Even before his final debate with Nikephoros Gregoras in 1355, St Gregory Palamas and his distinction between God’s essence and energies had already been definitively vindicated by the landmark Council of 1351. As Metropolitan of Thessalonica Palamas had largely dedicated the remaining years of his life largely to his pastoral work and preaching on a significantly expanded number of theological themes. Although Palamas would continue to defend and explain the essence–energies distinction, the final decade of his life is marked especially by his monumental collection of homilies, for which he was often remembered by ordinary Christians through the ages.1
Shortly after his death, Palamas’s fame and achievements would be celebrated and commemorated annually in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, solemly proclaimed on the first Sunday of every Lent.2 In this context, the contemporaries and successors of Palamas would remember his theology very much in the terms set down by the saint himself:
To Gregory, the most holy Metropolitan of Thessalonica, who tore down, in Councils of the Great Church, those inventors and contrivers of new heresies, Barlaam and Akindynos, along with their wicked faction, who dared to say that the natural and inseparable energy and power of God, and, simply, all the natural attributes of the Holy Trinity, are creatures, but also that the unapproachable light of the Divinity that shone from Christ on the mountain is a created divinity, attempting to introduce into the Church, once more, in wicked manner, those Platonic Ideas and Greek myths—to Gregory, who battled wisely and nobly, in writings and discourses and debates on behalf of the common Church of Christ and the true and firm dogmas concerning divinity, ever proclaiming one Divinity and one God in three Persons, active, possessed of a will, all-powerful, and uncreated, in accordance with the divine Scriptures and the theologians who interpreted them: Athanasios, Basil, Gregory, John Chrysostom, Cyril, and, in addition to these, Maximos the wise, the divinely-inspired Damascene, along with the other Fathers and Doctors of the Church of Christ, proving himself in both words and deeds to be a communicant, fellow chorister, emulator, and brother in arms with all of them—may his memory be eternal!3
As the foregoing study has attempted to show, then, the divine energies as conceived by Palamas are not simply “God’s mode of existing in relationship to His created world, especially to man.”4 The divine energies, rather, constitute everything that can be and is known about God; everything that can be and is predicated of God, both positively and negatively; and everything that can be and is shared with creatures at every level. As the comprehensive list of divine names, attributes, and powers, these include not only God’s manifestations ad extra but even the things that are commonly said to describe God as he in himself: the fact that God is holy, eternal, simple, incorporeal, and so on. Such attributes or energies not only ‘surround’ the essence, they are also the very ‘things of nature’ and essential properties of God, belonging to God in se. In this way, although the divine energies include the divine processions of providence, the logoi of the divine will, and the deifying Light of Thabor, the divine energeiai cannot be limited to these uncreated realities. Nor was the polemic with Barlaam, Akindynos, and Gregoras ever limited to this or any other strictly practical concern but had as its focus the plenitude of the divine powers and energies contemplated essentially around God as well.
As attributes of the divine essence, the energies of God, Palamas insists, are not only divine but uncreated, eternal, and timeless, being not the activities of God in time but the internal entelechy, operation, and first actuality of the immutable God. Even energies such as the divine creativity, foreknowledge, and providence are not acts performed at a certain moment, but eternal attributes by which God is known to be active and all-powerful from all eternity. They constitute for Palamas the inner motion and actus of God, who does not pass from potency to reality but is eternally and essentially active. When such energies, in accordance with God’s eternal will, are productive of creatures and other effects in time and space, they are also seen to be ‘actualized’ ad extra, as manifestations of God’s eternal and immutable power. This can be seen, especially, in the revelation of God’s uncreated glory through Christ’s human flesh and the bodies of the saints, and in the miracles performed by Christ as well as by his followers. But it can also be seen, in a more basic way, in all the created effects of God’s eternal power, which come into existence as products of the divine will. The manifestation of God’s energies in and through creatures has a beginning and an end, although the divine powers and attributes that they reveal do not in any way pass in and out of being. Still, even though the divine energies are said by Palamas to characterize the divine essence and to mark God’s nature from all eternity, they do not constitute ‘what’ God is, which ever remains beyond all created conception, participation, and articulation.
As we have seen, the distinction between God’s essence and energies is very much meant to preserve the principle that God is his own existence, wisdom, and so on, and that God is not what he is by participation. As Palamas conceives it, essence and energy are not two divinities or two parts of God. Both indicate how God is, one at the level of quiddity or substance, beyond all names and knowledge, the other at the level of his essential energies, properties, and attributes. Although human beings can say many things that are true of God, even naming the features that ‘define’ God, to the extent that they are the proper idioms of God and of God alone, still these properties do not circumscribe God, who is more than the sum of his natural attributes. The essence–energies distinction is therefore something more than simply the limits of self-disclosure. It is also meant to function as a metaphysical insight into the ultimate difference between God and created being. Unlike the created strata of the Porphyrian tree, which are increasingly specified by their juxtaposition with other created beings, there is nothing against which the being of God can be measured. To say that essence is unknowable is thus to say that God is in a category all his own, or rather, not in a category at all. Yet to say that he has energies is to say that human beings can, nevertheless, talk about him, and know him, even in spite of this radical transcendence.
