Can Palamism and Thomism be Reconciled? W/ Fr. Peter Totleben, O.P.
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- Опубликовано: 11 мар 2021
- I chat with Fr. Peter Totleben about Thomism and Palamism
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“Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.” - Saint Gregory of Nyssa
Along with the episode with Fr. Dominic Legge O.P. on morality, this is easily one of the BEST Pints with Aquinas episodes of all time! Keep up the great work Matt Fradd!
Your podcast is pure gold!
I just read your book. Really good material to keep in mind when talking to atheist friends. I hope you will write some more in the future. Greetings from Germany
Thanks for another interesting episode! Around min 48-51 while you spoke about God as personal or impersonal in relation to man I was reminded of these quotes.
”When the divine and human activity is taken away, there is no God, nor man.” - St Maximos the Confessor
”If the essence does not possess an energy distinct from itself, it will be completely without actual existence and will be only a concept in the mind” - St Gregory Palamas
So in other words: A fire radiates warmth. Without a fire there's no warmth and without warmth there's no fire. They are indeed distinct but always exists simultaneously. We cannot participate in the fire directly because we would be burned, but we can indeed participate in the warmth which is part of the nature of fire. In the same manner the essence of God is unparticable and beyond us in every way, but the energy is particable and within "our reach". (Forgive me if I'm confusing or distort something.)
Some food for thought!
I like this analogy,
Excellent analogy. Well done.
I know the topic is dense when I catch myself looking away and scratching my beard then look down to see Matt doing the same. Thank you Fr. Peter for making this topic more accessable to us simpletons.
Thank you so much for this much needed video, Matt. I learned a lot! And I’m sure many other Catholics did as well. Please have Fr Totleben on again.
Father can talk about anything and I'll tune in.
Really really good and important episode! I'm only 40 minutes in but it's fantastic.
The 7 minutes starting at the 50 minute mark were frankly mind-blowing.
Same at 21:00 with that talk of relations. Just incredible
Agreed. That's Carmelite/Teresian/St. Elizabeth of the Trinity theology in a nutshell. The indwelling of God in the soul.
I am so happy you did this video. Down the rabbit hole and frightening bunnies. My brain is happy tonight. Added Palmas to my reading.
This was a fantastic video! Thanks for having Father Peter on your show, Matt.
This was a great interview! Probably the most dense PWA episode to date.
I love that this subject is getting more attention.
Excellent talk. A true man of God. Humble and wise. A Good lent from Rome. 🙏🏼🙌🏽💪🏼🕊️
And per usual, Father Peter does it again with his brilliance!
Thank you Fr. Peter and Matt, great video!
My brain is hurting. I will admit a lot of it went over my head but the little that I did learn was worth it.
Great topic. Love the outro title card paced with the music! Way professional! Take that NPR!
This is better than Fr. Peter Totleben's interview at Reason & Theology. It's better because Matt Fradd genuinely interested and, this is what make the difference, confused. So Fradd kept asking questions (and some of them is what we want to ask). The questions really made Father Peter Totleben gave his best.
Excellent.
You know it's a good episode when Matt has to take a break in between.
"When you pray, draw crappy pictures for God" made me cry lol.
Great episode!
See St. Bonaventure Breviloquium part 5....
Great vid.
I'm going to have to listen to this several times for all of this to sink in.
These Dominicans and their love of fast food. Fr. Pine and his Chick-fil-a, Fr. Totleben and his Five Guys
Huh. I think the primary interpretive lense necessary to understand Palmas is that he wasn't a systematic thinker. That means his theology doesn't use consistent terms which means it should not be interpreted in a systematic way and that makes its exegesis more complicated.
The Orthodox response would usually be, “systematic thinking is overrated”.
@@eldermillennial8330 Maybe it is, but that’s only proof you shouldn’t systematize everything - especially Palamas’ thought.
@Kevin Cobb
Maybe we’re technically SAYING the same thing, but we’re sure as The Prophetess Yael’s Spike, NOT living OUT the “same thing”. Speaking of “Judges”, The Orthodox priesthood has ALWAYS been a decentralized, confederated hierarchy of Bishops, in much the same way Ancient Israel was a Decentralized Confederation of tribes.
God clearly has a preference for mankind to be ruling ourselves by some flavor of Confederacy or other, rather than Federalism or Dictatorship, and certainly not anarchy.
Rome and her Bishops were PART of that confederation until she slowly separated into a Centralized, Top-Down Monarchy, which then had historical revisionists like Friar Duns Scotus put false words retroactively into the Orthodox Popes’ mouths so to justify their false or mistaken claims of “Supremacy”.
EVERY valid Bishop is “The Rock”, Peter was the First, and the First Among Equals, (“Tallest” Rock), but unlike the Carolingian Puppet Popes’ novel claims, he is NOT the ‘ONLY’ Rock.
@@deusimperator
The Greeks didn’t like Carolingian brown nosers. They were initially fine with early scholasticism as one of many systems for interpretation until it became obvious that the Court of Charlemagne was using it as a political weapon. Their long term response became needlessly extreme, especially when many came to prejudicially regard Latins in general with the Corruption of the Fanks and the greed of the Venetians. Not all were like that; there was a tragically beautiful period where many Eastern monks sought to rebuild the crumbling bridges between the east and West, such as building from scratch that lovely little church that Francis of Assisi would later rebuild.
It was built by early Slavic monks, just a generation out of paganism, who were worried about the divisiveness, so sought out brotherhood within the Latin backyard. Alas, we’re not certain what happened to them, but may have been driven out when they refused to accept Papal supremacy. I find it heartbreakingly poetic that Francis would have been busy rebuilding it during the unchristian treacherous incident of 1204 against Constantinople.
@@deusimperator The Barlamites were not scholastics.
Matt, please turn the 8 minute conversation from 50:00 to 58:00 into a clip. Literally everyone needs to know this.
I appreciate how charitable of a conversation this was. I do have to say that about half way through, Fr. Peter began to misrepresent the Palamite view. It it would be extremely helpful if one of these two men were to have a discussion with an orthodox theologian.
Maybe Fr. Maximos Constas. I'm sure it would be extremely civil and, more importantly, profitable for all.
I hope you’ll post the part about “drawing crappy pictures for God” as a separate video. 😂 I’d love to share it with others!
Excellent let us have more
Apparently I am no longer being allowed to respond to people who respond to me, as I am finding emails from this site praising or criticizing me, but when I reply back I can no longer link up with them. Therefore I will try this method.
JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese wrote to me:
"Saint Columba of Ireland was a Hesychast. If you condemn Saint Palamas you must condemn the saints of the West before the schism."
I respond: Actually, it is the Synodikon of Orthodoxy which has condemned the pre schism saints of the West, and of the East as well, and the Council of Nicea itself and the Creed of 325 AD (which taught that the Son is begotten out of the essence of the Father, Light out of Light, and on account of being begotten Light out of Light is therefore homoousian with the Father), for the Synodikon anathematizes anyone who teaches that the divine light is synonymous with the divine essence, in accordance with the teachings of Gregory Palamas, who taught that the divine light is not synonymous with the divine essence, but is merely its proceeding energy. I have recently scoured the writings of all of the Church fathers from Clement of Rome in 95 AD up through Gregory of Nyssa in 395 AD or so, (and I will continue until I've reached about 1600 AD or so and I will publish the results my research), and I can assure you that not one father of the West taught anything approaching the essence-energies doctrine of Gregory Palamas, but many taught that the divine light is synonymous with the divine essence, while many Eastern fathers also taught that the divine light - at the level of Godhead - is synonymous with the divine essence, and St Athanasius and St Basil not only taught this, but affirmed that the Nicene Creed of 325 AD itself teaches that the divine light of Godhead is synonymous with the divine essence, and I can further assure you that this affirmation was of paramount importance in defeating the Arian and Eunomian heresies of the fourth century, which actually were more in harmony with the Palamite conception of a descending ontological hierarchy in the divine order of being, this conception having been continually imported into Eastern Christianity from various forms of Platonism/Neoplatonism throughout the early centuries of the first millennium, first manifesting in Gnosticism, then in Arianism and finally in Pseudo Dionysian-Palamism. Always the same idea of a Platonic emanationism of the Divine Being from the unapproachable Monad to the approachable manifestations of the Divine Being, whether the aeons of the Gnostics, the Son and Spirit as lower emanations of the One (i.e. the Ungenerate, or the Father), paralleling the Nous and the World Soul of Middle Platonism/Neoplatonism, or the Dionysian processions/Palamite energies paralleling the Proclean henads of later Neoplatonism. Dr Bradshaw in his work Aristotle East and West is well aware of this development in Eastern Christian theology, and rather than subjecting this plotting out of the gospel data onto a Neoplatonic framework on the part of Eastern fathers to any kind of critique refers to this merging of Christianity with pagan metaphysics as the "flowering" of the Eastern tradition, while criticizing Scholasticism as a defective theological hermeneutic. Well why not criticize both East and West for borrowing heavily from pagan philosophers in setting forth the doctrine of God, instead of taking sides?
As for St Columba, the fact that monasticism spread from the East to the West does not mean that Western monks ever adopted the Palamite theology, which came 1000 years later than the development of Christian monasticism. Most hesychasts follow the Rule of St Basil, who wrote, in explaining the Nicene Creed of 325 AD: "They (i.e. the Fathers of the Council of Nicea--ed.) indeed clearly and satisfactorily declared in the words Light of Light, that the Light which begot and the Light which was begotten, are distinct, and yet Light and Light; so that the definition of the ESSENCE is one and the same." (Basil, Letter 125) This utterly destroys the Palamite claim to have faithfully represented the teachings of the fathers as a whole, much less those of Basil and the ancient hesychasts.
Single handedly one of the most important comments I've read. Please link any websites you have which has all your research compiled. This is incredible. God bless
@@d.j.p.g.b.9662Well thanks for the kind words. It will be some time to complete this enormous project, so we're looking at another year or two at least before this gets done.
Just to be fair to the Palamites, there was certainly a divergence between East + West during the ante Nicene and Nicene eras (i.e. pre Pseudo Dionysian) between that which God is at the level of His Godhead, where the light of Godhead was identified with His essence, and that which comes down to us, which the Eastern fathers tended to describe as His goodness (Athanasius) or His energy (Chrysostom). In the West Pope Leo the Great was of the opinion that the Light of the transfiguration was indeed God's essence, but was tempered as it were to the capacities of the disciples. An exception in the East was Epiphanius of Salamis, who taught that the saints see the divine essence, but only as the sky as through a slit in a building, or as the sea from a distance, with no knowledge of the depths. This idea was similar to that of the Latin fathers and Aquinas.
The Palamites were disingenuous in stating that the Eastern fathers prior to 'Dionysius' taught that both the light that comes down to us and the Light at the level of the Godhead itself is mere divine energy, infinitely transcended by the unseen essence.
Palamas was often inconsistent in what he taught, and his lack of consistency is nowhere more apparent than in what he has to say about the hypostatic proprium of the Holy Spirit in his work One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, Ch 36, where he appropriates St. Augustine's teaching in De Trinitate 15.27 that the hypostatic proprium of the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father (an idea forst advanced by his Latin predecessor Gaius Marius Victorinus), which is all well and good for Augustine, since he holds that the divine attributes are correlative with the essence of God, but for Palamas, who teaches that the divine essence infinitely transcends the energies (viz. attributes), by identifying the "eros yearning" (theia eros) of the Father for the Son as the hypostatic proprium of the Holy Spirit, he has, in effect, stated that the Father's eros infinitely transcends His agape (cf. God is love (agape) 1 John 4:8), OR that the Holy Spirit is a mere energy, since all divine attributes are said by him to be divine energies. What Palamas proves rather is that he is a theological blunderer!
I like where you are going with this @thomaspalmieri6038 . I found fascinating the parallel of Palamite theology with Platnoism/Neoplatonism and how close it gets with aeons from gnostics. Did you finish and publish something on this? Do you recommend any papers or books that expose further the incompatibility of the Palamite theology with Thomism?
@@danielaguiar321 You may want to look at my viewpoint as something closer to that of Tertullian or of early Protestantism (minus most of the Protestant distinctives), viz., "what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" That is, as a rejection of the metaphysicizing of the Gospel. Thomism in that respect would fall under the same critique - with the exception that St. Thomas did not seek to dogmatize his speculations the way that Palamas and his fellow Athonites did. I wish to hew to the procedure of Athanasius and the Nicene Fathers, and to interpret Scripture by Scripture, and not introduce Neoplatonism (or Aristotleanism) as judge as to what can be spoken about God, and to adhere to the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. and not reinterpret it as the Eastern Orthodox have done in order to fit it in with the teaching of the Cappadoccians and especially with the Pseudo Dionysius with respect to divine energizing, who all were influenced (especially 'Dionysius') by Plato or by the Neoplatonists in regard to these matters. Aquinas, while adopting Aristotle's ontology, still remained faithful to Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. and did not seek to reinterpret it the way the post Pseudo Dionysian Byzantine Church did. You will observe in the Summa a marked tendency on his part to differ with the Byzantine theologians and to hew to the teachings of the Nicene fathers and to Latin Christianity as a whole, as the differences begin to emerge over various questions of theological interpretation.
As for reading materials, you may wish to read in support of Palamas/Palamism David Bradshaw's Aristotle East and West, which provides an excellent study of the use of the word "energeia" in Greek intellectual discourse from Aristotle to St. Paul to Gregory Palamas and all in between, which highlights a somewhat deficient understanding of this word on the part of Latin Christian theologians - the Latin word "operatio" not quite capturing the full range of meaning for this highly important word in Greek theological discourse, even for the Nicene era Greek fathers. Unfortunately, Dr. Bradshaw as an American Eastern Orthodox Christian tends to shill for Palamism, and actually pretends to defend Palamism from the charge that it is based in Neoplatonism by arguing that Palamas derived his doctrines from the Cappadoccians + 'Dionysius', which only begs the question since they derived their own doctrines relating to the Divine Names of Sacred Scripture from Plato, Plotinus + Proclus. One expects better from someone who holds a doctorate in religious studies.
Also in defense of Palamism, there is Vladimir Lossky's "On the Essence and the Energies of God", from The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (pdf), SVS Press, pgs. 85-87, which can easily be found online, as well as Protopresbyter Michael Azkoul's "The Uncreated Energies: Discerning Thoughts" (thoughtsintrusive.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/the-uncreated-energies/). Also Gregory Palamas' Triads and 150 Chapters On Theology, Chs 65-150. One should certainly familiarize oneself with these writings to give the Palamites their due.
