This post is about the essence–energies distinction, that is, the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energies. The distinction is central to Eastern Orthodox theology, but is largely ignored and often denied in Western Christianity. So what gives? What is this distinction supposed to be? Why do Eastern Christians think it’s vitally important? And why are most Western Christians indifferent and/or hostile to it?
These are some of the questions I’m going to tackle. Along the way I take issue with some common affirmations of both Eastern and Western Christianity.
Against the West, I argue that the essence–energies distinction is vitally important and that it should not be neglected, much less denied. Without some such distinction one cannot make sense of (a) divine freedom, (b) divine responsiveness to creation, (c) the Incarnation, and (d) salvation as theosis, i.e., true creaturely union with God without creatures literally becoming or merging with God.
Against the East, I’m going as to argue (a) that there are actually two essence–energies distinctions—one is a type of “real” distinction and the other is a type of “formal” distinction—and (b) that some Eastern Christians have erroneously followed Pseudo-Dionysius into extreme apophaticism by drawing the essence–energies distinction in the wrong place.
My main sources for reflection on the essence–energies distinction are both recent (2023) works of scholarship by well-regarded experts: David Bradshaw, Divine Energies and Divine Action: Exploring the Essence–Energies Distinction and Tikhon Pino, Essence and Energies: Being and Naming God in St. Gregory Palamas.
1. Developing the distinction
1.1. Energy
Let’s start with energy. As Bradshaw explains (p. 3), the term “energy” comes from the Greek energeia, which comes from ergon, meaning “work.” Aristotle used the term to describe “the active exercise of a capacity, such as that for sight or thought, as distinct from the mere possession of the capacity.” From there the term took on the double meanings of “activity” and “actuality” and was contrasted with the term dunamis, which took on the double meanings of “capacity” and “potentiality.” In short, energeia came to refer both to an activity (e.g., thinking) and the fulfillment or completion of that activity (e.g., knowledge or understanding). These senses merged in Aristotle’s notion of the Prime Mover, which as “pure act” or “pure energy” was described as “thought thinking itself”—an activity that is always already completed in itself.
Because it contains, indeed is, all intelligible content, Aristotle’s Prime Mover is intrinsically intelligible. This contrasts with Plato’s conception of the Good/One as “beyond being” and therefore, ultimately beyond intelligibility (Bradshaw, p. 6). The neoplatonic tradition of Plotinus and his successors would later harmonize Plato and Aristotle by positing that the Good/One is the absolutely simple, ineffable source of Intellect (Nous), i.e., Aristotle’s Prime Mover. Despite demoting the Prime Mover to secondary status, Plotinus retained the Aristotelian idea that the ultimate source is “pure energy.” He thus distinguished the intrinsic energy identical to the Good/One (energeia tes ousias, the energy of its substance/essence) from the outward manifestation of that energy in the production of Intellect (energeia ek tes ousias, the energy that comes forth from its substance/essence) (Bradshaw, pp. 7–8).
In the wider Hellenistic context, the dominant senses of “energy” (energeia) were that of “activity” and of “characteristic activity, operation,” but in the New Testament, the apostle Paul restricts usage of energeia to describe “the action of spiritual agents … God, Christ, angels, or demons” (Bradshaw, p. 9). This restriction became standard in early patristic literature, with the effect that the noun energeia and the verb energein took on the dominant senses of “a capacity for action or accomplishment” and “to be active in a way that imparts an energy,” respectively (Bradshaw, p. 10). In other words, when God (or another spiritual agent) acts energetically upon creatures He bestows upon them power to do stuff. Used in this way, the Aristotelian contrast between energeia as activity/actuality and dunamis as unactualized capacity/potentiality is blurred. In both Pauline and patristic usage, both creaturely activity and creaturely capacity for activity are enabled or “energized” by God. See, for example, Colossians 1:29 where Paul says that he strives according to Christ’s energy (energeia) working effectively (energoumenen) in him in power (dunamis).