It is manifestly untrue, then, that the categories of philosophy or Scholasticism, contrasted with a logic of ‘experience,’ cannot be applied to Palamas.5 As we saw in Chapter 4, the rejection of distinction in God, for St Gregory Palamas, has grave consequences for the most basic principles of Christian belief. For Palamas, Orthodox theology holds that “the Divine is both one and not one.” Thus, when someone like Nikephoros Gregoras claims that only the divine nature is uncreated, he not only abolishes the divine energies, “he also destroys all the hypostatic properties.”6 Yet the appeal to Trinitarian theology functions as much more than a reductio ad absurdum for the denial of difference in God. Trinitarian theology, for Palamas, provides the key to understanding not only divine distinction but also divine simplicity. As Vladimir Lossky has put it,
For St. Gregory Palamas … the pre-eminent simplicity of the Trinity is the basis of his theological thought: a simplicity unimpaired by the distinction between the nature and the Persons on the one hand, and that between the Persons themselves on the other. … Simplicity does not mean uniformity or absence of distinction—otherwise Christianity would not be the religion of the Holy Trinity.7
For Palamas, the existence of multiple distinct Persons in simplicity thus functions as an important precedent for affirming simplicity in the face of distinction. One cannot affirm a simple dichotomy between essence and accidents, narrowly ascribing all being to one of these two categories. As Palamas points out, the divine hypostases are neither essence nor accident, and yet they exist.8 “In the same way, the divine energy of God is also neither essence nor accident, yet it is not among non-existent things.”9
Future Directions
Nearly a century ago, in his magisterial survey of the thought of St Gregory Palamas, Martin Jugie noted that he “knew of no study where the system of Palamas on the essence and energy of God, with all its consequences that it entails for grace, glory, and the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation, were exposited and criticized.”10 The present book has not attempted so ambitious an analysis. But in light of the critical editions of Gregory’s works that have appeared since the time of Jugie, it has seemed proper to carry out a more thorough study of the essence–energies distinction across the entirety of Palamas’s writings. Only in the light of such studies can subsequent assessments be made of all the ramifications that the essence–energies distinction holds for Palamas’s broader theological vision and for the contributions of late Byzantine theology as a whole.
Regarding the contentious question of how, and if, the essence–energies distinction, with its attendant presuppositions and concomitant claims, can be reconciled with the accepted theological positions of the Christian West, it can only be reiterated that any deep comparison of St Gregory Palamas with the theologies of the Scholastic period and modern systematics must begin with a thorough knowledge of Palamas himself. It is hoped that the present study might provide a further step toward attaining that knowledge, though its work is by no means complete. There are many other aspects of the theology of St Gregory Palamas, including many dimensions of the essence–energies distinction, that have remained beyond the scope of this study, which has focused, specifically, on the distinction, or difference, itself between ousia and energeia.
One of the things that this book could not attempt was a complete literary and historical analysis of the Palamite controversy as a whole, doing full justice to the details of the debate between Palamas and his various opponents. Such a project very much needs to be completed, not by one author but through the broad cooperation of scholars who devote themselves to the records, writings, and personalities of the middle and late Palaiologan periods. Although the work of such early scholars as Candal and Jugie has been extended into the twenty-first century by the likes of Panagiotes Chrestou, Juan Nadal Cañellas, Antonis Fyrigos, Antonio Rigo, John Demetracopoulos, Ioannis Polemis, and others, many texts of the Palamite controversy remain unedited,11 and many questions remain not only unanswered but unasked.12
One dimension of the broader history of the Palamite controversy that requires further study is the extent and nature of the pro-Palamite movement as a whole and the network of supporters that rallied around Palamas and advocated for the triumph of his theology. Contemporaries like Akindynos spoke of the ‘disciples’ of Palamas (τῶν αὐτοῦ σπουδαστῶν),13 which Gregoras derided as a ‘faction’ and even a ‘drinking-club.’14 Such rhetoric serves to underscore that the writings of Palamas, and his efforts as a theologian, cannot ultimately be studied in isolation. Palamas himself advanced the essence–energies distinction in a collaborative environment, together with a wide circle of monastics, bishops, and even emperors. The broader Palamite movement encompassed the writings of many theologians, finally receiving approbation, and codification, in councils and official documents of the wider Church.15 Yet we still lack any comprehensive, synthetic account of this corporate, historical outworking of Palamite theology.
