Getting Personal: The Doctrine of the Divine Energies in Palamas’ Doctrine of the Trinity and its Implications for a Biblical Theology of Deification

For certain modern theologians, the Palamite concept of the divine energies distorts Patristic theology on account of its taking the dogmatic place once occupied by the trinitarian persons. That is, where communion between God and man, for the Fathers, was grounded in the person of Christ according to the revelation of the Spirit, Palamas replaces both the Son and the Spirit with God’s uncreated energies, rendering the Trinity a dogmatic atavism, believed but doing no conceptual work. Catherine LaCugna thus warns against de-emphasizing the divine persons, suggesting that the distinction implies that God’s ousia exists “‘by itself’, beyond the divine persons, and that it cannot be known as it really is.[1] Moreover, she argues, Palamas fails to give proper attention to the distinctive roles of the divine persons in the economy of salvation since the energies through which man is deified are predicated of the divine nature rather than the persons.[2] For this reason, then, the doctrine of the Trinity itself has no warrant since God is only revealed to mankind through the consubstantially grounded energy of God. Thus, if Palamite theology is taken to its logical conclusion, “the defeat of trinitarian theology is total.”[3]

Clarifying the true meaning of the distinction requires close attention to its conceptual roots in the tradition of classical metaphysics. In examining Palamas’ engagement with traditional Greco-Roman concepts of God, it will be seen that the special role played by the divine energies in relation to the world creates the conceptual context wherein the Trinity becomes necessary, thus distinguishing the personal and living God of Christianity from this classical conception of those Greeks whom Palamas lambasted. Moreover, it will be shown that Palamas’ understanding of the divine energies in relation to the Trinity provides a clarifying lens through which the soteriology of John’s Gospel can be read most fruitfully.

Palamas therefore opens his 150 Chapters by building an argument for the existence of God from the nature of the world’s existence. Because things in the world change, and because change requires a “new cause in each instance” or else it would be arbitrary and senseless, the world cannot be self-existent. On the basis of this truth, one has, according to Palamas “proof for an underived, self-existent primordial cause.”[4] The cause of all things is that which possesses the actualities through which contingent things are made actual. Palamas then draws from “the nature of…contingent existence…” that, in his words, things are “continually coming to an end in part.” That end for the world as a whole, he suggests, is the change of creation “into something more divine by the δυνάμει of the Spirit.” [5] Later in the text, Palamas uses this word as a close equivalent to the notion of the energies. Explaining Micah’s description of Christ as “going forth from ancient days”, for example, he states that the goings forth are the “energies of the divinity”, as God alone “possesses pre-eternal powers and energies.”[6]

Palamas proceeds from his description of the eschaton, energized and deified by the power of the Spirit, to criticisms of the teachings of the “Hellenic Sages” concerning the relation of God to the world. Referring to the idea that the motion of the heavens belongs to the nature of the World Soul and produces by its motion the motion of all other spheres, Palamas asks “if the World Soul belongs to the entire world, why does the earth not revolve too, and the water, and the air?” Additionally, if the World Soul functioning as such were rational as the Hellenes supposed, “it would not move the celestial body in the same perpetual movements” because those things which are self-determining “move differently at different times.”[7]

In these passages, the seed from which his systematic exposition will unfold is planted. Since the world changes in its qualities of existence and the degree to which these qualities are realized, it cannot be self-existent and ontologically ultimate. It owes its being and character to one who is self-existent and primordial. Moreover, the World Soul of the Hellenic philosophers is insufficient to explain the diversity of movements belonging to inanimate things such as stones, metals, and other mundane objects.[8] By implication, the diversity of inanimate things is explained in terms of a diversity of movements belonging to that which is primordial and self-existent.

This diversity of movements, or acts, is found in Palamas’ concept of the diversity of God’s natural energies. While God has one single essence, Palamas states “the rays are many, and are sent out in a manner appropriate to those participating in them…”[9] These rays are described as “natural symbols” which are “always coexistent with the natures of which they are symbols.” [10] The rays are symbols, Palamas says, in that they “become knowable the moment its natural symbol is known.” [11] This idea of necessarily existent manifestations is intelligible in light of the meaning of energeia in Aristotelian metaphysics. Energeia in the sense given by Aristotle, generally refers to “actuality” in contrast to “potency.”[12] An energy in the classical sense, then, is that which manifests a thing as truly existing with the qualities proper to its nature, enabling it to be picked out and named as what it is.

