Speaker 1: Up shop also.
Speaker 2: Saw Dom Dom Dom.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Welcome, another episode, another installment of Jay's analysis. We
have a real treat tonight. We've got not just doctor Bradshaw,
but a couple of my other cohorts. We've got, of course,
Father Deacon, doctor Ananias, and we've got our good friend Lewis,
the Ortho bro from our discord server. And we have,
as said the eminent doctor David Bradshaw, thank you for joining.
Speaker 4: Us, well, pleasure to be here, thanks for having.
Speaker 3: Me absolutely, and he is the author, as we said
in the description of the really really helpful work, especially
if you're into philosophy, if you are a person who's
from the tonistic background, if you have not heard of Aristotle,
East and West, that's what you're gonna want to get into.
And we're gonna go tonight, alternating in our questions from me,
father Deacon Lewis, and we're gonna ask doctor Bradshaw. We're
gonna pick his brain until he is basically past out,
hopefully not from the coronavirus, but just passing out from
the exhaustion of our increasingly difficult questions. We're not trying
to stump him, but we want to enlist his wisdom
in this in these these difficult topics. So we're gonna
go from the more basic kind of questions that arise
around the topics of Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Thomas Aquinas, Palamos, Energies, Aristotle,
and we're gonna move into progressively maybe more complex levels
of question up into some of the more tonistic scholars
and their questions and responses. So I'm gonna let Lewis
kind of take over as the MC, and then we're
gonna have kind of back and forth roundtables. So Lewis,
if you want to, you can introduce the first question.
And remember, everybody, I've got links to If you go
to my website, you'll see the link to doctor David
Bradshaw's book. Highly recommend this book if you are into philosophy, Tomism,
or any of these topics that we've discussed. So Lewis,
I'll let you take over now.
Speaker 5: M Hello everyone, it's a pretty honor to be here.
I just want to kind of sit it up as
meta topics. So I guess, first of all, Dr Bradshaw,
I read your book about two years ago now, and
I thought it was really good because it traced really
from the beginning to the end the concept of the
energies from Aristont all the way to San Gregy, Panama.
So I was just wondering if you could start you
guys could or talk about a basic basic introductions.
Speaker 6: Yes, energy is distinction.
Speaker 5: Briefly, why it matters in real life, because.
Speaker 6: I know a lot of people think this is just
abstract stuff.
Speaker 5: But why why it might actually matter in terms of
real life, in church, in life as well as a
history of the terms in Latin Greek.
Speaker 4: Uh huh, Well, yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad you kind
of want to start there, because it is some thing
that a lot of people, I think assume is esoteric
and purely abstract, and it's really not. There.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 4: The word that we translate as energy is in the
New Testament. It's a word that's used about well a
couple of dozen times by Saint Paul counting. Also a
verb inner gain that's cognitive to it. And the reason
we don't we don't recognize that is because it's usually
not translated as energy. It's usually translate translated as operation
or working. And then you know, same with the verb
it's translated as to operate or something like that. And
there's a history for why it's translated that way. It
really goes back to the Vulgate in Latin. But if
you look at these occurrences in Saint Paul closely, and
I've written an article where I do this in some detail,
I think it's pretty clear that he is talking about
what we would call energy. He's talking about the activity
of God as it is present and active in him
or elsewhere in the church, enabling him or the church
to do what it does to you, enabling his ministry
to take place. So one example of that Colossians one
twenty nine. Here's a verse where he says, for this
I toil striving with all the anergion, all the energy
which he that is Christ is inspiring. Or it's actually
a passive verb, which actually I would translate it as
being which is being effectively realized an ergo menane within me.
So he used to the word twice in this one verse.
Once is a noun, once is a verb an erga menane.
And what he's referring to is that Christ is active
and present within him and enabling him to perform his ministry,
to do all that he does and that doesn't mean
that he's therefore a puppet or some kind of you know,
programmed robot that God is simply controlling. This is his
own free activity, but now it's also God's activity, and
so what he's really describing here is what people often
call synergy, which is that union of human with divine activity.
And you know, if you want to try to translate
the word synergy, I guess you'd have to translate at cooperation.
But that really doesn't capture the full force of the
idea because cooperation is typically between two independent agents, whereas
synergy is where one agent, God is acting in another
and thereby enabling that other, the creature in this case
of Saint Paul, to be himself and to do what
he was meant to do, what he was created to do.
So it's really only, properly speaking, the Creator who can
do this. Now, there are passages where Saint Paul also
refers to a kind of demonic an airbea as well
in Second Thessalonians and others. Let's see, I could find
those if you like. But it's kind of mimicking in
a way this divine activity. Well, all of this was
recognized by the early Church fathers. If you go through
and you look at the works of the Apostolic Fathers
and then the Greek apologists in the second century, people
like Justin Martyr and Athanagaris and others, what you find
is they used this word group very much in a
way that kind of mimics the way Saint Paul is
using it, and that's a difference from the way it
had been used earlier throughout prior Greek literature. So you
mentioned the history of the word, so let me just
touch on that. And ergia actually is a word that
was coined by Aristotle, and it literally means being at work,
and then you have aragon, which is work or deed,
and so he put those two together to mean the
state of being at work or being active. So an
Aristotle it's often translated as activity. But the things that's
kind of different in Aristotle that's a little more subtle
and nuanced, is that Aristotle also, you know, as a metaphysician,
he's interested in, well, what distinguishes an activity from the
capacity to act, And so the difference is at least
in part, that the activity is something actual and real,
whereas the capacity is just to something potential. And so
an ergia also becomes a word he uses for what
we would call actuality, and that's it's translated that way
as well. Well anyway, that's you know, we can get
back to that. But what happened in later Greek then
was that it became a common term for activity, but
not just of God. It was used for activity of
the natural elements, of the organs of the body of
you know, a doctor who's operating on a patient. Pretty
much any active agent you could speak of, that agent's anergia.
It was really only within Saint Paul that he restricts
it just to referring to supernatural agents, whether God or Christ,
or the Holy Spirit or or else. Like I mentioned,
demonic activity that's active in another, okay, and it's sort
of empowering and enabling that other. And that's what the
what the early Church fathers picked up on. And so
from that point in the second century on, it became
almost a technical term in Patristic Greek for this idea
of supernatural activity that bestows some kind of an energy
or capacity to do things that one couldn't do otherwise.
And you see that, like I mentioned, a lot in
the Greek apologists they use it very frequently for the
activity of demons, you know, because that was that's a
major theme in their work, because they considered the pagan
gods to be demons and they saw that demonic activity
in the world around them. And then well, later, okay,
to skip ahead a little bit, in the fourth century.
It comes up very prominently in the Trinitarian controversies because Athanasius,
in one of his late works, called the Letters to
Serapion in the early three sixties, he has to face
this question. Well, you know, he's already argued extensively by
that point that the Son is of one essence homusion
with the Father. But then in this late work the
issue has kind of shifted to the divinity of the
Holy Spirit, and so he gives to come up with
a sort of a more general argument for well, how
do we know that the three persons, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are equally divine and are all fiddly called God.
And his argument is, well, they share the same and
arrogant What he means by that, as he explains, it
is that anything one of them does, the others are
also involved in and cooperating, and in fact are equally
active in that act. So he gives the example of
creation in Genesis, where God speaks and the word that
he speaks, the Logos is in a sense the Son,
or at least the Son, as he is active in creation.
The logos is sort of the uttered word of the Father,
and the spirit of God was upon the waters. And
so you see already, you know, in the first couple
of verses of Genesis, you see the three persons of
the Trinity already involved cooperating in the act of creation
and with redemption or prophetic inspiration. You know, same kind
of thing. That it's the word of God that comes
to the prophet and he's moved by the spirit. Right,
and when Christ becomes incarnate, it's by the will of
the Father that the Son becomes incarnate. And you know, Luke,
when it describes it, it's the Holy Spirit that comes
upon and overshadows the theatopahs. So his point is that
because they share the same and air view. And here
I think it is activity, okay, activity operation, that's fine
because that's one. Therefore there who see it as one.
So it's an inference, and that becomes a really sent
idea in Patristic teaching about the trinity, and from that beginning,
you know, that kind of dual in beginning in a sense,
I mean the pauline meaning that the kind of centers
around the idea of synergy, and then the trinitarian meaning
you know, later patristic thought sort of builds upon that basis,
and a raga becomes one of the words that they use.
It's not the only one, but it is one important
word they use to describe God as he is present
and active in the world. You know, So one of
the famous passages. I guess I'll just mention this or
maybe read a little bit of it, and then I'll
stop because I've gone on a long time. But this
is a real locus classicist for the whole idea. This
is Saint Basil's Epistol two thirty four. He's replying to
a Eunomian. Now, Eunomians were kind of aryan. They were
denied the divinity of the sun, and uh. The the
argument that he's replying to here was that, well, you
you people like Basil, the Cappadocians and others who are
defending Niceah, you say that the essence of God is unknowable.
The Usiah. That's the word that we usually translate essence.
And uh, the Eunomians ridicule that because they said, well,
then how how do you know who it is that
you're worshiping if you don't know the divine essence? Okay, Well,
so that's the the the argument that Basil is replying to.
Now here's what Basil says. He says, we say that
we know the greatness of God, his power, his wisdom,
his goodness, his providence over us, and the justness of
his judgment, but not his very essence or lucia. But God,
this interlocutor says, is simple, and whatever attribute of Him
you have reckoned as knowable is of his essence. That's
the view that he's replying to. Well, Basil says, the
absurdities involved in this sophism are innumerable. When all these
high attributes have been enumerated, the wisdom, the goodness, and
so on, are they all names of one essence? And
is there the same mutual force in his awfulness and
his loving kindness, his justice and his creative power, his
providence and his foreknowledge, his bestow of rewards and punishments,
his majesty and his providence. In mentioning any of these
do we declare his essence. The energies and their gai
are various in the essence simple, but we say that
we know our God from his energies, but do not
undertake to approach near to his essence. His energies come
down to us, but his essence remains beyond our reach.
And so that becomes sort of the governing idea that
the energies, which include things like God's power, wisdom, goodness, providence,
fore knowledge, bestole of rewards and punishments, etc. Both attributes
and activities, Okay, and that's sort of the way we
would tend to distinguish those. But Basil does not. He
considers them all to be divine energies. And the energies
come down to us. They're what we can know and share,
participate in, whereas the Essence remains beyond them as their
source and can never be known, not only by us
but even by any creature, including the agents. And that
too becomes just a fundamental teaching of the Greek fathers
and all that's in the fourth century, you know, Athanasius
and Basil and the other competition's fourth century, so long
before later Byzantines that people sometimes assume wrongly I think
originated these ideas. They didn't. It was really in the
fourth century that most of it all came together. And
then later authors like you know, Saint Maximus or Pomaus,
they did they kind of systemaized systematized it a little more.
But the basic ideas are already there at the time
of Saint Days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd like to add that that's one of the
clearest places. Definitely, you can also go to when Basil
defends on the Holy Spirit. He'll actually argue that very
point front as you pointed out from Athanasius, that the
common energy signifies common nature. So if the Son and
the Holy Spirit possess the same powers and energies that
the Father has, it stands to reason that they have
the same nature. And you'll find that that line of
argmentation all the way up into as you said, even
Saint John Damascus will say that energy is the signifier
of nature, is not identical to it, but it's the
signifier of it. I'd also recommend, I know, just for
the sake of the audience a lot of people out there,
this comes up a lot, especially when we discuss with
Roman Catholics, the topic of what is athenationis view of simplicity.
And if you read the famous Florowsky paper Creation st.
