ) of God’s being. These conceptions, these e0pi/noiai , are the only means by which a genuine knowledge of God can be attained. Basil offers an example:
We say that the God of all things is ‘indestructible’ and ‘ingenerate’, calling Him by these names according to different points of view. For when we look to the past ages, we find the life of God extending beyond every beginning and [therefore] say that God is ‘ingenerate’. And when we extend our minds to the ages to come, we call the indeterminate and unlimited and endless One ‘immortal’. Now, just as that which has no end of life is indestructible, so also that which has no beginning of life is named ingenerate, and we perceive both of these things by means of e0pi/noia .[24]
The e2nnoiai , the things perceived of God whether by sensory perception or mental perception through recorded revelation (in this case, that God had no beginning and will have no end), leads to the conception of God as ‘ingenerate’ and ‘indestructible’ or ‘infinite’— e0pi/noiai of His character. Such knowledge is true and correct with relation to God in His attributes, yet remains un-descriptive of His essence. In speaking of the human ability to observe the natural world and form conceptions ( e0pi/noiai ) about its character, Gregory of Nyssa writes:
When we contemplate these phenomena by the aid of sight, we are in no doubt of their existence, though we are as far from comprehending their essential nature as if sight had not given us any glimpse whatever of what we have seen. So it is with the Creator of the world: we know that He exists, but of His essential nature we cannot deny that we are ignorant. [25]
The process of e0pi/noia brings one into ever greater and clearer knowledge of God, but this knowledge is always limited, even at its highest, and distinct from God’s ou0si/a which, as has already been made clear, remains ever transcendent.
Kopecek, in his seminal history of Neo-Arianism, somewhat rashly claims that ‘Basil’s view of epinoia appears to have been fundamentally Epicurean in origin, for we find exactly the same view ascribed to the Epicureans by Diogenes Laertius in Book 10, sections 68 and 32, of his lives of the philosophers’. [26] While Kopecek does qualify this statement with the citation of examples in which Basil goes beyond the presentation of Epicurean theory by adapting the system to the Incarnate life of Christ, he neglects to suggest the foundation that such an epistemology has in the pages of the Old Testament. Ever since the proclamation that no one can see the face of God and live (Ex 33.20) there has been a tension between this Scriptural revelation and the many instances in which Scripture clearly portrays the meeting of God and humanity, oftentimes even ‘face to face’. [27] The Unseen is seen, and yet remains unseen. It is precisely this dialectic that is addressed by the Cappadocian essence/energy distinction, and from it that they draw the idea of God as knowable only in those aspects of His being that are made manifest among creation and thus open to deliberation and conceptualisation.
The process of e0pi/noia it not, however, without its weak points, and one in particular which Eunomius would identify and onto which he would latch with particular energy: namely, the fallibility of human conceptualisation. Is not an e0pi/noia simply an invention of the mind, related to the divinity in concept but nonetheless a fabrication of human reason? Eunomius seemed to think so, [28] and made a point of reminding Basil that the process of e0pi/noia can also lead to the conceptualisation of colossi, pigmies, many-headed monsters, and centaurs, [29] none of which have any real existence. Could not the conceptions of God formulated by this process be equally as fictitious and wrong? The charge did not go unanswered by Gregory of Nyssa, who readily admitted that the process of e0pi/noia ‘gives an entrance to false no less than true notions’. [30] Yet, he goes on to say, the possibility of error does not negate the value of the epistemological practice, for in the final analysis, it is the only way human knowledge comes about at all.
According to my account, conception is the method by which we discover things that are unknown, going on to further discoveries by means of what adjoins to and follows from our first perception with regard to the thing studied. [31]
What then [i.e., if not conception] was the origin of our higher branches of learning, of geometry, of arithmetic, the logical and physical sciences, of the inventions of mechanical art, of the marvels of measuring time by the brazen dial and the water clock? [32]
All human knowledge, and not just knowledge of God, is formed through the process of conceptualisation, and thus it is—like humans themselves—fallible. The sole way to guard against false knowledge is to refrain from speculation on the unknown, contemplating only those things which truly are and which have been perceived.
The disciple of the Gospels and of Prophecy believes that He Who Is, is, both from what he has learnt from the sacred writers, and from the harmony of things which do appear, and from the works of Providence. But what He is and how—leaving this as a useless and unprofitable speculation, such a disciple will open no door to falsehood against the truth. [33]
Basil critiques Eunomius for rejecting the process of e0pi/noia so resolutely, claiming that the latter thereby eliminates the possibility of terminological significance in any form:
For he [Eunomius] affirms, not that the concept ( e0pi/noia ) signifies something, even indeed something false, but that a term is deprived of all manner of signification and has no reality except in the act of its pronunciation. [34]
To so reject conceptualisation is, in the thought of the Cappadocians, to close the door altogether on the knowledge of the divine; for how is man to know God if not by the engagement of his rational faculty in the formation of reasonable, though partial, concepts about Him who is ultimately transcendent? P. Gregorios is in line with Cappadocian thought when he writes of Gregory of Nyssa’s doctrine, that ‘all human knowledge is achieved through the epinoia which Eunomius so uncomprehendingly despised and ridiculed’. [35] Eunomius’ ‘incomprehension’ lay in his interpretation of e0pi/noia as human invention rather than reasoned reflection, a view out of which he never appears to have been persuaded.
