In this paper I will briefly examine the nature of grace from an Eastern Christian perspective.  Now I must admit that it was only when I became a Byzantine Catholic earlier this year that I discovered that the entire focus of the Eastern Catholic tradition was upon grace as an uncreated, as opposed to a created, gift of God. [1]  It is this very understanding of God’s grace as an uncreated participation in the divine nature that leads to the Palamite distinction between God’s incomprehensible and incommunicable essence and His communicable uncreated energies.  The purpose of this theological distinction is to affirm unequivocally that man’s divinization is a real ontological reality, and not merely a metaphorical one, while simultaneously emphasizing man’s inability to achieve this goal (i.e., God) without God’s gracious and loving condescension.

          I will begin by addressing the problem of “created” grace.  In his book, The Meaning of Grace, Fr. Journet uses an analogy in order to try and express the mystery of man’s communion with God through grace, and here is how he describes it:

          [W]hen you bring into a room a source of 

          light, it illuminates the walls; so, when the

          divine Persons come to us (here we have the 

          source, uncreated grace), they illuminate 

          the walls of the soul (here we have the 

          effect, created grace).  And if you possess

          grace, then the source of grace, the three 

          divine Persons, is there too. [2]

Now, this way of looking at deifying grace is foreign to Eastern theology, because in the Eastern tradition nature itself can be called a created grace, but nature cannot deify man, only the uncreated energy (grace) of God can do that.  The world itself, which was brought into being by God’s creative and sustaining energies, can be called a created grace, but the world is not grace in the proper sense of the term, because created reality cannot bring man to his true end, that is, to the vision of the uncreated Light.

          Now this way of understanding grace was formulated during the 14th century controversies surrounding the Hesychastic method of prayer practiced on Mount Athos.  St. Gregory Palamas, the great defender of the Hesychastic mystics against Barlaam the Calabrian, held that grace had to be uncreated, because if it was not, it would be impossible to experience a true participation in God’s own uncreated life, and thus salvation would be unattainable.  So, although grace is a gift of God, it is not a gift in the sense that it is something other than God Himself; instead, grace is a participation in God’s own uncreated energies (activities), which are infused into man making him a son of God in the only begotten Son of God. [3]  In other words, what Christ is at the level of essential nature, man becomes at the level of energy.

          As far as Fr. Journet’s analogy is concerned, an Eastern Christian can use it as well, but he would have to modify it slightly in order to conform it to Palamite teaching.  Here is how the analogy would be presented in an Eastern manner:  a lamp (the tri-hypostatic God in His uncreated essence) is brought into a room, and as the light (the uncreated energy of God) pours forth from the lamp, it illuminates the walls of the room (man’s whole being), and so the room is bathed in the light that flows forth from the lamp, but this light is not something foreign to the lamp that is its source, but rather is one with it, in the unity of its existence.  An even better analogy would be to use the sun as God, and the light and warmth pouring forth from it as God’s uncreated energies.  The sun and the light that flows from it are distinct, but they are also inseparable.

          The concept of “created” grace is not simply a problem for Eastern Catholics, because even Germain Grisez sees it as a theological difficulty.  In his book Christian Moral Principles:  The Way of the Lord Jesus, Grisez asks the following question, “Is our sharing in the love which God is – the sharing which inheres in us as our own love of God – itself something created or is it the very creator Himself?” [4]  The question is a good one, for how can man be divinized by something created, since it is only the uncreated God who can impart to man a communion in His own uncreated life. [5]  In addition to his question I would add the following question:  Can there really be a “created” divine life?

          Grisez tries to answer these questions, but his answers remain problematic, because he holds that man’s share in the divine life is “. . . neither created nor the very creator Himself.” [6]  Is it possible for something to be neither created nor uncreated?  As I see it, Grisez cannot adequately answer these questions because his metaphysical outlook requires that he reduce anything other than the hypostatic processions of God to the level of created reality.  But this reduction of uncreated reality to the divine hypostatic processions alone does not follow of necessity, especially if one distinguishes between God’s essence and His energies, that is, between God’s being in His inaccessible transcendence, and His mode of being as God pro nobis. [7]  Grisez explains his position this way:

          Everything other than the Trinity proceeds 

          from the Father, Son, and Spirit together by

          their free choice.  The love of God which is

          poured forth into our hearts by the Holy 

          Spirit does not proceed from the Father 

          and the Son:  that is by an eternal procession

          without which God cannot exist.  The love of 

          God poured forth in our hearts by the Holy 

          Spirit proceeds from Him – He having been

          sent by the Father and the Son – through a 

          gracious act of the free will of the Trinity.  In

          this respect, our share in divine love is like a

          creature. [8]