Athanasians in the doction of Creation, he'll show you demonstrably,
I think, beyond any shadow of a doubt doctor Bradshaw's
point that Athanasius was really making this distinction between what
pertains to God's counsel and will and what actions pertain
to him naturally. And if you don't make that distinction,
you're kind of forced into the position that the Arians had.
So anyway, I just want to stress that point. But yeah,
that was great. Lewis you want to or father Deacon,
you want to ask anything.
Speaker 7: Let's see, I'm trying to hold off doctor Bradshaw the
more sophisticated questions towards the end.
Speaker 8: Let's see.
Speaker 7: Oh, you know what would be interesting, since you already
picked up on you touched a little bit on this,
that perhaps some people get concerned that we Orthodox have
a doctrine of development, because you see that these words,
whether it be energeia, kind of develop and become used
in different sense or even let's say hypostasis, the way that.
Speaker 8: The Greeks and the philosophers use.
Speaker 7: That is to be I mean the Latin word substantia,
like the usia, and how this changed over time to
respond to certain issues that were coming up within the
history of the church. How that's not actually development of doctrine,
but being able to have the freedom to use the
richness of these words, but being able to give them
different nuances. You've already kind of touched a little bit
on that. Perhaps you would like to say some more
about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, there's a difference between development and the sense
of change and development in the sense of articulation and
use use of new terms to state more clearly, or
at least in terms that are intelligible to a new audience,
a different audience, what was already believed.
Speaker 3: I mean, with the.
Speaker 4: Trinity, I don't think we believe in the Trinity any
more firmly or clearly than it's Saint Peter or Saint Paul.
In fact, it's from them that we learn our belief,
as well as from the from the gospels. Right, So
although we do with words like usia and apostasis, is
try to state that existing belief in a way that's
efficiently clear that it can be understood in a modern context,
or you know, with those terms even a fourth say
a fourth century context. You know that, and that's that's
always going to be the case, that language evolves, society changes,
and terms you know that made sense or that were
adequate at one time no longer really resonate in a
new time. And that's fine. On the other hand, you know,
whenever you do that, whenever you do that active articulation,
you have to make sure that you really are articulating
what's already there and not introducing something new. And that's
why I think it's important with the essence and Energies,
just as one can with the Trinity, you know, to
show the biblical basis and to you know, that's it's
very helpful that in a way, and the essence energies
is in a way even more firmly grounded in scripture
than those words we see an apostasis, which are not
in the New Testament, at least not in the meaning
that they later had, whereas an ergia is right there
in the works of Saint Paul.
Speaker 3: I want to ask a question that's on the basic
level of things too. On that very point you did well,
I think in the book and kind of hearkening back
to this being the in continuity with the original revelation
given to Moses. Can you talk about how we see
this in Exodus. We see the revelation of God's goodness
to Moses, and yet at the same time we're told
in scripture that no man can see God and live,
and yet Moses saw God face to face, talked with him,
and was a friend of Christ. Actually it's who it is.
So maybe you could explain that, you know, this kind
of goes back and then up into even the period
of Filo.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, There is a long tradition of reflection on the
biblical Theophanes, and you know it's complex, and these theophanes
are mysterious, typically like the Burning Bush as well as
the one you mentioned is the encounter with God in
the darkness on the top of Mount Sinai and Exodus
thirty three, and you know that one in particular is
sort of helpful because you find in that passage this
distinction where God says, no man can see my face
and live, but I'll put you in the cleft of
the rock, and I'll pass by, and you shall see
my glory and you'll see my backside. But anyways, as
the text goes on, what he sees is described as
God's glory, and so the Greek fathers, like Gregor the
theologian is one kind of keyed in on that, and
they correlated that with this distinction that's also in that
passage I read from Saint Basil between the divine nature
as it is in itself or in its own right,
and God as he is known only to himself, okay.
And then what Greger Nancansen calls the nature that reaches
down to us or another term they used is the
things around God, and that they'll often identify with the
divine glory from scription. So this is very important, you know,
for some of the later Greek fathers, also because another
revelation of the divine glory may be sort of the
climactic revelation is the transfiguration, and it's the transfiguration. The
disciples see this radiant glory around Christ, and that's what
the monks, you know, they're practicing the prayer of the Heart,
particularly in the later era in the fourteenth century, you know,
at the time of Saint Gregor Palamas, they also experienced
that uncreated light and they identified it with the light
that shined around Christ at the transfiguration what they call
the taborical life right table, and that was really you know,
that identification they made was what sparked the whole controversy
that occurred in fourteenth century. But the idea that they
were using and that tradition of interpretation, you know, it
does go back way way back in history if you
want to trace it back to Philo. Filo is one
who does identify the divine power, if I recall correctly
in the Divine Glory, and if you know, in Philo,
the idea is that well, anything any name we give
to God, we're always naming one of the divine powers.
Both Lord curios and God fails, he says or names
of different divine powers. And already in Philo, you know,
before even Christianity, he already has this idea that the
divine essence is something that cannot be known or named
in itself. What we can name and what we can
know are the powers that come from it, and that
it sort of executes. And the Greek fathers adapt that idea,
but they typically they'll use the word power us, but
they'll also use the word in rabia activity. And ultimately
an ergea becomes sort of the more prominent term there.
But it's a similar idea that that essence, it's unknowable
in itself or as it is in itself, is knowable
in its revelation, in its in its manifest activity. So yeah,
and that's really what you see in all the Biblical theophonies.
The burning bush would be another case that we would identify,
you know, as a revelation the manifestation of the uncreated light.
And there are other cases of the divine worry in
the Old Testament as well, So all of those are
also sort of contributing to this interpretation of that term
in Erbia in that the divine glory from scriptures to
be understood is in a way that the visible form
of the divine in Eric.
Speaker 6: Lewis Yes, so as alive, I just I just missed
my cue, I guess.
Speaker 5: As a as a convert from atheism, I became very
I took on a very kind of tomistic concept of
God because it seemed very coherent and intelligent.
Speaker 6: And one of the reasons why that was for me
at least, was.
Speaker 5: The the classical arguments, you know, the five ways for example,
and they all conclude with God, as you know, pure act,
so and you know, on on the basis of their
not being able to be any any potency in God
mm hmm. And so shifting this up a gear, getting
a bit more technical, I was wondering if you could
go through, because in your book you could you talk
about dunamis and then you talk about the grades of
act and potency in.
Speaker 6: Relation to God.
Speaker 5: I was wondering if you could talk about that, how
we would understand God as perhaps pure act and how
we would conceive of divine simplicity.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Well there's a you know, a lot of
history there also. That concept of God is pure act
is one that really goes back to Aristotle in Metaphysics
LaMDA Lambda six, where he first introduces the idea of
the prime mover. He says that the prime mover is
that his Usiah, his essence is an erga okay, and
as Aristotle is using the word there and you know,
as he goes on to explain this in the next chapter,
and Ergia I think is both activity and actuality, okay,
because what he was goes on to explain is that
the activity that the prime mover performs is thought nosis,
you know, And it makes this famous statement that it's
thinking is a thinking of thinking, self thinking thought. That's
how some people sometimes describe the Prime Mover, and that's
in a sense all that it does, all that it
or he. You know, it's not really clear that we're
talking about a person here, but Aristotle does use I
think of masculine pronoun all that Aristotle's God does. But
that thinking, then, because of its perfect full actuality, is
and also because of another key idea from Aristotle, okay
that from the dayanima, that thought at the highest level
of actuality is identical with its object. And I can
come back to that if you want to, but just
for the moment, let's just posit that. Well, because of that,
the Prime Mover's thinking, the object of its thought is
in one sense, it's itself. In another sense, it's everything,
the whole intelligible content of reality. And one simple way
to kind of see that is that if that were
not the case, then there would be something that the
Prime Mover could still learn and still find out about it.
And he denies that when he says that it's Usia
is in arrogant because what he also argues in that
same passage is that there's nothing that the prime mover
could do that it doesn't already do from all eternity,
and so pure actuality, pure actuality, there's very essence is actuality.
Speaker 7: You get this in book twelve, Chapter I'm trying to
see what is that ten seventy one.
Speaker 4: Anyways, go ahead, yeah, yeah, Book twelve is lambda, Chapter six,
I believe so. Yeah, so, so that's the idea of Aristotle. Now,
Aristotle's God is not a creator. Okay, Aristotle believes the
cosmos has always existed. What his God is is the
highest is the highest first principle, the arkae, and the
intelligible cause of everything else, at least of the order
and the intelligibility of everything else. But he doesn't ever
do anything in the sense of calling things into being
out of nothing, and he certainly doesn't do anything in
the sense of answering prayer or performing miracles or giving
a revelation. Again, that's just not the kind of being
we're talking about here. We're talking about a philosophical first principle,
but not an active personal god. Well, okay, so for Aristotle,
there's really not problem in saying that what the prime
move does, it does eternally, continually and necessarily because you know,
we're not trying to make room for anything like free
will or free choice, much less for reciprocity or interaction,
you know, with their creature. Well, because of that, this
is not at the first glance at least a very
promising idea to sort of pick up and transpose into
Christian theology. And the Church Fathers didn't do so. I mean,
they were aware of Aristotle, he was a well known
author in antiquity, but they make very little use, in fact,
pertually no use of Aristotle's theology. They do make use
of his logic, and in the fifth century, you know,
to no aristateologic sort of becomes required education for anyone
who's going to get involved in the Christological controversies, and
they'll they'll use aristatia and terminology like form and matter,
species and genus essence. But this idea of God is
pure act who has no unrealized capacities doesn't really appear
in Patristic Greek Patristic theology. The place it does enter
Christian thought is in the thirteenth century in the West.
And you know what's important here is that the works
of Aristotle, apart from the logical works that have been
translated by Believius, but most of Aristotle's Corpus was unknown
in the West for most of the Middle Ages until
the thirteenth century, and suddenly there was this influx of
translations into Latin, and it was a little bit overwhelming,
you know, because these are works of so much sophistication
in such deep thought that they presented a challenge to
the Christian thinkers.
Speaker 8: In the West.
Speaker 4: How do we, you know, maintain our own belief in
the face of this, given that Aristotle, say, does deny
the world came into being. He also denies the immortality
of the soul. So they're clear issues. But how can we,
you know, how can we reject Aristotle given the power
of his reason? And so it became sort of the
central agenda in particularly the University of Paris in the
thirteenth century, to show that either they're compatible or that
Aristotle can be refuted where necessary, and so people lack aquittance.
But also others like Albertus Magnus and even you know,
to some extent, Saint Bonaventure. We're all we're engaged in
this project of sort of wrestling with Aristotle and appropriating
the parts that they could and refuting the parts that
they believe no Christian could accept. Well, Aristotle was a
little bit more toward the appropriating end, I guess than
say Saint Bonaventure was. So he did incorporate a great
deal of aristatute and theology, and including as you mentioned,
the five ways. Well, the first two of them are
you know, the first one in particular, the argument from
emotion is right out of Aristotle, but even the second
and the third are sort of an airstatic form, a
pattern of reasoning that's based on the rejection of an
infinite regress. Well, so he then, coming out of the
five ways, and especially the first way, draws the same
conclusion that Aristotle had, namely that God is pure act
in Latin, its act as pueris. And in my opinion,
that's kind of, you know, a wrench in the works
from the beginning for for his whole project, because this
idea that was so natural and so much at home
within Aristotle's way of thinking about God. It is very
hard to reconcile with the Christian understanding of God, because,
you know, Christianity, God acts. He does choose to create,
He could have not created. There are many many things
he could have done differently, which all looks like he
has capacities to act in ways that he doesn't, okay,
and so those those are unrealized capacities. And furthermore, he
not only acts, he interacts. He is in some sense,
and I grant you this is you know, has to
be kind of worked through carefully. But you know, he's
grieved over our sin, and he loves us, and he
rejoices when we repent and turned to him. And you know,
this again is very scriptural, and you really can't have
Christianity without embracing that reciprocity that exists between God and man.
