Can the Orthodox define what "Uncreated Energy from the Holy Spirit is"?

[Cavaradossi]

God’s love, goodness, holiness, is his essence . God is not other than his wisdom, he’s not other than his power, goodness, etc That’s you and me, the limited beings, not God. He’s one perfect being that is all these things.

Comprehending God’s essence is besides the point. I don’t know ANY Catholic who has ever said that ANY****aspect of God can be comprehended by man. If we follow this logic, then, am I to understand that you personally belief that these divine energies you describe are comprehensible? Is God’s love comprehensible? Is his power? his holiness? are any of these comprehensible by anyone apart from God?

Of course we don’t comprehend the Divine essence- we don’t comprehend God, period . That does not mean we do not possess him in his essence- To the West, essence is what God is. Saying we have no union with him in his essence is saying we have no union with him, period. That’s how it’s understood from our perspective.

That’s the whole point, though. We can’t comprehend the being of God because God himself is beyond being and non-being (a concept we get from pseudo-dionysus), but we can comprehend the three persons because of their workings in the world, and their workings within us. If we deny that the energies of God are really God, then we don’t really ever know and communicate with God because he is otherwise unknowable.

 

[Marybeloved]

That’s the whole point, though. We can’t comprehend the being of God because God himself is beyond being and non-being (a concept we get from pseudo-dionysus), but we can comprehend the three persons because of their workings in the world, and their workings within us. If we deny that the energies of God are really God, then we don’t really ever know and communicate with God because he is otherwise unknowable.

I don’t know if our problem is simply one of language. I of course do not believe we can comprehend the three persons- only to an infinitely limited degree can we do so. The western refusal to make the E/E distinction has nothing to do with comprehending God. Like I said, even if we go by Eastern concepts, the Energies would be as incomprehensible to man as the essence- so comprehending God nowhere enters the discussion. Man does not grasp God- period. But does he possesss him in love? We say yes. And our yes refers to God in his absolute Divinity/essence, not just his works.

 

[Marybeloved]

That’s the whole point, though. We can’t comprehend the being of God because God himself is beyond being and non-being (a concept we get from pseudo-dionysus),

I’m not sure what this means, but to my Latin ears it sounds wrong. God indeed is the fullness of being, by his own testimony- YHWH- “I am who am/ I am that I am/ I am he who is”- Being. To BE- This is exactly how God identifies himself; By the fact that he IS.

 

[Cavaradossi]

I’m not sure what this means, but to my Latin ears it sounds wrong. God indeed is the fullness of being, by his own testimony- YHWH- “I am who am/ I am that I am/ I am he who is”- Being. To BE- This is exactly how God identifies himself; By the fact that he IS.

This is a really Eastern concept. Because we exist, we can’t say that God really exists, because His ‘existence’ is not like ours. To say that God exists or has being would be to constrain Him with concepts like being instead of recognizing that God properly transcends being.

 

[Marybeloved]

This is a really Eastern concept. Because we exist, we can’t say that God really exists, because His ‘existence’ is not like ours. To say that God exists or has being would be to constrain Him with concepts like being instead of recognizing that God properly transcends being.

God’s being transcends ours- That cannot mean that God has no being. We believe God exists or we would be atheists… no? I suppose this is another Eastern concept I’ll add after the E/E distinction in my still-struggling-to-understand list.

 

[Cavaradossi]

God’s being transcends ours- That cannot mean that God has no being. We believe God exists or we would be atheists… no? I suppose this is another Eastern concept I’ll add after the E/E distinction in my still-struggling-to-understand list.

Well, the idea is that God does not exist, but He also does not not exist, and so on forth ad infinitum. Pseudo-dionysus also says that Gods is above-essence (hyperousia, in the Greek, in think), implying that the very ‘being’ of God is really not being as we conceive of it, but that it is completely other. This is the framework that we have to understand the essence-energies distinction in. Some began to take this too far and say that God was unknowable completely. Any experience of communion with God was simply illusory, with us interacting with created things instead of truly interacting with God.