By the time we get to Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), the preeminent Eastern Orthodox defender of the essence–energies distinction, the blurring of Aristotle’s energeia/dunamis distinction is complete. Palamas does not distinguish between energeia and dunamis at all. The two terms are interchangeable for him (Pino, pp. 61–62), at least when it comes to God. In part, this is because for Palamas, practically anything we might truthfully say about God is counted as a divine “energy” (Pino, p. 59). I’ll explain below (§3.2.2) why I believe he holds this extremely expansive (and deeply problematic) conception of divine energies. For now, I’ll just note that for Palamas the divine essence (ousia) is unknowable by us, and so whatever we might affirm of God has to fall under the catch-all category of “energy.” The divine energies include all the things that are “around God” or “around the essence” as distinguished from the divine essence itself of which we can predicate nothing (Pino, p. 65). So, it follows that anything we might think of as a divine attribute, power, or faculty, whether positive or negative, is an “energy” of God’s.
1.2. Essence
In its most basic sense, an essence (Greek, ousia) or nature (Greek, physis) defines what a thing is and cannot not be as long as it is. The essence defines the boundaries of what a thing can do and become at every stage of its existence. It is of the essence of water, for example, that its molecules contain one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, that at standard Earth surface conditions it freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C, and that it cannot turn into (say) wine without outside help.
When used of God, ousia refers to the core of God’s being, what God is and cannot not be. God, for example, cannot not exist, cannot depend on anything else for existence, and cannot be other than the source and ground of all other actual and possible beings. To say that the Father, Son, and Spirit are homoousias (of the same essence) is to say that all three Trinitarian persons share these and other essential divine qualities in one concrete instance of the divine essence.
Note: Unlike most other essences (e.g., humanity), the divine essence is not multiply instantiable. There can be many distinct human beings, but there can be only one God. This follows from the above-stated entailments of the divine essence. If God cannot depend on anything else for existence and if the existence of everything other than God is grounded in God, with existential grounding being a form of ontological dependence, then nothing other than God can be God. If two Gods somehow existed, each would have to ground the other’s existence in which case neither would be God. So, there is either exactly one God, or there is no God at all.
As Pino notes, while the terms ousia (essence) and phusis (nature) have not always been perfectly synonymous, by the time we get to Palamas, the two terms are interchangeable (p. 51). I say more about Palamas’s conception of the divine essence below (§3.2.2).
Note: While ousia and phusis may be interchangeable for Palamas, Bradford helpfully points out that the term ousia has in fact carried several different meanings during its long history. He distinguishes between (a) ousia as “‘reality itself,’ that which is permanently and fundamental real” (p. 181); (b) ousia as “the core reality of something, that which makes the thing what it is” (p. 181); and (c) ousia as individual substances, “distinct things that are fundamentally real” (p. 182). In sense (a) ousia carries roughly the sense of “being” or “reality” or the Latin esse. Sense (b) corresponds to the modal/metaphysical sense that I describe above. In this sense it refers to the essential “whatness” of a thing (e.g., humanity). Sense (c) corresponds to what later became known as a hypostasis, that is, a subsistent concrete individual (e.g., Socrates).
1.3. The essence–energies distinction(s)
Essence, as I have explained, is a modal and metaphysical concept. It defines what something must be as long as it is. A thing’s essence, therefore, cannot change. For a thing’s essence to change would be for that thing to cease existing and for it to be replaced either by something else or by nothing at all.
Now, a key question concerning God is whether God is (identical to) His essence. If so, then it immediately follows that God cannot change at all. But if God is free to become or not to become a creator or free to become or not to become incarnate, then God cannot be identical to His essence. There must instead be more to God than the divine essence. The question, in other words, is whether everything God does (or can do) is specified in the divine essence, or whether God’s essence allows Him leeway to do things that are not specified in the divine essence. If the latter is the case, then we have an essence–energies distinction. What God is (essence) does not wholly define what God is able to do (energy).
In this latter case, in which God’s power exceeds His essence, we get a real essence–energies distinction. There really is more to God than the divine essence. There can be contingent specifications of God’s essence, modes of free divine activity, that are not themselves essential to God. Let’s call these God’s contingent energies.
