Roman Catholic Doctrine on Grace leads to Polytheism: A Response to ClassicalTheist

Jay Dyer on:

#ClassicalTheist #Theology #Orthodox

[ClassicalTheist]

First of all I should say that it is not I but you who misinterpret Lagrange. I’m not sure if you’ve read through the relevant passage, but subject in question is habitual grace, the grace we receive and by which we are sanctified. It can be interpreted as a direct refutation of the notion that grace is a created substance, because its rationale contrasts grace with the substantial existence of the soul upon which grace depends as the presupposed subject in which it inheres. This is perhaps made clearer when he says, “[G]race is an accident inherent in the soul: therefore it depends on the substance of the soul in being and hence likewise in becoming, inasmuch as becoming is a step towards being. Whence to be created is proper to a subsistent thing which possesses being independently of any subject. Therefore, the conclusion follows” (page 307).


So what he’s saying is that grace considered in itself is not an intermediary creature that God creates but is a quality of the soul educed from within the soul by the actualization of the soul’s obediential potency to become a partaker of the Divine Nature, and this is done the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the soul which brings about, educes from within, its deification. The effect that is brought forth from the soul is said to be created because it is a change happening in the creature, not in God Who cannot change. Because the change happens in the creature, the effect which before was not and now is must be an effect in the creature, and it is in this sense that the effect is said to be created, just as the expansion of iron is quality of the iron when it is heated by fire. This is why, again, as I said in the video, St. Paul says that ‘wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5;17). The deifying power of the Logos, which is uncreated, descends upon the creature and educes from within the creature a new quality, a new state. And the very fact that this state is new means that the effect is happening in the creature, because in God there is not even a shadow of alteration.


The fact that you think this is polytheistic is rather strange to me, as there are some implications of this that I don’t think you’d want to accept. For one, if our deification being created is tantamount to introducing a second Divinity into the picture, then what would uncreated deification amount to? It would either mean there is an element in us that becomes uncreated in which case we do actually become Divine and therefore become a second god. Or, the element in us that receives the grace becomes uncreated through subsuming it into the Deity thereby removing the human element of Deification altogether. This is why I said that to say deification is not a created infused quality educed from the obediential potency of the soul renders the whole concept of deification unintelligible. It’s actually my position that saves us from pantheism, because it allows for an unconfused distinction between creature and Creator in the process of Deification. To say deification, or sanctification, is a created effect, again, is not saying grace is a created reality that God creates as a medium between the creature and the Creator. It is simply to say it is an supernatural effect of the creature when the creature receives the deifying power of Blessed Trinity’s indwelling. As the Psalmist says, ”create in me a clean heart O God.”

[JayDyer]

St Maximos says in the Ambigua the energy the saints receive is the very energy of God Himself. Classical Atheist is a heretic and his analogy avoids the initial question of what the grace itself is. Fail

[larrycera]

Just realized how truly committed you are with the refusal to refer to him in any way other than “classical (a)theist”. That’s an exhibit of true dedication, sir

[Josdamale]

I believe the easiest way to understand and explain the essence-energies distinction is to define the energies of a nature as our partial knowledge of that nature, and the essence of a nature as God's complete knowledge of that nature.

Essentially, this means that energies refers to our knowledge and essence to our ignorance.

We know of the essence through knowledge of our ignorance. That is the basis of both humility and true theology.

Also, one can say that essence refers to existence (being - stationary in time), whereas energies refers to life (actions - movement in time).

As Quantum Mechanics has demonstrated one cannot both know the momentum and position of a particle, or know both the energy and time of a participle.

There is a natural ignorance that is associated with observation and knowledge - that is, one cannot know nature in full only partially: there is an essence associated with energies.

Quantum Mechanics also leaves us with a mystery as to the wave and particle nature of energy and matter. When we measure an attribute of a particle its wave function collapses to reveal the attribute, otherwise it remains a wave function of various probabilities.

Modern science has gradually moved away from the philosophy of the scholastics and more into the realm of the Greek Fathers.

Socrates is the example of where philosophy should begin in knowledge and humility: I know one thing, that I know nothing.

We have learnt many things (of God's uncreated divine energies) through Christ, yet still we know nothing (of the essence of God).

Plato and Aristotle both Hellenised Socrates - reducing philosophy to pagan concepts of God and nature.

Plato did so metaphysically and rationally claiming essentially to know the essence of God.

Aristotle reduced knowledge to what can be empirically observed.

The West followed Plato and Aristotle, whereas Socrates laid the Orthodox foundation of knowledge.

[ClassicalTheist]

>classical atheist
when Jay Dyer sends his people he’s not sending his best

(I’ll give an actual reply in the comments later on)

[JonahInWales]

I've got some pretty good conversations going on Classical Theist's video, but one thing I have noticed is the level of language in the replies. I have noticed that Catholics love to use absolutes. The amount of times Catholics use language like: No one has ever said (when they literally do in the comments above), Literally no one thinks (when they literally do), and no one denies/affirms (when again, they literally don't/do).

In one comment I replied how distinction doesn't imply division, and Classical Atheist replied that no one thinks this: yet the person I was replying to literally stated he thought this. What's up wid dat bruh?!

[danielgreenleaf]

Seems Classical Theist is deleting my comments in his video now.

[fistoflegend]

You misrepresented the Stained Glass window analogy. We are not standing on the other side of the stained glass window, we ARE the stained glass window.

[kinglear]

I'm lost by this. Are there two people being refuted, one called Classical Theist and the other called Classical Atheist?

[OrthoAutist]

Your videos have been incredibly helpful keep up the awsome work

[Gruenders]

You didn’t understand the analogy. We were the window itself and were receiving the uncreated light of the sun. We weren’t the people on the other side of the window. The light that is created after going through the window and that inheres in the window is the created effect since it is produced by the combination of the window and the sun (the created effect is not the light from the sun itself before it hits the window).

