The Essence/Energy Distinction Enables the Conception of Theosis | Nathan Jacobs & Jonathan Pageau

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The clips on this channel are selected and compiled by certain members of the Facebook Group (linked below) and not by Jonathan Pageau himself.

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[brotherbroseph]

Pray for me. I want to get to an Orthodox Church

[Thomasfboyle]

Thank God our souls don’t depend on understanding these nuances.
For many years I studied faith with profound intent, and then God showed me faith was in the little acts of love I had been neglecting.

[heatherwhitehead]

Jonathan speech indicates he has located precisely the truth that thoughts are visual. Visual way before we hear them inside our heads as words. Which in the end are lacking.

[KevinMakins]

Jonathan, have you ever looked into the Mandelbrot Set? I wonder if you would draw connections between it and the idea of God as the eternal and unmoved one.

I’d love to hear your thoughts through your own lens, but to save writing another comment, I’ll just leave a few thoughts here if you’re looking for a point of conversation.

The idea of “coherence” has been really helpful for me in meditating on Christ as the logos, who reveals the coherent Way. God is infinite, which results in infinite possibilities we could force our way into. But created beings need to exist within the proper pattern of coherence if we are to become light and produce good fruit. If we leave coherence by giving allegiance to a spirit that is not in the Logos/coherence, we enter incoherence.

We quickly see bad fruit growing out of this diseased body, and begin to manifest incoherence (more visible sins). If we stay in incoherence we spiral into more incoherence, and our soul enters into the infinite darkness that is God.

If this pattern carries within a few generations, unless grace occurs, the spirit that manifested our tribe or city or nation is lost to the infinite darkness of God.

Ok I don’t know if that makes any sense to you or resonates, or even if you’ll see this, but thanks for being a consistent voice of wisdom and theological reflection. Your theology videos represent the best of the internet.

[giovanni]

Revelation 14:12 King James Version 12 Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

[MediaevalGuitar]

The essence-energies distinction appears to correspond more or less to the distinction between agent and action..

[superapex]

Catholics DO believe that Grace is the indwelling of the Holy Ghost - I'm sorry but we seem to be saying the same thing using different words...

[notsam]

I'm really confused by this, because the way the idea of created grace is being presented, as God being apart from creation, is simply not what you see in any catholic theology. Then you say "this is what the Orthodox believe instead" and proceed to say everything as Catholics have always taught. Created grace in my view is simply the idea that man cannot "become God" in the fullness of his essence. Now I'm sure the Orthodox don't believe theosis turns you into God either. So what exactly is going on? I feel like catholic theology is being seriously misunderstood here. In fact I seriously think we are referring to the same things with different terms.

[melroycorrea]

Dr. Nathan seems to be misrepresenting the Catholic theology of created grace. It doesn't mean that God is absent in his encounter with human being, simply because He is the cause of those graces and these graces help human beings to respond to God's love. It only mean that God's Essence is incommunicable. It utterly belongs to who he is, his Divine Being.

[jonathanreilly]

This is the clearest explanation I've ever heard of the essence and energies distinction. I know I'm a late comer to the conversation, but could anyone clarify for me in plain language how theosis differs from hypostatic union and from spiration? I'm trying to grasp how they all fit together. Also any reading recs are appreciated.

[Matthew-pmfg]

One way to think of the two distinct worldviews, is to consider the difference, not between a lock and a key, but between a key and an eye. I have mixed a metaphor for this purpose: the hole in which the key belongs may belong to more than one key, because the form of the key, the shape, is not the unique factor; even so, the shape of the religion may give way to many different instantiations of the same archetypal expression, the outward decorations notwithstanding. In this manner the West can be seen as a similar key, if not the same key in the basic determinations, but what separates the East from the West is the eye, and not the key, so that when the door opens, so to speak, and the participants are initiated into the room, what the two see is not the same or what the two see is not seen in the same way, because the eyes by which the fundamental ontology is represented are not biting-down on the same being, and therefore are not unlocking the same lock; even when they stand in the same room, they are not standing in the same relation to the same room. This is one of the reasons why metaphysics is practical.

[mariog]

How does divine simplicity negate a participation metaphysics? It involves an analogy of being, which is totally a participation metaphysics.

[mcrummey]

Awesome explanation! As a Westerner I struggled to grasp energy/essence. I am sure it is much deeper than this but I feel like I have a solid base to work with.

[filipradosa]

Everything good.. but you guys tries to bite strawman. In catholic theology, there is no created grace in the sense you have portrayed it.
In western theology there is concept of uncreated God present in just souls, as for example Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange writes in his book: The three ages of the interior life : "Would only created grace or the created gift of wisdom dwell in the just soul? Christ's words bring us a new light and show us that it is the divine persons Themselves who come and dwell in us..." and then cites John 14:23.

There is great video by Classical Theist, who goes in more depth intothe question of grace.

[allenmorgan]

I don't think Aristotle ended up in the New Testament. That is an erroneous understanding of scripture. Holy Scripture was written through the apostles by Divine Revelation. The distinction between God's essence and energy is a way that St. Gregory Palamas explained to Barlam how we don't become God but that we participate in God's Nature, energia, which is the word St. Paul uses in the Greek. It is all God and to try to intellectualize it is a completely wrong thing to do because the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite nature of God. Hence we can never know God in His essence and yet we can know God by the experience of His Grace, which is His Holy Spirit who is fully God. If a person wants to know God we see His nature and attributes in Jesus Christ and if we believe in Jesus and participate in the sacramental life as well as putting to death the perversions of the carnal nature aligning ourselves with our true nature then we can experience God in His fullness. We can walk with God in this life as Adam. Because Christ being the second Adam, man, who is a life giving Spirit ascended above all heavenly places and filled all things with Himself. And we are recreated new into His image, the very image of the only begotten and we recieve His life within ourselves and we participate in His Divinity not having any life of our own because we were all dead in our sins and trespasses. This is the Grace of God that we recieve by faith in Him working out our salvation with fear and trembling all to the Glory of the Father who saw fit to call us out from among the dead as He chose us in Himself before the foundation of the world.

[seraphimc.]

So, is it safe to say that the energies of God, which are God, is the Holy Spirit, who processes from the Father? If his energies are God, that would explain why the Holy Spirit is refered to as both a He and and it in scripture, as both power and person

[M-i-k-a-e-l]

Theosis and gnosis is the very same, not similar, process.

[Aaron-xbrq]

Was the incarnation necessary for theosis? This is perhaps the most important question for Christians to contemplate, and in doing so, one will come to the conclusion that the incarnation was not necessary for theosis. In fact, it can’t be. Obviously this calls into question the very foundation of Christianity and is why the question isn’t and can’t be directly confronted and answered. Ultimately theosis isn’t about BECOMING that which you aren’t, but rather BEING that which you always and already are, but have quite simply forgotten. This is the fall of man - the fall into dualistic thinking and the forgetfulness of who he truly is.

[JB-puzq]

So "Energy" is God the Holy Spirit and his relationship with creation?

[Simon_Alexnder]

Does this "mechanism" of Theosis not make the Incarnation unncessary?