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Letter CCXXXIV

Do you worship what you know or what you do not know ? If I answer, I worship what I know, they immediately reply, What is the essence of the object of worship? Then, if I confess that I am ignorant of the essence, they turn on me again and say, So you worship you know not what. I answer that the word to know has many meanings. We say that we know the greatness of God, His power, His wisdom, His goodness, His providence over us, and the justness of His judgment; but not His very essence. The question is, therefore, only put for the sake of dispute. For he who denies that he knows the essence does not confess himself to be ignorant of God. Because our idea of God is gathered from all tire attributes which I have enumerated. But God, he says, is simple, and whatever attribute of Him you have reckoned as knowable is of His essence. But tile absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable. When all these high attributes have been enumerated, are they all names of one essence? And is there the same mutual force in His awfulness and His loving-kindness, His justice and His creative power, His providence and His foreknowledge, and His bestowal of rewards and punishments, His majesty and His providence ? In mentioning any one of these do we declare His essence ? If they say, yes, let them not ask if we know the essence of God, but let them enquire of us whether we know God to be awful, or just, or merciful. These we confess that we know. if they say that essence is something distinct, let them not put us in the wrong on the score of simplicity. For they confess themselves that there is a distinction between the essence and each one of the attributes enumerated. The operations are various, and tile essence simple, but we say that we know our God from His operations, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His operations come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.

2. But, it is replied, if you are ignorant of the essence, you are ignorant of Himself. Retort, If you say that you know His essence, you are ignorant of Himself. A man who has been bitten by a mad dog, and sees a dog in a dish, does not really see any more than is seen by people in good health; he is to be pitied because he thinks he sees what he does not see. Do not then admire him for his announcement, but pity him for his insanity. Recognise that the voice is the voice of mockers, when they say, if you are ignorant of the essence of God, you worship what you do not know. I do know that He exists; what His essence is, I look at as beyond intelligence. How then am I saved ? Through faith. It is faith sufficient to know that God exists, without knowing what He is; and "He is a rewarder of them that seek Him ."2 So knowledge of the divine essence involves perception of His incomprehensibility, and the object of our worship is not that of which we comprehend the essence, but of which we comprehend that the essence exists.

3. And the following counter question may also be put to them. "No man hath seen God at any time, the Only-begotten which is in the bosom hath declared him.''3 What of the Father did the Only-begotten Son declare? His essence or His power? If His power, we know so much as He declared to us. If His essence, tell me where He said that His essence was the being unbegotten ?4 When did Abraham worship ? Was it not when he believed ? And when did he believe? Was it not when he was called ? Where in this place is there any testimony in Scripture to Abraham's comprehending? When did the disciples worship Him ? Was it not when they saw creation subject to Him ? It was from the obedience of sea and winds to Him that they recognised His Godhead. Therefore the knowledge came from the operations, and the worship from the knowledge. "Believest thou that I am able to do this ?" "I believe, Lord;"5 and he worshipped Him. So worship follows faith, and faith is confirmed by power. But if you say that the believer [also knows, he knows from what he believes; and vice versa he believes from what he knows. We know God from His power. We, therefore, believe in Him who is known, and we worship Him who is believed in.


from www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-08/Npnf2-08-252.htm#P5454_1718187

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Therefore the knowledge came from the operations, and the worship from the knowledge. So worship follows faith, and faith is confirmed by power. But if you say that the believer also knows, he knows from what he believes; and vice versa he believes from what he knows. We know God from His power. We, therefore, believe in Him who is known, and we worship Him who is believed in.

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It only concerns me a bit whenever anyone bifurcates "essence" from "knowledge." If we know God TRULY, we know him AS HE IS. Postulating a "ding an sich" BEHIND the knowledge -- and then attributing to it attributes that are not contained in our knowledge -- is self-contradictory (for your claiming to know what you just said we don't know) and unproductive (what's the point?).

Doc

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Postulating a "ding an sich" BEHIND the knowledge -- and then attributing to it attributes that are not contained in our knowledge -- is self-contradictory (for your claiming to know what you just said we don't know) and unproductive (what's the point?).

