I chose to review Fr. M. Edmund Hussey’s doctoral dissertation, entitled The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Theology of Gregory Palamas, and although the book is not focused primarily upon Christology, it is nevertheless related to the Church’s doctrine of the incarnation, because, as the author himself points out, the Eastern Churches hold that Palamas’ doctrine of the uncreated divine energy is simply a further development and clarification of the teaching of the 6th Ecumenical Council of Constantinople III (A.D. 681). [1]  Now that Council declared Monothelitism heretical, and defined that there are two natural wills and energies in the one divine hypostasis of the Word incarnate.  Thus, the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and the uncreated divine energy is simply the application of that Christological doctrine to the Trinity.  That being said, my review will follow the structural outline of the dissertation itself, which consists of an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion, and so I will cover each part of the book by reviewing the chapter topic and analyzing the theological information presented by the author.

          In the introduction to the book Fr. Hussey provides a brief statement on the history of the controversy surrounding the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas on the divine energies and man’s deification (theosis) by grace.  In order to do this he begins by explaining the nature of doctrinal disputes between St. Gregory Palamas and his main opponent Barlaam of Calabria, but after only briefly touching upon the controversy, he quickly moves on to stress the positive nature of St. Gregory’s dynamic theology of grace.  Fr. Hussey calls attention to the fact that St. Gregory (and the whole of the Eastern Church) sees the distinction between the divine essence and the uncreated divine energy as the culmination of the dogmatic developments of the earlier councils of the Church.  Thus, the doctrine of the divine energy is seen as the definitive completion of the teaching of the Church as it is expressed in her earlier conciliar tradition, both in relation to Trinitarian theology and to the doctrine of the incarnation of the Eternal Son of God.  It can be said that the Eastern Churches consider the Palamite councils of the mid-fourteenth century as an extension of the teaching of Constantinople III.

          The first chapter centers initially upon the threefold distinction — without a separation — of essence, energy, and hypostases within the divine being, which is of course the centerpiece of the Palamite doctrine of God, [2] and then later addresses the unity of the divine energy as it is enacted by the three hypostases, while emphasizing the multiplicity of the divine energy in relation to man’s participation in God.  Fr. Hussey’s primary goal in this chapter is to show how man’s deification (theosis) is a real participation in God, while simultaneously protecting God’s transcendence.  Now in order to do this Fr. Hussey grounds the various Palamite distinctions in the theological tradition emanating from the writings of both Pseudo-Dionysios and St. Maximos the Confessor.  He shows how the Dionysian emphasis upon God’s super-essential transcendence, along with the Maximian focus upon the proper distinction between the essence and energy of a being, is utilized by St. Gregory in order to protect both the truth of man’s deification, while avoiding the error of pantheism. [3]

          In other words, by making a real distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies, which flow forth from and manifest the three divine hypostases to man, St. Gregory is able to achieve two important things:  (1) he unequivocally proclaims the reality of divinization and prevents any notion of theosis as a non-ontological participation in God, and (2) he protects God’s complete essential transcendence in relation to creation, but without destroying His true immanence in relation to the world.  Thus, the threefold Palamite distinction of essence, energies, and hypostases, safeguards both the reality of the Trinity and of God’s communication of Himself to mankind, while simultaneously making any form of Sabellianism in connection with the Trinity, or pantheism in God’s relationship to creation, impossible.  Moreover, Fr. Hussey holds that Palamas’ theological distinctions are not meant to be thought of as a type abstract or speculative metaphysic, but are instead experiential in nature, that is, the distinctions are based upon an experience of God’s very life and being in man through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

          Because there is only one divine nature, it follows that the three divine hypostases enact one and the same divine energy, [4] and yet it is also true that the divine energy, at least as it has been revealed to and experienced by man, is multiform.  This is true because God in His essence exceeds all of His manifestations, and therefore He is greater than His goodness, He is greater than His glory, and He is greater than His being, but this multiplicity is primarily understood in connection with man’s participation in God, and so it does not apply to the three divine hypostases in relation to each other.  In other words, the multiplicity of the divine energy must be seen as a reflection of the many graced participants in the one divine energy.  Thus, as Palamas says, “The divine and uncreated grace and energy of God, distributed indivisibly, is like the ray of the sun which gives warmth, light, life and nourishment, and sends its own light into those who are illumined, and appears in the eyes of the beholders.” [5]  So for Palamas, the divine energy is both multiple and simple, and can be thought of as indivisibly divided among all those who participate in it.

