Essence–Energies distinction
Encyclopedia
This is an article for the general view of the theological teaching. For the teaching specific to the Eastern Orthodox church please refer to the Essence–Energies distinction (Eastern Orthodox theology) article. A real distinction between the essence (ousia) and the energies (energeia) of God
is a central principle of Eastern Orthodox theology
. Eastern Orthodox theology regards this distinction as more than a mere conceptual distinction. This doctrine is most closely identified with Gregory Palamas
, who formulated it as part of his defense of the practice of Hesychasm
against the charge of heresy brought by Barlaam of Calabria
. These teachings of Palamas were made into dogma in the Eastern Orthodox church by the Hesychast councils
.
Historically, Western Christianity has tended to reject the essence-energies distinction as real in the case of God, characterizing the view as a heretical introduction of an unacceptable division in the Trinity and suggestive of polytheism. Further, the associated practice of hesychasm used to achieve theosis
was characterized as "magic". More recently, some Roman Catholic thinkers have taken a positive view of Palamas's teachings, including how he understood the essence-energies distinction, arguing that it does not represent an insurmountable theological division between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
.
According to John Romanides, Palamas considers the distinction between God's essence and his energies to be a "real distinction". Romanides distinguishes this "real distinction" from the Thomistic
"virtual distinction" and the Scotist
"formal distinction". Romanides suspects that Barlaam accepted a "formal distinction" between God's essence and his energies.)
Many writers agree that Palamas views the distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies as a "real" distinction. A few scholars argue against describing Palamas's essence-energies distinction in God as a "real" distinction. For example, David Bentley Hart expresses doubt "that Palamas ever intended to suggest a real distinction between God's essence and energies".
According to Aidan Nichols, Palamas's essence-energies distinction is not a mere "formal" distinction. By a "formal" distinction, Nichols means a distinction merely "demanded by the limited operating capacities of human minds".
G. Philips argues that Palamas's essence-energies distinction is not an "ontological
" distinction but, rather, analogous to a "formal distinction" in the Scotist sense of the term.
According to Roman Catholic theologian A.N. Williams's study of Palamas, which is more recent than Bentley's and Philips's, in two passages (only) Palamas explicitly says God's energies are "as constitutively and ontologically distinct from the essence as are the three Hypostases", and in one place he makes explicit his view, repeatedly implied elsewhere, that the essence and the energies are not the same; but Williams contends that not even in these passages did Palamas intend to argue for an "ontological or fully real distinction", and that the interpretation of his teaching by certain polemical modern disciples of his is false.
Western theologians admit no real distinction in God other than that between the three divine Hypostases or Persons. Neither between God's essence and the three Persons of the Trinity, nor between God's essence and his energies, do they admit a real distinction, but only a distinction that has a basis in reality or a formal distinction.
) and is distinct from his energies (energeia in Greek, actus
in Latin) or activities as actualized in the world. The ousia of God is God as God is. It is the energies of God that enable us to experience something of the Divine. At first through sensory perception and then later intuitively or noetically. The essence, being, nature and substance (ousia) of God is taught in Eastern Christianity as uncreated and incomprehensible. God's ousia is defined as "that which finds no existence or subsistence in another or any other thing". God's ousia is beyond all states of (nous
) consciousness and unconsciousness, being and non-being (like being dead or anesthetized), beyond something and beyond nothing beyond existence and non-existence. The God's ousia has not in necessity or subsistence needing or having dependence on anything other than itself. God's ousia as uncreated is therefore incomprehensible to created beings such as human beings. Therefore God in essence is superior to all forms of ontology
(metaphysics). The source, origin of God's ousia or incomprehensibliness is the Father hypostasis
of the Trinity, One God in One Father. The God's energies are "unbegotten" or "uncreated" just like the existences of God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) both God's existences and energies are experience-able or comprehensible. God's ousia is uncreatediness, beyond existence, beyond no existence, God's hyper-being is not something comprehensible to created beings. As St John Damascene states "all that we say positively of God manifests not his nature but the things about his nature."
.
