Comments for Canterbury Tales
You're conflating two issues that need not be conflated.
The energy/essence distinction is an issue that is related but not necessarily the same as hesychasm.
Hesychasm has just become a buzzword when it needn't be. Its just ascesis, not unlike what we see in the works of the Latin St. John Cassian. Nothing is necessarily wrong with it.
The problem we in the west have is the whole Energy/essence distintiion part of it all, which has marked become a greek character of this form of religious practice.
Not sure what to make of E/E, except i just follow the Catholic church. Everything any other argument esp by the Orthodox about energies and so called distinctions, is just more pretext to remain in schism.
Taylor,
I think the desire to reconcile Aquinas and Palamas is following the directives and actions of John Paul II, who wanted Catholics to do everything we can to unite with our Eastern brothers and sisters. I think this is a noble effort. Obviously, the Church cannot betray her doctrines, but at the same time there is often room to acknowledge that Eastern theologians have insights that Western theologians do not (and obviously, the reverse is true). Attempts to reconcile East and West are valuable efforts, as they show us what is truly reconcilable and what is not (I have a tendency to think more is reconcilable than we might think). JPII understood this and this is what he meant by breathing with both lungs.
I admire St. Thomas greatly, but he is not the only theologian we can look to for insights into the vast mysteries of our faith. No one theologian or school ever is capable of doing so. The Eastern view of the Transfiguration, for example, can do much to lead us into a deeper understanding of this great event.
As a side note: Eastern Catholic Churches celebrate the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas every 2nd Sunday of Lent and Rome has not tried to stop this. If Palamas and his teaching is truly antithetical to Catholic teaching, I would think that they would have not allowed such a celebration to continue.
I wonder if the reconciliation still requires a hierarchy. That is, the Hesychasts seem to fall into daemonism because of a failure to transcend physical images of God's transcendent nature: like a sun, far away, distant, etc. The nature of God's transcendence is not physical in any way, so the need for an intermediary is completely superfluous as there is zero distance between God and His creation, even while He maintains radical transcendence and alterity from His creation.
That is, the Hesychastic thinking on the issue provides metaphorical starting points--images, excellent ones, but ones in need of purification and more solid philosophical grounding in TAq and the the Latin thinkers. Just as the East's emphasis on beauty aids the West, so to the West's emphasis on scientific rigor aids the East. The soul, which in the hierarchy is first, nonetheless needs the body despite it being a little less perfect in its representations of the truth. You see where I am going with this...
Fortescue is notorious for not understanding Palamas. What is interesting is that you keep refering to it as Palamism, when its taught by almost all the Eastern Fathers and Doctors.
Again, the E/E distinction was denied by the arch-Arian/Anomoean, Eunomius. Eunomius said the divine nature was absolutely simple, known and comprehended, in a kind of analogia fide. All of the Capapdocians and Father who opposed this error make fun of Eunomius for trying to be a hardliner and consistent with this absued view. It led him to name the divine nature.
The response was apophaticism and the E/E distinction. Not one of these Fathers teaches that there is a composition in God by saying this, but rather use this to explain how it is we are deified, and yet the divine nature is simple. A real distinction does not imply a division or separation. For example, the persons are really distinct from one another, but not divided.
Second, the energies are many, not one, as Fortescue says. God's goodness is not His justice, nor is it His wisdom. And, we don't identify His nature with a single attribute, since God is simple. The energies are His actions and we find it taught clearly in the New Testament as well. In 1 Cor. 12:6 we read:
καὶ διαιρέσεις ἐνεργημάτων εἰσίν ὁ δὲ αὐτός ἐστιν θεός ὁ ἐνεργῶν τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν
-ἐνέργημα or energēma is operation, action or work, and it's the root of the English word "energy." Here, St. Paul says these spiritual gifts are energies or actions or operations of the Spirit. They are not equated with the phusis of the Spirit, because the divine nature is simple and beyond us.
Its found in Colossians 2:12 as well, where we are told that we are made one with Christ in baptism through the "energy of God:"
ἐνεργείας τοῦ θεοῦ
Since there is a lot on the E/E distinction in the Eastern Fathers, there are two good places to start, one of which is St. Basil's 234 Letter:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/
...istinction.html
There St. Basil shows that apophaticism is necessary and that we know God only by His energies--we do not have some direct conception of His essence via creatures, as Eunomius taught.
Another good, short application of this is found in St. John of Damascus, where he applies it to proper Incarnational theology; this shows that for any real, consistent view of theosis to occur, this distinction must be held:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/...aff/
npnf209.iii
A good illustration of this point as used by the Cappadocians shows that Person is not equated with action/energy, nor is nature.
If I build a house, the Person "Jay" is not equated with the action of working, nor is it equated with the house itself. I am not my works. Likewise, God's nature is not the same as His actions, nor does His handiwork manifest His divine nature: it manifests His wisdom, goodness, etc., which are not His nature.
We know God as tri-Personal, not as an impersonal nature. God is always revealed as the living, personal God. His creation manifests His anttributes and shows that He's NOT like anything created (Rom. 1). When we enter into relationship with God, it's with the three Persons, just as when I meet Taylor, I am not coming to "know" his impersonal human nature, but the particular person Taylor, known through his human energies (or actions).
-Jay
Eric,
Great comments. I totally agree.
Jay,
First, the denial of E/E is not a denial of theosis or a denial of apophatic theology.
Second, you're operating with metaphysical categories that I don't understand. "Taylor" doesn't have an "impersonal human nature".
According to Aristotle and Boethius, whenever a suppositum is rational, it is necessarily personal, i.e. a person. Thus, it is impossible to speak of something as "impersonal and human".
If you follow through with the argumentation, it does lead to a denial of theosis.
Nature is not personal, in us, or in God. Persons are. You and I share a common nature, human nature. Jesus assumed that nature. That is why we say the Logos assumed humanity in the Incarnation. It's the same with the Godhead, the divine nature is impersonal. The Persons are.
Taylor, if it is impossible to speak of impersonal human nature, what did the Logos assume?
You are confusing nature and person. Even the Catholic Encyclopedia is great on this, showing they are distinct:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/...and-
person.html
All these distinctions are absolutely crucial to Trinitarian and Christological Orthodoxy.
That is why the Catechism makes it very clear the humanity in Christ is in NO SENSE personal or a personal subject. The only Person there is the Logos:
"468 After the Council of Chalcedon, some made of Christ's human nature a kind of personal subject. Against them, the fifth ecumenical council, at Constantinople in 553, confessed that "there is but one hypostasis [or person], which is our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity."93 Thus everything in Christ's human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death: "He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy Trinity."94
All of perfect Orthodoxy is stated here in Pope St. Agatho's Dogmatic Letter to the 6th council. He teaches that nature is impersonal, will is a property of nature and that there are natural energies/operations. The entire document is a must-read:
And briefly we shall intimate to your divinely instructed Piety, what the strength of our Apostolic faith contains, which we have received through Apostolic tradition and through the tradition of the Apostolical pontiffs, and that of the five holy general synods, through which the foundations of Christ's Catholic Church have been strengthened and established; this then is the status [and the regular tradition ] of our Evangelical and Apostolic faith, to wit, that as we confess the holy and inseparable Trinity, that is, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, to be of one deity, of one nature and substance or essence, so we will profess also that it has one natural will, power, operation, domination, majesty, potency, and glory. And whatever is said of the same Holy Trinity essentially in singular number we understand to refer to the one nature of the three consubstantial Persons, having been so taught by canonical logic. But when we make a confession concerning one of the same three Persons of that Holy Trinity, of the Son of God, or God the Word, and of the mystery of his adorable dispensation according to the flesh, we assert that all things are double in the one and the same our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ according to the Evangelical tradition, that is to say, we confess his two natures, to wit the divine and the human, of which and in which he, even after the wonderful and inseparable union, subsists. And we confess that each of his natures has its own natural propriety, and that the divine, has all things that are divine, without any sin. And we recognize that each one (of the two natures) of the one and the same incarnated, that is, humanated (humanati) Word of God is in him unconfusedly, inseparably and unchangeably, intelligence alone discerning a unity, to avoid the error of confusion. For we equally detest the blasphemy of division and of commixture. For when we confess two natures and two natural wills, and two natural operations in our one Lord Jesus Christ, we do not assert that they are contrary or opposed one to the other (as those who err from the path of truth and accuse the apostolic tradition of doing. Far be this impiety from the hearts of the faithful!), nor as though separated (per se separated) in two persons or subsistences, but we say that as the same our Lord Jesus Christ has two natures so also he has two natural wills and operations, to wit, the divine and the human: the divine will and operation he has in common with the coessential Father from all eternity: the human, he has received from us, taken with our nature in time. This is the apostolic and evangelic tradition, which the spiritual mother of your most felicitous empire, the Apostolic Church of Christ, holds.
In regard to your third statement concerning Aristotle, it is agreed that there is no human nature that does not exist in a personal mode. This is what is called "enhypostatized." It is taught in the Catechism and was used by St. Cyril against Nestorius, as well as being explained at length in St. John of Damascus.
Jay,
"Taylor, if it is impossible to speak of impersonal human nature, what did the Logos assume?"
I didn't say "it is impossible to speak of impersonal human nature." I said it's impossible for something to be human and not personal. There's a big difference.
As to the second half of your question: "Taylor, if it is impossible to speak of impersonal human nature, what did the Logos assume?"
This is a point covered by St. John of Damascus (De Fide Orth. 3, 11) and echoed by Thomas.
Damascene writes and Thomas quotes him: the Logos "did not assume human nature in general, but 'in atomo'"
Thomas says that although Christ's human nature is a kind of individual in the genus of substance, it has not its own personality, because it does not exist separately, but in something **more perfect**, viz. in the Person of the Logos.
Jay, if I might add something unrelated. You may not be aware, but your tone in the comments is a little aggressive. You are a brother in Christ. I'm a brother in Christ. We're on the same team.
Taylor,
I agree, there is not humanity that is not personal-hence it's always enhypostatized, that is, existing in a personal mode.
It is Catholic and Orthodox dogma that He assumed all of human nature, however, and it's the dogma of the 6th council.
You are incorrect about St. John of Damascus. That statement is in reference to the Logos not being Incarnated *in* all men. He is a single being, but his divine hypostasis encompasses all human hypostases. This is why the eastern fathers referred to him as "the universal Man." Pelikan has an excellent chapter on this in his volume II of the Christian Tradition.
I suggest reading all of Book III of On the Orthodox Faith. It is also a summation of everything I am arguing here.
I've already shown this from the catechism and Vatican II and John Paul II as well, here:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/...ing-
godman.html
That Christ only assumed the humanity of some men is a Nestorian proposition and condemned, for example, in the papally approved Council of Quiercy. It stated:
Chap. 4. Christ Jesus our Lord, as no man who is or has been or ever will be whose nature will not have been assumed in Him, so there is, has been, or will be no man, for whom He has not suffered- although not all will be saved by the mystery of His passion." Denzinger, 319.
This is also the teaching of Vatican II and Constantinople III as I show above in my article.
That He assumed all men is also proven by the fact that all men are resurrected in bodies (though I of course believe in resurrection to damnation--John 5:28-29). There is no other basis for resurrection than union with Christ. Otherwise, resurrection would be natural.
So, again, 'in atomo' there means as a single entity, not that He only assumed the humanity of some men. I assure you that isn't John of Damascus' view. He and St. Cyril are well known for this.
You're right, I will tone down. I apologize.
-Jay
The idea is in St. Thomas, though he is unclear about it. He writes, citing the Damascene:
"Reply to Objection 3. As Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 6,11), the Divine Nature is said to be incarnate because It is united to flesh personally, and not that It is changed into flesh. So likewise the flesh is said to be deified, as he also says (De Fide Orth. 15,17), not by change, but by union with the Word, its natural properties still remaining, and hence it may be considered as deified, inasmuch as it becomes the flesh of the Word of God, but not that it becomes God."
-St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, citing St. John of Damascus, Part 3, Q 2, Art. 1.
But even if St. Thomas did say what you believe, it wouldn't matter, since the papal decrees and the councils are more authoritative than a single doctor.
And I don't mean this to be rude, I know no one here is wanting to be a Nestorian, but St. Thomas is not the end all be all on these matters.
-Jay
-Jay
What you are arguing for, I agree with, I want to stress--His divine hypostasis is Incarnated in an single subsistence, which St. Thomas means by 'in atomo,' and what the Damascene means here:
"This, indeed, we have learned, that the Godhead was united to humanity in one of its subsistences, and it has been stated that God took on a different form or essence , to wit our own."
Bk. 3, 11.
But this is why Gaudium et Spes quotes Council 6 when it says He is united to all men via the Incarnation:
22. The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come,(20) namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.
He Who is "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15),(21) is Himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam He restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as He assumed it was not annulled,(22) by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice(23) and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.(24)"
The document references the following citations:
22. Cf. Second Council of Constantinople, canon 7: "The divine Word was not changed into a human nature, nor was a human nature absorbed by the Word." Denzinger 219 (42
; Cf. also Third Council of Constantinople: "For just as His most holy and immaculate human nature, though deified, was not destroyed (theotheisa ouk anerethe), but rather remained in its proper state and mode of being": Denzinger 291 (556); Cf. Council of Chalce, don:" to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion change, division, or separation." Denzinger 148 (302).
23. Cf. Third Council of Constantinople: "and so His human will, though deified, is not destroyed": Denzinger 291 (556)."
