Theosis vs. Beatific Vision

[GaryTaylor]

Grace is divine energy, it can’t be created or God would create Himself, which is absurd.

Right, last post. Or as St Peter states “we are partakers in the Divine Nature” 2 Peter 1:14

Now since you bought up St Paul who was a cold blooded killer before what occured? Paul didn’t receive the Beatific Vision for His life of Sanctification continued till his death. As will everyones who seeks this path, regardless of where one stands in the order of Grace. So what happened at Pauls Vision with Christ? He didn’t obtain eternal Bliss, he started his journey by Grace.

 

[GaryTaylor]

So we can never directly experience God in this life? Like what Barlaam said?

Barlaam is a misunderstanding of Aquina’s.

 

[GaryTaylor]

I knew that, I thought that GaryTaylor denied the essence-energies distinction and said we can know/see God in His essence

This somehow makes me think that the Beatific vision is just another word for God’s uncreated energies.

No there is misunderstanding in theory, and in the theory of the Beatific Vision , which you cannot participate in on earth. No one can fully see God for He is infinate you are are finite. So how then could finite see infinite. In theory its impossible.

 

[GaryTaylor]

Here’s a brief from Fr Hardins sight on Grace.

therealpresence.org/archives/Grace.htm

 

[Stylites]

This somehow makes me think that the Beatific vision is just another word for God’s uncreated energies.

There is nothing only or merely about beholding God’s face, but if anything else of His besides His face brings perfect happiness and bliss and love and peace then maybe, yes, the Beatific Vision is just another word for something else.

 

[Vico]

Fr. Hardon has presented the Western viewpoint in his definitions, but I - as an Eastern Catholic - reject several of those definitions (e.g., Fr. Hardon’s definition of “divine attributes,” the “divine essence,” the “divine immanence,” and “uncreated grace”). I also reject what Fr. Hardon has written about “created grace” in several of his books and lectures; and in fact, I do not believe that there is such a thing as “created grace” at all.

But the idea is that to compare, one must have definitions. Ultimately what is derived from Neo-Platonism is not going to use the same concepts as that from Aristotle.

Ghosty stated before on another tread, that there is more than one expression of these concepts in the Latin Church, and I agree with that. The dogma allows for more than one formulation.

If you read that post from the Modern Catholic Dictionary, he states that the grace itself is uncreated: “All three are created graces, considered as acts, since they all had a beginning in time. But the gift that is conferred on a creature in these acts is uncreated.”

I use this outline for western:

A. Uncreated

1. essence / substance
2. energia / supernatural

B. Created

1. preternatural
2. natural

 

[Apotheoun]

But the idea is that to compare, one must have definitions. Ultimately what is derived from Neo-Platonism is not going to use the same concepts as that from Aristotle.

I do not see Eastern theology as Neo-Platonic, but instead see it as Christian through and through, while using (and changing to suit a Christian context) Neo-Platonic terminology.

Ghosty stated before on another tread, that there is more than one expression of these concepts in the Latin Church, and I agree with that. The dogma allows for more than one formulation.

I have read what Ghosty has to say on the subject, and if you read our discussions at the Byzantine forum you will see that he and I disagree when it comes to understanding the nature of grace.

If you read that post from the Modern Catholic Dictionary, he states that the grace itself is uncreated: “All three are created graces, considered as acts, since they all had a beginning in time. But the gift that is conferred on a creature in these acts is uncreated.”

I understand the Western take on grace, after all I was Roman Catholic for 18 years and my MA in Theology is from a Roman Catholic university, but I disagree with the Western position. There is no sense in which grace is created, even as an act that is performed synergistically with the creature it is, and remains, uncreated.

I use this outline for western:

A. Uncreated

1. essence / substance
2. energia / supernatural

B. Created

1. preternatural
2. natural

That is a nice outline, but it does not seem to mesh well with what Fr. Hardon said about sanctifying grace, and I quote:

Nature of Sanctifying Grace. What is sanctifying grace? It has been called the “masterpiece of God’s handicraft in this world … far more glorious than anything we can behold in the heavens above us or on the earth at our feet.” Is it just God’s favor toward us, as Luther wanted? No, it is much more. Is it God’s life or nature or God’s love, as some have called it? No, for God’s life and love and nature are uncreated, are God Himself. Sanctifying grace is not God, it is not the Holy Spirit, it is not just God’s favor. It is something created, given to us by God out of love and mercy, which gives us a created likeness of God’s nature and life. It is a supernatural gift infused into our souls by God, a positive reality, spiritual, supernatural, and invisible.