In the end, Eunomius’ criticism of the openness of e0pi/noia to false, errant ‘knowledge’ reveals perhaps more substantial a defect in human knowing than the Cappadocians give it credit for being, but they are fully aware of its inevitability and are right to suggest that the possibility of error does not disqualify the entire system. Yet for whatever weaknesses the process of e0pi/noia may possess, through it the Cappadocians were able to formulate a Christian epistemology based on an early essence/energy distinction that would prove fundamental to future reflection on the human knowledge of God. A manner of knowing the divine without destroying or eliminating the divine transcendence was something Eunomius and the Neo-Arians could not produce, and this was one among many reasons that the orthodox Fathers would ultimately feel obligated to reject their doctrine. The Cappadocian response gave credence to their rejection of Neo-Arian epistemology by providing a reasoned means of explaining how such a knowledge could, in fact, come about, and what is more, how it could be the only means of human apprehension of the divine.
WORKS CITED IN THIS STUDY:
Basil of Caesarea. Adversus Eunomium (Sources Chrétiennes 299, 305).
Basil of Caesarea. The Letters I (Loeb 190).
Gregory of Nyssa. Contra Eunomium (NPNF 5).
Hanson, R.P.C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God.
Kopecek, T. A History of Neo-Arianism.
Meredith, Anthony. Gregory of Nyssa.
Meredith, Anthony. The Cappadocians.
Rousseau, Philip. Basil of Caesarea.
Rusch, William G. The Trinitarian Controversy (collection of source texts).
NOTES:
[1] For the dating of the Apologia, which may be as late as mid-360, see R.P.C. Hanson, Search for the Christian Doctrine of God p. 618.
[2] Accepting, with nearly the whole of modern scholarship, that books 3 and 4 were added by a later author.
[3] Written in phases between 378-382/3.
[4] Following Hanson’s helpful custom, I will refer to Basil’s work as Adversus Eunomium and Gregory of Nyssa’s as Contra Eunomium in order to avoid any confusion of reference between the two; cp. Hanson, Search p. 686 n23.
[5] Contra Eunomium 2, pp. 251B-252A (quotations from the Contra Eunomium are taken from NPNF vol. 5, which does not identify chapters within the books; therefore references will be made to the book, then the page number with column indicator).
[6] Basil, Epistle 8.2.
[7] Apologia 7, 8.
[8] Contra Eunomium 2, p. 252B.
[9] So it is termed by Hanson, Search p. 630f.
[10] Apologia 9.
[11] Ibid., 8.
[12] Contra Eunomium 2 p. 253A.
[13] ibid., 2 p. 264B.
[14] Cp. Eunomius’ quotation in Socrates’ Historia Ecclesiae 4.7: ‘God does not know more about His own ousia than we do…’.
[15] Hanson, Search p. 630, in summation of Daniélou’s ‘Eunome l’Arien et l’Exégèse platonicienne du Cratyle’.
[16] Contra Eunomium 2 p. 260B.
[17] ibid., 2 p. 257A.
[18] ibid., 2 p. 251B, emphasis mine.
[19] Adversus Eunomium 2.32.
[20] Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.3.
[21] ibid., 28.10.
[22] Gregory Palamas, Topics of Natural and Theological Science on the Moral and Ascetic Life 83.
[23] See the above quotation from Palamas’ Topics, and that larger work as a whole.
[24] Adversus Eunomium 1.7.
[25] Contra Eunomium 2 p. 257B.
[26] T. Kopecek, A History of Neo-Arianism (1979) vol. ii, p. 376.
[27] E.g. Gen 32.30; Ex 33.11; Nu 14.14; Dt 5.4, 34.10; Ps 11.7; etc.
[28] Cp. Apology 8, quoted above, p. 3.
[29] Recorded, and lambasted as ‘a solemn travesty’ in Contra Eunomium 2 p. 267B.
[30] ibid., 2 p. 260A.
[31] ibid., 2 p. 268A.
[32] ibid.
[33] ibid., 2 p. 260A.
[34] Adversus Eunomium 1.6.
[35] P. Gregorios, Cosmic Man – The Divine Presence, p. 43.
