Do Catholics believe we can know God's essence?

[CatholicHere_Hi]

This refers back to the energy/essence debate.

The East believes God contains both essence (his true self that can’t be known by human understanding), and ‘energy’ (the things about God he reveals about himself to us through our human understanding).

The West believes this is absurd and God can’t have both. Instead his essence is his energy and vice versa.

If God’s essence and energy are one in the same, wouldn’t that mean the West is claiming we can know God’s essence by human understanding? (Something the West condemns in other teachings)

If that is true, then I can understand why the East might have a bone to pick with that position, but then again I’m not a philosopher nor am I well versed on the East/West debate.

 

[Genesis315]

I think this old post his helpful in this regard:

Essence and Energies distinction? Eastern Catholicism

The “debate” is, in my opinion (and I’ve devoted a LOT of time to studying this topic), a mountain out of a molehile. Long story short, both East and West have always spoken of the Essence and Energies of God (Energy is translated into Western theological use as “activity” or “operations”). Prior to the Schism there was really no division on this issue; that came with theological developments in the Byzantine East with St. Gregory Palamas and his debate with a theologian called Barlaam (in the 1…

 

[fhansen]

From my understanding, by Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals, man in heaven can know God’s essence directly, immediately, intuitively as a “vision”, a gift, aka the Beatific Vision. However, no created being can comprehend God’s nature or essence, God being infinitely superior to us. We can experience Him, as He grants it, and not with our own cognitive powers, but we cannot comprehend Him; that would require us to be His equal.

 

[hymin]

Both from the Angelic Doctor,
“But the divine essence, which is pure act, is light itself: he was not the light, but he came to give testimony of the light. There was a true light (John 1:8). But God abides with himself, and this light is inaccessible, i.e., not visible to a bodily eye, but to the intellectual eye. Yet no created intellect can approach to it.” (1 Tim, Super I ad Timotheum, C. 6, L. 3, 268)

“And so we do see the kingdom of God and the mysteries of eternal salvation, but imperfectly, for as it says, now we see in a mirror, in an obscure manner (1 Cor 13:12). But there is perfect regeneration in heaven, because we will be renewed both inwardly and outwardly. And therefore we shall see the kingdom of God in a most perfect way: but then we will see face to face (1 Cor 13:12); and when he appears we will be like him, because we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2).” (Ioan, C. 3, L. 1, 433)

 

[TOmNossor]

This refers back to the energy/essence debate.

The East believes God contains both essence (his true self that can’t be known by human understanding), and ‘energy’ (the things about God he reveals about himself to us through our human understanding).

The West believes this is absurd and God can’t have both. Instead his essence is his energy and vice versa.

If God’s essence and energy are one in the same, wouldn’t that mean the West is claiming we can know God’s essence by human understanding? (Something the West condemns in other teachings)

If that is true, then I can understand why the East might have a bone to pick with that position, but then again I’m not a philosopher nor am I well versed on the East/West debate.

Hello,
It has been a long time since I thought about these questions. I can no longer find anything from my notes on A.N. Williams The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas. My memory is that she felt the differences within Aquinas and Palamas (including their take on Essence / Energies / Knowability / Unknowability) were not matters dogmatically decided for either communion (or at least not the EO communion) so there was room to highlight agreement and pass over disagreements. This is probably a GROSS point, but it is all I remember now (the book was wicked expensive so I got it via interlibrary loan).

Around the same time I read from Eastern Orthodox scholar David Bradshaw Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom.
I remember leaning in the Bradshaw direction, but you can think about it and perhaps it is as Genesis315 suggested, “a mountain out of a molehill.” I will post a quote from Bradshaw in the below response.

Charity, TOm

 

[TOmNossor]

Here is the Bradshaw quote:

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 not 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 striking 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.

I remember leaning in the Bradshaw direction (verses A.N. Williams), but you can think about it and perhaps it is as Genesis315 suggested, “a mountain out of a molehill.”
Charity, TOm