For a sample of Roman Catholic scholars writing against Palamas and the Palamites, you can easily find online Martin Jugie's 1932 essay on the Palamite Controversy, as well as Juan Nadal Cañellas' "Gregory Akindynos’s role in the 14th-century hesychast controversy in Byzantium" (2007), both of which can be found online at De Unione Ecclasiarum. A cogent criticism against the doctrine of divine energies as advanced by Palamas can be found in The Catholic Encyclopedia in an article titled "Hesychasm", written by Fr. Adrian Fortesque in 1910.
Most devastatingly against the Palamites is the work of disinterested scholars of religion, East and West, who are exposing the Neoplatonic roots of the Byzantine/Palamite Theology, and the way that subsequent EO interpreters of Palamas tended to modify his teachings due to uncomfortability with the teaching itself or due to the influence of Thomistic theology relating to divine simplicity. The former are represented by "Proclus’ Doctrine of Participation in Maximus the Confessor’s Centuries of Theology 1.48-50", by Jonathan Greig, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, in Studia Patristica LXXV, 137-148 (2017) and Frederick Lauritzen's "Plotinus the Antipalamite" (Zbornik radova Vizantoloskog instituta 59(59):133-145). The latter by John Demetracopoulos' "Palamas transformed. Palamite interpretations of the distinction between God’s ‘essence’ and ‘energies’ in late Byzantium" (Greeks, Latins, and Intellectual History 1204-1500, Issue 11, pp. 263-372, [2011]). All of these can be accessed online.
I have found much of this work published in scholarly journals to be confirmatory of my own reading of primary texts. Holding MAs in philosophy + theology, I combine the approaches of interested doctrinal polemic with disinterested scholarly study. I will not advance any idea that cannot be backed up by hard facts, even if it relates to Latin theology.
If Palamism was simply one more speculative appropriation of pagan metaphysics indulged in by Christian theologians, who would care? There are so many of these. But Palamas alone sought to strong arm the Church into dogmatizing his formularies, and into pronouncing anathema upon all who did not agree with them. Thus the unending polemics of the Eastern Orthodox that Palamism represents the faith once handed down by Christ and the apostles. Steady research into the matter explodes these claims for the myths that they are, and opens the Byzantines up to the same charges of heterodoxy and innovation - or yea rather paganization - in doctrine that they launch against the Latins over the Filioque or the Thomistic concept of God as Actus Purus.
Moreover, there is a genuine difference in understanding between Greeks and Latins with respect to the Biblical promises relating to the vision of God in the age to come. Each side has scriptures which it can point to in favor of its teaching. However, the Latin doctrine, as first articulated by St. Augustine in Letter 147 to Paula, is actually more firmly rooted in the rule of faith, as being based on the New Testament statements and promises of Christ, Paul and John.
The Greeks tend to be very arrogant that they alone have preserved the ancient faith, but they stand just as exposed to the charges of innovation as they themselves lodge against the Latins, and it can be said in a sense that their greatest fathers are Plato, Plotinus and Proclus, whose ideas seem to rule in every area of their divine ontology, and which are then "justified" by them with the occasional Scriptural reference.
My final statement then in regard to all these metaphysical disputes between Greeks and Latins is the admonition of our Lord remove the beam from one's own eye before pointing out the moat in our brother's eye.
Hope that helps. As far as publication of my researches, it will take time to complete what I had begun, God willing, and then publish my results, preferably by creating my own website. Let academicians publish in journals. I'll do things my own way. I fully intend to lace my work with polemics, which will certainly preclude it from appearing in the genteel precincts of academia.
I forgot to reply to your question about suggested readings. Two I can recommend and which can be found online are John A. Demetracopoulos' Palamas Transformed and Frederick Lauritzen's PLOTINUS THE ANTIPALAMITE. Each damages the Palamite claims to apostolic and patristic witness, with Lauritzen's article demonstrating that Palamism was dogmatized on the basis of arguments made about the procession of divine energy by the Neoplatonist Philosopher Proclus Diadochus - which is a damning indictment against the establishment of Palmism as a dogma of the Eastern Church.
Short answer, yes.
Roman Catholics are big on Thomism. Byzantine Catholics are big on Palamism. Both thoughts belong to Catholic theology. If they were irreconcilable we Byzantine Catholics would be unable to maintain communion with Rome.
If anyone wants more on this subject, Reason & Theologys video with Classical Theist on this is great
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check it out!
Have Dr. David Bradshaw on
@@deusimperator Dude, you have a problem with nerves
A comment on Jonathan Pageau’s channel sent me here
Upload this audio to Spotify!!!!!!
Would be Great to have a discussuin between Fr Peter and David Bradshaw
I've found for a second or third time that mention of people following Palamas' teachings and converting into Neoplatonism. But that's because Theology is simpler and harder than it looks like. You can't think of Palamas' teachings as divorced from the Church and Tradition. The energies of God are always operating in us, but it's up to us who have free will to welcome them and recover the likeness with Christ (metanoia, i.e. repentance) or let ourselves be energized with created energies instead (paranoia, i.e. unrepentance). You'll find a repentant person fully living in the life of the Church, and actively participating in Sacramental life. Those who devolve into Neoplatonism do so because they are Gnostic in their hearts, and the mystery of Incarnation is like rocket science to them. And energies, operations, these are straight forward actions. Nothing can be more direct and personal than God actually engaging with you. But if you start thinking in if-then mode and speculate about the effects of God's actions you'll miss that which had already been handed down by the Church and didn't need to be specifically addressed by Palamas. Otherwise, any Church teaching would require infinite tomes to be handed down in case a word, a sentence or a paragraph is misconstrued or an idea feels like unfinished.
Thanks for helping an orthodox Christian understand Thomism better. I've heard a lot of less favorable representations of it from anti-West hyperdox on the internet, and I'm happy to know that Roman Catholics with a deeper understanding of Thomism aren't so dramatically different from the Orthodox.
Whether the philosophical system of Aquinas or Palamas is better is probably way above my understanding, but I would say that my lingering concern about Thomism is that, in its wake, the popular conception of God in the West does seem to have turned into something that is very cold and distant.
I've gotten that impression too, Jacob, until I looked into it even more and it started looking even worse than before. For example, Aquinas asserted that the Hypostatic union, the union itself, is created. It's as if all the different pillars of Thomism: that we can only know God by through His created effects i.e. analogia entis, absolute Divine simplicity, created grace, that God is not in a real relation to creatures and that sanctifying grace is sufficient for justification without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, revolve around the total pessimism of Divine/human contact which, to the mind of the Fathers and Orthodox until today, it was the whole point of the Incarnation to dispel. The more I interact with Roman Catholics on this topic the more it becomes clear to me that they put their Aristotelean/Thomistic system first and interpret every Christian doctrine according to it instead of adopting the expression that best suits Christian doctrine the way the Fathers did. They have many complicated and ultimately incomprehensible explanations why their systems don't assume unbridgeable alienation from God but they leave the heart completely in darkness. Similar to how a little philosophy is apt to make a man an atheist but a lot of philosophy is apt to make him a theist. A little Thomism is apt to make an Orthodox sympathetic, but a lot of it is likely to make him completely allergic
@@Jy3pr6 yikes, well that's disturbing! That would be quite the depressing conception of things
Maybe you should bring Dr. David Bradshaw on to clarify some of the confusion on the Palamite position in the presentation by Totleben.
I don't think anyone is confused. Disagreement and criticism does not imply misunderstanding. The history of Palamism - as found in Palamas himself, his successors, the acceptance or not by the various local churches, it's current popularity/resurgence beginning in the 20th century, those who led that resurgence, etc. - are complicated matters that require diligent study. The only attempt I'm aware of (besides Bradshaw) at a *metaphysical* defense of Palamism was made by Eric Perl in the early 90s. He made this defense because he recognized (correctly) that the *metaphysical* structures of Palamism had not been adequately defended, if at all, by the modern Orthodox theologians who often retreated into antinomies, "apophatic" defenses of the notions promulgated by Palamism, and the use/misuse of the earlier Fathers. All that is to say is that once you claim that any criticism of Palamism is simply misunderstanding, you are not really dealing with the issues.
@@ds9876 I disagree with palamist position, but no christian branch of metaphysics need pagan scholar to defend it. Antinomies are better than Perl's modus operandi, which itself need antinomies to work.
@@filipradosa6062 Well let's not pretend that Aristotle and Plato (and the whole neoplatonist) philosophical traditions didn't significantly shape ancient and medieval theologians. To be sure, the great Fathers modified and *corrected* aspects of those philosophies but their thought cannot be simply disconnected from the philosophical structures of their day. But I'm not sure how much more can be said in this setting about a very complex matter. I am glad Totleben noted that Palamism leads to neoplatonism, however. Perl and Farrell being examples of that phenomenon.
@@ds9876 I believe we can't exactly say that Palamism, per se, leads to Neoplatonism. Individuals are led to whatever philosophical or metaphysical systems they are drawn to. If Palamism led to Neoplatonism then most people exposed or upholding the Palamite formulation of the Essence/Energies distinction position would be led down that path. Two individuals do not vindicate this claim. I have heard that Thomism leads to Atheism, but is that true? We would have to judge on a case-by-case basis.
@@ds9876 Yeah I mean father here has done the historical work, and set forth a systematic exposition of the position. He's not 'confused' because he doesn't agree with it, as if the only way to disagree with neo-Palamite theses is to not understand them.
It does sound a great deal like neo-Platonism. . . and the New Age, at least in as much as Mormon doctrine shares God's "rearranging" of preexisting "stuff", that "necessarily exists" as opposed to how Christians understand the 1 creator.
He's a really good, very interesting guest!
Sometimes we are in such a hurry to reconcile everything Eastern Orthodox for the sake of the hope of reconciling, we forget that the Latin Church did other things better, like systematic, disciplined, logical pursuit of theology.
If we give a nod to the East in mysticism, can we still have a personal identity of having done something well?
There may be a reason that the Eastern fathers abandoned it.
The essence/energies distinction is also found in the Cappadocian fathers, for example St. Basil. It did not originate with Palamas.
No, it isn't. Their meaning of energy as the activity of the nature working is distinct from Palamas' real distinction meaning of an infinite number of uncreated energies, which is also identifiable with God's attributes and actually puts Palamas in direct conflict with the Cappadocians. As Palamas by teaching that God's Love for example isn't identifiable with His essence, but with one of an infinite procession of distinct energies, means that when we read Colossians 1:12 where St. Paul tells us that the Son was born from the Father's love, that this under Palamist theology would mean the Son was born from the Father's energy of Love, rather than His Essence. The Cappadocians in fighting against Eunomian heretics taught that the procession of the Son and Holy Spirit is effortless, or without energy. Under Palamism this would also make the second and third persons of the Trinity created.
Palamas is also contra to the 6th ecumenical council which, alongside the majority of the Patrisitics like John Damascus, identifies only one energy, not a multiplicity of Divine Energies.
@@Contentinople what is the energy of God ενεργεια in the text col 2:12 is it created or uncreated
@@Contentinople where is what you said in col 1:12 nothing in the greek text
@@Contentinople well actually Saint Gregory Palamas says one is the energy of God .we say energies because of the multiplicity of its effects .it seems you have not read his works
23:50 Hey, that's the First Reading this Friday! (Ordinary Form)
Matt looks like a Byzantine icon.
I was shocked to learn that the Thomist view of deification is actually more distances from God than palamism. Thomists teach that sanctifying grace is a created grace separated from God whereas Palamists teach that sanctifying grace (energies) are uncreated. I’m glad I tuned in.
Dyerites stay seething
In response to something Father said multiple times in the video, the Light that shown on Tabor and in the experience of the hesychast monk wasn't made of photons. The Holy Spirit bestows upon the soul of the Apostle/Hesychast a faculty which is above both intellection and sensation then then allows him to see the Uncreated Light, primarily noetically/intellectually. This grace, however, flows over from the soul into the attached body, and the body too participates in this act of superintellectual, spiritual vision. Palamas insists on this because he refuses to exclude the body from full participation in the divine life and vision of God. Although beheld by the body, there is no sense in which the uncreated light is a physical light. St Gregory also states quite clearly that if animals were present at the Transfiguration, they would not have seen any light at all, but merely four human beings standing on a mountainside. Anyway, thank you so much for fascinating discussion, and I hope this comment clarifies better the hesychastic understanding of the vision of God.
Agreed…with that said, I do appreciate the irenic attitude towards this subject and the non-dogmatic approach towards this subject that sees Palamism as an acceptable tradition in their own church. I’ve seen other videos that were a lot harsher with ad hominems.
The problem with Palamism is not in its proper defense of the actuality of the uncreated light of God experienced in mystical communion with the divine (which I was once favored with, God be praised, and it is both seen with the eye of the soul and penetrates directly into the heart and diffuses its grace throughout our body, or rather, He permeates our body with His grace, for it is Christ who lives in us, as Paul says, not merely His energies). The true issue is his division of God between essence and energies, because he applies Neoplatonic categories to Christian religious experience. Scripture declares that even saints only see God through a veil in this life, but face to face in the next. Palamism teaches that we see only the energies of God, even in the age to come, but never the person, nature, or essence of God. But what is this insubstantial light that is not the nature of God, pray tell? The Scripture declares that God is light, but the easterners want to say that the uncreated light is something that "surrounds" God, but is not His nature. Gregory of Nyssa described energy as the motion or activity of some nature or substance, not a thing in itself, hence the uncreated light as seen and experienced is either substantial or insubstantial. If it is substantial, then God has two natures if Palamism is correct, or we encounter that which is insubstantial when we encounter the uncreated light of God, which is ontologically absurd and an offense to the dignity of God. The Palamites have dogmatized upon this matter, and therefore should rightly be held to account for raising a faulty theology to the level of revealed dogma.
Would these be the same extacies that saints like John of thr cross or Theresa of Avila fescribe?
I had the same ah-ha moment as Matt @ 48:58
is the topic of Essence and Ousia still at the level of debate like when the Church was still trying to define THREE in ONE or is it a topic that the Catholic Church rejects completely?