The Distinction Between
Essence and Energies
and its Importance for Theology
The article by Father Juan-Miguel Garrigues, L'énergie divine et la grâce chez Maxime le Confesseur (published in the journal Istina , vol. 19, no. 3 [1974] pp. 272-296), is an interesting occasion for one to prove how critically important the truth regarding the distinction between essence and energies continues to be in the realm of theology. The acceptance or rejection of this distinction will determine either the abstract or the real character of theological knowledge, the attribution of theological truths to either rational certainty or existential experience.
Fr. Garrigues' study presents the traditional Roman Catholic arguments, somewhat refurbished. He rejects the distinction between essence and energies. At the same time he attempts to draw support for his position from the realm of Christology and particularly from the teaching which St. Maximus the Confessor developed to combat the heresy of monoenergism. Fr. Garrigues' presentation follows a kind of literary-historical analysis on the basis of the texts drawn mainly from St. Maximus. I say a kind of analysis because in Fr. Garrigues' attempt one cannot readily discern a consistent adherence to the literary-historical method. His systematic conclusions are not drawn from the historical and literary analysis, but, on the contrary, the use of the sources is a posteriori , to defend a given system of argumentation.
An extensive study would be needed to prove the hermeneutic omissions and the intellectual leaps created by Fr. Garrigues' a posteriori use of the sources in drawing his conclusions. I shall mention, very briefly, several characteristic examples:
(1) An attempt is made to defend the Thomistic view on energetic (i.e. active) divine essence by referring to the doctrinal definition of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. Fr. Garrigues observes that this council's definition nowhere implies that the two energies of Christ — the divine and the human — are really or formally distinguished from the corresponding natures. For this reason he regards as consistent with the spirit of the council's definition the Thomistic expression: the divine nature does not have one energy, but is active (energetic) (pp. 272-273).
(2) Referring to a passage of St. Maximus ( Amb. 26, PG 91: 1265CD) in which the names of the hypostaseis are defined as expressions of the existential fact of personal relationship, i.e. the mode of existence (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως) of the nature which is the hypostatic otherness, Fr. Garrigues attributes to St. Maximus the scholastic understanding of the hypostaseis as internal relations of the essence (p. 277). With similar arbitrary interpretations, St. Maximus is made a proponent of the view of divine energy as an act of creative causality ( acte de causalité créatrice , p. 277) and of divine grace as a causal presupposition of the intentional habitus (causalité de la grâce ,habitus intentionnel de la grâce , p. 286f).
(3) To St. Gregory Palamas is attributed the definition of the divine energies as accidentals (Palamas s'enferme dans une definition des énergies divines comme accidents , p. 278), while the passage of Palamas which is quoted ( Physical and Theological Chapters 135, PG 150: 1216CD) has precisely the opposite meaning.
(4) The saintly author of the Areopagitic writings is in principle rejected as a Neoplatonist; to the Cappadocian Fathers is attributed a kind of Eunomianism (p. 281); etc.
Concern over these arbitrary interpretations could develop into a strictly academic critique of the scientific soundness of the study in question, but this is not the purpose of this paper. The concern here is over the systematic presuppositions of Fr. Garrigues, which he attempts to defend with this fragmentary and a posteriori use of the sources. I believe that one could summarize these systematic presuppositions in the following statements:
(1) The divine essence does not have energies, whether created or created, but is active.
(2) There are two possibilities of participation in God: participation in the existential cause ( participation dans la causalité de l'acte d'être ) and participation in God by intention ( participation intentionnelle ).
(3) The divine grace is neither created nor uncreated, but rather is the causal presupposition for the efficacy of divine salvation ( la causalité de grâce est l'efficacité salvifique ), i.e. , the presupposition for the creation in man of a habitus , a tendency or state that coordinates man with the divine will.
(4) Consequently, the deification of man is merely a union of will or intention ( union intentionnelle ).
These systematic positions, which are also the presuppositions and the conclusions of Fr. Garrigues' problematics, do not, of course, exhibit the rationalistic formulations of the traditional anti-Palamite arguments. But neither do they abandon the classic Thomistic problematic, which is a problematic of essence in itself, of essence as being, and in which every relation with this ontic essence can only be merely external, a relation or experience according to the law of cause and effect.
This problematic of essence in itself implies a definite status of man over and against the truth about God: The first foundation of the truth of God is not achieved through the experience of the Church, which is an experience of personal relationship with the person of the Incarnate Logos, a relationship which is realized in the Holy Spirit and which reveals the Logos as witnessing to the Father. Rather, this first foundation is entirely anthropocentric, with an intellectual leap seeking to understand the divine essence in itself, its attributes and its objective relationships. And this rationalistic conception of essence not only obliges one to an ontic understanding of essence which overlooks the mode of being of the essence, but also leads by logical necessity either to the identification of essence and energy or to the essential separation of nature from the energies. The problematic of energy is reduced to a procedure of logical proof which refers the mystery of divine existence to the syllogistically necessary idea of a creating and moving cause of creation or a causal grace ( causalité de Grâce ) which contributes to the moral improvement of man.
