Energy/Essence similar to Accident/Substance

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I’d like to say also that we cannot even know the whatness (essence) of creatures either. I know that a rock exists. I even know about many of it’s characteristics. I have absolutely no idea what it is to be a rock, however, or a cup, or an ocean, because I’m not one, never been. I only know what it is to be me. With God I similarly cannot know what it is to be God, (Divine essence) either- and the distance here is infinite. What I do know is that God exists. Nothing other than him has it in itself to exist- only God does.

Everything else is properly by essence ‘‘non-being’’- It’s given its existence absolutely by God to whom alone it belongs to be. So we can’t understand what it is to be our own existence (as in God) but we can know only our own manner of being, to be a creature-something that should be nothing but is only something by an absolute grant of somethingness by the only one who can grant it because it belongs to him alone.

That’s why we call God the creator, and explain creation as God making us out of nothing, not out of anything that exists prior… Creation is an absolute grant of existence. That’s why no-one else can create- no one else can grant what does not belong to him, no one can give existence to anything-not even his own existence is his own. If we speak of God not existing like we do, we mean there’s a radical difference (and distance) between his existence and all creaturely existence, a difference we cannot grasp. That is, Our existence is far closer to all other creatures’ existence, however different: an angel, an alien planet, than it is to God- infinitely so. Not that we don’t know that he exists. If he didn’t then neither would we- where would we get it? We just don’t know what his existence really is.
 
Zekariya said:
Transfer, then, to the divine dogmas the same standard of difference which you recognise in the case both of essence and of hypostasis in human affairs, and you will not go wrong. Whatever your thought suggests to you as to the mode of the existence of the Father, you will think also in the case of the Son, and in like manner too of the Holy Ghost. For it is idle to bait the mind at any detached conception from the conviction that it is beyond all conception. For the account of the uncreate and of the incomprehensible is one and the same in the case of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. For one is not more incomprehensible and uncreate than another. And since it is necessary, by means of the notes of differentiation, in the case of the Trinity, to keep the distinction unconfounded, we shall not take into consideration, in order to estimate that which differentiates, what is contemplated in common, as the uncreate, or what is beyond all comprehension, or any quality of this nature; we shall only direct our attention to the enquiry by what means each particular conception will be lucidly and distinctly separated from that which is conceived of in common. - St Basil the Great, Letter XXXVIII

He does a pretty good job of maintaining God’s essence as being beyond all without saying that His essence doesn’t exist. St Gregory Palamas wasn’t espousing heresy but, even St Justin Martyr used poor words at times.

“There is, and that there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things, above whom there is no other God, wishes to announce to them… I shall endeavour to persuade you, that He who is said to have appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses, and who is called God, is distinct from Him who made all things, I mean numerically, not in will.” - St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 56

He was using words that later would be used by heretics. Plenty of Saints used words that were best to cease using later.
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You quote that letter by Basil as if I had never read it before. At this point, I feel as if you are basically repeating yourself with prooftexts (like those who quote the scriptures in innovative ways). That is not enough, frankly, to prove your point. My contention is that you in this thread are ignoring the apophatic tradition (most importantly, the influence of Pseudo-Dionysus), which must be used as a key for understanding in the Eastern tradition the so-called being of God as a necessary tool for discourse, but not as any sort of admission that the essence of God is an essence proper. You need to come up with a justification for ignoring these texts, rather than just pitting quote against quote, and accusing Gregory Palamas of crypto-heresy when he says things you find disagreeable. Right now I can account for the quotes you furnish, because I have already told you the contexts in which God is said to be, and this epistle is no exception. You beg the question, however, that he positively believes the essence to exist (rather than speaking of the essence as existing out of necessity), when he still excludes the possibility of positive knowledge of the divine nature.
 
Cavaradossi said:
You quote that letter by Basil as if I had never read it before. At this point, I feel as if you are basically repeating yourself with prooftexts (like those who quote the scriptures in innovative ways). That is not enough, frankly, to prove your point. My contention is that you in this thread are ignoring the apophatic tradition (most importantly, the influence of Pseudo-Dionysus), which must be used as a key for understanding in the Eastern tradition the so-called being of God as a necessary tool for discourse, but not as any sort of admission that the essence of God is an essence proper. You need to come up with a justification for ignoring these texts, rather than just pitting quote against quote, and accusing Gregory Palamas of crypto-heresy when he says things you find disagreeable. Right now I can account for the quotes you furnish, because I have already told you the contexts in which God is said to be, and this epistle is no exception. You beg the question, however, that he positively believes the essence to exist (rather than speaking of the essence as existing out of necessity), when he still excludes the possibility of positive knowledge of the divine nature.
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You’re doing the same thing. Everyone has told you that no-one claims we can know the essence of God- but you’re ignoring it to say something that no-one is claiming.
 
