Energy/Essence similar to Accident/Substance

[Cavaradossi]

I never said that God can be known in his essence. You said that God’s essence doesn’t exist. I disagreed and presented evidence that the Fathers teach that God’s existence exists. I believe “The terms ‘without beginning,’ ‘incorruptible,’ ‘unbegotten,’ as also ‘uncreate,’ ‘incorporeal,’ ‘unseen,’ and so forth, explain what He is not: that is to say, they tell us that His being had no beginning, that He is not corruptible, nor created, nor corporeal, nor visible.” God’s essence, however, does exist.

Please read posts 58 and 60, where I address that issue with quotations from Gregory Palamas, Gregory of Nyssa, John of Scythopolis, and John of Damascus. The issue that I was building up for is that if God’s essence absolutely cannot be known, then we, as creatures within the diastemic world, cannot even properly posit that the essence of God exists or is, because our created being is so far estranged from the uncreated, that in doing so, we try to drag that which is utterly transcendent into the realm of the created. So great is our ontological difference from God that when we use terms like ‘being’, ‘essence’, and ‘existence’ in our discourse about God, we only use these as an equivocation, without which, no discourse about God could take place.

 

[Zekariya]

The problem, as I mentioned earlier (with the quote from Gregory of Nyssa about the diastema), is that absent of the framework of being and existence, there is no way for us to think about God. As a necessity, we are forced to speak of God as being, essence, and existing, even though God is properly none of these things. The flaw in your reading of the Eastern fathers is that you do not take this part of the Eastern tradition into account, and therefore take every reference to the ‘being’ of God as meaning that the essence of God actually ‘is’. But there is a common affirmation used in the East which defies this sort of thinking: the term hyperousios. How are we to understand the use of the term hyperousios? Here is a passage from John of Damascus’ Orthodox Faith, which should make its meaning quite evident: “We believe, then, in One God,… occupying all essences intact and extending beyond all things, and being separate from all essence as being super-essential (hyperousios) and above all things” (Orthodox Faith, I.viii). If as John of Damascus says, God is above all essence, how can one say that God properly has an ‘essence’? It should be clear that we are only using the term essence as a way to speak of God, absent of which, all discourse on God would be incomprehensible.

But if you do not find this to be convincing, I can provide two further examples which are even more obvious and explicit than John of Damascus in asserting that existence and essence do not apply to God. Here is a short quote from the Scholia, traditionally attrbited to Maximus the Confessor, although believed to have been written by John of Scythopolis, commenting on a passage from Pseudo-Dionysus’ Divine Names which uses the term hyperousios ousia: “Dionysius does not present what the essence of God is for ‘essence’ is not properly predicated of God insofar as he is beyond being.” Agreeing with this understanding of God’s ‘being’, Gregory Palamas writes: “Every nature is utterly removed and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature; just as he is not a being, if the other are beings. And if he is a being, the others are not beings.” Again, I must reiterate that it is only in the context of these sort of radically apophatic affirmations about the so-called ‘essence’ and ‘being’ of God that we can understand what it means to talk about the ‘being’ of God in the Eastern tradition. As much as many in this thread seem ready to throw the radical apophaticism of the Eastern Fathers away, it is an undeniable part of the tradition, and it shapes very much how the essence-energies distinction should be understood. None of you have to agree with my understanding of the essence-energies distinction, but I feel compelled to post because it seems to me that very little of what I’ve seen on this thread accurately portrays the theological tradition of the Orthodox Church by which the essence-energies distinction should be understood.

Hyperousios does not translate into “God doesn’t exist in His essence”. If God’s essence is nonexistent you would be a monophysite since the Divine Nature wouldn’t exist (EOs consider ousia and physis to be the same). Without the existence of God’s essence there would be no divine energies. Beyond existence doesn’t mean nonexistence.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Hyperousios does not translate into “God doesn’t exist in His essence”. If God’s essence is nonexistent you would be a monophysite since the Divine Nature wouldn’t exist (if you believe that ousia and physis are the same). Without the existence of God’s essence there would be no divine energies. Beyond existence doesn’t mean nonexistence.