This obviously contradicts scripture where people have a true relationship with God both in the OT (Moses’ relationship with God for example cannot be explained as a string of anthropomorphisms) and the NT. This also had horrible consequences for our salvation, since it would mean that man could never be divinized (meaning Athanasius was wrong about theosis). To combat this, Gregory Palamas, taking examples from the Fathers, made a distinction between the unknowable essence of God and the energies which also are uncreated, but with which we can interact. Thus, God is unknowable in essence, but made known to us through the three hypostases (he who has seen me has seen the Father, so Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word told us) and the energies of God.

 

[Marybeloved]

Well, the idea is that God does not exist, but He also does not not exist, and so on forth ad infinitum. Pseudo-dionysus also says that Gods is above-essence (hyperousia, in the Greek, in think), implying that the very ‘being’ of God is really not being as we conceive of it, but that it is completely other.

That’s how he identified himself to Moses. The one who exists as of his nature I AM. God must exist- He can’t NOT exist. He exists absolutely. He simply IS.

This obviously contradicts scripture where people have a true relationship with God both in the OT (Moses’ relationship with God for example cannot be explained as a string of anthropomorphisms) and the NT. This also had horrible consequences for our salvation, since it would mean that man could never be divinized (meaning Athanasius was wrong about theosis).

Isn’t that why the incarnation happened? As we could not go to God, he came to us. Is that not why he remains in the Eucharist? To give himself (The infinite God) truly to us (creatures) at our own level. Is that not what makes Christianity so unique and defines the underlying reason for all our mysteries? That the unapproachable God makes himself for love, approachable?

To combat this, Gregory Palamas, taking examples from the Fathers, made a distinction between the unknowable essence of God and the energies which also are uncreated, but with which we can interact. Thus, God is unknowable in essence, but made known to us through the three hypostases (he who has seen me has seen the Father, so Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word told us) and the energies of God.

I mean no disrespect to St. Gregory Palamas, but I do not agree with his solution. The God who is totally other (transcendent) is also immanent. It’s part of his infinite being. It’s beyond our comprehension, that God is both transcendent and immanent at the same time. We should not divide him so as to make it fit in our creaturely minds how he can be both at once.

 

[Vico]

Marybeloved,

It is a logical conclusion that St. Gregory draws when he states: “For if God be nature, then all else is not nature. If that which is not God be nature, God is not nature, and likewise He is not being if that which is not God is being.”
Capita 150 Gregory Palamas, Capita physica, theologica, moralia, et practica (in V. Lossky, Mystical Theology of the East, p. 37).

Vladimir Lossky wrote of Apophaticism: “It is, above all, an attitude of mind which refuses to form concepts about God. Such an attitude utterly excludes all abstract and purely intellectual theology which would adapt the mysteries of the wisdom of God to human ways of thought.”
(V. Lossky, Mystical Theology of the East, p. 38-39.)

 

[Cavaradossi]

That’s how he identified himself to Moses. The one who exists as of his nature I AM. God must exist- He can’t NOT exist. He exists absolutely. He simply IS.

But to say that God exists assumes that existence precedes the very hyperexistence of God. Surely God (or more properly, divinity) does not exist, because that would constrain divinity within the very framework of existence and non-existence, which divinity transcends.

Isn’t that why the incarnation happened? As we could not go to God, he came to us. Is that not why he remains in the Eucharist? To give himself (The infinite God) truly to us (creatures) at our own level. Is that not what makes Christianity so unique and defines the underlying reason for all our mysteries? That the unapproachable God makes himself for love, approachable?

Yes, I don’t see any point of disagreement here.

Precisely,I mean no disrespect to St. Gregory Palamas, but I do not agree with his solution. The God who is totally other (transcendent) is also immanent. It’s part of his infinite being. It’s beyond our comprehension, that God is both transcendent and immanent at the same time. We should not divide him so as to make it fit in our creaturely minds how he can be both at once.