Understanding the divine energies in this sense clarifies the meaning of Palamas’ famous declaration that “if the substance does not possess an energy distinct from itself, it will be completely without actual subsistence and will be only a concept in the mind.”[13] The metaphysical questions addressed in Palamas’ writings on the energies concern not simply the way in which God and creation are related, but the way in which God is thought to exist at all.

In the Hellenic doctrine of God, Palamas suggests, the divine oneness is such that it necessarily implies the existence of the world even as it makes an account of the relation between God and the world difficult to construct, as Palamas particularly notes that the World Soul of Neoplatonic thought is other in substance from the One from whom he proceeds.[14] Proclus, attempting to account for the diversity evident in the world while still holding that the One, in order to be the One, must be utterly undifferentiated, proposes a hierarchy of emanations of increasing multiplicity and decreasing ontological distance from the One. Eric Perl notes the problem in this model by pointing out that “they offer no explanation of the origin of the first multiplicity.”[15] The distinction between the One and multiplicity is not a quantitative distinction, but a qualitative one which no theory of descending degrees of diverse processions can bridge.

On this view, the One seems to exist both in a necessary relation with the world through the unfolding processions and also in a way that is utterly unrelated to it. In the former respect, the simplicity and immutability of God is compromised in virtue of its constitution from composite and mutable things. In the latter, the One lacks a real causal relation with the world, which in its diversity is entirely foreign to that whose very essence is undifferentiated oneness. In the absence of such a causal relation, one might justly ask on what grounds one posits the existence of the One in the first place.

Thus, the specific concerns noted by Palamas in the three opening chapters of the 150 are set forth in light of the perceived advantages of his own theological system. The problem of relationality can be solved in light of Palamite metaphysics, through the contextualization of the divine energies in the doctrine of the Trinity. In this process, it will become clear how the nature of God is specifically related to the Trinity, against the common claim that the later Byzantine tradition abandoned the notion of the ousia of God being constituted in and only in God’s trihypostatic life.

I have suggested above that one of Palamas’ principal purposes in articulating his Christian doctrine of God is to account for the contingency of the world, as is reflected both in its changing nature and its characteristic tendency towards the fulfillment of its potential on the one side or nonbeing on the other. Eric Perl, however while arguing for the metaphysical utility of the Palamite distinction, describes the divine activities in terms suggesting the necessity of the world, describing the processions as “differentiated according to the differences of creatures” as the energies are “God-for-us.”[16] Perl captures the heart of the matter in describing the energies as “God-for”, but in stating that the energies are “God-for-creation”, he constitutes creation as a necessary emanation from God, undermining the qualitative distinction that Palamas wishes to make and collapsing his metaphysic into the Hellenism Palamas so vigorously condemns. Notably, Perl’s paper on Palamas’ metaphysics of creation does not mention the Trinity once.

The nature of the problem is not hard to comprehend. Quoting John Damascene, Palamas defines the energy as the “efficient and essential kinesis of nature”[17] and that which “makes Him manifest.”[18] As Palamas repeatedly denies that the energy is accidental,[19] the very character of the Christian God is identified by His active motion and self-manifestation. The language of κίνησις and δεικτικην immediately suggests the necessity of God’s acting with respect to another subject. Indeed, δεικτικος, meaning “to manifest” or “to show” can be used in the sense of a logical proof; a thing is manifested in its being known to a receptive subject in the particular qualities which define its character and logical relations with other things. Such an account of the energies would seem to naturally accommodate itself to a necessarily existent creation. This is the logic to which Bulgakov appealed in his doctrine of creation, who followed Soloviev in identifying the world as the “self-manifestation of the Absolute.”[20]

As attractive and obvious as Perl’s deduction might seem to be at first glance, Palamas is quite explicit in rejecting any ontological necessity in creation. For example, Palamas reconciles noncomposition with the diversity of created hypostases by noting that God alone is “active only, but is not acted upon, neither coming into being or changing.”[21] These characteristics are exactly those which define the cosmos as distinct from God in Palamas’ first two chapters: the cosmos, being what it is, requires a cause which is self-existent and primordial. If the cosmos’ existence followed simply from the energy natural to God, God and the cosmos would be mutually constitutive, rather than the former being self-existent and the latter being contingent. But such an idea is metaphysically incoherent, as it would suggest that God’s existence is constituted by a world which itself contains potentiality and thus the potential for nonbeing. Hence, God would not be, as he is in Palamas, self-existent.

