Loudovikos, Being and Essence. Reciprocal Logoi and Energies in Maximus The Confessor and Thomas Aquinas

Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
Being and Essence Revisited: Reciprocal Logoi and Energies in Maximus the Confessor and
Thomas Aquinas, and the Genesis of the Self-referring Subject
Author(s): NIKOLAOS LOUDOVIKOS
Source: Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, T. 72, Fasc. 1, Teísmos: Aportações Filosóficas do
Leste e Oeste / Theisms: Philosophical Contributions from the East to the West (2016), pp.
117-146
Published by: Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/43816277
Accessed: 15-08-2016 20:08 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
This content downloaded from 134.48.244.176 on Mon, 15 Aug 2016 20:08:00 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Revista Portuguesa de Filosofía, 2016, Vol. 72 (1), pp. 1 17-146.
© 2016 by Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia. All rights reserved.
DOI 10.1 7990/RPF/20 1 6_72_ 1 _0 1 1 7
Being and Essence Revisited: Reciprocal Logoi and Energies

in Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas,
and the Genesis of the Self-referring Subject
NIKOLAOS LOUDOVIKOS*
Abstract
This essay is a contribution to the discussion of a possibility of complementarity between

Maximus and Thomas, given that they are different but not necessarily hostile to each other.
For Maximus, logoi of God are clearly conceived of as acts of His own will, as an existenti
and not formal essential expression , through which he can create an uncreated relationshi
with every creature without losing His transcendentality, where logos becomes relationshi
a reality of love begging for reciprocity, and thus unavoidably moving on through proposa
and gifts asking for response, an uncreated-created syn-energy; something that remains tr
even in the deepest degree of perichoresis of creation by God , since without a created logic
response, the very reality of logos as proposal, invitation for reciprocity, skhesis (relation with
would be finally annihilated. On the other hand, in Thomas the ideas represent a differen
type of Gods self-understanding, regarding the possibility of an imitative participation i
a likeness of the divine essence on the part of the creatures, but this position, though no
wrong, does not seem to clearly initiate any sort of really reciprocal relationship of God with
a real otherness outside Him. This creates the context of a new theological and philosophica
discussion of the Gilsonian/Thomist distinction between being/existence and essence.
Keywords : A. Levy, being, C. Kappes, D. Bradshaw, energies, essence, Gregory Palamas, J

Goff, logoi, Maximus the Confessor, synergy, Thomas Aquinas, T. Giltner
Riou s Le Monde et V Eglise selon Maxime le Confesseur, 1 proposed

Forty Riou the works yearsofs Maximus
the works Le Mondetheof Confessor
have Maximus passed etAquinas
and Thomas V Egliseas thethe since Confessor selon Le Maxime Guillou, and le Thomas in Confesseur, his foreword Aquinas 1 proposed as for the A.
meeting point of Eastern and Western theological traditions. Although, in
order to understand Le Guillous proposal, we have to bear in mind that
* Professor of Dogmatics and Philosophy at the University Ecclesiastical Academy of

Thessaloniki.
E-mail: [email protected]
1. Riou, A. - Le Monde et l' Eglise selon Maxime le Confesseur. Paris: Beauchesne, 1973.
117-146
1 1 8 Nikolaos Loudovikos
for him, as for so many Eastern and Western theologians before and after
him, the underlying problem has rather been the impasse of any effort of
evaluating Palamite theology in light of Aquinatian thought, such claims
have fruitfully promoted the Maximian studies over the last decades,
though Maximus has been very rarely really compared with Aquinas.
Truly, it seems unthinkable for Western theologians not to conclude any
evaluation of Eastern theology with a sort of comparison, or confron-
tation, or, very recently, even equation of Palamas with Aquinas, but it
is also true that this cannot legitimately happen without checking the
formers tradition. Thus, Maximus the Confessor has to be read not only
per se, but also as a possible spiritual father of Gregory Palamas, since
the latter frequently refers to the formers work. Has Palamas properly
understood Maximus?
There is at least one recent work, which really tries to substantiate the
convergences between Maximus and Palamas, on the one hand, and the
divergences between Maximus and Thomas, on the other, while it also tries
not to separate them on the dogmatic field. This is Antoine Lévy s book, Le
Créé et V Incréé: Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d'Aquin. Aux Sources de la
Querelle Palamienne.2 1 mention this book not because I fully agree with it
-since, as it will become obvious, I have a different proposal to make - but
because it is a serious book, with a noteworthy knowledge of the source
texts and the adjoining discussions, and, above all, with an intention to be
theologically fair. In this book, Palamas is proved to be an honest discipl
of Maximus, as the Orthodox tradition of the medieval and modern period
alike believed him to be. No longer thought of as a theological monster
coming from nowhere, Palamas can be then compared, through Maximus
with Aquinas, without obsessive contestation. Thus, according to the
author, in the ontological field, what matters for Maximus (and Palamas,
who follows him, as well) is the external diffusion and operation of the
uncreated logoi/energies, something that the author calls ktizocentrism,
while what counts more for Thomas is the original unity of those logoi/
energies in the divine essence, something that is called ktistocentrism .3 In
the Christological field, what we have in Maximus (and also in Palamas) is
rather a divinizing synergy between divine and human energies in Christ,
while in Aquinas, as this divinizing energy is identified with essence, all
2. Lévy, Antoine - Le Créé et V Incréé : Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d' Aquin. Aux
Sources de la Querelle Palamienne. Paris: Libraire Philosophique Vrin, 2006.
3. Lévy, pp. 298-304.
Vol. 72
Fasci 0 RPF 2016
Being and Essence Revisited 1 19
the activity of grace is unfolded, as natural or supernatural, in the form

of a created grace.4 For Levy, all the above mean that there simply exists a
difference of perspective between Maximus and Palamas on the one side,
and Aquinas on the other, and not a deep dogmatic difference. Although
this is a legitimate conclusion, which manages to prelude (along with J.
Lison s and some others' research) the emergence of a modern generation
of scholars who have already overcome the sterile confessionalism of the
past, we must carry on the discussion in order to see if there is any possi-
bility of complementarity between Maximus and Thomas, given that they
are different but not necessarily hostile to each other.
Concerning Maximus, the Difficulty 7 in the Ambigua is, as it is well

known, a good point to start our reflection on the nature of the divine
logoi of beings.5 My purpose here is not of course to examine at length
this valuable doctrine, but only to make some important claims in order to
initiate our discussion on what I consider to be the main points of conver-
gence and divergence between Maximus and Thomas.
In this text, we learn a number of things concerning the nature and
function of the logoi.6 We first learn that these divine logoi are assumed
in the hypostasis of the one Logos/Son of God the Father, and He carries
them, since He is the one who brings forth the divine will of the Father in
the Spirit ad extra. Thus, "He (the divine Logos) held the logoi of all things
which subsisted before the ages, and by His gracious will brought the
visible and invisible creation into existence out of nothing in accordance
with these logoi; by word (logos) He made, and continues to make, all
things at the proper time, universais as well as particulars". What is thus
eminently important here is that the divine logoi are divine wills moving
ad extra. Maximus explicitly writes that "as to what I have called logoi,
St. Dionysius the Areopagite teaches us that in Scripture they are called
predeterminations and divine wills. Similarly the circle of Pantaenus, who
became the teacher of the great Clement of Alexandria, says that Scripture
likes to call them divine wills".7
4. Lévy, pp. 422-424.