In Orthodox theology, on the other hand, the problem of the energies is put exclusively in terms of existential experience. The experience of the Church is the knowledge of God as an event of personal relationship, and the question raised is one of witness to and defense of that event, the question of how we come to know God, who is neither intelligible nor sensible, nor at all a being among the other beings .1The knowledge of God as an event of personal relationship reveals the priority of the truth of the person in the realm of theological knowledge. There is no room for bypassing the reality of the person by means of an intellectual leap directly to the essence: Truth for us is in realities, not in names .2The person recapitulates the mode of existence of nature; we know the essence or nature only as the content of the person. This unique possibility of knowing nature presupposes its ecstatic recapitulation in terms of a personal reference, i.e. the possibility for nature to stand outside of itself , to become accessible and communicable not as an idea, but as personal uniqueness and dissimilarity. The ecstasis of nature, however, cannot be identified with nature itself, since the experience of relation is itself an experience of non-identification: the ecstasy is the mode , the manner by which nature becomes accessible and known in terms of personal otherness; it is the energy of nature which is identified neither with its bearer nor with its result: The energy is neither the active cause nor the resultant effect. 3
It is not possible, of course, to know the energy except through the one who acts; and, again, only through the natural energy can one know the one who acts as personal otherness as well as nature and essence. The will, for example, is an energy of nature. However it is accessible to us only through its personal bearer; we refer to the what of the will only because we know the how of its personal expression. 4The what of the will reveals to us the nature which has the possibility to will, while the how of the will reveals the personal otherness of its bearer. 5The will itself, however, is not identified either with the nature which has the possibility to will or with the person who wills, always in a unique, dissimilar and unrepeatable manner. For this reason we recognize in the will an energy of nature, ontologically (but not ontically) distinguishable from the nature as well as from the person.
Even though we distinguish the energy from the nature and the nature from the persons, we do not attribute any synthetic character to nature itself; we do not divide and we do not fragment the nature into persons and energies: the persons and the energies are neither parts nor components nor passions nor accidents of nature, but the mode of being of nature. The personal expression of each energy recapitulates impartially and wholely the entire nature; it is the existence of nature. The how of the energy of will (or the energy of creativity or of love or whatever other energy) recapitulates the what of the natural energy of will; the possibility of nature to will exists and is expressed only through the otherness of the personal will. Painting, music, sculpture are creative energies of the human nature, but they do not exist except as expressions of personal otherness: as music of Mozart, as painting of Van Gogh, as sculpture of Rodin. Nor is there any other manner of expressing and defining essence or nature outside its active ecstasis in terms of personal otherness. The only way we can name nature is in the personally expressed energy of nature; energy signifies nature: Essence and energy can both receive the same name (λόγος) .6
The energies, however, are not the exclusive and only manner of naming nature, for indicating the actor through his activities . The natural energy which is expressed personally represents that possibility of empirical knowledge which comes from a personal participation and communion in the essence or nature — without this communion becoming an identification with nature or with a part of nature. According to the Fathers of the Orthodox East, personal communion makes possible a fulness of knowledge and has no relationship whatsoever with Fr. Garrigues' rational categories of participation entitative, participation intentionnelle, participation dans la causalité de l'acte d'être.
St. Maximus the Confessor uses as an image and an example of such communion the human voice, which being one is participated in by many, and is not swallowed up by the multitude. 7If by taking this example we can arbitrarily consider human reason as essence, then we can say that the voice represents the energy of the essence of reason, the possibility for us to participate in the essence of reason as the voice reveals and communicates it, to participate, all of us who hear the same voice, in the same essence of the one reason — without this communion becoming our identification with the essence of reason, and without the fragmentation of the essence in as many parts as there are participants in the reason through the voice. Reason, expressed personally, remains unified and indivisible, while at the same time, it is singularly participated by all .
If we should insist on this example of the voice and reason we could clarify one more observation relative to the possibilities of participating in the essence through the energies. The voice certainly represents a revelation of the energy of reason homogenous to the essence of reason and makes possible a direct participation in reason, but a revelation of the energy of reason can also take place from within essences heterogenous to reason: it is possible to formulate into reason other essences such as writing, color, music and marble.
