The divine processions and the divine energies

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The divine processions and the divine energies

David Bradshaw - Ph.D., Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Kentucky. Lexington, Kentucky

The concept of the divine energies (energeiai) is commonly associated with the late Byzantine theologian Gregory Palamas. In fact, however, it has biblical origins and figures prominently in Greek patristic theology from at least the fourth century. Here I briefly trace its history beginning with the Pauline usage of energeia and continuing through the Cappadocian Fathers, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, and Gregory Palamas. I argue that the divine processions in Dionysius function much as do the divine energies in the Cappadocians, although Dionysius enriches the concept by setting it within the context of a Neoplatonic pattern of procession and return. Dionysius's own work was in need of a further synthesis in that he does not explain the relationship between the divine processions and the divine logoi, the “divine and good acts of will” by which God creates. Maximus the Confessor then introduced a further element into this complex tradition through his argument that certain “natural energies” must necessarily accompany any nature. I argue that the real importance of Palamas from the standpoint of the history of philosophy lies not in originating the concept of the divine energies, but in using it to synthesize these disparate elements from the Cappadocians, Dionysius, and Maximus.

Keywords: Cappadocian Fathers, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory Palamas, divine processions, divine logoi, divine energies, essence/energies distinction.

divine energie biblical

The Greek patristic tradition offers a bafflingly wide array of ways of understanding what are today commonly referred to as the divine attributes. Various authors - or, sometimes, the same author in various places - refer to them as powers, energies, characteristics, processions, and “things around God” (or “around the divine nature”). These descriptions are rarely explained in any detail, so to understand what they mean and why an author chooses one over another requires careful attention both to that author's aims and to the larger context. Although my main interest

in this paper is in the relationship between the divine processions and the divine energies, to understand this relationship properly requires taking into account the other terms as well. I will accordingly proceed chronologically, tracing briefly how each of these terms came to be introduced and what it contributed to later developments.

The question of what is meant by the names of the gods already provoked considerable discussion prior to Christianity. Plato in the Cratylus offers a number of speculative etymologies for the names of the gods, such as that `Zeus' is derived from zen (to live) plus dia (through), since Zeus is the one through whom all creatures have life PLATO, Cratylus 396a-b.. He admits, however, that we know nothing of the gods themselves, so that at best we can only inquire about the meaning of the names by which people call them PLATO, Cratylus 400d-401a.. Xenophon in the Memorabilia similarly asserts that the gods are invisible and can be praised and worshiped only through their works XENOPHON, Memorabilia 4.3.13-14.. The Stoics took this line of thought further, regarding the many names of the gods as names of the various powers (dunameis) of the one God DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers VII.147.. A similar view was held by the author of the pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo, who offers the analogy of God as like the Persian Great King, remaining seated on his throne while ruling the cosmos through his all-pervasive power PSEUDO-ARISTOTLE, De Mundo 6.. God is one but has many names based on the many works He performs PSEUDO-ARISTOTLE, De Mundo 7.. Finally - and most importantly - there is Philo of Alexandria, who applied a similar line of reasoning to the biblical God. For Philo the names said of God, including `God' and `Lord,' refer to the divine Powers, whereas the divine essence has no proper name See J. DILLON, The Middle Platonists, Second edition, Ithaca 1996, 155-70..

Christian authors, although not reifying the divine powers to the same extent as Philo, likewise regarded the divine names as properly naming only God's activity, or (to put the same idea in a less radical form) God as He is manifest in His activities. Justin Martyr writes, “To the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name given... But these words `Father,' and `God,' and `Creator,' and `Lord,' and `Master,' are not names, but appellations (prosrheseis) derived from His good deeds and works” JUSTIN MARTYR, IIApology 6, PG 6 453A.. An appellation is here a name given to someone based on the work he performs, much like `fireman' or `nurse' in English. Theophilus of Antioch similarly holds that God is recognized only by His “works and mighty deeds”; he accordingly derives the preeminent divine name, theos, from God's having placed (tetheikenai) all things in stability and His running and being active (theein) through all creation THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH, Ad Autolycum I.4-5, PG 6 1029A-1032B. The derivation from theein goes back to PLATO, Cratylus 397d.. Clement of Alexandria asserts that we do not name God properly (kurios) but that all the divine names taken together are indicative of the divine power CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, Stromata V.12.. Even Origen, who is less apophatically inclined than these authors, holds that the names of God are ways of summarizing divine activities such as providence and judgment ORIGEN, On Prayer 24.2-3; cf. De Principiis I.1.6..