But this is only one kind of essence–energies distinction. The Church fathers, in fact, tended to emphasize a rather different sort of essence–energies distinction by focusing on non-contingent expressions of God such as the divine glory that Christ displayed during His transfiguration (Matthew 17:2). The thought is that God is essentially energetic. As a personal, living (Jeremiah 10:10), and loving (1 John 4:8) God, God cannot not be energetic. Christ, as fully divine, always participates in and expresses the divine glory (John 17:5) but the disciples as they were then could not perceive that glory until God enabled them to do so at the transfiguration. The Church’s conception of theosis is that we Christians will eventually come to participate fully—as fully as our human nature allows—in Christ’s divine life and glory. We will become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) and will “be like Him [i.e., the resurrected and gloried Christ], for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).
These non-contingent or natural energies of God are ways in which God must act. Unlike God’s freely becoming a creator or becoming incarnate, which are contingent, God cannot not be good, wise, loving, etc. God’s natural energies are essential because God cannot not act in these ways. Because these energies are essential, they are not really distinct from the divine essence. That is, they cannot be added to or subtracted from God’s essence in the way that being a Creator is a divine self-modification added by God’s free decision to create. The natural energies may perhaps best be thought of as formally distinct from the divine essence and from each other. As defined by Duns Scotus, two things are “formally distinct when they cannot exist separately … but nonetheless can be defined or understood without reference to the other” (Bradshaw, p. 110). In short, formally distinct things are not intrinsically identical but are nevertheless non-separable.
In the case of God, the divine essence is distinct from God’s natural energies in roughly the way that a disposition/propensity is distinct from its manifestations/actualizations. Suppose we think of God’s essence as consisting of various overlapping propensities (e.g., being good, wise, loving, etc.) that are energetically manifested by the actualization of those propensities (e.g., acting good, wisely, lovingly). We might think of these essential propensities as the source from which their manifestations come in much the same way as we think of the Sun as the source of the electromagnetic radiation that it emits. The Sun’s rays are not identical to the Sun because they do not and cannot express the whole of the Sun’s being—the Sun is more than a mere collection of rays. But the Sun’s rays are not separable from the Sun either—a Sun without any rays at all would not be a sun because it is of the essence of a sun to undergo fusion and energetically express itself through its rays. Likewise, God’s natural energies are not identical to God’s essence because they do not and cannot express the whole of God’s being—however much goodness, wisdom, love, power, etc. God manifests, there is always more to God as the inexhaustible source of those perfections. But God’s natural energies are not separable from God’s essence because it is of the essence of God to be energetic in those ways. The essentially living and loving God cannot be simply a static metaphysical principle any more than a star can be merely a densely packed collection of (mostly) hydrogen atoms.
Furthermore, just as God’s natural energies express God’s essence, God’s contingent energies express God’s natural energies. Given that the natural energies cannot exhaust the divine essence but only express it, God is essentially free with respect to how those natural energies are expressed. The contingent energies are, if you will, the particular ways in which God has freely chosen to express the natural energies. It is not essential, for example, that God creates. So creating is a contingent energetic expression of God’s. But in creating God expresses the natural energies of wisdom, love, providence, power, etc.
Summing up so far, there are two essence–energy distinctions, depending on which category of divine energies is in view:
- God’s contingent energies (e.g., creating, becoming incarnate, responding to prayers, etc.) are really distinct from the divine essence. These energies express God’s natural energies in ways that are not specified by the divine essence. Each such expression adds a determination to God’s being that didn’t have to be there.
- God’s natural energies (e.g., knowing, loving, the divine glory, etc.) are only formally distinct from the divine essence. They are distinct from (not identical to) the essence in the same way that a propensity is distinct from its manifestations because as the source of those manifestations it cannot be exhausted by them. But they are also inseparable from the divine essence because they are energetic expressions that God cannot not manifest.