          In the second chapter Fr. Hussey investigates the Trinitarian personalism of Palamas, and shows how it is centered on the monarchy of the Father as the source and font of the Godhead.  Palamas, in line with the Eastern Christian tradition, holds that the unity of God is founded, not upon the one divine essence, but rather upon the Father who is the source and cause of the other two hypostases.  Thus, the unity of God is not an abstract quality as it is often held to be in the West; rather, it is a personal reality based upon the free and loving gift of the Father to His Son and to the Holy Spirit.  Fr. Hussey in this chapter once again highlights the fact that Palamas, as far as it concerns the Trinitarian processions, is following in the line of Eastern patristic tradition, and Fr. Hussey emphasizes this by quoting sections of St. John Damascene’s treatise De Fide Orthodoxa.  Thus, the Father is distinct from the Son and the Spirit precisely because he causes their subsistence (hypostatic reality), for He alone is the source and origin of generation and procession, both hypostatically and essentially.  Now, since these two things (i.e., generation and procession) are unique personal properties of the Father, it follows that any type of filioque at the level of essence or hypostasis is to be rejected as theologically heretical.  Because to identify the Son with the procession of the Spirit hypostatically or essentially would be to confuse the hypostases of the Father and the Son, and ultimately would destroy the reality of the tri-hypostatic God, replacing this divinely revealed doctrine with a form of Modalism. [6]

          After discussing these ideas Fr. Hussey moves on to examine St. Gregory’s distinction of essence and energy in connection with the eternal generation of the Son and the creation of the world.  St. Gregory holds that the former is a “work of nature,” that is, it is an essential act of the Father, while the latter is an act of the divine will, and so it is an energetic act of the whole Trinity.  When these two realities are confused, the distinction between the eternal generation of the Son and the creation of the world becomes blurred, and either the Son becomes a creature or the world becomes eternal.  Only if there is a distinction between essence and energy in God is it possible to safeguard the full reality of the eternal Logos as homoousios with the Father, while holding that the world is a product of the divine will, and as a consequence, that it is not an emanation from God.

          One of Palamas’ main concerns is to avoid any type of essentialist understanding of God, and so he focuses upon the three divine hypostases as primary in Christian theology.  As he says, “Essence is necessarily being, but not all being is necessarily essence,” [7] and so even though St. Gregory places great emphasis upon the divine essence as the source of the divine energy, he moderates that emphasis by his constant reference to the divine hypostases as the subjects who enact the divine essence and who thus give rise to the personal (enhypostatic) energies which manifest God’s presence in the world.  In other words, an essence cannot enact itself; only a hypostasis can give rise to the energetic manifestations of a being through the enactment of its essence.

          This logically leads into chapter three, which concerns the personal (enhypostatic) nature of the divine energies.  Although the divine energies are the essential energies of the divine nature, it is not the divine essence that enacts them, because, as was said above, only a person can enact an essence and manifest itself outside of is own essential being.  Now it is important to note that there is a sense in which the Son and the Holy Spirit, at least prior to the Nicene Council, can be thought of as “energies” of the Father, but they are of course hypostatic energies, and this is not to be confused with the enhypostatic energies which manifest God in the created order. [8]  The enhypostatic energies are proper to the three divine hypostases taken together, and never in separation from each other.  Thus, the divine energies, which are essential to the divine nature, belong properly to the three divine hypostases.