That the divine names are based upon or even refer to the works or powers of God was thus already a well-established idea in the ante-Nicene period. Gregory of Nyssa adopts a similar view but shifts the focus instead to the divine operations (energeiai). Like Clement, he argues that the divine nature has no extension (diastema) or limit (peras) and therefore cannot be named GREGORY OF NYSSA, Contra Eunomium I.360-69, II.69-70, Homilies on Ecclesiastes VII, Homilies on the Song of Songs V; cf. Life of Moses I.7, II.236-38.. Citing various passages in which Scripture refers to idols and demons as gods, along with the peculiar words of God to Moses, “I have given thee as a god to Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:10), he infers that `god' and `godhead' (theotes) are names of operations that God exercises.

The force of the appellation [theos] is the indication of some power, either of oversight or of operation (energetikes). But the divine nature itself, as it is, remains unexpressed by all the names that are conceived for it, as our doctrine declares. For in learning that He is beneficent, and a judge, good and just, and all else of the same kind, we learn diversities of His operations (energeion), but we are none the more able to learn by our knowledge of His operations the nature of Him who works (tou energountos) GREGORY OF NYSSA, On the Holy Trinity; ed. W. JAEGER, Gregorii Nysseni Opera [= GNO], Leiden 1960-96, Vol. III.1, 14; cf. Contra Eunomium II.149, 298-99, 304, III.5.58, On Not Three Gods (GNO III.1, 42-44)..

This passage is not wholly clear as to whether the divine names are actually names of the energeiai or are merely derived from the energeiai. Fortunately Gregory elsewhere makes it clear that he means the former: “the term `godhead' is significant of operation (energeian semainein) and not of nature” GREGORY OF NYSSA, On Not Three Gods; ed. Jaeger, GNO III.1, 46. Gregory's Ad Graecos might seem to contradict this statement, for there he says repeatedly that the term `god' is indicative of substance. He qualifies this admission, however, by saying that theos indicates the divine substance in the same way that the terms “that which neighs” and “that which laughs” indicate the natures of horse and man. Just as neighing and laughing are characteristic features (idiomata) of horses and men, so to oversee all things is the characteristic feature of the divine nature (GNO III.1, 21-22). Although here Gregory speaks of idiomata rather than energeiai, he still grounds the referential force of theos in activity.. Nor does he hold this only about theos and theotes; citing a reference to God's compassion and long- suffering, he asks: “Do [these words] indicate His energeiai or His nature? No one will say that they indicate (echein ten semasian) anything but His energeia” GREGORY OF NYSSA, Contra Eunomium II.151; ed. JAEGER, GNO I, 269, citing Psalm 103:8. See also ten endeixin echei at Contra Eunomium II.583..

Although I have so far translated the word energeia as “operation,” this position advanced by Gregory shows that it cannot mean only that. If energeia in this context meant only operation, there would be no way to specify to which operations we are referring; in saying that the operation is that of God, we would merely be attributing it to another operation, without indicating the acting agent. This means that the energeiai at issue must not be simply operations, but God himself under some nameable presentation or form. This is the same idea that we observed in a more inchoate form in some ante-Nicene authors, as well as in the Stoics and Philo before them. What is new in Gregory is the reference to the divine energeia rather than the divine powers or works, as well as the sweeping claim that many divine names (and not only a select few such as `God' and `Lord') refer to divine energeiai.

