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A real distinction between the essence (ousia) and the energies (energeia) of God is a central principle of Eastern Orthodox theology. Eastern Orthodox theology regards this distinction as more than a mere conceptual distinction.[1] This doctrine is most closely identified with Gregory Palamas, who formulated it as part of his defense of the practice of Hesychasm against the charge of heresy brought by Barlaam of Calabria.[2][3] These teachings of Palamas were made into dogma in the Eastern Orthodox church by the Hesychast councils.[4][5]
Historically, Western Christianity has tended to reject the essence-energies distinction as real in the case of God, characterizing the view as a heretical introduction of an unacceptable division in the Trinity and suggestive of polytheism.[5][6] Further, the associated practice of hesychasm used to achieve theosis was characterized as "magic".[4] More recently, some Roman Catholic thinkers have taken a positive view of Palamas's teachings, including how he understood the essence-energies distinction, arguing that it does not represent an insurmountable theological division between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.[7]
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According to John Romanides, Palamas considers the distinction between God's essence and his energies to be a "real distinction".[8] Romanides distinguishes this "real distinction" from the Thomistic "virtual distinction" and the Scotist "formal distinction".[8] Romanides suspects that Barlaam accepted a "formal distinction" between God's essence and his energies.[8])
Many writers agree that Palamas views the distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies as a "real" distinction.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] A few scholars argue against describing Palamas's essence-energies distinction in God as a "real" distinction. For example, David Bentley Hart expresses doubt "that Palamas ever intended to suggest a real distinction between God's essence and energies".[17]
According to Aidan Nichols, Palamas's essence-energies distinction is not a mere "formal" distinction. By a "formal" distinction, Nichols means a distinction merely "demanded by the limited operating capacities of human minds".[1]
G. Philips argues that Palamas's essence-energies distinction is not an "ontological" distinction but, rather, analogous to a "formal distinction" in the Scotist sense of the term.[18]
According to Roman Catholic theologian A.N. Williams's study of Palamas, which is more recent than Bentley's and Philips's, in two passages (only) Palamas explicitly says God's energies are "as constitutively and ontologically distinct from the essence as are the three Hypostases", and in one place he makes explicit his view, repeatedly implied elsewhere, that the essence and the energies are not the same; but Williams contends that not even in these passages did Palamas intend to argue for an "ontological or fully real distinction", and that the interpretation of his teaching by certain polemical modern disciples of his is false.[19]
Western theologians admit no real distinction in God other than that between the three divine Hypostases or Persons. Neither between God's essence and the three Persons of the Trinity, nor between God's essence and his energies, do they admit a real distinction, but only a distinction that has a basis in reality or a formal distinction.
The concept of synergy used to express the relationship of God with man, which as taught in the East was not only in dogma and proper context the transcendence of the limitations of pagan society and pagan philosophy. In his comparative history of philosophical thought in the two halves of late-antiquity and mediaeval Christendom, David Bradshaw says that the word "synergy" would be the best with which to summarize in a single word the differences between the eastern and western traditions.[20]
Robert E. Sinkewicz describes Palamas' ultimate perspective as being the "preservation of the reality of God's self-revelation and the divine economy of creation and salvation."[21]
The concept of God's essence in Eastern Orthodox theology is called (ousia) and is distinct from his energies (energeia in Greek, actus in Latin) or activities as actualized in the world.[22] The ousia of God is God as God is. It is the energies of God that enable us to experience something of the Divine. At first through sensory perception and then later intuitively or noetically. The essence, being, nature and substance (ousia) of God is taught in Eastern Christianity as uncreated and incomprehensible. God's ousia is defined as "that which finds no existence or subsistence in another or any other thing".[23] God's ousia is beyond all states of (nous) consciousness and unconsciousness, being and non-being (like being dead or anesthetized), beyond something and beyond nothing beyond existence and non-existence.[24][25] The God's ousia has not in necessity or subsistence needing or having dependence on anything other than itself. God's ousia as uncreated is therefore incomprehensible to created beings such as human beings. Therefore God in essence is superior to all forms of ontology (metaphysics).[23] The source, origin of God's ousia or incomprehensibliness is the Father hypostasis of the Trinity, One God in One Father.[26][27] The God's energies are "unbegotten" or "uncreated" just like the existences of God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) both God's existences and energies are experience-able or comprehensible. God's ousia is uncreatediness, beyond existence, beyond no existence, God's hyper-being is not something comprehensible to created beings.[28] As St John Damascene states "all that we say positively of God manifests not his nature but the things about his nature."[29]
