Monday, March 23, 2009

3 Reasons Evangelicals Should Accept The Essence-Energies Distinction

Over the next year or so I will be exploring the concept of the "energies" of God. This is an ancient Christian doctrine that goes back to the Early Church Fathers. While it remains an integral part of the doctrine of God in the Eastern Orthodox churches, it never truly took hold in the Latin West and seems to have been almost entirely forgotten until the Reformers. Both John Calvin and the Reformed Scholastics (such as Francis Turretin) made frequent use of the essence-energies (E-E) distinction in their theology. Sadly, this began to fall out of practice even in Reformed circles, so that today virtually no Western Protestant has even heard of the energies of God.


So, what are the energies? Crudely speaking, they are the "activites" of God. Because God's essence is wholly other, outside of the realm of space and time, incomprehensible, we cannot come into direct contact with it. And yet God is a God who intervenes in his creation and enters into relationship with his creatures. It is the energies of God that we come into contact with. God's glory and love and goodness are all energies. According to Mike Horton:

God's energies are radiations of divine glory, but are no more the divine essence than rays are the sun itself. God's uncreated glory emanates, but the essence does not. ...[The energies are] God-in-Action... They are not God's essence, but a certain quality of God's self-revelation and saving love.
(Covenant And Salvation, 268.)


But we must also keep in mind that the energies are not ontologically separate from God's essence, nor are they parts or pieces of God. They are God.

This may seem a bit confusing, and I have not even begun to do the topic justice. This is merely an introductory post that, I hope, will show that such a distinction is desperately needed in Western Protestantism today. All that is important at this point is that idea that there is a distinction between God as He is in Himself (His essence) and God as He manifests Himself to His creation (His energies).

Now then, three reasons Evangelicals need to start thinking about this distinction:

1) Pantheism (or Panentheism)

There has long been a tendancy in the West toward a kind of Pantheism. Medieval mysticism and its quest for the Beatific Vision was an extreme form of this. If God is absolutely simple and "only" an essence, how do we come into contact with Him without in a sense become a part of Him? What does the Apostle Peter mean when he says that we will "partake" of the divine nature? Do we partake directly of God as He is in Himself? At the very least, this seems to imply some sort of Panentheism, which is the belief that God is contianed within and permeates all of the natural world, as if He were the "world soul." By positing the doctrine of the energies of God, we can explain how it is that we come into direct contact with God and even partake of Him without falling into this dangerous tendency of Western theology.

2) Stoicism

This is not as dangerous of a problem for Protestants today, but it is always a potential. If God is, as traditional Christian theology has always maintained, unchanging and impassible, not affected by his creation (as He says in Samuel, He is not a man that he should repent), one could easily come to the conclusion that God is like the great Stoic philosopher in the sky. After all, impassible could mean "cold" and "unfeeling." Perhaps God is just an impersonal being from which all reality flows, a being who doesn't care about us or love us (certainly not enough to save us from our sin). Again, the E-E distinction saves us from such extremes. God in His essence is simple, unchanging and impassible. But his energies are manifold. Through His energies He comes into contact and enters into relationships with his creatures, and in an analogous way He feels with them, responds to their pleas, etc.

3) Open Theism

I saved the best for last! Of the three reasons I've given, this one is obviously the biggest potential danger for contemporary Protestantism. After considering Stoicism, it should be easy to see how the E-E distinction will help here, since Open Theism is simply the opposite problem. Open Theists want a God who can feel our pain, react to our cries for help, and genuinely respond to our prayers. Ignoring for the moment that the incarnation of Christ solves many of these problems (Hebrews specifically addresses how Christ can empathize with our struggles with sin, for example), the E-E distinction does as well. God's essence can remain unchanging while His energies remain manifold. His essence is simple while His activities in creation are varied.

So, are you interested yet? At any rate, I hope you can see how potentially important this distinction can be for the problems facing modern Protestantism. As I said, I will continue to explore this theme in greater detail over the next year. This is only the tip of the iceberg. If I've managed to whet your appetite, you can hear more on the E-E distinction in Mike Horton's systematic theology lectures (click here), specifically the most recent lectures on the incommunicable attributes of God. For a slightly more detailed introduction to the topic and its relation to the early Reformers' theology, check out the last section of Dr. Horton's book Covenant And Salvation (click here to buy the book online).

