Essence and Energies......Catholic Orthodoxy??? Seems Contradictory.......

[Antonius_Lupus]

Dear brethren,

I have found myself facing a peculiar situation that I was hoping some of you here could help me resolve.

The priest at the Melkite Byzantine Catholic parish that I attend was formerly Eastern Orthodox. On the second Sunday of Great Lent, they celebrate St. Gregory Palamas.

Since the self-governing Patriarchate accepts St. Gregory as a saint of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, I do not see how he cannot be a saint in the Roman Patriarchate.

However, alot of St. Gregory’s ideas are disturbing to me and I am beginning to question his Orthodoxy.

He seems to make too much of a distinction between the energies of God (what God does) and the ousia of God Himself. So much so that He even appears to reject the Orthodox Catholic teaching of the Beatific Vision. Some of the great Unionists of the Orthodox Church (who later left schism and entered into the Orthodox Catholic Church forming the venerable Byzantine Catholic Churches) wrote extensively against St. Gregory as did (if I am not mistaken) the Dominicans.

I wonder whether there is some basis in Fr. Adrian Fortescue’s conclusions that the “Palamism” is NOT Orthodox teaching, and he contends that it even borders on polytheism.

However, I submit myself to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’s judgement, as she has the succession and the ROCK of Orthodoxy, the See of St. Peter, from whence sacerdotal unity takes its source.

Could someone please help me to find what the Catholic Church has definitively taught in this matter? What have the Holy Ecumenical Synods ruled in this? What have the Popes taught consistenly?

This appeared on another forum:

God’s Essence (what He ‘is’ in His infinite transcendence), which is forever unknowable and incommunicable by created things, and

His Energies, i.e., His interactions with us and with the rest of creation. All biblical words for God’s actions towards us-- like “Grace”, “Peace”, “Justification”, “Salvation”, etc. refer to His Energies. Also, all divine visions in the bible were manifestations of His Energies.

No created thing ever did or ever will come into direct contact with God’s Essence-- except the human nature of Christ. In Christ, both God’s Energies-- and God’s Essence-- are fully present.

It appears to be something that is “standard” Eastern Orthodox teaching.

Is this compatible/acceptable with Holy Orthodoxy professed by Christ’s Catholic Church?

This bothers me because, when compared to the Catechism, this perhaps appears to be an instance of heretical teaching within the Greco-Slavic East.

I shudder to think so as it was handed down to me that EO were in schism…NOT heretics.

Here is the Catechism part that I cite that seems to contradict the above teaching:

**163 **Fides facit ut gaudium et lumen visionis beatificae quasi in antecessu gustemus, quae finis est nostrae peregrinationis hic in terris. Tunc videbimus Deum « facie ad faciem » (1 Cor 13,12), « sicuti est » (1 Io 3,2). Fides igitur iam est vitae aeternae initium

**163 **Faith makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below. Then we shall see God “face to face”, “as he is”. So faith is already the beginning of eternal life:

Also:

**1028 **Deus, propter Suam transcendentiam, non potest sicuti est videri nisi cum Ipse Suum mysterium immediatae aperit contemplationi hominis illique Ipse capacitatem praebet. Haec Dei contemplatio in Eius gloria caelesti ab Ecclesia « visio beatifica » appellatur

**1028 **Because of his transcendence, God cannot be seen as he is, unless he himself opens up his mystery to man’s immediate contemplation and gives him the capacity for it. The Church calls this contemplation of God in his heavenly glory “the beatific vision”:

Further:

**1045 **Pro homine, haec consummatio effectio erit ultima unitatis generis humani a Deo volitae inde a creatione et cuius Ecclesia peregrinans erat « veluti sacramentum ». 645 Qui Christo fuerint uniti, redemptorum efformabunt communitatem, Dei « Civitatem sanctam » (Apc 21,2), « sponsam uxorem Agni » (Apc 21,9). Haec non amplius a peccato erit vulnerata, a sordibus, 646 a sui ipsius amore, quae communitatem terrestrem hominum destruunt vel vulnerant. Visio beatifica in qua Deus electis modo inexhaustibili aperietur, perennis erit fons beatitudinis, pacis et mutuae communionis.

**1045 **For man, this consummation will be the final realization of the unity of the human race, which God willed from creation and of which the pilgrim Church has been “in the nature of sacrament.” Those who are united with Christ will form the community of the redeemed, “the holy city” of God, “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” She will not be wounded any longer by sin, stains, self-love, that destroy or wound the earthly community. The beatific vision, in which God opens himself in an inexhaustible way to the elect, will be the ever-flowing well-spring of happiness, peace, and mutual communion.