Eastern Orthodox theologians assert that Western Christianity treats God's ousia as energeia and dunamis
(Aristotle's Actus et potentia) as part of the scholastic method in theology. Which allows God's incomprehensibility to become comprehensible
, by not making a distinction between God's nature and manifestation of things about God's nature. As Aristotle and Pagan philosophy taught that God was the underlying substance, nature, being, essence (ousia) of all things (as the Monad
in substance theory
). Making the very thing that makes God, God (uncreated, incomprehensible) the same as God's created world and created beings. God's ousia then becomes detectable and experienced as a substance, essence, being or nature. Rather than God's hyper-being (ousia) as, infinite and never comprehensible to a finite mind or consciousness.
Therefore Pagan philosophy via Metaphysical
dialects sought to reconcile all of existence (ontology
), with Mankind's reason or rational faculty culminating into deification called henosis
. Where in Pagan henosis all of creation is absorbed into the Monad and then recycled back into created existence. Since in Pantheism there is nothing outside of creation or the cosmos, including God, since God is the cosmos in Pantheism. Or rather meaning no ontology outside of the cosmos
(creation). Where as Orthodox Christianity strictly seeks soteriology
as reconciliation (via synergeia
) of man (creation, creatures) with God (the uncreated) called theosis
. Mankind is not absorbed into the God's ousia or hypostases or energies in theosis. Ousia here is a general thing or generality, in this case ousia is the essence, nature, being, substance of the word God and concept of God. Various Orthodox theologians argue Western Christianity teaches that the essence of God can be experienced (man can have the same consciousness as God); they charge that Western Christianity's treatment is very much in line with the pagan speculative philosophical approach to the concept of God.
Since no distinction is made between God's essence and his works, acts (i.e. the cosmos) that there is no distinction between God and the material or created world, cosmos. Gregory Palamas' distinction is denied in favor of pagan Philosopher Aristotle
's Actus et potentia. Uncreated as that which has no first cause and is not caused, in Eastern Orthodoxy therefore being the basis for understanding outside the realm of science. Atheism here being a denial of the uncreated. Pagan philosophical metaphysics being a dialectical attempt to rationalize the uncreated.
, for its alleged incompatibility with the essence-energies distinction. Christos Yannaras writes, "The West confuses God's essence with his energy, regarding the energy as a property of the divine essence and interpreting the latter as "pure energy" (actus purus)" According to George C. Papademetriou, the essence-energies distinction "is contrary to the Western confusion of the uncreated essence with the uncreated energies and this is by the claim that God is Actus Purus".
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
expressed (through writing the works as St John Climacus) in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
for example, an approach to God as, God whom as Father hypostasis
(existence) has primacy over ousia
essence. Hence the teaching that the core of existentialist philosophy can be understood as the maxim of "existence before essence
". This has caused many Western observers to see Eastern Orthodox Christian theology as existentialist (since the Essence–Energies distinction also somewhat holds the view). This also accounts for other existentialistic works such as Fyodor Dostoevsky
's Notes from Underground
. In the case of Dostoevsky, his existentialist outlook would have drawn from his Russian Orthodox faith, but there is no record of Dostoevsky (and the Eastern Orthodox church in general) being exposed to or influenced by Kierkegaard's philosophical works.
From Palamas's time until the twentieth century, Roman Catholic theologians generally rejected the idea that there is in God a real essence-energies distinction. In their view, a real distinction between the essence and the energies of God contradicted the teaching of the First Council of Nicaea
on divine unity
. The idea of a real essence-energies distinction in God also conflicted with Western Scholasticism
's usual insistence that, as actus purus
, God can contain no real distinctions besides the distinctions between the divine persons
. According to Adrian Fortescue, Palamas's philosophical opponents always borrowed their weapons from Western Scholasticism. For these opponents, Fortescue claims, an uncreated energy really distinct from God's essence would be either "something neither God nor creature" or a second God. Fortescue reported that Palamas charged his opponents with fifty heresies and that Palamas himself, when condemned by a synod summoned by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1345, "outwardly" withdrew what Fortescue called Palamas's "heresy".