And this is precisely why the catechism says He is united to all men through the Incarnation in two places:
"521 Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. "By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man." We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model:
We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus' life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church. . . For it is the plan of the
521 Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. "By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man." We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model:
We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus' life and his mysteries and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church. . . For it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us."
and
"618 The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the "one mediator between God and men". But because in his incarnate divine person he has in some way united himself to every man, "the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery" is offered to all men. He calls his disciples to "take up [their] cross and follow [him]", for "Christ also suffered for [us], leaving [us] an example so that [we] should follow in his steps." In fact Jesus desires to associate with his redeeming sacrifice those who were to be its first beneficiaries. This is achieved supremely in the case of his mother, who was associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of his redemptive suffering.
Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven."
I will say Jay is passionate about this subject, but it does sometimes come off as a little aggressive.
I'm not as advanced as Taylor or Jay, but my logic is if St John of Damascus taught E/E, and St Thomas was well aware of this, then St Thomas didn't see any significant error in it.
Christ is in a certain way connected to all men (he is Emmanuel), but all men are NOT in hypostatic union with the Logos because the Logos assumed human nature in atomo.
Jay, you repeatedly place heresy in my mouth and then refute it. Why?
And when you do, at least have the integrity to apologize.
You demand retractions regarding Nyssa, and yet you libel your way through the comments...without retractions.
Taylor,
Lets not get angry. I apologize. You are a brother and I love your site. I;m not demanding anything of you, I ask that you retract that because it's a fact that he is a saint.
I do not believe either of us is saying heresy, and I'm not trying to get you to retract anything other than saying Nyssa isn't a saint, when he is. It has been my experience that a deep understanding of Eastern issues has only deepned my understanding of Christ, as well as helping me lead many Calvinists to Catholicism in the past few months. This is because these eastern issues cut to the quick in terms of Calvinistic anthropology and christology. If you had a chance to follow any of the Turretinfan debate, he was empty on each of these very issues.
Point being, as your brother and as a fellow apologist, this stuff is great. I do not want to tear you down, and if I have, I'm truly sorry.
This is all I've done for the past 3 years, and Nick and others can vouch that I'm not full of it or making this up. I understand the strangeness of some of this at first.
I know the principle you're referring to, and it's that Jesus is a single Incarnate being. He is not Incarnated in every human hypostasis. You and I totally agree there. But human nature is universal, and he assumed universal human nature. That is what the Catechism says and what Council 6 says as well as many Doctors.
To say He assumed the human nature of only some men is condemned at Quiercy, which is papally approved. He assumed all human nature: not all human hypostases are deified in Him. We agree there. This is the teaching of St. John of Damascus. Again, Pelikan has a whole section on this in Vol. 2 of his history of dogma. Its very good and so is John McGuckin's book on St. Cyril, "St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy."
Although I stress that it's not Palamite in origin, the debate between Palamas and a Barlaamite (ADS proponent) is relevant to this, and they discuss enhypostatized:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/...of-
palamas.html
I believe it was St. Augustine who said that theological inquiry was the most difficult activity on earth and must be done with the greatest of care because in no other endeavor is man so likely to sow confusing and go awry.
I do not want an apology from anybody. I would just counsel a little less haste in these sorts of debates. Other people than TM and JD are reading this discussion. Take care not to confuse more people than each other.
Jay,
A few things:
1) You say "it's a fact" that Palamas is a saint. By whom was he canonized?
2) None of the documents you have cited say that Christ assumed universal human nature, yet you claim that they do. In virtue of what should your interpretation be considered authoritative?
3) Along the same lines, you say that even if St. Thomas did disagree, it wouldn't matter. This is not true. If St. Thomas appears to disagree with your reading of authoritative Church documents, the probable conclusion is that your reading is wrong, not that St. Thomas is wrong. (The Immaculate Conception is not a counterexample to this principle, since in that case we have 1) common agreement regarding the meaning of the authoritative documents, and 2) common agreement that St. Thomas denied the IC.)
One other thing--what's the basis for the gratuitous assertions that God's wisdom, goodness, etc. are not the same as his nature?
I'm willing to bet none of you... -Jay
[Comment deleted.]
Edited By Siteowner
All of the confusion would be solved by reading all the way through On the Orthodox Faith.
Isn't the Son the Wisdom of the Father? If all the attributes are the nature and all are one, the, is the Son the Father? Are they both the nature? Is the Person of the Son simply the divine nature or a manifestation thereof? That's modalism. Remember, the divine nature is simple and not compounded, and if all attribites and distinctions in God are equated with nature, all distinctions become erased.
St. John of Damascus writes in Bk. 1, Chpt. 13:
No one sees the Father, save the Son and the Spirit John 6:46 .
The Son is the counsel and wisdom and power of the Father. For one may not speak of quality in connection with God, from fear of implying that He was a compound of essence and quality.
The Son is from the Father, and derives from Him all His properties: hence He cannot do ought of Himself . For He has not energy peculiar to Himself and distinct from the Father .
That God Who is invisible by nature is made visible by His energies, we perceive from the organisation and government of the world Wisdom 12:5.
There you go, essence/energy.
so much haste...
OK, my mistake about the saint.
No, I do not think St. Thomas trumps papal teaching. I think that St. Thomas trumps your interpretation of papal teaching (and certainly he trumps the other saints and doctors and fathers, as long as we're playing the authority game).
For the third time, the catechism, Vatican II citing Constantinople III and John Paul II teach:
521 Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us. "By his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man."
I don't see anything about universal human nature there, nor in your quotations from Denzinger. One of those says there is no man "whose nature he did not assume." Which only says that all men have the same nature (and that not numerically).
Because if God's nature is a single attribute, there are no distincitons in Him and all His actions are His nature. This is absurd. Action is not nature. Otherwise, God's actions would be determined, as His nature is determined. Secondly, since God's nature is simple, identifying His nature with one attribute excludes all others, which is absurd. Otherwise all attributes collapse into a single attribute with no distinctions. Do you really believe God's love is His wisdom. They are His actions, His energon, as St. Paul says, not His nature.
God's nature is not an attribute, but rather himself, his existence. Second, if by God's actions you mean what God does, then yes, they are his essence, and yes, they are determined. The effects that God produces in the world are not determined in the sense of being necessary, but these effects are not God. He himself is necessary, what he produces is contingent, and there is nothing in between (unless he produces something necessary). Third, yes, the attributes in God are not really distinct. His love is his wisdom is his knowledge is his power, etc. Nor is this problematic, since these things in God are not the same as they are in us; hence the fact that they are distinct in us does not imply that they must be distinct in God.
All of the confusion would be solved by reading all the way through On the Orthodox Faith.
On the contrary, it seems that this confusion has been produced precisely by reading much of that sort of theology without interpreting it in the right framework. This, for instance, which you quote:
That God Who is invisible by nature is made visible by His energies, we perceive from the organisation and government of the world Wisdom 12:5.
The reference seems to be Wisdom 13, actually. But the important point is that this obviously says nothing about God's "energies." It says that we perceive him through the things that he has made, just as St. Paul says.
I am an Orthodox Christian who sees some real differences between the RCC and Orthodox ethos. I think the doctrine of divine energies helps explain some of that.
It should be noted however, that the doctrine came about 1) from Biblical language about the spiritual life as synergeia and 2) in order to explain the Christian experience: both of theosis and the Uncreated Light experienced in prayer. It is in Holy Scriptures, in early Church teaching, but Palamas talked about it to defend pious Christian's experience of God.
He was in no way reacting to Thomas Aquinas or the Latin Christiandom. The notion some Orthodox have that Barlaam was brought into his heresy by reading Aquinas I find to be sad and politically motivated. (Even if he had read Aquinas, he would have had to have read him very poorly to motivate him in his heresy. Thomas is not to blame.)
Taylor asks: why try to reconcile the two? When M cries "haste" is this a cry for reconcilliation?
If you want to understand E/E primarily as metaphysical distinctions you will miss the whole reason it is there. Take a gander through the late Elder Sophrony's book "On Prayer", St. Isaac the Syrian, or St. Gregory's "Triads" and you'll get a taste of what it is like to have as an icon of prayer the actual experience of God in your body and your mind. Do I think it holds up metaphysically? Yeah, I do. It sure sounds more helpful and true than saying the wisdom of God and the goodness of God are exactly the same thing.
To respond to an early comment: the use of images (sun, rays) is an analogy: not an end. Palamas is explicit that the energies are ineffible. When you contemplate the mystery of God's simplicity you are contemplating the energeiai, since simplicity is one of them.
Forgive me, a sinner.
Going to Adrian Fortescue for information on Orthodox theology is akin to learning Catholic dogma from Lorraine Boettner, or more to the point, the monks of Mt. Athos. There are plenty of Catholic scholars with a more nuanced and sympathetic understanding of the E/E distinction and Hesychasm, although specific references escape my tired brain at the moment (it being way past my bedtime).
What about this article?
http://mliccione.blogspot.com/20...f-
doctrine.html
Bunthorne,
I am not inventing some obscure interpretation. Its the teaching of the 6th council and many doctors. Its clear in the Letter of Pope St. Agath to that Council there is an essence/energy distinction.
Nature, by it's very definition, means universal. Persons are particular. It's not my fault you are not aware of this. How else do you imagine Christ is in some way connected to all men via His assumption of our nature. The quote of Quiercy says He is united to all men.
Do you believe Christ assumed only some men? That's Gottschalk bro.
Existence is an attribute. His nature is not one attribute.
You say, "God's nature is not an attribute, but rather himself, his existence."
If God's nature is not one attribute, then he cannot be defined as pure act, as Thomas does.
Lol. You say God's actions are determined? Lol. So, when God created, He created out of necessity? His creating the world was determined but not free. You are exemplifiying all the critiques of this position in one response.
Again, you say God's essence is His actions. God's essence is simple. Therefore if ist simple, its not multiple. If its simple, all relations collapse, and this would include his generation of the Son of Spiration of the Spirit. This means, following your logic, these actions are His essence as well. This is modalism, where the Persons are modes of the essence. Thomas makes this same confusion in 1a Q39, where he says the persons are the essence.
You asy in the first 2 lines, God's nature is His action and is His existence. Thus all the relations and distinctions are merely modes of the essence, which is modalsim plain and simple.
If God's attributes and actions are all one, then so are the Persons and creation (and all His acts) are necessary and none free act. This is all completely absurd.
Wisdom 12:5 is different in the LXX, bro. Most of the chapters in the LXX are about 1 chapter. This also goes to show you are not familiar with these issues.
1 chapter off i meant to say.
This will not be an easy article to those new to this question, but it's very well written and lays all of this out:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php...632006&
comments
Sorry, here is the right link:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/...-energies-
.html
Nature, by it's very definition, means universal. Persons are particular. It's not my fault you are not aware of this.
Nature in itself is neither universal nor particular. It is universal only according to the being it has in the intellect, and particular according to the being it has in things. There is no really existing universal human nature.
If God's nature is not one attribute, then he cannot be defined as pure act, as Thomas does.
On the contrary, St. Thomas uses the notion of God as pure act as a premise to argue to the fact that God is his own essence and his own existence (ST I, q. 3, aa. 3-4).
Lol. You say God's actions are determined? Lol. So, when God created, He created out of necessity? His creating the world was determined but not free.
God did not create out of necessity, but this does not mean that what he does is not determined. What God does is his essence, eternal knowledge and love, and this is necessary. The created world is something God makes, but there is no "making" by which he makes it. Again, there is no "action" in between God and what he creates. He is necessary, creation is not.
Again, you say God's essence is His actions. God's essence is simple. Therefore if ist simple, its not multiple. If its simple, all relations collapse, and this would include his generation of the Son of Spiration of the Spirit. This means, following your logic, these actions are His essence as well. This is modalism, where the Persons are modes of the essence. Thomas makes this same confusion in 1a Q39, where he says the persons are the essence.
Your objection is answered in that very article--in the Trinity, person and essence differ not in their being but in our way of thinking, which is why we can predicate multiplicity of the former but unity of the latter even though they are really the same. The persons are really distinct from one another, on the other hand, because relations of oppositions are really opposed to their opposites.
You asy in the first 2 lines, God's nature is His action and is His existence. Thus all the relations and distinctions are merely modes of the essence, which is modalsim plain and simple.
The relations are not modes of the essence, they are the essence itself.
Wisdom 12:5 is different in the LXX, bro. Most of the chapters in the LXX are about 1 chapter. This also goes to show you are not familiar with these issues.
How does this show that your interpretation of Wisdom is the correct one?
Jay,
Please tone down your comments to the other commentators.
Adding "bro" to the end of your statements and "LOL" after you consider someone's statement is disrespectful.
Truth must conveyed in the context of virtue.
If it happens again, you'll be blocked.
Bunthorne,
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I don't understand much of what you are saying. Maybe you can clear stuff up for me.
How is God related to His creation? The Father, Son, and Spirit do not act?
As I mull over what you're saying, I keep thinking, "this means that God is ineffably transcendent beyond our language and understanding". Do you mean it to be taken this way?
If so, that's something we can all get on board with; but what then can we say about God? What then is comprehensible?
Re: the Persons of the Trinity - how are they opposites in relation to each other?
Does anyone else wonder if starting with metaphysics, at least in the way that this discussion has gone, is the right way to go? Maybe it is, but it certainly isn't a way to understand the Cappadocians, Palamas, and the "Eastern" understanding of the issue.