Cavaradossi said:
You need to come up with a justification for ignoring these texts, rather than just pitting quote against quote, and accusing Gregory Palamas of crypto-heresy when he says things you find disagreeable.
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I said, “St Gregory Palamas wasn’t espousing heresy but, even St Justin Martyr used poor words at times.” And I still maintain that it is better to use words that others won’t misunderstand.
 
To be clear here folks, I’m not arguing that Thomism is wrong on such and such point (such arguments are sophomoric and too brutish for serious thinking), only that the Eastern tradition here is being forced into a framework that its terminology and conceptual framework was not designed to deal with. I am simply trying to present Eastern theology as it is to give people perhaps a cursory understanding of the underlying framework which influences the formulation of our answers to certain problems (many problems which are answered differently in the West). But I suppose if people are more interested in putting up their fists and telling me that I don’t know how to read Palamas (evidently, I do not have the secret decider ring to sift the crypto-heresies from his non-heretical stuff), I guess I’ll just leave and let everybody read whatever they want out of Palamas, no matter if it is authentic to the tradition.
 
Marybeloved said:
You’re doing the same thing. Everyone has told you that no-one claims we can know the essence of God- but you’re ignoring it to say something that no-one is claiming.
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It is an implicit consequence. He said that Basil posits the divine nature exists. But I argue that this is not true, because to do so would be positive knowledge of the nature, which Basil denies we can have. I think it is better to understand that the the discourse on God as being is only a necessary thing for us to try and understand God epinoetically, rather than an actual name which signifies His essence (which as Gregory of Nyssa tells us cannot properly be named).
 
Cavaradossi said:
It is an implicit consequence. He said that Basil posits the divine nature exists. But I argue that this is not true, because to do so would be positive knowledge of the nature, which Basil denies we can have. I think it is better to understand that the the discourse on God as being is only a necessary thing for us to try and understand God epinoetically, rather than an actual name which signifies His essence (which as Gregory of Nyssa tells us cannot properly be named).
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But to say that we can’t have that knowledge, or that it is beyond us, is itself a positive statement about that which you say we can have no knowledge about, indirect or analogical-That’s the self contradiction I was speaking about. You necessarily use analogy in speaking about God’s essence at the same time as you deny it can be done.

That God exists is God’s own statement, don’t see why we should need to deny it. But what this means is beyond our knowledge, which is what Aquinas and the Fathers are saying. But there it is, God’s own words. God uses the fact of his being as a personal name and a personal revelation-something to distinguish himself (from all else) to Moses. How would that fit into the philosophical language/frame you’re approaching essence with?
 
effect/Energy/Essence is far more akin to effect/method/cause than to the accident/substance distinction.

Accident is what we see - eg: it looks like bread.
Substance is its platonic reality, it’s “true nature” - if it’s unconsecrated, that’s bread; if consecrated, it’s Jesus.

The energy of God is not the accident - we don’t perceive it. We experience its effects.
Essence is the sum totality of God’s being - if we experience that prior to theosis, we may cease to exist. The Energy of God is that part of God that we can, in our mortal life, be affected by… but it’s not the accident because we can’t perceive it.

The Accidents of Divine Energy are Miracles, Theosis, Grace, and Healing.
 
Cavaradossi said:
I don’t know if I can agree. Energy is how God makes himself known to us by condescension. This (the debate over what energy is) was the major bone of contention between Palamas and Barlaam. Both agreed that the essence is unknowable and impenetrable. The difference was, because Barlaam denied that the energies were in fact a condescension of God to the created order, but instead held them to be created effects, he came off as being a practical atheist (or perhaps a deist, although I don’t think such a clean distinction between deism and theism had been thought up yet), because without uncreated energies, the common framework of an essence which transcends all things would make for a supremely transcendent (and non-existent) God Who exists as much as unicorns and centaurs, merely as figments of our imaginations.
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I’ll be blunt: you seem so lost in philosophy that you’re unable to let go of worldly concepts. You’re so attached to mental constructs of God as if they really exist, as opposed to them being our limited explanation of God, that you’re using terms like “uncreated energies” as if they are real expressions of real knowledge, when they’re really merely negations of analogies. “Uncreated energy” is less than nothing when it comes to God, because “uncreated” is nothing (it’s a negation, as creatures can only know “created”), and “energy” is merely a worldly construct applied to God (since energy is nothing but the worldly definition of “the operation of a nature”).