          The energies as personal or personalized manifestations of God belong properly at the level of nature to the three divine hypostases alone, but, and this is the key to understanding Palamas’ doctrine of deification, they also become the proper energies by grace of the saints who have been deified and assimilated to Christ through the incarnation.  Thus, there is a real communication of the uncreated divine energy from the three divine hypostases to man, to the point that:

          When we are deified, we are truly united to God; we share in His life; we

          become, in a sense, ‘uncreated’ by our participation in the divine uncreated

          energy.  Yet we do not cease to be creatures; we do not lose our natural

          identity; we are not swallowed up by God or absorbed into Him.  Rather,

          the three divine persons communicate their natural energy to us in such

          a way that we possess it personally but not naturally.  Our nature and our

          natural energy remain intact.  Yet the divine energy is a personalized

          energy for us since it becomes an enhypostaton of our persons.  Because

          the energy is transmissible from one person to another, there exists for

          man the possibility of a personal communion with God that does not confuse

          natures. [9]

Clearly, the essence, energy, and hypostasis distinction allows St. Gregory to make man’s divinization a true ontological reality, while also avoiding any form of pantheism or monism.

          In chapter four Fr. Hussey examines what he calls Palamas’ Trinitarian models, and focuses primarily upon the relations existing between the second and third hypostases within the Trinity.  He sees two different figurative images present within St. Gregory’s writings establishing the relationship that exists between the Son and the Spirit; the first is what he calls the Word-Breath image, and the second he calls the Knowledge-Love image.  As far as the first figure is concerned (i.e., the Word-Breath figure), Palamas cleanses it of any materialist qualities, but still holds that as with human speech, which requires breath in order for it to be heard, so too the Word of God requires the breath (i.e., the Spirit) in order for Him to be truly manifested in creation. [10]  Thus, as Fr. Hussey explains, “The divine Logos . . . is somehow a natural and perfect expression of the Father and is naturally and perfectly articulated, as it were, by the divine Pneuma of the Father.” [11]  In other words, the Son and Spirit relate to each other primarily through their source of origin, that is, through the Father, while the Son economically sends the Spirit as the Father’s love, and the Spirit reveals Son by establishing communion between man and the Holy Trinity.

          The second model or figure shows some affinities to the Augustinian view of the Spirit as the love existing between the Father and the Son, but Palamas does not accept any type of filioque at the level of the hypostases themselves, although he does accept what can be called an energetic procession of the Spirit through the Son, but that will be dealt with in chapter five.  In the Palamite system the Spirit as the love of the Father, proceeds forth from the Father and rests upon the Son.  This love is then bestowed by the Son upon those who come into intimate union with Him, and the Spirit through the Son pours out God’s uncreated energies into man divinizing him and elevating him into the very life of the Triune God.  Palamas centers the outpouring of the Spirit through the Son in the economic order, although there is a sense in which he speaks of an eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son, but only at the level of energy.

          It is in chapter five that Fr. Hussey addresses the problem of the filioque, and he tries to show that there is an eternal procession or manifestation of the Spirit through the Son in the theology of St. Gregory Palamas.  It is also in this chapter that he deals with the fundamental difference that exists between the triadology of the East and the West, that is, the fact that the East primarily centers upon the three divine hypostases, while the West primarily emphasizes the unity of the divine essence.  Thus, East and West approach the Trinity from different perspectives and appear to understand the hypostases and essence (ousia) of God in different ways.  The East tends to see the divine essence (ousia) as a type of universal, while the West tends to view it as a particular. [12]  As far as the divine hypostases are concerned, the East focuses upon them as concrete objects, while the West normally sees them as subjects. [13]

          The distinctive views of East and West on the nature of the unity within the Trinity is what leads to confusion over the filioque in Trinitarian theology.  The East with its focus upon the Father as the unifying principle within the Godhead rejects any notion of a procession of the Spirit from the Son at the level of the divine hypostases or at the level of the divine essence, but St. Gregory Palamas does accept that there is an energetic manifestation or procession of the Spirit through the Son in the divine economy; and more than this, because the divine energies are eternal and uncreated, it follows that there is some type of energetic manifestation of the Spirit through the Son eternally within the intimate life of the Godhead.  This second aspect means that there is a true sense in which the Spirit proceeds through the Son as a part of the inner life of the Triune God, that is, as a part of the immanent Trinity and not merely as an economic outpouring of the Spirit upon mankind within salvation history. [14]