It is in the light of this dilemma that the deeply trinitarian structure of Palamas’ theology is itself made manifest. In his Dialogue, Palamas responds to a query about the manner in which the divine names signify God’s nature. Palamas answers by quoting Gregory of Nyssa, who, when speaking of the person of the Spirit, states that His “divinity reveals [divine] nature.” Intriguingly, Nyssa then states that the Spirit’s divinity signifies His “power of seeing”, which, Palamas adds, “knows everything, oversees everything, and foresees everything.”[22] That the energies of the Spirit are here identified with the power (δύναμις) of the Spirit is, as one might appropriately say, illuminating. Those energies which have been identified throughout Palamas’ writings as the Tabor light seen by the apostles in the face of Christ are here identified as the means by which God Himself sees. Palamas joins these two aspects of the energeia in the Chapters. To demonstrate that the multiplicity of operations are not multiply subsistent but “manifestations and natural energies of the one Spirit”, Palamas points to the “seven eyes of the Lord” in Zechariah as well as the “seven spirits” before God’s throne in Revelation, which, in context, are seven torches of fire.[23] The latter text is quoted as part of a trinitarian benediction invoking God, Christ, and the seven spirits.

Thus, the manifestations of divinity which preoccupy Palamas’ theological work are simultaneously the light which is manifested by the divine persons and the illumination through which the persons apprehend this light. What about the possibility of a motion of kinetic activity without a corresponding receptive capacity? Is such a thing conceivable in Palamas’ metaphysics? A comment about the activity of fire in the Triads suggests not. In considering the concept of a natural symbol (a manifestation always present with the thing manifested), Palamas identifies “heat” as the natural symbol of fire, since the former is always present with the latter. It “always uses heat as its natural symbol”, Palamas says, “whenever an object capable of receiving heat preserves itself.”[24] The heat always manifests and makes present the fire which it signifies, but this can only be communicated in relation to those things which have the capacity to receive the heat. Absent such a receptive object, the fire, losing the capacity to manifest itself, ceases to burn.

The relational precondition for actuality-as-activity is the metaphysical basis in Palamas’ articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. God is the “absolute and transcendent goodness.” As in Dionysius, “goodness” signifies all the natural processions in their being the paradigm according to which perfection is measured. Building on what has been described above, Palamas writes that God in His goodness must also be the “source of goodness.”[25] God’s goodnesses, His natural manifestations, demand a personal subject to whom these manifestations are related. That God is actual in His kinetic self-disclosure entails, then, the production of the person of the Logos. He is consubstantially generated from the Father’s essence as the Son because He is “indistinguishably identical with”[26] the Father in substance. Palamas calls him the Logos on account of the nature of God’s δεικτικος, or self-manifestation. A thing’s self-manifestation in this sense is that which manifests it according to those qualities which mark it out as precisely itself. The Logos is the Logos because the infinitely actual manifestations of the Father’s divine character exist in relation to Him and are known by Him, constituting Him as the perfect revelation of God’s character as God. Moreover, since the processions are simultaneously the revelation of divine qualities and the capacity to apprehend them, His consubstantiality and total identity of activity makes possible His perfect apprehension of the entirety of God’s self-disclosure. Palamas’ theology therefore avoids creating a descending hierarchy of increasingly distant divine processions, since there is no possibility of successively less perfect degrees of apprehension and thus reflection.

At this point, one might naturally conclude that the basic metaphysical issue has been solved. Since things are actual only in motion, and since motion only occurs in relation, God is realized as infinitely actual in the mutual constitution of the Father-Son relationship, the Two perfectly revealing the character of divinity and knowing that revelation through the divine energies. But there is still one outstanding question. Since God is infinitely actual in and through His manifestation as such, in what way is God’s unity manifested? Father and Son are indeed consubstantial, but according to the aforementioned logic, their consubstantiality has no proper manifestation. The Father moves in relation to the Son who moves in relation to the Father, but a revelation or actualization of the consubstantial communion is lacking. Indeed, one seems to slip into that very problem which the dyadic relation of Father and Son is supposed to resolve. If Father and Son completes the intra-divine motion, then the creation is still necessitated as the theater for the revelation of the consubstantial communion.