Did you even read the Gregory Palamas quotation or anything that I wrote about the limitations of our diastemic existence and our radical ontological gap from the uncreated? At this point, I feel that you are not reading what I’m writing, so there is little point in continuing this dialogue.

 

[Zekariya]

Did you even read the Gregory Palamas quotation? At this point, I feel that you are not reading what I’m writing, so there is little point in continuing this dialogue.

Yes. Gregory Palamas writes: “Every nature is utterly removed and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature; just as he is not a being, if the other are beings. And if he is a being, the others are not beings.”

He is not a Catholic Saint. If you could point to some of the many common Fathers that teach the above that would be helpful.

 

[Zekariya]

Gregory Palamas also said: “Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases.”

 

[Zekariya]

Does hyperousios not mean “above essence”? That is not the same as saying nonexistent.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Yes. Gregory Palamas writes: “Every nature is utterly removed and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature; just as he is not a being, if the other are beings. And if he is a being, the others are not beings.”

He is not a Catholic Saint. If you could point to many common Fathers that teach the above that would be helpful.

First of all, Gregory Palamas is commemorated on the calendar of the Melkites. Were you not once a Melkite? He is one of your saints too. Palamas’ place in the Roman Catholic Communion notwithstanding, this is a thread about the Essence-Energies distinction. To write about it without mentioning Palamas would be like writing about Thomism without quoting Thomas Aquinas (a truly ridiculous proposition), and it would be totally inauthentic to the Eastern tradition. Regardless, I think a strong enough case has been built using the concept of our diastemic created existence, the radical ontological difference between the created and uncreated as a basis for radical apophaticism, and quotations from the Eastern Fathers themselves to demonstrate the principles which go into the denial of the ‘existence’ of the divine essence, even without the Palamas quote. You must understand that existence in the Eastern framework properly only applies to things which are created, and the essence of God, not being created does not exist or be. It must be beyond being and essence, which is exactly what is meant by the term hyperousios which is so often used to describe the ‘essence’ of God. The only argument you have come up with is to accuse me of being a crypto-monophysite, which is rather amusing if not a weak and unconvincing (and seemingly shot-from-the-hip) argument, based on a misunderstanding of what it means for me to say that the essence of is not. Again, you don’t have to agree with me, but as one of the few Orthodox Christians posting here, I feel that I should at least throw in my two cents when I see my own tradition being radically misrepresented for something that it is not.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Gregory Palamas also said: “Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases.”

That is completely irrelevant. You again are making the mistake of not understanding the place of being in discourse on God.

Does hyperousios not mean “above essence”? That is not the same as saying nonexistent.

Hyperousios means literally above essence. But since essence is normally taken to be the ‘being’ of something, its ‘what it is’, (and indeed, ousia is derived from the Greek verb einai, meaning to be), this statement also means that God is transcendent of being and not existent.

 

[Zekariya]

First of all, Gregory Palamas is commemorated on the calendar of the Melkites. Were you not once a Melkite? He is one of your saints too. Regardless, this is a thread about the Essence-Energies distinction. To write about it without mentioning Palamas would be like writing about Thomism without quoting Thomas Aquinas (a truly ridiculous proposition), and it would be totally inauthentic to the Eastern tradition. Regardless, I think a strong enough case has been built using the concept of our diastemic created existence, the radical ontological difference between the created and uncreated as a basis for radical apophaticism, and quotations from the Eastern Fathers themselves to demonstrate the principles which go into the denial of the ‘existence’ of the divine essence, even without the Palamas quote. You must understand that existence in the Eastern framework properly only applies to things which are created, and the essence of God, not being created does not exist or be. It must be beyond being and essence, which is exactly what is meant by the term hyperousios which is so often used to describe the ‘essence’ of God. The only argument you have come up with is to accuse me of being a crypto-monophysite, which is rather amusing if not a rather weak and unconvincing argument, based on a misunderstanding of what it means for me to say that the essence of is not. Again, you don’t have to agree with me, but as one of the few Orthodox Christians posting here, I feel that I should at least throw in my two cents when I see my own tradition being radically misrepresented for something that it is not.