This example indicates that we can speak (together with St. Maximus) about two forms of energy of the same essence or nature: one form which is, as we called it, homogenous to the nature of the one who causes the energy (an ecstatic self-offering of nature in terms of personal otherness); and the other form which reveals itself out of essences heterogenous to the nature of the one who causes the energy, an energy that is effective on things external, according to which the actor acts on objects outside of himself and heterogenous, and obtains a result, which is made up of preexisting matter and is foreign to his own substance. 8
Accordingly, God's homogenous energy (to use St. Maximus' distinction) is revealed in the Church's experience of divine grace, which is uncreated ( heterogenous to creatures and homogenous to God) and through which God is wholly participated in 9and participated singularly by all ,10 remaining simple and indivisible, offering to the communicant that which He (God) possesses by nature except essential identity 11 and elevating man to the rank of communicant of the divine nature , according to the word of Scripture (II Peter 1:4). On the other hand, the revelation of God's energy in essences heterogenous to God is seen in the character of beings as creatures , created by divine energy. The personal logos of these creatures (a logos of power, wisdom and art), 12 even though it is characteristic to each one of these creatures, in terms of the infinite variety of essences, reveals the singular wholeness of the one divine energy and witnesses to the one, simple and indivisible God. 13
As for man, we can probably say that the concept of homogenous energy is applicable to the power of love and to the erotic ecstasy of self-giving in terms of which the existential truth about man is made known . This is the mystery of the human nature and of the human person as singular otherness — when man totally belongs to the loved one and is willingly embraced by him entirely .14 This homogenous energy, however, interprets also the reality of the human body in terms of the singular otherness of each person: the body is par excellence the personal differentiation of the physical energies, 15 the possibility of a meeting and a communion between the created energy of the human essence and the uncreated energy of the Grace of God. 16 As for the revelation of the energy of man through the heterogenous essences of man, it concerns the variety of human creations , in the works of human art, wisdom, and power. 17
The fundamental fact observed and verified in the distinction of St. Maximus between the homogenous energy of an essence or nature and its heterogenous appearance is that both of these forms of expressing the energy reveal the nature or essence as the singular and unified content of the person. The personal differentiation of the physical energies (the uniqueness and dissimilarity of each human body, as well as the absolute otherness of each erotic event and the differentiation of creative expressions, for example, the music of Bach from the music of Mozart or the painting of Van Gogh from that of Goya) distinguishes the nature without dividing it, it reveals the manner by which nature is — and this manner is its personal singularity and otherness. The energies or distinctions disclose and reveal the catholicity of nature, as content of the person.
In the distinction of nature and energies Orthodox theology sees the very presupposition for a knowledge of God, as well as of man and of the world. If we reject this distinction and if we accept, with the Roman Catholics, the intellectual leap to the essence itself — an active divine essence — then the only possible relation of the world to God is the rational connection between cause and effect, a connection that leaves unexplained the ontological reality of the world, the formation of matter and its essential character.
For Orthodox theology matter is not a reality that simply has its cause in God. Matter is the substantiation of the will of God, the result of the personal energy of God; and it remains active as the revelatory reason of divine energy. St. Gregory of Nyssa says that all things were not reshaped from some subsisting matter into phenomena, but the divine will became the matter and the essence of creation. 18 The will of God is an act, and the act of God is His word, for in God the act is word .19 The word of God which expresses His will is substantiated directly as a substance and a formulation of creation. 20
Matter, therefore, constitutes the substantiation of the divine will. The logoi of matter, that is to say, its types or forms , reflect the creative logoi of the divine conceptions and volitions. 21 In its own organic content, matter is the result of the union of rational qualities whose convergence and union defines the substance of sensory things. 22 The rational formulation of matter refutes from the start the ontic autonomous character of things ; matter is not the what of physical reality, the material which receives shape and form to reveal the essence, but the convergence of the rational qualities, their coordination into the how of a unique harmony which constitutes the type or the form of things. The whole cosmic reality, the innumerable variety of kinds of essences are not the what of objective observation and rational conception; they are not the abstract effect of a rationally conceived active cause, but the how of the personal harmony of rational qualities, a musical harmony constituting a controlled and sublime hymn to the power which controls the universe. 23
This continuously active personal harmony of the world reveals the direct and energetic presence of God in the world as personal will and energy (and not as essence). It is an endlessly active invitation to a personal relationship with the personal God-Logos through the logoi of things. This active invitation is not essentially identified with the one who invites nor with the energy of the caller; the reason and the will of God is not identified with the created things themselves, just as the will of the artist is not identified with the product of his art, with the result of his personal creative energy. But the work of art is the substantiation and incarnation of the personal reason and will of the artist; it is the active call and possibility of a personal relationship with the creator through the logos of his creations. The work of art is in essence and in energy different from the artist ( the art in the artistic is one thing, and quite another is the art in the person who undertakes it , as St. Basil points out). 24 Therefore, the work of art represents and reveals the unique, the dissimilar and unrepeatable personal logos of the artist. Without personal relation, without a personal acceptance of the logos embodied in the work of art, the latter remains a neutral and uninterpreted object: the logos of the artist remains inaccessible, the truth of the thing uninterpreted, the experience of the personal presence, the personal uniqueness and dissimilarity of the artist unattainable.