Resistance to the claim of a real essence-energies distinction in God continued into the twentieth century. In the Catholic Encyclopedia
of 1911, Simon Vailhé accused Palamas's theology of "monstrous errors" and "perilous theological theories", claiming that the Eastern churches' canonization of Palamas's theories represented a "resurrection of polytheism". Fortescue, also writing in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, claimed that "the real distinction between God's essence and operation remains one more principle, though it is rarely insisted on now, in which the Orthodox differ from Catholics". Fortescue saw Hesychasm, which Barlaam called superstitious and absurd, as a form of auto-suggestion. Ludwig Ott
held that an absence of real distinction between the attributes of God
and God's essence is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, adding, "In the Greek Church, the 14th century mystic-quietistic Sect of the Hesychasts or Palamites [...] taught a real distinction between the Divine Essence [...] and the Divine Efficacy or the Divine attributes." In contrast, Jürgen Kuhlmann argues that the Roman Catholic Church never judged Palamism to be heretical, adding that Palamas did not consider that the distinction between essence and energies in God made God composite. According to Kuhlmann, "the denial of a real distinction between essence and energies is not an article of Catholic faith". The Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum (Handbook of Creeds and Definitions), the collection of Roman Catholic teachings originally compiled by Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger
, has no mention of the words "energies", "hesychasm" or "Palamas".
The later twentieth century saw a remarkable change in the attitude of Roman Catholic theologians to Palamas, a "rehabilitation" of him that has led to increasing parts of the Western Church considering him a saint, even if uncanonized. Some Western scholars maintain that there is no conflict between the teaching of Palamas and Roman Catholic thought on the distinction. According to G. Philips, the essence-energies distinction of Palamas is "a typical example of a perfectly admissible theological pluralism" that is compatible with the Roman Catholic magisterium. Jeffrey D. Finch claims that "the future of East-West rapprochement appears to be overcoming the modern polemics of neo-scholasticism and neo-Palamism". Some Western theologians have incorporated the essence-energies distinction into their own thinking.
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
is a central principle of Eastern Orthodox theology
Eastern Orthodox theology
Eastern Orthodox Christian theology is the theology particular to the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is characterized by monotheistic Trinitarianism, belief in the Incarnation of the Logos , a balancing of cataphatic theology with apophatic theology, a hermeneutic defined by Sacred Tradition, a...
. Eastern Orthodox theology regards this distinction as more than a mere conceptual distinction. This doctrine is most closely identified with Gregory Palamas
Gregory Palamas
Gregory Palamas was a monk of Mount Athos in Greece and later the Archbishop of Thessaloniki known as a preeminent theologian of Hesychasm. The teachings embodied in his writings defending Hesychasm against the attack of Barlaam are sometimes referred to as Palamism, his followers as Palamites...
, who formulated it as part of his defense of the practice of Hesychasm
Hesychasm
Hesychasm is an eremitic tradition of prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some of the Eastern Catholic Churches, such as the Byzantine Rite, practised by the Hesychast Hesychasm is an eremitic tradition of prayer in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some of the Eastern Catholic Churches,...
against the charge of heresy brought by Barlaam of Calabria
Barlaam of Calabria
Barlaam of Seminara , ca. 1290-1348, or Barlaam of Calabria was a southern Italian scholar and clergyman of the 14th century. Humanist, philologist, and theologian. He brought an accusation of heresy against Gregory Palamas for the latter's defence of Hesychasm...
. These teachings of Palamas were made into dogma in the Eastern Orthodox church by the Hesychast councils
Fifth Council of Constantinople
Fifth Council of Constantinople is a name given by some to the Quinisext Council of 692, and by others to a series of six patriarchal councils held in Constantinople between 1341 and 1351 to deal with a dispute concerning hesychasm...
.
Historically, Western Christianity has tended to reject the essence-energies distinction as real in the case of God, characterizing the view as a heretical introduction of an unacceptable division in the Trinity and suggestive of polytheism. Further, the associated practice of hesychasm used to achieve theosis
Theosis (Eastern Orthodox theology)
The teaching of deification or theosis in Eastern Orthodoxy refers to the attainment of likeness to or union with God, as deification has three stages in its process of transformation...
was characterized as "magic". More recently, some Roman Catholic thinkers have taken a positive view of Palamas's teachings, including how he understood the essence-energies distinction, arguing that it does not represent an insurmountable theological division between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Nature of the essence-energies distinction in God
Philosophers differentiate between various kinds of distinction. A real distinction is drawn between genuinely separable things, each of which is capable of existing independently of all others. For Descartes, the existence of such a distinction between mind and body was an important part of his philosophy. A merely mental or conceptual distinction is drawn wholly within our minds between aspects that in fact apply to a single thing. Other kinds of distinction include the virtual distinction (a conceptual distinction that, however, has a basis in reality) and the formal distinctionFormal distinction
In scholastic metaphysics, a formal distinction is a distinction intermediate between what is merely conceptual, and what is fully real or mind-independent...