5. PG 91, 1068D-1 101C.
6. See especially 1077C-1080A.
7. 1085AB.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
120 Nikolaos Loudovikos
I have two things to stress here: first, that these logoi of God are
clearly conceived by Maximus as "acts of His own will and we add a good
reason for this: if He has made everything by an act of will (and there will
be no contradiction of that), and it is pious and just always to say that God
knows His own will, and He has made each entity willingly, then it follows
that God knows entities as acts/energies of His own will, because He has
made things willingly".8 By absolutely connecting logoi with divine will
and divine acts ad extra, of God the Father through the Logos-Son by the
Spirit, Maximus shows that through those logoi/wills/energies God creates
a real relationship with beings created by Him, out of nothing, i.e. outside
Him.
The second point is that for God this relationship cannot be identified
with His essence, in any sense, Thomist or not. Those acts/logoi/wills are
called by Maximus,
works (épya) of God without beginning in time, in which beings participate in

by grace; such works are the goodness along with everything that is contained
in its logos. And simply (such works are) every sort of life and immortality
and simplicity and unchangedness and infinity, and all that is contemplated
around His essence ; which are God's works without beginning in time.9
This, of course, does not mean that these works can be somehow
ontologically separated from Gods essence, and, consequently, they cannot
be separately ontologized and conceived as separate beings between God
and creation as they belong to Gods very being. And in order to leave
no "Thomist" question unanswered, he makes absolutely clear in the very
next paragraph that,
of all beings which are participated in or participating in, God is infinite

times infinitely above. Because everything that has a divine logos of being
behind it, is a work of God, whether it started existing in time, or it is infused
as a natural power in beings, thus praising loudly God who exists in every-
thing.10
8. 1085AB.
9. My italics. Cap. Th. et Econ. I, 48, PG 90, 1 100 CD. It is no

Palamas repeats exactly the same phrases in order to char
energies in Antirrhet. B, (ed. 1981: vol. 5, pp. 248, 260, 486).
10. 1,49, 1101A.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 0 RPF 2016
Being and Essence Revisited 121
Because, as Maximus boldly continues, God is above all of His eternal

(such as immortality, life, sanctity, virtue, being), or temporal works, "of
which the temporal ones participate in the eternal and they draw their
names on these."11
We thus see that Maximus does not hesitate to make a distinction
without any sort of ontological separation between the essence of God
and His (always equally uncreated) logoi that are His will acting outside
Himself. In Maximus (as well as in Palamas many centuries after him),
this distinction, precisely because of its ultimately existential character
cannot be clearly translated into logico-metaphysical terms of an auton-
omous natural theology with its subsequent metaphysics, and be called
for example "formal", (in the Scotist logico-metaphysical sense of the
existence of more than one form of a subject, e.g. of Gods essence and its
energies); this happens not only because uncreated essence and uncreated
logoi/energies co-exist without any ontological, or typical, or virtual sepa-
ration (a^copioTcoç), but mainly because it is impossible to see logoi "around
essence" and essence as two or more logical 'forms' of divine being, because
they are, in this sense, totally and numerically one, as it is impossible to
conceive of the existence and the attitude of any personal subject as two
or three, united or not, forms of its being - unless he is neurotic! The same
is seen, for example, in Palamas' treatise, On divine Energies , 28. (This
why neither Maximus, nor John Damascene, or Palamas, ever used a term
equivalent to the Scotist "formal distinction"). And, of course, Maximus
is the author who also claimed, when interpreting the Areopagite, in a
'Thomisť way, that divine being is "because He (God) is intellect, then
indeed He thinks of entities inasmuch as He is. And if He thinks of entities
in the process of thinking of Himself, then He is those entities."12 For
Maximus, as later on for Palamas, the divine essential manifestation ad
extra, just expresses a deep unfathomable ocean of divine being behind
it - no uncreated (or even created) logical being can ever exhaustively
express his self in an act of absolute kenosis ad extra, yet God gives wholly
and absolutely from his own being to the creatures, without any need of
formal distinctions.13 Furthermore, the fact that, according to Maximus,
God is beings, does not mean either that created beings enter the divine
essence, or that the divine logoi are both created and uncreated. As it is
11. /, 50, 1 101 AB.

12. PG 4, 324A, 325AB, 353B.
13. See Appendix 2 below.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
made absolutely clear by Maximus, created beings have their existence

only through participation in the uncreated logoi/wills/acts "around God"
- that means in a God willing, loving and acting in a real relationship
outside of Himself. We shall say more concerning the precise meaning of
this expression below.
Let us now come to those Maximian texts that explicitly connect
logoi with energies, in order to reflect upon the ultimate nature of this
relationship of God with creation.
thus when the mind apprehends the logoi in things in a natural manner,
contemplating the energies of God in the infinitude of those logoi, it reckons
that there are many - or, truth to tell, infinite - variations of the divine energies
it apprehends. And it will most likely find its power feeble and its method of
searching for knowledge useless before Him who indeed is true, being unable
to understand how God who is in truth no one of the things that exist, and
properly speaking is everything and is beyond everything, is in every logos
of each thing separately, and in all the logoi of all things taken together. If
therefore it is true to say that every divine energy indicates through itself
God, whole and undivided, [as present] in every [creature], in accordance
with the logos of its own particular existence - in that case, who is able to
understand and express precisely how God in His entirety is undividedly and
indivisibly present in all things in common, and in each entity in a way that
is particular, being neither subject to a variety of distinctions in line with
the infinite variations in the things in which He is present, nor compressed
into the individual existence of each one; nor yet does He compress the diffe-
rences between things into one unitary totality of all things, but He is truly
all things in all things, never abandoning His own indivisible simplicity?14
I have two points to make here: first, the logos, as we see in the
text, creates a unique presence of God within each one of the creatures,
a presence which is expressed ("indicated") through a divine energy
which makes God "whole and undivided" to appear in the depth of
each creature. Thus, what we "contemplate" in the depth of each logos/
presence is a divine energy, forming this presence, (and, in a second step,
as a syn-energy with the created energies of beings, as we shall see below).
This absolute ontological connection/identification between divine
essence ( God whole and undivided, according to the above text), and logoi
and energies (logos is exclusively manifested as energy), primarily means
here that energies, manifesting divine essence ad extra, are not a sort of
14. Ambigua, 1257AB.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
automatic emanation from Gods essence but personal, logical acts/wills of

communication, deriving precisely from an uncreated loving hypostatic
essence, who creates firm, real and permanent relationships with an
otherness created by Him outside Him, and this is the second point that
I want to make. Through this logos/energy God can "be everything and
beyond everything", i.e. He can create an uncreated relationship with every
creature without losing His transcendentality. Let us not forget that one
of the most important semantic nuances of the term logos in Greek is
relationship, and so what we ultimately describe through this word is
a reality of love begging for reciprocity, and thus unavoidably moving on
through proposals and gifts asking for response, or what we have already
called syn-energy, something that remains true even in the deepest degree
of perichoresis of creation by God .Without a created logical response, the
very reality of logos as proposal, invitation for reciprocity, skhesis ( relation
with), would be finally annihilated. And here we come to a very crucial
point concerning our comparison between Maximus and Thomas. As we
shall see below, for Thomas any relation between God and creatures can
only be created, while for Maximus this relationship is decidedly by grace
uncreated, through a perichoresis of divine and human logos/energy, in a
process of a reciprocal exchange of gifts. Let me substantiate this decisive
position, through the reading of four different texts:
1. When describing the ontology of divinization Maximus writes
that this happens when "only God acts (evepyei), so as there exists only
one energy, that of God and of those who are worthy of God, or better,
only of God, as the whole of Him, according to His goodness, has made
a perichoresis of those worthy of Him in their existential wholeness."15
This perichoresis did not happen after an abolition of the "autexousion"
(the self-determination) but rather as an ex%ápi]<nç yvcofiixr¡, a self-offering
through a personal choice, on the part of the creature, since the icon really
wants to ascent towards its archetype and does not will to move toward
any other direction, since it "has been engaged in the divine energy (coç
T7]ç Qeíaç 67T81 'y'[l[lívy'<; evepyeiaç) and so it has become God through this divini-
zation". It is thus clear that here we have two wills and two acts/energies
in relation, one created and the other uncreated, and the final outcome is,
by grace and not by nature, only one uncreated relationship/energy, only
in the sense that the created will/energy has been engaged (and of course
not essentially identified with) with the uncreated divine will/energy. This
15. Amb. 1076BC.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
results to a deeply dialogical syn-ergy/syn-energy, where the created logos,

as will and energy, responds in the affirmative to the divine uncreated call
out of love and finally there happens what Maximus in his Mystagogy calls
the "heavenly marriage" of the two.
2. The term that Maximus uses in order to describe the possibility
of an ontological change of nature, without losing its logos of being, i.e.
its ontological identity, is the tropos hyparxeos (mode of existence). This
permits Maximus to explain the kind of relationship that, as he asserts,
exists between God and created natures. Thus, a personal created nature
can change through his participation in God not his logos (since that would
be a sort of ontological absorption) but his mode of existence, when for
example he is engaged in divine energies through his own created energy
and, finally, to become innovated/deified by "acting or being acted upon
above his statute."16 We have another witness here that through changing
its mode of existence a created being can not only be acted upon but also
act in and through the divine energy, not of course according to its created
nature, but in grace - man can become God not cfwo-ei but Géaei, and this is
why, of course, though he is in God, he is not able to understand God's
nature.
3. For Maximus "the perfect work of love and the fulfilme

activity is to make the attributes and the names of those who
by it to belong to one another. Thus it makes man God and ma
appear as a man, because of the one and identical agreement o
movement of the two.",7It is obvious that, in the Christological f
this exchange of attitudes, this deep "dia-logos" of the two wills/e
Christ, forms the one "theandric" energy of Him. What interests
is that in this Chalcedonian Christ, according to Maximus, we do n
just a passive submission of human will/energy to the divine, but
rocal dialogical opening out of love - we do not have a one-sided
but a syn-e(ne)rgetic perichoresis of the two, out of mutual love.
4. In another text Maximus speaks of an "exchange of dis
between man and God - the former becomes philotheos and th
philanthropos - and thus man is called God through grace, wh
called man through his consent to man.18 In the same Amb. 7, th
goal of divinization for a creature is to "aquire the quality of the
16. Amb. 1341D.