It seems that if you want E/E and ADS to work, there's ways to define the two in order to make it work, but that seems to be a rather futile undertaking.
Which leads us back to one of Taylor's original questions - why try to reconcile the two?
What are we hoping to get from this discussion?
How is God related to His creation? The Father, Son, and Spirit do not act?
Creation is really related to God, but God has a relation to creatures only in idea, not in himself. For an explanation of this, see ST, I, q. 13, a. 7.
God does act, but not in the way that others have suggested. More properly, he is act; his action is the same as his essence. But creating this or creating that is not something God does. He produces things by his action, but his action is not producing this or that. In other words, God's action would be the same no matter what he had created, or even if he had created nothing at all.
As I mull over what you're saying, I keep thinking, "this means that God is ineffably transcendent beyond our language and understanding". Do you mean it to be taken this way?
That is true in a sense, but it is not true that we cannot say anything positive about God. I don't have time to elaborate now, but see all of ST, I, q. 13 for an account of the way in which we can speak about God.
Re: the Persons of the Trinity - how are they opposites in relation to each other?
In the sense that fatherhood is by definition opposed to sonship, and spirating is opposed to being spirated. For an account of this, read Aristotle's discussion of relatives in the Categories, and Aquinas's treatment of the Trinity. The distinction in this sort of relative opposition is the only real distinction in God, which brings me to the last point:
What are we hoping to get from this discussion?
I believe that ideas such as the essence/energy distinction are materially heretical. It is doctrine that the only real distinction in God is the distinction of relative opposition (Council of Orange, IIRC). To say that his essence is distinct from his energies violates this truth.
Bunthorne,
Sorry for the late response. I appreciate what you write. If I were RC I'm pretty sure I would believe I would hold E/E to be materially heretical. Why? Well, simply because it is against RC dogma. So if that's what this discussion is about, it seems to have come to a terminus.
I'm hear, not because I want to rail against RC dogma, but because this issue is central the differences in the RC and Orthodox ethos. There's a lot a don't understand about these issues: metaphysically, historically, and more importantly on the spiritual life. Orthodox pray with expectation of entering further into the divine energies, and dedicate themselves to transforming their lives into this prayer. They are being fed - not by some mediating force - but by communing/ participating in God. (Which is why St. Gregory Palamas likens the Uncreated Light to manna from heaven.)
I've read Aquinas, but isn't is reasonable for someone who initially buys the E/E distinction to hear "God is act" as "We know God by knowing His Energies"?
Perhaps it is the case that I don't have a place in this conversation - and that's the case, that's ok.
Bunthorne,
I've already shown you in many instances this is not heretical and is in our Catholic dogma. Thomism is not the be all, end all of Catholicism. You know your Thomism, but you appear to be unfamiliar with dogmatics where this is clearly taught. It is taught clear as day in Pope St. Agatho's Letter:
"For when we confess two natures and two natural wills, and two natural operations in our one Lord Jesus Christ, we do not assert that they are contrary or opposed one to the other (as those who err from the path of truth and accuse the apostolic tradition of doing. Far be this impiety from the hearts of the faithful!), nor as though separated (per se separated) in two persons or subsistences, but we say that as the same our Lord Jesus Christ has two natures so also he has two natural wills and operations, to wit, the divine and the human: the divine will and operation he has in common with the coessential Father from all eternity: the human, he has received from us, taken with our nature in time."
Notice how nature and operation are distinguished. Operation there is energy.
St. Cyril of Alexandria and the 6th council teach that Christ assumed universal human nature.
You say nature is neither universal not particular. There is a really existing human nature, that which Christ assumed. It is enhypostatized, which means it exists only in the mode of persons. In other words, there is no form of human nature out there in the realm of forms, it means that human nature is common among all human persons. Christ assumed this nature and that is the teaching the 6th council.
Nature in the godhead is common, person is particular.
You say:
"I don't see anything about universal human nature there, nor in your quotations from Denzinger. One of those says there is no man "whose nature he did not assume." Which only says that all men have the same nature (and that not numerically)."
If there's no man whose nature He did not assume, He assumed all men. Recall that that is a condemnation of Gottschalk who taught the idea that only some men were the objects of Christ's incarnation and death--an early version of limited atonement.
Again, if you read any standard works on the development of Eastern theology, you will see this is the teaching of the Eastern Doctors.
I already showed you in On the Orthodox Faith that what I am saying is what he says. Observe:
"The divine Apostle in truth says that in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily Colossians 2:9, that is to say in His flesh. And His divinely-inspired disciple, Dionysius, who had so deep a knowledge of things divine, said that the Godhead as a whole had fellowship with us in one of its own subsistences . But we shall not be driven to hold that all the subsistences of the Holy Godhead, to wit the three, are made one in subsistence with all the subsistences of humanity. For in no other respect did the Father and the Holy Spirit tak
I agree God's creativity is not determined, but that's because I believe the divine Persons have a single will that is free.
You said above His actions are determined. If they are determined, they are not free. You have predicated contradictory assertions--both that God's actions are free and determined.
St. Paul himself clearly distinguishes Person from action:
In 1 Cor. 12:6 we read:
καὶ διαιρέσεις ἐνεργημάτων εἰσίν ὁ δὲ αὐτός ἐστιν θεός ὁ ἐνεργῶν τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν
-ἐνέργημα or energēma is operation, action or work, and it's the root of the English word "energy." Here, St. Paul says these spiritual gifts are energies or actions or operations of the Spirit. They are not equated with the phusis of the Spirit, because the divine nature is simple and beyond us.
Its found in Colossians 2:12 as well, where we are told that we are made one with Christ in baptism through the "energy of God:"
ἐνεργείας τοῦ θεοῦ
This is clear.
If the Persons are relations of the essence, the Persons are the essence. That is modalism.
If the divine nature is absolutely simple, then is the eternal begetting of the Son an action of the essence?
How does an impersonal essence act? Don't persons act?
Person is not nature, and its that simple. If Person is nature, it's modalism.
You say:
"Your objection is answered in that very article--in the Trinity, person and essence differ not in their being but in our way of thinking, which is why we can predicate multiplicity of the former but unity of the latter even though they are really the same. The persons are really distinct from one another, on the other hand, because relations of oppositions are really opposed to their opposites."
This has been thoroughly critiqued by Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics for years. If what is the defining property of the persons is their mere relation to one another, the distinctions collapse because each Person possesses the property of being "not the other two." This means each person's defining property is the very same as the defining property of the other two!
The Persons are not the essence. Just as human persons are not the same as human nature. Let's carry this through consistently--if what you are saying is the case, then the divine Person of the Son *is* the divine nature. No, the divine Person possesses a divine nature. Persons act, not nature.
Here is St. Basil teaching it again:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/
...ctionagain.html
Mr. Dyer:
Kindly take note of the following dogmatic proclamations of the councils deemed ecumenical by the Catholic Church, which are nothing other than what St. Thomas is saying.
Lateran IV:
"We firmly believe and simply confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immeasurable, almighty, unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable, Father, Son and holy Spirit, three persons but one absolutely simple essence, substance or nature.
...
This holy Trinity, which is undivided according to its common essence but distinct according to the properties of its persons, gave the teaching of salvation to the human race through Moses and the holy prophets and his other servants, according to the most appropriate disposition of the times."
Florence:
"These three persons are one God not three gods, because there is one substance of the three, one essence, one nature, one Godhead, one immensity, one eternity, and everything is one where the difference of a relation does not prevent this.
...
Whatever the Father is or has, he has not from another but from himself and is principle without principle. Whatever the Son is or has, he has from the Father and is principle from principle. Whatever the holy Spirit is or has, he has from the Father together with the Son. But the Father and the Son are not two principles of the holy Spirit, but one principle, just as the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit are not three principles of creation but one principle."
I would differ with Bunthorne, in that I think the essence-energies distinction does not necessarily introduce a division into God unless the energies are viewed as a metaphysically separate entity, which Mr. Cone aptly points out is not the case. "Energies" in this context could merely be used to denote a real change in our relationship to God, which is admissible in either formulation. But it is not a dogmatic option for Catholics to posit a real distinction in God discrete from the intervening relations of the Trinity.
Re: St. Basil, I would note that St. Thomas does not assert that we comprehend the essence by knowledge according to our own finite mode. That is a peculiar consequence of the Neoplatonic metaphysics employed by Eunomius, and that is what Basil was answering.
Jay's objection voices my own concerns about modalism, and stripping the Persons of the Trinity of their Personhood. Before Thomas baptized Aristotle, what were Christian's to think? How did they relate to and know God? How does God as purus actus change and/or deepen Latin Christians' spiritual life?
I have a great deal of respect for Aquinas, but do you Thomists see why others might be concerned that you are in love with a metaphysical conception of God, and it as a sort of idol? I know too many Godly and pious RC's to esteem myself better than them - but to many people metaphysical arguments of this sort can sound at worst heretical, and at best unnecessary and distracting.
This, of course, is coming from one who likes to think and read about these things as well...
Jonathan and Jesse,
I agree, but I think those statements in Ia Q.39 I are confused and problematic.
-jay
More of my thoughts on this"
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/...ent-
debate.html
Also, St. Bonaventure says this point up for debate, showing its not heretical:
"I RESPOND: For an understanding of the aforesaid it must be noted, that about this question wise (men) opine (what is) contrary to wise men. for in this question there is something, which the Faith determines, (and) something, which reason investigates. The Faith and Scripture determines, that apart from the gift of grace it is impossible to please God;3 (each) also determines, that apart from the uncreated Gift, which is the Holy Spirit, man cannot come to be accepted by God nor be assumed into the adoption of the sons of God. And for that reason all (those) understanding (this) rightly concede, that there is a gift of grace in the just, and they also believe,4 that in them is the uncreated Gift, which is the Holy Spirit. And this is determined by the Faith and by Scripture; and for that reason, he who would think the contrary of this, would be a heretic. — But whether besides the uncreated God there is, and/or is not, in us the positing of a created gift, through which we have been accepted by God; because it is not expressly determined by the authority of Scripture, it is investigated by the doctors (of theology) with the probability of reasons. And since both the habit and the gifts and even the virtues have to be cognized through their own operations;5 for that reason, there are diverse opinions of the doctors on this, according to the diverse comparison of grace’s acts and effects to grace itself."
http://www.franciscan-archive.or...a/
bon02633.html
Jonathan,
What do you make of this from LaGrange:
"Reply. Both parts of the question are denied. St. Thomas says in the present article: "The grace of union is the personal being that is given gratis from above to the human nature in the person of the Word, " and therefore it cannot be understood in the sense of a created medium, a created actuation that is produced by the uncreated act. The grace of union is not something created, but it is the very Word that terminates the human nature, both possessing and sanctifying it."
http://www.catholicprimer.org/ga...orks/tp0-
90.htm
It must follow for the Incarnation as well, musn't it? I mean in terms of energy being what deifies, since all are agreed the divine nature is one and simple.
-jay
Being one and simple is not opposed to act (ST I, q. 3, a. 2). Rather, the former entails the latter. Otherwise potency would be introduced into God, and God would not be God.
Jonathan--
You wrote:
"I would differ with Bunthorne, in that I think the essence-energies distinction does not necessarily introduce a division into God unless the energies are viewed as a metaphysically separate entity, which Mr. Cone aptly points out is not the case. "Energies" in this context could merely be used to denote a real change in our relationship to God, which is admissible in either formulation. But it is not a dogmatic option for Catholics to posit a real distinction in God discrete from the intervening relations of the Trinity."
I am not Mr. Cone, so I can't speak for him. But I will say what I suspect. I think he would agree that there is no division in God and the energies are no separate entity. But I also guess he would say there is distinction in God. My read of the Eastern Fathers (which seems to be in line with Jesse's) leads me to believe that what they mean by energies is not merely some sort of change in relationship to God that we can experience. This seems plausible when we consider the way Maximus and others speak of "the things around God" and the way the Cappadocians and others seem to talk about how we take on God's attributes, and the way Irenaeus and others talk about how we can't know about or share in the divine essence (if the energies are different ways of experiencing the essence, then surely we can know about and share in the essence, right?).
So when Mr. Cone and Bunthorne say that Roman dogma seems incompatible with e/e, I think they're right on the money. In fact, I suspect that you and Bunthorne are pretty much in agreement on this issue. You only seem to differ over whether or not e/e can be read in the way that involves real metaphysical distinction in God (you say it doesn't have to, he says it does--I agree with him). Forgive me, though, if I have mischaracterized either of your positions.
The fact that the Eastern Fathers taught e/e is significant by itself. What's really interesting to think about is the fact that Eastern terms and theological concepts were the basis for the Ecumenical Councils. I suspect that e/e is the (usually implicit, sometimes explicit as in the 6th council) teaching of the first seven Ecumenical Councils. And if so, how do Roman Catholics harmonize the (prima facie) tension between e/e in the Councils and their later dogmatic formulations about the absolute simplicity of God?
Thanks MG, I think you summed me up well, and the most distressing tensions also. Speaking for myself: There is no division in God, he is simple as both East and West affirms. There are distinctions, and these distinctions are real. God is not a "black hole" that sucks in all distinctions and makes them all part of the same simple substance - as can sometimes be expressed by ADS supporters.
Such a thing is not beautiful...
Taylor:
"Being one and simple is not opposed to act (ST I, q. 3, a. 2). Rather, the former entails the latter. Otherwise potency would be introduced into God, and God would not be God."
