Somewhat tangential to this post, but David Bentley Hart has had pretty caustic things to say about the essence/energies distinction. (See, e.g., here: https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/q-and-a-14; search for "Palamism.) I would be interested in your thoughts on his criticisms. Thanks!
Let me retreat for a moment to an earlier point in Christian metaphysics, because my essential contention is that Neo-Palamism, if not Palamism itself, essentially destroys the logic of communion with God that it is intended to fortify, chiefly by losing the whole trinitarian logic that had informed the high patristic vision of God’s presence in his creatures, and inserts a caesura between the trinity and creation that is not only theologically catastrophic, but logically incoherent.
The Church Fathers, the Cappadocians and Maximus in particular, took very seriously the Johannine language of the Father and his Logos, and saw a necessary connection between the claim that none but the Son has ever seen the Father and the corresponding claims that whoever has seen Christ has seen the Father, and that Christ and the Father are one; and all these claims are reconciled in us by the light of the Spirit, they insist, which constantly transforms us into Christ. Hence the Matthean assurance that the pure in heart will actually see God (ho Theos, that is, which is to say the Father). Remember, despite the imprecision with which Palamas often spoke, for the Church Fathers the divine essence is not a distinct thing in addition to or more original than the trinitarian relations, much less some anonymous ground from which the trinity springs, but is instead the fullness of Godhead wholly resident in the Father and imparted to the Son and Spirit by filiation and spiration (or procession). It is the Paternal fons deitatis or pēgē theotētos, the fountainhead of deity that simply is the Father. Remember also that when we speak of ‘knowledge’ of the divine essence, we are often illegitimately conflating in our thinking two very distinct concepts in the Greek: epistēmē and gnōsis. For Maximus, as for the whole Greek tradition before him, we cannot possess the former with regard to the divine ousia, as it is not an object that can be grasped in the abstract or comprehended by a detached finite mind, but we must ascend to the latter, which is the knowledge of direct intimate acquaintance. Maximus insists that we seek to rush into an immediate gnōsis of the divine essence beyond concepts. This is no different from Thomas Aquinas describing the Beatific Vision as direct cognitio of the divine essence, but never comprehensio. Of course, by borrowing Gregory of Nyssa’s language of epektasis, Maximus can describe this in a way that makes the difference between ‘epistemic’ and ‘gnostic’ ways of knowing God not just a wrestling with a qualitative gap, but an ecstatic journey into ever deeper intimacy. If we were speaking in French, we could distinguish between savoir and connaissance, but English lacks that distinction.
The thing to grasp is that, in the patristic sources, union with God in creation and deification is far more radically trinitarian than the Palamite system allows. Creation and salvation occur right within the trinitarian relations and share immediately in the divine life by the Spirit. Say what they like, the Palamites have added a tertium quid into this vision of things, ‘after’ the trinity but ‘before’ creation, mediating a relationship that in the fathers is truly immediate. By reifying the essence of God and introducing this logically meaningless concept of really distinct and subsistent eternal energies, Palamism not only creates a rationally vacuous set of categories and thereby compromises, say, Maximus’s elegant account of divine simplicity, but also undermines the whole logic of Nicene trinitarianism. The whole logic of Nicaea is that we can know the trinitarian relations from the very dynamism by which the Spirit unites us to the Son and, through the Son, to the hidden Father. Palamism gives us instead an extrinsic action produced ‘outside’ the trinitarian relations by some kind of magical fused radiation in which the trinitarian distinctions are somehow all at a remove from creatures, with the essence somehow then removed even further. This is a crude reduction of the concept of God to a picture of a thing with parts.
