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.  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. 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.

Finally, on 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.  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. [1]  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.

A Response to Misconceptions Concerning the Teaching of Palamas

by Steven Todd Kaster

23 March 2024

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End Notes:

[1] In order to explain the Orthodox doctrine of simplicity to a professor of mine in graduate school, I once made an analogy between the breaking of the host during the liturgy, where Christ is present — whole and entire — in each of the many broken pieces, and the presence of God within His many uncreated energies.

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