Great article. I especially liked your refutation of the idea that God could’ve created our world otherwise than it is now. The whole idea of God “could have” done this or that is as I understand it an exercise in futility and nihilistic speculation. I have heard even Orthodox people say that God could’ve chosen someone other than Mary to be His Son’s Mother, but as Fr. Josiah Trenham once said, “Without Mary, the incarnation wouldn’t have happened and salvation would be impossible” (paraphrasing).
Though I have to ask: What does that mean for free will? Why are we still responsible for our sins and our falls if it is simply the condition in which we are created? Why are we to repent? Why are we even being called to become gods, as it were?
Well to begin with, I do not believe that we are created by God as fallen and in sin. There are different senses of the word "created," and when we say that God created we should primarily mean our creation by God as His Image (what we are ontologically as finite instantiations of the divine perfection) and His likeness (our eschatological end realized in union with God), which are both the same divine act. It is this "creation" which includes our manifestation or placing in temporality.
So that is creation from the divine perspective. But creation of persons requires synergy, and so the human perspective or contribution as well (otherwise we introduce a monergism and moment of unfreedom or non-personhood into our reality). God's eternal act of creation summons a coterminous human act of self-creation in response, that is, the summons of God of a person into being includes the free self-determining "yes" of that person to its existence, which is both the eschatological state of the creature and the entirety of its free temporal development which is summarized in its eschatological state. Its a divine-human act, and both poles of the act retain their full ontological integrity (the divine summons as eternal actuality, the created "yes" as self-determining development ultimately summarized or recapitulated into its final beatitude).
Perhaps an easier way to summarize this is with the doctrine of the Logos and logoi. The logoi are the principles of the creature's beginning and its end in God by which it also freely develops according to them from its beginning to its end. For God, the logoi only proceed into creation because, for Him in His eternity, they are also fully returned to Himself.
So then on the question of the fall and sin, these realities are the result of the creature's errors in the process of its self-determination, conditioning its finite temporal existence, which must be overcome to reach its final end in and as God. For the creature this overcoming is a process, for God it is eternally accomplished, and both realities are true in their full integrity as one divine-human reality united in Christ.
If you would like more in-depth reading on this subject I recommend the last chapter in David Bentley Hart's "You Are Gods" for a succinct explanation and defense of the ontology of person and question of its creation provided by Fr. Sergius Bulgakov in "The Bride of the Lamb." Thanks for your comment. :D
Fascinating article, thank you for exploring this in such depth. I am still left with one question, due to my lack of understanding of the nuances of Palamite theology: Could you please explain how this does not contradict the essence vs. energies distinction? That seems like a sticking point to me; you mentioned it in passing in your conclusion, but I am left wondering exactly how to resolve the two doctrines. Thank you.
Over time I have come to the conclusion that the essence/energies distinction, other than being symbolic or rhetorical language for the reality of deification, can mean whatever one wants it to mean (though for reasons of doctrinal orthodoxy and philosophical necessity EE must be another way of stating actus purus). The best book on Palamas' overall thought on the distinction is "Essence and Energies: Being and Naming God in St Gregory Palamas" by Dr. Tikhon Pino. But even when reading that I don't think it can be denied that (a) Palamas' thought even at its most clear (which it wasn't always) is "a" rather than "the" interpretation of Eastern Christian thought, and (b) that by itself the EE is not speculatively satisfying for contemplating the God-world relation. Personally, I can still use the language of Palamas, but it is in service to ideas and systems I take to be more holistic and speculatively radical (e.g., Sophiology).
My exposure to the essence/energies distinction is solely through Lossky's books "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" and "In the Image and Likeness of God", so not yet having read any of the primary sources such as Palamas, my understanding is quite limited at this point. The idea is intriguing in that it does to a great degree resolve a lot of the issues that come up around the God/world relation, but what I have read about Fr. Bulgakov's doctrine of Sophia (again only secondary sources at this point) and Whitehead's process theology speak much more to my sensibilities, especially as my spiritual background before coming to Christ lay mostly in Kashmiri Shaivism and Neoplatonism. I'm currently diving into St. Maximus's cosmology, through his Ambigua and Dr. Wood's book, which seems quite aligned with the aforementioned schools of thought. What seems to me to be the crux of all of this is -- what is the nature of the distinction between God and creation? A vast, unbridgeable gap, as it seems most Western Christians conceive of it, is untenable for me; but a complete identity, per Advaita Vedanta, is equally absurd, if for completely different reasons. These sort of non-dualistic Christian conceptions (if I am to use that term somewhat liberally) that we have been discussing here seem to me to be the most fruitful areas for exploration, understanding, and communion with God's nature.
