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Christos Yannaras writes, "The West confuses God's essence with his energy, regarding the energy as a property of the divine essence and interpreting the latter as "pure energy" (actus purus)" [23] According to George C. Papademetriou, the essence–energies distinction "is contrary to the Western confusion of the uncreated essence with the uncreated energies and this is by the claim that God ...
Mar 28, 2016 · Today, the answer is: “God is Essence and Energies.”. That God is Essence and Energies is something that occupied St. Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century. At stake was the Orthodox Christian practice of hesychasm, which is the cultivation of spiritual stillness through contemplation in order to experience mystical union with God.
Mar 15, 2022 · While we cannot know God in His essence (God in Himself), we can know Him in his energies (the work of God’s grace in our lives, and who God is in relation to the creation and mankind). Both essence and energies are fully God. Therefore, when interacting with God’s energies, we interact with the uncreated God Himself, while His essence ...
May 31, 2024 · Essence (Ousia): The essence of God refers to His inner being, His nature, which is absolutely transcendent and unknowable to created beings. It is the fundamental "whatness" of God, signifying what God is in Himself. Energies (Energies): The energies of God are His actions and operations, through which He manifests Himself to the world.
- William Albrecht
The essence–energies distinction was formulated by Gregory Palamas of Thessaloniki (1296–1359), as part of his defense of the Athonite monastic practice of hesychasmos, the mystical exercise of “stillness” to facilitate ceaseless inner prayer and noetic contemplation of God, against the charge of heresy brought by the humanist scholar and theologian Barlaam of Calabria.
Mar 7, 2021 · The “visible essence” one may today classify as His energies and these energies pertain to how God is visible in the realm of creation (such as the movement of the stars). The “invisible essence,” God’s literal substance, is what can allegedly only be contemplated by the intellect (because, according to Philo and the Platonists, the reality of God can truly only be contemplated).
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May 10, 2021 · Part Three: The Distinction Between Essence and Energy. Last updated on: May 10, 2021 at 3:02 am. What we know of God, we know through God’s energies, that is, God’s operations. We do not know ...