17. Amb. 134 ID.
18. Amb. 1084C.
Vol. 72 -
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
includes it" (i. e. God, 1073D), but this does not mean any abolition of the
autexousion, the self-determination, but its "steady and unshakable reso-
lution" (Gácric; 7rayía Kai a^eraSeroę, 1076BC), in order to finally have "only one
energy, that of God, and of the saints of God " (my italics). Once again, for
Maximus, any sort of passivity or suffering the divine energy on the part of
the creatures is simply unthinkable; creatures find their real and eternal
identity in their participation in God, and not simply, in a passive way, his
energy, as Levy s Thomist account of Maximus would have us think.19
Thus all the above texts mean that, first, the relationship between God
and creation is real and permanent, not only for creation but also for God
Himself- otherwise we could not have invitation for dialogue, proposal,
energetic relationship, or, in a word, divine logos', and, second, that,
consequently, this relationship means that God indwells creation indeed,
through his uncreated wills/logoi expressed via his uncreated energies,
by transforming the mode of existence of created beings in dialogue/ synergy
with their logoi/wills/energies into uncreated, through his own graced wills/
logoi/ene rgies, without the created beings losing their essential creat-
edness. Because of the Maximian distinction between essence and logoi/
wills/energies, this participation does not imply that divine essence is
flooded by the created beings, while, at the same time, it is precisely with
this divine essence that the creatures come into communion - this is why
Maximus calls the logoi "existential ways toward God."20
19. Lévy, see, p. 179-1 83. The author here reads the text Ad Thalassium 2,269D-27 1C, but
in that text Maximus clearly connects the energeia of the divine Providence with the
synergetic "movement of the particular beings towards the well-being", which he
characterizes as avSaíperoç, not in the bad sense of the arbitrary, as the word is translated
in the modern Western dictionaries, but in the ancient and not necessarily bad sense
of self-choice (avro-ctípea-K;) . By reading the word in the former sense, Levy concludes
that divine energy pushes forcefully the poor created motions/energies, beyond
their arbitrariness, towards itself as goal of any actuality. The distance between this
"Thomist" understanding of "participation as energetic causality", according to L., and
the Maximian understanding of participation as dialogical synergy, is enormous, as we
shall see, while Lavers that the two views are identical (p. 299). The divine call does not
mainly serve God 's Selbstbehauptung, but gives creatures an eschatological free, active
and creative self; it is through this reciprocity that participation is achieved.
20. See my Eucharìstic Ontology: Maximus the Confessors Eschatological Ontology of Being
as Dialogical Reciprocity, Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010, pp. 84-
88. Note that for Levy, it is completely impossible for any creature to overcome its
createdness, even if it enters the sphere of divine participation through its created
energy, which thus becomes "supernatural", but not by grace uncreated, as this
happens for Maximus (pp.182, 194ff).
v°'- 72
Fasci Q RPF 2016
This transformation takes place pre- eminently in the Eucharist, thus

forming a Eucharistie ontology of dialogical reciprocity , title of my above
mentioned book. But, there is also a Eucharistie gnosiology, precisely
in the perspective of this Eucharistie ontology. This happens because
dialogue is a fundamental common presupposition not only for ontology
but also for gnosiology, since these two are deeply interwoven . It is
impossible to acquire any sort of divine knowledge unless God becomes
a "God-for-the-world" and man "a man-of-God," primarily in the person
of Christ. In this case, man contemplates in Christ, by the Spirit, the deep
meaning of created things as a circulation of gifts (divine logoi which
give existence and life and created logoi which are given back and thus
become sanctified by getting transformed in the energies expressing the
divine logoi). In a further perspective, human mind, in Christ, co-creates
the deep divine and human meaning of beings in dialogical synergy with
God, and this is perpetuated in the Church, through the eucharistically
inspired act of contemplating beings as divine words and calls and inter-
preting them through human meanings and acts. But it is in Christ, i.e. in
the transforming grace of the Spirit, who makes created knowledge into
uncreated in grace, that is in the only known possibility of having human
works, words and wills, hypostatically engaged in the divine works, words
and wills.
So, for Maximus spiritual knowledge is dialogical and that means
Eucharistie; what we see is what we participate in: Gods eternally dialo-
gical mode of existence (which, in the Trinity, is called homoousion) trans-
mitted to the world in Christ. We can know God only because he really
ontologically relates himself to the world in Christ, and he really trans-
forms human created logoi and energies into his uncreated logoi/energies,
by grace, i.e. in the Spirit.
For Aquinas, "it is necessary to suppose ideas in the divine mind. For
the Greek word 'idea' is in Latin 'forma'. Hence by ideas are understood
forms of things existing apart from the things themselves". Thus, either as
a type of that which is called the form, or as a principle of knowledge, and
because "the world was not generated by chance, but by God acting by His
intellect (...) there must exist in the divine mind a form to the likeness of
Vol. 72
Fasc i Q RPF 2016
which the world was made. And in this the notion of an idea consists."21
But this further means that, "God is the similitude of all things according
to His essence; therefore an idea in God is identical with His essence/'22
But then, in what sense can we conceive of those ideas that cannot be
distinguished from divine essence? Thomas s answer is as follows: "hence
many ideas exist in the divine mind, as things understood by it; as can
be proved thus. Inasmuch as He knows His own essence perfectly, He
knows it according to every mode in which it can be known. Now it can
be known not only as it is in itself, but, also, as it can be participated in by
creatures according to some degree of likeness. But every creature has its
own proper species, according to which it participates in some degree in
likeness to the divine essence. So far, therefore, as God knows His essence
as capable of such imitation by any creature, He knows it as the particular
type and idea of that creature; and in like manner as regards other crea-
tures. So it is clear that God understands many particular types of things
and these are many ideas".23
If ideas are the closest Aquinatian equivalent to the Maximian logoi,
it is immediately clear that with texts like the text above, we are presented
with a rather different understanding of the nature and the function of
those logoi/ideas. The ideas here simply represent a different type of Gods
self-understanding, regarding the possibility of an imitative participation
in a likeness of the divine essence on the part of the creatures, and they do
not seem to clearly initiate any sort of real relationship of God with a real
otherness outside Him. For the reader of Thomas, this is not of course a
surprise, as for this author God cannot be the being of things "for if He is
the being of all things, He is part of all things, but not over them"24 - while
Maximus does not hesitate to assert precisely the opposite, by calling God
"sense" and "mind" and "life", and "being" of all existent things, while in
himself he is absolutely above any being. Thus for Thomas, "God knows
other things as seen in His essence",25 precisely because "Gods will is His
essence".26 But if the Thomist will of God is absolutely identified with
Gods essence, opposite to the Maximian distinction-in-identity between
21. Aquinas - The Summa Theologica. (translated by Fathers of the English Dominican
Province) New York: Benziger Bros, 1947, I, 15, 1, ans.
22. op. cit. repl. to obj. 3
23. STh, I, 15, 2, ans.
24. Aquinas - Summa contra Gentiles. Book I (transi, by Anton C. Pegis), I, 26, 8.
25. ScG, I, 49, 5.
26. ScG, I, 73, 3.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
essence and will in God, then "God wills His own being and His own good-
ness"27 necessarily, and "He wills Himself as the end, and other things as
what is for the sake of the end".28 As a consequence, "Gods action is His
essence",29 and thus Gods act does not create any real relation outside
Him. As Thomas explicitly writes, "these relations in question have no real
being in God".30 Even "beatitude is a created thing in beatified creatures
but in God, even in this way it is an uncreated thing".31 As it is further
explained, in the third part of the Summa, 32 every relation between God
and the creature really exists only in the creature, as coming from the
change which affects the creature, but this does not exist really in God,
existing only already in (His) reason. But then, even the union between
God and creation, Aquinas maintains, does not have "a real existence
in God"; it is present in Him only by reason. On the contrary, this rela-
tionship really exists in human being exactly because this being is created
- therefore we can say that this relation of union is something created.
What is somehow odd for an Orthodox reader is that Thomas
describes this kind of created relationship of the creature with
a non real one, on the part of God: "therefore there is no real r
in God to the creature, whereas in creatures there is a real relatio
to God; because creatures are contained under the divine order, and
their very nature entails dependence on God".33 Even if this relationship
on the part of the creature is sometimes called supernatural, this does
never mean uncreated.34 It is not paradoxical then that, even concerning
Christ, Thomas thinks that His soul needs a created grace in order to get
in contact with His divine nature.35
Though Thomas' idea of the unity of all in God, along with the
ontological unity of divine ideas, energies and wills, with divine essence,
(the "ktistocentic" aspect, in Lévy s terminology) is familiar not only to
the ancient , but also to the modern Eastern theological ear, starting
with Gregory Palamas and ending with George-Gennadios Scholarios,
27. ScG, I, 80, 2.

