How do teachings on Theosis differ in EC, RC, and EO?

[Vico]

Isn’t HH speaking of the East’s view in that excerpt? Either way, I didn’t necessarily know if “seeing” the Essence meant “knowing” in the Western model.

Per the Catholic view, Beatific Vision is analogical vision, and is intuitive.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

1023 Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they “see him as he is,” face to face:598 By virtue of our apostolic authority, we define the following: According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints . . . and other faithful who died after receiving Christ’s holy Baptism (provided they were not in need of purification when they died, . . . or, if they then did need or will need some purification, when they have been purified after death, . . .) already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment - and this since the Ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into heaven - have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.599
Modern Catholic Dictionary has that the intellect may perceive truth by reasoning or immediately by intuition:INTUITION. The immediate knowledge of something, especially the act of vision by divine or angelic intelligence. Among human beings, the power of insight into the meaning of primary truths, without conscious attention or reasoning. Awareness of truth without mental effort. (Etym. Latin intuitus, a look, view; from intuere, to look at, upon, or toward.)

INTELLECT. The spiritual power of cognition, knowing reality in a nonmaterial way. The faculty of thinking in a way essentially higher than with the senses and the imagination. It is possessed by human beings, disembodied souls, and the angels, both good and demonic.

BEATIFIC VISION. The intuitive knowledge of God which produces heavenly beatitude. As defined by the Church, the souls of the just “see the divine essence by an intuitive vision and face to face, so that the divine essence is known immediately, showing itself plainly, clearly and openly, and not mediately through any creature” (Denzinger 1000-2). Moreover, the souls of the saints “clearly behold God, one and triune, as He is” (Denzinger 1304-6). It is called vision in the mind by analogy with bodily sight, which is the most comprehensive of human sense faculties; it is called beatific because it produces happiness in the will and the whole being. As a result of this immediate vision of God, the blessed share in the divine happiness, where the beatitude of the Trinity is (humanly speaking) the consequence of God’s perfect knowledge of his infinite goodness. The beatific vision is also enjoyed by the angels, and was possessed by Christ in his human nature even while he was in his mortal life on earth. (Etym. Latin beatificus, beatific, blissful, imparting great happiness or blessedness; from beatus, happy.)

From H.H. Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi. 1943: 80. Therefore, Our most learned predecessor Leo XIII of happy memory, speaking of our union with Christ and with the Divine Paraclete who dwells within us, and fixing his gaze on that blessed vision through which this mystical union will attain its confirmation and perfection in heaven says: “This wonderful union, or indwelling properly so-called, differs from that by which God embraces and gives joy to the elect only by reason of our earthly state.”[162] In that celestial vision it will be granted to the eyes of the human mind strengthened by the light of glory, to contemplate the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in an utterly ineffable manner, to assist throughout eternity at the processions of the Divine Persons, and to rejoice with a happiness like to that with which the holy and undivided Trinity is happy.

 

[Vouthon]

Catholics Hope is to “See” the Trinity
Orthodox Hope is to “Participate” in the Trinity…

With all due respect, I think you are mistaken

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

260 The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity.100 But even now we are called to be a dwelling for the Most Holy Trinity: “If a man loves me”, says the Lord, “he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him”:101

O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me forget myself entirely so to establish myself in you, unmovable and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing be able to trouble my peace or make me leave you, O my unchanging God, but may each minute bring me more deeply into your mystery! Grant my soul peace. Make it your heaven, your beloved dwelling and the place of your rest. May I never abandon you there, but may I be there, whole and entire, completely vigilant in my faith, entirely adoring, and wholly given over to your creative action.102

The above quotation “102” is cited as being from a prayer by Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, a great Catholic mystic who died in 1906. Her very name signifies participation in the life of the Most Blessed Trinity.

Jesus Himself said that the unity that he has with the Father will be granted to us in a lesser way by means of grace. We will literally be caught up into the very Triune Life of the Holy Trinity and become god by participation.

Where I think you have been led to the erroneous assumption that Roman Catholics only hope to “see the Trinity” rather than “participate” in the life of the Trinity, is in the Latin belief that “seeing” and “tasting” are one and the same in the life of union with God, as in the biblical aphorism:

“Taste and see that the Lord is good;” Psalm 34

See this wiki passage on Thomas Aquinas and the Beatific Vision:

The only perfect and infinite good, therefore, is God himself, which is why Aquinas argues that our perfect happiness and final end can only be the direct union with God himself and not with any created image of him. This union comes about by a kind of “seeing” perfectly the divine essence itself, a gift given to our intellects when God joins them directly to himself without any intermediary. And since in seeing this perfect vision of what (and who) God is, we grasp also his perfect goodness, this act of “seeing” is at the same time a perfect act of loving God as the highest and infinite goodness

