Energies of the Trinity: the Energies As Tripersonal Communion in Gregory Palamas

Rule of Faith Orthodox Journal Volume 1 — November 2019 Energies of the Trinity: The Energies as Tripersonal Communion in Gregory Palamas The doctrine of the Divine Energies is significant not only as an account of how God manifests Himself to man, but also as a basis for understanding His trinitarian life. by Thomas Hamilton Th e Palamite controversy began with the Trinity. 1 According to Barlaam, the filioque was impermissible because of divine apophaticism: the human creature lacked the capacity to apprehend the divine nature. As such, the question of the Spirit’s procession could not be answered even in principle. St. Gregory Palamas, while agreeing that the filioque was impermissible, rejected Barlaam’s reasoning. The filioque was condemned precisely because God has made himself manifest and participable. In partaking of the uncreated energies, Palamas argued, the Church comes to know Father, Son, and Spirit, one God. It is because of the Church’s knowledge of God that the filioque must be rejected, not because of her ignorance of God. Yet, in contemporary theology, both the critics and advocates of the essence-energies distinction have sometimes ignored or understated its trinitarian context and purpose. In a paper designed to articulate positively the purpose and content of the doctrine of the energies, for example, David Bradshaw only once alludes to its relationship to the doctrine of the Trinity. 2 On the other side, Catherine LaCugna’s criticism of the doctrine suggests that it essentially supersedes the doctrine of the Trinity, replacing the role of the divine persons in facilitating divine-human communion. 3 It is the purpose of this paper to argue that the doctrine of the energies was Copyright 2019, Rule of Faith Orthodox Journal Hamilton - Energies of the Trinity - 2 understood by Palamas as essential to the theology of the Trinity in that it provided a philosophical elucidation for the concept of personal divine communion ad intra. I will then briefly sketch the way in which such a model provides a sound basis for understanding how God is revealed in the very same activity as one and three, thereby facilitating a model of divine-human communion that is firmly earthed in Trinitarian doctrine. Clarifying the true meaning of the distinction requires attention to its conceptual roots in the tradition of classical metaphysics. In examining Palamas’ engagement with traditional Greco-Roman concepts of God, it will be seen that the special role played by the divine energies in relation to the world creates the metaphysical context wherein the Trinity becomes necessary, thus distinguishing the personal and living God of Christianity from this classical conception of those Greeks whom Palamas lambasted. This amounts to a rebuttal of Barlaam’s contention that the Hellenistic philosophers possessed knowledge of God equal to or greater than the knowledge available in the life of the Church. Moreover, it will be shown that Palamas’ understanding of the divine energies in relation to the Trinity plays a clarifying role in understanding the way in which the New Testament describes the church’s communion with God in Trinity. I. God as One and Many First, I will examine Palamas' cosmological argument for the existence of God, whereby proves from the properties of the world that it exists contingently, requiring on that account the existence of one who is self-existent and infinitely actual. Because things in the world change, and because change requires a “new cause in each instance” conferring on things their new or more perfectly actualized properties, the world cannot be self-existent: it must derive its new properties from that which already possesses them. One therefore has, according to Palamas, “proof for an underived, self-existent primordial cause” ( 150 Chapters 1). The cause of all things is that which possesses the actualities through which contingent things are brought into existence. Palamas then draws the conclusion from “the nature of…contingent existence…” that, things are “continually coming to an end in part.” This end for the world as a whole, he suggests, is the change of creation “into something more divine by the δυνάμει of the Spirit ( 150 Chapters 2). Later in the text, Palamas uses this word as a close equivalent to the notion of the energies. Explaining Micah’s description of Christ as “going forth from ancient days”, for example, he states that the goings forth are the “energies of the divinity”, Copyright 2019, Rule of Faith Orthodox Journal Hamilton - Energies of the Trinity - 3 as God alone “possesses pre-eternal powers and energies” ( 150 Chapters 71). The development of the world toward, or into, its intrinsic end occurs through the energies which are the primordial ideas (or λόγοι)4 giving creatures their distinct properties. As it is the λόγος of a thing which develops a creature towards its eschatological completeness, it must be fully actual in God and belong to Him independent of the world’s existence, for that which is self-existent cannot be dependent upon