          In the sixth chapter Fr. Hussey tries to workout in greater detail the eternal manifestation of the Spirit through the Son by focusing on the Trinitarian nature of this idea.  Thus, for St. Gregory Palamas the divine energies are proper to the Father as the font of Godhead, and so they flow from Him through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.  This out pouring of God’s uncreated energy is not simply a temporal reality, because God’s glory eternally radiates out from His essence, and so He cannot be contained within Himself even before there is a created universe.  That being said, throughout this entire chapter Fr. Hussey emphasizes what St. Gregory Palamas holds to be a fundamental truth of the faith, that is, the idea that the divine energies are God Himself, as He exists outside of His essence, and that this manifestation of God is not merely a temporal reality.

          The last portion of chapter six is centered on Fr. Hussey’s attempt to clarify the relationship that exists between the Holy Spirit as the sanctifier of man and the divine energies that flow out from the Divine Spirit and which can be participated in by man.  In the Palamite system it is not possible to participate in the hypostasis of the Spirit, but only in His energetic manifestations, but that being said, there is a tension present within Palamas’ own thought in this area, because he constantly emphasizes that the divine energies are the activities of all three hypostases together, and yet when speaking of man’s divinization he focuses almost exclusively upon the role of the Holy Spirit in bestowing deifying grace.  In order to try and bring balance to his presentation of this mystery, St. Gregory relies upon what Fr. Hussey calls a traditional patristic formula, that is, the idea that grace is sent, “from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.” [15]  Fr. Hussey shows how this patristic formula, which can be found in the writings of St. Cyril of Alexandria, is used by Palamas to try and show that the focus upon the Spirit as the giver of the gift of deification does not involve a rejection of the truth that the Father and the Son also give this deifying energy to the human person.  There is in other words, a unity of action among the three divine hypostases, which necessarily involves a distinct ordering of the operations (energies) of the Trinity among the three divine hypostases in the economy of salvation.

          In the conclusion to the book Fr. Hussey once again emphasizes the threefold distinction of essence, energies and hypostases, and the importance of this idea in Palamas’ doctrine of divinization.  He also stresses the fact that Palamas is not doing speculative theology; instead, he is relating the experience of the uncreated divine light given to the holy hesychastic monks of Mt. Athos, and so his theology is not to be thought of in definitional terms, but must be seen instead as man’s experience of the divine life.  In other words, Palamas  is relating a spiritual way of life to us in his writings and so his thought must not be reduced to a mere scholastic system of theology.  As Fr. Hussey said, “Gregory did not invent this distinction; we should better say that he explicitated and developed a distinction already implied in earlier patristic literature.  The distinction was inevitably crystallized thereby and subsequently has remained in sharper focus in the Eastern Christian tradition.  This has been his obvious and fundamental contribution to his theological tradition.” [16]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books:

M. Edmund Hussey.  The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Theology of Gregory Palamas.  (Ann Arbor, MI:  UMI Publishing, 1972).

Daniel M. Rogich.  Becoming Uncreated:  The Journey to Human Authenticity.  (Minneapolis, MN:  Light and Life Publishing, 1997).

Journal Articles:

Richard Cross.  “Two Models of the Trinity?”  Heythrop Journal 43 (2002):  pages 275-294.

Book Review:  The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Theology of Gregory Palamas

by Steven Todd Kaster

Franciscan University of Steubenville

Theology 731:  Christology

Dr. Hildebrand

21 April 2005

_____________________________________

End Notes:

[1]  See Edmund M. Hussey, The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Theology of Gregory Palamas, (Ann Arbor, MI:  UMI Publishing, 1972), page 12.  “. . . the frequent appeal to the Fathers by Palamas and the characterization of Palamism as a ‘development of the Sixth Ecumenical Council’ by the Council of 1351 indicate that the doctrine of the energies was not considered new in the sense of a departure from tradition.”