Now consider this passage from Ruusbroec, a prominent Catholic mystic:

“…If above all things we would taste God, and feel eternal life in ourselves, we must go forth into God with our feeling, above reason and there we must abide, unified, empty of ourselves, and free from mental images, lifted up by love into the open bareness of our mind, for when we transcend all things in love and die to all rational observations in a dark state of unknowing, then we are wrought and transformed through the working of the Eternal Word, who is an image of the Father. In the empty being of our spirit we receive the Incomprehensible Light, which enwraps us and penetrates us, as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. And this Light is nothing else than a fathomless staring and seeing. What we are, that we behold; and what we behold, that we are: for our thought, our life, and our very being are uplifted in oneness, and made one with the Truth which is God. **In this simple act of seeing we are therefore one life and one spirit with God. This is what I call a contemplative life…The Spirit of God now speaks within our own spirit in its hidden immersion: ‘Go out, into a state of eternal contemplation and blissful enjoyment after God’s own manner.’ All the richness which is in God by nature is something which we lovingly possess in God –and God in us– through the infinite love which is the Holy Spirit. … There the spirit is caught up in the embrace of the Holy Trinity and eternally abides within the superessential Unity in a state of rest and blissful enjoyment. In this same Unity, considered now as regards its fruitfulness, the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, while all creatures are in them both…To comprehend and understand God as he is in himself, above and beyond all likenesses, is to be God with God, without intermediary…And therefrom follows the last point that can be put into words, that is, when the spirit beholds a Darkness into which it cannot enter with the reason. And there it feels itself dead and lost to itself, and one with God without difference and without distinction…”

- Blessed Jan Van Ruusbroec (1293-1381), Flemish Catholic mystic & Augustinian priest, "The Sparkling Stone"

This is representative of the Catholic approach to theosis. It is a distinctly Trinitarian experience, even when expressed at its most apophatic and monistic sense as with Ruusbroec’s mentor Eckhart, and consists in sharing in the very unity of the Triune Persons through participation and grace, fufilled in this life where we are called to become a house for the Most Blessed Trinity and more fully consummated after our deaths in the state of heaven when, in latin understanding, we will have perfect sight of the Beatific Vision - the Divine Essence unknowable - and in the words of Ruusbroec, “In this *simple act of seeing *we are therefore one life and one spirit with God.”

Seeing is participating in Catholic theology and mysticism, which in not understanding is where I think you have gone wrong.

 

[Vouthon]

On Ruusbroec’s Trinitarian mysticism itself read this. The article explains it quite simply:

patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2010/12/ruusbroec-tipsy-on-the-trinity/

The trinitarian side of the Christian mystical tradition knows that there’s no transcending the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In fact, trinitarian mystics usually take the Trinity to be a kind of road map or itinerary for the soul’s ascent to union…Ruusbroec’s own take on the experience of the Trinity is interesting. He thought of the Trinity as a kind of tripersonal tide, flowing out from unimaginable unity into perfect distinction, and then somehow flowing back without ever really leaving. His starting point was the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father, but he developed it in strange and evocative ways. The three persons ebb and flow, or rather they are an ebb and a flow, an eternally complete and always ongoing dynamic of going-out and returning.

Ruusbroec described the mystical path as a participation in that trinitarian ebb and flow. By that he meant, among other things, that the Trinity was the key to reconciling the two kinds of lifestyles, the active and the contemplative. The trinitarian mystic would flow out in ceaseless activity, but return and recollect in perfect completeness. Should you do works of charity, or should you contemplate God? Yes, said Ruusbroec; both. Because of the ebb and flow of the Trinity.

Whatever you think of the procession-and-return model for conceptualizing the Trinity, that ebb-and-flow routine is a pretty abstract dynamic. And on the basis of it, Ruusbroec goes on to make some astounding claims, claims that compete with anything in the mystic tradition: “To comprehend and understand God as he is in himself, above and beyond all likenesses, is to be God with God, without intermediary.” And he goes on with page after page of that kind of writing…

 

[neokarny]

Basically, there are two understandings of divine simplicity: the philosophical one (used by Neoplatonists and many heretics, like Eunomians, Origenists, etc.), and the more Christian understanding.

In the philosophical understanding of simplicity, simplicity means that all categories which we speak of with respect to God are completely identical, to the point that they differ only conceptually. For the Neoplatonists, for example, simplicity leads to the conclusion that the One was not free to create, but created out of necessity. Similarly, in Origenism, God’s being the Father is the same as being the Creator, and God therefore always begat the Son and always willed creation. With Eunomianism, simplicity is abused in a different fashion, to argue that the Son is not of the same essence with the Father. In fact, in its strictest form, one would have to question whether or not this understanding provides room even for three truly distinct Trinitarian hypostases.