Divine Quality. According to St. Thomas, sanctifying grace “is neither a substance nor a substantial form, but an accidental form, a permanent quality placed by God in the very essence of the soul, which causes it to participate by means of a certain likeness in the divine nature” (1-2q110aa.2-4). No wonder, then that the Roman Catechism calls it a “divine quality.”

The definitions given by Fr. Hardon in connection with sanctifying grace are completely foreign, and even inimical, to the teaching of the Byzantine tradition on grace. There is no such thing as “created grace,” nor is there a “created supernatural,” etc., and in fact the whole approach taken by the West since the time of the Scholastics is contrary to the teachings of the Eastern Church Fathers.

 

[Vico]

I do not see Eastern theology as Neo-Platonic, but instead see it as Christian through and through, while using (and changing to suit a Christian context) Neo-Platonic terminology.

I have read what Ghosty has to say on the subject, and if you read our discussions at the Byzantine forum you will see that he and I disagree when it comes to understanding the nature of grace.

I understand the Western take on grace, after all I was Roman Catholic for 18 years and my MA in Theology is from a Roman Catholic university, but I disagree with the Western position. There is no sense in which grace is created, even as an act that is performed synergistically with the creature it is, and remains, uncreated.

In that case you are considering grace as a virtue rather than as a state of a creature which occurs in time.

 

[Apotheoun]

In that case you are considering grace as a virtue rather than as a state of a creature which occurs in time.

I am saying that grace occurs in time in the sense of reception, but nevertheless is, and always remains, timeless in itself; and moreover it makes the man who receives it timeless as well, for as St. Gregory Palamas wrote in opposition to the heretic Akindynos:

"According to the divine Maximus, the Logos of well-being, by grace is present unto the worthy, bearing God, Who is by nature above all beginning and end, Who makes those who by nature have a beginning and an end become by grace without beginning and without end, because the Great Paul also, no longer living the life in time, but the divine and eternal life of the indwelling Logos, became by grace without beginning and without end; and Melchisedek had neither beginning of days, nor end of life, not because of his created nature , according to which he began and ceased to exist, but because of the divine and uncreated and eternal grace which is above all nature and time, being from the eternal God. Paul, therefore, was created only as long as he lived the life created from non-being by the command of God. But when he no longer lived this life, but that which is present by the indwelling of God, he became uncreated by grace, as did also Melchisedek and everyone who comes to possess the Logos of God, alone living and acting within himself."

 

[Vico]

I am saying that grace occurs in time in the sense of reception, but nevertheless is, and always remains, timeless in itself; and moreover it makes the man who receives it timeless as well, for as St. Gregory Palamas wrote in opposition to the heretic Akindynos:

“According to the divine Maximus, the Logos of well-being, by grace is present unto the worthy, bearing God, Who is by nature above all beginning and end, Who makes those who by nature have a beginning and an end become by grace without beginning and without end, because the Great Paul also, no longer living the life in time, but the divine and eternal life of the indwelling Logos, became by grace without beginning and without end; and Melchisedek had neither beginning of days, nor end of life, not because of his created nature , according to which he began and ceased to exist, but because of the divine and uncreated and eternal grace which is above all nature and time, being from the eternal God. Paul, therefore, was created only as long as he lived the life created from non-being by the command of God. But when he no longer lived this life, but that which is present by the indwelling of God, he became uncreated by grace, as did also Melchisedek and everyone who comes to possess the Logos of God, alone living and acting within himself.”

This: “that grace occurs in time in the sense of reception” is what the Modern Catholic Dictionary states also: “… considered as acts, since they all had a beginning in time. But the gift that is conferred on a creature in these acts is uncreated.”, and the just souls “are elevated to a share in God’s own life”. We know that Gods life is eternal.

 

[Apotheoun]

This: “that grace occurs in time in the sense of reception” is what the Modern Catholic Dictionary states also: “… considered as acts, since they all had a beginning in time. But the gift that is conferred on a creature in these acts is uncreated.”, and the just souls “are elevated to a share in God’s own life”. We know that Gods life is eternal.