Jay:
It's not opposed to act because they are being identified and equated. If God's nature is determined and His acrions are His nature and the Persons are relations of the nate, then all in God is determined, as well as all out of God (creation).
MG:
"My read of the Eastern Fathers (which seems to be in line with Jesse's) leads me to believe that what they mean by energies is not merely some sort of change in relationship to God that we can experience. This seems plausible when we consider the way Maximus and others speak of "the things around God" and the way the Cappadocians and others seem to talk about how we take on God's attributes, and the way Irenaeus and others talk about how we can't know about or share in the divine essence (if the energies are different ways of experiencing the essence, then surely we can know about and share in the essence, right?)."
As Mr. Dyer pointed out, it's not even clear in the West as to what precisely the entitative nature of the change in relationship effected by grace is. Clearly, uncreated grace becomes present in the soul in the personal presence of the Holy Spirit, but the exact nature of that presence in the soul and the change in the soul wrought by that presence is (I think rightly) viewed as beyond the powers of analysis. There is speculation, but I can't see any definitive resolution. In that respect, I certainly don't think that any Western author would suggest that a real change in metaphysical relation to God entails direct and comprehensive knowledge of the essence in a way that runs afoul of the Eastern formulation. I think people *assume* that, but I have never come across anything in either the Eastern Fathers (including the ones you mentioned) or the Scholastics that actually justifies that conclusion. I just don't see the wisdom in jumping to the conclusion simply because of an apparent difficulty. Calling out a dogmatic contradiction and asking how to resolve it is premature at this point. All we have is an apparent difficulty that has never been conclusively resolved.
Great posts Jay!
I am including a link to the Byzantine Liturgy's prayers for the "Sunday of the Fathers of the Six Ecumenical Councils," because those prayers help to explain and clarify the faith of Eastern Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox.
http://www.geocities.com/
theomim...zantine_liturgy
God grant you all many joyful years,
Todd
Just my two cents, but I think people are oversimplifying/misreading ST 1:39:1.
"But as it was shown above (Question 28, Article 2) in creatures relations are accidental, whereas in God they are the divine essence itself. Thence it follows that in God essence is not really distinct from person; and yet that the persons are really distinguished from each other. For person, as above stated (29, 4), signifies relation as subsisting in the divine nature."
When you look up 28:2 and 29:4, he gives a more complicated and nuanced understanding of Person and Nature than to just throw it all away with an absolute equation of the two in 39.
To me he is simply denying the relations are 'accidental' and thus it must be essence, but the contrast is accident-essence, so it doesn't read the same way the East is reading it as an absolute equation. How the essence itself is understood is beyond our comprehension, absolute simplicity says of all the ways we know something can be composed of parts (eg accidents), the Divine Essence doesn't include any of those distinctions. The last sentence of the above quote comes off to me as Thomas wanting to avoid two numerical "divine-things" coming together to make up God (ie Divine Person and Divine Nature). So He is denying a Person could exist on his own.
I could be totally wrong here, and I'm not as advanced as others, but I would just strongly caution pulling out theological sound bytes and concluding a Doctor was teaching heresy. In situations like this, his teaching must be read as a whole, and not by individual articles.
Nick, I think you're right and Thomas even brings in the liturgy to demonstrate his point - showing that the cult of latria is given to the divine relations in I, 28, 2:
Everything which is not the divine essence is a creature. But relation really belongs to God; and if it is not the divine essence, it is a creature; and it cannot claim the adoration of latria; contrary to what is sung in the Preface: "Let us adore the distinction of the Persons, and the equality of their Majesty."
One can see further problems for the Thomist mind to grasp what is meant by "engergies distinct from essence" when one looks at this statement from Thomas:
"Everything which is not the divine essence is a creature."
ST I, q. 28, a. 2, c.
It is for this reason that Western theologians have understood (wrongly or rightly) the Eastern "energies" to function as a kind of emanating "demiurge" that mediates between a transcendent God and the created universe.
Also, the sixth council was directed against those (Monothelites who were really just crypto Monophysites) who denied a human will or operation in Christ. The argument is that just as the divine nature entails a divine will, so also the human nature entails a human will.
The Monothelites were divorcing the connection between nature and will. The Holy Church affirmed their union.
The purpose was to rescue the true humanity of Christ, not codify a doctrine of divine energies. The same pertains also to St. Agatho's letter.
Jonathan--
You wrote:
"As Mr. Dyer pointed out, it's not even clear in the West as to what precisely the entitative nature of the change in relationship effected by grace is. Clearly, uncreated grace becomes present in the soul in the personal presence of the Holy Spirit, but the exact nature of that presence in the soul and the change in the soul wrought by that presence is (I think rightly) viewed as beyond the powers of analysis. There is speculation, but I can't see any definitive resolution."
Well, if all of the alternatives for how this could be resolved are unacceptable, then the argument still stands. As I see it, the only two things that could be present in the soul on the Western view are (a) the divine essence or (b) a created effect. Is there a third alternative?
You wrote:
"In that respect, I certainly don't think that any Western author would suggest that a real change in metaphysical relation to God entails direct and comprehensive knowledge of the essence in a way that runs afoul of the Eastern formulation. I think people *assume* that, but I have never come across anything in either the Eastern Fathers (including the ones you mentioned) or the Scholastics that actually justifies that conclusion. I just don't see the wisdom in jumping to the conclusion simply because of an apparent difficulty. Calling out a dogmatic contradiction and asking how to resolve it is premature at this point. All we have is an apparent difficulty that has never been conclusively resolved."
I will admit that my reading of the Scholastics and Western Fathers is not as extensive as I would like it to be. But my impression is that they think you can see God's essence in some sense. Is this incorrect?
Nick--
you wrote:
"When you look up 28:2 and 29:4, he gives a more complicated and nuanced understanding of Person and Nature than to just throw it all away with an absolute equation of the two in 39.
To me he is simply denying the relations are 'accidental' and thus it must be essence, but the contrast is accident-essence, so it doesn't read the same way the East is reading it as an absolute equation. How the essence itself is understood is beyond our comprehension, absolute simplicity says of all the ways we know something can be composed of parts (eg accidents), the Divine Essence doesn't include any of those distinctions. The last sentence of the above quote comes off to me as Thomas wanting to avoid two numerical "divine-things" coming together to make up God (ie Divine Person and Divine Nature). So He is denying a Person could exist on his own.
I could be totally wrong here, and I'm not as advanced as others, but I would just strongly caution pulling out theological sound bytes and concluding a Doctor was teaching heresy. In situations like this, his teaching must be read as a whole, and not by individual articles."
Aquinas' fear of composition in God by distinguishing persons and essence seems to at least manifest a confusion about the theology of the Councils, if not an implicit denial of their teachings.
I'm still struck by the fact that Aquinas seems to be saying that the persons and the essence are identical. Can you shed some light on that?
You wrote:
"One can see further problems for the Thomist mind to grasp what is meant by "engergies distinct from essence"... It is for this reason that Western theologians have understood (wrongly or rightly) the Eastern "energies" to function as a kind of emanating "demiurge" that mediates between a transcendent God and the created universe."
(1) Why should we accept the idea that God is absolutely simple?
(2) Why can the energies not be fully divine and also really distinct from the divine essence?
(3) Doesn't this just show that the West should *try to understand* what the East is saying, instead of rejecting it, perhaps?
Taylor--
you wrote:
"Also, the sixth council was directed against those (Monothelites who were really just crypto Monophysites) who denied a human will or operation in Christ. The argument is that just as the divine nature entails a divine will, so also the human nature entails a human will.
The Monothelites were divorcing the connection between nature and will. The Holy Church affirmed their union.
The purpose was to rescue the true humanity of Christ, not codify a doctrine of divine energies. The same pertains also to St. Agatho's letter."
How do you interpret the phrase "two energies" that the Council ratifies? Do you interpret that according to the theology of Thomas Aquinas, or the theology of Saint Maximus?
Yes, the purpose was to rescue the true humanity of Christ. The question is, how did the Council do this? How did it maintain Christ's full humanity? The answer: formalizing the essence/energies distinction and applying it to both anthropology and the doctrine of God.
The Council also had other purposes in ratifying Maximus' thought on the Incarnation:
(1) to deny the dialectic of opposition (a principle assumption from which the doctrine of Absolute Divine Simplicity is derived)
(2) to maintain that there are a multiplicity of really distinct Goods in the one Good that is God (notice: multiplicity of energies)
(3) to maintain the radical libertarian freedom of God and man in opposition to the threat of lapsing into determinism (notice: this is incompatible with ADS's commitment to God necessarily creating the universe)
You can read about this in Maximus' debate with Pyrrhus over the natural wills and natural energies of Christ. See "Disputation with Pyrrhus" and "Free Choice in Saint Maximus the Confessor" for details about Maximus' theology on these points, which is at odds with Thomas Aquinas and Roman Catholic teaching about God's simplicity. Maximus, the theologian that inspired the 6th Council, taught the essence/energies distinction and used it to preserve the integrity of Christ's humanity. So the very Ecumenical Council that Rome accepts seems to me to be in conflict with Rome's teaching about God's absolute simplicity.
MG,
"(1) Why should we accept the idea that God is absolutely simple?"
If God's essence has parts, then he is material since divisible applies to matter.
(2) Why can the energies not be fully divine and also really distinct from the divine essence?
"Essentia" is a Latin creation to denote the Greek philosophical phrase: "to ti en einai" or "the what it is to be".
Thus, the essence of God is the "what it is to be God." If something is not the "essentia" of God then it is NOT the what it is to be God. It's not God.
Using this definition of essentia, the energies cannot be God UNLESS the essence of God is the energies of God. I don't think that any Thomists have a problem with that - in fact it nicely complements the idea of God as Pure Act. M. Liccione's article had some good things to say about this. The problem is that some folks want to say that the energies are NOT the essence or the "what it is to be God".
(3) Doesn't this just show that the West should *try to understand* what the East is saying, instead of rejecting it, perhaps?
I don't think that the Catholic Church has ever condemned or anathematized the E/E distinction. On the other hand the Orthodox Church has condemned those who don't agree with them.
"Everything which is not the divine essence is a creature." (ST I, q. 28, a. 2, c.)
That is an interesting quotation from Aquinas, but Palamas - in a sense - gives the Eastern Christian response:
"Not everything which is predicated of God is essence." (Capita Physica, no. 127)
Christos Voskrese!
Todd
MG:
"As I see it, the only two things that could be present in the soul on the Western view are (a) the divine essence or (b) a created effect. Is there a third alternative?"
Obviously. The Western view asserts that it is the personal presence of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the soul (uncreated grace) that produces the effect in the soul (created grace). The divine essence is therefore present in the soul, since so is the Holy Spirit, but obviously not possessed in the same mode as God possesses it.
"But my impression is that they think you can see God's essence in some sense. Is this incorrect?"
In some sense, this is not incorrect. But if you aren't going to succumb to the complex question fallacy, then the follow up question had better be "in what sense?" That is where I would suggest there is no real difference between the Eastern and Western views.
"(1) to deny the dialectic of opposition (a principle assumption from which the doctrine of Absolute Divine Simplicity is derived"
Absolutely not. That is the assumption from which *Plotinian* absolute divine simplicity is derived, a concept which has no significant relation to Augustine's concept, much less Aquinas's. The propaganda campaign equating Augustine with Plotinus, long lived thought it has been, is finally being recognized as far overstated. The false dichotomy between Maximus and Aquinas simply follows from it.
"to maintain that there are a multiplicity of really distinct Goods in the one Good that is God (notice: multiplicity of energies)"
Aquinas doesn't deny this either, at least in the relevant sense that Maximus asserts the distinction (viz., the *ways* God can be enjoyed or chosen as truly good).
"to maintain the radical libertarian freedom of God and man in opposition to the threat of lapsing into determinism (notice: this is incompatible with ADS's commitment to God necessarily creating the universe)"
The propaganda campaign to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no hint of Origenism in St. Thomas, because creation very clearly does not necessarily follow from his doctrine of divien simplicity, nor does the Angelic Doctor insist on deterministic causality in such a way as to override free will. Your tendentious conclusion follows from the very premise that the identity Aquinas asserts between the persons and the essence (and for that matter, the acts of the essence) is Leibnizian identity. But that is clearly false, as St. Thomas repeatedly notes the infinite number of ways in which God can will Himself as God. Indeed, to contradict Aquinas on this point is to say that there is a real difference in God (based on His energies) if He chooses to create this rather than that. St. Maximus's doctrine of the unity of the energies actually says nothing different from St. Thomas in that regard.
Where do you learn these things? Stump? Farrell? I keep hearing these assertions, but when I read the sources, I have
... no idea what the basis for these conclusions is.
"Not everything which is predicated of God is essence."
And what makes you think that everything truly predicated of God need correspond to a real distinction in God? I certainly understand why Pseudo-Dionysius, Palamas, and even Maximus believed it, but I also see why both Aquinas and Scotus have reason to differ from them on that point.
I hold that the distinction is real, because that is the teaching of Palamas and the Fathers. And of course a real distinction does not necessitate a real division.
Christos Voskrese,
Todd
Indeed He is risen!
My only point is that the fact that the Fathers teaching that there is a real distinction according to the metaphysical categories of Neoplatonism says little about whether one is required in the Aristotelian metaphysics of the Scholastics. There are even Eastern Fathers that argue for the distinction between personal properties and nature in a way that appears compatible with the West.