I stand corrected about St Gregory Palamas being a saint. I am not calling you a monophysite. I was just stating the logical conclusion of a nonexistent essence. The word that St Basil uses, uncreate, pretty much explains God’s essence as not being part of creation without saying that it doesn’t exist. The Creed says that Christ is of one essence (homoousian) with the Father. That implies the existence of the essence. If the essence did not exist, we couldn’t profess the Creed.

Above existence is not the same as nonexistence. I am sure that there is a different Greek word for nonexistence.

 

[Ghosty]

Cavaradossi: Perhaps without realizing it you have made the case for analogy in speaking of God. We say “Divine Essence” analogically, precisely because essence, as we properly use the term, doesn’t apply to God. If you speak at all of the Divine Essence, you are speaking analogically from your knowledge of creatures, as Aquinas points out. It can’t be avoided, because God must be spoken of, yet He is beyond all rational thought.

So far from undermining the point, you have proven it. All Aquinas is saying is that when we speak of God in positive terms, and essence is a positive term, we are speaking analogically because our words do not properly represent God even as they signify Him for the purpose of speech and doctrine.

Peace and God bless!

P.S. St. Gregory is a Catholic Saint, for those who don’t realize it. He’s one of my favorites, in fact.

 

[Cavaradossi]

I stand corrected about St Gregory Palamas being a saint. I am not calling you a monophysite. I was just stating the logical conclusion of a nonexistent essence. The word that St Basil uses, uncreate, pretty much explains God’s essence as not being part of creation without saying that it doesn’t exist. The Creed says that Christ is of one essence (homoousian) with the Father. That implies the existence of the essence. If the essence did not exist, we couldn’t profess the Creed.

Above existence is not the same as nonexistence. I am sure that there is a different Greek word for nonexistence.

No, the energies imply that there is in an equivocal sense of the term an essence. That the essence is (in an equivocal sense) can only be arrived to by faith. But because the essence is, in the Eastern framework, only in an equivocal sense, this is the same as saying that the essence is not (this is, if I recall, one of the reasons Thomas Aquinas posits his understanding of affirmations as metaphor, because he wishes to preserve the sense that God is not in the same way that we are, but without coming to the radical conclusion that God is not).

 

[Zekariya]

No, the energies imply that there is in an equivocal sense of the term an essence. That the essence is (in an equivocal sense) can only be arrived to by faith. But because the essence is, in the Eastern framework, only in an equivocal sense, this is the same as saying that the essence is not (this is, if I recall, one of the reasons Thomas Aquinas posits his understanding of affirmations as metaphor, because he wishes to preserve the sense that God is not in the same way that we are, but without coming to the radical conclusion that God is not).

Oh, you are saying that nonexistence is a metaphor for saying God is beyond creation? I took nonexistence literally. Though I personally wouldn’t use that term, I now understand what you mean. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Cavaradossi: Perhaps without realizing it you have made the case for analogy in speaking of God. We say “Divine Essence” analogically, precisely because essence, as we properly use the term, doesn’t apply to God. If you speak at all of the Divine Essence, you are speaking analogically from your knowledge of creatures, as Aquinas points out. It can’t be avoided, because God must be spoken of, yet He is beyond all rational thought.

So far from undermining the point, you have proven it.

I am unsure, again. I am sure that the East was confronted with the same problem of being that Aquinas was (namely, that we must posit that something is before we can talk about it), but I think the East goes about solving it in a different fashion. The essence of God is not, while the energies of God are how the non-being essence is made manifest in being (on a side note, I was once accused of reading Kant into the Cappadocians—an impressive feat, for a man who has not once read anything of Kant’s—but this seems to be how most scholars read the Cappadocians these days, so I suppose I am good company). There is definitely something held to be so radically different about the essence of God in the East that it cannot even be properly said to be essence or being, which I am not sure is a conclusion that Thomas Aquinas was comfortable coming to (not to say that he was somehow wrong to do so, certainly a rather sophomoric argument to try to make, only that he solved the problem in a different fashion).