What do you make of Lossky's argument about the uncreated light of Tabor? That is quite compelling at first gloss. I don't want to take up too much of your time with this back and forth (for which I am grateful); perhaps you have already written about this topic and could refer me to an essay of yours?
I agree with Lossky's and the general Orthodox tradition's view that the light of Tabor is the uncreated manifestation of God, also interpreted as the sight of the kingdom Christ had promised earlier to the Apostles "some of you will not taste death until you see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." I don't know if there is a specific aspect of Lossky's argument you have in mind with your question though.
From what I understand of the Palamite tradition, the issue at stake here is the apophatic character of God: how to reconcile the unknowability of God -- cf. 1 Timothy 6:16, "who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see" -- with the manifestation of the uncreated light at Tabor? Or even the incarnation itself, when many people saw Christ Himself, "Light from Light, True God from True God", walking the Earth.
Excellent article. In affirming that God is actus purus and denying that there is a real distinction between God’s essence and energies, would you also say that creation is Christic - that is, in a very real way, the Body of Christ, the Church?
I have also noticed that there are two contradictory models of salvation being taught in the church - one based on the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the other theosis. Would you agree that salvation is theosis and not a necessary result of the incarnation of Jesus Christ? This is not to discount or deny the absolute importance of the Incarnation, but to point out the fact that the Incarnation resulted in no ontological change for man.
2. I think the contradiction you sense here is one that comes from conceiving of the Incarnation as an arbitrary and contingent historical event, as opposed to theosis/deification which is the process of becoming God as the ontological fulfillment of humanity and nature's telos, am I correct? If so, I think you are right that this is how many individuals in Western Christianity, and perhaps even in Orthodoxy, think about this issue, but I do not think it is correct or what the best of the Orthodox tradition teaches.
As I understand it, through Christ's kenosis and resurrection the Christian perceives and gains access to the reality of all of creation as God's kenosis and exaltation, or creation as Incarnation. The nature of creation itself as proceeding from and returning to God is, as Sergius Bulgakov explains in his Greater Trilogy, grounded in and manifesting the ultimate reality of Trinitarian kenosis, so its not the case that God arbitrarily becomes incarnate in history as an act among others, rather the whole of creation is Incarnation and for the Christian its entire scope is known from Christ as being the beginning and end manifest in the middle (in St. Maximus formulation). This view allowed St. Maximus to say that Melchizedek (who he believed was a human, not an angel or the pre-incarnate Christ), despite living thousands of years before Christ's birth was fully deified to the point of truly being eternal and unbegotten, because the Incarnation is the theosis always available to all because it was always the true reality.
This conception of creation as Incarnation, and so of theosis and Incarnation's absolute correspondence, is something I go over at length in my second and third articles on Apokatastasis.
Exactly! Unfortunately, salvation has, in much if not most all of Christianity as commonly taught and understood (Orthodoxy included), been reduced to beliefs in a contingent, historical event meant to save mankind from death and eternal damnation, when in truth, salvation is theosis - the actualization of the inherent and essential potential as the image of God. These false beliefs and teachings have at their foundation the notion of ontological separation between God and creation. From this deluded vantage point, it’s impossible to see creation as Incarnation and the Body of Christ - the Church.
In reality, theosis is the very purpose and meaning of our life. The Incarnation simply revealed to man his great and high calling which he had forgotten. Unfortunately, it has become something totally different. I struggle to find those in Orthodoxy who even see this.
Thanks for pointing me towards your other articles. I’ll be sure to check them out!
Timelessness or transcending time. God's eternal existence means that all of His acts are realized in His own eternity without any interval between them; He is not a temporal actor whose activity is measured by before, during, and after. St. Augustine's Confessions Book II chapters 12-14 explain this succinctly regarding the specific act of creation.