It is clear that the inference from the personal harmony and beauty of creation to the personal presence of the creator God-Logos is neither self-evident nor automatic nor simply rational; it is a moral-dynamic movement of participation in the benevolent personal divine energy, an acceptance of the invitation which substantiates the beauty of nature — a moral movement of catharsis, a gradual and dynamic illumination of the mind, to be surprised and to understand ... to be lifted up from knowledge to knowledge, and from vision to vision, and from understanding to understanding. 25 The end (always endless) of this dynamic vision of the world is a revelation, through beauty, of the triune character of divine energy, beautifying creation triunely .26 The beauty of creation is not the single-dimensional logos of a creative cause, but the revelation of the unified and at the same time triune mode of the divine energy which reflects the mystery of the singular and triune mode of existence of the divine life. 27
The problem of the knowledge of God, but also of man and the world — of knowledge as direct personal relationship and existential experience or knowledge as abstract intellectual approximation — depends on the acceptance or the rejection of the distinction between essence and energies. The acceptance and rejection of this distinction represents two fundamentally different visions of truth, two noncoinciding ontologies . This does not mean simply two different theoretical views or interpretations, but two diametrically opposite ways of life, with concrete spiritual, historical and cultural consequences.
The acceptance of this distinction between essence and energies means an understanding of truth as personal relationship ,i.e. as an experience of life, and of knowledge as participation in the truth and not as an understanding of meanings that result from intellectual abstraction. It involves the priority of the reality of the person to every rational definition. In the infinite terms of this priority, God is known and communicable through His incomprehensible uncreated energies, remaining in essence unknown and incommunicable. That is to say, God is known only as a personal revelation (and not as an idea of active essence), only as a triune communion of persons, as an ecstatic self-offering of loving goodness. The world also is the result of the personal energies of God, a creation revealing the person of the Logos, witnessing to the Father through the grace of the Spirit, the substantiated invitation of God to relation and communion, an invitation which is personal and therefore substantiated heteroessentially .
On the contrary, the rejection of the distinction between essence and energy means exclusion of catholic-personal experience and priority of the intellect as the way of knowledge, reducing truth to a coincidence of thought with the object of thought ( adaequatio rei et intellectus ), 28 an understanding of nature and person as definitions resulting from rational abstraction: the persons have the character of relations within the essence, relations which do not characterize the persons but are identified with the persons in order to serve the logical necessity of the simplicity of the essence. Thus, finally, God is accessible only as essence, i.e. only as an object of rational search, as the necessary first mover who is unmoved , that is pure energy , and whose existence must be identified with the self-realization of the essence. The world is the result of the first mover , even as the grace of God is the result of divine essence. The only relation of the world with God is the connection of cause and effect, a connection that organically disengages God from the world: the world is made autonomous and subjected to intellectual objectification and to (useful) expediency.
The problem of the distinction between essence and energies determined definitely and finally the differentiation of the Latin West from the Orthodox East. The West rejected the distinction, desiring to protect the idea of simplicity in the divine essence, since rational thought cannot accept the antinomy of a simultaneous existential identity and otherness, a distinction that does not mean division and fragmentation. For the western mind (expressed either with the directness of Thomistic rationalism or with the subordination of the patristic texts to a priori interpretations, as in the case of Fr. Garrigues) God is defined only in terms of His essence; whatever is not essence does not belong to God; it is a creature of God, the result of divine essence. Consequently, the energies of God are either identified with the essence, which is active ( actus purus ), or else any external manifestation of theirs is regarded as necessarily heteroessential ,i.e. a created result of the divine cause. 29
This means that, in the final analysis, the theosis of man, his participation in the divine life, 30 is impossible, since even grace, the sanctifier of the saints, is itself an effect, a result of the divine essence. It is created, even though supernatural , as western theologians have rather arbitrarily defined it since the ninth century. 31
It is characteristic that Fr. Garrigues avoids defining divine grace as created, but insists on the effective character of grace (on the causalité de grâce ) that brings about the state (habitus ) of virtue. In the text of Fr. Garrigues, the state of grace is deprived of any semblance of personal participation in the personally active divine grace. The state is simply the effect of the causal character of grace and is realized as an objective change of the human intention. 32 The realism of theosis for Fr. Garrigues is only a realism of intention; 33 it is understood in terms of moralistic categories, 34 a rationalistic improvement of the human character that has Christological content only as a pattern of the obedience of Christ.
The notion of divine energy as a causal-creative act ( acte de causalité créatrice ) as well as the notion of divine grace as a causal presupposition of the habit of intention ( causalité de la grâce — habitus intentionnel de la grâce ) exhaust, in Fr. Garrigues study, the relation of God with the world and of God with man in an entirely external and only rationally conceived aitiological connection. Out of these objectified and deterministic relations there appears for the Orthodox Christian the nightmarish danger of an impersonal acceptance of God, an ontically absolute and active essence that moves the mechanism of a deterministic philanthropy , which destroys the truth of the person.