13:39 Good point
16:43 This and a That in God
38:38 intresting
45:36 mysterious
49:40 bookmark
I've been very confused by this subject, and it was refreshing to hear Fr. Peter's explanation. However, Fr. Peter wondered how a Palamite would explain the light of Tabor as uncreated if the disciples saw physical photons with their physical eyes. St. Gregory explains this in the Triads. The uncreated light is not physical. It does not have photons. It is a non-sensory mystical light, but it does overflow into the sensory. It's the inner spirit that is transformed, not the outer world. He says on pg. 91 "Nevertheless, the divine light that exists beyond all sense perception was in fact also seen by the eyes of the senses". I think St. Gregory is misunderstood because it's not very common to have mystical experiences. It seems his theology begins with mystical experience that is then roughly converted into words. Whereas St. Thomas thinks it through more conceptually maybe. I'm struggling with this because I've been asking God to really help know which way is more accurate. I think people too easily dismiss mystical theology because it seems so other worldly. Palamas, in a quote I cannot find right now, says something like, "If you don't believe me, come and follow our way and you will see". Perhaps?
Thank you. I would like to make a clarification about my position, however. I do not hold that "The uncreated light is physical and has photons." I hold that "What the apostles saw with the eyes of the body was not an uncreated light, but a created light, and, as created that light was photons just like any other light, which is why it can be seen with the eyes of the body." Basically, if you can see it with the eyes of the body, then it's photons hitting the retina, because that's what "seeing with the bodily eye" means.
I think you indicate something similar when you write, "It is a non-sensory mystical light, but it does overflow into the sensory. It's the inner spirit that is transformed, not the outer world." But, of course, if this is true then the light isn't really being seen with the eyes of the body.
As you indicate, Gregory does not think that the uncreated light has photons (because that would just be to say that the uncreated light is created), but yet he thinks that it is seen by the eyes of the body: "Nevertheless, the divine light that exists beyond all sense perception was in fact also seen by the eyes of the senses." I agree that this is what Palamas teaches, but I think that he is wrong on this point. I don't think that even the omnipotent power of God can make a sense organ sense that which is insensible. That's like saying God can make a four-sided triangle. Saying "The eye sees something that is not corporeal light" is a bit like saying "My ear hears that smell." If your ear is hearing it, then it is not a smell, and if you are sensing a smell, then you are not sensing it with your ears.
So I think that the uncreated light must be a strictly "noetic" light, though nothing prevents the transformation brought about by that noetic light to have corporeal effects, such as various visions of brightness, or even a certain bodily "glow" in the person experiencing that noetic light. So, a bit like what you say: ""It is a non-sensory mystical light, but it does overflow into the sensory. It's the inner spirit that is transformed, not the outer world."
But, of course, what was seen by the apostles at Tabor was not just a noetic light which illumined their eyes. According to the Bible, they really did see light with their bodily eye (and hear a voice with their bodily ears). I would say that this light was a created light and therefore seeable by the bodily eye, which was perhaps itself a manifestation of the deifying glory that filled Jesus' human soul (because a noetic light can have corporeal effects). The purpose of this light was prophetic and sacramental. Prophetic because it indicated--in just the sort of visible and tangible way that the disciples needed--Jesus' true identity as well as the ultimate destiny of each human being in the light of the resurrection, a destiny which was revealed before the means to it (the Cross) was undertaken. Sacramental, because the beauty that transformed the physical sight of the apostles was a sign of the deifying transformation that was going on in their souls.
There are two reasons why I would want to push back against the standard Palamite interpretation (that what the apostles saw with the eyes of their body was the uncreated light), besides its incoherence. First, I don't want to make sensible phenomena an absolutely necessary integral part of mystical experience. Now, I don't hold a dualism which says that mystical experience is only noetic. As I said, I freely concede that a noetic mystical experience can overflow into the senses, but it does not have to. Second, I don't want to treat the theophanies (like visible light) as uncreated energies, because this presupposes the assumption that creation is something distant from God, which he needs to enter into by means of his uncreated activities. Sometimes people want to say that the light of Tabor which the apostles saw with their bodily eyes was uncreated, because this makes it seem like God is more present in the world when he manifests himself in it via an uncreated energy than he is in a created thing itself.
@@BrPeterTotlebenOP Thank you for the clarification Father Peter. I don't like asking questions because it seems argumentative, but this topic is important as I'm trying to understand the differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Isn't it possible that the divine Light that St. Gregory described did not include photons acting on the retina? How can we be sure they were seeing physical light? Isn't St. Gregory describing spiritual sight? In the Triads, he keeps emphasizing that it is mystical or spiritual perception, not physical or sensory. In section 3.18, he states "This is why their vision is not sensory - they do not receive it by the senses. Neither is it an act of noetic perception, since they do not find it in thoughts, nor in the knowledge that comes from them. They only discover it after all noetic activity ceases. In separating from the activity of the psyche, we find the peak of pure prayer - which is also purity of heart." So it seems to me this divine Light would be seen even with eyes closed, but nevertheless, changes perception when eyes are open. In section 3.28 he states "If the light in not sensory, although the apostles were judged worthy of perceiving it with their eyes, then it is perceived through a means other than the senses. That is why the radiance of Jesus' face was indescribable, unapproachable, and timeless - because it acted through an inexpressible reality. This is why they say that this radiance was not, properly speaking, accessible to the senses". Can Catholics agree with St. Gregory or must they reject what he is describing? Peace be to you Father and thank you for your wisdom.
@@BrPeterTotlebenOP Thanks again Father. I will think this over some more. By the way, I had only seen the first paragraph of your response yesterday. The rest was hidden, and I apparently did not see the "read more" icon. Otherwise, I would not have posted my other response. Please pray for me as I am really stuck on which church I'm supposed to be part of.
@@robertpeters1409 Just to jump in here quickly on that last point about determining what Church to be a part of based on the Palamite debate. I just wanted to make a couple of comments as a priest/pastor rather than as a theologian about this, because I've met a pretty good number of people in your same boat, and I've seen how much this problem bothers them.
The precise official position of the Orthodox Church is harder to determine, but from the Catholic side, I can say that there's nothing in official Catholic teaching that requires you to be either a Thomist or a Palamite. These are both detailed metaphysical systems that attempt to explain the mechanics of how our deification in Christ and the Spirit works. But what matters for a Christian is to actually allow God to deify you in Christ and in the Spirit -- not to hold a correct metaphysical theory about how this actually happens. God would be very wicked if he made our eternal happiness depend on each of us choosing correctly between abstruse metaphysical systems.
Some people might say that if you have the wrong theory of deification, then this will somehow impact your prayer life or your life of discipleship. I think that this is nonsense, at least in the case of the difference between Thomism and Palamism. As someone who has been deeply impacted by both Western and Eastern traditions of Christian spirituality, I have been unable to find any incompatibility at all that is worth mentioning. And when someone points out to me some alleged incompatibility, it usually turns out that the person was just misinformed. (So, for example, most of the ideas that are presented as characteristic of the East are actually either just commonplaces of Western baroque scholastism or bad modernist ideas from Germany).
So, for most Christians, the actual resolution of the Palamite debate makes no real difference to their life of prayer or their life of discipleship.
That's not to say that thinking through these problems is unimportant. There should be people in the Church who are thinking more carefully about the mystery of God and what he has revealed about himself and his plan for us, because it's one of the ways in which we can engage and glorify God, and the very act of engaging in these discussions can benefit the whole Church inasmuch as they ultimately help the whole Church to refine her preaching and teaching--which aids in the salvation of souls.
Advanced theological research in the Church is a bit like science research in our country. We fund zoological research on say, bats, first of all because its good to live in a society that pursues knowledge, and that's going to mean having at least a few people who devote their whole lives devoted to investing really obscure points about bats. All of us are richer as a society because some of us pursue research in this way. And, even though lots of the questions that these people research are abstruse, sometimes they end up producing applications that benefit us all. So, for example, given the coronavirus, it's probably a good thing that we have at least a few people around who spent a lot of time worrying about obscure questions about bats. Theologians are like this.
But this is not to say that everyone in the Church has to know all about these obstruse kinds of questions. It's perfectly fine to be an amateur theologian, however. An "amateur" is literally a "lover", and there's certainly something admirable about a Christian who studies God because he's fallen in love. That being said, it can't be the case that God requires us to be professional theologians in order to decide which Church to join. It's great for Christians to do theology, but you shouldn't have to resolve technical theological disputes just to figure out how to be a Christian. If you want to become an amateur mechanic, fine. But you shouldn't have to become an amateur mechanic just to operate a car!
So, if you are trying to decide between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, I think a better question to ask is, "Which communion seems to better embody Christ's will for his Church?" I think that if you try to answer this question as honestly and sincerely as you can, then your life as a disciple of Jesus will be fine, regardless of which communion you ultimately end up choosing. (I say this of the Catholic and Orthodox [and I suppose Oriential Orthodox churches as well] especially, because these are the Churches that have preserved the apostolic succession and the sacraments. I am less sanguine about other ecclesial communities).
The process of mutual estrangement which led to the present situation of two distinct communions was a complex historical process that involved many factors. So, there are actually very good arguments for each communion that it better instantiates what Christ intends for his Church. Obviously I think that the Catholic side has the edge in the argument, but that is not to deny the very formidable arguments for the Orthodox position. (Though an Orthodox priest will do a much better job giving you those than will a Catholic priest!)
At the end of the day, the only doctrinal difference that matters between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church is the status of the bishop of Rome and the consequent approach to the nature of the universal Church that the Pope's Petrine ministry enables. The Orthodox can make many strong historical arguments against Catholic claims on this matter--especially the exercise of the Papacy in its modern form--but on more careful inspection, historical arguments about the exercise of the Pope's primacy are not as simplistic as some Orthodox apologists make them out to be. (Though I'm not going to be drawn into a historical debate here!)
Speaking for myself, what I think gives the Catholic Church its edge is the way that it (not without mistakes, not without struggle) has been able to maintain the global integrity of its life, being in every culture, nation, and state, but not captured by them. And I think it is precisely the ministry of the bishop of Rome, the Pope, who has been able to ensure this integrity. Lacking the Petrine ministry, Orthodoxy has a tendency to a certain fissiparousness as well as a tendency to be co-opted by the nation or culture that she is a part of. I think that communion with the Pope is precisely what would enable the Orthodox Church to overcome these tendencies and to be more authentically herself. However, I do concede that the Orthodox have quite legitimate fears of doing this: how can they guarantee a responsible exercise of Papal power which will not compromise the integrity of their traditions? Are they not just signing a blank check to Rome, which the Pope might cash at some point in the future in a very undesirable way? Unfortunately, they are quite right to fear this.
So I think that meditating on the mystery of the Church with prayer and scripture will actually give you much more insight on this question; it will give you much more peace and serenity; and you'll actually focus on what is important: transformation in Christ, life in the Spirit, instead of majoring in minors (like whether God's essence and energies are distinct by a "distictio rationis rationata cum fundamento in re" or a "distinctio formalis ex parte rei"--trust me, your salvation does not depend on getting this right...)
One other thing I would caution you against in your discernment is to avoid superficial analysis and cheap shots about the relative health of either communion. Both Churches are ancient, culture-forming institutions with hundreds of millions of members all over the world. That means their apparent relative health defies easy characterization, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either culpably ignorant or a manipulative liar. Things like doctrinal confusion, faithless politicians, nationalist exploitation, scularization--these are all highly complex phenomena with highly complex genealogies that can't be magically blamed on some obvious error discovered by confessional polemicists. And the relative health of Churches changes rapidly as you go from place to place and time to time.
That's because Churches are like families. And your family is a hot mess, because every family is a hot mess, and anyone who tells you that there's isn't is full of it. But the miracle of family is the love and beauty that you experience amid the hot mess. That's how you should think of the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches--both as a whole, and in your local parish. Because if you decide your confessional allegiance as a triumphalistic, ideological, confessional issue, you *will* be dissillusioned by both churches, and you'll probably lose your faith. But if you focus on what Christ intended for his Church, you'll discover the family of God.
@@robertpeters1409 I think your observation that St. Gregory's "theology" is the linguistic expression of an encounter with God is the bottom line of this whole debate. True Apostolic Christianity must affirm the possibility of substantial contact with the Uncreated God while affirming that no matter how much one "grows" into that infinite ocean of Divine Being that there is always a real element that eludes the Deified creature. That is why those Saints who attempted to linguistically describe the experience of God could only fall back on paradoxical language like "knowing unknowing" and "stationary movement". Adopting a philosophical framework and sticking to it at all costs before going through the ascetic and repentant purification necessary for that encounter that would reveal the validity of these distinctions to the mind directly would be a tragedy. It may seem better compared to all of the uglier forms of wretchedness like drug addiction, but in the end it is just another flavor of hell since it is another excuse for remaining separated from God.
"We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe." - Descartes
When Celidonius was given sight, his restored vision recognised the divinity of Christ immediately. The words, 'ego eimi', spoken spontaneously, was the confluence of the his will and the divine nature of God. An act of Christ healed him, in that grace is seen to be created, the source of which remains uncreated. In other words, grace subsists in the divinity of God, manifesting itself substantively through creation.
'I think, therefore, He is I Am' transforms into 'I think, therefore I am.' A created being called to partake in the divine nature. And ultimately, deification.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese read in the light of Athanasius with an emphasis on the word, 'transforms'.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese it is not about premise and consequent, it is about intuition. How else would martyrs have ordered their lives for God?
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese faith is not reason.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese hahaha! You forced me to agree with something that catholics tend to be less introspective about.
I guess the neoclassical developments continue to be the most contentious part of our history. But I see a strong revival in the 'tradition movement', albeit in ways questionable at times. It is not like we risk losing the faith. That would better describe protestantism and progressive catholicism. Spirituality remains a strong quality of many yet.
I guess there would always be faithfuls who persists to see everything as dualistic without admitting it, good v evil, creator v created, body v soul,etc. It is by far the easiest way to understand reality. It is also almost a necessary path of many to attain the next level of consciousness.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese Well, Faith and reason walk together. The Lord revealed many Truths through Sacred Scripture that are kept in Tradition with all the Mystics and Doctors to this day, even though many catholics are unfortunately not aware, but the Doctrine is the same and so are the Dogmas. Regarding Saint Thomas Aquinas, it is important to notice how at the end of his earthly life he gave away all he wrote to the Authority of the Church. While the Church seriously considers Saint Thomas, not all his theological views are Dogmatic, for instance the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady is a Dogma, which Blessed Duns Scotus defended.
In the end, the Magisterium defines with the Dogmas as "boundaries" where one can "play" with Theology, which is something that does require Faith and Tradition to be well done.
An interesting excerpt from the Cathechism of the Catholic Church;
Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. "Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and 'makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.'"
Part 2?
Matt, you should definitely try to reach Jordan Peterson with this episode! He made a podcast with Jonathan Pageau, an orthodox, and they touched upon the theme of deification. This video might help him sort this question out!