.
According to John Romanides, Palamas considers the distinction between God's essence and his energies to be a "real distinction". Romanides distinguishes this "real distinction" from the Thomistic
Thomism
Thomism is the philosophical school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, his commentaries on Aristotle are his most lasting contribution...
"virtual distinction" and the Scotist
Scotism
Scotism is the name given to the philosophical and theological system or school named after Blessed John Duns Scotus. The word comes from the name of its originator, whose Opus Oxoniense was one of the most important documents in medieval philosophy and Roman Catholic theology, defining what would...
"formal distinction". Romanides suspects that Barlaam accepted a "formal distinction" between God's essence and his energies.)
Many writers agree that Palamas views the distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies as a "real" distinction. A few scholars argue against describing Palamas's essence-energies distinction in God as a "real" distinction. For example, David Bentley Hart expresses doubt "that Palamas ever intended to suggest a real distinction between God's essence and energies".
According to Aidan Nichols, Palamas's essence-energies distinction is not a mere "formal" distinction. By a "formal" distinction, Nichols means a distinction merely "demanded by the limited operating capacities of human minds".
G. Philips argues that Palamas's essence-energies distinction is not an "ontological
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
" distinction but, rather, analogous to a "formal distinction" in the Scotist sense of the term.
According to Roman Catholic theologian A.N. Williams's study of Palamas, which is more recent than Bentley's and Philips's, in two passages (only) Palamas explicitly says God's energies are "as constitutively and ontologically distinct from the essence as are the three Hypostases", and in one place he makes explicit his view, repeatedly implied elsewhere, that the essence and the energies are not the same; but Williams contends that not even in these passages did Palamas intend to argue for an "ontological or fully real distinction", and that the interpretation of his teaching by certain polemical modern disciples of his is false.
Western theologians admit no real distinction in God other than that between the three divine Hypostases or Persons. Neither between God's essence and the three Persons of the Trinity, nor between God's essence and his energies, do they admit a real distinction, but only a distinction that has a basis in reality or a formal distinction.
Eastern Orthodox perspective
Robert E. Sinkewicz describes Palamas' ultimate perspective as being the "preservation of the reality of God's self-revelation and the divine economy of creation and salvation."The Essence of God
The concept of God's essence in Eastern Orthodox theology is called (ousiaOusia
Ousia is the Ancient Greek noun formed on the feminine present participle of ; it is analogous to the English participle being, and the modern philosophy adjectival ontic...
) and is distinct from his energies (energeia in Greek, actus
Actus purus
Actus Purus is a term employed in scholastic philosophy to express the absolute perfection of God. It literally means, "pure act."Created beings have potentiality that is not actuality, imperfections as well as perfection. Only God is simultaneously all that He can be, infinitely real and...
in Latin) or activities as actualized in the world. The ousia of God is God as God is. It is the energies of God that enable us to experience something of the Divine. At first through sensory perception and then later intuitively or noetically. The essence, being, nature and substance (ousia) of God is taught in Eastern Christianity as uncreated and incomprehensible. God's ousia is defined as "that which finds no existence or subsistence in another or any other thing". God's ousia is beyond all states of (nous
Nous
Nous , also called intellect or intelligence, is a philosophical term for the faculty of the human mind which is described in classical philosophy as necessary for understanding what is true or real, very close in meaning to intuition...
) consciousness and unconsciousness, being and non-being (like being dead or anesthetized), beyond something and beyond nothing beyond existence and non-existence. The God's ousia has not in necessity or subsistence needing or having dependence on anything other than itself. God's ousia as uncreated is therefore incomprehensible to created beings such as human beings. Therefore God in essence is superior to all forms of ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
(metaphysics). The source, origin of God's ousia or incomprehensibliness is the Father hypostasis
Hypostasis
Hypostasis may refer to:* Hypostatic abstraction * Hypostasis , personification of entities* Hypostatic gene* Hypostasis , an Australian-based not-for-profit organization...
of the Trinity, One God in One Father. The God's energies are "unbegotten" or "uncreated" just like the existences of God (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) both God's existences and energies are experience-able or comprehensible. God's ousia is uncreatediness, beyond existence, beyond no existence, God's hyper-being is not something comprehensible to created beings. As St John Damascene states "all that we say positively of God manifests not his nature but the things about his nature."