Taylor:
"Everything which is not the divine essence is a creature. But relation really belongs to God; and if it is not the divine essence, it is a creature; and it cannot claim the adoration of latria; contrary to what is sung in the Preface: "Let us adore the distinction of the Persons, and the equality of their Majesty."
Jay:
The Persons are not the essence and cannot be. The hypostases are not the ousia, just as in Christ incarnate, the Divine hypostasis is not the ousia. It's not in impersonal divine essence that became Incarnate, it's a divine Person with a divine nature, the Logos. This is the teaching of Ephesus and St. Cyril.
The argument is quite simple: equating essence and hypostases in the sense of identification, which is what your post does leads to faulty conclusions. If the Persons are the essence, then the essence must become personal, and a fourth Person is posited (the "Person" of the essence), or the Persons are merely manifestations of the essence. And again, its reciprocial with this Incarnation as well. This is why I cited Pope St. Agatho because He distinguished nature and operation, or energy.
-jay
Taylor: If God's essence has parts, then he is material since divisible applies to matter."
Jay:
No eastern Doctor who posits the E/E distinction (which is all of them) thinks there are parts. Just as in a human being, hypostasis is not nature, so in God it is the same. This is a frequent argument in the Eastern Fathers & Doctors.
The Father's begetting is a REAL begetting and a REAL distinction: its also an action of the Father's hypostasis, not the essence. If Begetting is a property of the essence, then all the three Persons beget the Son and spirate the Spirit, since thay all share the same divine ousia. I can't stress the strength of this argument (about the begettging and spirating enough).
Nick,
While I too would like to salvage Aquinas, the problem is that we know he's most likely not wanting to say what you would like because of the fact that he makes the defining characterstics of the persons "relations of opposition" within the essece. The problem with this is manifiold. Namely, as said above, all the persons share the property of being "opposed to the other two," so this loses all meaning. Second, begetting and spirating become actions of the essence, which all Persons share. This is absurd, as it would mean the Son begets Himself, and the Spirit spirated himself, because the cause becomes the essence. It also means the Persons are determined, since the act of God is His essence in this view, and thus begetting must be a determined act of the essence, as well as creation.
Taylor writes:
If God's essence has parts, then he is material since divisible applies to matter.
I must not be getting something because there are immaterial things all the time that are distinguished in interesting ways. A gaggle can be divided into geese (imaginary), Three can be broken off from the Odd, and a triangle can be divided rotated and divided in all sorts of impressive ways. I picked the last one because Palamas quotes the tradition that says that Plato only let people into the Academy who really knew geometry: because geometry is preparation for abstract thinking of the highest order. One must manipulate, divide, rearrange; all while being faithful to Truth.
This is likely not your point, so feel free to enlighten me.
Taylor also writes:
"Essentia" is a Latin creation to denote the Greek philosophical phrase: "to ti en einai" or "the what it is to be".
Thus, the essence of God is the "what it is to be God." If something is not the "essentia" of God then it is NOT the what it is to be God. It's not God.
But the issue is not the Latin essentia, but the Greek “ousia”. That is what the Fathers are saying cannot be seen. Let's stay we stick with Aristotle (which according to Jonathan the West does, while the East becomes part of some nebulus “Neoplatonic” tradition). For Aristole ousia is weird: it can be both the “being” of a thing, and a kind of categorical term. Thus, it applies to species: mankind is of a kind of ousia, fish another. Socrates' ousia, in this sense is not his existence.
Something else that defines a thing – and can indeed be used of particular things – is actuality. If something has a certain actuality, that is part of what a thing is. And of course, one of the words that is used for this sense of actuality is energeia.
So the issue of predication is still on the table: my earlier question of “God is ___” does it entail the entirety of God? God is Love, is that His entirety?
That's (I think) a sensible account of why some of us are not compelled by the ADS or arguments that E/E is dividing God. There's more to my dissatisfaction with the Thomistic account, but I really want to know what of the above is non-sensical to those of you to whom it is non-sensical.
MG wrote:
The fact that the Eastern Fathers taught e/e is significant by itself. What's really interesting to think about is the fact that Eastern terms and theological concepts were the basis for the Ecumenical Councils. I suspect that e/e is the (usually implicit, sometimes explicit as in the 6th council) teaching of the first seven Ecumenical Councils. And if so, how do Roman Catholics harmonize the (prima facie) tension between e/e in the Councils and their later dogmatic formulations about the absolute simplicity of God?
Has this been addressed? There's been some talk about the 6th EC, but I don't remember this issue being handled. And I am curious...
Also, if there are no real distinctions in God, and Persons are the act and the essence, then it must follow that the entire Trinity became Incarnate. But this is clearly false, as the Logos alone became Incarnate.
-Jay
MG: The fact that the Eastern Fathers taught e/e is significant by itself. What's really interesting to think about is the fact that Eastern terms and theological concepts were the basis for the Ecumenical Councils. I suspect that e/e is the (usually implicit, sometimes explicit as in the 6th council) teaching of the first seven Ecumenical Councils."
Jay: It is. This was my argument as well. The 6th council is relying on St. Maximus: none can deny this. St. Agatho clearly distinguishes the will from the operation in the Incarnation. And it doesn't matter that this is talking about the Incarnation and not the Trinity, because its the same argument--the natural energy of Christ's two natures (one which is the divine and is shared by the other hypostases).
And this shows as well that Person isn't nature, because one of the Persons became Incarnate, not the entire Trinity.
-jay
Taylor--
Jesse's responses seem quite good, but I will throw in some supplemental considerations.
you wrote:
“If God's essence has parts, then he is material since divisible applies to matter.”
The essence/energies distinction is not a part-whole distinction. The energies are not parts of God. They are fully divine, and are features of God, but they are not parts. Activities cannot be reduced to the category of parts. (I don't think Jesse's comment intended to do this, either, though he used the word “part”)
You wrote:
“"Essentia" is a Latin creation to denote the Greek philosophical phrase: "to ti en einai" or "the what it is to be".
Thus, the essence of God is the "what it is to be God." If something is not the "essentia" of God then it is NOT the what it is to be God. It's not God.
Using this definition of essentia, the energies cannot be God UNLESS the essence of God is the energies of God. I don't think that any Thomists have a problem with that - in fact it nicely complements the idea of God as Pure Act. M. Liccione's article had some good things to say about this. The problem is that some folks want to say that the energies are NOT the essence or the "what it is to be God".”
I would add to Jesse's remarks the fact that the Fathers seemed to think of essences as potentiality. They thought of essences as sets of powers which could be actualized that designated the thing posessing the essence as a member of a natural kind. This doesn't seem to map on correctly to the Western view of essence.
You wrote:
“I don't think that the Catholic Church has ever condemned or anathematized the E/E distinction. On the other hand the Orthodox Church has condemned those who don't agree with them.”
I think that ratifying the doctrine of absolute divine simplicity (if this has indeed happened) would involve a rejection of e/e. I was specifically responding to things you said such as “One can see further problems for the Thomist mind to grasp what is meant by "engergies distinct from essence"” which seems to imply the problem is not with the e/e distinction per se but with *how Thomists understand the distinction.* So I was just offering the suggestion that Thomists who do not understand it should study it. But I assume that the problem is not just one of understanding, but you think that e/e is in fact wrong.
Jonathan—
You wrote:
“Obviously. The Western view asserts that it is the personal presence of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the soul (uncreated grace) that produces the effect in the soul (created grace). The divine essence is therefore present in the soul, since so is the Holy Spirit, but obviously not possessed in the same mode as God possesses it.”
How is the Holy Spirit present in the soul? By means of the energy of grace?
In what sense is the divine essence present in the soul at all?
You wrote:
“In some sense, this is not incorrect. But if you aren't going to succumb to the complex question fallacy, then the follow up question had better be "in what sense?" That is where I would suggest there is no real difference between the Eastern and Western views.”
Could you explain what you take to be Aquinas' doctrine of the beatific vision, then?
You wrote:
“Absolutely not. That is the assumption from which *Plotinian* absolute divine simplicity is derived, a concept which has no significant relation to Augustine's concept, much less Aquinas's. The propaganda campaign equating Augustine with Plotinus, long lived thought it has been, is finally being recognized as far overstated. The false dichotomy between Maximus and Aquinas simply follows from it.”
I find this hard to buy, even though I am not an Augustine scholar. Just a quick look at book one of Confessions makes me suspicious. Why does Augustine struggle to affirm that God is present within him? Why does he argue with himself and ask himself “how can I ask you to come into me, if you are already here?” if he believes in e/e? (would you say he does?)
Why do Maximus and Aquinas seem to address theological questions so differently, if they are so similar?
You wrote:
“Aquinas doesn't deny this either, at least in the relevant sense that Maximus asserts the distinction (viz., the *ways* God can be enjoyed or chosen as truly good).”
When you say “ways God can be enjoyed or chosen as truly good” do you mean “the kinds of actions creatures can do to enjoy or choose God” or do you mean “the kinds of objects that those choices can have”?
"to maintain the radical libertarian freedom of God and man in opposition to the threat of lapsing into determinism (notice: this is incompatible with ADS's commitment to God necessarily creating the universe)"
You wrote:
“The propaganda campaign to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no hint of Origenism in St. Thomas, because creation very clearly does not necessarily follow from his doctrine of divien simplicity, nor does the Angelic Doctor insist on deterministic causality in such a way as to override free will. Your tendentious conclusion follows from the very premise that the identity Aquinas asserts between the persons and the essence (and for that matter, the acts of the essence) is Leibnizian identity. But that is clearly false, as St. Thomas repeatedly notes the infinite number of ways in w
...which God can will Himself as God. Indeed, to contradict Aquinas on this point is to say that there is a real difference in God (based on His energies) if He chooses to create this rather than that. St. Maximus's doctrine of the unity of the energies actually says nothing different from St. Thomas in that regard.”
If it is JUST that, only a long-lived propaganda campaign, I find it suspicious that this seems like it was only discovered after the Latin West began to understand the Eastern Fathers. Is my historiography wrong here, or does your interpretation show up in earlier Thomas scholars?
The question is not whether there is a hint of Origenism in Aquinas. The question is whether or not the teachings of Thomas imply something Origenistic.
So that makes me curious. Would you say that for Thomas God has unrealized potentiality?
Would you say that the infinite number of ways God can will himself to be God are *really distinct* in Aquinas? Or is the distinction just one in our minds?
You wrote:
“Where do you learn these things? Stump? Farrell? I keep hearing these assertions, but when I read the sources, I have no idea what the basis for these conclusions is.”
Yes, Stump and Farrell, and many others. When I read the sources, it sure seems to me like Stump and Farrell are right on the money. Can you alert me to arguments for your interpretation (perhaps scholarship, so I can get a good grasp of what you're trying to say)?
I find Taylor presenting what I have always thought to be the more traditional read of Aquinas. I've never heard any compelling reasons to reject it. But if those reasons are indeed forthcoming, I'd be interested to hear them.
May I re-affirm this as well--if essence is act and Persons are essence, then it follows that the action of becoming Incarnate must involve the entire Trinity becoming Incranate. But this is false, so there must be a real distinction between the Persons and between the Persons as well as the essence.
-Jay
Jay--
I don't think "becoming incarnate" is a divine energy. It is a description of what happens when the second person of the Trinity takes on human nature, uniting it to his person. But there's no energy of "becoming incarnate", I don't think. The energies of the Trinity are natural; they are activities done by the shared divine powers of the Trinity. So all three persons would have to do that action if it were a natural energy.
But if it is strictly true that person=essence, then I think your point that the whole Trinity would become incarnate still holds.
Yes, Stump and Farrell, and many others. When I read the sources, it sure seems to me like Stump and Farrell are right on the money. Can you alert me to arguments for your interpretation (perhaps scholarship, so I can get a good grasp of what you're trying to say)?
Contra Stump, I would suggest Barry Miller's _A Most Unlikely God_ (the other books in the trilogy are worth reading as well). Ralph McInerny's _Praeambula Fidei_ is also helpful for getting a correct "big picture" view of what St. Thomas is doing with simplicity.
Contra Farrell, I would suggest Demetrios Bathrellos's _The Byzantine Christ_, because I think that the dispute over whether prohaeresis (deliberative choice) persists is absolutely essential to understanding why the Western view of *enjoying* God in the beatific vision is entirely compatible with Maximus's view of the natural will in the eschaton. For that matter, one could also tie it back to the theme of Christ's action without deliberation or hesitation based on His perfect harmony with the natural will, which matches well with Christ having the beatific vision in this life (segue into the latest thread on this subject).
Hey guys,
I do realize I am invading this discussion at a rather advanced stage in the dialog, so if I repeat something you all have beat to death, then please forgive me and ignore the following.
Though I am probably not the most qualified person to address these issues, I'd like to take a shot at something here, being fairly familiar with Eastern theology:
There are, to be precise, five distinctions in the Trinity we ultimately have to consider from an eastern perspective: (1) nature, (2) person, (3) will, (4)foreknowledge, (5) energy. This fifth is multiform, so there are technically more than just four distinctions--many more.
In fact, since these five things are only DESCRIPTIONS of the WAY God is (as opposed to WHAT He is), they in fact are listed among the energies themselves. Yes, even the word "essence" is understood to be a description for a concept that is ineffable and unknowable and thus the term is referenced as an energy since God, for the Orthodox, is hyper-ousia, beyond essence or being.
He is beyond mere metaphysical categories because He is ultimately personal. That is, the essence of God transcends philosophy and metaphysics because His personality is more than His nature (though united to it).