 

[Zekariya]

I am unsure, again. I am sure that the East was confronted with the same problem of being that Aquinas was (namely, that we must posit that something is before we can talk about it), but I think the East goes about solving it in a different fashion. The essence of God is not, while the energies of God are how the non-being essence is made manifest in being (on a side note, I was once accused of reading Kant into the Cappadocians—an impressive feat, for a man who has not once read anything of Kant’s—but this seems to be how most scholars read the Cappadocians these days, so I suppose I am good company). There is definitely something held to be so radically different about the essence of God in the East that it cannot even be properly said to be essence or being, which I am not sure is a conclusion that Thomas Aquinas was comfortable coming to (not to say that he was somehow wrong to do so, certainly a rather sophomoric argument to try to make, only that he solved the problem in a different fashion).

This helps me understand better. St Gregory Palamas says that God is the non-being in the sense that his understanding of being refers to creation?

 

[Ghosty]

No, the energies imply that there is in an equivocal sense of the term an essence. That the essence is (in an equivocal sense) can only be arrived to by faith. But because the essence is, in the Eastern framework, only in an equivocal sense, this is the same as saying that the essence is not (this is, if I recall, one of the reasons Thomas Aquinas posits his understanding of affirmations as metaphor, because he wishes to preserve the sense that God is not in the same way that we are, but without coming to the radical conclusion that God is not).

The problem here is that the term “essence” is not entirely equivocal, else it could not be used at all. When you say Divine Essence you mean something, even though we have no experience of what you mean; if it was purely equivocal it would be an empty term because it refers to a unique thing that we don’t know.

It is obviously not univocal either, however, so we’re left with analogy. This is shown in Scripture when it says, in various places and ways, that the invisible is known by the visible, and that we are in the image of God. An image is not univocal, but it is also not entirely equivocal else it could not be called an image. Furthermore, while we can’t know the Divine Essence, we can know the Energy, and where there is Energy there is Essence. We say Energy of God because God is “active”, not stagnant, though we have no comprehension of infinite operation and Energy. So as we know that operations arise from natures, and natures belong to essences, we apply these terms to God in order to speak of that which we know is real (because we clearly see the effects), even though these terms fall short of God and give us no proper idea of Him. This is the nature of analogy, and you use it yourself when you use the terms Essence and Energy.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Ghosty]

I am unsure, again. I am sure that the East was confronted with the same problem of being that Aquinas was (namely, that we must posit that something is before we can talk about it), but I think the East goes about solving it in a different fashion. The essence of God is not, while the energies of God are how the non-being essence is made manifest in being (on a side note, I was once accused of reading Kant into the Cappadocians—an impressive feat, for a man who has not once read anything of Kant’s—but this seems to be how most scholars read the Cappadocians these days, so I suppose I am good company). There is definitely something held to be so radically different about the essence of God in the East that it cannot even be properly said to be essence or being, which I am not sure is a conclusion that Thomas Aquinas was comfortable coming to (not to say that he was somehow wrong to do so, certainly a rather sophomoric argument to try to make, only that he solved the problem in a different fashion).

Aquinas would say that even “essence” is not univocally applied to creatures and God. Absolutely nothing can be said of God that properly applies to, and defines, God. It is absolutely beyond the created nature to make any such univocally positive statements about God.

All natural knowledge comes through creatures, according to Aquinas, and therefore everything said of God is said by way of acknowledging that the perfections of creatures come from God as an effect, so there is something of us in God (so to speak), but since what we know is from creatures these ideas can never properly apply to God, though they can signify through analogy.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Zekariya]

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.

 

[Ghosty]

Zekariya: St. Gregory Palamas was, unfortunately, not the most clear in his expositions. While I love his work, he was given to a lot of repetition and apparent self-contradiction (I say apparent because he didn’t really contradict himself, he just spoke verbosely about such complex topics that his words became stumbling blocks at times). St. Gregory’s work was not immediately and universally accepted, and he was both condemned by synods at Constantinople and exonerated by them. It took ten years and six Councils to settle the matter, and even then it took several decades to be fully put to rest, only to see Palamas’ work get swept aside for several centuries (his teaching, properly understood, was held as the baseline for orthodoxy, but his works themselves were not studied much, IIRC). The last century or so has seen a revival of interest in his actual works.