The Orthodox understanding of simplicity is best expressed by Maximus the Confessor, who writes, “every divine energy properly signifies God indivisibly, wholly and entirely and altogether common to all and yet altogether particularly present in each of these realities.” The energies while distinct, are neither divided nor partitioned amongst the three hypostatses, and similarly, no energy is partially God, but is God entire.

Thank you - very interesting. Where would Aquinas’s simplicity fit into this, then?

 

[neokarny]

Per the Catholic view, Beatific Vision is analogical vision, and is intuitive.

Thank you for sharing. One question, though regarding this part:

“As defined by the Church, the souls of the just “see the divine essence by an intuitive vision and face to face, so that the divine essence is known immediately, showing itself plainly, clearly and openly, and not mediately through any creature” (Denzinger 1000-2).”

Does the West then say that it is possible to fully know and/or interact with the divine essence? I ask since the quote says that “the divine essence is known immediately, showing itself plainly, clearly and openly…” Further, this intuitive knowledge, is it actually immediate or progressive?

 

[Vico]

…

Does the West then say that it is possible to fully know and/or interact with the divine essence? I ask since the quote says that “the divine essence is known immediately, showing itself plainly, clearly and openly…” Further, this intuitive knowledge, is it actually immediate or progressive?

Do you mean to contrast “proceeding or progressing by steps or degrees” with “taking place or accomplished without delay”, or do you mean, as in philosophy, “of or relating to an object or concept that is directly known or intuited”. If you intend the second, then immediate means intuitive intelligence and mediate means intelligence by a reasoning process.Concepts and reasoning therefore are in themselves inferior to intuition; but they are the normal processes of human knowledge. They are not, however a deformation of reality, though they give only an imperfect and inadequate representation of reality — and the more so according to the excellency of the objects represented — they are a true representation of it.
Sauvage, George. “Intuition.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910.

newadvent.org/cathen/08082b.htm

Immediate means (Benedictus Deus, 1336 A.D.):"…see the divine essence by intuitive vision, and even face to face, with no mediating creature, serving in the capacity of an object seen, but divine essence immediately revealing itself plainly, clearly, and openly, to them, and seeing thus they enjoy the same divine essence…".
Yet it may not be perfect (Laetentur coeli, 1439 A.D.): “… and see clearly the one and triune God Himself just as He is, yet according to the diversity of merits, one more perfectly than another.”
Denzinger: BENEDICT XII 1334-1342
The Beatific Vision of God and the Last Days *
[From the edict “Benedictus Deus,” Jan. 29, 1336]

  530 By this edict which will prevail forever, with apostolic authority  we declare: that according to the common arrangement of God, souls of  all the saints who departed from this world before the passion of our  Lord Jesus Christ; also of the holy apostles, the martyrs, the  confessors, virgins, and the other faithful who died after the holy  baptism of Christ had been received by them, in whom nothing was to be  purged, when they departed, nor will there be when they shall depart  also in the future; or if then there was or there will be anything to be  purged in these when after their death they have been purged; and the  souls of children departing before the use of free will, reborn and  baptized in that same baptism of Christ, when all have been baptized,  immediately after their death and that aforesaid purgation in those who  were in need of a purgation of this kind, even before the resumption of  their bodies and the general judgment after the ascension of our Savior,  our Lord Jesus Christ, into heaven, have been, are, and will be in  heaven, in the kingdom of heaven and in celestial paradise with Christ,  united in the company of the holy angels, and after the passion and  death of our Lord Jesus Christ have seen and see the divine essence by  intuitive vision, and even face to face, with no mediating creature,  serving in the capacity of an object seen, but divine essence  immediately revealing itself plainly, clearly, and openly, to them, and  seeing thus they enjoy the same divine essence, and also that from such  vision and enjoyment their souls, which now have departed, are truly  blessed and they have eternal life and rest; and also [the souls] of  those who afterwards will depart, will see that same divine essence, and  will enjoy it before the general judgment; and that such vision of the  divine essence and its enjoyment makes void the acts of faith and hope  in them, inasmuch as faith and hope are proper theological virtues; and  that after there has begun or will be such intuitive and face-to-face  vision and enjoyment in these, the same vision and enjoyment without any  interruption [intermission] or departure of the aforesaid vision and  enjoyment exist continuously and will continue even up to the last  judgment and from then even unto eternity.