Ontologically, person is more than nature--not in a quantitative but qualitative sense. It ontologically precedes essence--not in time and space, but logically. In short, person is the precondition for nature.
Incidentally, this is why the Orthodox reject the filioque clause: because person/hypostasis causes (i.e., the Father), not a nature/form dialectic of opposition (i.e., Father/Son). The Son does not cause as a Caused Cause in conjunction with the Uncaused Cause (the Father), otherwise the Holy Spirit may also cause another person and so on, exploding the Trinity. The filioque represents an essentially emanantisitic idea.
Another way of putting it is that a person (in this case the Holy Spirit) cannot be caused by something that is inherent and held in common by two persons, for now we have shifted the emphasis off hypostasis as the principle of causation in the Trinity over to nature. Again, it has to be emphasized that this is emanantistic to the core.
One way, given the foregoing, to distinguish between various kinds of energy in God (in other words, to demonstrate their inherently and eternally multiform character, precluding them from being mere emanations from the undivided essence) is to point out that there are clearly two modes of causation in God: eternal causation, involving the Son't generation and Holy Spirit's spiration (energies whose products are without beginning), and causation in time (e.g., the world, which has a temporal beginning).
In addition, to demonstrate the balance between nature and person in this view, we can see how the Son and Spirit are the same relative to each other, and yet distinct from one another: they are the same in that they are both caused (an aspect
of nature held in common), yet distinct in terms of their mode of procession from the Father (a distinction in terms of personal properties: spiration vs. generation).
We can also demonstrate the essential commonality of the two caused persons with the one caused person by noting that what is common to the three doesn't involve the property of causation at all (causation, again, being a hypostatic quality, and THIS is what distinguishes the PERSON of the Father from the other two); eternality--an attribute or energy of nature--is the basis for their shared nature.
If causation were proper to nature, we could not distinguish created existence from non-created existence. The Creator/creature distinguish would be erased. But since the hypostasis of the Father causes eternally (i.e., outside of time), the caused persons (Son and Spirit) are (like the Father) also eternal and thus are of one essence with Him. This is why it is equally appropriate and permissible to speak of the three persons collectively as "God", as well as to refer to the hypostasis of the Father more specifically as "God" as well.
Incidentally, this is also why persons are not equivalent to energies: the uncreated energies caused the two caused hypostases, and are thus logically antecedent to them.
Anyway, back full circle:
In eastern theology, the will, while falling more on the side of nature, is distinct from it in that God freely desires and chooses (via His will) to do this or that, and since He wills many things that are consistent with his essence though unnecessary to His existence, His will is distinct from--though nevertheless FROM--His essence. (Another way the East distinguishes person and nature/essence is to distinguish the terms existence and essence--existence being antecedent to essence logically.)
Will and foreknowledge are distinguished in that God performs what He is determined to do (e.g., effecting the Incarnation)via the will, while foreknowledge involves such things as the activities and choices of created free agents.
God is the cause of His own existence.
Here is one question I have. There seems to be two difficulties here:
(1) If Person is 'above' Nature, such that Persons have their own unique 'powers', then it seems there is a god within god.
(2) But if generation is a function of Nature, then all Persons share this.
Option #1 seems to blur the lines between Person and Nature, because Person cannot exist apart from Nature and Nature is supposed to determine what the Person can do. So whats the answer?
Jonathan--
I don't want to come off like a jerk, or an authority. And I have to admit, you're saying a whole lot of stuff, much of which seems very sensible. But what are you responding to or trying to address specifically? Are you just offering information? (I'm curious so that I can see how what you're saying applies to the previous discussion)
Also, there's a few things you have said that could be read as saying something problematic. I'm concerned about the following:
You wrote:
"(1) nature, (2) person"
These aren't energies. These are distinct from the energies. The energies are the activities of the essence (essence is sometimes equated with nature). Persons are particulars that choose how to manifest their natural activities.
You wrote:
"the essence of God transcends philosophy and metaphysics because His personality is more than His nature"
No, the essence of God transcends philosophy and metaphysics because it is beyond being. That's a different issue from the person/nature distinction though. Though, admittedly, the persons cannot be reduced to natures, and thus they resist philosophical analysis as well.
You wrote:
"there are clearly two modes of causation in God"
Generation and spiration are not energies. They are hypostatic properties. (you sort of clarify this later, but I think its important to make this somewhat more precise) Otherwise they would be shared by the whole Trinity. Energies are natural, common to all three persons.
There is also the eternal causation of timeless energies, such as love and justice and glory etc. Hence there is also an eternal energetic procession of the Spirit through the Son (which is not a hypostatic causation).
You wrote:
"the uncreated energies caused the two caused hypostases, and are thus logically antecedent to them."
I think the Father is the cause of the Son and the Spirit, not the energies. Besides, the Son can self-originate divine activities through His common essence with the Father, for "the Father hath given the Son to have life in himself".
Saying we distinguish person and nature via an essence/existence distinction seems somewhat on the right track. But a more helpful way of putting it is to say that persons are particulars that serve as the underlying reality of which natural (common) qualities can be predicated.
You're definitely right, though, that God causes His own existence. The divine activities originate from the essence beyond being, through the persons. And as such, God's life is self-originated; He will be who He will be.
Hopefully that didn't come off sounding dictatorial or anything. Maybe you can help me understand what you were saying (I might have just been giving an uncharitable read).
Jonathan Prejean--
I will try and get ahold of those texts you suggested.
I didn't see anything in Battrellos when I read him that would be helpful, but I will go back and take a look at the section you mentioned. His read of Maximus seemed mostly the same as Farrell's except for some minor differences.
I'm still interested in how you would answer my other questions that aren't directly concerned with interpreting the sources. I'd like to hear whether you think Thomas believes there is unrealized potentiality in God. I am curious (and I assume Jesse and Taylor likewise) about how you would argue Thomas believed this. If you don't think he believed it, then I'd be interested in an explanation of in what sense Thomas thought God was free to have performed a different act of creation (or no act of creation at all).
"His read of Maximus seemed mostly the same as Farrell's except for some minor differences."
I heard the same thing from someone else who I think doesn't understand the Western view on this point. For compatibility with the Western view, that minor difference appears to loom large.
"I'd like to hear whether you think Thomas believes there is unrealized potentiality in God. I am curious (and I assume Jesse and Taylor likewise) about how you would argue Thomas believed this. If you don't think he believed it, then I'd be interested in an explanation of in what sense Thomas thought God was free to have performed a different act of creation (or no act of creation at all)."
Absolutely, he believed that God had unexercised *active* potency, because there are infinite number of ways in which God is finitely participable without changing God in what He is. So long as creation produces no real change in God, the fact that God can produce innumerable created things does not implicate the divine simplicity whatsoever. But Kretzmann and Stump don't make that distinction. Bernard Blankenhorn, OP, wrote a nice article as to why this form of causation is self-diffusive and final, contra Kretzmann:
http://www.opwest.org/Archive/
20...iffusive_01.htm
Without that distinction, I don't see how you avoid the necessity of creation, a la Origen, and indeed, Stump appears to suffer from this problem. I think it's a category error.
MG,
Thanks for your commentary on my post. I'll have time later to interact with you more, but I needed right away here to say that I had a seriously absent minded moment when I wrote that person and nature were included in the energies. I know better than that, but somehow I put it out there. Maybe it had something to do with composing the note at 1:00 in the morning. 
"Contra Farrell, I would suggest Demetrios Bathrellos's _The Byzantine Christ_, because I think that the dispute over whether prohaeresis (deliberative choice) persists is absolutely essential to understanding why the Western view of *enjoying* God in the beatific vision is entirely compatible with Maximus's view of the natural will in the eschaton. For that matter, one could also tie it back to the theme of Christ's action without deliberation or hesitation based on His perfect harmony with the natural will, which matches well with Christ having the beatific vision in this life (segue into the latest thread on this subject)."
Batthrellos' book has nothing to do with Thomism or Western views of the beatific vision.
He makes some very minor mistakes concerning the function of gnome as it relates to created hypostasis.
The thesis of proharesis undercuts Farrell zilch and you haven't read Free Choice as Farrell documents in a footnote that there still could be deliberation in the eschaton without affecting the thrust of the argument. That question is a complete side issue.
The good bishop and doctor is the greatest patristic scholar of our time.
The thesis of proharesis undercuts Farrell zilch and you haven't read Free Choice as Farrell documents in a footnote that there still could be deliberation in the eschaton without affecting the thrust of the argument.
It's the fact that it doesn't affect the thrust of the argument that strikes me as erroneous, because it seems to me that is surely *should* make a difference. If Farrell is arguing that deliberative choice is still possible in the eschaton, then that assuredly marks out a difference between his position and the Western position, but it is not at all clear to me that Maximus is the source of that difference. On Bathrellos's reading, it seems clear that it isn't. Obviously, he doesn't have the Western view in mind, but if Maximus is saying what Bathrellos thinks, then the difference from the Western position that Farrell asserts isn't present in Maximus.
Jonathan,
Farrell's argument is that Maximus' psychology of will is governed by plurality of objects of choice. That's it.
Photios
I think he's wrong, particularly given how Maximus cites Clement as the first person to recognize the distinction between the power to choose and the object of choice. In Clement's theory of choice (and I would argue the same for Maximus), you wouldn't need to have a multiplicity of objects in order to have free choice.
It doesn't matter if Clement made that distinction. Actually, the first non-biblical writer to make that distinction is Aristotle. What it comes down to is exegesis of what Maximus says and the Gethsemane text was the test case as is the spatial imagery of movement 'around the divine nature' borrowed from Plotinus. That Maximus thinks that free choice is a property of the nature and that the objects of choice have to be many for free choice to operate properly is pretty much irrefutable.
Clement has some interesting ideas but He's influenced more by Plato rather than the Bible, nor is he a Father.
Photios
What it comes down to is exegesis of what Maximus says and the Gethsemane text was the test case as is the spatial imagery of movement 'around the divine nature' borrowed from Plotinus. That Maximus thinks that free choice is a property of the nature and that the objects of choice have to be many for free choice to operate properly is pretty much irrefutable.
... in the Plotinian imagery. There are other perfectly good spatial images of movement that don't use the Neoplatonic framework (Clement himself used Aristotelian infinity; so did the Scholastics). In those views, there need not be a real distinction between objects for something to be chooseable as multiple (St. Thomas repeatedly points to the operation of the intellect, for example, which can know things in diversity even when the object is simple). Saying that free choice is a property of nature doesn't prove anything, unless you are also arguing that there is only one metaphysically coherent account of free choice as a property of nature. Plotinus presents one, but surely not the only one.
Well I don't think Plotinus has a view of free choice that is Christian...really...He just has some phrases and insites that are altogether useful as does Aristotle...but anyway...If you 'turn the stream' as they say, you might see that the One is not a God or the mystical ascent of the soul but rather a topological metaphor for the undifferentiated medium, that is wholly simple and one. Does a large mass create a curved space (Einstein) OR perhaps a curved and differentiated "space" create a large mass per an OBSERVER (theos)...(Hermes' analogy and 'synthesis', as above so below principle of analogy, creatio ex nihilo). Copleston's little table to Plato's Cave and how one ascends to the forms looks alot like topological mathematics even if he didn't draw that conclusion...Perhaps the mystical ascent of the soul is just the mathematical understanding of the topological principles of reality (does one sort of transcend consciousness by understanding topology?)...I'm just rambling now of course...but you like physics I thought you'd like that and/or think about it.
Back to the problem...
Even St. Thomas' account makes sense somewhat psychologically, since the intellect will judge something that in reality is simple as multiple anyways. Of course, how would we know it's all really simple?
On Maximus' account what is judged as multiple by the intellect really is that way. It's a much stronger form of realism. Was the choice in Gethsemane two choices...both good, yet really simple and one? I don't think so.
There are 3 kinds of Monergism/Monotheletism:
Monophysitism: Where the objects of choice are simply different manifestations of the same thing.
Nestorianism: Where two wills are united contractually in the object of will with the divine will fixing the object of choice for the human will.
And then there is the Monotheletism in Sergius and the Typos: the will is hypostatic. There is no distinction between the 'will' and the 'willer'. Human nature has no authentic expression of Is own and is pushed around by the Will of the Logos.
Maximus' Dyotheletism is that there is a natural will, a willer distinct from the will, and the object of the will that is governed by the natural will. The divine will undividedly divided in the many logoi makes the divine will one-also many. The human nature of Christ by dint of His Person has this to his disposal.
Now, how I see it Thomas fits the closest to #2 above. Garrigues seems to interpret Maximus along this paradigm too as you problaly remember from his article vis-a-vis Yannaras.
Photios
"Perhaps the mystical ascent of the soul is just the mathematical understanding of the topological principles of reality (does one sort of transcend consciousness by understanding topology?)"
David Bohm seemed to think so, but my disagreement with that physics is part of my difficulty with the metaphysics.
"Of course, how would we know it's all really simple?"
By negation. Incidentally, I think that's why Garrigues gets Thomas and Maximus wrong. I think there are several interpreters who really do what you say with the forced monotheletism, Nestorian-style. Those interpreters take this transcendent determinism (as final cause) and make it into univocal determinism. But I also think those guys are wrong about Thomas, since they are making a move that he never did.
"By negation."