Another way of making the point, and one at the heart of the patristic synthesis, is to say that the neshamah Yahweh, or pnoē tou kyriou in the Septuagint, is the actual Holy Spirit resident in us, making each of us a living soul (nefesh or psychē), as well as the Spirit that moves upon the waters, vivifying all of creation. For both Paul and Irenaeus (and Maximus too), the human spirit is not something other than that one Spirit of God, so our life is lived always in God’s life. There cannot be any ontological real distinction in God’s essence and operations without nullifying the Nicene vision. One should even say that, when you look upon creation and see it correctly, you are indeed seeing the essence of God without comprehending it, though only as in a glass darkly; ultimately though, you are called to know even as you are known by God; for Gregory of Nazianzus and Maximus, this is divinization right up to the degree of being uncreated gods. That picture falls apart with Palamism—unintendedly but irreparably.
To my mind, Palamism is just another late mediaeval forgetting of the logic of Nicaea, prettier but not much better than the nominalism and voluntarism taking shape at the same time in the Latin West. It is the Eastern version of the same inadvertent theological nihilism, though graciously devoid of all the grim talk of sovereignty. And, no matter how fierce or seemingly sophisticated some of the Orthodox polemic on this issue has become, it is simply a philosophical and theological car crash. The Orthodox intellectual world is not always particularly solid at the moment; in many ways, it boasts inferior patristic scholarship to that of the Catholic and Anglican worlds today by virtue of somewhat more tendentious trends in historical and philosophical training. Otherwise, the Eastern Fathers would provide the Orthodox with the antidote to Palamism. The best Orthodox patristic scholars prefer just to avoid Palamas altogether so as to avoid fruitless arguments with self-appointed champions of the East.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Yes, I'd be interested what Nathan's views are. I get what he says, but I also like what Nathan Jacob says about essence-energies. Perhaps there is no ultimate distinction in some sense, since the energies just simply are all that we swallow and comprehend, given our limited nature, of the essence of God. Linguistically and conceptually I then like the distinction between essence and energies, and isn't that a good reason to make such a conceptual, lingustic dinstinction?! (anyway, I'm an former(ish) evangelical trying to figure stuff out and no expert at all. I wonder what Nathan would say).
Somewhat tangential to this post, but David Bentley Hart has had pretty caustic things to say about the essence/energies distinction. (See, e.g., here: https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/q-and-a-14; search for "Palamism.) I would be interested in your thoughts on his criticisms. Thanks!
What are his main points? I cant see that its behind a paywall
Here is the relevant passage at the link:
Let me retreat for a moment to an earlier point in Christian metaphysics, because my essential contention is that Neo-Palamism, if not Palamism itself, essentially destroys the logic of communion with God that it is intended to fortify, chiefly by losing the whole trinitarian logic that had informed the high patristic vision of God’s presence in his creatures, and inserts a caesura between the trinity and creation that is not only theologically catastrophic, but logically incoherent.
The Church Fathers, the Cappadocians and Maximus in particular, took very seriously the Johannine language of the Father and his Logos, and saw a necessary connection between the claim that none but the Son has ever seen the Father and the corresponding claims that whoever has seen Christ has seen the Father, and that Christ and the Father are one; and all these claims are reconciled in us by the light of the Spirit, they insist, which constantly transforms us into Christ. Hence the Matthean assurance that the pure in heart will actually see God (ho Theos, that is, which is to say the Father). Remember, despite the imprecision with which Palamas often spoke, for the Church Fathers the divine essence is not a distinct thing in addition to or more original than the trinitarian relations, much less some anonymous ground from which the trinity springs, but is instead the fullness of Godhead wholly resident in the Father and imparted to the Son and Spirit by filiation and spiration (or procession). It is the Paternal fons deitatis or pēgē theotētos, the fountainhead of deity that simply is the Father. Remember also that when we speak of ‘knowledge’ of the divine essence, we are often illegitimately conflating in our thinking two very distinct concepts in the Greek: epistēmē and gnōsis. For Maximus, as for the whole Greek tradition before him, we cannot possess the former with regard to the divine ousia, as it is not an object that can be grasped in the abstract or comprehended by a detached finite mind, but we must ascend to the latter, which is the knowledge of direct intimate acquaintance. Maximus insists that we seek to rush into an immediate gnōsis of the divine essence beyond concepts. This is no different from Thomas Aquinas describing the Beatific Vision as direct cognitio of the divine essence, but never comprehensio. Of course, by borrowing Gregory of Nyssa’s language of epektasis, Maximus can describe this in a way that makes the difference between ‘epistemic’ and ‘gnostic’ ways of knowing God not just a wrestling with a qualitative gap, but an ecstatic journey into ever deeper intimacy. If we were speaking in French, we could distinguish between savoir and connaissance, but English lacks that distinction.