But see, we have to understand this from an Eastern mindset rather than trying to fit this conceptualization into Western theology. In the East, where the person of God the Father is what unifies the trinity, making distinctions between essence, energy, will, etc., is not not problematic. This objection that the essence-energies distinction somehow introduces division into the substance of God is moot, because from an Eastern perspective, nothing can divide the person of God the Father, Who unifies the trinity.

 

[Vico]

To make it work between east and west, use this: essence is everything that God is apart from what God does.

 

[milidrag]

To make it work between east and west, use this: essence is everything that God is apart from what God does.

Absolutely not.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Absolutely not.

Uhhh, ok, them how do you define essence. That definition looks good to me, since by ousia, we simply mean the divinity of God which is the ‘being’ of the three persons of the Trinity.

 

[Marybeloved]

Marybeloved,

It is a logical conclusion that St. Gregory draws when he states: “For if God be nature, then all else is not nature. If that which is not God be nature, God is not nature, and likewise He is not being if that which is not God is being.”

I don’t see this as logical because it’s based on an assumption that absolutely separates God and his creatures. God IS the ultimate being, he’s the only one who MUST be- Whose very nature/essence it is to BE. Everything else has a derived being/existence and cannot exist as of necessity. Only God does. God cannot NOT be- He IS fully, always, infinitely and absolutely. He cannot be other than being- or existence- as this is exactly his own identification of himself to creatures through Moses. To be as of nature and necessity- This is the God of Moses, and therefore of the Jews and Christians. I don’t see how we can say that God is not being- when infinite and absolute being is exactly what he is. A thing is- exists- or it is Not. And God is the one that IS- The very thing that makes “being”, or “to be” be!

 

[Marybeloved]

Uhhh, ok, them how do you define essence. That definition looks good to me, since by ousia, we simply mean the divinity of God which is the ‘being’ of the three persons of the Trinity.

Then if that’s true, then energies have no Divinity- How can we say they are God then? Is not the Divinity what makes God, God?

 

[Marybeloved]

Please take a look at this article discussing God’s transcendence and immanence from the Western perspective- it’s Thomist. Please note the parts that say that God is his own act of existing- He is the act by which he IS- but also that this is esse- is utterly unknowable by us. I thought this does a good job of explaining what I mean when I say that God simply must be, even though this is infinitely transcendent to us

aquinasonline.com/Topics/godtalk.html

Knowing the Transcendence/Immanence of God.

Aquinas offers a very compelling account of how to reconcile the transcendence of God with His immanence. This reconciliation is most compelling because Aquinas claims that God is most transcendent from, and most immanent in, creation for the very same reason, i.e. because God is Ipsum esse subsistens (Subsistent Act of Existing Itself).
According to Aquinas, all creatures are fundementally composed of essence and existence. He argues that because one can know the essence of a created thing, i.e. what a thing is, without thereby knowing anything about whether it exists in reality, essence differs from existence. Thus, every created thing is a composition of what it is and an act of existing whereby it is a real, actual thing. (For more on this, see On Being and Essence, Chapter 4.) This act of existing, esse, is sometimes refered to as that feature about things that makes them something rather than nothing, or real as opposed to imagined. (I don’t think that these ways of speaking are enough to prove the reality of the distinction, but they illustrate the point.) Since every creature is a composition of essence and esse, there must be a First Cause of this composition that is Himself uncomposed. In God there is no distinction between What He is, i.e. His Essence, and the act wherby He is. (Summa Theologiae Ia, 3, 4) ***Thus, because God is utterly simple, and not composed, and utterly perfect, he utterly transcends every creature. ***