that which contains unrealized potential. Palamas proceeds from his description of the eschaton, energized and deified by the power of the Spirit, to criticisms of the teachings of the “Hellenic Sages” concerning the relation of God to the world. Referring to the idea that the motion of the heavens belongs to the nature of the World Soul and produces by its motion the motion of all other spheres, Palamas asks: “If the World Soul belongs to the entire world, why does the earth not revolve too, and the water, and the air?” And if the World Soul’s functioning as such were rational, as the Hellenes supposed, “it would not move the celestial body in the same perpetual movements” because those things which are self-determining “move dierently at dierent times” ( 150 Chapters 3). The activities intrinsic to creatures are diverse, and insofar as every creature owes its existence and attributes to the One who is self-existent, diverse activities must belong in some manner to that divine self-existence. In these passages, the seed is planted from which his systematic exposition will grow. Because the world changes both in its qualities of existence and in the degree to which these qualities are realized, it cannot be self-existent and ontologically ultimate. It owes its being and character to one who is self-existent and primordial. Moreover, the World Soul of the Hellenic philosophers is insucient to explain the diversity of movements belonging to inanimate things such as stones, metals, and other mundane objects ( 150 Chapters 3). By implication, the diversity of inanimate things is explained in terms of a diversity of movements belonging to that which is primordial and self-existent. That there is only one self-existent being but many forms of actuality giving the contingent world its diversity entails that the diverse acts must be ontologically rooted in an absolute unity. Copyright 2019, Rule of Faith Orthodox Journal Hamilton - Energies of the Trinity - 4 II. Energies as the Ground of Ontological Diversity This diversity of movements is found in Palamas’ concept of the diversity of God’s natural energies. While God has one single essence, “the rays are many, and are sent out in a manner appropriate to those participating in them…” ( Triads 3.2.13). These rays are described as “natural symbols” which are “always coexistent with the natures of which they are symbols” ( Triads 3.1.19). The rays are symbols in that each “becomes knowable the moment its natural symbol is known” ( Triads 3.1. 2 1). This idea of necessarily existent manifestations is intelligible in light of the meaning of energeia in Aristotelian metaphysics. Energeia in the sense given by Aristotle, generally refers to “actuality” in contrast to “potency.”5 An energy in this sense, then, is that which manifests a thing as truly existing with the qualities proper to its nature, enabling it to be perceived and named as what it is. Understanding the divine energies in this sense clarifies the meaning of Palamas’ well-known claim that “if the substance does not possess an energy distinct from itself, it will be completely without actual subsistence and will be only a concept in the mind” ( 150 Chapters 136). The metaphysical questions addressed in Palamas’ writings on the energies concern not simply the way in which God and creation are related, but the way in which God is thought to exist at all. That God exists of Himself entails that God necessarily possesses all possible actualities, subsisting through and only through His energetic manifestations. In the distinction between essence and activity, Palamas seeks to reconcile the unity and diversity which must, as deduced from the world’s properties, coexist in God. The diverse operations are rooted in one nature to which the operations belong as manifestations. Thus, the specific concerns noted by Palamas in the three opening chapters of the 150 are set forth in light of the perceived advantages of his own theological system. There must be a category that relates the one nature with its many activities. Palamas’ category, I will argue below, is the consubstantial hypostases of the Trinity. III. The Relational Character of the Divine Energies I have suggested above that one of Palamas’ principal purposes in articulating his Christian doctrine of God is to account for the contingency of the world, as is reflected both in its changing nature and its characteristic tendency towards the fulfillment of its potential on the one side or nonbeing on the other. Eric Copyright 2019, Rule of Faith Orthodox Journal Hamilton - Energies of the Trinity - 5 Perl, however, while arguing for the metaphysical utility of the Palamite distinction, describes the divine activities in terms suggesting the necessity of the world, describing the processions as “dierentiated according to the dierences of creatures” as the energies are “God-for-us.” 6 Perl captures the heart of the matter in describing the energies as “God-for”, but in stating that the energies are “God-for-creation”, he designates creation as a necessary emanation from God.

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