This is the conceptual space wherein Palamas sets forth his doctrine of the Spirit’s procession immediately following his account of the Son’s generation. The Spirit, according to Palamas, is “like an ineffable love of the Begetter towards the ineffably Begotten Word himself”, which the “beloved Word” immediately reciprocates “towards the Father.”[27] The Spirit, then, proceeds from the Father in order that He might be He who manifests the consubstantial communion in relation to Father and Son. In describing the importance of the Spirit, then, Palamas refers to pre-eternal Wisdom, identified as the Word, having “rejoiced together” with God the Father. Palamas specifically emphasizes the word “together” in order to prove the necessity of a third divine person.[28] The importance of this point can be understood in light of Palamas’ presupposition that an energy is always directed towards another hypostasis. Thus, to speak of the Son “rejoicing with” the Father is unintelligible unless there is a third person. Were there only two persons, each would rejoice toward the other, but to rejoice together would imply a self-directed motion, which is a contradiction in terms. The Spirit is thus described as “ineffable love” because of He makes manifest the divinity always and exactly as communion. The Son never reveals the divinity to the Father simply as the Son, but always in communion with the Spirit. Such a distinction may at first appear abstract, but such relational structures are well-known in creation. The love of parents for their children is completed only when they themselves are in a loving relation and jointly move outwards.

Thus, for St. Gregory Palamas, the doctrine of the divine energies attains its significance precisely in its trinitarian character. The contingency of the world demands a self-existent, infinite God in the perfectly kinetic motion by which He apprehends the infinite principles of the world in His own mind, a God who knows Himself in an uninterrupted movement of self-contemplation. But the Hellenic notions of God and the cosmos were insufficient to coherently meet these criteria. Aristotle’s Prime Mover set the celestial spheres in motion as it revolved upon itself in the act of self-knowledge. The cosmos is in essential relation to the Prime Mover as it revolves in descending spheres according to the revolution of the Prime Mover on himself. For Neoplatonism the hierarchy of spheres set in motion by the Prime Mover has been replaced by the hierarchy of divine processions. But for Palamas’ purposes, both models suffer similar problems. A thing is actualized in its manifestations, and these can only be actualized in relation to hypostases with the capacity to receive them. The Hellenic God, being sheer Monad, is unable to exist in infinite actuality, there being no truly consubstantial hypostases in relation to which the One can exist as fully actual. Palamas’ argument for the existence of God, then, is developed in light of his doctrine of the essence-energies distinction, through which lens the necessity of God’s trihypostatic existence is shown forth.

It is therefore upon this basis that the flaw in LaCugna’s analysis is revealed. LaCugna criticized the doctrine of the energies because energies are actualizations of the one nature rather than the particular persons in their peculiar hypostatic properties. In making this argument, however, she creates a disconnect between the divine nature and the tripersonality of God. If the natural character of the energies entails a marginalizing of the Trinity, this suggests that there is nothing about the Trinitarian character of God which is related to the divine nature. In other words, the divine nature does not necessarily subsist in three divine persons, but only (so her argument would imply) contingently subsists in this way. Indeed, in demanding that the Holy Spirit indwell the Christian “directly”, in such a way that the Spirit’s indwelling is hypostatic rather than natural, she raises the question of how the Spirit’s indwelling is intrinsically related to the life of the incarnate Son into whose family the Spirit adopts the baptized. On this model of divine-human communion, there seems to be no category in which God reveals Himself as one God. Since the persons reveal themselves in their personal character rather than in a manner intrinsically linked to their common nature, there are no revelatory grounds to affirm God as Trinity rather than as three distinct gods.

Palamas characterizes the energetic revelation of God in a trinitarian fashion by stating that “…all energies are contemplated [θεωροῦνται] in not one but three persons.”[29] The acquisition of θεωρία entails not a revelation of God’s nature instead of His hypostases, but a revelation of God according to His trinitarian character. Indeed, Palamas’ arguments concerning the necessity of the Trinity depend upon God’s revelation of His nature. To know God’s attributes in His natural manifestations is to know those attributes which imply His trinitarian life, such as love, humility, and communion. Stoyan Tanev, describing Palamas’ understanding of this relationship, writes that “the specific manner…of this manifestation depends on the way the hypostasis exists.” The peculiar property of each hypostasis “shape out and provide the particular mode of the manifestation of the energies.”[30] God’s self-disclosure is always a trinitarian revelation because an energy never exists “raw”, but only and always exists according to a hypostatic manifestation.