Instead of understanding God’s interaction as simply a relation of cause and effect, the East holds that all of the divine energies proceed forth from the three divine hypostases as enhypostatic (personalized) energetic processions, and that these processions are timeless, for the three divine Persons have been surrounded by the uncreated divine glory for all eternity. [9]  Thus, for St. Gregory Palamas, God by definition exceeds His own essence, and so He is truly hyper-theos.  It is in knowing God’s energies that one truly knows God, for the “. . . energies of God lead directly to knowledge of the hypostatic subjects who together are God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – the hypostases who are responsible for the concrete energetic enactment of the divine essence.” [10]  In other words, God’s energies or activities are not other than Himself; instead, they are the enhypostatic enactments of the divine essence by the three divine Persons, and consequently it is only at the level of His activities, that is, at the level of His uncreated energies, that God communicates Himself to man deifying him in the process.

          That being said, it is also possible for man to contemplate God by looking at the wisdom present within creation itself, [11] but this contemplation is not to be confused with the uncreated gift of divinization, because God’s deifying energy is an eternal reality, which enters into time in order to elevate man out of his temporal existence, thus giving him a real participation in the divine eternity.  As St. Gregory Palamas puts it, “. . . those who possess not only the faculties of sensation and intellection, but have also obtained spiritual and supernatural grace, do not gain knowledge only through created beings, but also know spiritually in a manner beyond sense and intelligence, that God is Spirit, for they have become entirely God, and know God in God.” [12]  This can only be achieved through a real participation in God’s uncreated energy, for deification (theosis) is quite simply the elevation of man into God’s uncreated life.

          Since St. Gregory Palamas sees the divine energies as communicable, it follows that man can participate in God’s attributes by taking on the characteristics proper to God, not at the level of essential nature, but at the level of energy.  Thus Palamas, referring back to the teaching of St. Maximos the Confessor, says:

          The grace of deification . . . transcends 

          nature, virtue and knowledge . . . ‘and all 

          things are inferior to it.’  Every virtue and 

          imitation of God on our part indeed prepares

          those who practice them for divine union, 

          but the mysterious union itself is effected 

          by grace.  It is through grace that ‘the entire

          Divinity comes to dwell in fullness in those 

          deemed worthy,’ and all the saints in their 

          entire being dwell in God, receiving God in

          His wholeness, and gaining no other reward

          for their ascent to Him than God Himself.  

          . . . So, when you hear that God dwells in 

          us through the virtues, do not imagine that 

          deification is simply the possession of the 

          virtues; but rather that it resides in the 

          radiance and grace of God, which really 

          comes to us through the virtues. [13]

St. Gregory’s emphasis on the uncreated energy as the cause of deification helps him to guard against any kind of Pelagian understanding of the process of deification.  Man is not divinized because he first lives a virtuous life, but rather, he lives a virtuous life because he has received the divine energies that empower him to live as he should.

          Moreover, through man’s participation in God’s uncreated energies, he can even be called “uncreated” himself, for he has become uncreated by grace; similarly, through his configuration to the image of the only begotten Son of God, he has become a participant in God’s eternal life, and this is true of many of God’s other uncreated energies. [14]  In other words, what God is by nature, man becomes by grace.  Nevertheless, it is important to remember that in the Palamite system man’s elevation into God occurs only at the level of energy, and not at the level of essence; for deified man remains in his essential nature a created being, and so he remains a creature even after he has been deified, but through his participation in the uncreated energies of God, he gains a real and ontological participation in God’s own divinity. [15]  Consequently, the “. . . the deified individual graciously acts the divine essence, theoretically alongside and in harmony with the identical enactment of the divine essence by the three divine hypostases.” [16]

          The Eastern Christian understanding of man’s divinization involves making a threefold distinction between God’s essence, His energies, and the three divine Persons, and this threefold distinction corresponds to the three modes of union.  Emmanuel Cazabonne describes the three modes of union as follows:

          (1) The union according to the essence:  

          [which] is proper to the three Persons of 

          the Trinity; (2) The union according to the

          hypostasis:  [which] was realized in Christ;

          (3) The union according to the energy:  

          [which] is accessible to all who are in 

          Christ, subsequent to the incarnation, 

          through which the divine energies 

          penetrate our created human nature and 

          deify it.  This union is a union with God 

          Himself.  The incarnate Christ became 

          the definitive place where participation

          of humans in the divine life is realized 

          forever. [17]