Orthodox guy here.
Just as there is a distinction between the three persons of God and the single essence of God, there is a distinction between the essence of God and the energy of God, and yet God is not made of parts, and the energy and essence of God are both fully God.
The distinction between Persons is by immanent divine productions. The divine productions are internal action/passion relations and therefore allows for a real distinction between Persons without leading to composition.
The “uncreated energies” are not distinct by immanent divine productions (otherwise they would be Persons). So you actually have to give an explanation or grounding to how the energies are distinct from the essence and why it doesn’t lead to composition.
St Thomas Aquinas thoroughly demonstrated that out of Aristotle’s 10 Categories, only immanent action/passion relations allow for a real distinction within God without composition. Anything else leads to a composed God.
Furthermore there is no real distinction between Person and essence. There only exists real distinctions between the Persons. The “essence energies distinction” says the energies are really distinct from the essence. So that’s another reason that analogy can’t work.
Matt Fradd asked how Palamists can hold that there is a real distinction between God's essence and energies without denying divine simplicity. A simple answer that makes sense to me that I heard a Palamist provide is to respond, "the same way we hold to a real distinction between members of the Trinity without denying divine simplicity." The answer made sense to me, but I wonder if I'm missing something.
The concept of “real” distinction is the problem. What is a real distinction and a distinction that is sure to be existent but not “real”? Would it be “virtual”? Because if there are “real” distinctions above the relational aspect to unify the very divine nature, of course it would imply polytheism because if so we would have three natures in the very intratrinitarian Godhead or at the very best three parts of one nature, as 1/3 fractions adding to others. But that’s not how God’s essence is understood in the study of the Most Holy Trinity (what Easterners like to call “Triadology”). The understandings that Palamism in fact is or it can be polytheistic was exactly the problem Barlaam argued, not Thomists. And Barlaam here was the accuser, not the other way around: but notice it was not that Palamas despised Barlaam’s “absolute divine simplicity (allegedly). Rather it was Palamas defendind his theological approach do not threat divine simplicity at all. So Neopalamites twisted the story. And anti-Catholics in the “American converthodox” realm started to use those jargons to preach - many times furiously - the incompatibility and the “error” of the “Roman Catholics” on “absolute divine simplicity”. What those Neopalamites mean by “real” or “absolute” is 100% arbitrary and epistemologically inaccurate.
So these kind of objections are different than those according to which Palamism can be pantheistic if not specifically and carefully addressed (like the ones Thomists advise), with a systematic thinking and a rigorous methodology Palamas obviously lacked. Nevertheless, I would say that Palamism greatest problem from a Thomistic point of view is not really that it threatens divine simplicity, but that it threatens much more seriously divine immutability: since neo-Palamism conceives God as ‘essence and energy’ with a ‘real’ (=meaning extra-mental) distinction between the two - and it is not clear within Palamas himself, that was dubious - then it will follow that God is not complete immutable, since the energies are changeable and they “are” God in a “real” sense, that means, ontologically. In my opinion that’s the real problem within Palamism, that would demand this sort of clarifications so as to be fully Catholic (but that’s just an opinion).
For me, the only concept of the word “real” that one can give, apart from Internet militancy of anti-Catholics, is that it means “ontological”, meaning in the very reality of being. And if so, both the uses those Neopalamites proposed (only to taste their own anti-Catholicism) seem wrong enough to me and it would have very tragical consequences. But hey, that’s just an opinion.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese I don’t know as much as you do (maybe) on Muslim apologetics, but they tend to be modalists in their differentiation. That’s totally different from the differences focused on subsisting relations. Sabellianism was the mainstream and more famous among all the modalist heresies - it is not impossible that the Islamic approach to the Trinity have disguised into modalism nowadays due to the similarities in some of the most complex fields. Interesting enough, St John Damascene clearly treated Islam as a Christian heresy, one of the many created in the East at those times.
That has zero affiliation with what I said and no identity to what St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas trinitarianism indeed means. Just for an easy text on this:
www.academia.edu/10350963/A_Thomistic_Look_at_the_Trinity_with_Concentration_on_the_Kinds_of_Distinctions_and_Relations_Among_the_Divine_Persons_in_Light_of_Simplicity
Polytheism and Pantheism maybe are always haunting, even in the eyes of Islam, the realm of Eastern Orthodoxy consequential result of something that Neopalamites portray as their theological premises. But Islamic metaphysics were once crushed with their brightest minds in every study of the Most Holy Trinity by Western scholastics, I think. So an Eastern Orthodox saying Catholics use Islamic arguments about the Trinity is entirely new to me.
You both make many good points and it has helped me realize that this is beyond my abilty to understand at the moment. Hopefully someday I'll have the time to study this out further. For now, @Master Chief, stay well, because we need you at your best for the next Halo.
@@HerotPM actually in orthodox theology there is no such thing as palamism.the orthodox church is actually the same as saint Greogory Palamas says
To: HerotPM: If that is their explanation it is invalid. The distinction between person and person is between the individuals within a class, Father-Son-Spirit being the individuals, and Divine Persons being the class. The reason the tripartite hypostases do not divide the simplicity of God is because the simplicity of God refers to the divine essence, not to the divine hypostases. This was the argument that Basil and his brother Gregory made in refuting the Eunomians, that the hypostases distinguish relations within the Godhead amongst the persons but do not divide the essence, which exists without limit, and is co-extensive with the divine persons. St. Augustine taught that the personal names signify terms of relation, not the substance itself.
Palamas teaches that essence infinitely transcends energy, so essence and energy can in no way be identified as being in the same class. Besides, the Palamites are adamant that essence and energy are not the same thing, so how can that in any way be analogous to the Father-Son-Spirit, who are the same thing, viz. divine persons?
The analogy if applied to the energies is that the variety of energies do not divide the simplicity of the divine energy itself, since they are characteristic marks of the one simple energy. This is what John of Damascus taught. But even here we have a problem, because Gregory Nazianzen + Nyssa taught that energies go out of existence when the specific exertion ceases, so even in the Palamite system you would need to have some kind of idea that the energies exist eternally in plurality within the Godhead, but when exercised upon creatures have a specific and delimited existence of their own, if the Palamites wish to be consistent with the teaching of the patristic Gregories and John of Damascus.
If the essence infinitely transcends the energies, how then are essence and energy co-extensive with one another? The persons as hypostases are individual existences, and hypostasis indicates 'individual substance', so that essence could be properly predicated in relation to hypostasis, since the idea of 'hypostasis' involves that of substance along with individuality. Energy bears no such similarity to essence as does hypostasis, for energy is the activity of substance or essence.
The Palamites state that the essence is present in the energies. In that case, it is the essence that is encountered in a specific form of activity, as Gregory of Nyssa puts it, the energy of the runner is the motion of the foot. What is encountered then, the motion only or the foot itself in a specific form of activity? That is, no one sees the energy except as the substance in a given form of activity. We see the substance of the foot in motion, not the motion of an invisible substance, for if that is the case, the motion itself is invisible, unless the motion is seen in the effect it produces in something that is acted upon, such as the calming of the seas by Christ.
Given the foregoing, I don't see how it is possible for the illuminated hesychast to see only the uncreated divine energy, as the Palamites call it, but not the divine essence (viz., through a glass darkly), for energy is observed only in its effects upon substances, or in the activity of substances themselves.
What is this insubstantial uncreated light that is not the substance of God but which is nevertheless an apprehensible reality, a directly visible and noetically contemplated and yet ultimately insubstantial reality? The Synodikon of Orthodoxy defines it as "that supremely Divine light [which] is neither a created thing, nor the essence of God, but is rather uncreated and natural grace, illumination, and energy which everlastingly and inseparably proceeds from the very essence of God." We can see it, but it is not the essence, and yet it exists along with the essence of God but does not constitute something within the Godhead that is in any way an addition to the essence? To me this visible and apprehensible light, even if they wish to deny it, is a res/thing in its own right, and just because the Palamites say it is a mystery and you have to accept what they say about it, my answer is no you don't have to accept their human fashioned theory about it, for I too once was favored with such an encounter, and I reject their definitions as mere human speculation about a reality which transcends our intellect, and which can be explained conceptually in other ways than those employed by the Palamites, and which have in fact been explained differently by Latin theologians and mystics in ways which differ from the Palamites.
The Scriptures distinguish between seeing the glory of God through a glass darkly and seeing the glory of God face to face (1 Cor 13:12). The word of God does not talk about seeing the uncreated energies of God, which is an idea of the Platonists, not the Biblical authors.
My ultimate issue with Palamism is that it raises its own particular theologoumenon about the encounter with God's uncreated light to the level of dogma, with the attendant anathemas, and refuses to admit the Neoplatonic provenance of its so called dogma. So much vitriol, and so much dishonesty is involved with propagating and defending their doctrine.
Dr. David Bradshaw should come on and give an accurate explanation of the Essence Energy distinction.
I think this was okay for a quick cursory introduction.
Just when I thought I was understanding this...I would get lost again!
Clearly God gave some, more intellect then others! I am willing to admit when I'm licked!
Though I really enjoyed Fr's explanation for bad prayer!
I like how at the 12:47 mark... There was stupification
My fiance: what do you want to watch tonight? A movie? Netflix?
Me: this on 2x speed
i think many non-palamists miss the point. that god is simple is a fact. that we can't completely comperehend him is also a fact. well "things around god" as energies and activies in the eastern system means "effect in created existence that point to the essence" and "the light or vision in reality of him from whom everything comes". the "distinction" part means that as we live here we see the result, the "veil" of god as he is in here pointing to the outer true him, so the result is also an uncreated truth , the beginning of understanding. you walk that road in this and in the after life, but it never ends. because an end would mean that you literally become the god. so the "god in here/the energy of god" is the result (as a mirage) and the uncreated road, but not the end of the road. to say that in god , through our created thinking we conclude necessity in his will , or an illusion of a necessity if u like (a necessity in our thought) is something that we try to escape. not because aquinas doesnt make sense, but because the scriptures dont give of that feeling. so exactly because is revelation and we dont get it, we humble ourselves and say: lets give true participation of god in creation (the scriptural feeling that he comes in and out) ,still being in him and let ourselves truly be his images participating not with complete understading but 100% freely in him. we let the created and uncreated to interact in a way that doesnt go in "the inside parts of god" as "god does contemplate his goodness" etc. it is deliberately non-mechanistic and in a sense leaves some questions about the inner truths hidden, because whatever we answer, is not the truth. hence the "distinction"
Palamism tries to maintain the mystery in God, but does this by creating an ontological division between the inferior divinities (energies) and the superior divinity (essence), and by teaching doctrines that are contrary to Scripture, to wit, the divine attributes are derived from the principle of God's energy, when St Paul teaches that the divine energy is a derivation of His attribute of power (Eph 3:7). So Palamism is not a proper expression of revealed dogma, and should never have been ratified as such at the Council of Constantinople.
To say that Gods Love overflows suggest that there is a Lack of control in God?
“Synergy” is the answer to the question of deification. It’s also the term utilized by St. Paul to talk about Gods work in us. The hot iron example was useful.
Energies seems to envision some type of spacetime causation from God to us. But causation is a human construct that is applicable to the physical world. There is no distance between God and us, so any concept of causation that we have will be inadequate to describe how God works through the world.
At least that is my takeaway. Any thoughts?
I think the energy-essence distinction is perceived by our limitations. It is not real.
@Ελληνας Γραικος Im Orthodox as well. Just out of curosity which patrisitc writings and scripture show the Essence-Energies distinction. Don't worry I beleive in the Essence-Energies distinction.
Following.
@Ελληνας Γραικος Yes. But where in Church Fathers is it, pre-1054 councils, and Sacred Scripture is it?
@Ελληνας Γραικος deity as in the Divine nature?
@Ελληνας Γραικος in 1Cor the following verse (12:7) literally mentions the Holy Spirit, so technically no evident distinction, and in Col 1:29 that could be the power that the Holy Spirit gives him as well, even thogh the greek version clearly says the word "energeiam", but I don't think it has to be intended in the way eastern theologians mean when they talk about "energies", since greek words have often several meanings and even in the earliest latin translations it was translated as "operationem eius" by Saint Jerome, who actually corrected previous translations of the new testament in order to preserve the original meaning in greek.
Lateran IV is 1215
St. Bonaventure Breviloquium part 5 defines his understanding of grace, God-conformity in the soul etc. and he is a Doctor of the Church who can relate more closely to Palamas as he refers to God's grace as uncreated, while also not being His immutable Divine Essence.
Can a Catholic use hesychastic meditation
Yes, although it is not really practiced in the Western Churches...
Question: Can Palamism and Thomism be Reconciled?
Answer: As Senior Base Officer Ramsey remarked to Lieutenant Hendley near the end of the 1963 film The Great Escape: "It depends on your point of view."
1. Reflecting their own starting positions, it would seem that Pints With Aquinas and Fr. Peter Totleben, O.P. would be most interested in discovering whether Palamism is as compatible with Catholic teaching as Thomism is. That question has never been officially answered because the Catholic Church has never made a formal inquiry into Palamism. Gregory Palamas' veneration by Eastern Catholic Melkites was abandoned when they reunited with Rome in the early 19th century but then reinstated into their liturgical calendar in the 1970s. Was there a cause for canonization with the customary steps towards sainthood and the testimony of miracles since Gregory of Palamas was not a martyr, as is customary in the Latin Rite?
2. Gregory Palamas is preeminently an Orthodox Saint and therefore respect for the judgment of the Orthodox Church hierarchy should provide guidance for the Catholic Church in determining any sought after compatibility. Consider the following passage from Archbishop Chrysostomos, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Relations from the Fourth Crusade to the Hesychastic Controversy (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2001, Lecture 7, pages 226-22):
"In many ways, then, the Hesychastic Controversy brought Orthodox soteriology into direct conflict with the rise of Papal monarchy. Whereas for the Palamites and for Orthodox soteriology, each individual may attain to the status of 'vicar of Christ,' by virtue of his transformation, purification, union with God, and deification by Grace, the Papal monarchy came to claim for the person of the Bishop of Rome alone, and this by virtue of his election to that See, what was for the Orthodox the universal goal of the Christian Faith, that
criterion of spiritual authority that brought Patriarch and pauper into a oneness of spiritual authority and charismatic power. Here, in the collision between Papism and Hesychasm, politics and theology, inextricably bound together in a complex web of historical events, brought about an extraordinary deadlock in what are to this day 'seemingly irreconcilable differences of doctrine' that lay at the heart of Orthodox and Roman Catholic relations in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries." (Chrysostomos, 1943-2019, was appointed Bishop of Etna, California in 1989, elevated to its Archbishop in 1995 and then its Metropolitan in 2014.