Still, LaCugna argues that such a model still fails to account for the nature of divine-human communion, writing that “even if the energies are enhypostasized- the energies express what the persons are- the three divine persons are a step removed from the economy of salvation.”[31] However, she offers no model in its place apart from emphasizing the directness of communion. Upon close examination, however, it is unclear how such directness can exist apart from the doctrine of the energies. The challenge for any theologian of the Trinity is to explain how the human person is incorporated into the life of the trihypostatic Lord without being absorbed into the essence or being identified with a particular divine person. One must know that the Spirit does proceed without becoming part of that procession. Moreover, she fails to recognize that the category of energeia is not merely a category which belongs to God’s revealed life, but is a basic metaphysical principle applying to the revelation of anything at all.

Obvious examples exist in activities such as love and blessing- a human person has an intrinsic potency to extend himself in love in virtue of his human nature, and such love is clearly an active movement. But the category applies at an even more fundamental level. Any perception of anything outside of oneself is intelligible in light of the concept of energy. The person who is seen is seen through the activity which belongs to him through his human nature, that of manifesting visibly. Likewise, the person who sees is able to see because of the natural activity of sight- the active and receptive aspects of sensible energies are made for each other, existing in relation to one another.[32] As Bradshaw says, “Alongside the capacity to move is an answering capacity in the thing acted upon to be moved.”[33] LaCugna’s argument fails because the directness of the communion which she rightly seeks is only explained through the concept of energies, not apart from them. To say that this is “one step removed” from the hypostases is like saying that the hypostases are “one step removed” from the essence.

This metaphysical framework also provides the interpretive key by which certain theological paradoxes can be resolved. In the Dialogue, Palamas approvingly quotes Gregory of Nyssa in saying that “If something is said…by the divine Scriptures, it signifies something about that which surrounds divinity.”[34], referring to the natural energies. Similarly, in the Triads, Palamas writes that deification “can be given a name” through those who have shared in the divine life.[35] A thing is named according to its distinctive nature, and that nature is known only through participation in its natural activities. One uses the name “bluebird” to pick out those birds who are known to be such through a distinctive set of acts belonging only to creatures of that genus. The word originates precisely in that the energies of such creatures have been shared with human persons the receptive capacity and rational faculty intrinsic to human nature. However, a difficulty arises in that unique names are ascribed to each of the three hypostases: the Logos is the only divine Person to whom the name “Son” properly belongs. If names are ascribed only through natural activities, how can names be properly ascribed to the persons? That the manifestation of the natural energy is shaped out in a way proper to the peculiar hypostases resolves this dilemma. The Son is known as the Son and as God in the very same act of self-disclosure: it is a disclosure of divine activities in a filial mode.

Moreover, Palamas’ appropriation of Augustine’s imagery in De Trinitate is clarified in view of Palamas’ discussion of the Word and Spirit cited above. Augustine notes that the Holy Spirit appears to be signified by a name denoting what is common among the persons. Each hypostasis is holy, and each is spirit. Thus, Augustine suggests that the “Holy Spirit, whatever it is, is something common both to the Father and Son.”[36] God is named according to His energies, and His energies are shaped out according to the distinct modes of manifestation belonging to each person. Thus, the Spirit is picked out by the name “Holy Spirit” not because of direct apprehension of the character of His eternal procession, but because of His unique place in the structure of the Trinitarian relations. Since God exists as necessarily and not accidentally one, and since existence is actualized in relation, the Spirit’s manifesting the unity of divine activity is essential to that unity. Holiness is an act through which mankind is sanctified, and the Spirit is named as “Holy Spirit” because He, manifesting the common act of Father, Son, and Spirit is the agent by which that common activity is communicated to the Church. The names of the persons, then, belong to each person because of the distinctive role each plays in kinetic relation to each other. Moreover, that such a relationship can be named implies the capacity of creation to participate in that very same relation. No creature can possibly share in the generation of the Son. Yet, scripture refers to incorporation into Christ as “sonship” (Gal. 4:5). The ontological basis for such adoption is found in the relationality of the energies. A baptized Christian is not adopted as son through sharing in the generation of the Son, but rather in being drawn, through the Spirit, into the relational place that the Son has with the Father. Articulating the Spirit’s eternal relationship with the Son in energetic terms functions in the same way; the Spirit is named the “Spirit of the Son” (Gal. 4:6) in the context of the Spirit’s adoption of the faithful into the sonship of Christ. The Spirit’s eternal relationship with the Son must be a relationship that is participable if it is to do the theological work scripture requires of it.