Alright, so far so good. Despite the fundamentally metaphysical nature of the essence–energies distinction, however, many of the Church fathers demarcated between the divine essence and God’s natural energies in epistemological ways. In his debate with Eunomius, for example, Basil of Caesarea says:
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. (Bradshaw, p. 15; emphasis added)
Basil’s distinction here is between what we can know of God (His energies) and of what we can’t (His essence). As Bradshaw puts it, for Basil “the relevant distinction is … between God as he exists within himself and [as] known only to himself, and God as he manifests himself to others. The former is the divine ousia, the latter the divine energies” (p. 16). To some extent, this epistemological gloss is natural and to be expected. The only way we can know of anything apart from ourselves is by experiencing how it acts and interacts with ourselves and with other things. We gradually discover the essence of water, for example, by observing what water does under many different conditions. Likewise, we come to know of God through what God has done in creation (Psalm 19:1), has spoken through the prophets (Hebrews 1:1), and has revealed in Christ (Romans 5:8). In short, it is only through the divine energies that we have any access to the divine essence. Moreover, it is only to be expected that we, as finite creatures, can only grasp or experience part of God’s infinite goodness, power, love, etc. We should not expect ever to fully comprehend God’s essence. Unfortunately, many Church fathers, including Palamas, went much further—indeed overboard—with this epistemological emphasis. They held not merely and plausibly that God’s essence can only be known partially by creatures through the divine energies but that God’s essence cannot be known at all by creatures and that we can only know God’s energies. I’ll explain below (§3.2) why I think they came to this extreme position and why it’s problematic.
2. Why the essence–energies distinction is important
Having discussed what the essence–energies distinction is, I now want to discuss why it’s important. Why do we need such a distinction? There are at least four important reasons. The first two pertain to the distinction between the divine essence and God’s contingent energies. The latter two to the distinction between the divine essence and God’s natural energies.
2.1. Divine freedom
Without a real distinction between the divine essence and God’s contingent energies, God has no freedom of self-determination. For God to be free to create or not create, free to create this sort of world or that sort of world, free to interact with creatures in this way or that way, etc., God must be able to act in ways that are not wholly dictated by the divine essence.
2.2. Divine responsiveness to creation
If there is any creaturely freedom, then for God to act in response to creaturely choices, there must be a distinction between the divine essence and God’s contingent energies. Bible passages like Jeremiah 18:7–10 and Ezekiel 33:13–15 state quite clearly that how God acts is to some extent contingent upon what creatures do. If God’s essence dictated all of God’s actions, then God would not be able to be responsive to creatures in this way.
2.3. The Incarnation
An orthodox doctrine of the incarnation requires a distinction between God’s essence and God’s natural energies. To be one divine person with two natures, one divine and one human, God the Son must take humanity into His person. I explain in this post how I think this works. Basically, the Son sets up a “human-sized” psychological space within His own person and interfaces with Christ’s human body through that space. In this way Christ’s humanity is enhypostasized by the divine Son. This implies, in turn, that Christ’s humanity is divinized by the Son. But humanity cannot participate in the divine nature as such because God is essentially God and not a creature and creatures are essentially creatures and not God. So the only way humanity can be taken into the divine person and life of the Son is by way of some aspect of God that is not identical to the divine essence. Enter God’s natural energies. Christ’s humanity was suffused with the Son’s own divine life, love, wisdom, etc. to the fullest extent His humanity could handle. If these energies were identical to the divine essence, then an incarnation would have been impossible. So God’s natural energies must be distinct from the divine essence.
2.4. Theosis
For the same reason that there can be no incarnation without an essence–energies distinction, there can no theosis without such a distinction. Theosis is direct creaturely participation in God’s own divine life. If God was nothing but essence, this would be impossible because God’s essence excludes creaturehood. But if God is essence plus energies, where the divine energies are distinct from the divine essence, then creatures can participate in God’s divine life via the divine energies. Just as we can bask in the heat and light given off by the Sun but can’t bask in the Sun’s interior on pain of immediate destruction, so we can participate in God’s natural energies and be transformed by them without having to merge with the divine essence (which would destroy our created individuality).