Based on this threefold distinction it is clear that God is inaccessible to man at the level of His uncreated essence, moreover no man can experience a hypostatic union with God, for that was unique to the second Person of the Trinity, but at the level of energy man can participate in God’s being, and in doing that, he is truly, and not in mere appearance, deified.  Thus God’s energy brings about man’s divinization, but not through acts that are extrinsic to him, as if salvation were something externally applied to him; instead, deification involves an infusion of God’s energy into man, which empowers man’s own energy so that he can really cooperate with God in a true synergy. [18]

          Now, in order to be fair to the Latin Church’s teaching on grace as a created reality, I thought I would provide an interpretation of that doctrinal position that explains it in a way that would allow it to be conformed, at least in some sense, to the Eastern view of grace as uncreated.  A. N. Williams, in her book The Ground of Union:  Deification in Aquinas and Palamas, argues that the term “created grace” signifies not the nature of grace in itself, but rather its mode of existence within the created person receiving it, for as she says, “. . . grace conforms to the nature of its subject:  ‘In this way it must be a finite being, since it is in the soul of Christ, as in a subject, and Christ’s soul is a creature having a finite capacity; hence the being of grace cannot be infinite, since it cannot exceed its subject.’  Nevertheless, grace considered as gift is not created, nor is the effect of grace created.” [19]  In other words, grace is essentially an uncreated reality, that is, it is a participation in the uncreated life of God, but once it is infused into a limited finite being, it takes on the characteristics of that being.  So, one could say that in the Latin tradition grace is only called created because a created being receives it, while in its essence it is and remains uncreated.

I will conclude with the words of St. Gregory Palamas:

          Sensible light shows things to our senses.

          The intellectual light is to manifest the truth

          which is contained in thoughts.

          But those who receive the spiritual

          or supernatural light,

          perceive what is beyond all intellect.

          They participate in the divine energies

          and become themselves, in a sort, light.

          When they unite to the Light

          they see with it in full all that is hidden from those

          who have not seen the grace of light.

          The Uncreated Light

          is the Light where God makes Himself manifest

          to those who enter into union with Him. [20]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books:

Carlo Caffara.  Living in Christ.  (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1987).

St. Gregory Palamas.  The Triads.  Translated by Nicholas Gendle.  (Mahway, New Jersey:  Paulist Press, 1983).

Germain Grisez.  Christian Moral Principles:  The Way of the Lord Jesus.  (Chicago:  Franciscan Herald Press, 1983).  2 Volumes.

Charles Journet.  The Meaning of Grace.  (Princeton, New Jersey:  Scepter Publishers, 1996).

George Maloney, S.J.  A Theology of Uncreated Energies.  (Milwaukee, Wisconsin:  Marquette University Press, 1978).

John Meyendorff.  A Study of Gregory Palamas.  Translated by George Lawrence.  (London:  Faith Press, 1974).

Scott F. Pentecost.  Quest for the Divine Presence:  Metaphysics of Participation and the Relation of Philosophy to Theology in St. Gregory Palamas’s Triads and One Hundred and Fifty Chapters.  (Ann Arbor, MI:  UMI Dissertation Services, 1999).

Philo of Alexandria.  Loeb Classic Library.  (Cambridge, Mass:  Harvard University Press, 1958).  In ten volumes (and two supplemental volumes).

Archbishop Joseph Raya.  Transfiguration of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  (Combermere, Ontario:  Madonna House Publications, 1992).

A. N. Williams.  The Ground of Union:  Deification in Aquinas and Palamas.  (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1999).

Journal Articles:

Thomas L. Anastos.  “Gregory Palamas' Radicalization of the Essence, Energies, and Hypostasis Model of God.”  The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 38:1-4 (1993):  page335-349.

Emmanuel Cazabonne, O.C.S.O.  “Gregory Palamas (1296-1359):  Monk, Theologian, and Pastor.”  Cistercian Studies Quarterly 37:3 (2002):  303-333.

Grace as God's Uncreated Energy

by Steven Todd Kaster

Franciscan University of Steubenville

Theology 730:  Grace and Virtues

Dr. Regis Martin

9 December 2004

_____________________________________

End Notes:

[1]  See John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, Translated by George Lawrence, (London:  Faith Press, 1974), pages 163-164.  As Fr. Meyendorff writes:  “Grace is therefore not a ‘thing’ which God grants to nature either to ‘complete’ its deficiencies, or simply to ‘justify’ it, or to ‘add’ to it a created supernatural, but it is the divine life itself.”