3. Perhaps a neutral Anglican appraisal coming from someone who later would become the Archbishop of Canterbury might indirectly shed some light as to the compatibility of Palamism and Catholicism:
"Palamas has come to be presented as The doctrine of the Eastern Church on the knowledge of God, and any critical questioning of Palamism is interpreted as an attack upon the contemplative and experiential theology of Orthodoxy. However, scholars, by no means unsympathetic to the Eastern tradition, have serious doubts upon whether the Palamite distinction of of OUSIA and ENERGEIA is really a legitimate development of the theology of the Cappadocians or Maximus the Confessor ... Against the Eunomian heretics, Basil and the Gregories insist the God's ENERGEIA are inseparable, the ENERGEIA is one ... The Patristic defense of Trinitarian dogma points us towards an IDENTIFICATION of OUSIA and ENERGEIA ... Palamism is philosophically a rather unhappy marriage of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic systems, the characteristic extreme realism of NEOPLATONIC metaphysics coloring (and confusing) a terminology better understood in terms (inadequate though they may be) of the Aristotelian logic already applied to Christian trinitarianism." (Rowan Williams, The Philosophical Structures of Palamism in Eastern Churches Review, Vol. IX, no. 1-2; 1977 - p.41)
It is one or the other the truth or Gregory Palamas or Aquinas .cant be both .one is correct the other a satanic heresy says
I thought we need to believe in the same things
I wish he would get down to the bare bones disagreement, the uncreated light. John writes in His gospel, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, all things were made by him and without him nothing was made that was made. In Him was light and the light was the life of men, and the light shines in the Darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it.”
Okay, so you have the Light of God which is *in* the Logos. Is that light created or uncreated? Well, that light is in God, and nothing within God can be called created.
So do we ever see this light in scripture? Yes, that light descended upon the tabernacle, it is the light that passed by Moses when he was in the rock which caused his face to shine, it is the light that shone from Christ on the mount of transfiguration.
Okay, so a Palamite will say that Light is God. It actually is God relating Himself in the world in a supernatural way, that those who witnessed that light actually saw God, and experienced God.
Barlam said that light was a created light that God used to communicate his favor and presence, but was not actually uncreated or divine in any way.
And we say the term energies in English, but I think it is more appropriate to say Energy. God doesn’t have multiple energies, because as you have pointed out, God is not made of parts, rather there is God’s inner essence which only God can know fully, and then there is God’s working in the world.
By analogy, a human being also has an essence and energy distinction. I may have a good relationship with my friend, Facebook Tom, but I will never know what it is like to *be* him. I can only know Tom by what he does, but I will never know his inner thought life, and how he experiences the world. Now, when Tom gets up and makes his breakfast in the morning, is his inner motivating force, or his energy, a different energy than when he kisses his wife? Or is he merely doing something else with the same energy? It is the same, singular energy being expressed in different ways.
So, for example, when God energizes the world, or works within it, we can recognize, “oh, that’s God” but at the same time we do not know what it means to be God in God’s self, or God’s essence.
So, the difference when the rubber meets the road is this, when Paul was knocked off his horse by a light and blinded, a Palamite will say that light was God’s activity in the world, the light was uncreated, and it is the light that John wrote abides in the Logos.
Barlam would say that light was a created phenomenon, was not divine, but was a means whereby God communicated with Paul *indirectly through a created medium* whereas a Palamite will say that God communicated with God directly through His uncreated light.
Now, this is essential, because it means that Barlam did not believe it was possible to experience God, where Gregory Palamas said that you could experience God directly, and to say otherwise is to negate what God did in the incarnation and also to deny the hope of Christians, which is Theosis, Union with God.
St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Leo says the light of Mt Tabor is created.
Palamism / Orthodoxy doesn't deny divine simplicity; rather, it understands it differently than the Scholastic West. That said, the Orthodox understanding of divine simplicity does not involve the identification of God's many energies (or what are called His "attributes" in the West) with the divine essence; instead, God is simple because the unknowable divine essence is wholly (i.e., indivisibly) present in each of God's many uncreated energies. Finally, as far as the discussion on "personalism" is concerned, the teaching of St. Gregory of Palamas properly understood cannot fall into a non-personal position because the energies are enhypostatic; that is to say, they have their being in the persons of the Trinity, and so they are by definition personal and cannot be seen in any other way according to Palamas.
@@T_frog1 - alas, Eastern Catholics (i.e., Melkites, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, et. al.) would disagree with your comment, because they venerate St. Gregory Palamas on his feast day; while also commemorating him on the Second Sunday of Great Lent.
If you read the fathers, the Son is enhypostatic of the Father, that is, His hypostasis exists within and is indivisible from that of the Father, though they are distinct. An energy cannot be a hypostasis (a subsistent thing or being, since it is merely God's power in action (Eph 3:7). The Son and the Father are equal in nature and in power and in divinity, but the energies are, in Palamas' words, inferior divinity in comparison with the superior divinity, which infinitely transcends them', so in what way can they be personal or enhypostatic, since they are infinitely transcended by the three divine persons? His analogy fails.
@@T_frog1 Gregory Palamas went against absolute divine simplicity .he supported divine simplicity understand the difference between the two
@@T_frog1 how catholism are in full union with the Byzantine Catholic in the Eucharist and participate in that but say Gregory Palamas is a heretic when he in tbe Byzantine Catholic Eucharist is seen as a saint so explain
@@thomaspalmieri6038 paul shows the ενέργεια energy of God in distinction from the persons
Another problem with Palamism is that it identifies all of the divine attributes with the energies, but this is contrary to the Scripture, for Paul teaches that grace is the energizing of divine power within us (Eph 3:7). This means that energy is an operation of the attribute of divine power. That is, God's attribute of power is the principle from which the energies derive, whereas Palamas incorrectly teaches that the divine attributes derive from the principle of the divine energy. Palamas was an inconsistent theologian because his ideas do not cohere with the Scriptures when they are subjected to rigorous examination.
Paul actually uses synonymus ενέργεια energy with δύναμις power col2:12 _ 1 cor6:14
@@user-pj7sq7ce1f Paul uses ενέργεια as synonymous with δύναμις because energy is power in action. Note that he does not use energy as synonymous with goodness, truth, life, light, and so forth, when speaking of God, which is the doctrine of Pseudo Dionysius, John of Damascus and Gregory Palamas, who teach that the latter terms signify processions or energies emanating from God's essence.
@@thomaspalmieri6038 Paul uses the word ενέργεια ενεργηματα that get in us energy enegies. And shows they are Uncreated not something created as cathollics claim
@@thomaspalmieri6038 yes Paul uses energy meaning χάρις Grace.
@@user-pj7sq7ce1f As you have been told before, but are incapable of understanding, in the Latin tradition created grace does not mean 'the energizing of God's power within us' (cf. Eph 3:7), but being a new creation in Christ (ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις - 2 Cor 5:17). Is being a new creation in Christ uncreated grace? No, that would be blasphemy. So if you don't know which Scriptures Aquinas is referring to when he speaks of created grace, you end up looking awfully foolish. Uncreated grace refers to God's activity, created grace to the effect of God's activity upon man.
Matt is so humble here and a great listener. I think Father Peter is running from sin when he thinks he can receive God while acting contrary to his will. We may be participating in the divine will in so far as we remain part of creation as a living creature, but that will not last forever if we were to perish in a state that has been working contrary to the divine will. In the end, we will be weighed on the scales and our final condition will be determined by our purchase of souls to or away from heaven.
When a man says God is disinterested in our participation or is not affected by it... you are in a bad bad place, my friend. You are clinging to the edge of salvation by your finger nails and hoping that your way of seeing participation in the divine will as having nothing to do with your condition or your response. As many words as this man might be able to blurt out, they only manage to confuse rather than sanctify, and that is the proof of grace. Please pray for this priest, brothers and sisters.
If there is no distinction then God HAD to create the world and us. That is to say He was Creator before He created the heavens and the earth.
You got it in reverse. If there's distinction then creation is a necessary act, not a free act, of God. Father Totleben discussed this quite clearly in the video.
@@namapalsu2364 How's that?
@@andrewselbyphotography What is the point of uncreated energy? The answer is, so that creature can relate to God because essence is too trancendent. It follows then the energy follows creatures. It exists because creature exists. Without creature there's no point of this uncreated energy. What did it do before creation?
Hopefully that shed some light.
This is actually an important objection. If you poke around in a coupe of answers to Chris Sweet I gave some hints about how I would answer it. Basically, the distinction doesn't help you, because then you just end up having to make the energies themselves contingent, and then the question immediately arises why God's essence has these energies and not others. It's the same problem, just now it happens in the Godhead itself. This problem shows up in every Christian metaphysic, because it is inherent to the idea of trying to derive a contingent plurality from a one. The problem even arises for analytic "theistic personalists" who think that God is just a big perfect powerful man in the sky. They still have to ask if an all-wise, all-good, all-powerful God can really be free.
@@BrPeterTotlebenOP Thanks for the reply Father. I'm going to have to think about this for a couple of years
I am still not sure it's not just 2 ways of describing the same thing but I need to bang my head off this one a bit more.
I have found that often when I try to think like each side, I come to that often we speak at cross purposes. Thomas is so beautifully logical, with great emphasis on precision of language, the Eastern mindset seems to couch concepts in mystical and figurative language, approaching mysteries with the emphasis on the mystery as unknowable in its fullness, whereas our beloved Thomas emphasized reason and knowing as much as can be known. Getting the two approaches to reconcile may not be possible but does that mean they cannot both be valid approaches.
@@gkseeton I tend to agree. I think many disagreements only seem that way because of our limited perspectives and that in God's eyes both sides are part of the whole unified Church. I'm also not sure how important it is to God that we try to achieve full understanding yet. As a new Christian I can't help wondering if most denominational issues are akin to splitting hairs where each one is correct up to the point at which they cry heretic and anathemise one another to create division where God created unity. I am too ignorant to decide yet but I can't shake the feeling.
@@colmwhateveryoulike3240 to some extent yes, except unity can only be achieved by way of all embracing truth. Correct theology is the means, we must avoid relativism and syncretism because accepting either is to reject truth. I’m inclined in study of theological approaches among Orthodox and Catholic to look for differences in how a truth agreed upon is approached. This is different from ignoring heresy in the name of unity. When someone disrespects Mary or rejects Tradition, the Real Presence, or other foundational truth of the Faith they have crossed a line from unity into rejection of truths handed down from the apostles, who were taught by Jesus and further by the Holy Spirit as Christ said. I respect genuine desire to love and serve Jesus but true unity is unity of belief which does not exist on very basic truths between Catholics and non-Catholics. Only the Orthodox come close to unity of belief even though they reject the Catholic understanding of the role of the Pope. We get the fun of going much deeper with theology to discuss differences there. But when my Baptist friend considers my praying the Rosary as a pagan practice that leads to hell I may appreciate her zeal but we are not in unity.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese Thanks I'll check that out.
@@gkseeton Yes, I think you're definitely correct. The only thing I'll say is that love covers a multitude of sins so I suspect a lot of sheep in goatherds will be drawn in despite bad doctrine. I was an atheist naturalist desperately seeking truth itself when God saw fit to respond in supernatural ways and reveal Himself with an immense amount of "unreasonable" patience for my stubborn skepticism so how much more mercy will he show other Christians, considering their circumstances and heritage? Only God can weigh up such things but He is merciful. That said, we should at every step endeavour to seek truth and for that reason I personally am also edging Orthodox. Gregory the Great's Epistle XI to Eulogius put the question of Peter's See being geographically fixed to one person to rest in my mind.
Matt, how about teaching people how to do both and see if it works?
The US is great at teaching and understanding Christian theology but we forget that Christianity and salvation is of a Living God who can answer all these questions Himself.
How about getting an Eastern Hesychast to teach it on your channel and have another Thomism practitioner teach the other and get real information on whether both work or are appealing to God?
Orthobros Attack!!!
1204 II: The Empire Strikes Back
So, simplicity is God is indivisible. But He is made of indivisible persons that co-exist. They are distinct but each exist in the other and cannot be seperated and are of one mind, one essence and oneness.
Palamism and _Catholicism_ can't be reconciled... The proposition that "the Divine Attributes are really identical among themselves and with the Divine Essence" is _de fide_ .
The Thomistic position is that "grace is _said to be created_ inasmuch as men are created with reference to it [emphasis added]" ( _ST_ Ia-IIae. Q.110, A.2, ad.3), @JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese; "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10 _D-R_ ).
The Orthodox distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies is openly at variance with the absolute simplicity of God, because it introduces a composition in Him; Christ isn't a heretical polytheist, Palamas is.
"...there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His 'suppositum'; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple" ( _ST_ Ia. Q.3, A.7, co.).
_Created_ grace is created. _Uncreated_ grace is not. Created _accidental_ grace is a supernatural gift. Uncreated _substantial_ grace is God Himself. How does that distinction render divine simplicity incoherent, @JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese? Conversely, the proposed (Persons ≠ attributes ≠ essence) creates a clear divide within God, contradicting both dogma _and_ authentic scriptural exegesis...
Acceptance of a real distinction leads _inexorably_ to composition, and therefore dissolution, @JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese, Aristotelean “canards” notwithstanding.
Sts. Basil, Nyssa, Dionysus, and Damascene (all of whom are cited dozens, if not hundreds of times, in the Summa) certainly weren’t proto-Palamites. That’s entirely anachronistic. This isn’t an appropriate forum for long-form citations, but I’ll refer you to Jean-Philippe Houdret’s article: “Palamas et les Cappadociens” (bekkos.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/j-p-houdret-on-palamas-and-the-cappadocians/)
_Palamism_ and Catholicism cannot be reconciled. The Cappadocians themselves, however, _are_ Catholic, as is their work.
Any Uniate who venerates Palamas, Photius, or Mark of Ephesus should be ashamed, but their error is immaterial; it isn’t part and parcel of Uniatism.
The Persons of the Trinity are one in essence… so, no, @JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese, acceptance of a distinction between them as such does not, as in the case of a distinction between the essence and energies lead “to composition, and therefore dissolution” in the Godhead; with respect to the Trinity, the divine essence remains undivided, whereas in Palamism, the essence is _other_ than the energies.