The ecclesiological implications of Palamas’ model are profound. The concept of the divine energies provides a firm and precise foundation upon which the mystery of the Trinity can be related to the mystery of the Church, as the energies provide a metaphysical category for the latter’s proper participation in the former. The Church exists as the body of the incarnate Son, and the Spirit binds the Church in unity with the Father in a manifestation of His eternally binding the Father and Son in their consubstantial communion.[37] Given the integral link between the concept of activity and the notion of language (naming) described above, the ecclesiology which unfolds from the doctrine of the energies places the concept of Christ as the revelatory Word into sharp focus. Khaled Anatolios argues that the intelligibility of the biblical narrative demands that “Father, Son, and Spirit are mutually referring speech-acts such that…[they are] radically conversational.”[38] Matthew Bates similarly emphasizes the essential role that the concept of divine conversation placed in the early history of trinitarian doctrine. Bates argues that the unfolding of the doctrine of the Trinity was rooted in “prosopological exegesis”, wherein conversations reported in the Old Testament are attributed to an eternal dialogue between Father and Son.[39] Bates concludes that “from our earliest Christian sources”, Jesus was understood to be divine in His identification as “the Son who converses with the person of the Father through the Spirit in a time transcending fashion.”[40] The context of such exegesis in early high Christology reinforces the inner logic of the Palamite distinction; that God is in conversation is intrinsic to His being God, and such character necessitates the existence of a conversation partner or partners. The incarnate Jesus Christ is disclosed as truly God in nature through those word-activities He has in relation to His Father. This suggests the reason for Paul’s invocation of Jesus’ suffering prayer life (Mk. 14:36) in the context of describing divinization through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:15, Gal. 4:6)- to be glorified is to participate in the eternal Son’s prayer to the Father.

In John’s Gospel, the trinitarian basis for divine speech is unfolded in the context of the glorification of God’s family through that speech. Jesus is the incarnate Word in whom God’s creative speech is summed up. In becoming incarnate, He manifests the Father’s character through His acts, in which He is perfectly coactive with the Father: “The works that the Father has given me to accomplish…bear witness about me, that the Father has sent me” (Jn. 5:36). Jesus declares that the Father, by His voice, “has himself borne witness about me” (5:37), but that His opponents are not able to receive that witness because they “do not have his word abiding” in them (5:38). This reinforces Palamas’ description of the divine energies as simultaneously light and the power by which such light is seen. Here, God’s speech-operations are only intelligible to those in whom His speech abides. Christ later describes to the Father how He “manifested your name” (Jn. 17:6) to His disciples. The nature of this revelation is encapsulated in three sets of seven which structure John’s Gospel. The preeminent name of God in the Hebrew Bible is revealed in the theophanies of Exodus 3 and 34, both of which reveal the divine name in the context of describing divine activities. His name is revealed as “I am who I am” in the light of His determination to redeem Israel from her slavery (Ex. 3:14-17), and that name is manifested in “signs” which are given to Moses to carry out. Exodus 34 then declares the name of God to Moses in a visible revelation of the divine glory, through which His character as one who does not break His covenants nor clear the guilty is manifested (34:5-7). John 1:14, describing the revelation of divine glory in the incarnation of the Word, contains strong verbal allusions to this text.[41] In order to present the revelatory character of the Word’s incarnation, John arranges Jesus’ ministry in such a way that He identifies as “Ἐγώ εἰμι” seven times,[42] describes Himself metaphorically with seven “I am the…” statements, revealing His character in relation to His people,[43] and performs seven miracles which are specifically described as “signs[44] and which “manifest” the “glory” (2:11), which He has as the pre-eternal Son from the Father (1:14).