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As St Basil points out, it's his command over earth, sea, and sky that convinces us of the nature of him who wields it, even though we do not know him as he knows himself. The energies are this posed between his unknowable self-knowledge, and our knowledge of him; and yet because they are essential energies, they do disclose what his essence is, without actually placing it in our grasp.

That, in fact, is the whole point of Basil's argument about knowing God only from his "energies". I often think that this word "energies" is a mistranslation. "Energeiai" in Greek really means something like "activities". I think the word "energies" reifies an 'existential act' (if i may put it that way) in a manner that the fathers never intended. God ek-sists from his essence in an infinity of actions 'outward' which are eternal-- he is 'wise', 'knowing', 'powerful' etc.-- and he would ek-sist in this way whether he had created us or not. But on the other hand, these energies are the means precisely by which God is related to us, and we to him, and that's why the fathers affirm that we know him through his 'energies' (and through salvation history, which is an act of a different kind) and not directly, in his absolute and infinite and ineffable essence.

Would YOU go so far as to say, to the contary, that "The presence of God as "essence" is immediate and active in the world."

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Doc: Okay, all cards on the table (as you say). Al, not only would I go so far as to say "God's 'essence' is immediate and active in the world, I would openly confess that I don't have a clue as to what you or Basil are really talking about with your distinction between "essence" and "energies." Honestly. I 'm sure these concepts have some social function in some context, but its not one I'm a part of. I don't know what "the essence" of a tree is, let alone the 'essence' of God, once you distinguish it (the essence) from the tree I know -- or the God I know.

God's is present in the world. Yes. But to say "God's energies are present but not his essence"... I don't get what function such a statement has, and thus what concepts are being communicated. Or better, the only function I've seen is one I don't much like: namely, to separate the unknown essence (which the speaker privately knows about) from the known "energies" (which both parties acknowledge). I don't do that function.

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Tom: No, I'm saying that unless God reveals himself to us we wouldn't know him. God must act. Intellect cannot get us what God has not chosen to reveal. But once God reveals himself, it's God who is revealed. God certainly hasn't revealed all of himself, but this doesn't mean you're free to insist that God unrevealed is contrary to God revealed.

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Tom: unless God reveals himself to us we wouldn't know him. God must act.

Al: Sounds fine. Sounds Orthodox.

Tom: God certainly hasn't revealed all of himself...

Al: Sounds fine. Sounds Orthodox.

Tom: ...this doesn't mean you're free to insist that God unrevealed is contrary to God revealed.

Al: I've not said that is so. I don't think so. But the bee-under-your-bonnet won't let you catch up to what I said a LONG time ago.

CONSIDER THIS. A "friend" of mine wrote (relevant to Doc's scattered comments--which seemed contradictory to both me and him):

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...the whole point of Basil's argument about knowing
God only from his "energies" (JUST PAUSE FOR A MOMENT, TOM, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS IS SAYING YET! OR DOC.) ... "Energeiai" in Greek really means something like "activities". God ek-sists from his essence in an infinity of actions 'outward' which are eternal-- he is 'wise', 'knowing', 'powerful' etc.-- and he would ek-sist in this way whether he had created us or not. But on the other hand, these energies are the means precisely by which God is related to us, and we to him, and that's why the fathers affirm that we know him through his 'energies' (and through salvation history, which is an act of a different kind) and not directly, in his absolute and infinite and ineffable essence.

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SPEND SOME TIME WITH THAT, TOM. SEEMS THAT YOU SIAD THE SAME THING ABOVE!

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The essence is hidden, not just partly hidden.

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YOU MIGHT QUIBBLE WITH THAT MERELY OUT OF HABIT. BUT IF SO, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE SAYING. TO DO SO WOULD BE TO EQUATE YOURSELF AS ONE OF THE TRINITY. (E.G.: DO YOU PROCEED; ARE YOU ETERNALLY BEGOTTEN?)

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Aquinas asserted that we could know God's essence directly, but at the same time, we could not be united with it, especially not in the flesh. Grace itself they thus understood to be a created gift-- another creature, ultimately a thin veil of cellophane between us and God. There was no uncreated grace-- in other words, one did not meet God himself-- and thus there was no real enounter. It's Gregory Palamas's handling of this encounter that makes him interesting; and of course he builds on Basil, etc. On the one hand the encounter is real; but on the other, we don't know him as he is in himself.