How should we understand energeia in this context? The first step in answering this question must be to take note of previous Christian usage of the term - which, after all, undoubtedly had much to do with the preference for it shown by Gregory. This usage was largely determined by St. Paul. To take one typical passage, Paul speaks of himself as “striving according to Christ's energy (energeian) which is being effectively realized (energoumenen) within me” (Col. 1:29). I render energeia here as `energy' because it indicates both an activity or operation of God and a capacity for action that this activity imparts to St. Paul Compare the translation of the New Revised Standard Version (“I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me”), which correctly renders energeia as `energy' but takes energoumenen as middle, thereby missing the force of the cognate accusative.. The divine energy is realized or made effective within Paul's struggle to promote the Gospel, so that from one point of view Paul is the agent or conduit through whom God is acting. Yet nothing in such external direction prevents Paul's actions from remaining his own. In effect, God has imparted to Paul the energy to do His will, and this energy is now also Paul's energy, one that is realized only through his free cooperation See further D. BRADSHAW, “The Divine Energies in the New Testament”, in St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 50 (2006), 189-223; J.C. LARCHET, La theologie des energies divines: des origines a saint Jean Damascene, Paris 2010, 83-93; C.A. SCHWARZ, God's Energy: Reclaiming a New Testament Concept, Emmelsbull 2020..

It is not entirely clear, in Paul's own usage, how the divine energy is to be understood. Is it a created effect distinct from God's own being, or is it simply the form in which God is present and active among creatures? Whatever ambiguity there was on this point was settled in later patristic writings, which embraced decisively the latter alternative. It is sufficient to quote here a passage from On the Holy Spirit of Basil the Great describing how the Spirit is present through His energy in those who receive His gifts.

[The Spirit is] by nature unapproachable, apprehended by reason of its goodness, filling all things with its power, but communicated only to the worthy; not shared in one measure, but distributing its energy (energeian) according to the proportion of faith; in essence simple, in powers various, wholly present in each and being wholly present everywhere; impassively divided and shared without loss, after the likeness of the sunbeam, whose kindly light falls on him who enjoys it as though it shone for him alone, yet illumines land and sea and mingles with the air BASIL, On the Holy Spirit 22, PG 32 108C..

Through the divine energy the Spirit is “wholly present in each” and “shared without loss”. The divine energy is thus not a reality distinct from God, but a particular way in which God appears and is manifest. It is in this light that we must understand Gregory of Nyssa's teaching that the divine names are names of divine energies.

This teaching in turn helps shed light on another important text, Basil's Epistle 234. In this epistle Basil seeks to answer the taunt of the Eunomians that one who does not know the divine essence worships what he does not know. Basil replies: We say that we know the greatness of God, his power, his wisdom, his goodness, his providence over us, and the justness of his judgment, but not his very essence... But God, he says, is simple, and whatever attribute of him you have reckoned as knowable is of his essence. The absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable. When all these high attributes have been enumerated, are they all names of one essence? And is there the same mutual force in his awfulness and his loving-kindness, his justice and his creative power, His providence and His foreknowledge, His bestowal of rewards and punishments, his majesty and his providence? In mentioning any of these, do we declare his essence?.. The energies (energeiai) are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from his energies, but do not undertake to approach near to his essence. His energies come down to us, but his essence remains beyond our reach BASIL, Epistle 234.1..

Basil seems here to be speaking about two separate types of predicate: ongoing divine activities such as providence, foreknowledge, and the bestowal of rewards and punishments, and attributes such as greatness, power, wisdom, goodness, justice, loving-kindness, and majesty. It is not surprising that he refers to the former as energeiai, but much more so that he includes the latter as well. How are we to understand this grouping? It is helpful to remember at this point the teaching of Basil's brother Gregory that to speak of God's compassion or long-suffering is a way of indicating His energeia. This suggests that, despite their differences, both ongoing activities such as providence and foreknowledge and attributes such as greatness, power, and compassion can be understood as “energies” in the sense that we have identified - that is, they are God himself as He is manifest in particular forms of activity.

We also find in the Cappadocians another way of speaking of the divine attributes, as “things around God”. Gregory of Nyssa refers to these particularly often. Among those he lists in various passages are splendor, glory, holiness, justice, patience, eternity, infinity, being without beginning, power, goodness, incorruptibility, the giving of life, and light GREGORY OF NYSSA, Contra Eunomium II.89, 102, III.1.103-04, III.5.58, III.6.3, Great Catechism 5, On Not Three Gods (GNO III.1, 43), On the Holy Spirit (GNO III.1, 114).. Several of these, such as glory, holiness, justice, power, and goodness, Gregory and Basil refer to elsewhere as energies. Indeed Gregory at one point describes God's being a judge by both terms, as a thing around God and an energy GREGORY OF NYSSA, Contra Eunomium III.5.58-59.. However, the things around God also include several attributes that are not mentioned among the energies, such as eternity, infinity, begin- ninglessness, and incorruptibility. These are (with the possible exception of eternity) negative attributes. As such it would seem that they cannot be understood as divine activities or operations, and so not as “energies”, even under the expansive interpretation I have offered.