11 comments:

  1. A very nice introduction. I look forward to following your posts.

    I did not know that the E-E distinction was a part of the Reformed Tradition. How does the E-E distinction avoid becoming emanation?

    Peace, Mike

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  2. Hi Mike,

    Thanks. I hope to have a lot of people along with me on this journey, to give feedback and criticism.

    As I understand it, the E-E distinction IS a kind of emanation. But since the energies are not the essence, it is not the essence that emanates, so we avoid the bad pantheistic kind of emanation that we find in Neo-Platonism.

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  3. David--

    The energies are not emanations. At least, that would be a very confusing way of putting it, that carries connotations that are too Neoplatonic (if one or two Fathers spoke this way, it was not to their credit). Emanation often implies a "lesser degree of reality" in the emanation than the thing it emanates from. Furthermore, emanation is generally understood as impersonal and deterministic. The energies are fully divine. Furthermore, God is free to be who He is, and thus the energies come from God without causal determination.

    One main reason that e/e does not entail pantheism is because the energies are distinct from created effects. The energies are on the uncreated side of the uncreated/created distinction. Creatures exist by partaking of them, but this does not make the creatures identical to the energies.

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  4. For those interested, I have responded to David's post here:

    http://wellofquestions.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/reasons-reformedevangelicals-shouldnt-accept-the-essence-energies-distinction-1-3/

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  5. MG,

    Great! I was actually hoping that there was a way to speak of the energies without talking about emanation. In my response to Mike I was actually just using the Horton quote from my post, "God's energies are radiations of divine glory, but are no more the divine essence than rays are the sun itself. God's uncreated glory emanates, but the essence does not." In your opinion, is this description simply incorrect? What do you think would be the best concise way of describing what the energies are (i.e. actions or activities, attributes, etc)?

    Also, in regards to your comment about pantheism, why couldn't the same be said of the essence? Why couldn't those who reject the E-E distinction simply maintain a strong creator-creature distinction such that the essence is always on the "uncreated side" of things? If you can somehow partake of the energies without becoming identical to them, why couldn't the same happen with the essence?

    Thanks!

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  7. David--

    you wrote:

    "Great! I was actually hoping that there was a way to speak of the energies without talking about emanation. In my response to Mike I was actually just using the Horton quote from my post, "God's energies are radiations of divine glory, but are no more the divine essence than rays are the sun itself. God's uncreated glory emanates, but the essence does not." In your opinion, is this description simply incorrect? What do you think would be the best concise way of describing what the energies are (i.e. actions or activities, attributes, etc)?"

    Horton’s descriptions are unhelpful because they fail to take into account the history of the usage of the word energeia which provides context for its (slightly modified) usage in Christian theology. The concept of energeia had a long philosophical pedigree, even before the word itself was used. It would have been better if there had at least been an accurate comparison or illustration. The whole “no more the divine essence than rays are the sun itself” isn’t bad, but its not giving the deep conceptual content to the notion of energeia that the Fathers would have had.

    I highly recommend getting ahold of Bradshaw’s book and reading it all the way through. It will help flesh out the concepts. As he points out, energeia had two meanings for Aristotle. First, for Aristotle it meant activity. It was contrasted with power. Second, it meant actuality. It was contrasted with potentiality. Really, the meanings are intertwined. The potential for existence that is present in a power (ability) gets manifested when the power performs an action, and is actualized. Think of the difference in fire between “the potential to be hot” and “being hot”. Being hot is an actual state of being that the fire has. The ability to be hot is what makes this state of existence possible. The Fathers seem to basically have this understanding of what the energies are--states of being, or activities, that make latent potentialities actual.

    You wrote:

    "Also, in regards to your comment about pantheism, why couldn't the same be said of the essence? Why couldn't those who reject the E-E distinction simply maintain a strong creator-creature distinction such that the essence is always on the "uncreated side" of things? If you can somehow partake of the energies without becoming identical to them, why couldn't the same happen with the essence?"

    Of course the essence is uncreated.

    With respect to partaking of the essence, we need to ask two questions. First, what is “partaking”? Second, what is “essence”?

    If partaking means “thinking about/having as an object of thought” and essence is “the necessary properties of a thing” then of course you can partake of God’s essence.

    If partaking means “having the same object of will as” and essence is “the necessary properties of a thing” then you might be able to partake of an essence, because the necessary properties of God might include “having God as an object of will”, and you can surely have God as an object of will.