 

[Ghosty]

Also, for those interested, here’s some statements from the Summa regarding this issue:

Now it is shown above (Question 4, Article 2) that God prepossesses in Himself all the perfections of creatures, being Himself simply and universally perfect. Hence every creature represents Him, and is like Him so far as it possesses some perfection; yet it represents Him not as something of the same species or genus, but as the excelling principle of whose form the effects fall short, although they derive some kind of likeness thereto, even as the forms of inferior bodies represent the power of the sun. This was explained above (Question 4, Article 3), in treating of the divine perfection. Therefore the aforesaid names signify the divine substance, but in an imperfect manner, even as creatures represent it imperfectly. So when we say, “God is good,” the meaning is not, “God is the cause of goodness,” or “God is not evil”; but the meaning is, “Whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God,” and in a more excellent and higher way. Hence it does not follow that God is good, because He causes goodness; but rather, on the contrary, He causes goodness in things because He is good; according to what Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 32), “Because He is good, we are.”

and:

So we must say that these kinds of divine names are imposed from the divine processions; for as according to the diverse processions of their perfections, creatures are the representations of God, although in an imperfect manner; so likewise our intellect knows and names God according to each kind of procession; but nevertheless these names are not imposed to signify the procession themselves, as if when we say “God lives,” the sense were, “life proceeds from Him”; but to signify the principle itself of things, in so far as life pre-exists in Him, although it pre-exists in Him in a more eminent way than can be understood or signified.

The last portion is significant, because Aquinas is pointing out that even though we use terms to talk about God directly, these terms merely signify without understanding. So we can say “God is good” because the goodness of creatures comes from God (where else would it come from?), but in saying this we are not implying that we understand the goodness of God, nor that the goodness of God is the same as the goodness of creatures (Aquinas highlights this point by saying that it is not even of the same genus). We are merely highlighting the fact that what is in creatures comes from God; we are speaking “towards” God, rather than directly “of” God. This kind of knowledge is properly of creatures, not of God, but just as knowledge of “energy” implies something of “essence” (else energy would not exist to be spoken of, since there is no energy without essence), knowledge of creatures implies something of the creator. Aquinas makes it clear that when we speak of “good”, which we know from creatures, we are not speaking even of the same genus as “good” in God; it is literally so remote that we are merely signifying that it is (which we know from the goodness in creatures, His effect), but not at all what it is, as our knowledge doesn’t even reach the same genus as God.

I realized that there may be some confusion because in common language we use the term analogy to convey real knowledge of something through figures of speech, but that is not how Aquinas uses the term. Aquinas is actually very strict in saying that we can’t define the essence/nature of God, because it is quite simply beyond all capacity of our created nature. Analogies are not definitions, they aren’t even of the same genus as God, they are simply the recognition of the fact that what we see in creatures is caused by a non-creature, and this non-creature is imparting some incomprehensible aspect of itself to creatures in the act of creating. This applies to terms like “essence” and “energy” just as much as it does to “goodness” and “wisdom”.

Peace and God bless!

 

[Cavaradossi]

The problem here is that the term “essence” is not entirely equivocal, else it could not be used at all. When you say Divine Essence you mean something, even though we have no experience of what you mean; if it was purely equivocal it would be an empty term because it refers to a unique thing that we don’t know.

It is obviously not univocal either, however, so we’re left with analogy. This is shown in Scripture when it says, in various places and ways, that the invisible is known by the visible, and that we are in the image of God. An image is not univocal, but it is also not entirely equivocal else it could not be called an image. Furthermore, while we can’t know the Divine Essence, we can know the Energy, and where there is Energy there is Essence. We say Energy of God because God is “active”, not stagnant, though we have no comprehension of infinite operation and Energy. So as we know that operations arise from natures, and natures belong to essences, we apply these terms to God in order to speak of that which we know is real (because we clearly see the effects), even though these terms fall short of God and give us no proper idea of Him. This is the nature of analogy, and you use it yourself when you use the terms Essence and Energy.

Peace and God bless!

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.

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. 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?). 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). 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. 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.

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.