[2]  Charles Journet, The Meaning of Grace, (Princeton, New Jersey:  Scepter Publishers, 1996), page 26.

[3]  See Scott F. Pentecost, Quest for the Divine Presence:  Metaphysics of Participation and the Relation of Philosophy to Theology in St. Gregory Palamas’s Triads and One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, (Ann Arbor, MI:  UMI Dissertation Services, 1999), page 49.  Any reduction of God to a contrastive transcendent cause would not convey the Eastern Christian understanding of God’s relationship with the world, because it involves a reduction of the divine operations (energies) in a way that “. . . renders metaphysically unintelligible any intimate relation of the world, and thus of man, to God, leaving only the extrinsic relation of creation understood in terms of efficient causality.”  For more information on contrastive and non-contrastive transcendence, see Pentecost, pages 91-97.

[4]  Germain Grisez, Christian Moral Principles:  The Way of the Lord Jesus, (Chicago:  Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), volume 1, page 592.

[5]  See Carlo Caffara, Living in Christ, (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 1987), page 36.  As Caffara explains, “Communion . . . is an original concept and experience.  It does not fall within the range of man’s possibilities, it is not the consequence of shared interests.  It is the consequence of the initiative of God, who calls us to be in Christ and – in Him – with our fellow man.  This divine initiative communicates God’s own life to man, it transforms man and elevates him to a participation in God’s own communion.”

[6]  Grisez, volume 1, page 593.

[7]  See George Maloney, S.J., A Theology of Uncreated Energies, (Milwaukee, Wisconsin:  Marquette University Press, 1978), page 74.  As Fr. Maloney explains:  “. . . in distinguishing between the two aspects of ‘God in se’ and ‘God for us,’ Palamas is not introducing a dichotomy into God, as if there were ‘two Gods’ (as Barlaam accused him of doing).  Rather he is simply distinguishing the knowable from the unknowable in God.”

[8]  Grisez, volume 1, page 593.

[9]  See Philo of Alexandria, “On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile,” Loeb Classic Library, (Cambridge, Mass:  Harvard University Press, 1958), volume 2, page 429:  The distinction made between God’s essence and His energies (activities) is similar to the distinction made by Philo in many of his writings, in particular in his commentary on Cain, where he says, “‘Thou shalt behold that which is behind Me, but My Face thou shalt not see.’  This meant, that all that follows in the wake of God is within the good man’s apprehension, while He Himself alone is beyond it, that is, in the line of straight and direct approach, a mode of approach by which (had it been possible) His quality would have been made known; but brought within ken by the powers that follow and attend Him; for these make evident not His essence but His subsistence from the things which He accomplishes.”  See also Philo of Alexandria, “Questions and Answers on Exodus,” Loeb Classic Library, (Cambridge, Mass:  Harvard University Press, 1958), Supplement II, pages 89-90.

[10]  Thomas L. Anastos, “Gregory Palamas' Radicalization of the Essence, Energies, and Hypostasis Model of God,” The Greek Orthodox Theological Review 38:1-4 (1993):  page 341.

[11]  See Pentecost, pages 82-89.

[12]  St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads, Translated by Nicholas Gendle, (Mahway, New Jersey:  Paulist Press, 1983), page 69.

[13]  St. Gregory Palamas, page 83.

[14]  See St. Gregory Palamas, page 98.

[15]  See Caffara, page 43.  Monsignor Caffara speaks of this in chapter three of his book, where he says that, “The fact that he is created for the glory of God means, then, that man is destined to become a participant in God’s own life, in the splendor of His unfathomable riches.”

[16]  Anastos, page 344.

[17]  Emmanuel Cazabonne, O.C.S.O., “Gregory Palamas (1296-1359):  Monk, Theologian, and Pastor,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 37:3 (2002):  page 313.

[18]  Meyendorff, pages 164-165.  As Fr. Meyendorff explains:  “All along man’s road from his fallen state to union with God, divine grace helps him to overcome corruption, then to surpass himself, and finally shows God to him.  This ‘synergy’ of grace and human effort is for Palamas an obvious axiom.  The effect of grace is ‘to establish the inner powers of the soul and body, and make them act in conformity with their nature.’  But that is only a secondary aspect of our redemption, the goal of which is to make us contemplate God, that is to say to surpass ourselves.”

[19]  A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union:  Deification in Aquinas and Palamas, (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1999), page 89.

[20]  Joseph Raya, Transfiguration of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, (Combermere, Ontario:  Madonna House Publications, 1992), pages 52-53.

Copyright © 2004-2024 Steven Todd Kaster