[JAMINben]

What is an uncreated effect??? That's basically saying an uncaused effect. An effect in the soul has to be created. No way around that, since the soul itself is created. If I understand CT right, grace is used to mean an ability which is the effect of God being present in the soul. The grace to stop sinning with gluttony is a created effect by God being present in the soul. It's that simple. I don't know how that leads to polytheism.

[Josdamale]

It is not so much about justice in the juridical sense, although one can have this allegorical view from the perspective of the Old Testament, as St John the Forerunner called Christ the Lamb of God.

Righteousness (justice) is about becoming like God in nature.

We frequently seek the mercy of God through confession of sins in the Church so that we might enter into God's divine energies of mercy, to become merciful as he is merciful, to become like God in nature.

Mercy is the love of God in the face of the sinner - it welcomes the repentant person (defined by his good essence made by God) and expels the sin (his energetic actions disobedient to God).

Thus, we seek to enter the love and mercy of God, not only to receive forgiveness personally, but more than that if we are to abide in God's mercy, so that we might become like God in mercy and forgiveness.

By frequently repenting of our sin, we become more forgiving and merciful to others, and that what makes us God like.

The whole point of receiving mercy is to become merciful, because becoming merciful to others is what makes us God like, which is salvation.

That is the righteousness and justice of God: to make us merciful and loving as God is towards others.

We become forgiving as God is forgiving. This becoming like God is eternal life in God, which is his divine energies (grace).

In the measure we forgive we are forgiven, not juridical in some spiteful manner, but according to nature because we have become like God through his divine energies, and living in God is eternal life.

By becoming God like in divine grace through God's will, we are saved, because God in his humility dwells in us, who are become like him, and God living in us is eternal life.

This is the whole Gospel: God became man to make us humans like God.

[JonahInWales]

The two Dyer articles you linked in the description are the same articles? Not two separate ones?

[Thomasrice]

When you say we get the "uncreated justice of God", Catholics read that you are equating "uncreated" with Essence at this point. The distinction of Essence/ Energy makes it clear that we are not receiving the Justice that is God (Essence) but the Justice that God has (Energies). As you say that Essence and Energies are distinct but not separate and that both are fully God; so does the Roman Catholic who defines the uncreated source of the "created" (in effect) grace and distinguishes that from the uncreated Essence itself. But I agree that the terms used by RC are clumsy and can obscure the distinction between eternal generation (in which we cannot participate) and creation (in which we do participate. There is no created divinity because we are not deified by participating in God's Essence. This is no created divinity. We receive our deification by being "IN Christ" becoming adopted children of God. But like most problems of overcompensating corrections, we can create new problems. Western theologians (not just Catholics) had speculated that the results of the East’s rejection of the filioque, in what has been pejoratively called ‘monopatrism’ might be responsible for an obscuring of the Son’s mediation, resulting in a naturalistic mysticism in which man might enjoy communion with God in the Spirit apart from Christ. It is grounded from all eternity in God that no man comes to the Father except through the Son. Yet the sending of the Spirit is, like creation, an act of the divine will. To quote Georges Florovsky: "The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption in Christ Jesus, ‘the power of Christ’ (2 Cor. 12:9). By this Spirit we recognize and confess that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor.12:3).The operation of the Holy Spirit in the faithful is precisely their incorporation in Christ, their baptism in the unity of the body (12:13) of Christ. As St. Athanasius well stated it: ‘Watered by the Spirit, we drink of Christ.’"

[TheBrunarr]

A complete strawman, and non sequitur. No one denies that the grace in itself is uncreated, but obviously the instance of grace in a particular individual is a created effect. If the grace in a particular individual is an uncreated effect that would mean the person it is in would have to be uncreated as well, but this is absurd.

Think of it as similar to the Incarnation: the Son has always existed, uncreated with the Father and Holy Spirit, but the Incarnation into Jesus is obviously a created effect. If it wasnt that would mean the Son has been incarnate in Jesus for all eternity, but this is clearly false, the Incarnation happened at a point in time.

The essence/energy distinction doesnt get by this because the energies are uncreated leading to the conclusion above. Plus the EE distinction makes no sense, since it states that it "...does not in any way impair the divine Simplicity..." and that "the term _deity_ (theotis) may be applied not only to the essense of God but to the energies." If this is the case then how are the energies in any way actually distinct? It makes the energies something like the active effects of the essense rather than something distinct from the essence. The best explanation is the one CT gives.

[Timoboza]

I don't think that whether is the cause of Grace is created or uncreated is inconsequential lol. It would be weird if the cause was created but the effect uncreated

[Josdamale]

The Greek Fathers seek to understand Christianity in terms of the nature of God and creation, whereas the Gothic Latins seek to explain Christianity in terms of juridical philosophical concepts.

[nicholasvogt]

You presuppose this is what St. Maximus teaches, and ignore the implications within the Catholic lens but insist on viewing a Catholc conclusion in the lens of orthodox premises.

[Thomasrice]

The effects have to be "created" because they are operations suited to man. There is no "created" source of grace. It is the same distinction that Orthodox make is distinguishing "energies" from "essence" in God. Taken wrongly (as Barlaam did), the same criticism can and has been made against the Orthodox view: that it is polytheistic (two Gods- one in energies and one in essence) saying we participate the "energies" rather than the "essence". But it is the same God fully in energies that is in essence. For the proper view of Divine Simplicity (which is no different than the Thomistic view) read the chapter on God's operations in Dumitru Staniloae's book "Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: The Experience of God, Vol. 1: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God"