Distinction between created and uncreated
For the Eastern Orthodox, the distinction as the tradition and perspective behind this understanding, is that creation is the task of energy. If we deny the real distinction between essence and energy, we can not fix any very clear borderline between the procession of the divine persons (as existences and or realities of God) and the creation of the world: both the one and the other will be equally acts of the divine nature (strictly uncreated from uncreated). The being and the action(s) of God then would appear identical, leading to the teaching of PantheismPantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
.
Eastern Orthodox theologians assert that Western Christianity treats God's ousia as energeia and dunamis
Dunamis
In philosophy, Potentiality and Actuality are principles of a dichotomy which Aristotle used throughout his philosophical works to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics and De Anima .The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to...
(Aristotle's Actus et potentia) as part of the scholastic method in theology. Which allows God's incomprehensibility to become comprehensible
Comprehension (logic)
In logic, the comprehension of an object is the totality of intensions, that is, attributes, characters, marks, properties, or qualities, that the object possesses, or else the totality of intensions that are pertinent to the context of a given discussion...
, by not making a distinction between God's nature and manifestation of things about God's nature. As Aristotle and Pagan philosophy taught that God was the underlying substance, nature, being, essence (ousia) of all things (as the Monad
Monad (Greek philosophy)
Monad , according to the Pythagoreans, was a term for Divinity or the first being, or the totality of all beings, Monad being the source or the One meaning without division....
in substance theory
Substance theory
Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. A thing-in-itself is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears....
). Making the very thing that makes God, God (uncreated, incomprehensible) the same as God's created world and created beings. God's ousia then becomes detectable and experienced as a substance, essence, being or nature. Rather than God's hyper-being (ousia) as, infinite and never comprehensible to a finite mind or consciousness.
Therefore Pagan philosophy via Metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
dialects sought to reconcile all of existence (ontology
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
), with Mankind's reason or rational faculty culminating into deification called henosis
Henosis
Henosis is the word for "oneness," "union," or "unity" in classical Greek, and is spelled identically in modern Greek where "Enosis" is particulary connected with the modern political "Unity" movement to unify Greece and Cyprus....
. Where in Pagan henosis all of creation is absorbed into the Monad and then recycled back into created existence. Since in Pantheism there is nothing outside of creation or the cosmos, including God, since God is the cosmos in Pantheism. Or rather meaning no ontology outside of the cosmos
Cosmos
In the general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from the Greek term κόσμος , meaning "order" or "ornament" and is antithetical to the concept of chaos. Today, the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The word cosmos originates from the same root...
(creation). Where as Orthodox Christianity strictly seeks soteriology
Soteriology
The branch of Christian theology that deals with salvation and redemption is called Soteriology. It is derived from the Greek sōtērion + English -logy....
as reconciliation (via synergeia
Synergy
Synergy may be defined as two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable.The term synergy comes from the Greek word from , , meaning "working together".-Definitions and usages:...
) of man (creation, creatures) with God (the uncreated) called theosis
Theosis
In Christian theology, divinization, deification, making divine or theosis is the transforming effect of divine grace. This concept of salvation is historical and fundamental for Christian understanding that is prominent in the Eastern Orthodox Church and also in the Catholic Church, and is a...
. Mankind is not absorbed into the God's ousia or hypostases or energies in theosis. Ousia here is a general thing or generality, in this case ousia is the essence, nature, being, substance of the word God and concept of God. Various Orthodox theologians argue Western Christianity teaches that the essence of God can be experienced (man can have the same consciousness as God); they charge that Western Christianity's treatment is very much in line with the pagan speculative philosophical approach to the concept of God.
Since no distinction is made between God's essence and his works, acts (i.e. the cosmos) that there is no distinction between God and the material or created world, cosmos. Gregory Palamas' distinction is denied in favor of pagan Philosopher Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's Actus et potentia. Uncreated as that which has no first cause and is not caused, in Eastern Orthodoxy therefore being the basis for understanding outside the realm of science. Atheism here being a denial of the uncreated. Pagan philosophical metaphysics being a dialectical attempt to rationalize the uncreated.