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TOM, HE'S SAYING THAT OUR ENCOUNTER WITH GOD IS "REAL" READ "TRUE" DON'T READ CONTRADICTORY!

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Besides this not making sense, it makes you guilty of what you're accusing me of, knowing God intellectually--you figured out intellectually that God is essentially immutable, impassible, timeless, etc.. For someone who believes God's essence is unknowalbe, you have an aweful lot to say about it. If his essence is really as unknowable as you claim, shut down discussion of it and move on to another thread.

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CUT IT OUT, TOM!!!

AGAIN, OUR ENCOUNTER WITH GOD IS "REAL" (READ "TRUE") DON'T READ CONTRADICTORY!

RESPONDING TO DOC's POST HE WROTE -- AND I THINK THESE WORDS MIGHT BE HELPFUL:

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I am not sure what's being argued here. I thought your correspondent had just affirmed that we know nothing in itself, but only insofar as it is related to us. So we don't know God 'as he is', but only in his energies. Yet the energies are essential (i.e., 'essence-ial') energies, so the real God really does manifest his real self to us in them. Moreover, he is fully in his energies-- he is not just wise some of the time, but is always all-wise. So we do indeed know him 'as he is'-- yet this is insofar as he discloses himself to us, and not because we simply can *grasp* his being at its source, as it were. And I think it's important to recognize that not only is his ownbeing ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing, and always the same-- and not only his this ownbeing of his always all-wise, all-powerful, all-merciful, etc-- but also and above all, our encounter with him is and must ultimately always be, personal.

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PLACE THESE TWO SIDE-BY-SIDE, TOM:

1. ...we don't know God 'as he is', but only in his energies.
2. Yet the energies are essential (i.e., 'essence-ial') energies, so the real God really does manifest his real self to us in them.

LOOK AT THAT A WHILE. AND KEEP YOURSELF FROM JUMPING TO THE CONCLUSION THAT GOD'S ENERGIES ARE "CONTRADICTORY" TO HIS ESSENCE. DON'T GO THERE.

3. ...he is fully in his energies-- he is not just wise some of the time, but is always all-wise.

THERE'S A STATEMENT AND AN ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE.

4. ...yet this is insofar as he discloses himself to us, and not because we simply can *grasp* his being at its source...

MY "FRIEND" GOES ON:

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I'm not sure what 'attributes not contained in our knowledge' your correspondent thinks are being attributed to an essence which is beyond our knowledge, of which attributes we supposedly have knowledge all the same. Certainly, such an idea would be self-contradictory. But this is not where the energies are situated, if that's his meaning. As St Basil points out, it's his command over earth, sea, and sky that convinces us of the nature of him who wields it, even though we do not know him as he knows himself. The energies are this posed between his unknowable self-knowledge, and our knowledge of him; and yet because they are essential energies, they do disclose what his essence is, without actually placing it in our grasp.

That's why St Gregory of Nyssa (I think),
echoing St. Paul, speaks of life in God even in the age to come as an eternal 'epektasis'-- an eternal stretching ahead which in the very act of meeting its desire is ever drawn infinitely forward in an encounter that is (like St Augustine put it), 'ever ancient, ever new'.

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TIME TO RETOOL, TOM.


SERIOUSLY, YOU ARE THE ONE'S WHO WANT TO REMAIN IN THE WESTERN FRAMEWORK OF ASSUMING THAT GOD CAN BE KNOWN IN HIS ESSENCE. BUT BEFORE REMAINING FOREVER THERE (TIED TO THE "CLASSICAL" VIEW IN AN ONGOING STRUGGLE) YOU SHOULD MAKE SOLID NOTE OF WHAT IS SAID RE: AQUINAS AND "CREATED GRACE" AND NOT KNOWING GOD DIRECTLY. (RE-READ AGAIN.)



St. Gregory Palamas
www.monachos.net/patristics/palamas_theology.shtml

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"Artistic skill in the work of art" is something different from "artistic skill in the artist."

(Basil, On the Holy Spirit 26(61) PG 32.180)

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"Artistic skill in the work of art is something different from artistic skill in the artist."

That says that the artist is not identified with the work of art itself. The result of personal creative energy is something different from the creative essence of the creative person. The work of art is a true revelation of the artist. But it does not "reveal" the artist. God is revealed in his creation. But God in essence remains unapproachable.