I don't think so, and here's where I think the Hermetic text is far superior to Thomas on simplicity, more consistent, and more realistic. For Hermes the Topos (space) is undifferrentiated medium, and wholly simple. It is in short a metaphysical nothing because it is absolutely undifferentiated. Now, the mind can only judge difference based on 'other.' So to say something is simple and wholly simple, is to have no point of reference or division for differentiation in the mind. So for Thomas to say that the mind will judge the absolutely simple, as absolutely complex is really question begging and to my mind nonsensical.
Photios
So to say something is simple and wholly simple, is to have no point of reference or division for differentiation in the mind.
That's why I keep harping on the analogy to infinity in Aristotle. Even though you can't actually count to infinity, there is a potential for infinite divisibility. That is to say, the simplicity of the thing doesn't mean that it cannot be divided, only that you can never divide it exhaustively. That is the sort of negation I mean; being finite, we are always only in potency with respect to pure simplicity an actuality.
That strikes me as a much better analogy for space than a metaphysical nothing. It is non-being with respect to some act(i.e., potency, in this case, being amenable to the motion of a body through it) not absolute non-being. This is why, for St. Thomas, even matter is created, and the composition between act and potency is possible even in simple beings that cannot be divided into parts (like angels). Scotus has his own version of spiritual matter and formal distinction, but in any case, the notion of simplicity is much more complex.
I do think you are accurately representing the physical concept in Hermes and Plotinus. But that's exactly why I say that neither the physics nor the metaphysics is compatible with the Western view. What you said is exactly where I think Hermes is wrong on the physics, and specifically, where he confused potency with nothing. That's exactly what produces the confused notion of infinity as either chaos or something utterly transcendent "beyond being."
That's not to say that it's not possible to work within the Neoplatonic framework. But that's just not what the Scholastics were doing.
"That's why I keep harping on the analogy to infinity in Aristotle. Even though you can't actually count to infinity, there is a potential for infinite divisibility. That is to say, the simplicity of the thing doesn't mean that it cannot be divided, only that you can never divide it exhaustively."
Well that's exactly what Heremes' Topos is to be. It is infinite "information in the field." An infinite possibility for division. But before division it is wholly simple. That's why this physics of the Egyptians makes sense of things like creatio ex nihilo. That is to say that this physics maybe something very very old. You could think of simplicity as this topological metaphor of this infinite information in the field.
"That strikes me as a much better analogy for space than a metaphysical nothing. It is non-being with respect to some act(i.e., potency, in this case, being amenable to the motion of a body through it) not absolute non-being."
I think we are talking past each other here. I meant to say "it is as if it were a metaphysical nothing, because there is no differentiation prior to creating by an Observer." Heremes' Topos is not Dionysios' divinity of beyond being-being. Once you grasp that, that's when you understand that Dionysios and the Hermetica and other Neoplatonic texts are not doing the same thing. Heremes' is at home in topology and not metaphysics or religion, though there is a definite impact there too.
"But that's exactly why I say that neither the physics nor the metaphysics is compatible with the Western view."
I think the west fundamentally misunderstood Neoplatonism and its aim (at least if we are talking about what is for public consumption), and in doing so I believe they have collapsed Science and Theology into somewhat of the same discipline, or in essence married them together such that you can't do the latter without the former. St. Photios was a master of not only the Fathers but also of the philosophers. I think when he ran into this Neoplatonized Trinity of the Carolingians that his intuitive reaction that this stuff was useful for evaluating "sensory things" left a story to be told.
Photios
MG: Jay--I don't think "becoming incarnate" is a divine energy."
Jay: I don't think it is either, but clealry the Son becomes Incarnate and not the other Persons.
MG>Taylor: Yes, the purpose was to rescue the true humanity of Christ. The question is, how did the Council do this? How did it maintain Christ's full humanity? The answer: formalizing the essence/energies distinction and applying it to both anthropology and the doctrine of God."
Jay: Precisely--that was my argument, since, when I read it in the Damascene, it became clear that its the same argument in St. Agatho, and its the same with the ontological Trinity as well as the Incarnation. This is why a denial of E/E must mean no theosis.
Photios: Well that's exactly what Heremes' Topos is to be. It is infinite "information in the field."
Jay: Very Interesting. Well-stated concerning the 3 possible paths of monergism, also.
Well that's exactly what Heremes' Topos is to be. It is infinite "information in the field." An infinite possibility for division. But before division it is wholly simple. That's why this physics of the Egyptians makes sense of things like creatio ex nihilo. That is to say that this physics maybe something very very old. You could think of simplicity as this topological metaphor of this infinite information in the field.
I just noticed this, and that's helpful, because I hadn't even seen that concept of divisibility used in Neoplatonism. It still isn't the extension of that concept to participation in existence, which appears to have been a truly new idea in the Middle Ages (though anticipated to some degree by both Augustine and Gregory Nyssen), but it does show what the Neoplatonists knew of Aristotle and how they used the concept in their own framework. That's a good basis for comparison, and I think it goes a long way to showing how the physical use of the concept is both different from and related to the metaphysical use of the concept found in the Scholastics. I had previously thought that the Hermitian view would rule out the Scholastic view, but based on what you said here, it doesn't look like that would necessarily be the case. I see that as a good thing, because it leaves some hope that a common language can be developed, which has thus far been difficult.
I have to think about how the difference might be articulated here. There's a step from physics to metaphysics that can be made by analogy here, and that's what the Scholastics did, but how does that get articulated in Neoplatonic terms? That's the puzzle for me.
Jonathan Prejean: But it is not a dogmatic option for Catholics to posit a real distinction in God discrete from the intervening relations of the Trinity."
Jay: The fact that Lateran IV and Florence don't mention E/E doesn't mean it's necessarily forbidden. It also mentions hypostatic properties in your second quote, which are absent in Aquinas:
"This holy Trinity, which is undivided according to its common essence but distinct according to the properties of its persons, gave the teaching of salvation to the human race through Moses and the holy prophets and his other servants, according to the most appropriate disposition of the times."
Further, I already showed several times now, it's taught dogmatically in Pope St. Agatho's Letter at Const. III.
-Jay
The Dogmatic Letter of St. Agatho reads:
"For when we confess two natures and two natural wills, and two natural operations (energies) in our one Lord Jesus Christ, we do not assert that they are contrary or opposed one to the other (as those who err from the path of truth and accuse the apostolic tradition of doing."
This is an undeniable confirmation of energies distinct from nature. No one can claim that this is not true because the council was dealing "only with Christology" (as someone did) because **it's the same argument.** The Letter says Christ's divine nature has also an energy proper to it and distinct from it, as does the human nature.
Jay,
Note that Pope Agatho wrote there are "two energies" in Christ - not an infinite number of energeia.
There is ONE divine energy, and ONE human energy. Palamites typically teach that there are infinite divine energies, not just ONE divine energy.
Also a distinction does not entail metaphysical difference...
Taylor,
There is one divine energy in that conciliar text because it's dealing with the deification of the humanity. That is the "one energy" in question, but that doesn't mean that all the energies are one.
Justice is not love, nor is creation wrath.
You still call "Palamism" what is in all the Eastern Doctors. Was Athanasius a Palamite? Cyril?
St. John of Damascus explains that the energy itself is one, but manifold in it's forms:
"Further the divine effulgence and energy, being one and simple and indivisible, assuming many varied forms in its goodness among what is divisible and allotting to each the component parts of its own nature, still remains simple and is multiplied without division among the divided, and gathers and converts the divided into its own simplicity . For all things long after it and have their existence in it. It gives also to all things being according to their several natures , and it is itself the being of existing things, the life of living things, the reason of rational beings, the thought of thinking beings. But it is itself above mind and reason and life and essence."
-On the Orthodox Faith, 1.14
I meant it doesn't mean all the energies are one absolutely: they take on a varied form, and that is why I said justice isn't creation. But if you agree to this, then God's essence isn't His act, absolutely.
The Church Fathers do NOT teach Palamism. That's a fact. The quote from Damascene proves the point. The one divine operation language in Pope Agatho further confirms it.
Jay, why are you so insistent on this? You've wondered far away from mainstream Catholicism on this question.
I've been plowing through Damascene's Orthodox Faith and what you're saying just isn't there. Energy it one, not plural. Sorry.
Taylor,
I think what Jay is describing is consistent with Orthodox teaching about Divine Energies. It's often used in the singular: the Uncreated Light, Divine Grace, etc.
Moreover, in Holy Scripture it is used both singular and plural (i.e. Phil 3:21, 1 Cor 12:10,11). In fact 1 Cor 12 seems to be a great place to go in order to explain how the unity and diversity are.
I think Jay is making good points about both the language of the Church Fathers and their arguments. You say he is wandering from mainstream RC, and while that seems true to my experience as well, he citing and arguing well. Is what he is saying not RC (a misinterpretation), is it RC but not dogmatic, or did the "mainstream" change from Ss. John, Athanasius, etc.?
It seems that the question of "Is what Jay is arguing for Palamism" should be secondary for you to "Is what Jay saying not part of Roman Catholic Tradition."
Once he starts quoting Palamas, then we can argue about Palamism. Rather than admonishing Jay for wandering from the fold, why don't you thank him for asking questions that bring you back to part of the rich Tradition that you are part of? Rather than pounding the dogmatic fist of "that's a fact!" why don't you treasure what our fathers among the saints have deemed to tell us about our God?
Taylor,
What is clear and what has been shown several times is that there is a distinction between essence and action/energy. You call this Palamism as if it were a new development by him, when every Eastern Catholic and Orthodox person on here has shown you over and over it's not his.
Again, I've read all these Easterns at length. Its in Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria and Cyril of Jerusalem, the Cappadocians, Maximus and John of Damascus. Name an Eastern Doctor and they teach the essence - energy distinction. That's just a fact. Now, part of the problem is that the East couldn't widely read the west until the 13th century or so and the west couldn't really read the east until then, either. This is part of the reason for the divide and misunderstanding. But, in Book 3 of On the Trinity, of St. Augustine (which I've read much of) he admits from the get-go he couldn't read the Greek Fathers and wishes he could. He writes, very humbly, that what he has said is his own attempt to figure these things out, but that he may be mistaken in many places and that he submits to the Church as a whole. So, why are we suprised, given this fact, that he was in fact, wrong on this point?
Even if the divine energy were one as you think (which it isn't) its still clearly distinct from the essence in all these doctors. No one--repeat--no one decently read on this denies that the Eastern doctors teach the essence - energy distinction.
What Jesse just wrote is absolutely correct. The energy, because its an energy of the nature, is spoken of in both ways--single and multiform. It is as if to say, "God's actions" or "God's action."
And as for mainsteam, this may not be in line with Thomism, but who said Aquinas was the end-all be-all of all Catholicism? Only die-hard Thomists. Pope Benedict doesn't have that view (Thomistic integralism).
And as for St. John of Damascus, what is unclear about this:
"Further the divine effulgence and energy, being one and simple and indivisible, assuming many varied forms in its goodness among what is divisible and allotting to each the component parts of its own nature, still remains simple and is multiplied without division among the divided, and gathers and converts the divided into its own simplicity."
-On the Orthodox Faith, 1.14
Its multiplied without division. That is what all easterns believe. But the point of all of this still obtains here as well as in St. Agatho: essence isn't action/energy, and that is what this debate was all about.
Here is just a smattering of what is everywhere:
“Is it not ridiculous to say that the creative power is an essence, and similarly, that providence is an essence, and foreknowledge, simply taking every energy as essence?” Basil the Great, Contra Eunomius, I.8, PG 29, 528B
“The energies 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 the Great, Epistle 234
“And if we may reckon that the Cause of our existence did not come to the creation of man out of necessity but by benevolent choice, once more we say that we have seen God in this way too, arriving at an understanding of his goodness, not of his being…He who is by nature invisible becomes visible in his operations, being seen in certain cases by the properties he possesses.” Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Beatitudes, VI.
“Essence and energy are not identical.” Cyril of Alexandria Thesaurus 18, PG 75:312c
“The man divinized by grace will be everything that God is, apart from identity of essence.” Maximus the Confessor Ad Thalassium 22, PG 90:320a
Jesse,
I certainly agree, but wouldn't you be perplexed if a fellow Orthodox Christian kept trying to tell you that "Filioque" is a consistently Orthodox doctrine?
There is an energy/essence distinction (I've granted this all along), but I don't see how one can say what Jay says:
"[the energies] are clearly distinct **from** the essence."
Taylor,
The energies are distinct from the essence in the same way the Persons are distinct. At what point in this discussion did you ever admit the distinction?
This discussion began with you saying it was pantheism and introduced parts into God. Distinction is not division, Just as the Persons being distinct from the essence doesn't divide the Trinity, nor does one Person becoming Incarnate and not the other two.
If you admit the distinction, this means God's actions cannot be He His essence, nor can the distingiushing properties of the persons be mere relations of opposition (as Thomas says). Both these points hang or fall together. For the whole debate here has been disputing Thomas on these two points.
-Jay
Where have you shown that what I am saying is not Catholic--that it is equated with an EO person accepting the filioque? You've ignored all the East and can only see through Thomas-colored lenses.
Thomism just simply is not the final say so in theology.
***And I used to be a radical Thomist!
Also, Taylor--in your very first post on this comment list above, you wrote:
"Jay, First, the denial of E/E is not a denial of theosis or a denial of apophatic theology."
Reply: Clearly you did not all along admit the E/E distinction, as you now say, and it was obviously somewhat new to you.