[2]  See Daniel M. Rogich, Becoming Uncreated:  The Journey to Human Authenticity, (Minneapolis, MN:  Light and Life Publishing, 1997), page 116.  In his book Fr. Rogich confirms what Fr. Hussey says about this Palamite distinction, for as he puts it, Gregory distinguishes “. . . the essence (ousia), existence (hypostasis), and grace (energeia) in God.  He states [that] ‘through each of His (the Trinity’s) energies one shares in the whole of God . . . the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’  To him it is when one mistakenly identifies, in spiritual experience, the essence (‘substance’ in Kasper) with existence (hypostasis) that one, like Arius, Eunomius, Barlaam, and Akindynos, begins to collapse the identity of the Holy Spirit as person into the notion of the (uncreated) energies of God, making no distinction between the energies and their hypostatic source, the gift-giving Spirit.”

[3]  See Hussey, 13;  Fr. Hussey holds that Palamas is combining the Dionysian emphasis upon God’s super-essential transcendence and His “processions” into the world, with the Maximian distinction between the essence and energies of a hypostasis.  Thus Palamas says that one must “. . . not think that God lets Himself be seen in His super-essential essence, but rather according to His deifying gift and according to His energy, according to the grace of adoption, the uncreated deification.” (page 14)

[4]  Hussey, 19; as Fr. Hussey says, “In the created world . . . every personal act is proper to one person.  Various human acts can be similar, but they are not identical.  This is not so, however, with God, for Palamas asserts that the divine persons in fact have one energy and every divine action is necessarily the single act of the three persons.  The one divine essence is the source of the one divine energy.  No energies are to be attributed exclusively or properly to one of the persons, but to the Trinity in its entirety.  This assertion of the unity of action in the Trinity is one of the fundamental characteristics of Gregory’s thought.”

[5]  Hussey, 20.

[6]  See Hussey, 25; as Palamas says, “We do not say that the Son is from the Father in as much as He is begotten by the divine essence, but rather in as much as He is begotten by the Father as a person. For the essence is common to the three persons, but begetting is proper to the Father personally. That is why the Son is not begotten by the Spirit. Consequently the Spirit is also from the Father; He possesses the divine essence, proceeding from the person of the Father. For the essence is always and absolutely common to the three persons. Therefore the act of spiration is proper to the Father as a person and the Spirit does not proceed from the Son, for the Son does not have the personal properties of the Father.”

[7]  Hussey, 32; Palamas, Contra Akindynum II, 10.

[8]  See Hussey, 35; as Fr. Hussey explains, “When the Son and the Spirit are sometimes called energies of the Father. . . . this is not because they are to be identified with the essential energy, but rather because they possess its fullness.  ‘Both the only begotten Son of God and the Holy Spirit are called energy and power by the saints, but only in the sense that they have the very same powers and energies as the Father.  It is in this sense that the great Denis called God power, since He has super-eminently all power in Himself.’”

[9]  Hussey, 41.

[10]  See 1 Cor. 12:3.

[11]  Hussey, 52.

[12]  See Richard Cross, “Two Models of the Trinity?,” Heythrop Journal 43 (2002):  pages 275-294.  Richard Cross speaks of the different approaches to the Trinity used by East and West in his article, and as he puts it:  “There is a clear difference between the two views, however, and it is this:  the Eastern view does and the Western view does not, generally accept a sense in which the divine essence is a shared universal.  This divergence can clearly be seen in the originators of the two different approaches.  As I will show below, Gregory of Nyssa, for example, asserts that the divine essence is a universal, and Augustine just as decisively denies this.  And similar assertions are not hard to find later in the various traditions too (as I will show in the cases of John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas).” (page 275)

[13]  See Hussey, 60-61; Fr. Hussey, referring back to the work of G. L. Prestige, says that there is a fundamental difference between the way that Greek and Latin theology approach the Trinity:  “to the Greeks, God is one objective being, though He is also three objects, whereas to the Latins, God is one object and three subjects.  Although Prestige does not give an exact definition of his terms ‘subject’ and ‘object,’ the tenor of his study clearly indicates that the Greek emphasis is on three really objective presentations of one identical being and that the Latin emphasis is on one objective being with three real, internal and subsistent relationships.”

[14]  See Hussey, 72-75.

[15]  Hussey, 84.

[16]  Hussey, 121.

Copyright © 2005-2025 Steven Todd Kaster