David Bradshaw - Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom, pages 255-256
Aquinas’ teaching on the beatific vision exhibits with particular clarity the difference separating him from the eastern tradition. The most immediately obvious is that, whereas for the East God is beyond knowing, Aquinas regards Him as the highest intelligible object. Aquinas is aware of this disagreement. In the De Veritate he cites a long string of objections to the possibility of seeing God through His essence, and among them are several drawn from Dionysius and John of Damascus. The most fundamental, which Aquinas attributes to Dionysius, is that “all cognition is of things that are; God, however, is no a being, but is above being; therefore, He cannot be known except by transcendent knowledge, which is divine knowledge.” Aquinas’ reply is worth quoting in full:
“Dionysius’ argument proceeds from the knowledge had while in this life. This is had from forms in existing creatures, and, consequently, it cannot attain to what is transcendent. Such is not the case, however, of the vision had in heaven. His argument, therefore, is not pertinent to the problem at hand.”
What for Dionysius had been a limitation inherent to the relation between creature and Creator become for Aquinas one imposed solely by our current ways of knowing. It is worth noting that Aquinas’ position had been considered and rejected by St. Gregory of Nyssa. In his Contra Eunomium Gregory denies that the ousia of God is known even to the angels, precisely in order to insist that this limitation is not due solely to human ways of knowing but is an intrinsic limitation of the creature. Gregory’s writings were not available to Aquinas, however, and even if they had been it is unlikely that Aquinas would have changed his mind. He notes at the beginning of this article of the De Veritate that the denial that God can be seen through His essence had already been judged heretical. This judgment occurred at the University of Paris in 1241, in the rejection of the proposition that “the divine essence will be seen in itself neither by man nor by angel.” In his Commentary on Hebrews Aquinas attributes the rejected view to Eriugena, who in turn (unknown to Aquinas) depended for this point on St. Maximus the Confessor. One could hardly find a more string example of the misunderstanding between the two halves of Christendom: a view that Aquinas regards as heretical had, unknown to him, been orthodox in the East since at least the fourth century.
Bradshaw seems to lean towards the strength of Eastern thought, but he acknowledges that within Eastern Christianity there has been considerable less effort to “systematize” theology. I would go farther and say that within Eastern thought there are very few efforts to align mutually contradictory ideas and instead they are just asserted without even acknowledging the tensions. This resolving of tension was not seen as necessary in Eastern thought (perhaps until the last century of two). Palamas did do some de-tensioning though.
Now, while A.N. Williams would deemphasize the conflicts and state that where the conflicts do exist there is no dogmatism on both sides such that resolution was not possible, she still stated:
- A.N. Williams – The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas, pages 173-174*
At different points, however, each theologian leans to one side or the other, and they do not always lean in the same direction at the same time. IN the context of the vision of God, for example, Aquinas inclines towards the assertion of direct apprehension of God, while Palamas is willing, via the affirmation of the divine essence’s absolute infiolability, to restrict human access to God if it seems a compromised transcendence would result. In the context of grace, we see precisely the opposite.
All this being said, I claim to be able to read. Deeper plunging into the above issue will stretch my familiarity with Aquinas, Palamas, and philosophical thought/dialogue potentially past its breaking point. In other words, I read the above, I quoted the above, I think I know some about the above, but I am out of my area of comfort.
I think that there is a big conflict between Palamas thought and Aquinas thought. If you want to educate me further on this, that would be fine. If you, CatholicGuyNY want to embrace Palamas thought as your concept of deification, I can express my thoughts about this. I most frequently assume Catholics are Thomists, but I often discover that they are not. I think Thomistic thought builds rather naturally from some non-negotiables that most non-LDS hold, but smarter folks than me disagree (though one smarter folk than me Aquinas agrees).
Charity, TOm