3. Why the West tends to neglect and the East tends to exaggerate the essence–energies distinction
Ironically, the source of both Western neglect and Eastern exaggeration is the same core idea: absolute or “definitional” divine simplicity (DDS). (For more on DDS, see this post.) The difference is that whereas the West applied DDS to God and identified God with the divine essence, the East applied DDS to the divine essence understood as something distinct from (i.e., not identical with) God.
3.1. The source of Western neglect
Following Augustine and later Aquinas, Western theologians generally held that God is absolutely simple, meaning that God identically is whatever He has. That is, everything in God or intrinsic to God is identical to God. This entails that God = God’s essence = God’s intrinsic attributes = God’s internal acts. If we think of God’s internal acts as His “energies,” then it follows straightaway that God’s essence = God’s energies, in which case there is no distinction between the two. God’s essence is to be pure act (actus purus) or pure energy, with no unactualized potency. For this reason, Western theologians in the Augustinian and Thomistic traditions often explicitly reject the essence–energy distinction because they see it as incompatible with DDS.
For a detailed explanation of why the DDS conception of God is theologically disastrous, see this post.
3.2. The source of Eastern exaggeration
The East, by and large, never identified God with the divine essence. That is, they didn’t hold to DDS in the Western manner. God’s essence and energies are always kept at least formally distinct. As I explain in this post, the essence–energies distinction is a vital conceptual distinction without which the Church could not have developed what has come to us as orthodox Christology. Without that distinction the heretical confusions initiated by Origen’s DDS-inspired placing of the Father–Son relationship and creation on the same level cannot be overcome. (Augustine was able to reintroduce DDS in the West only because he affirmed an orthodox Christology alongside DDS—without noticing the implicit tension.)
But even though the East (after several centuries of debate) finally overcame the heretical Christological implications of DDS, the vestigial influence of Neoplatonism and its identification of God with the absolute One remained. So even though the East was prohibited by its conciliar legacy from identifying God with the divine essence (as the post-Augustinian West eventually came to do), it remained open to identify God’s essence with the absolute One. The primary catalyst for this trajectory of thought in the East was, I believe, Pseudo-Dionysius (late fifth–early sixth century AD).
3.2.1. The influence of Pseudo-Dionysius
Pseudo-Dionysius (hereafter, PsD for brevity) was a syncretistic Christian Neoplatonist. He sought to blend Christianity with Neoplatonism in the tradition of Proclus. Almost as soon as PsD’s writings first appeared in the late fifth century, he was received as prominent early Church father, albeit one whose writings were only recently discovered. This is because he passed himself off as Dionysius the Areopagite, a first-century disciple of Paul’s referred to by Luke in Acts 17:34. He even addressed some of his writings to Timothy, Titus, and the apostle John as though writing to contemporaries and equals (though he does display some deference to John). PsD’s writings were not recognized as the “forgeries” they are until the 15th century. By then, their influence on both Eastern and Western Christianity had become enormous. And there are still scholars—a small minority—who insist to this day that PsD is really a first-century authority. So the influence of his writings continues.
Upon their appearance PsD’s writings were quickly received as authoritative by Severus of Antioch (c. 459 or c. 465–538), who appealed to PsD to buttress the Miaphysite cause over against the Diophysites. From the other side of that controversy, John of Scythopolous (fl. 6th century) also defended the first-century authenticity of PsD’s writings. Later, in the seventh century, Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), an enormously influential Church father, wrote of PsD in glowing terms in his work On the Ecclesiastical Mystagogy: “the all-holy and truly God-revealing Dionysius the Areopagite … mysteries … were revealed by the inspiration through the Holy Spirit to that one alone” (p. 48). With such an endorsement by Maximus, it is no wonder that PsD exerted a tremendous influence on Eastern theology. Indeed, the preeminent systematizer of Eastern theology, John of Damascus (c. 675–749) cites PsD at least 41 times in his major work (p. 33, fn. 63). By the time we get to Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) we still see PsD held in very high esteem. Palamas speaks of PsD as “the great Dionysios himself” (Pino, p. 67), “the divinely inspired Dionysios” (Pino, p. 68), or simply as “the great one” (Pino, p. 71). And in the course of his dispute with Gregoras, Palamas compiled a list of patristic proof-texts “drawn exclusively from the Dionysian corpus” (Pino, p. 97).