We experience God, true, and this experience can be spoken of in many ways. It can be expressed through “analogical terms”, and it can can be spoken of as “the simple Energy of the Divine Essence”. Neither of these expressions speak of God as He truly Is, but rather they are both worldly expressions that are spoken as analogies, distant analogies, about God.
Applying the principle outlined by Gregory of Nyssa of man being unable to transcend his diastemic existence, I don’t think it is right to say that the Cappadocians would hold that the essence of God is said to be by metaphor, or that God is said to have an essence by metaphor. Rather, the Cappadocians come to the conclusion that no words are proper to signify whatever God is.
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In saying this it seems that you don’t appreciate what a metaphor actually is. The Cappadocians speak of God, and they deny real knowledge of God, therefore they speak in metaphor when they speak about God.
I don’t know if I can agree. Energy is how God makes himself known to us by condescension.
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This is why we speak of God by analogy. God is not known by us as He is, but only as He expresses Himself to us. God expresses Himself to us through Grace and creatures; the knowledge of God by Grace is entirely incommunicable through created nature, but the knowledge of God through creatures is easily expressed, but fails to actually communicate the nature of God.
This (the debate over what energy is) was the major bone of contention between Palamas and Barlaam. Both agreed that the essence is unknowable and impenetrable. The difference was, because Barlaam denied that the energies were in fact a condescension of God to the created order, but instead held them to be created effects, he came off as being a practical atheist (or perhaps a deist, although I don’t think such a clean distinction between deism and theism had been thought up yet), because without uncreated energies, the common framework of an essence which transcends all things would make for a supremely transcendent (and non-existent) God Who exists as much as unicorns and centaurs, merely as figments of our imaginations.
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True, but irrelevant to the discussion of translating the Essence/Energy distinction into Latin theology. Barlaam’s argument was based on Nominalism, and Nominalism is rejected in Latin theology.
They instead content themselves to talk about that which has being as we know it and can be interacted with, namely, the divine energies. In this sense, we do univocally predicate being of energies of God, because they are God as He makes Himself known to us in the being world (after all, How could He be all-powerful without the ability to overcome His own transcendence?).
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We do not univocally speak of “energy” in creatures and God, because created energies flow from created essence, and such energies are entirely different from Divine Energy. Created energies are complex, Divine Energy is simple. Created energy merely changes what already exists, Divine Energy creates. We know of Divine Energy by its effects, and it is “nearer” to us than Divine Essence insofar as Divine Energy is the foundation of our being, but we don’t understand Divine Energy the way we understand created energy, and therefore we can’t univocally predicate “being”, or anything else, of Divine Energy as we do for creatures.

continued…
 
For how God manifests in the world as energy, there are names beyond number in every human tongue to describe Him in truth (for it would not be a divine condescension if He did not condescend to the condition of our diastemic being, and make his act of condescension capable of being known).
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God’s Energy is manifest, but God does not manifest as Energy. God’s Energy is manifest because the energima (effect) is manifest; we don’t experience the Divine Energy (except in Grace, which is a whole different ball game) but we do experience the effects of Divine Energy, such as matter, bodies, sight, sound, ect. We know that God is from the energima, we know that the Divine Energy is from the energima, but we don’t know the Divine Energy in and of itself except in Grace, and even then it is not comprehended.
For how he can transcend being, however, no word in any tongue can express this, and so we are only left with the ability to say what God is not. They do not apply, therefore, the term essence to God metaphorically, but only because it is the most suitable (and only possible) way of trying to have discourse on that which is transcendent of being.
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This is the very definition of theological metaphor; we can’t speak directly of God, but we can speak “around” God. Nothing we say is true and proper to God, but we speak towards God through what we do know. Therefore we say “essence” metaphorically, because in our experience the only term that is suitable when speaking of God’s inner nature is “essence”.
It is only a necessary framework for the mind to understand something, but not an endorsement that God actually has something which is in any way like an essence.
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The very definition of metaphor and analogy.

I am a lion: this means I have strength and courage in some sense, not necessarily as lions have it. It is said because lions are known to have a kind of strength and bravery, though not in the full human sense. A lion has strength of muscle, but not of character; a human can be said to have the strength of a lion when speaking of courage in multiple avenues, despite the fact that the courage of a lion is much more limited than that of a human, even to the point of a different genus. A lion has physical courage, the courage to charge an antelope despite the physical risk to self, but a human has courage to engage in discussions that jeopardize their entire concept of reality. Two entirely different things, yet both can be described with “the courage of a lion”. We speak metaphorically even with creatures, because we can’t reach a proper understand of them. We speak about God in an even more remote and metaphorical manner.