In a similar way, very little attention has been paid to the broader legacy of Palamite theology in the Byzantine Empire after the death of Palamas. Because the theology of St Gregory Palamas was enshrined as official orthodoxy by councils in 1341, 1347, 1351, and 1368, and subsequently written into the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, the theology of the period leading up to the fall of Constantinople would be dominated by the question of the essence–energies distinction and by a series of ecclesiastical figures and thinkers who continued to honor and defend St Gregory Palamas in theological treatises and encomia. This includes such illustrious figures as Joseph Bryennios, Makarios Makres, Symeon of Thessalonica, and Mark Eugenikos, who would even leave the imprint of the essence–energies distinction on the debates held at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–39).16
The study of the essence–energies distinction, both in the lifetime of St Gregory Palamas and beyond, suggests many avenues for future research. The present work, it is hoped, contributes to this wider field of study by providing a first step into the comprehensive analysis of the essence–energies distinction as it is articulated in the complete writings of Palamas. Although the work of understanding the essence–energies distinction is by no means complete, it is hoped that one is now slightly better positioned to understand this far-reaching and extensive topic, not only taking account of a part of what Palamas has to say, but looking to the writings of St Gregory Palamas in their totality.
Notes
1. This is especially true in the Slavonic world, where the controversy over the essence–energies distinction did not come to impact theological literature in the same way that it did in the Greek world. For a sense of the reception of St Gregory Palamas in the broader ‘Byzantine Commonwealth,’ see the rich bibliography in G. Podskalsky, Theologische Literatur des Mittelalters in Bulgarien und Serbien, 865–1459, 109 n. 439. Cf. M. Scarpa, “La recenzione nella Russia del XVI secolo dei testi antilatini di Gregorio Palamas e Nilo Cabasilas,” 215–223; Schulze, “Die Bedeutung des Pâlamismus in der russischen Theologie der Gegenwart,” Scholastik 36 (1951): 390–412; Rigo and Scarpa, “Le opere antilatine di Gregorio Palamas a Bisanzio e tra gli Slavi (XIV–XV secolo),” 151–161; Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia, 96–118; and the studies in N. Kautchtschischwili et al., ed. Nil Sorsky e l’esicasmo. At the 1991 ICBS, Georgios Kakrides also delivered an important paper on “The Reception of Gregorios Palamas’ Confession in Ukraine;” see Andrii Iasynovskyi, “The Eighteenth International Congress of Byzantine Studies,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 18 (1994): 419.
2. See Chapter 1, p. 34, n. 2. According to Jugie (“La controverse Palamite,” 418), the Palamite elements were added to the Synodikon by Patriarch Kallistos in a July 1352 session of the Holy Synod. These additions are attributed, in turn, to Philotheos Kokkinos in Monac. gr. 505 f.2v; see Uspensky, Исторιя Афона 3:780–781.
3. Synodikon 692–709 (ed. Gouillard, 89).
4. Maloney, A Theology of Uncreated Energies, 60.
5. For a general critique of this idea, see Schulze, “Die Taten des einfachen Gottes,” 141, who imputes it to Meyendorff.
6. Greg. 2.13 (PS 4:274.2–5).
7. Mystical Theology, 78. This seems to be what Lossky means by a conception of God as “simple essence”: a divinity in which the very fact of hypostases is secondary.
8. Cap. 135.11–15 (ed. Sinkewicz, 240).
9. Cap. 135.14–15 (ed. Sinkewicz, 240).
10. Jugie, “Palamas,” 1776.
11. This is especially true of anti-Palamite authors (see K. Morozova, “Неизвестные антипаламитские трактаты,” Verbum 3 [2000]: 254–257), although it applies even to pro-Palamite figures, especially those writing after the death of Palamas. Fortunately, many anti-Palamite writings have begun to appear with more frequency in the last thirty years. See, especially, the collection of works edited by Ioannis Polemis, Theologica varia inedita saeculi XIV (CCSG 23); id., “Arsenius of Tyrus and his Tome against the Palamites,” JÖB 43 (1993): 252–276; id., ed. Theodori Dexii Opera Omnia (CCSG 55); Fyrigos, Dalla controversia palamitica alla polemica esicasta; Cañellas, La résistance d’Akindynos à Grégoire Palamas. Enquête historique, avec traduction et commentaire de quatres traités édités récemment, vol. 1
12. A recent example of the kind of ongoing research that remains to be carried out in the history of the Palamite controversy is the article by A. Dunaev, “Commentarius ad unum caput Gregorii Palamae ex anthologia antipalamitica,” Вестник Свято-Филаретовского института 34 (2020): 149–168. This article again examines the correspondence between the ‘genuine’ writings of Palamas and the manner in which they are quoted in anti-Palamite texts, asking after the original form of Gregory’s formulations and their modification and editing over the course of the controversy.
13. Akindynos, Ep. 44.27 (ed. Hero, 190).
14. See, for example, Gregoras, Historia 15.9 (Bonn 2:783).
15. A full history of the Palamite controversy would thus take account of the works of David Dishypatos, Joseph Kalothetos, Isidore Boucheiras, Mark Kyrtos, Hieromonk Matthew, Philotheos Kokkinos, Kallistos I, Philotheos of Selyvria, John VI Kantakouzenos, and others. See the works of these authors, and later pro-Palamite authors, listed in the bibliography.
16. See, for example, V. Lur’e, “L’attitude de S. Marc d’Ephèse aux débats sur la procession du Saint-Esprit à Florence: Ses fondements dans la théologie post-palamite,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 21 (1989): 317–333; Ch. Kappes, The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence.