Fullness Received and Returned: Trinity and Participation in Jonathan Edwards

Appendix 7: Divine Energeia in the Eastern and Western Traditions

Appendix 7: Divine Energ Energeia eia in the Eastern and Western Traditions Duncan Reid traces two contrasting interpretations of Aristotle’s notion of energeia. In the East, the Aristotelian categories were developed to distinguish between ousia and energeia, by interpreting dunamis and energeia as virtually identical.1 The terms energeia and energein were transmitted to the West largely through the Latin Vulgate as operatio and operari, respectively, and could not convey the idea of divine dispositional powers in which human activity could participate.2 Since the writings of Iamblichus and Proclus were not translated into Latin during the Middle Ages, the West failed to appreciate the thick description of energeia as “the fusion of activity and actuality.”3 “That is why,” Bradshaw notes, “when the works of Aristotle were translated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, energeia had to be rendered in different contexts by three different terms: operatio, actus, and actualitas.”4 In the West, Aristotle’s notion of an essence with its power/potentiality (dunamis) and energy/actuality (energeia) developed into the identification of energeia and ousia in God as pure actuality (actus purus), and into the corollary distinction in creatures between act and potency.5 This is based on the assumption that eternal things exist of necessity and, therefore, do not include potency with regard to their existence.6 Gregory of Palamas and the Notion the Divine ENERGEIA St. Basil emphasized that though God’s essence is inaccessible to creatures, God can be known through the divine energies.7 The distinctions between the essence (ousia) and the energies (energeiai) of God, made initially by the Cappadocians, were systematically elaborated by Pseudo-Dionysius and fully formulated by Gregory Palamas.8 For example, Gregory of Nyssa uses a particular causal sequence of nature-power-activity to show that while activity reveals its originating power, nature remains apophatic.9 Palamas makes a clear distinction between the uncreated, eternal divine energy from “the effects of the divine energy [which] are creatures.”10 While 389 the divine energetic operations appear as multiple in their temporal manifestations, they are, simultaneously, singular since they proceed from the simple superessentiality of God.11 As Thomas Anatos has pointed out, the essence-energy distinction in Palamas represents a radicalization of both sides of the transcendence-immanence polarity within God’s being.12 According to Georges Florovsky, the essence-energies dialectic distinguishes (but does not separate) the divine nature from the divine will and corresponds to the necessity-freedom distinction within God.13 Furthermore, it is in the uncreated energies surrounding the superessentiality of God where the attributes of God are placed, and where “God’s pretemporal but contingent idea of creation is located.”14 The existence of the uncreated energies is not dependent upon creation, but neither is the actualized creation coeternal with the energies.15 Hence, the divine essence (in its three hypostatic modalities), the uncreated energies of the Trinity, and the created world are respectively characterized by eternity, aeonic eternity, and temporality.16 According to Reid, Georges Florovsky has “reintroduced the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality” by positing a distinction between the divine idea of creation, which is located in God’s aeonic eternity, and actual space-time creation.17 Critique of the Palamite Essence-Energy Distinction Accordingly, the rejection of the essence-energies distinction, in favor of a Thomistic notion of an active divine essence, can only allow for the explanation of the God-world relation based on a cause-and-effect schema.18 Paul Negrut has further highlighted a few weaknesses of Palamite trinitarianism. Firstly, while the energies are enhypostatic and only express but are not identical to the divine persons, it follows that “the latter is forced to occupy a kind of intermediary level between the essence and energies,” thus distancing theologia from oikonomia. Secondly, by asserting that the ousia is totally impenetrable and incommunicable, Palamas has reified the divine essence altogether beyond the divine persons, departing from the Cappadocians, who identified the personal existence of Father, Son, and Spirit as the ousia.19 In this way, the loyalty of Palamite theology to the Cappadocian contribution of the ontology of divine personhood to theology, and hence the primacy of person over essence, is questioned.20 It has been alleged that Palamas’s doctrine of the essence-energy distinction threatens the doctrine of divine simplicity. Using such a rationalistic critique, the West has often charged Palamas of separating God into an undefined 390 | Fullness Received and Returned [18.221.145.52...