Note: In his writings, Thomas Aquinas quotes PsD about 1,700 times! (PsDtCW, p. 21)
In any case, let’s consider some of what PsD has to say about God. By far his favorite description of God is as “beyond”:
“beyond being” (p. 49, passim)
“more than ineffable and more than unknowable” (p. 61)
“beyond every assertion and denial” (p. 61)
“he transcends mind and being … is completely unknown and nonexistent” (p. 263)
“surpasses the source of divinity and of goodness” (p. 263)
Many of PsD’s descriptions of God are, taken at face value, self-refuting. There is deep irony in his describing God as “more than ineffable” (thereby “effing” the ineffable, we might say), in his implicitly claiming to know that God is “more than unknowable”, and in his asserting that God is “beyond every assertion.” But the most outrageously apophatic declaration by PsD has to be this one:
“It [i.e., God] is not soul, or mind, or endowed with the faculty of imagination, conjecture, reason, or understanding; nor is It any act of reason or understanding; nor can It be described by the reason or perceived by the understanding, since It is not number, or order, or greatness, or littleness, or equality, or inequality, and since It is not immovable nor in motion, or at rest, and has no power, and is not power or light, and does not live, and is not life; nor is It personal essence, or eternity, or time; nor can It be grasped by the understanding since It is not knowledge or truth; nor is It kingship or wisdom; nor is It one, nor is It unity, nor is It Godhead or Goodness; nor is It a Spirit, as we understand the term, since It is not Sonship or Fatherhood; nor is It any other thing such as we or any other being can have knowledge of; nor does It belong to the category of non-existence or to that of existence; nor do existent beings know It as it actually is, nor does It know them as they actually are; nor can the reason attain to It to name It or to know It; nor is it darkness, nor is It light, or error, or truth; nor can any affirmation or negation apply to it; for while applying affirmations or negations to those orders of being that come next to It, we apply not unto It either affirmation or negation, inasmuch as It transcends all affirmation by being the perfect and unique Cause of all things, and transcends all negation by the pre-eminence of Its simple and absolute nature-free from every limitation and beyond them all.”
The upshot of all this is that God, for PsD, is an metaphysical surd, a we-know-not-what beyond or behind every possible conception we might have about “it.”
Now, why does PsD say this kind of stuff about God? I think the answer is clear. He affirms DDS. That is, like a good Neoplatonist and like post-Augustinian Western theologians, he affirms that God is absolutely simple. Notice that he doesn’t, like Palamas and later Eastern luminaries, restrict his apophaticism to the divine essence. No, PsD routinely speaks of God as “beyond,” etc. And the reason he, like the Neoplatonists, held that God/the One is beyond all affirmation and negation, assertion and denial is because every assertion makes a conceptual distinction between a subject and a predicate (“S is P” or “S is not P”). If the One is absolutely simple then it is beyond all distinctions and so cannot be faithfully represented in a manner that relies on conceptual distinctions.
3.2.2. The Eastern appropriation of PsD
PsD’s writings entered the scene during the post-Chalcedonian monophysite controversy. He himself was probably a monoenergist, if not a monophysite (PsDtCW, pp. 19–21). The anti-Chalcedonians quickly endorsed PsD to buttress their case. But PsD was clever and just ambiguous enough to leave room for a pro-Chalcedonian reading. And so the Chalcedonians, not wanting to ignore a putative first-century authority and leave him as a key resource for their opponents, appropriated PsD for themselves. Maximus the Confessor was instrumental in purging “Dionysian spirituality of the interpretations that would have connected it to one or another heresy” (PsDtCW, p. 23).