28. ScG, I, 88, 4.
29. ScG, 87, 4.
30. ScG, II, 12, 3; Levy, p. 218.
31. STh, I, 26, 3, ans.
32. STh, III, 2, 7.
33. STh, I, 28, 1, r. to obj. 3. On this point, see the Appendix 1 to this essay.
34. Lévy, p. 218.
35. De Veritate, q. 29, a. 1, c.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
the consequences derived from this unity, concerning the ontological

articulation of the reality of creaturely participation, are indeed, for an
Orthodox, inadequate. Levy's book is valuable precisely because of its
realistic understanding of this great difference between Maximus and
Thomas (as well as of the faithfulness of Gregory Palamas to Maximus),
though the author tries to minimize the difference, by claiming that it is
without significance on the level of dogma. However, the difficulty for me
is to show how a possible reconciliation can be articulated, given that,
in Thomas, biblical inspiration often seems to be too easily adapted to a
non-Christian philosophical metaphysics of participation. On the other
hand, it is true that Thomas is right both theologically and philosophically,
when he so intensively stresses Gods absolute unity and transcenden-
tality. As I have claimed elsewhere, we can even find a convincing effort to
overcome Aristotelian metaphysics in the Aquinatian work.36 What makes
me sympathetic to some modern Thomists, (such as Milbank, Pickstock,
Williams and others), is precisely that they are moved by a passion for
deep and real participation in God, and they read Aquinas in that way,
stressing precisely the absolute unity of ideas, will, energies with divine
essence, since it is exactly this unity of creatures in God that seems to
them as the only safe way of participating in him, and not in beings or
creatures that lie between God and creation.
Thus it is only in favour of their theological aspirations that I come
to propose that Thomas has to be complemented by Maximus, precisely in
order to express better what he already wanted to ultimately express - for
it seems to me that Thomas, starting from a theo-logic persuasion, of phil-
osophical rather than of theological inspiration, he finally switched to it
possible existential theological consequences, even sometimes suspending
his initial onto-theo-logical conviction, as I have extensively claimed in my
"Striving for Participation ..." above. This happens when Aquinas asserts
for example, that "God is in all things not, indeed, as part of their essence
or as an accident but as an agent [...] who acts immediately and touches
it by its power [...]. The mover and the moved must be joined together
[...]. But it belongs to the great power of God that he acts immediately in all
things"?1 as "God is in all things by his power, as all things are subject to his
36. See my "Striving for Participation: Palamite Analogy as Dialogical Syn-ernergy and
Thomist Analogy as Emanational Similitude", In: Athanasopoulos, C. and Schneider,
C. (eds.) - Divine Essence and Divine Energies. Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence
of God in Eastern Orthodoxy. Cambridge: J. Clarke, 2013, pp 122-148.
37. STh, I, 8, 1.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 0 RPF 2016
power "38 (my italics). By so clearly defining power as the principle of acting
upon another, Thomas is able to write that "without Gods action all things
would be reduced to nothing".39 What is this divine essential power (since
in both ScG and STh divine power is identified with divine essence), which
acts immediately in all things, i.e. ad extra, and touches them directly,
and it is God himself who acts through it, thus existing in all things, and
making all things subject to him through it? Gregory Palamas or Maximus
the Confessor could have written the above texts, as they perfectly describe
their definition of divine essential power/action/energy. Most importantly,
the above texts could be perfectly match with Thomas' new understanding
of divine will in STh I, 19, 1-12: "God wills both himself to be, and other
things to be; but himself as the end, and other things as ordained to that
end; inasmuch as it befits the divine goodness that other things should be
partakers therein". Thus "it pertains therefore to the nature of the will to
communicate as far as possible to others the good possessed " (my italics).
What will? Not the "necessary will of God (God wills his own goodness)",
but his "unnecessary will" concerning things ad extra. It is obvious that
here we have a clear distinction between essence-energies, or essence-will,
very close to that of Maximus or Palamas and the Greek Fathers in general,
something that seems unthinkable in ScG. The divine power/action is now,
on the one hand, identical to the essence/substance (onto-theo-logically),
but, on the other hand, it acts outside it, without any ontological danger of
any possible elimination of God s being or its simplicity. It is also clear that
this divine power/action has to be, of course, uncreated, as it is totally iden-
tical with divine essence - but at the same time it touches created beings
without this action being changed into created! A fully "Maximian" (if you
do not dare to say "Palamite") Thomas thus emerges. Thus, to use Lévy s
terms, the Aquinatian philosophico-theological "ktistocentrism" leads
to an existential/theological impasse, if it is not complemented with the
Maximian "ktizocentrism". On the other hand, no one can seriously claim
that the Maximian supposed "ktizocentrism" lacks "ktistocentrism"...
38. STh, I, 8, 3.
39. STh, I, 9, 2.
Vol. 72
Fasci Q RPF 2016
Being and Essence Revisited 1 3 1
II
In 1 948 Etienne Gilson published in French L' Etre et V Essence, which,

one year later was published in English in a considerably different form,
under the title Being and some Philosophers .40 In this book he ventures
his Neo-Thomist interpretation of Aquinatian ontology, in dialogue with a
long philosophical tradition, aiming at establishing his understanding of
Thomism as the ultimate answer to the philosophical question of being.
He also undertook this enterprise in some other of his works, and a fertile
discussion followed. In the following section of this paper I shall try to
re-evaluate the aforementioned book and re-open the relevant discussion
in light of what we have established above about the Aquinas/ Maximus
approximation of the research made above.41
Gilsons first preoccupation is to stress the convergences and diver-

gences between Thomas and ancient Greek thought. What is most
important for him is, of course, to show that the 'ontology of essence'
starts already with Plato, and it is hostile to any 'science of becoming';
Gilson finds that the same occurs in Plotinus.42 Aristotle was the first to go
beyond his teacher, searching for existence, i.e. for the concrete being, as
the centre of ontology, though it was impossible for him to find a sufficient
metaphysical explanation for his philosophical intuition. The one who
overcame this metaphysical impasse of both Aristotle and his medieval
Arabian and Christian progeny was Aquinas, who finally realised that the
crucial question for metaphysics is not whether God has created essences
or not, but whether his causality can be extended to their concrete being /
existence, or, in other words, whether or not the act/energy of being/exis-
tence exceeds its essence, which then becomes a 'potentiality' in relation
to that real being/existence. Thus, this ontology of the act of existence
40. The French edition was published by Vrin (Paris); the English translation was
published in Toronto by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
41 . I use here the excellent Greek translation of the 1994 edition of the French book, made
by Th. Samartzis, precisely because it comprises in its notes extensive passages from
the English edition. See Gilson, E. - To On kai e Ousia, (translated by Th. Samartzis)
Herakleion, Athens: University of Crete Press, 2009.
42. The sequence of Gilson quotes taken from Samartzis: pages 137, 138, 142.
Vol. 72 -
Fasc.l ff RPF 2016
becomes, for the first time in history, according to Gilson, the real ontology
of the real being, through the work of Thomas Aquinas.
This of course presupposes, first of all, a new' (but always Aristotelian)
understanding of God, not as a frozen supreme being, but an actus purus,
as a pure esse, i.e. absolute act of being, where being/existence has taken
the place of essence, in other words, where essential potentiality no longer
exists in it.43 Concerning now created beings, esse remains the actus of
essence, as the first act/energy or entelecheia or form of a being - while
operado is the second actus of it.44 Thus the act of the form is the act of
existing, while within created beings we see an act of the absolute divine
esse , confined in the limits of the essence of a certain being. Natural
theology now becomes metaphysics, as an understanding of divine esse
in created beings, an understanding of the influxus Dei, which lies behind
creatures.45
Having made these clarifications, Gilson now moves on toward a
criticism of the loss of existence in both medieval and modern philosophy in
the light of his revolutionary Aquinatian discovery. Already with Avicenna
starts the identification of existence with one attribute of essence, while
with Ockham, and especially with Duns Scotus, essence becomes the rule
and the measure of being, against the Thomist priority of existence over
essence - even in God, according to the latter, his existence is contained
in his being.46 With Scotus, as later on with Suarez, we gradually reach
an autonomous pure ontology, absolutely detached from the metaphysics
of divine esse. Suarez identifies being with essence - when we speak of
essence we speak of being, without any need of a distinct concept of exis-
tence, as an act marking the emergence of a real , concrete being.47
Subsequently, after what he claimed above, Gilson finds the same
oblivion of esse as existence throughout modern philosophy, starting with
Descartes and Spinoza, where no real distinction between essence and
existence in finite being's structure is made;48 the Cartesian-Spinozian-
Leibnizian ontological argument is similar to that of Anselm: God exists
only because of his divine essence. In Wolf, ontology is completely
divorced from theology, and existence is again a secondary complement
43. Gilson, cf. p. 236.

