On Essence and Energies: Part 3, The Vast Burning Bush

After Palamas’ defense of the hesychasts in The Triads, his dispute with Barlaam of Calabria soon spread throughout the wider church. A series of councils held in Constantinople between 1341 and 1368 ultimately took up the matter. These councils affirmed Palamas’ teaching, establishing the distinction between essence and energies as central to Orthodox theology, liturgy, and spirituality.

As summarized by Kallistos Ware, the 1351 council was the most important, summarizing the doctrine of divine energies in eight main points: 

1. There is in God a distinction between the essence and the energies or energy. (It is equally legitimate to refer to the latter either in the singular or in the plural).
2. The energy of God is not created but uncreated.
3. This distinction between the uncreated essence and the uncreated energies does not in any way impair the divine simplicity; there is no 'compositeness' in God.
4. The term "deity" may be applied not only to the essence of God but to the energies.
5. The essence enjoys a certain priority or superiority in relation to the energies, in the sense that the energies proceed from the essence.
6. Man can participate in God's energies but not in his essence.
7. The divine energies may be experienced by men in the form of light -- a light which, though beheld through men's bodily eyes, is in itself non-material, 'intelligible' and uncreated. This is the uncreated light that was manifested to the apostles at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, that is seen during prayer by the saints in our own time, and that will shine upon and from the righteous at their resurrection on the Last Day. It thus possesses an eschatological character: it is "the light of the Age to Come."
8. No energy is to be associated with one divine person to the exclusion of the other two, but the energies are shared in common by all three persons of the Trinity.

As elaborated in Orthodox theology, Palamas' teaching sets forth an ousia/energeia distinction. This distinction also marks the contrast between the apophatic and cataphatic theological traditions. As Kallistos Ware describes:

Apophaticism, then, has both a negative and an affirmative aspect. It underlines, on the one hand, the transcendence and incomprehensibility of God, 'whom no man has seen or can see'; it proclaims, on the other hand, the possibility of an encounter face to face with this unknowable God, of an unmediated union with the Inaccessible. To express this double truth that God is both hidden and revealed, both transcendent and immanent, Orthodox theology makes a distinction between the divine essence (ousia) and the divine energies or operations (energeiai). This latter term, while possessing a philosophical flavour, is in fact also scriptural. Whereas 'the term ousia is used in only one passage of the New Testament (Lk 15: 12--13)- and here it does not refer to God, but means 'property' or 'wealth' - the term energeia, applied to God, is found several times in the Epistles (Ep I: 19, 3: 7; Ph 3: 21; Co 1: 29, 2: 12). 

Ousia or essence means God as he is in himself, the energeiai or energies signify God in action and self-revelation. According to the Orthodox apophatic tradition, the divine essence remains for ever above and beyond all participation and all knowledge on the part of any creature, both in this age and in the Age to Come; the essence of God can be apprehended neither by men nor by angels, but only by the three divine persons themselves. But God's energies, which are God himself, fill the whole world, and by grace all may come to participate in them. The God who is 'essentially' unknowable is thus 'existentially' or 'energetically' revealed.

As described in the last post, since the cosmos is upheld by the energy and action of God the entirety of existence is irradiated by God's sustaining presence. Ware describing this:

This doctrine of the immanent energies implies an intensely dynamic vision of the relationship between God and the world. The whole cosmos is a vast burning bush, permeated but not consumed by the uncreated fire of the divine energies. These energies are 'God with us'. They are the power of God at work within man, the life of God in which he shares. Because of the omnipresence of the divine energies, each of us can know himself as made in the image of God. Through the divine energies, Jesus Christ ceases to be for us an historical figure from the distant past, with whose story we are familiar from books, and he becomes an immediate presence, our personal Saviour. Through the divine energies we know him not merely as a human teacher but as the pre-eternal Logos.

As I mentioned in the first post, Palamas' essence versus energies distinction, the ousia/energeia contrast, is a helpful way of thinking about God's transcendence versus God's immanence. Specifically, God's essence/ousia speaks to the absolute ontological contrast between God and creation. God is transcendent. This boundary is patrolled by apophaticism, the Via Negativa. However, at the same time God is immanently present to us via His energies. God is intimate and close. As Ware describes:

In His essence, God is infinitely transcendent, radically unknowable, utterly beyond all created being, beyond all understanding and all participation from the human side. But, in His energies, God is inexhaustibly immanent, the core of everything, the heart of its heart, closer to the heart of each thing than is that thing’s very own heart. These divine energies, according to the Palamite teaching, are not an intermediary between God and the world, not a created gift that He bestows upon us, but they are God Himself in action; and each uncreated energy is God in His indivisible totality, not a part of Him but the whole.

The cosmos burns but is not consumed, aflame with the Uncreated Fire.