But the Eastern and Western take on “reception” is the crux of the matter and is where the disagreement lies. The East rejects any notion of a “created grace” saying instead that man takes on the qualities of the uncreated grace (i.e., God’s uncreated energies) received; while the West reduces grace to man’s created nature, saying that it becomes created in man as a habitus. There is no parallel to this novel Western teaching in the East.

I am reminded of what Vladimir Lossky wrote in his book The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, “Eastern tradition knows no such supernatural order between God and the created world, adding, as it were, to the latter a new creation. It recognizes no distinction, or rather division, save that between the created and the uncreated. For [the] Eastern tradition the created supernatural has no existence. That which Western theology calls by the name of the supernatural signifies for the East the uncreated—the divine energies ineffably distinct from the essence of God.”

To put it bluntly, there can be no “created grace,” nor can there be a “created supernatural,” in Eastern theology.

 

[dsully]

I also understand this to be an concept unique to the Catholic Churches (east and west) and the eastern Orthodox churches, seeing as it has no place in monergism.

Perhaps. I don’t know what the Protestant/Reformed/Evangelical equivalent of the final state is. I think Westminster says that the “chief end of man is enjoy God and to glorify Him forever” but I don’t recall a nuanced theory on the level of beatific vision or theosis. Come to think of it, much of what I hear is more about life after the resurrection, in the New Jerusalem, on the New Heavens and New Earth (N.T. Wright, Randy Alcorn, etc.).

 

[Apotheoun]

This: “that grace occurs in time in the sense of reception” is what the Modern Catholic Dictionary states also: “… considered as acts, since they all had a beginning in time. But the gift that is conferred on a creature in these acts is uncreated.”, and the just souls “are elevated to a share in God’s own life”. We know that Gods life is eternal.

I disagree. There is no beginning to God’s act of the good, and when a man receives the uncreated energy of goodness, he receives in time a timeless and uncreated gift, and he becomes eternal and uncreated by his reception of it.

The man who receives God’s energy of life, receives an uncreated gift, and not merely a created similitude of God’s own life. There is no “created grace” in the tradition of the East.

 

[Vico]

But the Eastern and Western take on “reception” is the crux of the matter and is where the disagreement lies. The East rejects any notion of a “created grace” saying instead that man takes on the qualities of the uncreated grace (i.e., God’s uncreated energies) received; while the West reduces grace to man’s created nature, saying that it becomes created in man as a habitus. There is no parallel to this novel Western teaching in the East.

I am reminded of what Vladimir Lossky wrote in his book The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, “Eastern tradition knows no such supernatural order between God and the created world, adding, as it were, to the latter a new creation. It recognizes no distinction, or rather division, save that between the created and the uncreated. For [the] Eastern tradition the created supernatural has no existence. That which Western theology calls by the name of the supernatural signifies for the East the uncreated—the divine energies ineffably distinct from the essence of God.”

To put it bluntly, there can be no “created grace,” nor can there be a “created supernatural,” in Eastern theology.

I disagree. There is no beginning to God’s act of the good, and when a man receives the uncreated energy of goodness, he receives in time a timeless and uncreated gift, and he becomes eternal and uncreated by his reception of it.

The man who receives God’s energy of life, receives an uncreated gift, and not merely a created similitude of God’s own life. There is no “created grace” in the tradition of the East.

Exactly what Fr. Hardon said also, as you said that “he receives in time a timeless and uncreated gift”.

As you can see from Modern Catholic Dictionary, as shown before is uncreated. Supernatural is above human (created) nature, and is above preternatural extensions of mans nature. That source also states:“The gifts of grace are essentially supernatural. They surpass the being, powers, and claims of created nature, namely sanctifying grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and actual grace. They are the indispensable means necessary to reach the beatific vision.”
Augustine did have a different idea of created grace than some others in the western Church.

There is the dogma de fide that “By reason of His endowment with the fullness of created habitual grace, Christ’s soul is also accidentally holy.”

The Holy Spirit consists of the created accidental grace and the uncreated substantial grace.

East and west can agree that God does (actus purus) aside from what he is the ineffable, and the grace of the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

John 14:21: Jesus answered and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.

 

[GaryTaylor]

“he receives in time a timeless and uncreated gift”.

Right, the problem here is, “time” which isn’t relevant since God isn’t subject to time. Man is subject to time through God. Thus a horizontal and vertical plane.

