Distinctions & Capacities in God: St. Gregory Palamas & Aquinas

The purpose of this commentary on these quotes is to hopefully clear up confusion on precise differences in St. Gregory Palamas & Thomas Aquinas

Hopefully the following quotes and citations from some key books will help clear up elements of recent online disputes that have confused both Roman Catholic and Orthodox adherents. The purpose here is not primarily to prove what I think is correct based on lengthy argumentation, but rather to clear up precisely and exactly where the two positions differ and to do so I will use Dr. Ed Feser’s Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction as accurately stating the Thomistic view in general for understanding the terminology and Dr Tikhon Pino’s excellent recent book Essence & Energies: Being and Naming God in St. Gregory Palamas. For the fuller argumentation for why the essence / energy distinction is both Kat epinoia and real, I recommend the Dr David Bradshaw paper here. See also his smaller paper on Kat Epinoia here.

This book is a good introduction to the topic and is available here.

First, let’s look at the Thomistic position on whether a real distinction in the Persons entails separability: For Thomists, real distinctions between the Persons does not entail separability (nor, by extension any other created property, like composition). Feser notes, in contrast to Scotus and Suarez, it is possible for a distinction to be real without separability, and the crucial example is the Persons in the Triad. Were the distinction between Persons not real, modalism or Sabellianism would be the case, and the Persons would be mere masks or instantiations of the single essence. Note the Thomistic position here because it is the same as the Orthodox/St Gregory Palamas’ position on the reality of the distinction of the Persons.

Feser then moves on to consider the Scotist notion of a formal distinction, situated supposedly between a conceptual and a real distinction, which is not our purpose in this analysis, but it’s worth noting that Feser has an interesting argument as to why it ultimately collapses. Furthermore, for Thomists, a “real distinction need not entail separability,” which is the Scotist concern. Recall that above Feser appealed to the Persons of the Triad as the paradigm example, which Scotists would confess as well, and moves on to include other examples from Oderberg and geometry to demonstrate this:

Note that Feser uses the same distinction of real properties had by both geometric figures and the Triad as both being real distinctions that do not entail composition or division or separability. In other words, this feature of creaturely distinction also can be applied to the Triad without entailing the Persons are separable. Thus “real distinctions” cannot be a category that is only applicable to creatures and it introduces no polytheism by positing a belief that the Trinity is really Three Persons.

Second, we move to the Orthodox / Palamite position as outlined in Against Akyndinos and the Palamite Synods, as cited in Meyendorff’s Byzantine Theology which is available here. Here, the “reality” that is life in God cannot be identical to the “reality” that is foreknowledge, and the same holds for all the attributes / energies. Each attribute has its own real corresponding name or signification. The distinctions here are not merely ad extra, pertaining to the economia or to the multiplicity of creatures or created effects, but inter-Trinitarian realities. In the Thomistic position, the divine attributes are distinguished ad extra in a virtual or conceptual way in the human mind. So the distinction between the attributes and one another or between the attributes and the essence is not a real distinction, but a mental or logical distinction. In St. Gregory Palamas’ 150 Chapters, the same line of argumentation is given in a few examples that are reductio arguments against the identification of the attributes or for a position that distinguishes them only in human conception:

Clearly for St. Gregory Palamas the energies really are manifold and really are distinct in themselves and not merely in human conception. They are also really distinct from the essence, and thus the essence / energy distinction. The Orthodox / Palamas position is not doing anything more than consistently applying the same logic the Thomist uses for the Persons, to the energies: The energies can also be really ontologically distinct without introducing separability or composition in to God. This shows that for Palamas, the energies are not merely distinguished in our mind, as it would lead to various errors such as Origenism, Eunomianism or emanationism (as he argues in many places against Barlaam and Akyndinos and as Dr Pino shows in many places). Rather, the energies are ontologically distinct as demanded by divine revelation and its theological argumentation and the attendant Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and creation ex nihilo.

Next, we look at a couple pages from Dr. Tikhon Pino’s excellent study on the Energies in St Gregory Palamas available here.

Here, we note that Dr Pino elucidates the key point: the distinctions between the energies is real to the extent that it does not reduce the energy to being strictly one. When showing that energy follows nature, as the Cappadocians argued, the argument hinges on one God acting because there is one divine nature. But when the acts or energies are compared to one another or to the divine essence, they are really distinct and really manifold, as the 150 Chapters argued. They are a “real plurality” while their ultimate identification is a key anti-Palamite argument we see in Barlaam, Akyndinos and Thomists. They are distinct inter se: Things that differ cannot be identical to a tertium quid. No stronger language and argumentation could be used to show how far Palamas considers the distinctions to be “real.” In fact, as Bradshaw shows, Palamas follows the Cappadocian line of reasoning the distinctions between essence and energy and between and the energies among themselves is as real as the distinctions between the Persons in the Triad. They are the “things around the essence” and things are plural and differentiated - not identical.

Dr Pino’s work vindicates my reading and understanding of the English works of Palamas, as well as many other relevant fathers I’ve read who speak to these issues, such as the Cappadocians, St. Cyril, St. Maximos and St. John of Damascus. In fact, he repeats one of the stronger arguments from the 150 Chapters mentioned above - that God’s foreknowledge or providence cannot be identical to the divine will, since God knows possible worlds and didn’t will them to be. Likewise, the argument that God’s contemplation of beings cannot be identical to His deification of them since deification for creatures depends on their volition and synergy. The one (divine contemplation) is actualized from all eternity, while the other is not - unless you want to be an Origenist. This means, as Pino argues, there are capacities or powers in God that are not reducible to pure actuality. This means God’s essence is not identical to Actus Purus, which is the Thomistic position. This means so-called Orthodox who push the Thomistic position as Orthodox or who seek to subvert Orthodoxy with Thomism or combine them are in fact promoting heterodox ideas.

“Although dynamis and energeia are generally interchangeable, Palamas does admit a kind of subdivision of power into manifested and unmanifested, that is, first and second actuality.” (Pino, page 70). This is something no Thomist could ever say and illustrates precisely where the differences lie. This is precisely why God possesses free will and the Orthodox position avoids modal collapse, as Pino notes:

As a bonus, here is a key section in the Ambigua of St. Maximos which makes the same argument for real distinctions as applied to the logoi, the divine ideas. They are just as many as the many creatures based on them, and their many-ness is not based on being creatures or purely conceptual human distinctions:

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