After reading Garrigues' study, one remains with one simple question: How is it possible, especially today, for a Roman Catholic scholar to ignore the historical consequences for western Christendom of the rejection of the distinction between essence and energies? How is it possible to discover new arguments for the defense of a theological position for which the West has paid such a tragically heavy price? It is not my desire to refer to historical events, such as the drama of the Middle Ages in the West, centered upon the desacralization of the world by means of Thomistic theology, the tragic opposition on the part of a multitude of mystical and underground heresies that sought hopelessly somehow to rediscover sanctity in the created world, the austere and consistent process that led from Thomism to Descartes and from Descartes to the contemporary technological rape of physical and historical reality. The transference of the knowledge of God from the realm of direct personal manifestation through the natural energies to the level of intellectual and rational approximation of an active divine essence, had as unavoidable results the sharpest antithetical separation between the transcendent and the immanent, the banishment of God into the realm of the empirically inaccessible, the schizophrenic divorce of faith from knowledge, the successive waves of rebellion in western man against the theological presuppositions of his own civilization, the rapid fading away of religion in the West and the appearance of nihilism and irrationalism as fundamental existential categories of western man.
But the whole of this historical drama — which would require lengthy studies to be analyzed systematically and which had been foreseen by the Orthodox theologians of the East in the fourteenth century with astonishing lucidity — is being lived today by the Roman Catholic Church in its own body. During these last decades, all of us have been following with pain the tremendous weakening and disintegration of the Roman Catholic Church: its internal fragmentation, the loss of its authority, its theological disorientation. The crisis engulfs millions of people in total confusion over their personal life: without goals and without an existential hope, without a spiritual community which could serve as a psychological balance to the loneliness of the great cities, and without a vision of personal life as something other than biological survival and economic well-being.
With these given facts, one would expect Roman Catholic theologians to turn their attention to those means and to those criteria that could reveal a solution to this nightmarish crisis. If they did so, they might discover, particularly in the theology of St. Gregory Palamas and in the councils of the fourteenth century, not only the interpretation but also the solution of the drama that torments them. Instead of this, studies such as that of Fr. Garrigues show Roman Catholic theologians to be fettered to a new kind of sterile scholasticism that threatens Orthodox theologians of the so-called Neo-Palamite school with the anathemas of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (see p. 296 of Fr. Garrigues study).
Personally, I like to believe that this defensive return to scholasticism is merely an exception. The greatest asset of our theological generation is awareness that one cannot do theology on the level of abstract categories. We now know well that the crisis of our civilization is a crisis in the theological presuppositions upon which this civilization has been founded; we know that our theological views have direct and practical consequences for either the ruin, or the salvation of man. And this awareness, no matter how costly it might be, is, indeed, a great lesson .
Athens, February, 1975
(Translated from the Greek
by Rev. Peter Chamberas)
Notes
Dion. Areop., On Divine Names , III, P.G. 3, 869C.
Maximus the Confessor, Theological and Polemical Chapters , P.G. 91, 32BC.
Basil the Great, quoted by St. Gregory Palamas, Physical and Theological Chapters , P.G. 150, 1220D.
To want and how to want is not the same; nor is to see and how to see the same. For to want and to see belong to nature, and it is a qualification of all who have the same nature and belong to the same species. But how to want and how to see ... are manners by which the reality of wanting or seeing is used; it is a qualification that belongs only to the subject who wants and sees and distinguishes him from others according to the commonly accepted category of difference. Maximus the Confessor, Dialogue with Pyrrhus , P.G. 91, 292D.
The will of all can be demonstrated to be one in reference to nature; but the manner of movement is different. Maximus the Confessor, Theological and Polemical Chapters , P.G. 91, 25A.
Basil the Great, Letters , 189, P.G. 32, 696B; see also St. Maximus: While energy belongs to the one who acts, nature belongs to the one who exists ,Theological Chapters , P.G. 91, 200D.
Scholia on On Divine Names , P.G. 4, 332CD.
Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua , P.G. 91, 1268AB.
... (God) who is wholly participated by all the worthy in a beneficent manner. Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua , P.G. 91, 1076C.
Dionysius, On Divine Names , 9, P.G. 3, 825A.
The person deified by grace is all that God is, except the essential identity. Maximus the Confessor, To Thalassios 22, P.G. 90, 320A.
The created things are indicative of power and wisdom and art, but not of essence itself. Basil the Great, Against Eunomius 2, 32, P.G. 29, 648A.
See Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua , P.G. 91, 1257AB.
Maximus the Confessor, Theological Chapters 5, P.G. 90, 1377 AB.
See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Creation of Man , VI, P.G. 44, 140.
See Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration VI , P.G. 45, 27D-28A.
See Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius I , P.G. 45, 381B.
Homily on I Corinthians 15, 28, P.G. 44, 1312A.
Gregory of Nyssa, On the Hexaemeron , P.G. 44, 73A.