The aforementioned Fathers are considered foundational to Palamism _and_ Thomism; they are read differently by Catholic and Orthodox theologians. That was my point. I was not suggesting that either Palamas or St. Thomas agreed with them 1:1 (in fact, that’s precisely what I reject); no “basic false dilemma logical fallacies” here. But, again, this conversation is entirely too difficult to have in a RUclips combox, and it’s getting increasingly convoluted.
Criticizing the tendency of Orthodox apologists to read Palamism into the Fathers isn’t an instance of “secular western demarcation,” and that construction certainly doesn’t account for Barlaam, who argued against Hesychasm from within Orthodoxy… I could just as easily say that “there is no Thomism in Catholicism,” but as a point of intellectual history that’s simply a non-starter. Just as the Catholic Church’s theology has been heavily influenced by St. Thomas, Orthodoxy’s understanding of itself has been filtered through Palamas. Doctrinal development is an observable historical fact, and the increasing clarity and specificity consequent to the Ecumenical Councils is case in point.
The Uniates should follow the lead of their ancestors and take pride in the Holy Unia. Unfortunately, Rome is in the business of tolerating quite a bit of bad behavior these days. The fact that _some_ Uniates revere heretics and schismatics is, once again, immaterial. They are wrong to do so, and their error should be condemned, just as it was at the Council of Zamość.
What’s “silly” is trivializing the contributions of intellectual giants like The Philosopher and The Angelic Doctor because they belie the misconceptions of Orthodoxy. This is a serious matter. I simply do not share your confusion, and so I do not have a problem with the Thomistic conception, and Catholic doctrine, of divine simplicity.
A distinction between the divine essence and energies or essence and attributes introduces composition in the Godhead, whereas a distinction between the Persons of the Trinity does not, because they are incomparable distinctions, @JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese. The “transitivity of identity” is, with respect to this dispute, irrelevant, and the comparison made is demonstrably false. The Persons are coeternal, coequal, and consubstantial. Each is uncreated, almighty, and immeasurable. The Trinity is “one in substance and undivided.”
Contrast the above, Trinitarianism, with your theology, Palamism, which teaches that the divine essence “exceeds” the energies, even “surpasses” them, according to _The Triads_ ; wherein “only one reality is unoriginated, the essence of God” and “all the energies of God are uncreated” but “not all are without beginning.” For Palamas, then, the essence and energies are not “coeternal” or “coequal;” divinity is therefore divided and multiplied.
I’m not defending a “middle ground.” I’m suggesting that St. Thomas is in harmony with the Faith of the Fathers expressed in the Creeds and Councils of the Catholic Church, East _and_ West, and that Palamas is not. Tradition is subject to misinterpretation. I’m arguing that Orthodox hermeneutics is faulty. You’re denying that it exists, and that there are no “schools of thought,” which bears much more resemblance to Protestantism than my position…
Barlaam converted to Catholicism because Orthodoxy canonized Palamism. He resisted the _doctrinal development_ then occurring within Orthodoxy. That’s my point: his disputation with Palamas wasn’t an instance of Catholic/Orthodox polemics, it was a schism within a schism.
Christ walking on water is uncreated energy?
22:28 - the tome of 1351, signed by Palamas says that the distinction between the energy and the essence is kat'epinoian (a conceptual or mental distinction).
This distinction is like the one we can make in the fire, where i can trace a distinction between his light and his heat and the flame itself, this distinction, although existing in the thing [the fire] per se, in any way imply division the fire is absolutely simple, not composite of parts whatsoever.
There is another distinction we can trace in the flame, between his right side and left side, tracing a mental line in the middle, this distinction however does not exist in the flame per se, being only in my mind, but that is not what we meant when we say kat'epinoian. Thats why we say that the distinction is "real", the problem is that for thomism a "real distinction" is one that imply division/multiplicity/parts... thats why we need to be careful when using the language to explain this concepts.
22:46 This is exactly the teaching of John Chrysostom in the homilies "On the Incomprehensible Nature of God."
Palamas seems more simple - no pun intended lol
Re: the Q&A, I don’t think the argument is that Thomism and absolute divine simplicity lead to pantheism; I think it’s that it leads to atheism, because it cuts God off from the world entirely. I can however see how a misinterpretation of Palamism could lead to a sort of Pantheism.
I can see how some caricatured version of so-called "absolute divine simplicity" as this is discussed in, say, contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, might possibly lead to cutting God off from the world. The problem is, however, as I pointed out in the video, that everybody means something different by "absolute divine simplicity." Most people who talk about "absolute divine simplcity" are just arguing against straw men.
Aquinas' own understanding of divine simplicity is not remotely subject to such a critique. In fact, I don't know how such an idea could even possibly occur to someone even slightly familiar with Aquinas. (Seriously, how anyone who reads Ia, qq.2-4, 8, 13, 103-105 could think this is completely beyond me!) As I pointed out in the video, for Aquinas, divine simplicity (taken together with the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo) is precisely what enables God to be immediately and radically present to creation at its very depths.
In fact, the whole motivation for positing uncreated divine energies is the idea that there is some gap in the ontological hierarchy between God and the creature which God needs to span. Thomists posit an even more radical kind of intimacy to the creature, saying that God is radically present to the creature by actively and immediately causing all of its being and perfection (its actus essendi), with absolutely no subject presupposed.
In fact, among people who are familiar with Thomism, it is more common for us Thomists to be under attack for making God *too* actively and radically present in the life of the creature on account of our radically synergistic doctrine of physical premotion. (No joke! In fact, in Ia, q. 23, a. 1, ad 1, St. Thomas gently corrects St. John Damascene for making creatures too independent from God).
So, if you want to criticize early modern and contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and the way that it thinks through philosophical problems about God, be my guest! Palamism is vastly prefereable to all of these systems! But remember, the way that they are thinking about God is very different from the way that St. Thomas Aquinas thinks about God, and therefore their arguments about divine simplicity really don't touch on what St. Thomas is saying. To understand what St. Thomas is saying about simplicity, you have to account for his notion of simplicity in the light of his understanding of God, other very different accounts of God and simplicity don't really touch on his point of view. (If your Spanish is any good, there is going to be a really good talk by Fr. Juan Harrera, O.P., who wrote probably the best book on simplicity in Aquinas online on 3/15: angelicum.it/event/la-simplicidad-de-dios-en-tomas-de-aquino-en-linea/)
Actually, Thomism and Palamism have much more in common with each other than either has with the type of philosophy of religion that you see in Leibniz, Paley, Plantinga, Craig, et al. (Ed Feser and Fr. Brian Davies, O.P. are especially good on this point). Roughly, Thomism and Palamism share the common approach of being (broadly-speaking, despite differences) "Dionysian" in their approach to God. This approach is rejected by later forms of philosophy of religion (which latter approach Davies has termed "theistic personalism"). The Thomist critique (with its view of divine simplicity) is, surprisingly enough, that the neo-Palamite approach does not go far enough in rejecting the view of God as acting just like any other agent acts. The doctrine of divine simplicity functions, in Thomism to guarantee the radical transcendence of God over all forms of created being and agency, precisely as the condition of being able to be intimately and immediately involved in them all, whereas Palamism presupposes an ontological distance between the divine essence and creatures, so that God has to go outside of himself to make contact with creatures and act on them.
Another good example of this is the Thomistic doctrine that creation is nothing but the real relation of dependence which the creature has on God (de Potentia, q. 3, a. 3), which is the whole reason why Aquinas thinks you can prove God's existence a priori, by arguing from creatures back to God (Ia, q. 2, a. 2).
@@BrPeterTotlebenOP
In your fascinating discussion with Dr. Bradshaw of a few days ago, Bradshaw mentioned Maximus the Confessor and how "simplicity" is itself an "ergo" a work. Hence, simplicity is just one way that he manifests to us. Does this concept pose a challenge for a Thomist? Please explain and thank you for your time.
If only created corporeal things can affect created corporeal things and this is a rigid and unbreakable metaphysical law then how does God affect creatures? And why would any story a Thomist tells to explain how that is possible not be allowed to someone who affirms the E/E distinction?
👍🙏✝️🇻🇦
Palamas vs St. Thomas
I think to settle this debate we first must answer the question, "is Gregory in Heaven?" I'd say no since he died an ortho and not a Catholic, "what did Gregory do?" Well he defended hesocasym, a practice that from my understanding is very similar to what buddhists and hindus do. So no, I personally don't think we should be honouring Gregory
Sooooo, Orthodox automatically go to hell?
@@GuadalupePicasso yes
@@ShaNaNa242 you have an incredibly toxic view of Catholicism, which, luckily, the Catholic Church does not teach.
In short, shame on you for presuming to sit on the throne of God, daring to declare with your puffed up definitiveness as to who is in hell.
A real Christian bothers not with these distinctions, and instead worried about and focuses on their own salvation.
In fact this was precisely how Christ responded to the Apostles when they asked Him how many would be saved. In short, Christ told them to not waste time in these thoughts and discussions, and to instead “strive to enter” the narrow gate themselves.
I encourage you to do likewise.
@@GuadalupePicasso stop acting like you know me and my intentions, the orthodox don't go to Heaven (Extra Nullas Sallas) I'm trying to inform people who are under a false belief that the orthos or those who chose to not be Catholic are in heaven. I'm defending Catholic dogma, am I better than you? No, I'm a terrible man and a sinner, but I'm trying to correct error.
@@ShaNaNa242 you are wrong in your understanding of church teaching, and you insult God by presuming to sit on His throne, hiding behind “this is just what the church teaches”🙄
Again, get off of your false throne, repent, and worry about your own salvation. Also, go and read a great work such as The Spiritual Life And How To Be Attuned To It by the Russian saint Theophan the Recluse, and then try and say, with a straight face, that “all of the Orthodox will burn in hell”.
No
The Light of Tabor is not contingent. As St. Palamas made clear in his homily on the Transfiguration, it is not Christ who is changed at the Transfiguration; instead, it is the apostles who are changed, for their eyes are opened in order to see the divine light that was always present in Christ.
That's what the Eastern Orthodox (the ones who haven't actually bothered to study Aquinas) always fail to understand: 'created grace' does not mean the energizing of God's power in us (cf. Eph 3:7), which is what they mean by 'uncreated grace', but being a new creation in Christ: ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις (2 Cor 5:17).
@@thomaspalmieri6038 - as Palamas explains in various other texts it is not a "created" change that occurs in the Apostles on Mt. Tabor; rather, it is a real ontological participation in the uncreated eternal divine energy, which makes the Apostles uncreated by grace (see St. Gregory Palamas, "Third Letter to Akindynos"). That said, there is no such thing as "created" grace.
@@theomimesis First of all, you did not address what I said about 2 Corinthians 5:17, about our becoming a new creation in Christ. You don't defeat an argument by ignoring it, but concede that you don't have a proper answer for it by neglecting to address it, so you pass on to another Palamite absurdity - if you are quoting him correctly.
Where in the whole of Sacred Scripture does it say that men and angels become uncreated by grace? The Trinity would thereby become the Trillionity! Christ said that in the age to come men will become like the angels (Mk 12:25), but the angels are said to be CREATED spirits - ποιῶν τοὺς ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ πνεύματα (Heb 1:7). Our spiritual bodies in the age to come will be like the angels themselves "made" (ποιῶν) or created by God.
St. John of the Cross, the mystical doctor par excellance of the Roman Catholic Church, whose body remains in a state of incorruption over 400 years since he passed from this world, whilst Palamas' flesh moldered in the tomb, though his bones remain, evidencing a lower level of spiritual unification with God in this life than that attained by that saint who far exceeded him in wisdom and charity and in nearness unto God, gives the proper explanation of the soul's "transforming union" (as he put it) with God:
"Hence, for the soul to be in its center - which is God, as we have said - it is sufficient for it to possess one
degree of love, for by one degree alone it is united with him through grace. Should it have two degrees, it
becomes united and concentrated in God in another, deeper center. Should it reach three, it centers itself in a
third. But once it has attained the final degree, God's love has arrived at wounding the soul in its ultimate and
deepest center, which is to illuminate and transform it in its whole being, power, and strength, and according to its capacity, until it appears to be God.
When light shines on a clean and pure crystal, we find that the more intense the degree of light, the more
light the crystal has concentrated within it and the brighter it becomes; it can become so brilliant from the
abundance of light received that it seems to be all light. And then the crystal is undistinguishable from the light, since it is illumined according to its full capacity, which is to appear to be light." (The Living Flame of Love, Stanza 1.13)
The glorified body and spirit in heaven, then, will be made (ποιῶν) by God like unto the angels, and be of such crystalline pure nature that God's uncreated light will shine through it with such intensity that it will appear to be the uncreated Light of God Himself, but it remains a creature, and does not become uncreated, assuming that you properly quoted Palamas, as having said such an insipid and blasphemous thing.
It really does feel like Thomists have "too perfect" of a system. And that they only work within their predetermined system. It is all logical, formal, rational, but it's just too...neat. It feels cold and unreal.
Matt , the idea that there is no “middle thing” in Thomism (1:13:00) seems false; because grace itself is created in Thomas’ framework. Whereas Gods energies, while distinct from Gods essence (nature) are not “created”. They are in a sense “part of God”, or “God made manifest”. When we participate in Gods energies we participate in God himself in a more real sense. Again, I’m new to this Eastern stuff but I think I’m correctly articulating the position
But it's precisely because grace is a "created" (but this has a very technical sense!) accident in Thomism that it is not a "middle thing". After all to call it created means to say that it is one of the effects at which God's creating/conserving action terminates; unlike uncreated energies, they are not the very action itself that "transpires" between the essence and the energies.
In short, there are four critiques that a Thomist would make of this understanding of divine energies:
(1) The point of divine simplicity is to argue that there is no distinction between act and potency whatever in God, and this makes him transcend every genus of being In Thomistic metaphysics, to say that there are activities of God that are somehow extra-mentally distinct from the divine essence is to say that God's essence acquires some further perfection; but God cannot be a perfected being, particularly if that perfection comes from a habitude towards creatures.
(2) Palamites do not typically argue for the existence of divine energies as extra-mentally distinct from the divine essence. Rather, they make the assumption that because we can formulate clear and distinct concepts of "God in himself" and "God made manifest" that these clear and distinct concepts answer to distinct entites ex parte rei. That is, at best Palamites give a nominal definition for the term "divine energy", but they do not supply an argument for why there must exist something other than the divine essence that answers to the term. At best they beg the question when they assume that those who deny that there is some unique entity answering to the notion of "God made manifest" have no account of how God can be manifest.
