Could you give me the definition of the word “graces”? I don’t find the word “graces” anywhere in scripture. Or do you mean “grace”, which is **God’s unmerited **favor? “Grace” comes through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), not through rituals (sacraments).
Graces are the Uncreated Energies of God.
orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/non-orthodox_ch2.pdf - taken from this link is the following quote:
"The Orthodox view of Grace is quite distinct from that of the West, especially as
developed by the Scholastics from seeds in the theology of the Blessed Augustine. As
the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky explains:
[The] theology of the Eastern Church distinguishes in God the three hypostases, the
nature or essence, and the energies. The Son and the Holy Spirit are, so to say, personal
processions, the energies, natural processions. The energies are inseparable from the
nature, and the nature is inseparable from the three Persons. These distinctions are of
great importance for the Eastern Church’s conception of mystical life:…
3) The distinction between the essence and the energies, which is fundamental for
the Orthodox doctrine of grace, makes it possible to preserve the real meaning of Saint
Peter’s words “partakers of the divine nature” [2 Peter 1:4]. The union to which we are
called is neither hypostatic—as in the case of the human nature of Christ—nor
substantial, as in that of the three divine Persons: it is union with God in His energies,
or union by grace making us participate in the divine nature, without our essence
becoming thereby the essence of God. In deification [theosis] we are by grace (that is to
say, in the divine energies), all that God is by nature, save only identity of nature . . .
according to the teaching of Saint Maximus. We remain creatures while becoming God
by grace, as Christ remained God in becoming man by the Incarnation.10
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. . . . The act of creation established a
relationship between the divine energies and that which is not God. . . . [However,] the
divine energies in themselves are not the relationship of God to created being, but they
do enter into relationship with that which is not God
, and draw the
world into existence by the will of God.11"
may the Lord have mercy on us all!