 

[Ghosty]

Dear brother, rest assured that you are not the first, or the last, person who has difficulty with this particular Saint. While St. Gregory Palamas is not found on the Roman Calendar, he is recognized as a Saint within the Catholic Communion, and his teachings are considered orthodox. That being said, there are some major hurdles to overcome in terms of understanding his teachings, especially when it comes to nuance and terminology.

One “ground rule” to keep in mind at all times when dealing with St. Gregory Palamas is that his writings were actually a defense of the “Beatific Vision”, rather than an argument against it. Keeping this in mind will help you to understand how his teachings are indeed orthodox. It also helps to know a bit about his opponents, and what they were arguing, so I think I’ll start with that.

The most famous opponent of St. Gregory, the one who got him writing in the first place (and the one who’s arguments are pretty much the archtype of the opposition) is Barlaam of Calabria, a Byzantine Scholastic theologian. Barlaam wrote against the Hesychast monks who believed that through prayer, fasting, and holy living they could come to “see God”, which they termed a vision of the Taboric Light (referring to the Light which shined forth from Christ on Mt. Tabor, also known as the Transfiguration). Barlaam said that this was impossible, because God essentially infinitely removed from all things, being the Almighty and Infinite, and couldn’t be perceived by the finite. He argued that what the monks were experiencing was not God, but merely the “actions of God”, in other words the experience was merely a creaturely miraculous representation of God, much like an Icon or something like that. Any true vision of God would basically be impossible.

St. Gregory Palamas, in order to argue against Barlaam, began to articulate his famous distinction of Essence and Energy, saying that both are equally God, but that while the Essence remains infinitely seperate from created things, the Energy (while still Infinite and Almighty) is shared with creatures, and therefore creatures really can see God, and don’t merely experience a miraculous “analogical image” of God as a gift from on high.

The major difficulty that comes up, in my opinion, is how the term Essence is used. I believe that the term as used by Palamas is not equivalent to the common Western use of the term Essence. In Western theological language (especially among my personal favorite Latins, the Dominican Thomists) Essence means “what God is”. In Palamas, however, Essence is more akin to meaning “what God is in and as Himself”. The term Energy is also used a bit differently in both schools of thought, but it can be roughly boiled down to “God’s activity” in either case, albeit with slightly different nuance.

So already we have a major difference in terminology with the use of Essence. In Latin theological terminology, Essence basically means Divinity, whereas in Palamite theology Essence means “God as Himself”. This may seem like a small difference, and it is very subtle, but it has significant impact on how the term is used. Since we come to share in Divinity by Grace, the Latin theology can rightly say that we “participate in the Divine Essence”. This can’t be said using Palamite terminology and definitions, however, because even with Grace and the Divine Life we don’t “share in God as God is God”, but only as “creatures sharing in God”. In other words, we don’t become Divine in the same sense as God is Divine, but rather as participants in Divinity by Grace. Palamas uses “sharing in the Divine Energies” to express this idea, whereas the Latins would simply say “we participate in the Divine Essence without becoming the Divine Essence”.

It was taken for granted, in the argument between Palamas and Barlaam, that sharing in the Divine Essence meant becoming God as God is God, and it was on this basis that Barlaam said that we couldn’t actually see God at all (because we’d have to literally join the Trinity in order to do so). Palamas had to navigate between that extreme, and the extreme of total non-participation in Divinity, in order to properly articulate the orthodox theology, and the language of Essence and Energies is how he did so. That way he could say that we do share in Divinity, since Energies and Essence are the same Divinity, but we don’t become as God is in Himself.

In Latin theology we actually see the same distinction being made, just in different words. Thomists, for example, would say that we see the Divine Essence, but we can’t comprehend it, i.e. possess it totally as God alone can. This is because we participate in the Divine Essence, it is shared with us, while God is the Divine Essence, i.e. His very being is being this Divinity, and that’s something we can never, ever share. The Latins simply don’t have a unique term for this “unshared” aspect of Divinity, as this strict distinction between Essence and Energy arose in the East out of these debates in Byzantium after the Schism.

So in the end, I think St. Gregory Palamas was merely defending the same orthodox truth that is defended by the Latins (especially by the Dominicans against the Nominalists), but it’s easily clouded by the fact that the terms being used have a different nuance in either theological system. Such is the difficulty of translation and human language.

Hope that helps!

Peace and God bless!

 

[Catherine_Grant]

Note from Moderator:

There is a temporary ban in place concerning the Roman Catholic Church’s recognition of St. Gregory Palamas, among related topics that created a volatile environment on the board. This thread has skirted extremely close to the edge of that ban and could only transgress it if it continued. The ban will be lifted on January 7 at which point this conversation may charitably continue.

May God Bless You Abundantly,
Catherine Grant
Eastern Catholicism Moderator