44. Ibidem, pp. 208-210.
45. Ibidem . cf. dd. 217. 243.
46. Ibidem, cf. pp. 255, 265 ff .
47. Ibidem, cf. pp. 289-290.
48. Ibidem, cf. pp. 306ff.
Vol. 72
Fasc.1 Q RPF 2016
of essence, without being necessary for the definition of being - even God
exists because of his essence.49 In Kant, on the other hand, there exists
a feeble existential light, due to his reading of Hume, whose empiricism
claims some rights for real existence, against Wolf. Nonetheless, existence
in Kant is, as happens with Scotus, a simple modus of essence, or, better,
a modality not of a thing , but of a judgment - finally existence is frozen,
as Ding an Sich, beyond human knowledge, as if it does not exist at all.
In Hegel, according to Gilson, being is pure thought, or thought that
takes itself as its object, i.e. pure abstraction and negativity, which finds
the truth of being in non being, and vice versa, to wit, in the unity of being
with non being, which is precisely what we call becoming.50 In Hegel we
have Dasein instead of existence: the being-here of becoming, the unity of
the negative with the positive, or ultimately, the unity of being with phai-
nesthai. In Hegelian terms this finally means that existence is identical
with pure concept. Kierkegaard reacts against this reduction of existence
to a logical system of concepts, precisely because existence always exceeds
concepts. However, according to Gilson, existence in Kierkegaard is still
not the act of existing, but the empirical existence of the Kierkegardian
moment'.51
Gilson s Thomistic proposal is that within the subject who possesses
his essence, one can discern a transcendental act of existing, which parti-
cipates in Gods pure act of existing that contains all those acts, and makes
possible transcendence as an ascent of created being, 'in it and through iť,
according to Gilsons fine expression, to its divine source, the divine act
of existing.52 Thus, from the concept of existence as a simple attribute of
being we reach to a concept of existence as a catalyst and cause of essence,
which gives truth and reality to it.
Perhaps the most important philosophical part of Gilsonian

Neo-Thomism is his criticism of Existentialism. For the French
Neo-Thomist, what in existentialism is pernicious is precisely the
concerning the concept of existence as ecstasis from essence, a
49. Ibidem, cf. pp. 325-328.

50. Ibidem, cf. pp. 365-367.
51. Ibidem, cf. p. 405.
52. Ibidem, p. 277.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
from nature and its meaning - and thus existence-without-essence becomes

nausea, absurdity etc. For Gilson, Existentialism is a 'metaphysical coup
ďetať, which separates essence from existence.53 Existence according to
Heidegger means an ec-stasis from the self, while for Thomas it forms
the very core of the active self. There is much here that can be aligned
with much of the most important theological teaching of Maximus the
Confessor and Gregory Palamas.
What I mean by that is, for example, Maximus' definition of man as
his not only psychosomatic, but also existential wholeness, where also will
and act/energy is comprised,54 as well as Palamas' 'wholistic' account of
the encounter between Man and God, as taking place not only through
mind, but together with any sort of creature, in order for God's image to be
complete.55 But Gilson s 'existentialist' proposal, though it distances itself
from the current Existentialism, was taken to mean precisely a Christian
Existentialism by some Orthodox theologians of that period of time, wh
rushed to present their own Orthodox version of Patristic 'existentialism'.
This sort of 'existentialism' was precisely of the sort that Gilson needed
to deny, in order to establish existentialism 'as it should be', to use his
own words. It separated, to wit, existence/person from essence/nature,
ontologizing them, and considering the former as a true free being and
the latter as a sort of fall/necessity. The first author in whom we find
tendency toward such a separation is, of course Lossky, while John
Meyendorff is the first who followed, by attributing to Palamas a modern
sort of existentialism based upon the alleged priority of person/existenc
upon nature/essence, against Varlaam's 'essentialism'.56 Meyendorffs
argument is founded upon his interpretation of Palamas' Defence of Sain
Hesychasts 111,2, J 2, which reads: 'God, when he was speaking with Moses,
did not say "I am the essence" but "I am that I am" (Exod. 3,14). It is not
therefore He-that-is who comes from the essence, but it is the essence
that comes from He-that-is, for He-that-is embraces in Himself all the
being'. Meyendorff thus produces an existentialist/personalist basis for the
Palamite distinction between essence-energies (a divine person above his
essence turning it into energies); but if, as we can easily conclude from the
53. Ibidem, p. 476.

54. See my Closed Spińtuality and the Meaning of the Self. Athens: Ellinika Grammata,
1999, pp 303f.
55. See my "Striving for participation...", p. 132.
56. See his A Study of Gregory Palamas. New York: St Vladimir's Sem. Press 1998, pp. 212-
213.
Vol. 72
Fasci Q RPF 2016
reading of this treatise, Palamas is here just repeating the Areopagite,57

or/and Gregory Nazianzen,58 then the meaning of the passage is different,
referring only to Gods power of 'giving essence' (ouo-io7roió<; Súvapç) to all
beings, deriving from divine essence.
It is true that the above assertion kindled the spark of the contem-
porary Orthodox personalistic/existentialistic interpretation of the
Patristic tradition, culminating in the work of some Greek personalists
- an interpretation that seems to do the opposite of what the Gilsonian
Thomas does: they decisively separated essence from existence, searching
for 'personal priority' and domination over nature, and losing the very
core of Patristic anthropology
But, against any obsessive existentialist/idealist de-functionalization
of nature, personal otherness means natural otherness and vice versa ,
and any of them is simply inconceivable without the other. Nature does
not mean simply sameness, but personal otherness; between nature and
person, no one is prior or above or possessor of the other, precisely because
it does not really exist without the other. The question then is not just to
assert that they are connected, but mainly to deny any Neo-Platonizing
'spatial' ontological model, using the scheme 'above-under (person/above
versus nature/under, which is the scheme that seems to have replaced the
scheme freedom-necessity in their thought, although the core remains the
same: the absolute ontological degradation of nature) in order to describe
their relationship. For the Greek Fathers nature is an open nature, since
the divine wills/logoi/energies lie behind it, making it an open field of divi-
ne-human dialogue leading to a perspective of an unending divinisation,
and thus it is totally different from the Aristotelian self-existing nature,
which remains closed to itself, even it is fulfilled through the virtues. This
is 'the philosophers' nature', according to Maximus, which can be taken as
dead sameness, while the Patristic nature is an active, living, personal gift
that is only enhypostatic otherness. Nature only personally ('dialogically')
constituted, and/or person only naturally manifested: this is the Patristic
wholistic 'revolution' in ontology, which, by the way, can open new ways
of discussion with philosophy and science today. And this deep inter-
connection between nature and personal otherness is valid even for the
Trinity through the homoousion, which expresses divine nature's 'motion'
57. De Divinis Nominibus, 2,7; PGe, 645a.