This is quite a different matter than the banal example of whether you will ever live long enough to know your wife completly. Or maybe you are not being that banal. Perhaps you are saying that you can know the energies of your wife, but will never know her essence from which those personal energies flow. If so, that's good. And the personal energies of your wife are NOT CONTRADICTORY to her essence. Yet they never "fully" reveal it. And in fact they do not reveal her essence at all -- they just help you to know her. Marriage is, I think, at the same time a useful and humorous example for this exercise. The husband who presumes to know his wife, to know her essence" is called only one thing: a "newly wed." (Actually, he gets called other things too!)

My friend wrote one other thing that I edited from the paragraph. Its worth mentioning though. He mentioned that when people hear of or think about "energies" they sometimes have the mental picture of a flighty 'existential act' (In my friend's words -- by which I think he means something uncharacteristic like a "wim", or something reactive rather than active.) Its NOT. That's not it at all.

He writes:

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I often think that this word "energies" is a mistranslation. "Energeiai" in Greek really means something like "activities". I think the word "energies" reifies an 'existential act' (if i may put it that way) in a manner that the fathers never intended. God ek-sists from his essence in an infinity of actions 'outward' which are eternal-- he is 'wise', 'knowing', 'powerful' etc.-- and he would ek-sist in this way whether he had created us or not. But on the other hand, these energies are the means precisely by which God is related to us, and we to him, and that's why the fathers affirm that we know him through his 'energies' (and through salvation history, which is an act of a different kind) and not directly, in his absolute and infinite and ineffable essence.

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So, with this friend I will say something NOT LIMITING, NOT A 'NEGATION', BUT HIGHY POSIT-IVE!:

God ek-sists from his essence in an infinity of actions 'outward' which are eternal-- he is 'wise', 'knowing', 'powerful' etc.-- and he would ek-sist in this way whether he had created us or not. But on the other hand, these energies are the means precisely by which God is related to us, and we to him, and that's why the fathers affirm that we know him through his 'energies' -- and not directly, in his absolute and infinite and ineffable essence.

We can talk about our own limitations. That is reason for thinking that we would be "limited" in knowing God in his essence. But the "real deal", I think, is just that we are not God. So we do not know God that way.

It is a HIGHLY POSITIVE thing to affirm that we DO KNOW GOD. Aquinas would not say that. It is a HIGHLY POSITIVE thing to affirm that we do not need intermediaries through wish to have relations with God (as Barlaam preached). The Scholastics were wrong! It is a HIGHLY POSITIVE thing to affirm that we can know God PERSONALLY.

It is the Scholastic legacy -- the legacy of those who gave you the "classical" view -- to say that one must leap the gap by human logic...because God is personally inaccessible in his essence. It is the Scholastic legacy to say that God must be subject to human logic...because otherwise God entirely inaccessible. both of these suppositions are wrong!

No, Tom. There are lots of headlines.

From where I sit it just seems that a lot of people in the Open View merely don't want to read the chapter and are hoping that it won't be on the test.

But the enormity of how much this knowability (in the possitive) of God matters thrusts this matter forward.

So far this debate has only been about "whether" it matters. It is not about "significance" or "relevance"

It really should be a discussion of the radiance of knowing and worshiping God personally. Basil wrote: "knowledge came from the operations, and the worship from the knowledge."

That's the headline.



Edited by - Al2Si2H4O9 on 01/10/2003 10:51:24 AM

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Your friend writes, “The energies are thus posed between his unknowable self-knowledge, and our knowledge of him; and yet because they are essential energies, they do disclose what his essence is, without actually placing it in our grasp.”

I have no problem with this.

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Al: I guess you changed your position from when this thread began; and I didn't notice. Sorry.

Tom: No, I actually thought you had changed yours.

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Tom, here's a loose end.

I agree, and found someone's words to use to express that what God reveals is NOT CONTRADICTORY to "who God is." But what I'm asking you it this. Do you take the position that that coherence/non-contradiction) means that you can "figure out" anything about God that you wonder.

THAT is what I have been shying away from here.And that is the assumption that I sometimes see on this board.

What's your answer?

Thanks Tom.

Al

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