 EUGENIUS IV 1431-1447
  COUNCIL OF FLORENCE 1438-1445
  Ecumenical XVII (Union with the Greeks, Armenians, Jacobites) 
  Decree for the Greeks *
  [From the Bull "Laetentur coeli," July 6, 1439]

  693  De novissimis] * It has likewise defined, that, if those truly  penitent have departed in the love of God, before they have made  satisfaction by the worthy fruits of penance for sins of commission and  omission, the souls of these are cleansed after death by purgatorial  punishments; and so that they may be released from punishments of this  kind, the suffrages of the living faithful are of advantage to them,  namely, the sacrifices of Masses, prayers, and almsgiving, and other  works of piety, which are customarily performed by the faithful for  other faithful according to the institutions of the Church. And that the  souls of those, who after the reception of baptism have incurred no  stain of sin at all, and also those, who after the contraction of the  stain of sin whether in their bodies, or when released from the same  bodies, as we have said before, are purged, are immediately received  into heaven, and see clearly the one and triune God Himself just as He  is, yet according to the diversity of merits, one more perfectly than  another. Moreover, the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin or  in original sin only, descend immediately into hell but to undergo  punishments of different kinds [see n.464].

 

[Cavaradossi]

Thank you - very interesting. Where would Aquinas’s simplicity fit into this, then?

Aquinas’ understanding of God is considerably “more simple” (as ridiculous as that sounds, I’ve seen that terminology used in published works comparing Scotus to Aquinas) than Maximus the Confessor understands God to be. For Aquinas, there can be no real distinction between anything in God but the three persons, and the divine attributes are all identical, being only distinct in the mind of the observer. Maximus the Confessor (and really the East in general) posits quite a few puzzling distinctions in unity. For example, for Maximus, the human nature and the divine nature are distinct, but united in the Logos by hypostasis (that is to say, the Logos by hypostasis is identical to both); The Father, Son and Holy Spirit, following the Cappadocian tradition are distinct by hypostasis but in union according to nature (with the corollary that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are identical with the divine nature by nature); and taking it even further, he argues that the supreme Logos, except for his supreme transcendence, is the many logoi (roughly speaking, the divine principles upon which the created order is based), and the logoi while many and distinct are united in the Logos, and that furthermore the energies of God are manifold, imparting to the logoi the wholeness of God without either destroying the differences between the logoi or dividing God up into parts. In general, one could say that Maximus has a far more apophatic understanding of simplicity, which leads to a remarkably more complex account of God.

 

[neokarny]

Aquinas’ understanding of God is considerably “more simple” (as ridiculous as that sounds, I’ve seen that terminology used in published works comparing Scotus to Aquinas) than Maximus the Confessor understands God to be. For Aquinas, there can be no real distinction between anything in God but the three persons, and the divine attributes are all identical, being only distinct in the mind of the observer. Maximus the Confessor (and really the East in general) posits quite a few puzzling distinctions in unity. For example, for Maximus, the human nature and the divine nature are distinct, but united in the Logos by hypostasis (that is to say, the Logos by hypostasis is identical to both); The Father, Son and Holy Spirit, following the Cappadocian tradition are distinct by hypostasis but in union according to nature (with the corollary that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are identical with the divine nature by nature); and taking it even further, he argues that the supreme Logos, except for his supreme transcendence, is the many logoi (roughly speaking, the divine principles upon which the created order is based), and the logoi while many and distinct are united in the Logos, and that furthermore the energies of God are manifold, imparting to the logoi the wholeness of God without either destroying the differences between the logoi or dividing God up into parts. In general, one could say that Maximus has a far more apophatic understanding of simplicity, which leads to a remarkably more complex account of God.

Thank you again. Do you know of any articles or papers to read to delve into this further? The latter part about the logoi and the Logos specifically; it seems my meager philosophy courses didn’t equip me for St. Maximus.

 

[Traditium]

This is fascinating. Just sayin’.

T

 

[Cavaradossi]

Thank you again. Do you know of any articles or papers to read to delve into this further? The latter part about the logoi and the Logos specifically; it seems my meager philosophy courses didn’t equip me for St. Maximus.

Tollefsen’s book The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor deals with the topic of the logoi quite extensively. That being said, it comes with a $100 price tag, and I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t recommend the book one way or another. If you’re interested, I’d recommend that you go to your local library and see if you can get it through an inter-library loan.

 

[Athan]

Also, I’ve read that some (e.g. Aquinas) Roman Catholics believe that part of the Beatific Vision is to be united to, and “see” the Essence of God (which accompanies a belief in Divine Simplicity).

And I’ll second that Orthodoxy believes in the full participation in the Holy Trinity. It can be said that we aquire a relationship to the Father by grace that the Son has by nature. However, this necessarily requires the denial of Divine Simplicity.

Are you saying that Orthodox Christians believe in passibility?

 

[Vico]

Regarding the experience of the light of Tabor and the Beatific Vision, Ukrainian Catholic Major Archbishop (Cardinal) Josyf Slipyj (lived 1892-1984), showed compability between the Catholic and Palmite theologies.“The God-bearing cardinal demonstrated the compatibility of Palamite theology with Catholic theology based on his study of the writings of Fr. John Meyendorff and Fr. Georges Florovsky, both Eastern Orthodox scholars.”
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