Orthodox criticism of Western theology
Eastern Orthodox theologians have criticized Western theology, and especially its traditional claim that God is actus purusActus purus
Actus Purus is a term employed in scholastic philosophy to express the absolute perfection of God. It literally means, "pure act."Created beings have potentiality that is not actuality, imperfections as well as perfection. Only God is simultaneously all that He can be, infinitely real and...
, for its alleged incompatibility with the essence-energies distinction. Christos Yannaras writes, "The West confuses God's essence with his energy, regarding the energy as a property of the divine essence and interpreting the latter as "pure energy" (actus purus)" According to George C. Papademetriou, the essence-energies distinction "is contrary to the Western confusion of the uncreated essence with the uncreated energies and this is by the claim that God is Actus Purus".
Kierkegaard and accusations of existentialism
The Danish LutheranLutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
expressed (through writing the works as St John Climacus) in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments is a major work by Søren Kierkegaard. The work is a poignant attack against Hegelianism, the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. The work is also famous for its dictum, Subjectivity is Truth...
for example, an approach to God as, God whom as Father hypostasis
Hypostasis
Hypostasis may refer to:* Hypostatic abstraction * Hypostasis , personification of entities* Hypostatic gene* Hypostasis , an Australian-based not-for-profit organization...
(existence) has primacy over ousia
Ousia
Ousia is the Ancient Greek noun formed on the feminine present participle of ; it is analogous to the English participle being, and the modern philosophy adjectival ontic...
essence. Hence the teaching that the core of existentialist philosophy can be understood as the maxim of "existence before essence
Philosophy of Existence
Philosophy of Existence is a book by German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers. It is both a discussion on the history of philosophy and an exposition of Jaspers' own philosophical system, which is often viewed as a form of existentialism...
". This has caused many Western observers to see Eastern Orthodox Christian theology as existentialist (since the Essence–Energies distinction also somewhat holds the view). This also accounts for other existentialistic works such as Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
's Notes from Underground
Notes from Underground
Notes from Underground is an 1864 short novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel...
. In the case of Dostoevsky, his existentialist outlook would have drawn from his Russian Orthodox faith, but there is no record of Dostoevsky (and the Eastern Orthodox church in general) being exposed to or influenced by Kierkegaard's philosophical works.
Roman Catholic perspectives on the essence-energies distinction in God
The Roman Catholic Church distinguishes between doctrine, which is single and must be accepted by Roman Catholics, and theological elaborations of doctrine, about which Catholics may legitimately disagree. With respect to the Eastern and Western theological traditions, the Roman Catholic Church recognizes that, at times, one tradition may "come nearer to a full appreciation of some aspects of a mystery of revelation than the other, or [express] it to better advantage." In these situations, the Church views the various theological expressions "often as mutually complementary rather than conflicting."From Palamas's time until the twentieth century, Roman Catholic theologians generally rejected the idea that there is in God a real essence-energies distinction. In their view, a real distinction between the essence and the energies of God contradicted the teaching of the First Council of Nicaea
First Council of Nicaea
The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325...
on divine unity
Monotheism
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one and only one god. Monotheism is characteristic of the Baha'i Faith, Christianity, Druzism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism.While they profess the existence of only one deity, monotheistic religions may still...
. The idea of a real essence-energies distinction in God also conflicted with Western Scholasticism
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
's usual insistence that, as actus purus
Actus purus
Actus Purus is a term employed in scholastic philosophy to express the absolute perfection of God. It literally means, "pure act."Created beings have potentiality that is not actuality, imperfections as well as perfection. Only God is simultaneously all that He can be, infinitely real and...
, God can contain no real distinctions besides the distinctions between the divine persons
Trinity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...
. According to Adrian Fortescue, Palamas's philosophical opponents always borrowed their weapons from Western Scholasticism. For these opponents, Fortescue claims, an uncreated energy really distinct from God's essence would be either "something neither God nor creature" or a second God. Fortescue reported that Palamas charged his opponents with fifty heresies and that Palamas himself, when condemned by a synod summoned by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1345, "outwardly" withdrew what Fortescue called Palamas's "heresy".