Great article. I especially liked your refutation of the idea that God could’ve created our world otherwise than it is now. The whole idea of God “could have” done this or that is as I understand it an exercise in futility and nihilistic speculation. I have heard even Orthodox people say that God could’ve chosen someone other than Mary to be His Son’s Mother, but as Fr. Josiah Trenham once said, “Without Mary, the incarnation wouldn’t have happened and salvation would be impossible” (paraphrasing).
Though I have to ask: What does that mean for free will? Why are we still responsible for our sins and our falls if it is simply the condition in which we are created? Why are we to repent? Why are we even being called to become gods, as it were?
Well to begin with, I do not believe that we are created by God as fallen and in sin. There are different senses of the word "created," and when we say that God created we should primarily mean our creation by God as His Image (what we are ontologically as finite instantiations of the divine perfection) and His likeness (our eschatological end realized in union with God), which are both the same divine act. It is this "creation" which includes our manifestation or placing in temporality.
So that is creation from the divine perspective. But creation of persons requires synergy, and so the human perspective or contribution as well (otherwise we introduce a monergism and moment of unfreedom or non-personhood into our reality). God's eternal act of creation summons a coterminous human act of self-creation in response, that is, the summons of God of a person into being includes the free self-determining "yes" of that person to its existence, which is both the eschatological state of the creature and the entirety of its free temporal development which is summarized in its eschatological state. Its a divine-human act, and both poles of the act retain their full ontological integrity (the divine summons as eternal actuality, the created "yes" as self-determining development ultimately summarized or recapitulated into its final beatitude).
Perhaps an easier way to summarize this is with the doctrine of the Logos and logoi. The logoi are the principles of the creature's beginning and its end in God by which it also freely develops according to them from its beginning to its end. For God, the logoi only proceed into creation because, for Him in His eternity, they are also fully returned to Himself.
So then on the question of the fall and sin, these realities are the result of the creature's errors in the process of its self-determination, conditioning its finite temporal existence, which must be overcome to reach its final end in and as God. For the creature this overcoming is a process, for God it is eternally accomplished, and both realities are true in their full integrity as one divine-human reality united in Christ.
If you would like more in-depth reading on this subject I recommend the last chapter in David Bentley Hart's "You Are Gods" for a succinct explanation and defense of the ontology of person and question of its creation provided by Fr. Sergius Bulgakov in "The Bride of the Lamb." Thanks for your comment. :D
Fascinating article, thank you for exploring this in such depth. I am still left with one question, due to my lack of understanding of the nuances of Palamite theology: Could you please explain how this does not contradict the essence vs. energies distinction? That seems like a sticking point to me; you mentioned it in passing in your conclusion, but I am left wondering exactly how to resolve the two doctrines. Thank you.
Over time I have come to the conclusion that the essence/energies distinction, other than being symbolic or rhetorical language for the reality of deification, can mean whatever one wants it to mean (though for reasons of doctrinal orthodoxy and philosophical necessity EE must be another way of stating actus purus). The best book on Palamas' overall thought on the distinction is "Essence and Energies: Being and Naming God in St Gregory Palamas" by Dr. Tikhon Pino. But even when reading that I don't think it can be denied that (a) Palamas' thought even at its most clear (which it wasn't always) is "a" rather than "the" interpretation of Eastern Christian thought, and (b) that by itself the EE is not speculatively satisfying for contemplating the God-world relation. Personally, I can still use the language of Palamas, but it is in service to ideas and systems I take to be more holistic and speculatively radical (e.g., Sophiology).
My exposure to the essence/energies distinction is solely through Lossky's books "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church" and "In the Image and Likeness of God", so not yet having read any of the primary sources such as Palamas, my understanding is quite limited at this point. The idea is intriguing in that it does to a great degree resolve a lot of the issues that come up around the God/world relation, but what I have read about Fr. Bulgakov's doctrine of Sophia (again only secondary sources at this point) and Whitehead's process theology speak much more to my sensibilities, especially as my spiritual background before coming to Christ lay mostly in Kashmiri Shaivism and Neoplatonism. I'm currently diving into St. Maximus's cosmology, through his Ambigua and Dr. Wood's book, which seems quite aligned with the aforementioned schools of thought. What seems to me to be the crux of all of this is -- what is the nature of the distinction between God and creation? A vast, unbridgeable gap, as it seems most Western Christians conceive of it, is untenable for me; but a complete identity, per Advaita Vedanta, is equally absurd, if for completely different reasons. These sort of non-dualistic Christian conceptions (if I am to use that term somewhat liberally) that we have been discussing here seem to me to be the most fruitful areas for exploration, understanding, and communion with God's nature.