Speaker 3: Deed, if pure actuality doesn't become.
Speaker 4: Incarnate, right, Yeah, well, the incarnation is sort of the
climax of that reciprocity, where God takes on the Sun
takes on the form of a server.
Speaker 5: So it sounds like you're teasing out a kind of
potency that is acceptable within our framework of simplicity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, power nuonymous is also you can ord
you can often translate potency or potentiality. But yes, God
has many do names, and there's no intrinsic necessity to
his nature that he has to realize all of them
in every poble a way, because he's infinite, you know,
and so why should we think that he has to
realize every every every act he could possibly perform. That
just seems crazy. And there's nothing in the in the
Bible that would suggest that, and nothing in the teaching
of the fathers. So you know, if you want to
call that an unrealized capacity, I think it's fine. I
don't see any problem with that, as long as we
realize that that's not in any way an imperfection, and
it's also not any way in which see I think when.
Speaker 7: Yeah, doctor Bradshaw, Oh yeah, yeah, could you talk about
that that with the latinization of denonness and energe into
potency and actuality, that the kind of a lot of
understanding potency is a lack of perfection. Yeah, if you're
already kind of touching on it, So if you just
for the audience, might kind of explain that, so we
could talk about NamUs actually not being the lack of perfection.
Speaker 8: But if you move into kind of a very strict.
Speaker 7: Latinization of what, for example, Aquinas means by potency, then
you kind of restrict the way that you can speak
about this, because potency really is a lack of perfection.
Speaker 4: Right it is. Well, it's really, as I understand, at least,
an idea that that also comes from Aristyle Aristotle in
Book A to the Physics. You know, he develops this
complex argument that does lead to the conclusion that there
is some prime mover, some first mover. But part of
that argument is that everything that's moved ultimately is moved
by something else, uh the and the only only one
thing is moves without being moved, and that's the prime mover,
the unmoved mover. Everything else both moves and is moved,
and that being moved obviously requires some prior mover. So
nothing that's potential can be realized as actual without the
agency of some prior cause. All right, that's the key idea.
And this is also something that's prominent in the metaphysics
of Aristotle, and there he kind of refers to it
as the priority of actuality. That's in book nine. Okay,
priority of actuality over dunamus or potentiality. Well, so that's
why on this Aristatuti and I view, the presence of
an unrealized capacity or dunamus would be a kind of imperfection,
because there would have to be some external agent that's
going to bring that capacity into realization. And so people
sometimes think that if you say God has unrealized capacities,
that you're saying, oh, so he he's imperfect because something
will have to act upon him to realize that capacity.
But that's not correct. That's again, I think if anything,
a kind of an aristatute and prejudice. You know, it's
precisely who God is that he can act spontaneously. I mean,
that's the whole idea. Whether that's what creation max Neilo
is exactly, yeah, right, there's nothing that acts upon God
to make him create. So I just reject that premise
that that every that no capacity can be realized without
the agency of some prior.
Speaker 3: Agent.
Speaker 4: I just don't think that's correct.
Speaker 5: So that is really to strike at the core of
what simplicity is in Orthodox Christianity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well again, you know, it's a lot of this
in the West comes from the attempt to incorporate as
much as they could of that Aristotilian framework. And you know,
as someone who works in the history philosophy, when I
look at that now, you know, I'll probably offend some
Tomas who are out there because they have their own
way of reading this history. But when I look at
this history, I just see a lot of what occurred
in the West, in the Middle Ages was sort of
people were, you know, groping in the darkness because they
didn't have access to all the sources. They didn't have
the works of Plato, they didn't have Platinus, they didn't
have any of the Middle Platonists, they didn't have most
of the works of the Greek fathers. And so when
Aristotle's works were recovered in the thirteenth century, it was
this enormous illumination, and people thought, this is sort of
the voice of reason, and we've got to somehow incorporate
it and embrace it. But if you see Aristotle in
his historical cond text and as sort of part of
a much larger development in ancient Greek philosophy that really
culminates with Neoplatonism, I would say, especially with Platinis, well,
then you know you don't come to that conclusion. You
just see him as sort of a step along the way.
And that was more the position the Greek fathers were
in that they had they had access to all those sources.
None of these were ever lost in the East, and
they always, you know, when they read philosophy, it was
always sort of in light of that whole history and
never taking any one figure as the sole authority. So
I just see what happened in the West is kind
of a you know, a result of a lot of
historical contingency that has largely to do with language, just
the in the non availability of translations, as well as
some differences that come in when you try to translate
Greek intolabin. So I just I feel it's been a
huge mistake for so much of Western theology to sort
of remain fixated on the thirteenth century as if that
was the golden era, and it really wasn't. It was
just a you know, it was a people were coming
to terms with new information, new ideas, and it was
just a step along the way.
Speaker 3: On that question of question of simplicity, I'd like to
ask a follow up there in the section on Palamas.
Not to get too far ahead, but you touch on
that that that Lewis just raised about. It seems that
the idea of simplicity originally was more so a question
of acting and acted upon as opposed to whether there
were distinctions. Could you could you explain.
Speaker 4: That well, yeah, I would. I would say originally, I mean,
simplicity just means not having parts. And Aristotle does talk
about the prime mover being simple, and Platinus actually, you know,
Platinus has three hypostases, okay, right, the same term that
gets used later in Trinitarian discussions. For him, they're the one, intellect,
and soul, and in that order, the one is highest,
then intellect comes forth from the one, and soul comes
forth from intellect. Each one of those is simple in Platinus,
and he uses that term, but there are degrees or
sort of levels of simplicity, and actually those three platinum
hypostases are one helpful way to sort of think about that.
This soul, you know, soul has hypostasis. That's not any
individual soul, Okay, it's sort of soul as a as
a principle, is simple, but it is temporal. It does
exist in time, and it you know, can be located
space in the sense that it's present throughout the whole cosmos.
And so it's not perfectly simple in the highest way,
but it is simple, and that it's in material doesn't
have material parts and doesn't a should I put this well, Okay,
let's just leave that in for soul, because when you
get to intellect, which is the second Platinium hypostasis, you
get a higher kind of simplicity because intellect is not temporal.
Platinus says that the life of soul is time. Time
is the life of soul, whereas the life of intellect
is eternity. Okay, intellect is all that, It is all
that once. It doesn't do different things at different times.
In fact, intellect and Platinus is essentially his version of
what Aristotle had said about the prime over. It thinks everything,
all intelligible content, all at once in a single, unified act. Well,
so it's simple in a much higher way than soul
because you can't draw temporal distinctions within its activity or
its being. But it's not the simplest in the in
the very highest way, and in this splutonium system, because
the first hypostasis is the one, and he says the
one is beyond both time and eternity. And that's because
eternity being the life of intellect, Well, the one is
itself beyond intellect. It's not an object of intellect. It's
not something that intellect can apprehend. And the reason being
that it doesn't have any form or any distinct intelligible Well,
so you know, what can you say about the One?
And a lot of what he says is what the
One is, not as I just did, but it is
also you know, and this is something he would affirm
that it is the source of all other things, the
ultimate ArKade, the ultimate, first principle, the ultimate, It on
the ultimate cause, and from it it comes intellect. And
also the other thing you can say is that it's
the good yet advice, the one and the good. It's
that to which all things seek and to which they return.
So you have in Neoplatonism what's called precession in return. Well, anyway,
so there's an even higher kind of simplicity in the
One than there is an intellect, because whereas the intellect
embraces all intelligible content in a single eternal act, the
One is beyondtinct intelligible content and beyond eternity. So it
has the kind of simplicity that consists in having no
form all.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 4: Now, one simple way I think to look at what's
going on in the Greek fathers, as they sort of
you know, as I mentioned, they'll never take anything from
Greek philosophy and just you know, plug it in like
it's good. You know, that doesn't work that way, but
they will use ideas and concepts and sort of adapt them.
So I think you find both of those higher forms
of simplicity in the way that the fathers understand God,
in the sense that the divine essence as they understand it,
they'll use a lot of the same terms the Platinus
used in describing the one that it has no name,
that it's beyond intellect, it's beyond being, it has no form,
but is the source of all forms, all right. And
then a lot of what Platinas says about intellect, they'll
use that kind of language in describing the divine energies
as being the way in which that transcendent, unknowable divine
Essence is manifest and can be known and participated and named.
All right. So in a sense, you know, they'll never
just adopt the idea of forms per se from grateful
and in a sense, a lot of what Platinists would
say about the forms that are the objects of thought
of intellect, they would say about the divine energies, that
they're the names that the intelligible objects that we can
apprehend and seeking to know their transcendent source. Well, okay,
so the point being that simplicity itself is complex. There
are different ways being simple, and you know, you know,
it's so people talk about the doctrine of divine simplicity. Uh,
there are different doctrines of divine simplicity, and you've got
to be careful which one you have in mind. And
I think the fathers, the Greek Fathers, definitely do believe
in divine simplicity, but they don't articulate that the same
way that it comes to be articulated in the wayst.
Speaker 3: Well, the way the way you word in the book.
You say, Palamos argues in fact that to possess a
multitude of powers is not a sign of composition, but
of simplicity. So ironically there it's more so a question
what I was what I was getting at was the
way it develops in our Orthodox tradition is that it's
conceived of as mutability, whether or not there's liability to change,
rather than whether there are distinctions.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right, Uh, that comes up when he's re responding
to Barlin. Uh. Yeah, and so for him it's one
more sign of God's simplicity that God is not happy upon.
Mm hmm.
Speaker 6: So so given the.
Speaker 5: Doctrine of divine simplicity that the.
Speaker 6: St.
Speaker 5: Thomas a quietness, sorry Thomas Aquitetas and the Thomas have
committed themselves to, maybe I thought, if it's not too jarring,
we could segue into a discussion about problems in Tomistic
natural theology and perhaps starting to talk about the logie first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, uh, the logi. So what do you have
in mind there?
Speaker 5: Well, Jay has some critiques regarding the logi and the
and the doctrine of design simplicity and intomism.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, Jay, would you mind just explaining that a
little bit? Sure?
Speaker 3: I guess what I was getting at is that to me,
it seems like the two are are kind of irreconcilable.
The first reason, I think that the Tomistic conception of
locating the exemplars in the divine essence itself is problematic,
so we have to see them as works of God
that are not identical to the divine essence. That's I
think the first departure point that we would we would
notice between Saint Maximus's conception of logi and what you
get in the West from Augustine up into Quitas, because really, again,
this would be another way of compromising the doctrine of
God's free creation. If creation is patterned on archetypes and
exemplars that are in the divine essence, then if they're real,
then creation is just as necessary and just as willed
necessarily as God's essence and as the Since they're in
the essence, they are the essence. Right, So creation, I
would say, then kind of becomes more of a patterned,
determined emanation rather than a free action, which is why,
as you point out in the book, Saint Maximus does
not equate the logie with the eternal energies or attributes
of God. They are only in reference to the created order.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, okay, I got you. Well, you know what
what the Aquinas says is about the divine ideas is
that they are the distinct ways that God knows that
his essence can be imitated. Exactly, which is I mean, well,
I mean it's it's problematic because you know, you've got
that in the further step that God chooses some of
these to actually be imitated in creation and some not. Right, so,
so he has the idea of unicorn, but he doesn't
choose to in stand shiate that one. So yeah, it's
you know, it does take you back to the whole
issue of divine freedom, which I do think is problematic
on that kind of a view. So this this issue,
I think, you know, it's not posed the same way,
and the same problem doesn't arise for the Greek fathers
because they just take from the beginning that, yeah, the
logi are acts of will. They're not forms of divine
self understanding there, they're dynas part of me thought will. Yeah,
thought wills. I think that's the term the Saint John
Damascus uses, uh Dinysius calls him divine and good acts
and will the laymantagh and Maximus uses that as well.