58. Oratio 38, PG36,3 1 7B; Oratio 45, PG36,625C.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
within the Trinity, but to say more about this is out of the scope of the
present paper.59
We now reach the most delicate point of our discussion. We have

already said that, by sharply distinguishing, but, at the same time, refusing
to separate essence from existence, Thomism and Gilson himself seem
to be in continuity with the relevant Greek Patristic positions. But there
also exist, as I think, some important divergences. I will make three major
points:
1. For Thomas 'existence is the most perfect of all things, for it is
compared to all things as that by which they are made actual; for nothing
has actuality except in so far that it exists. Hence existence is that which
actuates all things, even their forms. Therefore, it is not compared to
other things as the receiver is to the received; but rather as the received
to the receiver. When therefore I speak of the existence of man, or horse,
or anything else, existence is considered as a formal principle, and as
something received; and not as that which exists'.60 Essence and existence
coincide only in God, and thus things are put in a rigid hierarchy, of
Neo-platonic and Aristotelian provenance, according to the greater
existence/actuality they have by participation, and the lesser potentiality
that is left to them. Thus beings 'are distinct from one another according
to the degree of potency and act, a superior intelligence being closer to the
primary being, having more act and less potency, and so with the others'.61
Human soul possesses more potentiality than other intellectual substances
and so 'a material reality is induced to share its own being' i.e. the body -
and the gradation goes on until we reach 'the primary forms of elements,
which are the closest to matter'.62 What is most important here is not only
the obvious degradation of body and matter, but that each being is defined
through its incompleteness, and this incompleteness is conceived as a
restricted participation in God. In Thomas' words: 'All beings apart from
59. See my "Possession or Wholeness? St Maximus the Confessor and John Zizioulas
on Person, nature and Will", In: Participado, 4, 2013, pp. 258-286, and my "Hell and
Heaven, Nature and Person. C. Yannaras, D. Staniloae, and Maximus the Confessor",
In: International Journal of Orthodox Theology, 5:1 (2014), pp 9-32.
60. STh, 1,4,1.
61. De Ent. et Essent., 4,10, my translation.
62. Ibidem .
Vol- 72
Fasci 0 RPF 2016
God are not their own being, but are beings by participation, Therefore it
must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation in
being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one first being, Who
possesses being more perfectly'.63 Apart from the positive clear identifi-
cation of beings' existence with participation in this passage, it is obvious
that a series of serious questions arise: what we mean by restricted partic-
ipation? Why does such participation have to depend on the limits of the
essence of a certain being? Is, then, in other words, grace an additional gift,
a superadditum? Is it possible to avoid all this separate understanding of
grace, and conceive of it not as an addition, even naturally desired by the
creature, but as a fulfilment of its very natural being, and have, to use Dr
Levy's terms, an approach not only ktistocentńc but also ktizocentric at the
same time? Neither Thomism, nor Neo-Thomism can do this. But it can
be conceived of, as I think, again through Maximus' distinction between
logos-tropos. Through this distinction, Maximus, on the one hand, estab-
lishes the possibility, on the part of God, of an unlimited logical/ener-
getic gift of divine participation forming the very nature of creatures
(logos ousias), already in the order of grace. On the other hand, he makes
this possibility (i.e. the existence) also depending upon creatures' active
free response in this dialogical perspective, making existence real and
decisive for any creature's being ( tropos hyparxeos). Thus, while the 'act
of existence' seems monological for Thomas, it is dialogical for Maximus.
We must repeat here that in Amb. 1, the ultimate goal of divinization is
for the creature to "acquire the quality of the one who includes it" (i.e.,
God, 1073D), and that means an unrestricted gracious perfection through
dialogical syn-energy, since this participation does not mean abolition of
the autexousion, the self-determination, but its "steady and unshakable
resolution" (Qácrtç izayioL içai a(X6xá06To<;, 1076BC), in order to finally have "only
one energy, that of God, and of the saints of God" (my italics). Once again,
for Maximus, any sort of passivity, or suffering, of the divine energy on the
part of the creatures is simply unthinkable; creatures find their real and
eternal identity in their participation in God, and not simply, in a passive
way, his energy, as Levy's Thomist account of Maximus wants to convince
us.
2. My second point is connected to the first. As we re

ST,64 'What is substantially in God (i.e. grace), becomes a
63. ST, 1,44,1.

64. STh, 1-11,110,2.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
soul participating in the divine goodness [...]. And thus, because the soul
participates in the divine goodness imperfectly, the participation in the
divine goodness, which is grace, has its being in the soul in a less perfect
way than the soul subsists in itself. Nevertheless, inasmuch as it is the
expression of participation of the divine goodness, it is nobler than the
nature of the soul , though not in its mode of being' (italics mine). What we
have here is Thomas' philosophical decision that, for some philosophical
but not clearly Biblical reason, participation in God must be incomplete,
(i.e. supernatural but not uncreated?) - precisely because of the great
distance that separates Gods being, which is pure intellect, and created
being, which is mixed with matter; once again Plotinus seems to prevail
over Scripture. This would be reasonable if that participation would occur
only through human powers, not through the transformation of human
nature by the Spirit, and in Christ - it is curious that while Thomas often
speaks of this special help of grace in order for man to reach the contem-
plation of God, this help is never enough to change man's mode of exis-
tence in order for man 'to act and be acted upon, beyond the limits of his
nature', i. e. in an uncreated tropos , through grace, according to Maximus.
But if this is true, we then risk to reach a spiritual self-sufficiency, where
the experience of God is included and restricted within our created - even
supernatural - limits; God is imprisoned and confined within my created
condition, and he is unable to radically break my chain of createdness,
and lead me to the radically other, which is the uncreated. This is why
Thomas does not clearly need the essence-energies distinction, which he
nonetheless sometimes proclaims. The following text could have been
written by Maximus or Palamas65:'Now from the divine effects we cannot
know the divine nature in itself, so as to know what it is; but only by way
of eminence, and by way of causality, and of negation' - and there exist
some other passages where the essence-energies distinction is even clearer
(31).66 So, the uncreated grace becomes created for the creatures for
strict philosophical, rather than theological reasons. The same happens,
according to Colin Gunton, regarding God's attributes. In Gunton 's words:
that is to say, Aquinas having set up the ontological framework for his
theology in the Five Ways by means of a general philosophical analysis of
causation, everything else follows by a process of logical deduction. The attri-
butes are those appropriate to a being who is the moving, efficient, formal
65. STh,I,13,8.
66. See my 'Striving...', pp 140-142.
Vol. 17
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
and final cause of the cosmos. We have an analysis of the God-world relation
in largely cosmological terms, untrammelled by reference to those particular
divine acts in which God is revealed by Scripture actually to operate. That is
to say, the basic concepts come from philosophical, or, should we say, Greek
theology.67
3. My third point is in continuity with the other two. What do we then

mean when we speak of the relationship between God and his creatures?
Is this a relationship of a philosophical or a Biblical type? For Thomas, as
he explicitly writes, and as we saw above "these relations in question have
no real being in God".68 As it is further explained, in the third part of the
Summa,69 every relation between God and the creature really exists only in
the creature, as coming from the change that affects the creature, but this
does not exist really in God, and it exists only in (His) reason. But then, as
we have already said, even the union between God and creation, Aquinas
maintains, does not have "a real existence in God"; it is present in Him
only by reason. On the contrary, this relationship really exists in human
being precisely because this being is created. Consequently, as we saw
above, Thomas describes this kind of created relationship of the creature
with God as a non-real one, on the part of God, "whereas in creatures
there is a real relationship to God; because creatures are contained under
the divine order, their very nature entails dependence on God"70. But can
we understand the reality of relationship with God only in terms of the
creaturely dependence, in a Biblical context? Where is Gods unlimited,
free and unconditioned love for (i.e. in favour of) His creature?
All the above Aquinatian assertions are quite understandable from a
philosophical point of view - one can easily discern a long philosophical
tradition behind them. However, as Colin Gunton again claims, mercy,
justice, love and holiness of God seem to be underplayed, and put behind
"the process of causal abstraction" that comes first.71 This is why, while
Thomas indeed somehow discovered the existential dimension in philo-
sophy, enriching both Neo-platonism and Aristotelism precisely through
his Christian persuasion, this 'existentiality' cannot be fully realised or
developed as a real dialogical reciprocity, an active participation in
67. Gunton, Colin - Act and Being. London: SCM Press 2002, p. 52.
68. ScG, II, 12, 3.
69. STh, III, q. 2, a. 7.
70. STh, I, 28, 1, r. to obj. 3.
71. Gunton, p.51.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
God s act of existence, and free transformation of the will, without some
Maximian (or even Palamite) 'additions', which, without destroying the
philosophical coherence, can liberate our thought from its metaphysical
restrictions.
But the most important discussion has just started. First, it is impos-
sible to find in Maximus this sharp Thomist distinction between being and
essence, as von Balthasar thinks, thus identifying Maximus with Thoma
on that point, precisely because his dialogical reciprocity between man and
God constantly and syn-energetically existentializes created natures - there
is not an active moment' of existentialization on the part of God, passively
received by the creature, but a dialogical becoming, divinely changing, i
Christ, the mode of existence of created beings.72 God infinitely "changes"
through his infinite logoi/energies in Christ, and man infinitely change
through his active/logical responses; their essence is their dialogical being.
Second, by understanding the inner life of this self-concentrated
God as a sort of self-love and self-rejoicing Thomas writes: "again,
joy and delight are a certain resting of the will in its object. But God
who is his own principle object willed, is supremely at rest in himself,
as containing all abundance in himself. God therefore, through his will
supremely rejoices of himself".73 This sort of erotic solipsism, (to love the
other through loving yourself) common for both man and God, represents
a germ of what I have called elsewhere the modern self-referring subject,
starting, in modern times, from Descartes' Cogito and ending with Husserl 's
Transcendental Ego and Heidegger's Dasein, though this subject will become
manifest only after the modern secular revolution of the purely self-suffi-
cient humanism', in Charles Taylor's words.74 (34). This sort of subject neve
changes, and, against both Maximus and Thomas, his being is identical t
his essence, since he usually aspires to change everything according to his
own will to power.75
72. See Balthasars Cosmic Liturgy, (Brian Daley transi.) San Fransisco: Ignatius Press
(Communio), pp 246-250. I cannot agree with Balthasar or anyone else who claims
that we can find in Maximus a "Christology of essence and a Christology of being"; see
my "Possession or Wholeness?..." pp 273-280.
73. ScG I, 90, 4.
74. See his Cosmic Liturgy, (Brian Daley transi.) San Francisco: Ignatius Press (Commu
pp 246-250. I cannot agree with Balthasar or anyone else who claims that we can f
in Maximus a "Christology of essence and a Christology of being"; see my "Possess
or Wholeness?..." pp 273-280.
75. See my 'Consubstantial Selves; a Discussion between Orthodox Personalism,
Existential Psychology, Heinz Kohut, and Jean-Luc Marion', In: Torrance, Alexis (ed.) -
Vol. 72
Fasc i Q RPF 2016
Appendix 1: On Levy's Critique of Bradshaw and Beyond
It is important to reflect briefly upon Levy's critique of D. Bradshaw s