What do you make of Lossky's argument about the uncreated light of Tabor? That is quite compelling at first gloss. I don't want to take up too much of your time with this back and forth (for which I am grateful); perhaps you have already written about this topic and could refer me to an essay of yours?
I agree with Lossky's and the general Orthodox tradition's view that the light of Tabor is the uncreated manifestation of God, also interpreted as the sight of the kingdom Christ had promised earlier to the Apostles "some of you will not taste death until you see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." I don't know if there is a specific aspect of Lossky's argument you have in mind with your question though.
From what I understand of the Palamite tradition, the issue at stake here is the apophatic character of God: how to reconcile the unknowability of God -- cf. 1 Timothy 6:16, "who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see" -- with the manifestation of the uncreated light at Tabor? Or even the incarnation itself, when many people saw Christ Himself, "Light from Light, True God from True God", walking the Earth.
Excellent article. In affirming that God is actus purus and denying that there is a real distinction between God’s essence and energies, would you also say that creation is Christic - that is, in a very real way, the Body of Christ, the Church?
I have also noticed that there are two contradictory models of salvation being taught in the church - one based on the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the other theosis. Would you agree that salvation is theosis and not a necessary result of the incarnation of Jesus Christ? This is not to discount or deny the absolute importance of the Incarnation, but to point out the fact that the Incarnation resulted in no ontological change for man.
1. I would say that yes.
2. I think the contradiction you sense here is one that comes from conceiving of the Incarnation as an arbitrary and contingent historical event, as opposed to theosis/deification which is the process of becoming God as the ontological fulfillment of humanity and nature's telos, am I correct? If so, I think you are right that this is how many individuals in Western Christianity, and perhaps even in Orthodoxy, think about this issue, but I do not think it is correct or what the best of the Orthodox tradition teaches.
As I understand it, through Christ's kenosis and resurrection the Christian perceives and gains access to the reality of all of creation as God's kenosis and exaltation, or creation as Incarnation. The nature of creation itself as proceeding from and returning to God is, as Sergius Bulgakov explains in his Greater Trilogy, grounded in and manifesting the ultimate reality of Trinitarian kenosis, so its not the case that God arbitrarily becomes incarnate in history as an act among others, rather the whole of creation is Incarnation and for the Christian its entire scope is known from Christ as being the beginning and end manifest in the middle (in St. Maximus formulation). This view allowed St. Maximus to say that Melchizedek (who he believed was a human, not an angel or the pre-incarnate Christ), despite living thousands of years before Christ's birth was fully deified to the point of truly being eternal and unbegotten, because the Incarnation is the theosis always available to all because it was always the true reality.
This conception of creation as Incarnation, and so of theosis and Incarnation's absolute correspondence, is something I go over at length in my second and third articles on Apokatastasis.
Exactly! Unfortunately, salvation has, in much if not most all of Christianity as commonly taught and understood (Orthodoxy included), been reduced to beliefs in a contingent, historical event meant to save mankind from death and eternal damnation, when in truth, salvation is theosis - the actualization of the inherent and essential potential as the image of God. These false beliefs and teachings have at their foundation the notion of ontological separation between God and creation. From this deluded vantage point, it’s impossible to see creation as Incarnation and the Body of Christ - the Church.
In reality, theosis is the very purpose and meaning of our life. The Incarnation simply revealed to man his great and high calling which he had forgotten. Unfortunately, it has become something totally different. I struggle to find those in Orthodoxy who even see this.
Thanks for pointing me towards your other articles. I’ll be sure to check them out!
Timelessness or transcending time. God's eternal existence means that all of His acts are realized in His own eternity without any interval between them; He is not a temporal actor whose activity is measured by before, during, and after. St. Augustine's Confessions Book II chapters 12-14 explain this succinctly regarding the specific act of creation.
Im sorry, Im not quite sure what you are asking me.
And long posts are what I do here. Theological questions like this require it. :D
ok. sorry not feeling well. will have to come back and read.