He quotes that from Dionysius, And so it's really just
taken for granted that and union. The other thing that's
interesting is that there there's a distinct act of will
for every individual creature, you know, so you have your
own logos and I have mine as well as there's
one universal logos for for humanity and a higher level
one for an animality, right, yeah, so they're both generic
and specific and individual. And the other thing that's a
very important difference between the logo and the divine exemplars
and aquinas is that we as free creatures have a
kind of a calling to realize, and you know, the
extent to which our logos is actually realized in time
and space and time is of us. That's where they
that synergy comes back into it, right, and synergy is
is it does require our human co operation. So they're
not simply the exemplars by any stretch. They're more like, yeah,
they're individual creative acts that call us into being the
define who we are with our native capacities and what
we're meant to be. But then we have to realize,
you know, we as free creatures, we have to realize
the logos.
Speaker 3: I would also ask too, it seems that in the
Tomistic conception, the tendency is to equate universals in the
same way with the divine essence. They seem to be
located there. I could be wrong on that. You can
correct me if i'm not. But there's a difference, a
very fine point distinction in say, Maximus that even universals
are liable to perish, which if they were ultimately located
in God, they wouldn't be liable to perish, and so
it seems that even the universals themselves are part of
the created order that big forty two he speaks of
Christ recapitulating. That's, of course one of the most of
the difficult of the ambiguous, but understanding as I read it,
and again I want you to correct me if I'm wrong,
it seems that Christ's a recapitulation of the created order,
gathering so to speak, the logi back into the logos
that the Fall in a way had kind of like jolted,
I'm speaking of the created aspect of things that partaking
a corruption. As you pointed out, it's our duty to
recapitulate the virtues themselves in ourselves, and that's kind of
us getting realigned with the tilos, the logi purpose that
Christ had for us all along, and so we have
to participate in Christ and Theosis to recapitulate those virtues
so that in the Escaton we will experience ever well
being instead of ever ill being, because even the unrighteous
will have their natures restored in the Escaton, but because
they haven't recapitulated the virtues, their experience will be ever
ill being.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 3: Do I have that correct?
Speaker 4: I believe so far as I you know, I couldn't
cite you chapter in verse on all of that where
it is in Maximus, but it sounds like very much
definitely his idea, you know, in a big of a
forty two. It's Christ. So humanity did have the vocation
of being the mediator and the microcosm in which all
of creation is sort of encapsulated and returns to God
and the five divisions of being are overcome, right, And
because of the fall, we failed in that vocation. And
so Christ, becoming man, does what we were meant to do,
and he overcomes and reconciles those five divisions. And now
you know, by being in Christ, we too partake of
his salvafic work, you know. And and there's the adoption
of sons, I guess as one of the Pauline terms.
Exactly there on Lewis.
Speaker 3: Lewis's point, he asked the question in regards back to
natural theology. So we have in Maximus the threefold embodiment
of the logos, and uh, He's uses that that imagery
of the even the created world being a kind of
a garment that the Logos is wearing. So to speak. This,
in my understanding, is what led Father Stanneloy in Orthodox Dogmatics,
and say Saint Justin Popovich in his book Orthodox Faith
in Life in Christ, where he analyzes Saint Isaac the
Syrian's view of mystical union and the Logi, to point
out that there's there's not, really, strictly speaking, in the
Orthodox conception natural law and natural theology in the tonistic sense.
So it's fine to use that word and that terminology.
We're not getting hung up on the on words. But
the way that the Tomistic conception will have a actual
content of natural theology is in no way different. Ultimately,
I think then the way that we get it in
Saint Maximus, where you ultimately the content of nature and
natural law is the logi, that's the meaning of nature.
And this is why Father Stanieloid can say that in
the Orthodox conception there's not strictly speaking a Tomistic natural
law theory, because what's in script The truths of Scripture
are the logi, the truths of nature are the logi.
The difference is rather not so much the it's it's
it's the way that the information comes to us. Right.
The rocks and trees are different from written text, but
Saint Maximus says in a way that the whole whole
of reality is a kind of text of the logos.
So it's not so much this two tiered system of
nature and grace. There is a distinction between nature and grace,
but the idea and tonism of like natural truths, natural law,
and then you stack on top of that the supernatural
truths and supernatural revelation. We don't see that kind of
a division in Saint Maximus. We see more of a
unified view, and rather it's two different ways or the
content is the logos of both, but the ways, of
the means of the mode by which that information comes
to us is obviously different between written scripture and the
natural world.
Speaker 4: Yeah well yeah, so for the Greek fathers to understand
nature properly requires ascetic transformation, repentance exactly. The senses have
to be purified. And so you know, there's these the
three forms of contemplation that were distinguished by I think
origin initially, and then a vigorous and others Practica being
the first or sort of the most basic and fundamental.
That's that's a setic practice, and that you know, it's basic,
but it's not something you ever get beyond any any
Christian and certainly any Monk is going to be always
until the end and engaged in that sort of ascetic
discipline that teaches us to view natural things rightly, not
as objects of appetite or possession and pleasure, but as
creatures made by God that are there to glorify God.
And by the way, liturgy also, you know, has this
same sort of meaning embedded or transmitted that you learn
what our bodies are meant for. You know, they're meant
for bowing, for prostrating and kissing and and and so,
you know, there's a sort of ascetic liturgical education that
we have to undergo. And according to Maximus, you know,
as one does, so, your senses are He uses this
interesting term that they're rendered rational. They're made to be rational,
They're made to be able to see things as they
really are. And that's the stage, the second stage of
contemplation physically, the natural contemplation, uh that does perceive the
logoi that are in nature. And as you mentioned, you know,
that's what he says are analogous to Christ's radiant garments
and so but that in turn is a stage toward
the highest level, uh theologia, which is, you know, pure
prayer and that that he says is analogous to the
vision of Christ's face. Yeah, so anyway, that's yeah. They
they use the term natural law, and I don't think
they would, you know, object to a lot of what
the West has to say about natural law. But if
you don't have that basic idea, then nature can only
be under known properly through ascetic and liturgical transformation, then
you're going to end up creating what is just a
human philosophy, you know, and that is unfortunately, I think
what what did occur? Mm hmm, yeah, hm hmm.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I was wondering what kind of critiques you might
have of the classical arguments, say the five ways, And
I know that father and I has some views on
this too, as someone who was very familiar with them
and found them as kind of kind of the lynchpin
of apologetics. How would you approach these things?
Speaker 4: Well, so, I guess I've never been moved if you will,
by the argument for motion that it's an ariostyle.
Speaker 8: Never been moved by the first move.
Speaker 4: I guess part of my you know, so my personal
history I was a physics major, and I worked as
a physicist before I'm back to school and got my philosophy.
So anyway, I just I don't think that motion is
what Aristotle says it is, you know, and I was
I mentioned this earlier, right, that he thinks that every
every real change requires some antecedent, actual cause, And I
just don't see how there there's room for spontaneity in
that world. And you know, real spontaneity, I think kind
of enters philosophical thought through Christianity, because we understand man
to be made in the image of God, and God
is spontaneous in the sense that there is no external
cause and he acts out of the abundance of his
own goodness, and you know, that is sort of the
paradigm the archetype that we're made as an image of.
And the Greek fathers when they talk about what they
call out exusion, you know, self determination or sometimes that's
translated to free will, that's what they say is that
that's part of our being made in the image of God,
that we have that out exusia, that self determining capacity.
So partly for that reason, partly because I just did
the mismatch with modern physics, I think, or even Newtonian
physics for that matter, I don't. I don't think that
air Strateian understanding of motion is is really inadequate one
and because of that, I've never seen much power in
the in the first way, and the other, you know,
the other has a reason, I would. I also don't
like the conclusion, right, I think that when you end
up drawing that conclusion that God is pure us, that
just loaded yourself with a bunch of unnecessary problems.
Speaker 8: So and how about yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, just to kind of round up the thought
about natural theology, when you do look at the way
that fathers argue for the existence of God, it's primarily
some form of the design argument that they use very frequently.
And but the way they use it isn't really to
then become the basis of a systematic philosophical sort of
unfolding of all the divine attributes and so on. They
use the divine argument to say, yes, there is a
creator and we can learn that from nature. But now
and we and we we have good grounds to believe
that Creator is good, being good? Wouldn't he give us
a revelation?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 4: Why would he leave us alone, and so then they
turn toward revelation. So they don't really do this sort
of typical Western natural theological project of trying to, you know,
push natural reason to the to the limit and build
up a whole theory of God on that basis.
Speaker 3: Before before Father Deacon takes over one last question on
that point, Another area I think would be difficult to
reconcile Saint Maximus with natural theology and the tonistic scheme
would be in Questions and Doubts. There's a couple of
places where he talks about Trinity's in nature. I know
this is a little a little controversial, but obviously didn't
we don't want to read too much into that in
the sort of Latin Augustinian sense where we read the
the triads that are in nature back into God. But
there is I think a valid move in Saint Maximus
too at times notice that the creative world does have
a triadic feature. He does this in multiple different places,
but in Questions and Doubts he even considers the possibility
in question one thirty six of a natural proof of
the Holy Trinity, where he talks about the logos of
beings and then the wisdom and the Spirit, that the origin,
the logos, and then the place of the Holy Spirit.
In terms of things being hyposthetized, that he seems to
think that this relates to the Trinity. I mean, it's
not that long. I'm not going to read the whole thing.
But he says that all beings are believed to exist
in three modes essence, difference, in life. And we believe
on the one hand that there is some essential being
from the logos of the essence of beings, who is
the Father. And on the other hand, there is some
essential being from the difference of beings, that is wisdom,
that is the Son. For from the wisdom of the
imparting to each nature of an offered selfhood takes place,
and it's wisdom manifests each thing that exists as both
distinct and unconfused, both towards his self into the rest.
And there is some essential being from that that is
the Holy Spirit. But in the case of God, these
things are in high postatized as such. So each one
of these, this this triad of principles that he sees
in nature, he says, actually in God are in hypostatize,
which is where he has improved upon the sort of
Plotinian arguments. Right, just like with the logi, the logie
are not impersonal. Maximus takes them and makes them in hypostatize,
and he does the same thing with these these principles
here in nature. And I would think that really that
would be completely foreign to any kind of natural theology
Tomistic conceptions. Whereas you do have some medieval Latin theologians
you think there might be little trinities in nature. In
the Tomistic scheme, that would be impossible.
Speaker 4: I would think, why would it be impossible, Because.
Speaker 3: The doctrine of the Trinity would be a doctrine only
known by supernatural revelations. So I'm speaking in terms of epistemology, right,
So a Thomas could conceivably say that the reality of
the world does have some triadic structure, perhaps ontologically, but
in terms of in terms of a pistemology, there's no
way that I can look at the natural world and
see Jesus or the Trinity, because Jesus and the Trinity
or any kind of doctrine that appeals to revelation is
not part of natural theology. So, and this is why
the Tomaistic tradition has pretty consistently said that natural reason
and natural theology has to operate autonomously, like the reasoning.