For the Eastern Orthodox, the distinction as the tradition and perspective behind this understanding, is that creation is the task of energy. If we deny the real distinction between essence and energy, we can not fix any very clear borderline between the procession of the divine persons (as existences and or realities of God) and the creation of the world: both the one and the other will be equally acts of the divine nature (strictly uncreated from uncreated). The being and the action(s) of God then would appear identical, leading to the teaching of Pantheism.[30] Eastern Orthodox theologians assert that Western Christianity treats God's ousia as energeia and dunamis (Aristotle's Actus et potentia) as part of the scholastic method in theology. Which allows God's incomprehensibility to become comprehensible, by not making a distinction between God's nature and manifestation of things about God's nature. As Aristotle and Pagan philosophy taught that God was the underlying substance, nature, being, essence (ousia) of all things (as the Monad in substance theory). Making the very thing that makes God, God (uncreated, incomprehensible) the same as God's created world and created beings. God's ousia then becomes detectable and experienced as a substance, essence, being or nature. Rather than God's hyper-being (ousia) as, infinite and never comprehensible to a finite mind or consciousness.
Therefore Pagan philosophy via Metaphysical dialects sought to reconcile all of existence (ontology), with Mankind's reason or rational faculty culminating into deification called henosis. Where in Pagan henosis all of creation is absorbed into the Monad and then recycled back into created existence. Since in Pantheism there is nothing outside of creation or the cosmos, including God, since God is the cosmos in Pantheism. Or rather meaning no ontology outside of the cosmos (creation). Where as Orthodox Christianity strictly seeks soteriology as reconciliation (via synergeia) of man (creation, creatures) with God (the uncreated) called theosis. Mankind is not absorbed into the God's ousia or hypostases or energies in theosis. Ousia here is a general thing or generality, in this case ousia is the essence, nature, being, substance of the word God and concept of God. Various Orthodox theologians argue Western Christianity teaches that the essence of God can be experienced (man can have the same consciousness as God); they charge that Western Christianity's treatment is very much in line with the pagan speculative philosophical approach to the concept of God.
Since no distinction is made between God's essence and his works, acts (i.e. the cosmos) that there is no distinction between God and the material or created world, cosmos. Gregory Palamas' distinction is denied in favor of pagan Philosopher Aristotle's Actus et potentia.[31] Uncreated as that which has no first cause and is not caused, in Eastern Orthodoxy therefore being the basis for understanding outside the realm of science. Atheism here being a denial of the uncreated. Pagan philosophical metaphysics being a dialectical attempt to rationalize the uncreated.[32]
Christos Yannaras writes, "[E]ssence, ... whether in the case of God or in the case of man, does not exist apart from the specific person who gives it subsistence. Persons hypostasize essence, they give it an hypostasis, that is, real and specific existence. Essence exists only “in persons”; persons are the mode of existence of essence."[33] God as infinite and hyper-being (as existent) is called the Father (hypostasis)[34] as origin of all things created and uncreated.[35] God's hands that created the finite or material world are the uncreated existences (hypostases) of God named the Son (God incarnate Jesus Christ) and God immaterial and in Spirit (called the Holy Spirit).[36] Since all of the existences of God as well as all things derive from the Father. What is uncreated as well as created also too, comes from God the Father (hypostasis).[37] The God as uncreated in ousia is infinite and is therefore beyond (not limited to) being or existence.[28] The ousia of God is uncreated and is a quality shared as common between the existences of God. This in Eastern Christianity is called hyper-being, above being (hyperousia).[38][39]
Orthodox doctrine teaches that there are three distinct realities of God. According to Clayton and Peacocke, Palamas does not employ a simple "dyadic contrast between essence and energy within God, nor yet a dyadic contrast between essence and hypostases but... deliberately insists upon a three-pointed contrast between essence, energy and hypostasis. In Palamas' words, "Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy and the triad of divine hypostases."[40]