    So I guess I’m wondering what you mean by essence and what you mean by partake.

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  8. MG,

    "So I guess I’m wondering what you mean by essence and what you mean by partake.

    Perhaps I've misunderstood, but I was under the impression that one reason given by Eastern apologists to us Westerners for why we should reject ADS is that it leads to Pantheism, at least partly because of notions of "partaking" in which the logical conclusion is that we must in some sense become identical to the divine essence. I thought that the e/e distinction was supposed to fix this problem by allowing us to partake of the energies instead of the essence. Have I misunderstood something?

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  9. David--

    You wrote:

    "Perhaps I've misunderstood, but I was under the impression that one reason given by Eastern apologists to us Westerners for why we should reject ADS is that it leads to Pantheism, at least partly because of notions of "partaking" in which the logical conclusion is that we must in some sense become identical to the divine essence. I thought that the e/e distinction was supposed to fix this problem by allowing us to partake of the energies instead of the essence. Have I misunderstood something?"

    No, you have not misunderstood; I have, however. I was puzzled by your question about "well, why not say that we partake of the essence?" because I thought we had discussed this before and that it had been explained why this is problematic. I assumed, therefore, you were trying to drive home some definitional issues and technicalities. But considering you're just asking a clarification question, I would be glad to explain what the problem is according to the East.

    Think about the difference between the following two ideas:

    (1) sharing in an activity/state/"mode of being" of some entity.

    (2) sharing in the primal capacities by which another entity performs its activities—the capacities that make it a member of a natural kind.

    Again, think of fire. Fire has activities it does (being hot, being bright). For a steel sword (with energies such as “being able to cut” and “being able to resist pressure” perhaps) to share in the heat and light of a fire (at very high temperatures) is to partake of the energies of the fire. The two sets of energies (steel sword energies and fire energies) remain distinct, (“being able to resist pressure” doesn’t turn into “being bright”) but are intrinsically united (they indwell each other). But lets say that the sword took on the fire's power of "being able to be hot" and "being able to be bright". The sword previously lacked these powers. At this point, you might think, the sword isn't just a sword anymore. It *is* fire, as fire exists in and of itself, even if it retains its sword powers as well.

    It seems problematic to say that a human being could be united to God’s fundamental powers (essence) even if you grant that the divine essence is being. Depending on how you flesh that out, you get different problems:

    (1) union of human essence with divine essence: mixes humanity and divinity, making human nature into human-divine nature (sort of Eutychian). It would also be problematic because it’s in one sense a stronger kind of unity than the divine-human unity in the Incarnation.

    (2) union of human person with divine essence: turns human beings into a bunch of incarnations.

    (3) union of human energies with divine essence: doesn’t seem to make much sense. It would imply that humans are acting within or acting on the divine essence, and that’s incompatible with Christian teaching that God is immutable.

    That, at least, is how I see it. If you say God’s essence is absolutely simple, then its even more problematic, because then to partake of any aspect of God would be to partake of every aspect of him. Furthermore, there couldn’t be degrees of participation in God.

    Were you seriously considering the possibility that humans could partake of God’s essence, or was it just a question?

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  10. "Were you seriously considering the possibility that humans could partake of God’s essence, or was it just a question?"

    I guess my confusion came from the fact that you said that we can partake of the energies without becoming identical with them, because they remain distinct from creation. So I was simply wondering why that same response (that we can partake of x without becoming identical to x) couldn't be applied to the essence and so save ADS from the charge of pantheism.

    But, if I understand correctly, you are now saying that there are other reasons to reject ADS, which I would agree with. But what about pantheism? If we're partaking without becoming identical, is it still pantheism?

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  11. David--

    Yes, specifically on this issue (union with God) essential participation is problematic. "Participating without becoming identical" isn't enough; there has to be some aspect of God that we can share in that is other than the essence. And of course I would say there are other reasons to reject ADS as well.

    What do you mean by pantheism? If you mean the theory that everything is identical to God, then obviously not. The energies are distinct from creation. If you mean the theory that the universe is an emanation from God, then likewise no. The universe is a special creation of God. If you mean the theory that God is distinct from the objects of the universe but confined to it, then no. God pre-existed the universe, acts independently of it, and is in no way limited by it. But then again, I don't know much about pantheism, and I don't know if you have a different idea of it in mind.

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