I'm speaking epistemically, I realized that Atomas would not say
that metaphysically speaking, man's natural reason is autonomous, But in
terms of epistemology, they do affirm that man's reasoning is
autonomous and apart from any revelation. So in other words,
they wouldn't say that you need revelation to interpret the
natural world. But the natural world has fallen, right, the
world as it is has fallen, and if it is fallen,
I'm not going to be able to properly interpret it
without a doctrine of the fall. Hence why a lot
of times in saying the Enlightenment period you get people
reacting to classical pologetic arguments by pointing out that you know,
you see, you see people like Nildergrass Tyson, you know,
the atheists. They'll still make these arguments. Now, well, they'll say,
when I look out at the natural world, I mean
it looks to me like it's created by a psychopath,
because who would have designed a world where, you know,
parasites feed on parasites. So, in other words, they because
they're not taken into account the doctrine of the fall,
which is a doctrine that's revealed. What I'm saying is
that in the Tomistic epistemology you have this division between
revealed theology and natural theology, and they don't recognize that
you need revealed theology to properly interpret the natural world.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Well so you'll notice, you know, the Greek
Fathers never talk about natural reason. Yeah, as you know,
as sort of a separate wait, knowing things as opposed
to revelation. That again is a largely an artifact. I
think of the way Aristotle was recovered, so the West
had already made this distinction even before that, but it really,
you know, becomes really kind of a structure that structures
the whole way they think about things in the thirteenth
century when they identify Aristotle as the voice of natural reason,
you know, than the Bible we have that gives us
the revelation, and the Greek fathers thought that, well, reason,
the reason is a form of revelation, you know. Reason,
the reason we have is our participation in the divine logos. Yeah,
and so when we know things, we are sharing in
that divine understanding, and so there's not really a line,
a sharp line that one would draw. They typically don't.
Speaker 3: I think, is it Fetus at Rachio, the John Paul
and cyclical feather Deacon, and then I mean and the
Leo the thirteenth and cyclical also, which reaffirms you know, Tomism.
Speaker 8: And then you'll get this in Vatican one as well.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, Okay, go ahead, Yeah, do.
Speaker 5: You have anything to add to that, Father An and
ees the whole natural theology thing, and then we can
just round that up and then we can move on
to you.
Speaker 7: Well, it's amazing because my question was one of my questions.
You just answered that you believe that a quitas is
assertion that God can be known a posty or i
from creation by what the Thomas would say, by the
natural light of reason alone, and that means without any
new natural or supernatural revelations. So, as you'd rightly pointed out,
natural revelation is seen within the light and participation of
the supernatural revelation.
Speaker 8: But it seems that what developed in the West was well,
we can know that.
Speaker 7: From the light of natural reason alone, and no God
is is from his creation, just as we know the
cause is knowable from it's a fact, and you've already
answered it. It simply seems to reduce to the assertion
that's really dependent upon the aristituting epistemology and metaphysics a
whole exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, m hm, very nice. Before let me just
kind of add to that thought. So, you know, synergy
is a way of knowing God, and it's uh, it's
not it doesn't fit in one of those pigeon holes.
You know, it's not natural reason, it's not revelation in
the sense of the sort of body of propositional knowledge.
It's experience. It's it's knowing God as the one who
was present and active within you within the church, and
knowing him the way you know your own activity. And
so that's the kind of knowledge I think Saint Paul,
you know, and some of those passages I mentioned is
sort of speaking from you might say. And so there's
there's a tendency to sort of pigeonhole wasting knowing God
that I think can be very constricting. And in the
New Testament there are not those pigeonholes. You know, God
is present everywhere in all things, including in us, and
and including in our activity.
Speaker 3: The word is near you, even in your heart exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 5: So I thought that now we would do a segue
into perhaps both defenses of Tomism as the Siltinemism and
revel and how that is in their view with revelation,
as well as critiques of the Orthodox essence energy is
distinction and related the old and these objections will get
They will start simplistic and kind of what you might
come across in the popular.
Speaker 6: Sphere of apologetic Sir Dr Bradshaw.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure how how familiar you are with that,
but you'll see what it's like, and then it will
get kind of more and more complex. And Father Deacon
has some very much more complex ones. So one of
the popular things going around.
Speaker 6: Now, this one's a bit more complicated the one's about.
Speaker 8: To go with.
Speaker 6: But this is very separate, it's very distinct.
Speaker 5: One of the popular things going around now is to
try and say that the Scotistic formal distinction is the
bridge almost between in a sense, perhaps Tomism and our
conception of God and his activity. Could you please explain
what a formal distinction is for people who may not
be aware, and what your opinions are on that tempt.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, well that's that's an idea that's been around
a long time. You know, some people think that George
Scolario's advocated that. I think he actually didn't, but it
has been attributed to him. So a formal distinction from
scotis done. Scotis as I understand it. So that's where
you have two things that can be defined separately that
cannot exist, okay, and the difference between them is something
that is based in the nature of the object, okay,
even though they're not different parts. So here's some examples,
something like let's see, well this may not be totally clear,
but let's just try it. The soul and its faculties.
I believe he says that those are formally distinct, So say,
the soul and the capacity of reason, or the nutritive
capacity and the faculty of sensation. That may not be
a perfect example, because sometimes you know, some souls exist
they don't have reason, right, their souls animal and vegetables soul.
But at least in the case of a human being,
you can't have the soul without all those faculties. And
at the same time, the faculties don't exist without the soul.
But they're defined totally in a way that totally distinct.
Another example that he gives is being and other transcendentals
like unity, truth, and goodness, which none of which can
exist without the others, but they're all defined all right.
So anyway, that's that's the idea in Scotus of what
he calls a formal distinction. And I think there's a
grain of truth to the idea that some of the
energies you could see as being formally distinct from the
divine essence, namely the ones that are eternal and necessary
divine attributes like goodness and wisdom and power and so forth.
A guy named Mark Spencer are all familiar with his work.
He's a philosopher at the University of Saint Thomas, and
he wrote a paper a couple of years ago in
International Philosophic Quarterly that was arguing this. He's a he
calls himself a Thomas. He's a very broad minded Thomas.
And he said, well that that you really need the
statistic formal distinction and you need the essence energy distinction.
I'm sorry, he wasn't really arguing that the formal distinction ession.
He wasn't arguing that the essence energy's distinction is a
form of the formal distinction, just that you need them both. Well,
let's see, So what do I think about that? As
I said, it's not totally mistaken in that limited case.
But you have to always bear in mind that there
are many forms of the divine energy. They're the gifts
of the spirit, you know, the Saint Paul talks about
one Corinthians twelve. Those are and the fathers often called
energies of the spirit. There are the divine logi that
we were just talking about, the good divine and good
acts of will by which God creates. There's the date
and light. So sometimes people want to kind of shoehorn
the essence energies distinction into this western issue or category
of the divine essence and attributes. That's not what it's about.
That's you know, some of the some of the energies
are what we would call attributes, yes, but by no
means all of them. And so what happens then is
if you try to uh, kind of break off the
ones that we call attributes and say, oh, those are
formally distinct from the divine essence, well, then you've lost
the unity of the concept the fact that the fathers
refer to all of this broader class as divine energies,
and you know that's important for them. You're what you're
losing is that active dimension where what we call attributes
actually are forms of self manifestation. And so I think
it's it's not so much wrong as it is sort
of a small minded, you know, way of thinking that
the misses out on the real point that they're making
the attributes.
Speaker 3: It's not like things you own. The attributes are in hypostatized.
They're personal manifestations of it of a nature, of a
divine nature. Right. So, even whether it's the logie, or
whether it's God's love or God's justice or mercy, or
whether it's the attributes that apply from all eternity or
the attributes that apply to creation like foreknowledge, they're always
in hypostatized and so therefore they're always first and foremost
personal energies.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So they come hypostatically. But they but but because energy
signifies nature, they show us they manifest divinity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if they're they're hypostatic in the sense, you know,
the fathers will use this expression that they issue from
the Father or the center induspirit from the Father is
the source sort of the fountain head, and then are
brought to you know, realization by the sun and perfected
by the spirit. Or they'll they'll have different ways of
putting that, but they're they're kind of restating that point
that Affamation Affinacious had made that every work of the
of the Trinity is a joint work, and so there's synergy,
you know, within the Trinity as well. And so anyway,
the reason I mentioned that is because you can't ever
look at one of the energies and say this is
just the energy of the spirit. Not right. We call
some of them energies of the spirit because that's biblical language,
but we don't mean that the Father is not giving
that gift. Of course he is. So that's the That's
the only caution I would have about saying that their
hype that they are sort of revealed the hypostasies. I
don't think they reveal the distinction of the hypostasies per se,
although all three of the hypostases are always active in
any right, Well, let.
Speaker 3: Me qualify that because what I was, what I was
getting at, was that so the Basil's triadic who from
the Father, through the son and the spirit. As I
understand it, it's true of the energies that are eternally manifested.
It's true of the energies that apply to creation. It's
true of the action of creation. It's also true of
the movement of redemption. So this is how you can
have each hypostasy in the in the in the triad
have a unique role not just in creation but also
in redemption.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So the father sends the son, but only the son
enters into the mode of being incarnate. So there's there's
roles that each person plays, but there's one. The energy
itself that's that's acted is one, but it's brought into
reality or manifested by each hypostasis in a unique way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good good. Well, you may remember in the book
I try to give an analogy for that of a
husband and wife who jointly give a gift, though you know,
life went out about it and the husband paid for
or what have you. They can do different things that
are jointly constituting the single act.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: This is also important too. I would add, just to
add on to that, is that if we understand eternal manifestation,
not that I'm claiming to understand out. But it's an
important distinction that's missing in Roman Catholic theology and dogmatics
most of the time, unless perhaps a UNI acknowledges this.
But most of the time it's not there because the
docrine of eternal manifestation is part and parcel with the
idea of the essence energy sinction and a distinction between
different types of you know, the eternal energies or attributes
and the attributes that apply to the created order. So likewise,
if you have that understanding, you could then see how
it's possible that some of the energies manifest from all eternity,
from the Father through the Son, in the spirit as well.
But at the same time there's different types of actions
that also manifesto tritic way, but only relate to the
created order. And this is always a big hang up
when you're arguing with the Roman Catholic because they don't
make that energetic manifestation distinction. But that's necessary to not
confuse something like the action of love with a hypostasis.
So all I was trying to say is that every
energy is triadically manifested in a personal way, but we
have to say that for example, Singragya Palmos, when he
explains how there is a sense in which we can
call the spirit the love between the father and the son,
he says that only applies at the level of energetic manifestation.
In no way does it identify that the energy of
love which is common to father, son and spirit with
the spirit. He's only speaking in the sense of eternal manifestation.
Speaker 4: So starting with some some.
Speaker 5: Low hanging fruits, I guess the reason why these are
going to sound a bit because they all on the
popular sphere, so people would really like to see how
a scholar responds to these. So the first one is
kind of more something that would come from like a
hier critic. They would ask, well, given this, and Gregor
Palomas relies so much on Dionysius because Dionysius is called
Pseudodonysius and therefore an apocryphal source, does this not undermine
the continuity of the theology from the apostles?
Speaker 4: H Well, you know, I argue in the book that
a lot of what's in Dionysius is already there in
the Capitoceans, you know, just different terminology. In fact, that's
why later authors like Palomas found it so natural to
incorporate this, you know, the Dynastian approach into sort of
a sort of a larger synthesis that also includes the
Cappit Oceans and and other there's people like Maximus et cetera.
Because the ideas are so similar, the terminology is often different.
You know, I read the passage from Basil Epistle two
thirty four Essence and energy Dinysius, it's more often sort
of the cooper ussios Ussia the essence beyond essence and
then the divine processions. Okay, so he uses that word
procession protos that is not there in earlier others. But
what he says about or what he uses that word
to say, turns out to be very similar. And so
you know, I've written a lot about this sort of
what's what each one of these fathers is sort of
adding in the sense of sort of taking a given idea,
carrying it a little further, adding more unity, more comprehensiveness
to the to the vocabulary. Dinasius is really just one
further step in that process. But he's by no means
a sort of a radical break. The more you read
the cap of Oceans, you more they realize that, well,
a lot of those so called neoplatonic ideas are really
already there. So you know, that's my short answer, I
think a long answer. You just have to read these texts,
these primary texts, in chronological order for yourself, you know,
and you'll see that gradual unfolding take place.