The divine economy, in the broadest sense, refers not only to God's actions to bring about the world's salvation and redemption, but to all of God's dealings with, and interactions with, the world, including the Creation. In this sense, economy, as used in classical Orthodox doctrinal terminology, constituted the second broad division of all Christian doctrinal teaching. The first division was called theology (literally, "words about God" or "teaching about God") and was concerned with all that pertains to God alone, in himself — the teaching on the Trinity, the divine attributes, and so on, but not with anything pertaining to the creation or the redemption. "...The distinction between οικονομια and θεολογια ... remains common to most of the Greek Fathers and to all of the Byzantine tradition. θεολογια ... means, in the fourth century, everything which can be said of God considered in Himself, outside of His creative and redemptive economy. To reach this 'theology' properly so-called, one therefore must go beyond ... God as Creator of the universe, in order to be able to extricate the notion of the Trinity from the cosmological implications proper to the 'economy.'"[41] Ralph del Colle explains that the divine energies and the hypostases are not identical; however, it is through the energies that the three hypostases are active in the divine economy.[42] Lossky summarizes the working of the divine economy in relationship to the revelation of the hypostases in the energies:
In this dispensation, in which the Godhead is manifested in the energies, the Father appears as the possessor of the attribute which is manifested, the Son as the manifestation of the Father, the Holy Spirit as He who manifests.[43]
The presence of the energies is not to be taken as denial of the philosophical simplicity of God. Therefore, when speaking of God, it is acceptable within Eastern Orthodoxy to speak of his energies as God. These would include kataphatic or positive statements of God like the list of St Paul's energies of God. God being love, faith and hope and knowledge (see 1 Cor. 13:2 - 13:13).[44] As is also the case of Gregory of Palamas that God is grace and deifying illumination.[45]
The important theological and soteriological distinction remains that people experience God through his energies, not his essence. Traditionally, the energies have been experienced as light, such as the light of Mount Tabor that appeared at the Transfiguration (called photimos). The light that appeared to St Paul on the Road to Damascus. The light that appeared to the apostles in the book of Acts 2:3. Orthodox tradition likewise holds that this light may be seen during prayer (Hesychasm) by particularly devout individuals, such as the saints. In addition, it is considered to be eschatological in that it is also considered to be the "Light of the Age to Come" or the "Kingdom of Heaven" the reign of God, which is the Christ. It is this light that is proper to understanding the Eastern Orthodox miracle called Halo as a person whom is defied will omit the uncreated light of God.
Eastern Orthodox theologians have criticized Western theology, and especially its traditional claim that God is actus purus, for its alleged incompatibility with the essence-energies distinction. Christos Yannaras writes, "The West confuses God's essence with his energy, regarding the energy as a property of the divine essence and interpreting the latter as "pure energy" (actus purus)"[46] According to George C. Papademetriou, the essence-energies distinction "is contrary to the Western confusion of the uncreated essence with the uncreated energies and this is by the claim that God is Actus Purus".[47]
After the conversion of Pagan Greek society to Christianity many of the pagan philosophical concepts where re-imaged to conform to Christian concepts. The philosophical concepts where changed to reflect the Christian understanding of the Roman and then Byzantine society and by proxy Byzantine philosophy and Byzantine mysticism. Which then led to the formation of Russian philosophy. Where the God of the Pagan philosophers was a deterministic God who was based on a rational Good called order. The Christian God was Uncreated in essence and brought meaning to existence through reconcillation of the individual to the God while not absorbing the individual into God (in contrast to Pagan deification).
This understanding was over time articulated as God in his ousia as incomprehensible, God is however immanent in the material world as both finite, creation (ordered and limited) and infinite (beyond order understanding and limitation). Unlike the various dualist concepts of creation and divinity the Christian God is not in essence, nature, being and substance, order or chaos for example but is beyond these concepts of created beings. Created and Uncreated are complementary and not in opposition to one another. As the God of Christianity (unlike the Pagan creator) creates ex-nihilo it is also this God who is experienced logically (dianoia) and intuitively, noetically (noesis). Evil in Christianity is not strictly the agent of chaos (misfortune) who manifests in the material world causing hardship, tragedy called the absences of Good. Evil in Christianity is the rebellion to and vilification of life. Evil culminates into the active pursuit of the destruction of existence. In Orthodox Christianity mankind has chosen to use his freewill for selfish aims (to have a separate being from God) and therefore caused the fall of man.