views, as they are expressed in his book Aristotle, East and West:
Metaphysics and the Division of Chństendom,76 in Levy's "An Introduction
to Divine Relativity: Beyond David Bradshaws Aristotle, East and West ".77
In his book, Bradshaw uses the term synergism in regard to the Orthodox
tradition. It was not very difficult for Antoine Levy, to show that there
also exists a sort of synergism in Aquinas' work. Far from understanding
synergy as an ontological fusion of divine and human energies, Levy
concludes by asserting that "dealing with the principles of cosmic order
and deifying grace, the Greek Fathers and Thomas equally believe that
participation without confusion rests on efficient causality".78 We have
already seen in our main text that, concerning Maximus, this is an inade-
quate interpretation of his dialogical ontology of participation. For Levy,
"this means that the elect are not deprived of their own natural energeia.
They freely use it to welcome the divine one, so that this divine energeia
might raise their own created energeiai far above their natural limits,
allowing limited minds to contemplate an infinite Reality. This indwelling
of God in human beings is, therefore, described as a circular or pericho-
retic chain of energeia and pathos, perfective actio and perfected passio,
generated by the causal influx of God and implying the free will of the
creatures. The elect are able to see God as long as their intellectual faculty
is raised to supernatural level of activity under the influx of the divine
energeia. This circular synergy, manifesting the uninterrupted movement
of God's energeia which pours forth from the divine essence towards the
elect and comes back to its source through their contemplation, does not
involve a blending between the uncreated energeia of God and the created
energeiai of the creatures at any stage".79 It is clear that this created energy
can only passively receive this "causal perfective influx" pouring forth
from above. This circular synergy is determined by what Levy calls the
Theology of Personhood: Ancient, Medieval and Modern Perspectives, forthcoming with

Ashgate.
76. Bradshaw, D. - Aristotle, East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Chństendom.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
77. Lévy, A. - "An Introduction to Divine Relativity: Beyond David Bradshaws Aristotle,
East and West". In: The Thomist, 72, 2008, p. 173-231, pp. 183 ff.
78. Ibidem, p. 189.
79. Ibidem, p. 188.
Vol. 72
Fasc.1 Q RPF 2016
Porphyrian Principle , which Bradshaw attributes only to Palamas, while

Levy attributes it both to Palamas and Aquinas. This principle is described
by Levy as follows: "The fact that the intelligible substance A affects the
material substance B through its own energeia induces relationship from
B to A, but no relationship from A to B. A remains absolute, askhetos, at
the very moment where it affects relatively, en skhesei, B. We will designate
this asymmetrical system of causation which Porphyry derives from
Plotinus, as the Porphyrian Principle' . First of all, Levy would have to ask
himself if this Porphyrian Principle is identical with the Biblical witness
of the living and conscious encounter of the righteous, the prophets
and the apostles with the living God of Abraham and Isaac, the Father
of the Incarnate Son, since for Maximus and Palamas this seems to be
their primary source of understanding any possible ontology of partici-
pation. I agree with Levy that a sort of synergy is unquestionably present
both in Palamass and Thomas's understanding of participation, but the
question is how they understand it. But what do we mean when we use
the terms askhetos and en skhesei ? Literally speaking, askhetos (áo-^eroç)
means without relation, while en skhesei (svajéasi) means being in relation
with. If we take it as meaning that God does not change when He relates
with creation through His energies, then Bradshaw is right when he unre-
servedly applies the Porphyńan Principle to Palamas, and Levy is also
in a sense right when he applies it to both Palamas and Aquinas. But if
we thus mean that God remains askhetos , precisely because He creates
an exclusively created relationship with creatures, remaing, in this way,
without skhesis with creation, i.e. without a real and unchanged uncreated
presence in creation, then this principle can only be unreservedly applied
to Aquinas. While Palamas so fervently insists throughout his work, that,
through his energies, God, really "gets out from himself" in order to meet,
as uncreated, the created otherness outside him, Aquinas, on the contrary,
insists that any relation between God and the creature really exists only
in the creature, as coming from the created 'supernatural' change which
affects the creature, but this does not exist really in God. This indeed
reminds us of the Plotinian God/One, who "does not desire us, so as to
be around us, but we desire it, so that we are around it", according to the
precise translation by A. H. Armstrong of Enn. VI,9,8. It is clear that, for
the Plotinian God, any relationship with the creatures is not real, while
any relationship of the creatures with God is absolutely real, to use the
above Thomist terms. But then how can we claim that the Thomist meta-
physics of participation is absolutely Biblical?
Vol. 72
Fase 1 Q RPF 2016
Appendix 2: On Kappes et al. criticism of my positions on Aquinas

and Palamas.
In their "Palamas among the Scholastics: A Review Essay Discus

D. Bradshaw, C. Athanasopoulos, C. Schneider et al., Divine Essenc
Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in E
Orthodoxy", (Cambridge: James Clarke, 20 13)", 80 Christiaan W. K
J. Isaac Goff, and T. Alexander Giltner, offer a criticism of my "S
for Participation..." above. What bothers them seems to be my m
argument, i.e. the very possibility of having a Palamite reading of Th
along with a Palamite correction of certain parts of his thought, whil
I claim, in other issues, Thomas can offer fertile suggestions to Pal
"How can this happen, after so many centuries of passionate objec
on the part of so many brilliant Thomists?", they wonder.81 And they
with a ...revolutionary, and unheard before, suggestion: Palamas is
deeply and madly. . . a Scotist. However, the first thing I heard as a fir
student of theology, in the classes on Hesychasm, some decades ag
precisely that the Roman Catholic authors (and especially the Thom
over the last six hundred years consider St Gregory as a cachectic
of Scotus! The thing that this position is not seriously discussed am
the Orthodox is due to the fact that all the major students of Pa
know well that St Gregory was simply a faithful student of the
Patristic tradition, concerning his doctrine of the uncreated ener
he repeatedly asserted and proved, and it is a little senseless to co
all of the Greek Patristic tradition, as a submission to ...Scotus - whose
pedigree is also well known, since he, mainly through Bonaventure,
came to know parts of the Areopagite, the Cappadocians, Maximus and
Damascene, and then he tried to assimilate, not always successfully,
what he read; these Greek theological presuppositions were the reason
of his ostensible... Palamism. Arbitrarily ,the three authors infer that I
have never come across this connection, (referring to the only book of
mine that they know, one of the twelve that I have published, of which
book they misquote the title!), though I put in quotation marks the word
80. Kappes, Christiaan; Goff, J. and Giltner T. - "Palamas among the Scholastics: A
Review Essay Discussing D. Bradshaw, C. Athanasopoulos, C. Schneider et al., Divine
Essence and Divine Energies : Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern
Orthodoxy, (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2013)". In: Logos: A Journal of Eastern Chństian
Studies , Vol. 55 (1-2), 2014, pp. 175-220.
81. Ibidem, p. 203.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
"Scotist", when speaking of Milbank , and clarify that Palamas "would not
endorse either a real or a formal distinction between essence and energies,
in the sense given to these terms by Milbank "82 - not by Scotus! Then they
conclude that, since I ignore that Gregory was a desperate Scotist, I also
know nothing about Palamas! However, I never thought that Milbank s
Scotus is the real Scotus, as they accuse me, but the subject of my paper
was Palamas and Thomas, not Scotus or Milbank. On the other hand, this
does not mean that Palamas is a Scotist. The three good authors try to
further devaluate my essay, in order to weaken my main argument, (which
they refuse to discuss), by attributing to me ... Monoenergism,83 though
I persistently speak of "the perfect perichoresis of the two natures (in
Christ) through the complete dialogue of created and uncreated energies
in him", and the "exchange of energies in the one hypostasis of Christ"84
- by the way, the term 'theandric energy' that I used was restored, in its
Orthodox meaning, by Maximus; they also attribute to me the paradoxical
position that divine energies are produced by the... divine will,85 though I
never wrote (or thought of) something like that, and they get anxious when
I prove that Palamas has indeed claimed that the distinction-in-identity
between essence and energies is made by mind, katepinoian, (something
that only Thomas, seems to have the right to claim!).
What is strange is that, despite their aggressive philological self-su-
fficiency, these men seem to have nothing to say about the possible diffe-
rences between Palamas (or Maximus) and Scotus. Since the space of
this paper has been exhausted long ago, I will leave this task for the near
future, but not without giving them a little food for thought. Only three
little points: is it possible to find, either in Maximus, or in Palamas, an
independent natural theology, like that of Scotus (explicitly against Henry
of Ghent's Augustinián doctrine of illumination), which deals with God in
a purely metaphysical way? Is it possible to find, either in Maximus or in
Palamas, a dialectic between nature and grace, similar to that of Scotus
(following, in his own way, Bonaventure)? Is it, finally, possible to find
either in Maximus, or in Palamas, a position like that of Ord.I,d.43, 14; 16,
where God seems to think, first, of himself as infinite, then he produces the
divine ideas, as finite essences (and not as uncreated), though in formal
82. Ibidem, pp. 21 6-217 .