Speaker 7: So this is the next you want plenty of time
to do by away, guys, now that you're all quarantine,
I want all of you to get started on and
we'll provide the list of books for you to read.
Speaker 5: I wish I was quarantined, but yeah, So the next low,
low hanging one is well. In the Triads, Sint Gregor
Balamas seems to recognize, recommend very specific breathing techniques quote unquote,
focusing on the navel and what is often plementally called
self worship or compared with the yoga.
Speaker 6: How would you respond to this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, he actually, if you read the Triads, he
doesn't really recommend them for the reader. He simply says,
you know, yes, these are things that we do with
the monks of Mount Autos, and we found them helpful.
But he's not by no means saying therefore you should
go do this. You know, these were practices that had
developed through you know, and may perhaps you might say
trial and error, or at least sort of the accumulation
of experience over many years. But they require a personal instruction,
and I think he'd be the first to agree that
they could be dangerous if practice the wrong way. And
you know, Barlin apparently had talked to some monks. I
don't think he ever actually visited Mount Athos, but he's
he talked to some monks who are from Anautos and
heard them talking about different colors of light, and apparently
some colors of light, as he understood what they were saying,
or sort of indicate the divine light, and some were demonic,
and he ridicules this. Palamas, I don't I don't recall it.
Palamus talks about it directly, but he doesn't, you know,
he doesn't go into that because those are matters for
personal knowledge and experience. Uh, sort of the kind of
thing that's passed down from an older monk to a disciple,
and by no means meant to be sort of universally
practiced by all Christians because they're just too dangerous. And
you know, even some of the later Heseikus in Russia
will tell you that, And so anyway, I hope that's
That's kind of what I would say is, well, he's
not saying, therefore go do this.
Speaker 6: This is the last one. Well that's sorry. Two more
asking a bunch for the sack of time.
Speaker 8: I guess.
Speaker 6: One one which was a concern to me, which.
Speaker 5: Was confusing to me, and I think a lot of people,
is this idea of uncreated energies.
Speaker 6: That have a beginning, and how how does how is
this is? Does this mean that.
Speaker 5: Uncreatedness and eternality are separable in reality?
Speaker 6: And how does this not imply some kind of.
Speaker 5: Mutability on God's part? I know we did a cover
of this earlier, but yeah, I am curious about that,
and that is an apologetic an argument often used.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, uh, it does mean I think that
not everything uncreated is a terminal. So, as I mentioned,
you know, the energies of the spirit or the gifts
of the spirit clearly are not eternal because they're given
to creatures who themselves are not eternal. Right, So the
gift of prophecy, for instance, you know, that's not eternal.
Human beings haven't always existed, and certainly the particular ones
who were given this gift, the gift of I don't know,
spiritual discernment, gift of healing. Those are our energies of
the spirit. And and if you look first Corinthians twelve,
Saint Paul uses the word and entergamental. You know that
that's that's why the fathers come to call them that way.
Another example that they use, the Briga palamask uses is
the act of creation itself. That isn't a divine energy.
It's something God does that manifests his character is nature.
But clearly it's not eternal because you know, you read
Genesis and God rested on the seventh day, so it
began and it ended. And now of course God maintains
creation in existence. That's true as well, but that's not
the same as the act of creating its described in Genesis.
So that's why not everything that is not everything uncreated
has to be eternal, right?
Speaker 5: What was the second part of the question was, it's
just how, how how this doesn't have some kind of
mutability on God's part. I think a struggle for people
is because when people think of uncreated, they think of
something that is eternal, because to be created, I mean,
Quitta says this to be creative is to have beginning
in time, I think, so, how yeah, it seems to
because the divine engines of God. It seems to be
that the critique is that it's a mutability, will change
and violence. God's im mutability.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it doesn't because God is eternal. But He's
perfectly capable of acting in time and revealing himself differently
in different ways in different times. And that's what the
energies are, you know, they're they're divine acts that manifest
God and that in which we can share and so
or at least many of them, not all of them,
but things like the energies of the spirit and even
the uncreated light. But you know, that's just basic Christianity,
that God the eternal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, every one of the Theophanes right kind
of answers this question that, I mean, the thought theovines
were specific to time and location. And this is raised
by Acandnos to to Saint Gregory, and he says that
he appeals back to Dynastius, and he says that God
transcends the logical categories such that he's not bound by
the either or dialectics of what's normative for created logic,
you could say, so God is can enter into and
undergo in some limited notion a type of change, while
at the same time he transcends change. I mean, every
every incarnate action of Christ would be negated if there
could be no temporal specific actions of God. I mean
Christ manifested the divine energy and his divine power when
he changed water to wine. Right, walking on water is
an action specific to time and space. That is clearly
I mean, Sir John Mascus says that signifies his divinity.
So if we if we negate these tim poral actions,
which are uncreated because they're actions of God, but they
are specific to time and space, then we really remove
the possibility of incarnation and God acting and within time
and space at all.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that leads into one of my questions that
I'd like the doctor Bradshaw to answer. And let's Lewis
you had another question.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just the last one was the idea of the
the people. Will a lot of POI press on this
idea of the upper and the lower divinity of the
Upper the lower Godhead, and how God's essence even transcends
to an infinite degree and an infinite number of times,
even his eternal, uncreated energies, and they will say, well,
this is polytheism because you have two gods basically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well that that that became a huge issue between
Palamos and a Kindonos, and it's to my mind, it's
kind of it was a fixation that a Kingdonos had
that if you actually look at the texts, he he
misrepresents what Palamas said, and he totally he just never
seems to grasp that what Palamus actually said was simply
repeating what's already there in Maximus and Dionysius. In fact,
if anything, Colamus kind of tones it down. But you
have in Maximus in the you know, the Theological Chapters
on Theology and Economy, book one, section forty eight to fifty,
there's a really key discussion of what Maximus calls the
uncreated works of God. And they're what we would call
divine attributes of things like goodness and power and wisdom.
But he calls them works of God that were not created,
and he says that God infinitely transcends them, okay, and
even he calls God their creator, their demi ourgos. And
so that's where Paula Musk, you know, takes that phrase
because what Maximus is referring to as these uncreated works
of God he identifies as among the divine energies. And
you know, there's a as I mentioned, there are a
number of different terms the Greek fathers will use things around.
God is one of them, and and that's essentially what
what Maximus is talking about in that passage. Well, okay,
and then Dionysius also, he's the one he uses the
word theot's divinity as a name of a divine procession,
and Palamas again is identifying the processions as among the energies. Well, so, anyway,
I've written about this. I have an article that's forthcoming
goes into all the textual detail, but a kind of
nose is just frankly, he was kind of thick headed
or else just you know, so stubborn. It's just unbelievable
because he kept coming back to this and Palomas had
to explain it over and over and over. You know,
that's not what I said. That's not what I said,
that's not what I said. So anyway, but again, it's
one of those things that if you read these sources
in chronological orders. As I mentioned, Dionysi the Cappadocians Dinysius
Maximus Palomas. You'll see that everything Palamas says is just
following in the division exactly.
Speaker 7: Prog Yeah, So, kind of picking up on the second
to last question, if on the Latins absolute divine simplicity doctrine,
if God's energies are really just his essence, because they'll
speak about that, but they just identify with his essence.
Speaker 8: Then, as a quit As claims, if He's not to.
Speaker 7: Enter into a central compositional creatures when he just remained
shut up in himself and not be able to energize
creation in the manner that Saint Paul talks about.
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, that's what I think.
Speaker 8: Good.
Speaker 4: Next question, that's where the whole necessity for created grace
comes from. In Aquinas, you know that you don't have
the possibility of a real participation in the divine energy,
and so what can you do? You know, there's this
created similitude that he God kind of bestows upon a creature,
but it's not the same as that synergetic participation in
the divine life.
Speaker 7: Also, a previous question I had when we were talking
about Aristotle, because Aquitas is going to pick up on this,
so we have basically two places in Aristotol you'd mentioned
in the Physics and his the kind of first Mover,
but then in Metaphysics book Lambda, chapter six, where he
talks about that kind of defines God not only whose
essence is pure actuality, but self thinking thought in pure actuality.
Speaker 8: What's puzzling is, well.
Speaker 7: How does he bridge these kind of two concepts such
that thought thinking upon itself can actually be the cause
of the physical motion of the planets and the heavens.
Do you think that Aristotle ever solves that and that
does it become a problem in scholasticism?
Speaker 4: Uh? Well, you know That's what chapter two of the
book is about, where I try to tease out what
is Aristotle's answer to this very puzzling question, how does
self thinking thought cause motion? And the best I can
make of it is that that key idea again of
the identity of fault with its object means that the
prime mover is identical with the fully realized forms of
all natural entities. And Aristotle's teleology, you know, understands every
natural process as some as a natural entity seeking to
realize its form in some way. That includes both the
growth of living things, you know, the acorn growing of
the ooak and also the motion of the of the
of the four elements, because when earth fault moves toward
the center of the cosmos is seeking to real lies.
It's Tellos being at the center. So you know, if
you sort of incorporate all that, then you can see
how it's at least plausible or makes sense in the
air staty in worldview that yes, the prime mover is
self thinking thought causes all natural motion. I do think
there's an issue even in Aristotle, well, what about human
free choice or what Aristotle call rational potencies, which are
in the ability to do a or not a what
causes one or the other? You know, this is the
sort of thing that the liveness it's you know, gotten
right well, and Aristotle really just doesn't ever address that
question other than just to say what we do or
it's our choice, which is fine, But then isn't there
a kind of motion that isn't caused by the first member? Right?
Speaker 7: I mean this kind of sets up a problem that
Aerostol has the kind of cosmos of necessity, and it
makes it difficult to kind of parse these issues that
you raise about human choice and freedom possibly within those.
Speaker 8: Kind of restraints.
Speaker 4: It's very striking when you read Aristotle. He's just not
bothered by a lot of questions I think we would
be bothered by because he's a pre Christian author, you know,
And as mentioned earlier that in Christianity, the spontaneity of
God is a fundamental belief, and then man is made
in the image of God, and so in Christianity that
element of human spontaneity, the ability to act in a
way that simply expresses your character without being determined by
any external prior cause, that's really fundamental. And Aristotle just
doesn't have that kind of a view of who we are,
and certainly not of our relation to God. And for
that matter, it doesn't have that view of God, right,
the Prime Mover doesn't have that kind of spontaneity of
free choice. So that's why I think he's just kind
of not alive or or awake to these issues in
the way that we are.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a that's a great lead off to the
next question, because I mean, if you in studying Aquinas,
who's drawing from Aristotle on these issues, when we start
thinking about God's act of will, that Aquinas articulates this
within his kind of conception of absolutely divine simplicity, that
God's act of will is conditioned by God's essence, nothing else.
Speaker 8: There's no terminus.
Speaker 7: Outside of God's essence, which serves us some sort of cause.
But then that would appear that, well, God's not completely
free and unconditioned in the full sense.
Speaker 8: But it seems as in the case with the Orthodox
conception of God, and that the essence and energies.
Speaker 7: And that God's not even bound by in any conditioned sense,
or referring back to his essence to freely will through
the logo to create gives us a more robust and
completely unconditioned and free God in the full sense of
the meaning.
Speaker 8: Would you agree with that? And how would you expect
the Thomas to respond to that?