Basil the Great, Against Eunomius , P.G. 29, 736C.
St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Hexaemeron , P.G. 44, 73C: For some reason the effective power of each product is made into energy.
See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Hexaemeron , 7, P.G. 44, 69C and On the Soul and Resurrection , P.G. 46, 124C.
Gregory of Nyssa, On the Inscriptions of the Psalms , P.G. 44, 441B.
On the Holy Spirit , P.G. 32, 180C.
Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Writings , Letter 4 (ed. Spanos), p. 384
Didymus the Blind, On the Holy Trinity 2, 1, P.G. 39, 452A.
Maximus the Confessor, To Thalassios , P.G. 90, 296BC.
See Thomas de Aquino, Quaest. disp. de veritate , qu. I, art. 1.
See Thomas de Aquino, Summa Theologica I, 25, 1; Summa contra Gentiles II, 9.
See the text of the Encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi of Pope Pius XII (in the publication La Foi Catholique–Textes doctrinaux du Magistère de l' Église , Paris, 1961, p. 364): Ce qu' il faut rejeter: tout mode d'union mystique par lequel les fidèles, de quelque faÕon que ce soit, dépasseraient l'ordre du créé et s'arrogeraient le divin au point que même un seul des attributs du Dieu éternel puisse leur être attribué en propre. Cf. also the eastern view recorded by Gregory of Nyssa, On the Beatitudes VII, P.G. 44, 1280C.D.: Man escapes from his own nature, becoming an immortal from a mortal that he is, and from one who has a price on his head to a priceless one, and from a temporal creature to an eternal one, being man becoming wholly god ... For if that which God is by nature, His property, is given by grace to man, then what else but a certain equality of honor is professed by virtue of the relation?
See M.-D. Chenu, La Théologie au douzième siècle , Paris (ed. Vrin), 1966, p. 294. See also La Foi Catholique , p. 321: La grâce est gratuite et surnaturelle , where the relative reference to the dogmatic sources of the Roman Catholic Church are cited. Also, J.-H. Nicolas, Dieu connu comme inconnu , Paris, 1966, p. 218f.
Op. cit., p. 289.
See p. 294: ...le réalisme de la divinisation: l'être intentionel n'est pas moins réel que l'être entitatif.
See p. 291: A partir de l'habitus de la grâce, la charité informe de l'intérieur toute la vie vertueuse de l'homme qui manifeste ainsi la ressemblance divine.
Thank you, lounger, for the articles. I had already looked at those, but they are very good resources. What I had in mind is the more narrow question that this RC fellow brings up.
St. Basil again, "We know our God from His energies, but we do not claim that we can draw near to His essence, for His energies come down to us, but His essence remains unapproachable."
QB:amen.However this does not address the issue of the glorified state of the individual in heaven for eternity:
Any insight on approaching God's essense in the glorified state?
luke
St. Basil again, "We know our God from His energies, but we do not claim that we can draw near to His essence, for His energies come down to us, but His essence remains unapproachable."
QB:amen.However this does not address the issue of the glorified state of the individual in heaven for eternity:
Any insight on approaching God's essense in the glorified state?
This is misguided reasoning on the part of the papist apologist, which makes an arbitrary distinction between this present life, and the experience of the dead in Christ, and the future experience of those who will be raised from death in blessedness.
The papist should be asked quite bluntly, how he justifies some arbitrary difference between the limitations of our nature in experiencing God in this life, from the limitations we may have in the next.
Everything the articles you were sent speaks of, is qualatatively true for all times - they deal with how man has been constituted, and the majesty/sublimity of God Himself. There is nothing that will change in either, at any time - certainly not of God, and even our natures themselves are not going to be "changed" at some future point (otherwise we wouldn't be human anymore, would we?), as much as renewed and healed.
The RCC teaches a different doctrine than the Church of Christ here. You'll find no talk of "beatific vision" prior to their alienation from the Church, even amongst the western Fathers. The truth of the matter is, that there is an ongoing assimilation to God occuring in those who are on the way of salvation, which is a spectrum beginning in this world, and going onward forever more. Hence, what is to come for the Saints is only different in "quantity", so to speak, rather than "quality."
For example, St.Stephen (the proto-martyr), when he was about to be matyred by the faithless Jews, entered into theoria (vision of God) and could perceive in full reality Christ enthroned in Glory, and the vision of the Kingdom of God. This vision does not qualatatively differ in the least from that described as being the inheritance of the Saints in the world to come, in the book of the Apocalypse (Revelations.)
Seraphim
seraphim reeves wrote:This is misguided reasoning on the part of the papist apologist, which makes an arbitrary distinction between this present life, and the experience of the dead in Christ, and the future experience of those who will be raised from death in blessedness.
Seraphim,
Anticipating the response to that, I suspect it would be based to a great extent on this:
(1 John 3:2) Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
luke