 

[Credo_ergo_sum]

I don’t think the East can ever agree to created grace.

 

[Apotheoun]

Exactly what Fr. Hardon said also, as you said that “he receives in time a timeless and uncreated gift”.

Actually, that is not what Fr. Hardon is saying; instead, he is saying that man receives a “created” quality, i.e., something other than God Himself that makes us only like God in a created manner. This take on grace is simply unacceptable to Eastern Christians.

Eastern Christianity teaches that grace, both in itself and in its reception, is uncreated, and has the effect of making the recipient uncreated energetically. There are no “created” acts of grace, and so when a man loves as God loves, he loves in an uncreated way.

Supernatural is above human (created) nature, and is above preternatural extensions of mans nature. That source also states:“The gifts of grace are essentially supernatural. They surpass the being, powers, and claims of created nature, namely sanctifying grace, the infused virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and actual grace. They are the indispensable means necessary to reach the beatific vision.”
Augustine did have a different idea of created grace than some others in the western Church.

Once again, for the West - according to Fr. Hardon (and the Scholastics he accepts as normative) - there is a “created supernatural,” but there is no such thing in reality; instead, there is only God and creation, for there is nothing that exists in between the Creator and His creation. That being said, it is clear that man does not receive a “created” sanctifying grace, and in fact such a thing (i.e., a created grace or quality) could never divinize a man; and that is why in Eastern theology it is said that man receives God Himself as energy, and that gift of God’s energy is what makes man eternal and uncreated by grace.

There is the dogma de fide that “By reason of His endowment with the fullness of created habitual grace, Christ’s soul is also accidentally holy.”

I reject that “dogma” as you call it, because Christ’s soul is holy, not because it has received some alien “created habitual grace,” but because His human soul as been infused (and even permeated perichoretically) with divine energy, and so it has been divinized in reality and not in mere appearance by a some kind of non-existent “created” quality.

It is an ancient axiom of the Eastern Fathers that only the uncreated can divinize the created. So there can be no “created grace,” because such a thing could never elevate man into the very life of the Triune God. To put it another way, man becomes God in God in the Eastern doctrinal tradition; while in the Western tradition (at least since the time of the Scholastics) man becomes divine through a “created grace” that gives him a mere likeness to God in a created fashion. The Western teaching, at least from an Eastern perspective, is very similar to Arianism.

The Holy Spirit consists of the created accidental grace and the uncreated substantial grace.

I find this notion utterly repulsive. The Holy Spirit is uncreated, both as to His hypostasis and when speaking of the energies that flow from Him. Grace is not an accident (in the Aristotelian sense); instead, it is God Himself personally (enhypostatically) as He comes down to us. There can be no such thing as “created grace” in the doctrine of the Eastern Churches. The idea of there being “created grace” is as nonsensical as saying there is a “created God.”

East and west can agree that God does (actus purus) aside from what he is the ineffable, and the grace of the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

I do not believe that God is “actus purus”; instead, I hold that God is essence, energy, and a triad of divine hypostaseis. Quite frankly, God is beyond the concepts espoused by Aristotle, and that is why it is unwise to try and use pagan philosophy to create a novel Christian theology. It is one thing to use the terms (words) formulated by Plato and Aristotle, and in fact the use of the Greek language will inevitably require that one use terms coined by the pagan philosophers, but it is quite another to absorb the pagan conceptual theories devised by those men into the Christian tradition.

John 14:21: Jesus answered and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.

That is a wonderful text of scripture, and it beautifully supports the doctrine of the Eastern Church, which holds that man is deified by God through entering into His uncreated life, and not by receiving some alien “created grace” or habitus.

 

[Vico]

Actually, that is not what Fr. Hardon is saying; instead, he is saying that man receives a “created” quality, i.e., something other than God Himself that makes us only like God in a created manner. This take on grace is simply unacceptable to Eastern Christians.

Eastern Christianity teaches that grace, both in itself and in its reception, is uncreated, and has the effect of making the recipient uncreated energetically. There are no “created” acts of grace, and so when a man loves as God loves, he loves in an uncreated way.