In one passage Gregory himself notes such a distinction among terms applied to the divine nature. He writes:

We do not say that all these terms have a uniform significance; for some of them express qualities inherent in God (ton prosonton toi theoi), and others qualities that are not. Thus when we say that He is just or incorruptible, by the term `just' we signify that justice is found in Him, and by `incorruptible' that corruption is not GREGORY OF NYSSA, Contra Eunomium II.131 (GNO I, 263)..

It is noteworthy that Gregory here speaks of justice and other such positive attributes as “inherent in God”. This shows that in calling them energies or things around God he does not wish to deny that they truly are part of the divine nature. His point is simply that they do not set forth or define the divine essence which is their source. Nor, of course, do privative attributes such as “incorruptible”.

It is against this complex background that we must understand the Divine Names of Dionysius the Areopagite. Dionysius recasts the understanding of the divine attributes as energies found in the Cappadocians into a sweeping vision of the relationship of God to creation. Dionysius's preferred term for such acts is proodos, procession. No doubt he chose this term because of its connotations in the Neoplatonic theory of emanation, in which any effect remains in its cause (the stage of mone), proceeds from it (the stage of proodos), and returns to it (the stage of epistrophe) PROCLUS, Elements of Theology, Prop. 35.. For Dionysius it is axiomatic that “the things caused preexist more fully and essentially in their causes” DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, Divine Names 2.8 645D; ed. B.R. SUCHLA, G. HEIL, and A.M. RITTER, Corpus Dionysiacum, Berlin 1990-91, Vol. 1, 133.. The divine processions are thus the acts by which God sets forth and manifests what He already is, sharing these perfections with creatures in the manner and degree appropriate to each. A cursory glance at the processions treated in The Divine Names reveals their sweeping scope: goodness, light, beauty, love, zeal, being, wisdom, truth, power, righteousness, salvation, redemption, peace, perfection, and one (or unity). Each of these is a divine name, so that in naming the divine processions, one also names God. The processions are, as it were, God-as-actively-manifest, as opposed to the hyperousios ousia, God as transcendent and beyond all names See DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, Divine Names 5.1 816B. Unlike earlier authors, Dionysius reserves the term ousia as said of God for God's being-making procession..

One particularly puzzling group of divine processions is the opposites that are treated in Chapter 9 of the Divine Names: Great and Small, Same and Different, Similar and Unsimilar, and Rest and Motion. As has often been noted, Dionysius's treatment of these is probably inspired by Plato's discussion of the Five Greatest Kinds in the Sophist, with the addition of Great and Small perhaps suggested by their role in the second hypothesis of the Parmenides For example, S.H. WEAR and J. DILLON, Dionysius the Areopagite and the Neoplatonist Tradition, Aldershot 2007, 27.. One might at first wonder whether these are truly processions at all, for Dionysius does not explicitly call them such, saying only that each of them is “applied to the Cause of all” DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, Divine Names 9.1 509B.. However, we must bear in mind the programmatic statement early in the Divine Names that all the “sacred hymns of the theologians” explicate (diaskeuazousan) the divine names in relation to the divine processions DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, Divine Names 1.4 589D.. It would seem, then, that every divine name in some way refers to a divine procession. This is borne out by the treatment of Great, Small, and the others in Chapter 9, for each of them is shown to apply both transcendently to God in Himself and derivatively to His causal action among creatures. This is the same duality that in general holds of the processions.

I would suggest that we may think of each of these opposing terms as a different way of naming the procession of Being, since (as Plato showed) everything that is partakes of each of them. (It is, of course, well known that a single divine procession can have many names, as light, beauty, love, and zeal are different ways of naming the procession of Goodness.) This has an important implication. To recognize that the Great, Small, and the rest are processions should lead us to broaden our understanding of what constitutes a divine procession. We see now that even relatively abstract attributes can be processions, for they too are modalities in which God makes Himself actively present and manifest.