Resistance to the claim of a real essence-energies distinction in God continued into the twentieth century. In the Catholic Encyclopedia
Catholic Encyclopedia
The Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language encyclopedia published in the United States. The first volume appeared in March 1907 and the last three volumes appeared in 1912, followed by a master index...
of 1911, Simon Vailhé accused Palamas's theology of "monstrous errors" and "perilous theological theories", claiming that the Eastern churches' canonization of Palamas's theories represented a "resurrection of polytheism". Fortescue, also writing in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, claimed that "the real distinction between God's essence and operation remains one more principle, though it is rarely insisted on now, in which the Orthodox differ from Catholics". Fortescue saw Hesychasm, which Barlaam called superstitious and absurd, as a form of auto-suggestion. Ludwig Ott
Ludwig Ott
Ludwig Ott was a Catholic theologian and Medievalist from Bavaria....
held that an absence of real distinction between the attributes of God
Attributes of God
The Attributes of God in Christian theology are those characteristics of God revealed in the Bible.-Classification:Many Reformed theologians distinguish between the communicable attributes and the incommunicable attributes...
and God's essence is a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, adding, "In the Greek Church, the 14th century mystic-quietistic Sect of the Hesychasts or Palamites [...] taught a real distinction between the Divine Essence [...] and the Divine Efficacy or the Divine attributes." In contrast, Jürgen Kuhlmann argues that the Roman Catholic Church never judged Palamism to be heretical, adding that Palamas did not consider that the distinction between essence and energies in God made God composite. According to Kuhlmann, "the denial of a real distinction between essence and energies is not an article of Catholic faith". The Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum (Handbook of Creeds and Definitions), the collection of Roman Catholic teachings originally compiled by Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger
Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger
Heinrich Joseph Dominicus Denzinger was a leading German Catholic theologian and author of the Enchiridion Symbolorum et Definitionum commonly referred to simply as "Denzinger".- Life of Denzinger :...
, has no mention of the words "energies", "hesychasm" or "Palamas".
The later twentieth century saw a remarkable change in the attitude of Roman Catholic theologians to Palamas, a "rehabilitation" of him that has led to increasing parts of the Western Church considering him a saint, even if uncanonized. Some Western scholars maintain that there is no conflict between the teaching of Palamas and Roman Catholic thought on the distinction. According to G. Philips, the essence-energies distinction of Palamas is "a typical example of a perfectly admissible theological pluralism" that is compatible with the Roman Catholic magisterium. Jeffrey D. Finch claims that "the future of East-West rapprochement appears to be overcoming the modern polemics of neo-scholasticism and neo-Palamism". Some Western theologians have incorporated the essence-energies distinction into their own thinking.
See also
- Vladimir LosskyVladimir LosskyVladimir Nikolayevich Lossky was an influential Eastern Orthodox theologian in exile from Russia. He emphasized theosis as the main principle of Orthodox Christianity....
- Archimandrite SophronyArchimandrite SophronyArchimandrite Sophrony , also Elder Sophrony, was best known as the disciple and biographer of St Silouan the Athonite and compiler of St Silouan's works, and as the founder of the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Maldon, Essex, England...
- Father John MeyendorffJohn MeyendorffJohn Meyendorff was a modern Orthodox scholar, writer and teacher. He was born into the Russian nobility as Ivan Feofilovich Baron von Meyendorff , but was known as Jean Meyendorff during his life in France.Fr John Meyendorff retired as Dean of St Vladimir's Seminary on June 30, 1992...
- Pseudo-Dionysius the AreopagitePseudo-Dionysius the AreopagitePseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, also known as Pseudo-Denys, was a Christian theologian and philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, the author of the Corpus Areopagiticum . The author is identified as "Dionysos" in the corpus, which later incorrectly came to be attributed to Dionysius...
- Uncreated Light
- PlethonGemistus PlethoGeorgius Gemistus — later called Plethon or Pletho — was a Greek scholar of Neoplatonic philosophy. He was one of the chief pioneers of the revival of Greek learning in Western Europe...
External links
- Theoria, Prayer and Knowledge by Dr M.C. Steenberg Theology and Patristics University of Oxford
- "Orthodox Psychotherapy" by Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos
- Excerpt from "Byzantine Theology, Historical trends and doctrinal themes" by John Meyendorff
- Partial copy of V. Lossky's Chapter in Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church dedicated to the Essence and Energies distinction