However, since no creature exists through itself of itself, every creature is continually kept in existence through continual active causality of God. God is the cause of the being of all things precisely because He is Subsistent Being Itself (ipsum esse subsistens) Now, since God is being itself by His own essence, created being must be his proper effect…Therefore, as long as a thing has being, so long must God be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundementally present within all things… Hence it must be that God is in all things and innermostly. (S.T. Ia, 8, 1) Hence, by one and the same principle, that God is “impsum esse subsistens,” Aquinas is able to claim that God is at once most trancendent, and infinitely so, from creatures, and that God is most immanently active in his creation. Although God, as Aquinas conceives him philosophically, is utterly Other than his creation (as the Judeo-Christian tradition maintains) He is no Divine Watchmaker, who set the cosmos running but has no further connection with his creation. ***Rather, for Aquinas, God is “innermostly” present precisely because He is utterly Other. ***
But with all this talk of God being “ipsum esse subsistens,” Aquinas believes that we should be on guard against two mistakes.
First, that God’s transcendence means that He is utterly unknowable. Aquinas’ claim that God is utterly transcendent is a conclusion and corollary of arguments that all things are caused by God.

But we do not know what “His own act of existence” is, i.e. we do not know His nature.
Thus, Aquinas’ metaphysics offers a way to say a great deal about God and his nature, based on reasoning that ultimately begins with sensible creatures about which we have some genuine metaphysical knowledge. We can come to real philosophical and metaphysical knowlegde of God (that He exists, that He is one, unique, good, intelligent, spirit, loving). Yet for all this natural knowledge, Aquinas consistently maintains there are “truths which exceed human reason” (S.T. Ia, 1, 1) that we could NEVER know about His nature (that He is a Trinity of Persons, that He became a man as Jesus Christ, that He offers Redemption through Christ) if He did not reveal them to us. Such truths constitute Sacred Doctrine which is superior to philosophy because it is knowledge of God "so far as he is known to Himself alone and revealed to others" (S.T. Ia, 1, 6)

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100106.htm

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100106.htm

 

[milidrag]

Uhhh, ok, them how do you define essence. …

I don’t.

It is up to the one involving the term into the discussion.

If I were to make the definition of the essence and apply it to God’s essence, I’d first make the application of the same definition to an ant.

Why don’t you first exercise to define an ant’s essence and, after this is successfully accomplished, then move on further?

 

[RyanBlack]

That’s how he identified himself to Moses. The one who exists as of his nature I AM. God must exist- He can’t NOT exist. He exists absolutely. He simply IS. Isn’t that why the incarnation happened? As we could not go to God, he came to us. Is that not why he remains in the Eucharist? To give himself (The infinite God) truly to us (creatures) at our own level. Is that not what makes Christianity so unique and defines the underlying reason for all our mysteries? That the unapproachable God makes himself for love, approachable? I mean no disrespect to St. Gregory Palamas, but I do not agree with his solution. The God who is totally other (transcendent) is also immanent. It’s part of his infinite being. It’s beyond our comprehension, that God is both transcendent and immanent at the same time. We should not divide him so as to make it fit in our creaturely minds how he can be both at once.

I don’t mean to be rude or combative, but what business do you have telling us (Eastern Catholics) that we should not have a theological understanding of God that our particular Churches teach, and which the universal Church has not rejected, simply because it does not fit your own Western approach? There are aspects of your Western, Thomistic approach that make no sense to me, from within my own Eastern set of presuppositions. However, I recognize and respect how they fit within your own tradition. Would you please extend the same respect to our tradition?

 

[Cavaradossi]

I don’t.

It is up to the one involving the term into the discussion.

If I were to make the definition of the essence and apply it to God’s essence, I’d first make the application of the same definition to an ant.

Why don’t you first exercise to define an ant’s essence and, after this is successfully accomplished, then move on further?

I define essence precisely as St. Basil the Great defines it:

Of all nouns the sense of some, which are predicated of subjects plural and numerically various, is more general; as for instance man. When we so say, we employ the noun to indicate the common nature, and do not confine our meaning to any one man in particular who is known by that name. Peter, for instance is no more man, than Andrew, John, or James. The predicate therefore being common, and extending to all the individuals ranked under the same name, requires some note of distinction whereby we may understand not man in general, but Peter or John in particular.

