The Essence-Energies Distinction and the Patristic Legacy

Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgments

2. Introduction

3. Chapter 1 About the Problem

   1. 1.1 The notion of antinomy

   2. 1.2 Cataphatic way and apophatic way

   3. 1.3 The Orthodox and Latin reception of Palamism and the “neo-Palamism”

   4. 1.4 Limits of neo-Thomistic apologetics

   5. 1.5 The Palamite controversy as a meta-problem: a range of interpretive paradigms

4. Chapter 2 Greek Patristics

   1. 2.1 Vision of God

      1. 2.1.1 Two currents of Eastern spirituality?

      2. 2.1.2 The three stages of the spiritual life

      3. 2.1.3 The inner contemplation of the divine light

      4. 2.1.4 Evagrius incognito: Saint Nilus

   2. 2.2 Fundamental dualities in patristic thought

      1. 2.2.1 Divine will and divine energy in patristic thought

      2. 2.2.2 The energeia-energeiai duality

      3. 2.2.3 The names-energies and their knowability

   3. 2.3 The thought of Pseudo-Dionysius

      1. 2.3.1 The two ways

      2. 2.3.2 Supra-ontological transcendence of Good over Being and antinomic apophaticism

   4. 2.4 The thought of Maximus the Confessor

      1. 2.4.1 The theory of logoi

      2. 2.4.2 Knowledge and ignorance of God in Maximus’ thought

   5. 2.5 Apophaticism and patristic themes

      1. 2.5.1 The problem of ecstasy

      2. 2.5.2 The spiritual senses

      3. 2.5.3 Apophaticism and the theory of logoi

         1. 2.5.3.1 The book of God

         2. 2.5.3.2 Apophaticism and divine will

5. Chapter 3 Gregory Palamas

   1. 3.A On the origin of the problem

   2. 3.B Palamas’ Apodictic Treatises, the Filioque problem and the essence-energies distinction

   3. 3.1 Epistolary exchanges between Palamas and Barlaam

      1. 3.1.1 The Antilatin Treaties of Barlaam and Palamas’ First Letter to Akindynos

      2. 3.1.2 Barlaam’s First Letter to Palamas: the controversy over the peri auton

      3. 3.1.3 Palamas’ Second Letter to Barlaam: Barlaam and Palamas face Pseudo-Dionysius

      4. 3.1.4 A few remarks on the Father’ use of the term apodeixis

   4. 3.2 The articulation between cataphatic and apophatic theology in Palamas’ thought

      1. 3.2.1 The Palamite epistemological scheme in the Triads

      2. 3.2.2 A “second” conception of logos

      3. 3.2.3 Antinomy in Palamite thought

   5. 3.3 The essence-energies distinction in Palamas’ doctrine

      1. 3.3.1 A univocal ascent from the creatural world?

      2. 3.3.2 Being and energies in the Palamite doctrine

      3. 3.3.3 The syllogism of “Chapter 90” and the suspension of the energeia-energeiai antinomy

   6. 3.4 The Palamite identification between energeiai and logoi

      1. 3.4.1 Analogy and participation in the divine energies according to Palamas

      2. 3.4.2 The contemplation locus

   7. 3.5 Personal distinction and energy distinction

      1. 3.5.1 The divine hypostases among the peri auton

      2. 3.5.2 Energy perichoresis

      3. 3.5.3 The interweaving of the energetic antinomy and the Trinitarian antinomy

         1. 3.5.3.1 Order of knowledge and order of causation

         2. 3.5.3.2 The “participation” of hypostases and divine energies in the divine essence

6. Conclusion

7. Bibliography

Acknowledgments

This work is a revised version of a dissertation submitted in May 2022 for the obtention of a Double Canonical License in Theology and Philosophy at the Catholic Institute of Paris.

I am grateful to my dissertation directors, Professor Vincent Holzer and Professor Laure Solignac, for their valuable guidance and the opportunity to pursue this research. Their insightful remarks and corrections were instrumental in refining my work.

My sincere thanks go to the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and Nanzan Catholic University for providing a stimulating and supportive academic environment. I am deeply indebted to Professor Joseph S. O’Leary for his perceptive feedback and corrections concerning some of the patristic authors and themes touched upon in this monograph, as well as for helping me improve the English flow of the text. I am also thankful to Professor Enrico Fongaro for our stimulating discussions on Japanese philosophy that helped me broaden my perspective toward non-European philosophical thought.

Needless to say, the arguments and conclusions presented in this monograph are my own, and I bear the sole responsibility for any errors or shortcomings.