The most important continuator of the Dionysian legacy was undoubtedly Maximus the Confessor. Like the Cappadocians, Maximus speaks frequently of the “things around God”. However, Maximus significantly unifies this concept by identifying the things around God as “goodness and all that the term `goodness' implies, that is, all life, immortality, simplicity, immutability, infinity, and such things which are essentially contemplated around Him” MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Chapters on Theology and Economy 1.48, PG 90 1100D.. The priority that Maximus gives to goodness is probably due to the fact that `Good' is the preeminent divine name in Dionysius, and indeed, Dionysius identifies goodness as the divine “subsistence” (huparxis) DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, Divine Names 4.1 693B.. By unifying the things around God in this way, Maximus shows the common root shared by the more positive divine attributes, such as goodness and life, and those that are seemingly merely privative, such as immortality, simplicity, immutability, and infinity. For Maximus all of these are implications of divine perfection, or, to put it another way, ways in which God manifests Himself as the Good.

Maximus also sharply distinguishes all of these attributes from the divine essence, calling them works (erga) of God that God himself, as their creator, infinitely transcends MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Chapters on Theology and Economy 1.48-50.. On the other hand, Maximus adds shortly thereafter that God is Life, and elsewhere he emphasizes that to participate in being, goodness, wisdom, and eternity is to participate in God MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Chapters on Theology and Economy 1.54, Centuries on Charity 3.24-25.. God is thus both each of these perfections and beyond them as their source. This is the same duality that characterizes the di - vine energies in the Cappadocians and the divine processions in Dionysius, and it strongly suggests that the “things around God” are, for Maximus, their functional equivalent. Thus we find that in Maximus too the divine processions, or their functional equivalent, include relatively abstract properties such as immortality, simplicity, and infinity as well as those such as goodness and life that are more immedi - ately evident through activity.

A further strand in Maximus's thinking about the divine energy emerges in his response to the monoenergist controversy. Monoenergism is the doctrine that Christ, although of two natures, divine and human, possessed a single operation or energy which was both human and divine. The fundamental issue at stake in this controversy was whether energy is to be associated with hypostasis, which is one in Christ, or with essence or nature, of which there are two. Although Maximus was initially relatively open-minded toward monoenergism, he soon settled into a resolute opposition. His fundamental argument was that without the affirmation of two energies in Christ, that of two natures would be empty. Indeed, the sole proof that Christ possessed a human nature was the presence in him of the human “natural energy” MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Ambigua 5.2.. Maximus saw divine and human energies as cooperating in every act that Christ performed: “he experienced suffering in a divine way, since it was voluntary, for he was not a mere man, and he worked miracles in a human way, since he did them through the flesh, for he was not naked God” MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Ambigua 5.18; ed. N. CONSTAS, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers, Cambridge, Mass., 2014, Vol. 1, 48.. Maximus also observed that to associate energy with hypostasis rather than nature would wreak havoc on Trinitarian doctrine, since it would mean that there are three energies in the Trinity rather than a single energy shared among the three Persons MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Disputation with Pyrrhus, PG 91 336D-337A..

In his defense of the dyoenergist position, Maximus went beyond earlier discussions of the divine energy in introducing the new concept of natural energy Strictly speaking it was not new, since some earlier authors had spoken of Christ as possessing a natural human energy (e.g., Leontius of Byzantium, Contra Aphthartodocetas, PG 86 1333A, 1336D-1337A; Leontius of Jerusalem, Contra Monophysitas, PG 86 1773A; Sophronius of Jeru-salem, Synodical Letter 2.3.11). However, Maximus was the first to give the concept systematic importance.. This is not quite an energeia in the normal sense - that is, an activity or characteristic pattern of action. It is instead a capacity for action of the sort that is characteristic of the nature in question. Maximus defines the natural energy as a “natural, constitutive power... which is properly and primarily characteristic of the nature, since it is the most generic motion constitutive of the species” MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Ambigua 5.2; ed. CONSTAS, Vol. 1, 32.. It is odd to find the natural energy characterized here as both a power (dunamis) and a motion (kinesis'). To judge from other similar texts, it would appear that Maximus thought of the natural energy as a kind of innate movement like that of life or thought, which naturally (and, indeed, inevitably) manifests itself in some form of outward action MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Epistle 6 (PG 91 432B), Epistle 7 (PG 91 436C-D), Chapters on Theology and Economy 1.3, Ambigua 20.2.. Similar definitions occur in Opuscula 27, a dossier of patristic passages dealing with energeia that is found among Maximus's works, although it is probably by a disciple. They include that the natural energy is “the innate motion of every essence”, that it is “the essential and knowledge-bearing principle of every nature”, and that it is “the power revelatory of every essence” MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, Opuscula 27, PG 91 280D..

