David Bradshaw
All Articles by David Bradshaw
University of Kentucky
Essence and Energies: What Kind of Distinction?
There is much confusion among scholars over the precise nature of the essence-energies distinction. Various authors have identified it as a Thomistic real minor distinction, a Thomistic rational distinction with a foundation in the object, and a Scotistic formal distinction, whereas others deny that any of these descriptions properly apply. The issue is further complicated by the tendency of some of Palamas’ closest followers, such as Philotheos Kokkinos and John Kantakouzenos, to describe the distinction as ‘conceptual’ (κατ’ ἐπίνοιαν), notwithstanding that Palamas himself seems to have avoided describing it in this way. Such varying interpretations point to the need for a careful consideration of the history and meaning of the various types of distinction at play, both Greek patristic and Latin scholastic. After offering such a history, I conclude with some thoughts regarding the ways in which Palamas’ own distinction does, and does not, conform to these various models.
The exact nature of the essence-energies distinction has been controversial ever since the time of Palamas. Within twentieth-century scholarship, this subject was first given prominence by the great Roman Catholic scholar Martin Jugie. Jugie took it as obvious that Palamas meant to distinguish between the divine essence and energies as between two res, or, in other words, that he intended what the scholastics call a real distinction.1 He was followed on this point by Sébastien Guichardan, who argued specifically that the distinction between essence and energies is a Thomistic real minor distinction.2 In the subsequent decades, numerous other authors accepted that Palamas intended a ‘real’ distinction.3 It must be admitted, however, that they
Martin Jugie, ‘Palamas, Grégoire’, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. 11, pt. 2 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1932), col. 1735–76, esp. col. 1750, 1755–56, 1760–64.
Sébastien Guichardan, Le problème de la simplicité divine en orient et en occident au XIVe et XVe siècles: Grégoire Palamas, Duns Scot, Georges Scholarios (Lyons: Anciens Établissements Legendre, 1933), 93, 105–109. The largely critical review of this work by Vénance Grumel, Echos d’Orient 34 (1935): 84–96, repeats this point without criticism.
For example, Basil Krivosheine, The Ascetic and Theological Teaching of Gregory Palamas (London: Coldwell; reprint from The Eastern Churches Quarterly, 1938), 32; Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976; orig. pub. in French, 1944), 76–77 and ‘ The Theology of Light in the Thought of St. Gregory Palamas’ (orig. pub. in French, 1945) in idem, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 45–69, at 56; Georges Florovsky, ‘St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers,’ Greek Orthodox Theological Review 5 (1959/60): 119–31, at 130; idem, ‘St. Athanasius’ Concept of Creation’, Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 36–57, at