(3) Even if it could be demonstrated that there are divine energies that are somehow extra-mentally distinct from the divine essence, the doctrine of creation ex nihilo would render them superfluous, because unlike a created agent acting on a created patient, when God acts ad extra he does not act on any presupposed subject. We must signify and conceive of creation as if it were a transient action that occurs over time, but creation is actually not a transient action, and so we must apophatically correct our mode of conceiving and signifying (derived as it is from a reflection on created agents acting on created patients) when we apply it to an uncreated agent causing the whole being and perfection of a thing with absolutely no presupposed subject. There is no need to suppose that God somehow manifests himself to things outside of himself, because this would suppose that the things to which he manifests himself (because they terminate the act of manifestation) exist prior to the manifestation, but that this is not the case is precisely what the doctrine of creation ex nihilo affirms.
(4) It is not clear that the terms "uncreated" or "manifestation" are or can be well-defined on their Palamite acceptation. Towards the end of his book, David Bradshaw reacts to the pan(en)theistic anti-Christian interpretation of Palamite metaphysics that is offered by Eric Perl. Perl (if I recall correctly; it's been awhile) basically thinks that God's energies are real relations of God to the creatures that are expressive of the various logoi of creatures. And, by implication, he thinks that the way God manifests himself through these energies cannot be otherwise than it in fact is. Consequently, there is no reason to suppose that God is free and personal. I actually think that if you really want to make the metaphysics of Palamas rigorous and consistent.
Many Eastern Orthodox neo-Palamites are not really interested in making the metaphysics of Palamism rigorous and consistent. This is basically John Meyendorff's position. John Meyendorff, in dialogue with French existentialist and personalist thought (as well as his Catholic ressourcement contemporaries) basically wants to see Palamas as representing a certain orientation in Christian life, and does not really sweat the metaphysical details. (As a matter of fact, given his post-Heideggerian intellectual milieux, I suspect that he would think that the preoccupation of theology with metaphysics was itself more than a little bit decadent).
David Bradshaw, however sees the problem with both of these approaches. He wants to get the metaphysics right, but he also wants to be a good Christian, so he is looking for a Christian interpretation of the notion of "uncreated divine energies." Again, I don't have his book handy (it's sitting in a box in a church basement half a world away from me), but he seems to want to classify all of the ways that God can be thought of as manifesting himself as different divine energies--some more permanent, some less permanent, some contingent, some beginning in time, and so on.
Now I wonder how coherent this category of "manifestation" really is as a category (even if we grant that these kinds of really-distinct-from-the-essence manifestations exist in re at all). First, some forms of this manifestation seem to have an object and some seem to lack an object; that's a pretty good indication that we are not dealing with one kind of thing, seriously imparing the coherence of the category. Second, I wonder what it means to talk about a manifestation that lacks an object; particularly if that manifestation would exist in a world without creatures. What could it mean for God to manifest himself outside of himself in an action ad extra that terminates in no object, where there is nothing else outside of God? So I'm not really sure if this interpretation of energies as manifestations of God outside of God coheres as a class.
I also wonder what "uncreated" means in the context of divine energies. Palamites use this term as if its meaning is obvious, but I'm not sure that it is. To judge from the anti-Eunomian context of the Cappadocian fathers, where the language of divine energies really enters into Christian theology, "uncreated" must mean something like, "exists non-contingently, independently of the will of God." (Recall that Eunomius thought that the Son was in some sense created because he came about from the energy of the Father's will, for instance). But Bradshaw seems to think that at least some things that are called "uncreated divine energies" are contingent products of God's will that come to be and pass away in time. But then why are they called "uncreated"? I once asked Bradshaw this, and his answer (I believe) was that the word "created" has several different senses. (He did not, however, elaborate on the various senses of "uncreated" in the propositions "The divine essence is uncreated" and "This divine energy which begins to exist contingently in time at the decree of God's will is uncreated). This seems to me to be an equivocation. That might be enough to save the traditional formulae, but it is not enough to save the realities which those traditional formulae are intended to denote.
What the neo-Palamite school is really groping after is a notion of a "created supernatural" that elevates the essence of the soul to a formal likeness of the divine nature and elevates the powers of the soul to engage in acts that have God the Trinity directly as their object. This is not the place to recount the whole Thomistic account of obediential potency and the supernatural organism (or how an accident like sanctifying grace, a virtue, or a gift of the Holy Spirit are properly understood to qualify a substance or faculty). But it would be useful to answer the standard Palamite objection that something created cannot deify. The simple answer is that Thomists do not hold that created grace alone deifies the person. Sanctifying grace is the formal, but not the efficient cause of deification. The efficient cause of deification is the action of God on the soul which gives it this higher formal likeness to the divine essence, and which elevates the faculties of the soul to make acts of knowing and loving (under the divine motion) which attain to God himself. Not only do these actions attain to God himself, but since the known is in the knower and the loved is in the lover, they actively bring about an indwelling likeness of the Trinity in the deified person. A person who has studied a little bit of Thomistic spiritual theology is really shocked at how someone could think that Thomists have no explanation for how a person can have a real encounter with God, because the whole thrust of the thing is to explain how the uncreated action of God really enables a person to have a direct experience of God. The reason why it has to posit created, but supernatural, forms/habitus in the essence of the soul and in its faculties is to secure the fact that deification is really a property of the person deified.
And Thomists have no problem with calling this uncreated action of God which brings about a synergistic cooperation with the person in encountering God, an uncreated divine energy. They just hold that this "uncreated divine energy" is a distinction of reason that we are forced to make when we think about how God acts on us. So, we observe some created effect in the world, and since (passive) creation is nothing but a relation of complete dependence of the creature on God, we reason back to God and recognize this created effect as a participation in him (you have to recognize the participant, and then the thing that it participates in before you can acknowledge a relationship of participation). Then we distinguish a "logos" in God---one of the divine ideas according to which his essence is imitatable in creatures. Then we see that this logos must be included in God's knowing and loving of himself, the immanent acts of which (active) creation is the virtually transient effect. This is a foundation for a relation of God towards the creature. On this basis, we think of God as being actively related to the creature. But in so doing, we recognize this as the constructive work of our mind trying to think about divine things, and we realize that our mode of conception must be inadequate to God's mode of operation. We think of God as acting on us to energize us, but this really is not the case.
Bradshaw does, however, raise the right challenge to the Thomist: if God is simple, then his act of willing is really identical to his act of being, and thus if God were to will differently, then God would be something different. Hence, either creation is necessary, or God is not simple. The short answer to this problem is that God's act of willing is specified by his essence as its object, and this "prior" creatures. Creatures are secondary objects of the divine will, loved inasmuch as they are participations in God himself. Consequently, creatures aren't means that God wills to attain an end, but rather, God, having attained his end wills to communicate it to creatures. But, since God has no end to attain in creating, there is no necessary reason why he creates one set of creatures as opposed to another. And since the act of his will is specified prior to the emnation of creatures, that act of will would be the same no matter what set of creatures he wills to create. Thomas just appeals to the axiom "bonum diffusivum sui." The answer is either mysterious, because we don't have any analogous experience of creating on which to better understand how this can be, or it is absurd. But, I think it solves the problem better than positing a contingent plurality of divine energies, because this solution has all the same problems (how does this contingency emerge from the essence), but with the added difficulty of making the problem occur in the divnity itself.
@@BrPeterTotlebenOP thank you for the robust responses Father Peter. That’s given me a lot to think about. Pardon my inadequate explanations; I’m still trying to get my head around some of these distinctions.
@@confectionarysound So are we all...
If you get to bring the charge that a friend of a friend who was a Palamist became a neo-Platonist, then Palamists can bring the charge that Scholasticism is responsible for the entirety of nominalism and atheistic, Enlightenment rationality (🤫which actually seems to be the case...)
Actually atheism is the same age as Christianity, probably even older.
@@belvedere416 ok, but that is completely irrelevant to my comment. Scholastics *rigorously* applied Aristotelian method to the analysis of divine doctrine and set a new precedent that bequeathed the Enlightenment age in which empirical presuppositions (which themselves can’t be verified empirically) grounded entire schools of (what are essentially atheistic) philosophy. These in turn gave way to our modern age of atheistic materialism.
@@Abraham-yq2wz What do you mean by atheistic philosophy? Many philosophers of the Enlightenment were certainly heterodox, but they were Christians and not atheists. Besides, the scholastics were diverse group, some made use of Aristotle, while others didn't. What are the empirical presuppositions? The scholastics were anything but empiricists.
@@Abraham-yq2wz Of course it is relevant, because atheism is not a product of philosophy. Philosophy is way of understanding, while you believe in a god or gods, or you don't.
@@belvedere416 It doesn’t matter what the philosophers themselves claimed to be, they discarded revelation for natural reason and natural theology. They set a precedent for how people began to think of the universe which did not properly account for the fallen state of nature. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the peripatetic axiom and the “blank slate” (tabula rosa).
I draw a lot of crappy pictures for God.
Palamism
The father says he is interested in eastern orthodox theology then he says he is in philosophy.Those two are the opposite . Orthodox Theology has nothing to do with any philosophical methodology or scholastic thoughts.
Isn’t the trouble with Aquinas’ commitment to divine simplicity that it comes at the cost of Gods freedom to act in the world? Because if the energies that come out of God that are attributed to Him are indistinguishable from His being, than they are also necessary, since there can’t be anything un-actualized in Gods essence. Therefore Gods energies can’t be free acts. I believe that’s the Orthodox critique of radical Divine simplicity. It also starts to muddy the waters a bit with what we mean by person when we speak of the Trinity. That’s my (imperfect) understanding of the Eastern position.
I think you're still thinking within Palamas framework to understand St. Thomas. Much like a muslim who is confuse as to how a son can be a God since a son has a beginning.
And Fr Totleben, on contrary, shows how in Palamism God action in the world is not free.
@@namapalsu2364 no, he doesn’t. Sorry.
@@confectionarysound He did. By pointing out that in the Palamis frame work the connection of the uncreated energy to the creture make creature a necessary (since an uncreated thing is necessar). Thus creation is a must, a necessary. God is not free to create or not to create.
@@namapalsu2364 I believe the apparent problem you’re describing is because you’re also using a Thomistic framework to describe Palamas. Gods energies are that which he’s made manifest but are not exhaustive or equivalent to his essence, and they’re freely done, just like his creation. Saying Gods work (energies) is uncreated means that it exists in God and comes out of Gods mind. But that doesn’t make it necessary. I come from a Thomist background myself, not Palamite, but I’ve been learning to stop thinking in western categories and try to understand the eastern position. Where it actually gets screwy in the east is I believe they’re comfortable ascribing something *like* potency and act in God, but that doesn’t detract from his perfection in any way. It’s more like “that which is in the mind of God, and that which he’s willed to manifest.” A lot of this language is in Maximus the Confessor as well. I may be misunderstanding it, and am open to correction if any Orthodox need to correct me.
@@confectionarysound Ok, so, what is the purpose of His energy were there no creation? What does it do?
Great video until the complete misrepresentation at 51:00.
I don't think that I am misrepresenting anything. What I am trying to do is give what I think are the implications of the Palamite doctrine as reasons for why I think that doctrine is incorrect. Just because you don't agree with the implications of a position doesn't mean that you don't understand the position itself.
@@BrPeterTotlebenOP I appreciate the reply but I would prefer that we don’t accuse each other of “not understanding the position”. I’ll respond in depth later but I urge you to re-read “The Triads” and St. Gregory Palamas’s “Debate with with a Barlaamite” as it is clear, from St. Gregory’s own words, that the Energies of God are God Himself. They are not an intermediary between us and God. The intermediary and indirect communion with God is precisely what happens in Thomism, seeing as grace is created, whereas in Orthodoxy, as you noted, the Energies/Grace are uncreated and, therefore, God Himself.
@@trevorbinning4683 Wait, aren't you the one accusing me of misunderstanding Palamas? I'm confused...
At any rate, yes, I have read The Triads and Gregory Palamas' "Debate With A Barlamite." And, of course I know that Gregory's position is that the divine energies are God himself, as I said at the precise place in the video that you cited. I did not mistake Gregory's position, but rather I said what I think is wrong with it by pointing out what I think is an inadmissible corollary of it. To reify the action of God with respect to the creature is effectively to make the creature ontologically prior to the energy and to view the energy as acting on the cxreature. Whether this reified divine action is called "God" or not, this is precisely an intermediary. This is a consequence of the Palamite position, even if a Palamite wishes that it weren't.
Moreover, to simply explain what you mean by the term "divine energy" is not sufficient as an argument that such a thing exists in reality. It is not even a guarantee that the explanation of the term even counts as significant speech. So merey to assert that "the Energies/Grace are uncreated and, therefore, God himself" establishes nothing, one way or the other about the truth of Palamas' position.
When it come to the position of St. Thomas, I'm afraid that you have misunderstood hi actual creature. St. Thomas does not hold that sanctifying grace is what brings about our deification. For St. Thomas, sanctifying grace (and the theological virtues, the infused moral virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit) are the formal cause of our deification, not the efficient cause of our deification. So for St. Thomas, created grace is not the medium through which we are deified, it is the form in our soul by which we are deified, and as such it is the form at which the uncreated deifying action of God terminates (and this form persists for as long as the uncreated deifying action of God continues to operate on us); and as terminative, it cannot be a medium. The reason why Thomas thinks that there has to be a created formal correlate in the person at which the uncreated action terminates is because deification has to be a real property of the one deified, and the action of the deified person has to be a synergy between God's energy and the creatures.
(I understand the confusion though; it is very common for Orthodox theologians to have a culpable ignorance of the Latin theologians they attempt to critique. All too often they hear a buzzword of Latin theology, and then they guess at what it means according to their own understanding, instead of trying to figure out what it meant to the author who used the term. Then they criticize the term according to their understanding of it. So, if you only listen to Orthodox authors explain Latin concepts, you will get the wrong idea. This is something that has frustrated many Catholic theologians who have tried to interact with Orthodox theologians over the years. Most have just learned to filter out these critiques when they hear them in Orthodox writers, and try to focus on their own ideas.)
So Thomists have no problem at all with using the language of God's "uncreated energies", and in fact, Thomists would readily agree that the uncreated divine energies are really God himself, because the divine energies are just one of our inadequate and refractory concepts of the divine essence, thinking of it as something active ad extra. In fact, we have to conceive of and signify the divine energies in just this way because of the way that our thoughts and language necessarily work. But just because we have to conceive of and signify God in this way does not mean that God actually has to manifest himself outside of his essence to reach creatures; since creation is ex nihilo, with absolutely no subject presupposed, God simply has to will their being.