As with the Cappadocians, there may be some echo here of the theory of two acts of Plotinus. But it is more important that, by the time of Maximus, Christian usage had for centuries given energeia the connotation of an “energy” that is both resident intrinsically in God and manifest outward through His activity. Maximus in effect extends this duality to creatures, seeing each being as possessing a “natural energy” that enables it to engage in its characteristic forms of activity.

The Christology of Maximus ultimately triumphed at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which explicitly affirmed two natural energies in Christ See the Exposition of Faith issued by this Council, which affirms two natural energies in Christ along with two natural wills; N.P. TANNER, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, London 1990, Vol. 1, 128-30.. The influential summary of dyoenergist Christology by John of Damascus in his On the Orthodox Faith draws heavily from Maximus, including a range of definitions of natural energy similar to those I have quoted JOHN OF DAMASCUS, On the Orthodox Faith 59; cf. 36-37.. John is also noteworthy for our purposes in that he provides a sweeping description of the divine energy as it is present throughout all creation:

The divine irradiation and energy is one, simple, and undivided, beneficently diversified in divisible things, dispensing to all of them the components of their proper nature while remaining simple... Toward it all things tend, and in it they have their existence, and to all things it communicates their being in accordance with the nature of each. It is the being of things that are, the life of the living, the reason of the rational, and the intellectual act of those possessing intelli- gence JOHN OF DAMASCUS, On the Orthodox Faith 14, ed. P.B. KOTTER, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, Berlin 1969-88, Vol. 2, 42-43..

This passage is plainly modeled on the description of the divine processions in Dionysius. By speaking of energy rather than procession, John in effect supplements the Dionysian picture of God as the first principle in a process of procession and return with that of God as perpetually active in all things, creating and sustain - ing them and calling them to himself.

We turn at last to the thinker who made the essence/energies distinction a subject of explicit and systematic discussion, Gregory Palamas. Palamas was primarily concerned to defend the uncreated character of the light beheld by the hesychasts, but this naturally led him to deal with the insistence of his opponent Barlaam that only the divine essence is uncreated. It was in response to this point that Palamas broadened the scope of the discussion to metaphysical issues. In order to show that more than just the divine essence is uncreated, he first cites the distinction - drawn, he says, by Dionysius - between the superessential divine essence and the “essential energies” or “essential powers” of God, such as goodness, life, and being GREGORY PALAMAS, Triads 3.1.23.. Although `energy' is not a term Dionysius normally uses for the processions, the reason for the identification becomes clear in the next section, where Palamas cites the Maximian axiom that no essence can exist without its natural energy GREGORY PALAMAS, Triads 3.1.24.. Palamas thus reads Dionysius in light of Maximus, and particularly Maximus's concept of natural energy.

Returning to the same subject in the next treatise, Palamas adds to the natural energies the “uncreated works” (that is, the things around God) spoken of by Maximus:

Not only the divine powers (which you will often find called natural energies by the Holy Fathers) but also the`works of God' are without beginning, as the Fathers also rightly affirm... For was there not need for the work of providence even before creation, so as to lead each created thing at the appropriate time out of nonbeing? Was there not need for a knowledge fitting to God, so that things might first be known and then chosen, even though not in time?.. And how could one conceive of a beginning of God's self-contemplation? GREGORY PALAMAS, Triads 3.2.6; ed. J. MEYENDORFF, Defense des saints hesychasts: Introduction, texte critique, traduction, et notes, Second edition, Leuven 1973, 653.