Of some nouns on the other hand the denotation is more limited; and by the aid of the limitation we have before our minds not the common nature, but a limitation of anything, having, so far as the peculiarity extends, nothing in common with what is of the same kind; as for instance, Paul or Timothy. For, in a word, of this kind there is no extension to what is common in the nature; there is a separation of certain circumscribed conceptions from the general idea, and expression of them by means of their names. Suppose then that two or more are set together, as, for instance, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, and that an enquiry is made into the essence or substance of humanity; no one will give one definition of essence or substance in the case of Paul, a second in that of Silvanus, and a third in that of Timothy; but the same words which have been employed in setting forth the essence or substance of Paul will apply to the others also. Those who are described by the same definition of essence or substance are of the same essence or substance. when the enquirer has learned what is common, and turns his attention to the differentiating properties whereby one is distinguished from another, the definition by which each is known will no longer tally in all particulars with the definition of another, even though in some points it be found to agree.

ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf208.ix.xxxix.html

What is the essence of an ant? Examine several specific things that are called ants and learn of the commonality between them which causes us to identify them as ants.

 

[RyanBlack]

Hello Cavaradossi,

Yes, I believe that the Son’s procession is by intellection, and the Holy Spirit by the Divine will.In the West, God is his own holiness, goodness, blessedness, life- They are not simply “works” of God. So perhaps that’s the difficulty with this distinction from the western perspective.

Well, they are not “simply” works of God, in the East. Rather, the divine, uncreated energies are eternal, and are indeed, God. However, holiness, goodness, blessedness, love, and so forth, are not unique to God. They are–to varying degrees–traits of humans, who are made in the image and likeness of God. So, in the Eastern mindset, and within a set of Eastern terminology and theological assumptions, making a distinction between God’s essence and God’s energies makes sense of how it can be the case BOTH that God is entirely transcendent AND humans are made in his image and likeness and can be assimilated to God. God, by virtue of the divine essence, which is entirely unique to the Holy Trinity, is eternally distinct from man. Man, by participating in the divine energies, which reach down from God to man (as taught by St. Basil the Great, recognized by the ROMAN Church as a DOCTOR of the Church), can be assimilated to God. So the essence/energies distinction, within the Eastern framework, is logical, and solves the problem of man (who is temporal and finite) can be assimilated to (who is eternal and infinite).

I really am perplexed as to what’s so hard to understand about this. I don’t mean to say that as a Roman Catholic, you are in any way bound to adopt this way of thinking for yourself, but I’m bothered by what seems to me to be hostility on your part towards it.

 

[RyanBlack]

God’s love, goodness, holiness, is his essence . God is not other than his wisdom, he’s not other than his power, goodness, etc That’s you and me, the limited beings, not God. He’s one perfect being that is all these things.

Comprehending God’s essence is besides the point. I don’t know ANY Catholic who has ever said that ANY****aspect of God can be comprehended by man. If we follow this logic, then, am I to understand that you personally belief that these divine energies you describe are comprehensible? Is God’s love comprehensible? Is his power? his holiness? are any of these comprehensible by anyone apart from God?

Of course we don’t comprehend the Divine essence- we don’t comprehend God, period . That does not mean we do not possess him in his essence- To the West, essence is what God is. Saying we have no union with him in his essence is saying we have no union with him, period. That’s how it’s understood from our perspective.

Within the Eastern perspective, we don’t say that wisdom, goodness, power, or any trait that we can name is God’s essence. For us, God’s essence is that which is entirely unique to God, and cannot be named. Wisdom, love, goodness, power, etc., are not unique to God. Of course, they originate with God, and our own wisdom, love, goodness, etc. are gifts to us from God. But they are clearly not entirely unique to God. If there are no traits of God that can also be attributed to man, then how can it be that we are truly made in his image and likeness?

Comprehending/not comprehending God’s essence is most certainly not besides the point. We cannot grasp the divine essence at all. However, we can, to the degree that God’s grace grants us, comprehend God’s uncreated energies, albeit to a limited degree. For the East, we can never say that we posses God or are united to God on the level of essence, because for us, that destroys the distinction between God and humanity, because for us, the divine essence (to the extent that we can speak of it at all), is that which is entirely unique to God-no creature can ever possibly participate in it, be assimilated to it, or enter into union with it.