The thing to grasp is that, in the patristic sources, union with God in creation and deification is far more radically trinitarian than the Palamite system allows. Creation and salvation occur right within the trinitarian relations and share immediately in the divine life by the Spirit. Say what they like, the Palamites have added a tertium quid into this vision of things, ‘after’ the trinity but ‘before’ creation, mediating a relationship that in the fathers is truly immediate. By reifying the essence of God and introducing this logically meaningless concept of really distinct and subsistent eternal energies, Palamism not only creates a rationally vacuous set of categories and thereby compromises, say, Maximus’s elegant account of divine simplicity, but also undermines the whole logic of Nicene trinitarianism. The whole logic of Nicaea is that we can know the trinitarian relations from the very dynamism by which the Spirit unites us to the Son and, through the Son, to the hidden Father. Palamism gives us instead an extrinsic action produced ‘outside’ the trinitarian relations by some kind of magical fused radiation in which the trinitarian distinctions are somehow all at a remove from creatures, with the essence somehow then removed even further. This is a crude reduction of the concept of God to a picture of a thing with parts.
Another way of making the point, and one at the heart of the patristic synthesis, is to say that the neshamah Yahweh, or pnoē tou kyriou in the Septuagint, is the actual Holy Spirit resident in us, making each of us a living soul (nefesh or psychē), as well as the Spirit that moves upon the waters, vivifying all of creation. For both Paul and Irenaeus (and Maximus too), the human spirit is not something other than that one Spirit of God, so our life is lived always in God’s life. There cannot be any ontological real distinction in God’s essence and operations without nullifying the Nicene vision. One should even say that, when you look upon creation and see it correctly, you are indeed seeing the essence of God without comprehending it, though only as in a glass darkly; ultimately though, you are called to know even as you are known by God; for Gregory of Nazianzus and Maximus, this is divinization right up to the degree of being uncreated gods. That picture falls apart with Palamism—unintendedly but irreparably.
To my mind, Palamism is just another late mediaeval forgetting of the logic of Nicaea, prettier but not much better than the nominalism and voluntarism taking shape at the same time in the Latin West. It is the Eastern version of the same inadvertent theological nihilism, though graciously devoid of all the grim talk of sovereignty. And, no matter how fierce or seemingly sophisticated some of the Orthodox polemic on this issue has become, it is simply a philosophical and theological car crash. The Orthodox intellectual world is not always particularly solid at the moment; in many ways, it boasts inferior patristic scholarship to that of the Catholic and Anglican worlds today by virtue of somewhat more tendentious trends in historical and philosophical training. Otherwise, the Eastern Fathers would provide the Orthodox with the antidote to Palamism. The best Orthodox patristic scholars prefer just to avoid Palamas altogether so as to avoid fruitless arguments with self-appointed champions of the East.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Yes, I'd be interested what Nathan's views are. I get what he says, but I also like what Nathan Jacob says about essence-energies. Perhaps there is no ultimate distinction in some sense, since the energies just simply are all that we swallow and comprehend, given our limited nature, of the essence of God. Linguistically and conceptually I then like the distinction between essence and energies, and isn't that a good reason to make such a conceptual, lingustic dinstinction?! (anyway, I'm an former(ish) evangelical trying to figure stuff out and no expert at all. I wonder what Nathan would say).