Palamas goes on to add the further instances of the divine will, which is uncreated yet not the same as the divine essence, and the predeterminations (proorismoi) by which God foreordains the existence of creatures. Although he does not explain it further here, this reference to “predeterminations” is undoubtedly an allusion to the definition in Divine Names 5.8 of the logoi that lead creatures into being as “predeterminations and divine and good acts of will” DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, Divine Names 5.8 824C; ed. SUCHLA, Vol. 1, 188. This definition was given further currency by MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR, who cited it twice (Ambigua 7.24, Questions to Thalassius 13.2).. Later in the same treatise, Palamas goes on to include these logoi explicitly among the divine energies. They are, he explains, realities that are “between” the divine essence and creatures, which preexist in the divine mind and by which all things are made GREGORY PALAMAS, Triads 3.2.24.. They are also that by which God is even now known and perceived, the “paradigmatic and perfective power and energy of all things” GREGORY PALAMAS, Triads 3.2.25; ed. MEYENDORFF, 689..

In later works, Palamas often speaks comprehensively of the divine “procession and energy”, using these terms more or less synonymously. He gives particular weight to the passage in Divine Names 2.5 referring to “the substance-bestowing, life-bestowing, wise-making, and other gifts of the Goodness that is Cause of all, in accordance with which the things that are imparticipably participated are praised on account of the participations and those that participate” DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE, Divine Names 2.5 644A; ed. SUCHLA, Vol. 1, 129.. Here the divine “participations” and gifts are situated between “the God that is the Cause of all” and the creatures that participate in them. Palamas identifies these participations and gifts with the divine procession and energy, and both in turn with the divine logoi:

The energy which bestows substance, life and wisdom and which in general creates and conserves created beings is identical with the divine acts of will [that is, the logoi] and the divine participations themselves and the gifts of the Goodness that is the Cause of all GREGORY PALAMAS, One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, Chap. 87,ed. R. SINKEWICZ, Saint Gregory Palamas: One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, Toronto 1988, 186; cf. On Union and Distinction, Chap. 13..

So here, too, we find the divine logoi (as well as the divine acts of will) embraced within the divine procession and energy.

It is striking to find the divine logoi, which Dionysius treats distinctly from the processions, so comprehensively identified with them. I believe that Palamas has correctly seen that to speak of the processions alone is insufficient to fully describe God's relation to creation. Dionysius is clear that the range of the being-making, life-giving, and wisdom-imparting processions is different, the first extending to all beings, the second only to those that are alive, and the third to those that are alive and rational. Yet what accounts for the existence of these individual things themselves? Even when we factor in that the being-making procession imparts sameness, difference, motion, and so on, we still need some account of the specific divine intention that defines how each being is unique while related to others through this complex web of relations. That is the role of the divine logoi. Palamas sees that the logoi are not acts separate from the processions, but merely the specific mode that the processions take in the case of each individual being - much as the life-giving and wisdom-imparting processions are themselves simply specific modes of that which imparts being.

Finally let me note one further terminological clarification made by Palamas. As I observed earlier, Gregory of Nyssa does not hesitate to refer to justice and other such positive attributes as “qualities inherent in God”. Drawing on a passage in On Right Thinking by John of Damascus, Palamas similarly refers to the natural energies as characteristics (idiomata) of the nature. However, they are “from” (ek) the nature and caused by it, rather than vice versa, and it is in that sense that they are (in the language of the Cappadocians) “around” the nature GREGORY PALAMAS, On the Divine Energies, Chap. 10.. Returning to the same subject later, he adds that they are characteristic (charakteristikai) and indicative (deiktikai) of the nature, but not constitutive (sustikai) of it, much as being grammatical is characteristic and indicative, but not constitutive, of human nature. Energeia in one sense (idios) is the use (chresis) of the innate power, and in another sense it is the power itself, but the ambiguity does no harm, for these two always follow upon one another GREGORY PALAMAS, On the Divine Energies, Chap. 23..

These are, then, the ways in which the various names and attributes of God came to be unified under the single concept of the divine energies. Palamas thereby drew together the great diversity of patristic expressions into a single comprehensive vision of the relationship of God to creatures, one that exhibits how both the perfections of creatures and their individual uniqueness are due to the indwelling activity of God.

Ñïèñîê ëèòåðàòóðû / References

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