As noted, though, the East was already committed to an essence–energies distinction. And so they couldn’t accept PsD’s DDS without modification. The obvious move was to shift the focus from God as the absolute One, which would have collapsed the essence–energies distinction, to God’s essence as the absolute One. This preserves the essence–energies distinction as long as we don’t identify God with the divine essence à la DDS. But just as DDS leads to extreme apophaticism about God—one can’t truly say or think anything about God because the very acts of assertion and conception distinguish subject and predicate and thereby misrepresent the absolutely simple referent—the same thing happens with an absolutely simple divine essence—one can’t truly say or think anything about it. The result is extreme apophaticism about the divine essence.
One result of this is that essence–energies distinction shifts from being primarily metaphysical with epistemological implications to being primarily epistemological, with no clear metaphysical implications since the divine essence so “beyond” that we can’t properly assert anything metaphysical. Thus, Palamas echoes PsD in saying that the divine essence is beyond all assertion and denial (Pino, p. 56) and completely ineffable:
God, whatever he is at the level of essence [Greek text omitted], since he transcends and is removed from everything, is utterly beyond every intellect, every reason, and every manner of union and participation. He is without relation, incomprehensible, imparticipable, uncontemplatable, unknowable, unnameable, and complete ineffable. (Pino, p. 53, quoting directly from Palamas)
But since even saying that is asserting something about that which allegedly nothing can be asserted—a clear self-contradiction—Palamas often speaks of going “beyond” the divine essence to God’s “superessentiality” (a term he uses of God 79 times). And even that God must transcend—to what, super-duper-essentiality?—because talking about God’s superessentiality is to also to say some positive of God that we allegedly cannot do (Pino, p. 76, n. 33).
In speaking of God’s essence in this extremely apophatic manner, Palamas is applying the same logic that PsD does to an absolutely simple God: If something is absolutely simple, whether that be God or the divine essence, then anything one might say about it necessarily misrepresents it because that assertion must conceptually distinguish the “it” (S) from what is said about it (P).
The upshot of this is that everything we can truly say about God has to be deflected away from the divine essence and lumped in with the divine “energies.” As Pino puts it,
According to Palamas, then, “energy is a more or less common name of the things contemplated naturally around God,” an expansive category of divine attributes, both positive and negative. (Pino, p. 65)
3.2.3. Why extreme apophaticism about God’s essence is a really bad idea
We’ve now seen how, through the influence of PsD, the Eastern Church was eventually led to a position of extreme apophaticism regarding the divine essence and to a recasting of the essence–energies distinction in primarily epistemological rather than metaphysical terms. I will now give several why this was a very bad development.
First, extreme apophaticism is self-refuting. If you can’t say anything about the divine essence, then logically you cannot even say that you cannot say anything about the divine essence. The only way to be consistent is to not talk about the divine essence at all. But then what about all the Trinitarian and Christological debates that could only be solved by distinguishing between the divine essence, the divine persons, and the divine energies?
Second, extreme apophaticism makes it impossible to define the essence–energies distinction. Ironically, in the course of defending the essence–energies distinction, which is vitally important (see §2 above), Palamas inadvertently vacates the distinction of any substantive content because (a) he doesn’t allow us to say anything meaningful about the “essence” side of the distinction and because (b) he lumps everything meaningful that we can say under the category of “energies,” which effectively trivializes that category by drawing that distinction in the wrong place. God’s “energies” should be properly conceived of as things God does or can do, not as anything that might be thought or said about God.
Third, extreme apophaticism sunders any meaningful connection between God’s essence and energies. As Palamas says, “‘the essence is known from the energy,’ but only with respect to ‘the fact that it is, not what it is'” (Pino, p. 54). In other words, our experience of God’s energies points to the existence of a source (God) but tells us nothing about that source other than that it is there. If this is right, then our experience of God’s goodness and love leaves us completely in the dark about whether God essentially is good and loving as opposed to superficially appearing good and loving (so far). The latter is consistent with God not being good and loving at all. This is catastrophic and unbiblical. The Bible is very clear that we can know God (John 17:3) and know that God is good (Romans 2:4) and loving (1 John 4:8). How can we fully trust God if we can’t know that God is essentially—not just accidentally, occasionally, or superficially—trustworthy?
3.2.4. A better way forward for Eastern Christianity