I recently re-watched the Pints With Aquinas Youtube Channel video interview with Fr. Totleben, entitled "Can Palamism and Thomism be Reconciled?", and although I have no doubt that Fr. Totleben has a good grasp on the teaching of Aquinas on the issues discussed, I do not believe that he understands the position of St. Gregory Palamas that well. [1]  For example, in the discussion he spoke about a tendency for Orthodox Christians to fall into a trap of seeing the uncreated energies as "impersonal," but any Orthodox Christian worth his salt knows that St. Gregory Palamas speaks of the energies always as "enhypostatic," which means that the energies subsist in the persons of the Trinity, and are thus always personal in nature.  I really see no way for an Orthodox Christian who understands what St. Gregory Palamas is teaching in "The Triads" or the "Capita Physica," or in any of his other works for that matter, to come away with an impersonal view of the energies.

Now another statement by Fr. Totleben that I found baffling in the video was made in connection with the Taboric Light, which he — following in the Augustinian tradition — conceives of as "contingent," and as happening in Christ, a notion that is utterly rejected by the East, and he then goes on to say that this creates an insurmountable problem for St. Gregory Palamas and the doctrine of energies, which makes it clear that he doesn't really understand St. Gregory's position on this issue.  The reason I say this is that if you read the homily of St. Gregory on the Transfiguration, it is quite clear that Christ does not change after going up onto the mount; instead, it is the apostles who are changed, for their eyes are opened to see the Light of Christ, which Christ always possessed, but which — because of the lack of spiritual insight on the part of the apostles — was invisible to them until the transfiguring event on Mt. Tabor.  Christ always possesses the glory of God, but only those who are properly disposed and spiritually prepared can see it.

Regarding the topic of divine simplicity, again it appears to me that Fr. Totleben misunderstands the Orthodox position, because the Eastern Churches do not reject the notion of divine simplicity; instead, they understand it differently. [2]  So rather than identifying all of God's many energies (or as the West calls them "attributes") as being identical with the divine essence, the Orthodox see all of the many energies as really distinct (pragmatika diakrisis), both among themselves and with the divine essence, but without there being a real division (pragmatike diaresis) in God (see St. Basil "Letter 234").  God is simple because the one divine essence is indivisibly divided among the three divine persons and the many divine energies, or to put it another way, the whole of the divine essence is present within each person and each energy. [3]  It must be firmly stated that, for the Orthodox the distinctions within God must be real, because to deny the reality of these distinctions (without separations) would be to embrace Sabellian Modalism.  This is also why the Orthodox reject the filioque, because it is seen as involving a blurring of the real hypostatic distinction between the Father, as the sole cause of divinity, and the Son.  That said, it is the Father alone who begets the Son as hypostasis and He alone also processes the Spirit as hypostasis, and this truth protects the monarchy of the Father as the sole source, cause, and font of divinity.  This — of course — is the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas and of St. Gregory of Cyprus as well; for, at the Blachernae Council, St. Gregory of Cyprus fully accepted the Orthodox doctrine of the monarchy of the Father in connection with the hypostatic generation of the Son and the hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit; while he also accepted — as all Orthodox do — the movement of the Spirit as energy through the Son, which does not concern His (i.e., the Spirit's) hypostatic origin, but only His energetic manifestation — temporally and eternally — as grace.

Finally, in the video Fr. Totleben, as already indicated above, attacks Palamism for being impersonal and for making the divine energies themselves impersonal, but that is to misunderstand the nature of God's energies, which are the personal enactments of the divine essence by the three divine persons.  In contrast, Fr. Totleben then explains the Thomist position concerning divinization, and argues that God creates a "sanctifying" grace within man, and that causes man to be divinized.  This reduces God's interaction with man to one of an impersonal extrinsic causality, which lacks any real personal connection and keeps God distant from man.  But for the Palamite, the uncreated energy of God changes man, and makes him, not essentially, but by participation, energetically uncreated.  Thus to summarize the two positions:  for the Thomist the grace of God takes on the properties of the created human person; while for the Palamite the created human person takes on the uncreated personal qualities of God by participating in the uncreated divine energies, not essentially, but at the level of energy (i.e., activity).

A Response to Misconceptions Concerning the Teaching of Palamas

by Steven Todd Kaster

23 March 2024

Reworked and revised:  19 January 2026

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End Notes:

[1] Reference Video: Pints With Aquinas – "Can Palamism and Thomism be Reconciled?"

(Note:  This article responds specifically to segments regarding the personal nature of energies, the Taboric Light, the nature of grace, and Divine Simplicity within this 1h 47m discussion).

[2] The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) defines the Holy Trinity as "one absolutely simple essence, substance, or nature" (una essentia, substantia seu natura simplex omnino).  This specific focus on the simplicity of the essence is foundational to the Eastern argument that while the divine essence is simple and incommunicable, the uncreated energies allow for a real distinction and participation in God's life without dividing that simple nature.  Furthermore, the Council’s subsequent clarification that the Trinity is "distinct according to the properties of its persons" (secundum personales proprietates discreta) establishes that a real distinction within the Godhead does not necessarily imply a division of the simple divine nature.  See Canon 1, "The Catholic Faith," in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Norman P. Tanner, S.J., editor (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 1:230.

[3] While in graduate school at Franciscan University of Steubenville, I proposed an analogy to my professor, Dr. Stephen Hildebrand, to illustrate how the Orthodox essence/energy distinction preserves divine simplicity:  just as the host is broken during the divine liturgy and yet Christ remains present — whole and entire — in each of the many pieces, so too the presence of God is whole and entire within each of His many uncreated energies.

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