-Jay
I don't know from essences and energies -- I'm just a dumb layperson with no training in philosophy. But ISTM that it's kind of dangerous to insist on ONE Triadological perspective, as Perry and Photios do for instance, as "the article on which the Church stands or falls." In essence, one is setting oneself above the Church and judging the Church -- a quintessentially Protestant enterprise. I assume no one here is doing this, of course. I'm just sayin'. [Diane skulks out furtively before the brickbrats start flying.]
As an aside, Dr. Bradshaw's papers on this stuff are really good:
http://www.uky.edu/~dbradsh/
Jay writes:
"Reply: Clearly you did not all along admit the E/E distinction, as you now say, and it was obviously somewhat new to you."
Please check the comments. I did so back on April 17th.
Catholics grant distinction as a philosophical distinction and not as an ontological distinction. None of the Fathers teach that there is God's essence AND then his energeia as if they were two distinct things.
Secondly, you write:
"The energies are distinct from the essence in the same way the Persons are distinct."
I have a hard time making sense of this. If they are distinct in the same way, then you now have new hypostases.
In Catholic theology, the relation of the persons is the essence of God (STh (I, q. 28, a. 2) and not something formally distinct from it. You seem to be saying something else.
Thirdly, the Palamite claim that we shall never see the divine essence is contrary to Papal teaching. Say whatever you want, but if you believe that we will never see the essence of God, you've contradicted the voice of the Church.
Taylor, sure I'd be confused if someone claimed that Orthodoxy taught the filioque; but if they supported the claim in as robust a way as Jay has, I'd have to do a lot more than just claim that it doesn't and has not ever taught it.
Let me see if I get what you are saying: there is a distinction between Essence and Energy in God - but it is not a "real" distinction, because that is against the RC claim that there are no real distinctions in God. Therefore when one of the numerous early saints says "energy" and they mean it distinct from "essence" what they really mean is "essence" but understood in a certain way.
Do I have that right?
Taylor,
There is no post of yours on this thread on 4-17. Your first comment denies. So, you did not grant it all along. The reason this discussion started was your blog posts clearly intended to deny the disctinction.
I don't mean they are distinct in exactly the same way, as if I want to multiply persons, I mean that persons transcend nature (without dividing it) *like* energy is distinct from action.
Consistently, it has been shown by all Easterns here, both Catholic and Orthodox, that there is no reason to accept that God's essence is His act and that the Persons are relations of that essence. This makes the Persons modes of the essence. And has already been shown to you, NO ONE in the East taught relations of oppostion at all, so where was the faith for all those years, until Aquinas?
Is the act of God creating the same as God's essence? Clearly its not.
If not, then action is not the same as energy, and its a real disctintion, but not a division--in the same way that person transcends nature, but is not "distinct from" it. Nature only exits in the mode of persons.
Taylor: In Catholic theology, the relation of the persons is the essence of God (STh (I, q. 28, a. 2) and not something formally distinct from it. You seem to be saying something else."
Jay: That's debatable. Have you not cared to read what we have been arguing over and over? I am saying something else, because this claim of Thomas is terrribly problematic. The persons are not relations of the essence, because that view causes a host problems.
The problem in all this is that you are unfamiliar with Eastern views. You can quote Thomas all day, but that doesn't solve the problems we are saying exist in Thomism. Thomas is not superior to councils. In the council quotation above Florence, we see a recognition of hypostatic properties as defining the persons. This way, the normative Eastern and conciliar way is ABSENT in Aquinas, to my knowledge. He opts for Augustine's approach of relations of opposition of essence. And as has been critiqued many times over, this view leads to modalism and cannot explain creation or the difference of procession or generation.
"All the heretics confuse nature and person." -St. John of Damascus
CORRECTION: I meant to say "like energy is distinct from essence."
And that "action is not the same as essence."
Taylor: In Catholic theology, the relation of the persons is the essence of God..."
Jay: So the Father IS the essence? The generation of the Son IS the essence. I thought the Person of the Father generated the Son? This quotation identifies the Persons with the essence: textbook modalism.
Taylor,
This is an amazing article that I think if you went through would clear some things up between us:
http://www.theandros.com/jdamasc.html
She explains how nature is enhypostatized and distinct from person, focusing on the Damascene.
-Jay
Check the combox for April 17 if you're really worried about it.
As the relations and essence, read STh I, q. 28, a. 2. Saint Thomas Aquinas says it better than I ever will.
You should also worry about how your interpretation of these texts is leading you to posit Saint Thomas Aquinas (a Doctor of the Church) as a heretic.
[Please also remember that this discussion began with your opinion that the blessed will NOT see the divine essence. Do you still hold that opinion?]
I didn't say he was a heretic. I said that position, if carried out, leads to modalism. There are numerous theological errors in the Summa, and Augustine changed his mind many times as well. So what if this is one of them?
This combox is on the Fortescue post, I thought, which is what I am mainly concerned about. What exactly it means to "see the divine nature," is debatable, but these are serious problems in Thomism.
And, if this is wrong, damn skippy I'll be Orthodox. I'm loyal to what is true, not to any man.
As for your claim about essence - energy, the reason I mention it is that a lot of this is new to you (as it was to me a couple years ago) and I fought it tooth and nail as well.
-Jay
Btw - There are propostions in Augustine that eventually became condemned, such as that all non-elect infants suffer damnation. But we don't say he is a heretic after the fact.
But so what--the question is which view is theologically correct.
Mr. Dyer:
"In the council quotation above Florence, we see a recognition of hypostatic properties as defining the persons. This way, the normative Eastern and conciliar way is ABSENT in Aquinas, to my knowledge."
The contradiction between Florence and Aquinas is only in your mind. I agree entirely that Florence recognizes hypostatic properties. But the papal bull Cantate Domino from the Council of Florence also very clearly agrees with Aquinas:
"These three persons are one God, and not three gods, because the three have one substance, one essence, one nature, one divinity, one immensity, one eternity, where no opposition of relationship interferes."
"Opposition of relationship" and "hypostatic properties" are logically equivalent for the purposes of the dogmatic teaching of Florence. What you think is absent from Aquinas is, on the contrary, what both Augustine and Aquinas taught.
FYI, I am not new to this debate, and the question is exactly how you know what is true and whom to trust to determine what is true. If I had been weak-minded when I was reading through this stuff, it would have been easy for me to simply accept it as true. But thinking critically through the concepts and finding all of the holes (which are manifold) took a lot more than two years, so I would caution you to take the same advice you gave Mr. Marshall. You're new to this game, so don't be so quick to conclude what is true. Many people who agree with you, even the ones who have studied it for a long time, formed their agreement with the position relatively quickly and simply stayed where they ended up. For someone who prides himself on independent, you seem to be repeating a lot of groupthink.
Jonathan,
It says "where no opposition of relationship interferes," Denzinger 703.
This is confirmed by the note on this in Denzinger, which reads:
"..John, the theologian of the Latins testified: 'Indeed according to the Doctors, Greek as well as Latin, it is the only relation which multiplies the persons in the divine processions, which is called the relation of origin..."
That's hypostatic properties (origin) my friend - the Eastern view.
Tanner reads: "These three persons are one God not three gods, because there is one substance of the three, one essence, one nature, one godhead, one immensity, one eternity, and everything is one where the difference of a relation does not prevent this." pg. 571
No one denies there is a difference of relation. But this does not appear to be identifying persons by relations of opposition within the essence.
It doesn't say we identify the persons by relations of opposition. Two different topics. I have Tanner and Denzinger and have read them both.
I know you are not new to this and didn't claim you were. I may be 3 years into Eastern issues, but I am not new to Thomism and Catholic dogmatics. Also, I remain single, which affords me much more time and flexibility in research.
"For someone who prides himself on independent, you seem to be repeating a lot of groupthink."
Perry, Daniel, Companik, James Kelley, Ballow and the Well of Questions dudes know I do not agree with them on all points. I have not read Farrell other than paleo-physics. I have read a lot of the Eastern Fathers. And sure, I may be wrong--that's why we do these things--to sharpen our knowledge. I am pressing this to get to the bottom of it.
-Jay
"I am pressing this to get to the bottom of it."
Good. Then I would suggest that if the notion of so-called "absolute" divine simplicity is an assertion of Leibnizian identity, then it is very clear that St. Thomas didn't believe in any such thing, and to my knowledge of Thomist scholars, *only* Stump, Kretzmann, and Hughes (and maybe Bradshaw, but he is not a specialist) have asserted that he did. As far as I know, everyone else denies it. You appear to be interpreteing Mr. Marshall's statement to mean something other than that "The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Father is neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit. The Son is neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son." I suspect that is equally incorrect. There is no difference, literally none, between what you cite as the "Eastern view" of Florence and what St. Thomas espouses (or what St. Anselm means, for that matter). So if you think that what St. Thomas means is something different, then I would suspect that you have heard something that is (at least as far as I can tell) wrong. The Thomists who have examined this problem in detail have come to the opposite conclusion (and I am thinking of people like James Ross and Bernard Blankenhorn, who have spoken to this particular problem).
That is not to say that I necessarily consider either St. Anselm's or St. Thomas's criticism of the East valid in all respects. Just as the East sometimes did not understand the West, so it appears that sometimes the Western doctors did not understand what the East had in mind (which does not mean that either is wrong). But Mr. Marshall has been willing to hear where those criticisms might have been wrong, so I would encourage you to do the same with respect to St. Thomas. If you learned what the Easterns said just from what St. Thomas thought they said, you would be doing yourself a disservice. Please consider likewise that what Gregory II or Mark Eugenicus thought of St. Thomas might be equally inadequate.
After reading the Bradshaw article recommended above, I'd like to touch on his claim that attributing the will of God to God's essence leads to determinism because if God willed something else, then his essence would change. The worry is that the identity of will with essence compromises the immutability of God.
I would just point out that the Bible, Augustine, and Aquinas each teach that God's will is immutable. Aquinas chases it out in I, q. 19, a. 7.
He cites:
"God is not as a man, that He should lie, nor as the son of man, that He should be changed" (Numbers 23:19).
The created effects may have been otherwise, but God doesn't ever change His will, as stated in Scripture.
One second observation regarding the Bradshaw article: I felt that the concept of "open theism" was being floated in under the category of energies.
Bradshaw wrote: "Likewise nothing prevents these energies from being affected by creatures."
If we grant this, then we must grant that the energies have potency. Yet energeia (actuality) cannot be dynamis (potency).
Here is what Bradshaw's presentation sounds like to my untrained ears (I'm probably very wrong about all this): Divine ousia conforms to traditional theism. Yet for the Orthodox, ousia remains behind the veil away from vision, comprehension, and knowledge.
Consequently, energies are introduced. We can act on them and thus they have potentiality. This concept of God sounds like open theism - the God who is not pure act but who has potentialities.
It certainly solves a problem - but it sure seems to create a whole bunch of new problems - the chief problem for the Catholic is that it denies the doctrine of the beatific vision.
I'm not saying that Dr. Bradshaw says all this. However, after reading the article, these were the objections that came to mind.
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/...-in-
christ.html
The human energy in Christ interpentrates the divine as the divine does the human, but I agree--there does appear to be a danger of open theism. In fact, when I was leaning EO a few years back, I recognized this, too, since some EO dogmaticians, like Androutsos even posit that God does not know all events.
I don't, though, that all the Easterns who believe in the divine energies would come anywhere near open theism, though they do stress the freedom of the human will more than the west.
-Jay
Taylor,
The created effects may have been otherwise, but God doesn't ever change His will, as stated in Scripture.
Doesn't this just mean that God, not being subject to passions like us, chooses not to change His mind? I don't read this to mean that God's will is determined. And isn't that exactly the point Jay tries to put forth?
God's will is determined to be His will, of course, but God is free to create or not create, save or not save. Thus, those things are various actions/energies.
By the way, I was just reading Summa question 28, where Thomas says paterinity is the divine essence, as well as filiation. With this in mind, when we consider his identification of act and essence, the action of generating the Son must also be determined. Further, it means that the Son is generated by the common essence. But He isn't: He is generated by His Father. If paternity is essence and filiation is essence, and all acts are essence, then creation is in no way different from generation and spiration!
-Jay
Actus purus = Divine essence = paternity = filiation = spiration = persons. ???? All of these are collapsed into and identified with the absolutely simple ousia. This is why people are fussin'.
KK:
Thanks for citing my article above. Nobody has taken up its argument, but I remain convinced it poses the issue correctly.
As for your last remark, I suspect you're overlooking the distinction Aquinas draws between absolute and hypothetical necessity. Thus God wills divine goodness, specifically the existence and perichoresis of the Persons, by absolute necessity: under no conditions could that willing have been otherwise. But God wills creation only by hypothetical necessity: given that God chooses to create and thus act ad extra, he cannot "unwill" it. For God's actions do not take time and are eternal. But he need not have willed creation.
Best,
Mike
All of these are collapsed into and identified with the absolutely simple ousia.
It's no different than saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all God. The "is" or "=" is one of relative identity (in this case, identity of what each is but now how each is) not Leibnizian identity (absolute equality). It is admittedly odd to me that a few students of St. Thomas can't see why St. Thomas would say what he said if he didn't mean the latter, but that is a decided minority. Like I said, I've not read any orthodox Catholic except Kretzmann who looked at that issue seriously and specifically and came to that conclusion.
Jonathan and all,
I have listed all the problem texts I've seen. In these texts I see:
Essence is Act is Persons is filiation is spiration in a simple identification:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/
...discussion.html
St. Basil on the difference between nature and person:
http://www.nicenetruth.com/home/...and-
person.html
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