Once again, for the West - according to Fr. Hardon (and the Scholastics he accepts as normative) - there is a “created supernatural,” but there is no such thing in reality; instead, there is only God and creation, for there is nothing that exists in between the Creator and His creation. That being said, it is clear that man does not receive a “created” sanctifying grace, and in fact such a thing (i.e., a created grace or quality) could never divinize a man; and that is why in Eastern theology it is said that man receives God Himself as energy, and that gift of God’s energy is what makes man eternal and uncreated by grace.

I reject that “dogma” as you call it, because Christ’s soul is holy, not because it has received some alien “created habitual grace,” but because His human soul as been infused (and even permeated perichoretically) with divine energy, and so it has been divinized in reality and not in mere appearance by a some kind of non-existent “created” quality.

It is an ancient axiom of the Eastern Fathers that only the uncreated can divinize the created. So there can be no “created grace,” because such a thing could never elevate man into the very life of the Triune God. To put it another way, man becomes God in God in the Eastern doctrinal tradition; while in the Western tradition (at least since the time of the Scholastics) man becomes divine through a “created grace” that gives him a mere likeness to God in a created fashion. The Western teaching, at least from an Eastern perspective, is very similar to Arianism.

I find this notion utterly repulsive. The Holy Spirit is uncreated, both as to His hypostasis and when speaking of the energies that flow from Him. Grace is not an accident (in the Aristotelian sense); instead, it is God Himself personally (enhypostatically) as He comes down to us. There can be no such thing as “created grace” in the doctrine of the Eastern Churches. The idea of there being “created grace” is as nonsensical as saying there is a “created God.”

I do not believe that God is “actus purus”; instead, I hold that God is essence, energy, and a triad of divine hypostaseis. Quite frankly, God is beyond the concepts espoused by Aristotle, and that is why it is unwise to try and use pagan philosophy to create a novel Christian theology. It is one thing to use the terms (words) formulated by Plato and Aristotle, and in fact the use of the Greek language will inevitably require that one use terms coined by the pagan philosophers, but it is quite another to absorb the pagan conceptual theories devised by those men into the Christian tradition.

That is a wonderful text of scripture, and it beautifully supports the doctrine of the Eastern Church, which holds that man is deified by God through entering into His uncreated life, and not by receiving some alien “created grace” or habitus.

I believe that there is a difficulty with the term “created grace” because grace in general is defined differently.

The theories of the Patristic Augustine or of scholastic Aquinas are not required for one that accepts the dogmas of faith of the Catholic Church on the beatific vision. Neither is the theory of Palamas rejected by the Catholic Church. It is acceptable in the Catholic Church to hold to any expression that does not deny those dogmas of faith. Since the human mind is limited in its ability to understand God, we can only know that which is revealed to us through the Holy Spirit, and the theories are approximations. Personally I believe that God is unfathomable and cannot be limited to “God is essence, energy, and a triad of divine hypostaseis”.

 

[Anthony_V]

Perhaps. I don’t know what the Protestant/Reformed/Evangelical equivalent of the final state is. I think Westminster says that the “chief end of man is enjoy God and to glorify Him forever” but I don’t recall a nuanced theory on the level of beatific vision or theosis. Come to think of it, much of what I hear is more about life after the resurrection, in the New Jerusalem, on the New Heavens and New Earth (N.T. Wright, Randy Alcorn, etc.).

Insertation into the divine trinity in monergistic theology is impossible because grace is said only to renew man’s natural state. Adam and Eve, according to monergistic theology, were in their natural state in Eden with God. If grace does not elevate (but merely restores), then man cannot be elevated beyond his nature and there cannot be beatific vision or theosis without treading into the ground of Pelagianism.

I cannot agree that grace is only a source of renewal, nor can I believe that it is natural for a rational animal to be in a friendship with God. Especially in reformed theology, this is so far assumed that mankind could only ever be “spiritually alive” or “spiritually dead”. What’s neglected is that a spiritual “status” presupposes a sanctifying grace–namely of friendship with God-- as opposed to merely a “covenant of works”. God never had to give us his friendship since it’s not natural to us as rational animals.

 

[dsully]

Anthony,

This is a perfect example of why I am on this forum. There are things in Catholic theology that I know very little about, including this (I’m not even that up on Reformed theology, to be honest with you). But I get the basic point of your reply–that Catholicism teaches grace does something even more magnificent to man than is thought of in Reformed theology. I would like to learn more about this distinction between Catholic and Reformed theology.

Thanks.

Dan