I have described these literary devices because of the way that John relates them to both the interpersonal relations of Father, Son, and Spirit as well as to the life of Jesus’ people. Palamas describes the structure of deification in these words, writing that “He unites Himself to [the deified] to the extent of dwelling completely in them, so that they too dwell entirely in Him.”[45] Insofar as the concept of perichoresis is almost always used today to describe the relations of the divine persons, it is notable that perhaps its most important dogmatic application among the Fathers was Christological, with Maximus using it to explain the interpenetration of acts in the divine and human natures of the one hypostasis of the eternal Son.[46]

The notion of mutual indwelling, then, can be understood as the link between Christology and Triadology. The incarnation of the Beloved Son weaves the life of the eternal Trinity into the life of the human family.[47] As discussed above, words are those names by which a rational agent picks out the nature of a thing according to its unique logos or set of energies, so that speech should be understood in light of the energies. A number of texts in John link the notions of perichoresis, divine speech, and divine acts. All three converge in John 14:10, where Jesus says that “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” The works of God are accomplished by the Father in the Son, which is described as the Father’s speaking authoritatively to and through the Son. As the Son speaks with the Father’s voice and on His authority, so also the Spirit speaks with the voice of the Son and on His authority: “When the Spirit of truth comes…he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak…he will take what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn. 16:13-15). In these texts one sees the divine persons as agents of both hearing and speaking: the Son hears the Father (5:30) as the Father hears Him (11:42) and as the Spirit hears Father and Son together (16:13).

Deification in John is described as an incorporation into that divine conversation. The one who hears the word of Jesus passes from death to life, as the dead respond to the “voice of the Son of God” (5:24-25). By contrast, those whom Jesus condemns “have never heard [God’s] voice” (5:37) and cannot hear the word of Jesus (8:43, 47). John, however, goes beyond hearing and opens up the sight of God as well.[48] This is based upon the closing line of John’s Prologue: “No one has ever seen God, God the only-Begotten, who is at His Father’s breast, He has made him known.”[49] This, in turn, looks back to the Word’s existing “πρὸς τὸν Θεόν” in the opening line of the Prologue. The divine light is intrinsically trinitarian, for if the light is divine light, then it exists in eternal relation. John presents the blessing of divine light in this way. The Son, having eternally stood face to face with the Father, is the one who has seen Him: “He who is from God, He has seen the Father” (6:46). The Son is a mirror in whom the Father’s glory is reflected to Himself by the Spirit and through whom God completes a perfect revolution of self-contemplation. The creation of the world and the incarnation of the Word is, in a manner of speaking, the Word’s turning towards that which is not and refracting the glory of He who is upon it. Hence, the exegesis of the Father through the incarnate Son is described in 14:10-11: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”

For the Evangelist, then, salvation in Christ is constituted by participating in the acts of God, given by the Father to Christ, who bestows them on His people through the Spirit. Through the Spirit, the disciples are called to reflect the same unfolding series of acts outwards. The Spirit is given through the Son (20:22) who sends the apostles “as the Father sent me”, that is, to incorporate others into the life given to them by the Son from the Father (6:57). The mutual indwelling of Father and Son thus becomes the model for the oneness of the whole family (17:22), so that the mutual indwelling of Father, Son, and Spirit, becomes the “many dwellings” of the whole church, which, as Mary Coloe argues, is a reference to the extension of the perichoretic community from the triune God to the people of God.[50]

The doctrine of the divine energies, as elucidated by Gregory Palamas, is a thoroughly trinitarian doctrine. The energies and their existence as both actualities and activities is that which explains why God’s being God is necessarily, and not merely accidentally, three. Moreover, this understanding of the Trinity provides a fruitful lens by which one can sharpen the doctrine of deification according to its biblical roots. Since the divine energies are only intelligible in light of the mutual indwelling of the three persons, deification through those energies is only intelligible as incorporation into that mutual indwelling.

[1] Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (Seoul: Christian Literature Society of Korea, 2008),193-194.

[2] LaCugna, 195

[3] LaCugna, 196.

[4] Palamas 150 Chapters, 1

[5] Palamas 150 Chapters, 2

[6] Palamas 150 Chapters, 71

[7] Palamas 150 Chapters, 3

[8] Palamas 150 Chapters 3

[9] Palamas Triads 13.

[10] Palamas Triads 19.

[11] Palamas Triads 21.

[12] David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Milton Keynes UK: Lightning Source, 2010), 13ff.

[13] Palamas 150 Chapters 136.

[14] Palamas, 150 Chapters 3.