83. Ibidem, p. 201 .
84. See my 'Striving...', pp. 127ff.
85. Kappes, et. al., p. 202.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 0 RPF 2016
unity with his essence, then he thinks of them as partially imitating his
perfection, and then he thinks of possible realizations of different associa-
tions of essences? I know of no other more radical refutation of Palamism
than the Scotist positions just mentioned.
Despite their arrogance, the Kappes group has still much to learn
from the Greek Fathers.
References
Aquinas - The Summa Theologica. (translated by Fathers of the English Dominican

Province) New York: Benziger Bros, 1947.
Aquinas - Summa contra Gentiles. Book I (transi, by Anton C. Pegis).
Bradshaw, D. -Aństotle, East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Chństend
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Balthasar, H. U. von - Cosmic Liturgy. (Brian Daley transi.) San Francisco: Ignatiu
Press (Communio), 2003.
Gilson, E. - To On kai e Ousia, (translated by Th. Samartzis) Herakleion, Athens:
University of Crete Press, 2009.
Gunton, C. - Act and Being, London: SCM Press, 2002.
Kappes, C.; Goff, J. and Giltner T. - "Palamas among the Scholastics: A Review
Essay Discussing D. Bradshaw, C. Athanasopoulos, C. Schneider et al.,
Divine Essence and Divine Energies: Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence
of God in Eastern Orthodoxy, (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2013)". In: Logos : A
Journal of Eastern Chństian Studies, Vol. 55 (1-2), 2014, pp. 175-220.
Lévy, A. - Le Créé et l' Incréé: Maxime le Confesseur et Thomas d' Aquin. Aux Sources
de la Querelle Palamienne. Paris: Libraire Philosophique Vrin, 2006.
Lévy, A. - "An Introduction to Divine Relativity: Beyond David Bradshaw s Aristotle,
East and West". In: The Thomist, 72, 2008, p. 173-231.
Loudovikos, N. - Euchaństic Ontology : Maximus the Confessor's Eschatological
Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity. Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, 2010.
Loudovikos, N. - "Striving for Participation: Palamite Analogy as Dialogical
Syn-ernergy and Thomist Analogy as Emanational Similitude", In:
Athanasopoulos, C. and Schneider, C. (eds.) - Divine Essence and Divine
Energies. Ecumenical Reflections on the Presence of God in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Vol. 72
Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016
Cambridge: J. Clarke, 2013, pp 122-148.

Loudovikos, N. - Closed Spirituality and the Meaning of the Self. Athens: Ellinika
Grammata, 1999.
Loudovikos, N. - "Possession or Wholeness? St Maximus the Confessor and John

Zizioulas on Person, nature and Will". In: Participatio, 4, 2013, pp 258-286.
Loudovikos, N. - "Hell and Heaven, Nature and Person. C. Yannaras, D. Staniloae,
and Maximus the Confessor". In: International Journal of Orthodox Theology ;
5(1), 2014, pp 9-32.
Loudovikos, N. - "Consubstantial Selves; a Discussion between Orthodox
Personalism, Existential Psychology, Heinz Kohut, and Jean-Luc Marion"
In: Alexis Torrance (ed.). Theology of Personhood: Ancient , Medieval an
Modern Perspectives, forthcoming with Ashgate.
Meyendorff, J. - A Study of Gregory Palamas. New York: St Vladimir's Sem. Pres
1998.
Milbank, J. - "Sophiology and Theurgy: The New Theological Horizon". In: Pabst,
A. & Schneider, C. (eds.). Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical
Orthodoxy. London: Ashgate, 2009.
Riou, A. - Le Monde et l' Eglise selon Maxime le Confesseur. Paris: Beauchesne, 1973.
Vol. 72
Fasc.1 Q RPF 2016

Loudovikos, Being and Essence. Reciprocal Logoi and Energies in Maximus The Confessor and Thomas Aquinas

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Loudovikos, Being and Essence. Reciprocal Logoi and Energies in Maximus The Confessor and Thomas Aquinas

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Loudovikos, Being and Essence. Reciprocal Logoi and Energies in Maximus The Confessor and Thomas Aquinas

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia

Being and Essence Revisited: Reciprocal Logoi and Energies

This essay is a contribution to the discussion of a possibility of complementarity between

Keywords : A. Levy, being, C. Kappes, D. Bradshaw, energies, essence, Gregory Palamas, J

Riou s Le Monde et V Eglise selon Maxime le Confesseur, 1 proposed

* Professor of Dogmatics and Philosophy at the University Ecclesiastical Academy of

Fasci 0 RPF 2016

the activity of grace is unfolded, as natural or supernatural, in the form

Concerning Maximus, the Difficulty 7 in the Ambigua is, as it is well

4. Lévy, pp. 422-424.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

works (épya) of God without beginning in time, in which beings participate in

of all beings which are participated in or participating in, God is infinite

9. My italics. Cap. Th. et Econ. I, 48, PG 90, 1 100 CD. It is no

Fase. 1 0 RPF 2016

Because, as Maximus boldly continues, God is above all of His eternal

11. /, 50, 1 101 AB.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

made absolutely clear by Maximus, created beings have their existence

14. Ambigua, 1257AB.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

automatic emanation from Gods essence but personal, logical acts/wills of

15. Amb. 1076BC.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

results to a deeply dialogical syn-ergy/syn-energy, where the created logos,

3. For Maximus "the perfect work of love and the fulfilme

16. Amb. 1341D.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

Fasci Q RPF 2016

This transformation takes place pre- eminently in the Eucharist, thus

Fasc i Q RPF 2016

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

27. ScG, I, 80, 2.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

the consequences derived from this unity, concerning the ontological

Fase. 1 0 RPF 2016

Fasci Q RPF 2016

In 1 948 Etienne Gilson published in French L' Etre et V Essence, which,

Gilsons first preoccupation is to stress the convergences and diver-

Fasc.l ff RPF 2016

43. Gilson, cf. p. 236.

Fasc.1 Q RPF 2016

Perhaps the most important philosophical part of Gilsonian

49. Ibidem, cf. pp. 325-328.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

from nature and its meaning - and thus existence-without-essence becomes

53. Ibidem, p. 476.

Fasci Q RPF 2016

reading of this treatise, Palamas is here just repeating the Areopagite,57

57. De Divinis Nominibus, 2,7; PGe, 645a.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

We now reach the most delicate point of our discussion. We have

Fasci 0 RPF 2016

2. My second point is connected to the first. As we re

63. ST, 1,44,1.

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016

3. My third point is in continuity with the other two. What do we then

Fase. 1 Q RPF 2016