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to the entire team at Peter Lang for their expertise and support in bringing this project to fruition. My sincerest thanks go to Esra Bahsi, my commissioning editor, for her unwavering support of this project from the very beginning. I am also indebted to Professor Gijsbert van den Brink, editor of the collection Contribution to Philosophical Theology, for his valuable assessment of the manuscript and for his thoughtful suggestions. Finally, my appreciation goes to the copyeditor Cyia Mary Joy for her meticulous work, which greatly enhanced the clarity and precision of the final text.

I am grateful to my parents, Pietro and Giovanna, and to my sister, Nadia, for their unconditional support throughout the years.

Introduction

In the 30 years or so between 1336 and 1368, the theological and monastic circles of Constantinople were shaken by a doctrinal dispute which, in spite of its apparently secondary and “technical” character, provoked such a widespread controversy as to justify the publication (in 1351 and 1368, respectively) of two “tomes,” a term which, in the ecclesiastical language of the time, denoted a document proclaiming a dogma or a constitutional reform¹. The second of these tomes, the synodal volume of 1368, marks the canonization of the Athonite monk and Bishop of Thessalonica Gregory Palamas, one of the protagonists of the controversy, and, jointly, of his doctrine stating the existence of a distinction² between the essence of God and His uncreated “energies.” Gregory, who was not a professional theologian, had taken up his pen some 30 years earlier to defend the practice of Hesychast prayer cultivated in the monasteries of Mount Athos against the attacks of the Calabrian monk Barlaam of Seminara³. His doctrinal positions had, at least initially, the sole purpose of justifying the legitimacy of a spiritual experience aimed at union with God, divinization as “participation,” an expression that must have sounded perfectly natural to the ears of his listeners, accustomed to the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers and Maximus the Confessor. Gregory will always maintain, throughout all his writings full of quotations from the Fathers of the Church, that his aim is nothing but the reaffirmation of their theology in its orthodoxy, against the “conceptualizing” drifts of the (Latin) scholars steeped in profane sciences. It is precisely in this sense that the later Greek Orthodox tradition will understand his “theological gesture,” by making of Palamas, in the synodal volume of 1368, an “equal” of the holy Fathers. At the same time, many of his contemporaries and former friends would become, throughout their lives, proud opponents of Palamas. His former pupil and disciple Akindynos, who had initially mediated the epistolary exchange between his master and Barlaam, became a fierce opponent of the Palamite doctrine after the publication of the Hagioritic volume of 1341.

It is crucial to note that, until the condemnation of Akindynos⁴, and in spite of the accusations put forward by the Hesychast circle around Palamas, “Latin theology” is very little solicited on the substance of the question: Barlaam’s detractors are content to portray him as a typical representative of a “Western sensibility,” philosophical and rationalizing, without questioning the possible debts that his positions maintain with regard to Latin scholasticism. A series of fortuitous circumstances is bound to change this situation, bringing Thomistic doctrine directly into the polemic through the writings of Demetrios Kydones, mesazon of John Cantacuzene, and of his brother Prochoros. According to their arguments, if one accepts the correspondence between the Greek term energeia and the Latin term operatio, the Thomasian affirmation about the absence of accidents in God forbids the introduction of any real distinction between divine essence and divine energies⁵.

The respective positions rapidly rigidified. What had appeared to be an internal dispute within Greek Orthodoxy was now perceived as a new front of separation between Western and Eastern theological sensibilities. The canonization of Gregory Palamas, beyond any judgment on intentions, could not fail to appear to Greek theologians of the time as the authoritative investiture of an Eastern counterpart of Thomas Aquinas. Thomism and Palamism thus became, in the collective imagination of the most erudite Christians of the time, the respective incarnations of Latin and Greek “orthodoxies.”

Emphasizing the fortuitous character of the occasion that brings Thomism into contact with the Palamite controversy does not suggest, on our part, a judgment that qualifies the tension between Thomism and Palamism as “superficial” or “pretextual.” It is true that in the course of history there have been some theologians who have suggested an analogy between the formula distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re, which in Aquinas’ thought describes the relation between divine essence and divine operations⁶, and the diakrisis kat’ epinoian, which describes, according some Palamas’ commentators⁷, the relation between divine essence and divine energies, in order to argue that the gap between Thomism and Palamism should be imputed to terminological misunderstandings and to the “instrumentalization” of the debate rather than to a real theological tension between the two doctrines⁸.

Against this interpretation, we take the dualism that has come to be established in Christianity between Thomism and Palamism as a fact, an event of thought whose depth is attested by the richness and fruitfulness of the theological developments that have resulted and still result from their confrontation⁹.