[15] Eric Perl, “Gregory Palamas and the Metaphysics of Creation," Dionysius XIV (December 1990): 107.

[16] Perl, 119.

[17] Palamas 150 Chapters 129.

[18] Palamas 150 Chapters 137.

[19] Palamas 150 Chapters 135.

[20] Vyacheslav Lytvynenko, "Sergey Bulgakov and Georges Florovsky: The Task of Relating God and Creation," Theological Reflections: Euro-Asian Journal of Theology, no. 15 (2014): 225.

[21] Palamas 150 Chapters 128.

[22] Palamas, Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite, 17.

[23] Palamas, 150 Chapters 71.

[24] Palamas Triads 20.

[25] Palamas 150 Chapters 35.

[26] Palamas 150 Chapters 35.

[27] Palamas 150 Chapters 36.

[28] Palamas 150 Chapters 36.

[29] Palamas 150 Chapters 137.

[30] Stoyan Tanev, "Energeia vs. Sophia,” International Journal of Orthodox Theology 2, no. 1 (2011): 20.

[31] LaCugna 192.

[32] One might say, in this light, that subatomic particles are not unseen simply because they are too small, but because their nature lacks the natural activity by which a thing is made manifest in relation to the hypostasis which sees. They are known through their unique and specific mathematical “signature” which is revealed in their operations in relation to those things which are moved therein.

[33] Bradshaw 16.

[34] Palamas Dialogue 17.

[35] Palamas Triads, 32.

[36] Augustine, On the Trinity, 6.7.

[37] To speak of consubstantial communion is to speak of the interpenetration of consubstantial persons through their acts: it is not, in my view, precise to speak of a “communion of nature.” To speak of comm-union is to speak of a relation among distinct subjects (through activities), so that there is not so much a communion of nature as there is an identity of nature, and a perfect communion of divine persons in virtue of that identical nature.

[38] Khaled Anatolios, The Holy Trinity in the Life of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2014), 163.

Emphasis his.

[39] Bates finds the earliest examples of such a hermeneutic in the ministry of Jesus itself, pointing especially to His use of Ps. 110 in Matthew 24 and other texts. This hermeneutic is likewise reflected in Romans 15:9-11, 2 Corinthians 4:13, and Hebrews 1:5-13.

[40] Matthew W. Bates, The Birth of the Trinity: Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 204.

[41] Ardel Caneday, “Glory Veiled in the Tabernacle of Flesh: Exodus 33-34 in the Gospel of John," Southern Baptist Theological Journal 20, no. 1 (2016): 56-57.

[42] Jn. 4:26, 6:20, 8:24, 8:28, 8:58, 13:19, and 18:5-7, where the statement is repeated three times.

[43] i.e. “bread of life”, “light of the world”, etc. James M. Hamilton, Gods Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway, 2010), 412.

[44] Richard Bauckham, Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 56.

[45] Palamas Triads 29.

[46] Elena Vishnevskaya, "Divinization as Perichoretic Embrace in Maximus the Confessor,” in Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 132-133.

[47] The narrative of Jesus’ defeat of the tempter, understood as a paradigm for those who are joined to Him (Hebrews 2:18, 4:15), is richly trinitarian. The Father sends down the Spirit on the Son, through whom He is declared “beloved.” (Mt. 3:16) The same Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness (4:1), where Jesus reciprocates the love of the Father in His absolute loyalty and faithfulness: the trinitarian relation of Father and Son in reciprocal love through the Spirit is thus unfolded in time and in human nature.

[48] John of Damascus links the vision of God to the incarnation, and John the Evangelist essentially does the same. Jesus’ words in 5:37 echo Dt. 4:12, in which Israel “saw no form” at Sinai but “heard a voice.” Jesus in Jn. 5:37 denies His critics have done either, whereas John teaches that the people of Jesus have done both in 1:14, 1:18, and so on. Paul also links the capacity for vision of God to the new covenant in contrast to the old in 2 Cor. 3:13-18.

[49] My translation. On “at his Father’s breast” compare 13:23. In defense of the traditional rendition of μονογενὴς as “Only-Begotten”, see Lee Irons, ““A Lexical Defense of the Johannine ‘Only-Begotten’”,” in Retrieving Eternal Generation (Zondervan, 2017)

[50] Mary L. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel(Collegeville (Minn.): Liturgical Press, 2001) 218.