Speaker 4: Well? You know, so, I think one place where we
do agree with the Thomas is that God necessarily wills
the good, you know ready in Hebrews chapter six, right
that there God cannot be false to himself. He can't
square both falsely. So there's not this voluntarist idea that
something is good.
Speaker 8: Just by God willing it whimsically.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, So that I think is sort of
the opposite extreme that we should avoid so, and the
and the Capitocians say this very openly or explicitly, that
God necessarily does will and good. But the thing is
that there are many ways of being good, in many
forms the good can take. And you know, they're thinking largely,
I think, in platonic terms, where you have the form
of the good, and then just think of all the
vast array of images of that form, the things that
participate in the form, the different you know, finite forms
of good, how different they are. Right, And God is
free in that he can realize, you know, this infinite
array of different kinds of good things, and there are
all ways in which He expresses and manifests his own
goodness and a lot of that. I think all of
that the Thomas would agree, and I think we have
common ground. The difficulties arise because again it's as you
mentioned earlier, you know, identifying then the divine will and
the divine operation with the divine essence, you you kind
of end up locked into a box where the essence
can't be different, right, So how can the will be different?
How can the operation different?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Exactly, Yeah, So that's that's that's good. Great, you pass
on that Okay, next test, I'm not kidding.
Speaker 7: So one thing that might be a concern for US
Eastern Orthodoxy is that to see that the West might
be placing a premissey or even superiority of the one
over the many, essence over personhood, and as a result,
we would worry that maybe let's just returning to the
same problems of Greek essentialism.
Speaker 8: And if that's so, wouldn't this lead if we committed.
Speaker 7: Ourselves as far as our theological projects, to this kind
of embracing the premise youre superior of the one over
the many and essence over personhood. Well, if we carry
that out in various ways, isn't that exactly what leads
to the numerous heresies that we see in history.
Speaker 4: Well, but I think we'd have to have a whole
further two hour discussion to, you know, to tease that out.
And I know, people like Metropolitans, Azulus, you know, have
said a lot about how person cannot be reduced to
nature and so forth, and I think there's some truth
to that, but I do think often the ways is
you know, people have tried to articulate it, including in
his case, are either unclear or just not well grounded
than the fathers.
Speaker 7: Ultimately, well that's because he spent too much time doing
continental philosophy.
Speaker 3: Yeah his approach, I kid, I kid, yeah, I don't know.
I mean, well, he does have a heavily philosophic approach,
I mean in terms of because I've got being a
communion and metropolitan orrotheos has I think a pretty good
treatise on nature in person. But I mean, we know
that a person has to in some sense not just
be a concretization or instantiation of nature, because if it was,
we would be modalists, right, The Father of the Son
and the Spirit would just be sort of instantiations of
the divine nature. They are instantiations of the divine nature.
But there really is something unique about the you know,
hypostasis of the sun that in some way transcends just
merely an instantiation of nature. Which is why, as some
people have argued, I would say, you know, our I
think just surfrom Hamilton has a good point about this
that you know, if it was just a participation in
divine nature that we were experiencing or looking for here,
then we wouldn't be called sons. But the fact that
we are called sons means that we are participating in
a relationship that is hypostatic. Right, It's the logos the person,
second person that God had that adopts us, and so
therefore we are made sons, and therefore it's a personal participation.
It's not just an essentialist participation. And so therefore a
person is more than just an instantiation of nature, even
if we can't give like a perfect, you know, sort
of philosophical scientific definition of what a hypostasis is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a good way to kind of tease out
what was implicit in that question. Thank you too.
Speaker 3: What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Doctor, Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's well said. I
don't know if you know the work of Father Nicolaus Ludovicos,
but he has a book on Saint Maximus where he
he kind of develops the theme of what he calls
a diological reciprocity that you know I mentioned earlier, how
our each of us, our logos is something that we
have to realize through our own free action, and the
way Maximus understands that it's never a sort of a
one and done sort of thing. You're always engaged in
this dialogue with God in which your free acts are
responding to the good that He presents to you. And
even when you refuse that good, he is still He's
going to present to you another form of the good, right,
And that's sort of just his way of presenting this
fact that we're always called to repent, we're always called
to seek God, are closer to Him no matter where
we are in our lives. So there's this continual dialogue
between each person in God, and that's what constitutes us
as persons.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I think it's you're never going to find a single
definition or a single term that really encapsulates everything there
because it's it's sort of the whole of the Christian life.
So anyway, I would agree, and I think the ideas
of as a personhood is absolutely central in the whole tradition.
But the term is not that these terms like hypostasis
and prosiphon, they have distinct meanings, you know, and we
have to have to be careful to respect what they
actually meant within a given context, and which not all
the burden of sort of the concept of person who
had asked to what rest on any yeah, individual term?
Speaker 3: I think, you know, Father Fluorowsky and Father stun Eloy
have pretty good, in my view, extensive discussions of hypostasis.
I mean, I think Experience of God is really good
in terms of how he deals with it. I think
he does try to ground it in a patteristic mindset
because he is, you know, very critical of Tomism in
that in that uh that series.
Speaker 5: This father is standalalie, yeah, yeah, father, and I did
you have the kind of top end sophisticated Tomist critique?
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, okay that you're they going to get a
little bit more complex, so bear with me.
Speaker 8: So we've already spoken about.
Speaker 7: Is a Tomistic notion divine simplicity compatible with divine freedoms?
We spoke a little bit about that. If we answer no,
there's a certain critique of our position that states, well,
if the energies could have been different from what they
in fact are, then, according to the Tomis, then there'd
be a reason.
Speaker 8: Why they are as they in fact are.
Speaker 7: Thus there would be some, as they understand it, contingent
cause which would account for the divine energy being multiplied
in creatures in the way in a way, not in
another way.
Speaker 8: How would we respond to this this criticism.
Speaker 4: Well, it sounds to me, if I understand the idea
sort of like an argument not against our viue, it's
an argument against any belief in free will. You know,
free will, by its nature just is the spontaneous the
ability to act spontaneously in a way that's not determined
by any prior cause. And if we have that, certainly
God has it. In fact, we have it because God
has it. That's that's part of what makes us in
the image of God. And so I think granted that
there's not any additional problem, you know, with understanding some
of the divide energies to be free. That's simply sort
of given in and understanding God to be free. So
I mean there's something I'm missing.
Speaker 8: In the in the no no, I think that. I
think that's a good uh. And again, I think a
lot of this comes down to.
Speaker 7: Once you kind of put yourself in a certain kind
of metaphysical box with terms and concepts restricted in such
and such a way, then you kind of set up
your own problems and it becomes impossible to kind of
answer these questions. But if you know, as in the
Orthodox notion, you have a lot more fluidity, Like a
stand away says, you know, the Orthodox Church never embraced
any one philosophical project or metaphysics, and therefore it is
free to be able to use the truth of philosophy.
That gives us, I think, a much more robust freedom
to be able to articulate what's been received in divine
revelation without getting into these kind of apparreas and problems.
Speaker 8: Good, yeah, and one, Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4: I was just good to say. It's been over two hours,
so we probably should.
Speaker 3: Ye, we're coming down to the end here. Yeah, thank
you for your time. We'll go ahead. We'll go ahead
and let you go because I know you've got probably
other stuff you've got to do, but you've been very
gracious and maybe we can get you back in the
future when you're free, and we won't and we'll try
to hold you so long.
Speaker 4: Oh, no problem. Yeah, I just I'm thinking there are
probably listeners out there who are maybe nearly as exhausted
as I am.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 8: Don't worry about them. Worry about yourself, all right.
Speaker 4: Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you guys.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Doctor Bradshaw was great and I hope to see
you soon. And it was wonderful seeing you. What was
that last month and wonderful having you on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was an honor to meet you.
Speaker 6: Well, it was a great honor to meet you.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I hope we can, Lewis, I hope we
can meet in person one of these.
Speaker 8: Days, but otherwise hoping.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I do go to England every now and then.
You know, they have that great Patristics conference at Oxford
every four years, and I make that.
Speaker 6: Every four years.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, yeah, well you other times too. There's the
Eyeways like it's like.
Speaker 7: Like a fifth of my life, or doctor Bradshaw, we
just will just put together a conference and have it
over there and round every all those scholars up well
and excused to see Lewis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, thank you, Doc Brutshaw. It has been great.
And everybody be sure and get a copy of Aristotle
East and West. As you see, I have that linked
in my show page. You go to my website, you'll
see the links there to his book. And have a
good night, doctor Brushaw.
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, blessed evening.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, good talking to you.
Speaker 3: All right, thank you Lewis and father Deacon. Can you
stay around for super chats or you guys got to go?
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, I'll be up.
Speaker 7: I can stay for another three hours. If all of
you in the chat are willing to stick.
Speaker 6: With me on this, I stay for another one.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's get to the super chest, So
John Alice for ten dollars. Since God's lucie is beyond ussia, actuality,
and potentiality, is it also correct that God's energy is
beyond energy, actuality, and potentiality Or are these categories properly
applied to God's energy? No, So, the what we speak
of as beyond is God in himself, right, God in
his essence, what he is in himself is what's beyond.
But when we speak of potentialities, when we speak of
energies and actions, those are in relation to creation. So
they are beyond us in the sense of that even
those are divine and actions uncreated. But they're also in
a sense knowable and interactable others. We can participate in
those things. So I would not say that that the
energies themselves are beyond energies. I would say that that
doesn't make any sense. Although there are energies and works
that we don't even know about. Some of the fathers
do say that, I don't know if anybody has any
other question, any statements on that. Yeah, Jeff Jablonski, what's
up five bucks? What's the difference between Ussia and Fusis?
That would have been a great question for Broadshaw, since
he has sort of the technical specifications when it comes
to the linguistic differences. I would just simply say that
as the theology crystallizes in the east nothing, it eventually
is not distinguished.
Speaker 6: Well, I it's funny, me and father and I we
were listening to this long.
Speaker 5: Stream night and I think I have an answer here,
but you guys can correct me here because I think
I in actuality as such, they're not distinct, that's synonymous.
But the word nature kind of picks out a different
aspect that essence does. So essence would pick out kind
of what what a thing is, that that what makes
the thing is, but nature would kind of pick out
perhaps the activity of that thing.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that I'm pretty sure is Dona Mascus
says that they're the same. They're just used the same.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I know the same, but I'm saying that.
Speaker 8: The same notionally same.
Speaker 7: So ontologically the reference which they refer to is ontologically
the same, but they have different notions within the mind
of I e. Connotations maybe a little bit different, nuanced,
exactly squashed out.
Speaker 3: Are we talking about in our theology or to Montoism
or what where are we talking about this? Because I mean,
I'm not trying to be contrary. I'm just I'm pretty
sure save oh.
Speaker 8: I was actually just no, Yah, donalds it is no difference.
I was actually just thinking of.
Speaker 7: There might be do you think within the connotation of
fusus or nature versus ousia.
Speaker 8: But the same They're referring to the same thing. But
what it it is of a being.
Speaker 3: There is a section where Donnamscus touches on this, but
I think he comes to the conclusion that really there's
not it's not it's not that big of it. There
might be different people who used it in specific ways,
but what we intend is the same thing. Jeff Doblonski
For ten dollars, she says, question two is God's is
God's energy and actualization of the nature or the essence?
Is this how we partake of the nature? And second
Peter one four? But the ushi remains transcendent. Remember that
the actualization is always brought into actualization by persons, right,
So it's not just an essence that's actualizing. It's a
person with an essence actualizing. That's the key thing here.
And that's why we always say that the actions of
God are in hypostatized. So I would say that that's
the first answer there, and then the part about second
Peter one four Are we partakers of the divine nature? Yes,
through the divine energies, but not directly God's essence. So
yes and no. You know, one comments on that. There's
a great book on that. By the way, The Deification
of Man touches on that, if you want to read
the classic Father manser Rites. That's what I was holding
up during the interview. He he touches on all that
in not too long of a treatise. Jeff again five bucks.