[qupte]This understanding of epinoetic conceptualization is why Basil was not too fussy over whether one made a homoousian or homoiousian confession of faith. So long as one was willing to say, in the case of a homoiousian confession, that the Son is homoiousios (like in essence) with the Father without variation, he felt that this was enough (in fact, Basil started out as a homoiousian, only abandoning the term in favor of homoousios when he realized that homoiousios could be abused and twisted to support Arianism). His understanding of the use of words and the epinoetic interplay between the mind and its concept of something to produce epinoia (conceptualizations) allows for him to be more flexible in his acceptance of certain formulae. This understanding of words as epinoetic processes, by the way, was never entirely lost in Eastern theology, which is why to this date, it is still possible to confess in the Orthodox Church one incarnate nature of the Word of God, from two natures, and in two natures, because it is recognized that each phrase can teach the right doctrine about God with certain qualifications, even though they are at odds when taken (mistakenly) to be statements about the ontology of Christ.

This is precisely why the Catholic Church is able to say that different expressions are still orthodox, while the Eastern Orthodox have no definite answer to the theological divergences that have arisen in the centuries of the Church. A Palamite can be a Catholic, and a Thomist can be a Catholic, but neither can share the Orthodox Communion.

Peace and God bless!
 
Aramis said:
effect/Energy/Essence is far more akin to effect/method/cause than to the accident/substance distinction.

Accident is what we see - eg: it looks like bread.
Substance is its platonic reality, it’s “true nature” - if it’s unconsecrated, that’s bread; if consecrated, it’s Jesus.

The energy of God is not the accident - we don’t perceive it. We experience its effects.
Essence is the sum totality of God’s being - if we experience that prior to theosis, we may cease to exist. The Energy of God is that part of God that we can, in our mortal life, be affected by… but it’s not the accident because we can’t perceive it.

The Accidents of Divine Energy are Miracles, Theosis, Grace, and Healing.
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I have to pray and think over your post, but on first reading it cuts to the heart.
 
Accident seems a poor choice of a word no? An act a thought , we can only
finitely perceive Gods Grace in the I-AM moment becomes reduced to words describing the infinite. We tend to perceive God through our limited human understanding. And adapt what others have said be it early church fathers, saints or a individual who impacted you with a thought.

For example when we speak of Love how can we understand Gods love or, God is Love, as John states less we take the best we can comprehend of Love from the membranes of our minds and then call that Gods Love, which of course we can never do, or rather reach that comprehension of Gods Love.

We only just begin to see a glimpse by the law of prayer and meditation/contemplation by relating to the experience of the Living God. The Inspiration be through the Word of God or those He has spoke through along the journey here becomes the audio in the real sense, and in the Biblical of My Sheep hear my voice, or those who hear you hear me, and so forth.
 
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Ghosty said:
This understanding of epinoetic conceptualization is why Basil was not too fussy over whether one made a homoousian or homoiousian confession of faith. So long as one was willing to say, in the case of a homoiousian confession, that the Son is homoiousios (like in essence) with the Father without variation, he felt that this was enough (in fact, Basil started out as a homoiousian, only abandoning the term in favor of homoousios when he realized that homoiousios could be abused and twisted to support Arianism). His understanding of the use of words and the epinoetic interplay between the mind and its concept of something to produce epinoia (conceptualizations) allows for him to be more flexible in his acceptance of certain formulae. This understanding of words as epinoetic processes, by the way, was never entirely lost in Eastern theology, which is why to this date, it is still possible to confess in the Orthodox Church one incarnate nature of the Word of God, from two natures, and in two natures, because it is recognized that each phrase can teach the right doctrine about God with certain qualifications, even though they are at odds when taken (mistakenly) to be statements about the ontology of Christ.

This is precisely why the Catholic Church is able to say that different expressions are still orthodox, while the Eastern Orthodox have no definite answer to the theological divergences that have arisen in the centuries of the Church. A Palamite can be a Catholic, and a Thomist can be a Catholic, but neither can share the Orthodox Communion.
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That was beautifully put, brother.

Blessings,
Marduk

Peace and God bless!
 
mardukm said:
That was beautifully put, brother.

Blessings,
Marduk

Peace and God bless!
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I can’t take credit for it; Cavaradossi wrote it originally, I just wrote the last portion about sharing the Catholic Communion. 🙂

Peace and God bless!
 
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