This priest is saying false things about palamism, there is absolutly no distance involved beetween God and and the creature, since the energies of God are God, just not the God's Essence itself, but one with God's Essence, since they in some way express the Essence, and not some medium that beetween God and the creature. The man ask a good question how to I relate to God in thomistic the answer is by grace, but the question is is grace created, or is grace precisely related to God, and in this case how can it be related to God if it created. Not to forget perviously to Thomas aquinas the question was : can grace be created , while after Thomas the question became can grace be uncreated, which means Thomas aquinas introduced a great shift concerning the way people thought about grace. This priest is not really answering the difficulty adressed by the lay man.
It's not clear how something can be God but also not be the Divine Essence. To not be the Divine Essence is just to say it doesn't have what it is to be that thing, i.e. God, and thus cannot be that thing. So it's not clear how that statement is isn't incoherent, unless you have some special definition of 'essence'. Can you clarify?
@@Math_oma Are our bodies identical with our essence. Are we our bodies?
@@Jy3pr6 No and no. But we're also composite (i.e. not-simple) and not completely immaterial, unlike God. And no one says my body just is me, so the question doesn't arise here. Neo-palamites say that God's activities (energies) are God but without being what it is to be God (essence), and I'm not sure how that's coherent at all.
@@Math_oma The identity beetween the essence and the energies goes beyond our rationnal understanding, but we can approach it. What must be understood, and what thomists most of the time, and scholastics most of the time fail to understand, or to be more precise, understand, but forget it in the process of their rational inquiry, is that the contemplation of God transcends our categories. The energies are the essence of God and at the same time aren't the essence of God. Like the attributes of God, which in palamite théology are identified as energies of God. The attribute of beauty, or wisdom are one with the essence of God, and so in a sens are by their unity with God, the essence of God. By example you couldn't say the beauty in itself isn't God, for it would mean you deny the perfection of beauty to God, but in an other sens, you could not say that God's essence is expressed fully by the attribute of beauty, so in that sens the attribute of beauty is both identical and distinct from the essence of God, since you can contemplate spiritually, the attributes of God, and participate to them, by the effect of grace (created in the case of most post thomistic scholasticism, thought not all of them) or uncreated grace ( as it is taught in orthodox theology especially St Maximus the confessor and St Gregory Palamas) So if the energies are denied, it is difficult to account for the reality of the objectivity of attributes, which it leads without possibility to avoid it, to a nominlistic understanding, and from there it seems that this nominalism will extend to other levels of the universals. The attributes, or energies must have reality in God as dictinctiv in themselves, and at the same time not compromised the unity and simplicity of God, and this is possible by the transcendental perfect nature of God, wich allows precisely things to be one, in him, where things can't united when they are not him. How is it possible that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one in essence, it's possible by the infinite trancendant nature of God. The dominican is misrepresenting palamism when he says that the energies are a mediation, they are not a mediation for they are God himself, just not his essence in itself, which is above all things and hidden, otherwise it would be difficult to understand how God is unkowable in some sens, if I can directly access his essence. Thought thomism explains this by the inadequacy of our minds and our limitation, rather than by the nature of God himself, but by this contradicting, all patristic tradition. God is participable by it's energies, ( attributes ) to give an image like the sun is known to us by the rays of light that come from him, the rays of light are from the sun, and one with the nature of the sun, but are distinct from the sun itself, the sun is not only the light coming from him, and God created the sun this way, for us to have a living symbol of how he is in himself, even thought this symbol, cannot give us an accurate but only a symobolic but still helpfull knowledge of his being, and how how we relate to him, as creatures.
@@ardisilir No, the scholastics at least the ones that people know about, didn't think God exactly lines up with the philosophical categories. I don't think you spoke truly on that point and I'm not sure who told you that. If fact, I think the neo-palamites are trying to force God into categories on how essence and activity work in creatures, even though these are in God in a radically different manner.
I think you'd actually agree with the Thomist because they'd wish to say the active power and substance in God are one, and one in a way which transcends the capacity of language because we must speak about things which are one in God as if they were not one, e.g. speaking of the divine attributes as if they were different things in God. And we must use concepts which do not exhaust what God is in Himself, e.g. our concepts leave out features which are there so far as the thing is in God. So far, I do not sense a disagreement. They would wish to avoid a mediation where something other than God's substance is the active agent, or God acts like a creature. God doesn't use something other than Himself, in other words, or act through the activation of a power, like we do, e.g. when we go from potentially thinking to actually thinking.
What I don't understand, and I don't think my question has been answered, is what one is talking about by saying X is God but X is also not God's essence. If it is God, then it has the characteristic being of God, which just is essence. Perhaps you want to say the energies participate in God's essence, but then what does it participate in? Then that implies God participates in the Divine Essence, which seems to be nonsense because God does participate in another. Like if you take the mysterian route out of this, then that's available to the Thomist as well - they could just say everything they claim is right and rebut any objections by saying it's a mystery, and then the discussion is over. That's a card both sides can play.
I think you cannot take the sun-ray analogy too far because God is very much unlike a star in many respects. First, a star is not living and God is. Not only not-living but non-intellectual, since some living things are non-intellectual. Secondly, God's causation is not a radiation through an already existing space, whereas that's what the sun is doing; God's causation is not quite like lighting up a dark room (what causes the dark room to exist?) The analogy doesn't take into account that God's causation is intellectual, not a radiation of light energy, which is non-intellectual, and hence more like the author of a novel than a star.
How can that man call himself a man of God but deceive in the worst way. In the orthodox church theology there is no such thing as palamism. Gregory Palamas Theology is actually the orthodox church theology nothing different.
We need both Eastern and Western Orthodox Christian living. That is not systematic order of words.
There is no such thing as palamism in orthodox theology. The orthodox church theology is actually tbe same of what saint Greogory Palamas said.so if you have an issue with GREGORY PALAMAS says simple say i dont accept the orthodox church theology
NO, Tommy is wrong
Greg did theology to justify Orthodox yoga.
@@namapalsu2364 1) _"Yoga and the Jesus Prayer - A Comparison between aṣtānga yoga in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali and the Psycho-Physical Method of Hesychasm"_ , by Eiji Hisamatsu and Ramesh Pattni, published in the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 28 (1), january 2015.
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2) _"Dimensions of Mystical Anthropology of the XX Century: Hesychasm and Tibetan Buddhism Compared"_ , PHD Thesis by Elizabete Taivåne, Faculty of Theology of the University of Latvia
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3) _"Clear and Uncreated: The Experience of Inner Light in Gelug-pa Tantrism and Byzantine Hesychasm"_ , by Christopher Emory-Moore, Buddhist-Christian Studies, University of Hawaii Press, vol. 36, 2016
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4) _"The Enlightenment of Zen Buddhism and the Hesychastic Vision of the Divine Light"_ , by George C. Papademetriou, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, University of Pennsylvania Press, Volume 50, Number 1, Winter 2015.
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@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese Just Google those above, my friend 👆. Take care, study a lot, but humbly pray even more. God bless you.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese Hey, have I said Oriental spirituality is never ever allowed to have some influences over monks? No. But the fact is Eastern Orthodox is much related to those concepts like Yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism and even Tantrism. On the fact that Hinduism was influenced by Eastern Orthodox monks in India, do you have a proof of that?
Because in India, most of the Christian presence is of Catholics and of Oriental Orthodox pre-Chalcedonians, and those are separated from Palamism from almost a thousand years. So my guess is that you just made it up to avoid the obvious.
@JL-XrtaMayoNoCheese What? But it's a historical fact.
Sure, many Catholics are crazy Hindust. But Greg is too, apparently.
Western Catholicism lost a lot of the Spiritual interventions of God in their teaching through havibg to contiuously defend truths and the revelations of God that the Eastern Church has still intact. We need both but more important is the Spiritual interaction with God. If God must be worshipped in Spirit (Eastern Church is more nuanced in this) and in Truth (Western Church prides itself in this). God is Truth but He is also Spirit, we need it. Truth gets you somewhere but the Spiritual experience takes you to the fullness of the Truth as we are Spirit in our origin as we come from the ONE TRUE AND DIVINE INVISIBLE SPIRIT.
Excellent comment Ntuthuko. Because Christ emphasized this encounter with Him as the most important thing, Orthodoxy is closest to bearing the fruits Christ told us to look for
@@Jy3pr6 That is not what I am saying. I am a Roman Catholic myself. I was mearly acting in charity towards the one and true body of Christ. If the Orthodox Church and its members were truly the body of Christ you shoud pray that we are just as proficient in Mysticism as we are in defending truth. That is Charity, that we may all share in God's love fully.
The truth is that we have gone too far in "defending" the truth in the Roman Catholic Church, so far as to defend untruth because we fear that people may abuse the truth.
With mysticism this problem can be solved easily, because God can answer for Himself to these people who have questions about the truth. If only we taught it more as the only way to Christ rather than an add-on. But, both are important.
The Orthodox Church itself missed the truth because it denies certain things about God that are true. The Son, is identical to God except in person and seniority but they are of the same essence even in the projection of the Holy Spirit from them. A God of order wants one leader of the overall Church in the seat of Peter, who is the pillar on which the Church was built. This is an orderly Church and is in line with the old Covenant and its tenets. Those are truths that I am willing to live and to die for. You have to accept all revelations about God to be in full communion with Him. There is no balance of propabilities. It is ALL OR NOTHING with God. That is why the Creeds are so important because they are the cornerstone of our faith and the cornerstone of the truth i.e. they are Christ Himself.
I suggest you use mystic ways to discern the truth but be willing to accept it if it is not what you think. I was taught by Christ Himself how to do it. God bless you.
@@1ntuthukozwane Thank you for the response, Ntuthuko.
My intention was not to suggest anything about you, only that to emphasize what Christ emphasized would lead one to Orthodoxy. I can see how that was not clear in my original comment.
Ultimately, I don't acknowledge this division between mysticism and truth though I do see it in the minds of people.
Since dogma was always defined when there was a widespread challenge or effectively denial by heretics, it is highly improbable that the Papal claims of *unqualified*, universal and immediate jurisdiction can plausibly be said to be part of the Deposit of Faith since that view of Papal supremacy was effectively denied in so many instances (and by many Saints) without Rome ever demanding the convocation of an Ecumenical Council or making a unilateral "ex cathedra" proclamation condemning the heretical stance of optional submission to the Pope. Rome even recognizes Saints that most likely died out of communion with Her and admits that there were synods that were called by the Pope that were considered ecumenical in the first millennium that She now does not consider ecumenical. And the worst part is that the Fifth EC explicitly teaches that Pope Vigilius was out of line for, effectively, rejecting concilliarism which is a straightforward contradiction put together with the irreformable, dogmatic anti-concilliarist Papal developments in Rome after the Council of Constance.
With regard to the Filioque, if the whole logic that led to it was the belief that it is Arianism to assert that the Son does not participate in the Spiration of the Spirit in the same way as the Father "as from one principle" then there is no principled way to stop that logic from spilling over to the Spirit. So either the Spirit is a creature by that logic or the Spirit can produce another Divine Person but never does, in which case there would be an unactualized potency in the Godhead.
@@Jy3pr6 arguments you make are intellectual and logical. I worship a God whose reasoning is beyond logic. For instance, Papal supremacy is disproven when a Pope is evil is a logical argument. God is Spirit and can do whatever He wants. The Pope you get is a microcosm of the society in which He lives and/or a way for God to achieve correction of incorrect doctrines often by putting them on the highest platform so as to elicit a reaction from us. This is in line with how God works. When He wants to defeat something He raises up and gives it power over His people. The only way to overcome it is for us to reconcile with Him and put all our trust in Him and He will rescue us. God has a universal and fail-prood way of converting millions and destriying heresies by making everyone subject to it.
This is similar to how we in African families have a rule that we respect the elder no matter what (whether they are a drunk or a drug addict and disrespecting them and it is the eldest (first-born) who demons target and often overcome. It is our challenge and gauntlet that we give ourselves wholly to God in order for that one person to be saved. That in essence is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the one and only true Catholic faith. God WILLs that Popes be defficient according to man because Papal supremacy does not imply that the Pope can do no wrong, it just means that God will never allow the gates of hell to overcome the Church. The problem with other parts of the world is hating monarchs while professing to follow a God who is a monarch. A monarchy has a head. When the head is not physically there he appoints a stand-in to stabd in for him with all his frailties but what he says is taken as gold. Otherwise who stands for truth? I am a Zulu and a monarchist. God's Kingdom is a monarchy with a definite head who can choose anyone he wants to, to peovide clarity in moments of there being ties or definitive moments in policy and scrupulous practice. It is simple to me really. The only King that was sinless is Christ. Anyone who stands in for him will be a sinner but what he says should be regarded as gold and if it is not true, we then need to subject ourselves to the Holy Spirit with all our hearts, minds, body and soul and God will rescue us.
@@1ntuthukozwane Thank you for this response, Ntuthuko. I can tell you have a distinct relationship to your faith that is not common among most other Roman Catholics I have interacted with. Your "approach" to your faith is something I feel greater sympathy for than even that of many of my fellow Orthodox brothers.
I very much sympathize with your skepticism of intellectual arguments, Ntuthuko. If you find my comments elsewhere you will likely see me making a similar point to Roman Catholic apologists as I think they generally tend to give too much weight to reason in the context of religion. It is interesting that on another thread on this very videos I have been accused multiple times of depreciating reason!
I responded the way I did because you gave reasons for Papal supremacy and the Filioque so I responded with other reasons why those aren't such good reasons. I know Roman Catholics don't believe the Pope can do no wrong. I know because I was Roman Catholic. It would equally be a caricature to claim that Orthodox are anti monarchical or otherwise anarchistic simply because they don't believe in Papal supremacy. Orthodox have always had a first first among equals according to what Christ said, "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." As soon as someone demands unqualified allegiance they have crossed the line into lording themselves over those subject to them. It would be one thing had Rome not deviated from O(o)rthodoxy, but since it did it was necessary to separate from her.
Each region in the Orthodox world is headed by its own religious monarch in the person of the Patriarch, Metropolitan or Archbishop and the Orthodox Church still has a head of the whole Church on earth in the Ecumenical Patriarch. But now that he is trying to rule without limits and absolutely there is a dispute. There is nothing anti monarchical about this, just a dispute about whether the authority had by the head is unqualified and absolute.
What you say about your culture is very beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with me, Ntuthuko