Does the Osis relate to Saint Maximus's appeal to Aristotle
dividing Fusis into ushia and potentiality and actuality? Again, I
don't think that eventually. I don't think that. So maybe
Father Deacon he's talking about Aristotle divides Fusis into usia, potentiality, actuality.
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 3: Does Aristol do that?
Speaker 8: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Actually, Okay, I don't think Saint Maximus would do that,
because I think by Saint Maximus and Saint John A. Mascus,
this time fussis and usha begin to be used in
the same way. I could be there could be a
technical section or maximism, but I don't know. If you
read the one hundred chapters, excuse me, two hundred chapters,
you'll see at the beginning, within the first ten pages,
he'll say, in what sense we use aerosol and what
since we don't so? And he actually addresses that very
sense in which God is first cause and not first cause,
first principle and not first principal. Russian Anime bought five dollars.
Here is some Dugan dollar for comrad bless blessings from
Putin and Dugan to you. Russian Anime book Palmer, Eric,
Palmer l Rick fifteen dollars, Great talk, guests, Thank you, gentlemen,
Thank you very much, Palmer el Rick. Who's next? Nicodemus
the Pharisee? Five dollars? Can you expand on the Theophanes?
Are they uncreated divine forms?
Speaker 4: In a way?
Speaker 3: Yes, they are uncreated manifestations of God. They're hypostatic. I
wouldn't necessarily say their forms if you mean do they
come in some form within time and space? Yes? How
is that possible? Because God transcends the logical categories and
he can step into time and space. And every time
somebody says that he can't do that, they're denying the incarnation.
Do they detract from the incarnation if they aren't angelic
special effects? No, They, as the Eastern Fathers consistently argue,
are intimations of the incarnation. They pre signify and prepare
mankind for the incarnation because they are the pre incarnate logos.
They're not angelic holograms. They're worshiped. You can't worship angels
or creatures. You can only worship God. They are worshiped.
They are the logos. There's no question in the Eastern
Fathers about that consistently, so the Theophanes again ahead, Yeah.
Speaker 7: And this is only a problem when you commit to
thistlicity model, since that you since the absolute divine simple
essence cannot enter into to nature and be composed and composite.
And this is really a problem I was trying to
hit on earlier with this kind of tension in the
West between the one and the many.
Speaker 8: Yes, so that's what Jay's talking about. Transcends the logical.
Speaker 7: Uh laws, particularly I mean God's you know, contradicting himself.
But there's a part of logic that's uncreated and then
created within you know, the human symbols. Obviously, Aristotle develops
and what you start to see the development within logic
starting from Aristotle is this kind of tension between the
one and many that plagues Western philosophy. And so then
it becomes well, then how could you know the absolute one,
you know, divine simple essence enter into.
Speaker 6: The world.
Speaker 3: Well, that's not a problem for us is not subject,
he's not subject to the antonomis and the logical contraries,
is what Palema says. Correct, correct, Wu ladd two dollars.
Do the logie have a more real existence than the sensibles.
Sensibles are would all have their own logie. But the
logie are just the archetypes, patterns, principles, predeterminations, and divine
ideas behind the created order. That's all they are. So
they're also thought wills, right. They only relate to the
created world. They're not identical to the essential eternal attributes
of God. They only relate to the created order. They
are uncreated, they're divine ideas. It is a form of
divine conceptualism. It is a form of exemplarism, but not
the same as the Western view, which sticks them in
the divine essence. Sat Maximus makes them personal, It makes
them relate to the Logos who brings them into being.
Right again, as we heard from doctor Bradshaw, from the
Father through the Son in the spirit, as you've heard
me say consistently, and so the Logos has the role
of bringing them into being. If you want the biblical
sense for this, look at what Paul's talking about Colossians.
The lug doctrine, the Logi doctrine is not some philosophy.
It's in Paul. Paul says that everything came to be,
and it's sustained in being and is being brought to
being by the Logos. So you have the creating of
the creative world on the pattern of the Logi. You
have the sustaining of being to the Logos brought to
perspection in the spirit.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So Father is the initiator, the Son brings them into being.
The Spirit perfects this. This the creation. That's a triadic
mode that I just read from Saint Maximus in the
Questions and doubts that threefold structure of reality, he says,
mirrors the triad. And so I wouldn't say that the
logi have any sort of more real or less real existence.
They're just the patterns, principles, archetypes, predeterminations, divine ideas, thought,
wills of the created order, and God didn't have to
bring them to be so for the number seven or
any other kind of universal or whatever principle or me
or you, there's an individual logi for each one of
those things. Universals also have it logi. But universals are created.
We are created, right, and we're created on the pattern
of uncreated patterns, you see, So hopefully that's helpful. Scandinavian
sunset twenty dollars ninety nine in California Bucks or Canadian Bucks.
Thank you, Thank you for your work. Jay. With the
anaphora of Adi and Mari, I guess you're talking to
the stream that we did with David, where we talked
about the David the real metright, some of the problems
in the uniate system where they will do they will
reference Nestorian and these kinds of anaphras which don't really
make sense. So yeah, that's probably I guess that's what
you're talking about Scandinavian sunset. I'm not sure, Nicodemus the
pharisee two dollars. Due created energies exist before they began.
They didn't have a beginning. They are uncreated, right, So
uncreated things are not the logie, do not exist. They're
always in the mind of God, but they're not brought
into reality unless God decides to create.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: So this is the point, is that God can have
all kinds of ideas that he doesn't bring into actuality.
That's not really possible in the Roman Catholic scheme you
see on the basis of their doctrine of divine ideas.
So I don't think it makes sense to talk about
uncreated energies existing before they began or begin. It's a
nonsense question, because did the incarnation happen before it began?
I mean, that's a retarded question. Email surrec twenty dollars.
Is there an official Orthodox position on the composition of
human nature? Is it bipartit or tripartite? Saint Paul seems
to be clear on the matter. Saint John Damascus in
many places favor as the former. It's tripartite, but when
you understand that the news is actually the integration of
the mind into the heart. The news, it's not a
third thing on top of it's the mind being reintegrated
into the heart. So the mental, intellectual faculty and the
heart are just different aspects of the soul. So John
Damascus does mention the news. In fact, he's not a
So that's how you reconcile these two positions, because there's
the news, is the mind functioning in unison and synergy
with the heart, So it's not a third other thing,
you see. So that's how those two positions are reconciled.
And John Demascus does mention the news, but he mentions
it as the intellect. But the intellect in terms of
the way Saint Gregor Palomas conceives of is that the
intellect is reintegrated into the heart. You see, this is
something that happens after the fall. I would say that
if you read the Saint Justin Popovich s on Isaac
the Syrian, his theory of Knowledge, where he talks about
the Logi and the noose, that will resolve this question.
But good question. I've had that same We had that
question in the discord actually the other day Lewis raised
it justin s Dan ten dollars, catching the tail end
of this off topic. Can you speak on the life
confession before baptism. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 5: I think, well, it's not a universal practice in the church,
but I went through a life confession. It's essentially just
so it's it's for those of you that don't know
anything about this, because do you.
Speaker 3: Mean where you confess all your life, all your sins.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you confessed like you do, like a broad confession
of your sins in your life, but you don't receive
like sacramental absolution because the baptism is the you knowchnical absolution.
So it's just kind of a it's just kind of
the motions of repentance.
Speaker 8: It's not like I did.
Speaker 7: I did as a one before ordination too, not that
that's a universal thing to do, but my priest wanted
me to so once before baptism and once before ordination,
just to clean out all the cob webs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 5: It's just it's just kind of a recapitulation.
Speaker 6: In a sense. I guess.
Speaker 3: That's good gen Z philosophy. Two dollars. He says, uh, oh,
justin Sam says, Catholic friends are confused on why I
would have to do that. When I joined the Catholic Church,
we did that. We did a full on lifetime quote confession.
Speaker 8: So and by the way, we are Catholic, you mean
Roman Catholic?
Speaker 3: Ye workout exactly.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 5: I also wouldn't use the Catholic mode of reception of
converts or baptism as like a standard either, because I
don't know as far as I'm aware that a lot
of stuff is and a few things have been cut
out that are in the Byzantine right down in the
Catholic right.
Speaker 3: Gen Z philosophy two dollars did the human image?
Speaker 9: Yeah, go ahead, Hell, where's we have a big fifty dollars?
Oh yeah, well, I'm super chat.
Speaker 8: We can't we can't leave.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Yeah, So they didn't say anything. It says
warm soda fifty dollars. My bad. So I didn't see okay,
I didn't see any text as well.
Speaker 8: Just a big big thank you to absolutely Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3: So much Warm Soda. Much appreciate it, and I'm sorry
for overlooking that. Gen Z philosophy two dollars to the
human image of Jesus appear in the Old Testament. No,
because Christ was not incarnate as a human yet. So mankind,
I think you could argue, many fathers say, is in
a sense made in the image of the Logos. There
is a triadic aspect to mankind's creation. Sat Maximus says this,
So in a way you could see the creation of
Adam as intimating the incarnation. But Jesus did not have
a human nature yet, because he took that from Adam.
So I don't think there would be any sense in
saying that Jesus had a human image when he appeared
as the Logos. Those were Theophanes. Theophanes are somewhat mysterious,
but yet nevertheless they occurred, and we believe it on
the basis of revelation. So when the Logos appeared within
time and space, he wrestled with with Jacob. Right, So
how'd that happened, I don't know, but it did.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So Nicodemus, a pharisee two dollars, was Christ's created body
worshiped by the magi. This is solved by Saint Cyril
of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus, which is that
we worship the whole Christ with one worship. So the
whole Christ hypostatically unite it both natures is worshiped in
the incarnation. We don't separate the worship or adoration of Christ.
Speaker 9: That would be to fall like Nestorius. Yeah, that would
be to be anus orient correct.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because we do believe in a kind of mea physis.
Speaker 5: Correctly, as if you watch the real Medwife. He goes
into this real depth. The natures are only distinguished after
the nature, after the union in the in the mind,
in the mind right. But what we what we interact
with an experience, is the whole Christ.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and St. Cyril makes this argument on the
basis of the Eucharist uh in against Mystorias. He says,
are you eating the flesh of just a dude or
are you partaking of the body of the god Man
and therefore the uncreated energies of the god Man that
have been transferred to the human nature and thus the Eucharist.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Roman Catholics, you don't eat the essence of God,
all right? So anything anybody want to leave us with,
be sure and subscribe to Father, Deacon doctor Ananias, be
sure and get your copy of Aerosol East and West.
It's a really crucial text on this issue. Anything you
guys want to leave us with failure, I said, be
sure to subscribe to Father Diagon doctor Ananias. Is there
anything that you guys want to want to leave us with?
And I'll put your channel in the in the description.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 6: Let me know, guys if.
Speaker 7: You want me to do the third lecture series of
the Logic of course this upcoming week. I didn't want
to stress everybody out with too much too fast, and
blessed Lan, make sure you keep upers for everybody. Think
of others instead of yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you're when you're smashing people over the head
to get the toilet paper in the cost code, be
sure to think of others.
Speaker 8: And when you do, think about the arguments that we
just did in this video and let the people know.
Speaker 3: All right, everybody, have a good night, God bless thank
you very Lloch stupid. Yes we've got one more from
gen Z philosophy. He says, thank you for the answer.
Here are some super jaggles, uh, blessed Lint and thank
you much appreciated. All right, everybody have a good night.
Speaker 8: Thank you, blessing Night
Speaker 3: All right, that was based