A WORD ABOUT THE DIVINE SIMPLICITY

A WORD ABOUT THE DIVINE SIMPLICITY


Now, Veritas, I propose that we go on with a short ontology—check.
I would like to pinpoint shortly the metaphysical junctions of some assertions. Let us deepen the articulations, the things that underlie these propositions.
Absolute simplicity belongs to the highest perfection—and this obviously not for aesthetic but for rational reasons. God’s actions are not uncreated beings themselves. What does energy signify in a Ditheist ontology? Something uncreated yet distinct from the being of God? In what sense can something uncreated be yet distinct from God? The underlying thought has to be this:--if I know one of God’s uncreated works and if God is absolutely simple then by the same act I know God himself; and, since I obviously can’t know Him this way, it must result there is a [real] distinction between Him and His [presumably] uncreated works …. This is a gnoseological question.
In reality, even if I would come to know one of His uncreated works or energies, I would know it very vaguely and foggily and as in a mirror. I cannot pretend I would know thoroughly one uncreated energy of His so that I would have to explain not knowing Him as well I would have to postulate a real distinction. No. The truth is that if those fingers used by God to touch or move me are His uncreated energies, I nonetheless ‘know’ and understand them vaguely and as the Apostle defined in his Epistle.
You see, Veritas, that I cannot oppose ‘knowable uncreated energies’ to ‘unknowable essence’; I may know, vaguely, as in a mirror, God. I may know, vaguely, as in a mirror, in a dynamic and beyond—concepts way, his uncreated energies. I do not need to postulate a real distinction, as nothing uncreated can be distinct from God—and as ‘something’, impersonal and distinct from God, can not be uncreated.
Who can say he thoroughly knows the uncreated energies, as the fingers of God? Who can say he thoroughly ignores God? If notions are unfit for God’s essence, they are as unfit for his uncreated energies. There is no reason to believe that they are distinct from him.
If God is unknowable, so are his uncreated energies; if these are partly, vaguely knowable, in the experiential cognition opened to the person, then so is God—knowable in enigmas and like in a mirror.
If God is simple, knowing one of his uncreated energies means knowing God himself—so sounds the assertion of the partisans of the real distinction. As I said, such knowledge of the uncreated energies cannot be but partial and vague; and by it comes knowledge of God. The knowing of the uncreated energies cannot equate the knowledge of God not because it is like knowledge of the periphery as opposed to the knowledge of the core—but because of the inherent limitations of our knowledge—again, like the Apostle said, we can only know in such a limited manner.
۞
One further note about a theological aside:--the inferior and the superior godheads in S Gregory’s 3rd antirrhetic are not like the Son and the Father—because the Son and the Father are not two godheads, but, as Nicaea I established, one God. The accent here is not on inferior and superior, but on the godheads—stated as being two.
So, no, the Son and the Father are not the inferior and the superior godheads. The plurality of the godheads is questionable, not their relation.
The Logos being caused does not make Him a 2nd godhead; the energies being from the essence does not make them a 2nd godhead, does not imply a real distinction. The fact that the Son is from the Father does not imply a plurality of godheads; neither does the fact that the energies are from the essence. Furthermore, the distinction of the Persons we know from revelation; the distinction of the essence and energies we don’t. The thought doesn’t lead us to such a distinction. The Revelation teaches us that the three Persons are one god, one being, one single being; but the Palamist persuasion teaches us that the energies are not God, but merely uncreated. They are ‘expressions’ of God; but coining various expressions nonetheless undermines the basic ontology.
Moreover, the plurality of divine Persons is to be conceived so as not to undermine the oneness of God, and only inasmuch and insofar as it doesn’t; but the real distinction is set exactly to claim there is ‘something’ uncreated besides God. The Persons are distinct from one another, not from the being of God. They are God’s ousia. But the energies are conceived as apart from the essence. The Persons are, each, the same single essence (--and here a long discussion might be made about how God is a singular substance--); but the energies it is taught are distinct FROM the essence. The ousia is not simply one common nature, as you and I have one common nature, the human nature—which is a universal substance, shared, that is, by more than one individual; but it, the divine ousia, is a singular substance, i.e., a being, a single being.
Now the things get very interesting.
The ‘nature’ of God is unlike all other, created, ‘natures’. God’s nature is a singular substance—represented in only one individual—God. The three Persons are not three individuals, ‘three Gods’. There is but one God; not ‘but one divine nature’—otherwise, each polytheism is also a monotheism, as it postulates a single divine nature, as universal substance, common to all its gods.
All the other, created, natures, are, unlike God’s nature, universal substances; i.e., they belong to at least two individuals. The human nature, the sparrow’s nature are universal natures—many individuals have them in common. There are not individuals in God; God is one. We are monotheists.
The ousia is not common to the divine Persons the way the common godly nature belongs to the gods in the polytheist systems (--judging so, all polytheisms are monotheisms, as all the gods are ‘one’ in virtue of their common nature--); instead, this ousia is a singular substance.
The divine ousia is the single being shared by all three Persons. This ousia is a singular substance, not an abstract principle. The three Persons have in common a singular substance, one being. That is why Dr Gilbert’s question is very right:--what do the energies and the essence have in common?
The divine ousia is not the abstract principle of unity of the three Persons; it is their shared, single being, their singular substance (i.e., a substance with only one individual). The three divine Persons have in common this—a single being. This is not an abstract principle of unity—but a being, a concrete being named also God.
The three Persons are one in a concrete being, named God, in a single divine individual named God; not in an abstract principle of unity named ‘divine nature’ (as Zevs, Hera and Athena share one common nature). The divine essence and the energies are one—in what?
Each of the three Persons is fully God; essence and energies are both fully what?
All three Persons share one being, one concrete being, the one divine individual named God. Christians used to believe in one single God (--it is true that more recently one reads of such things as …Mono—tritheism and such …--). The essence and the energies share what?
The Revelation teaches us both the uniqueness of God as one single divine individual (--and not as a mere ‘common nature’ of the three Persons--) and the real distinction of the Persons (--although much might be said about the amendments of some Fathers as to how such a distinction might even be conceived without abjuring the Monotheism--). The Revelation teaches us not about the distinction of the divine essence and the uncreated actions.
[What some pretend to take as Modalism is sometimes a keen awareness of the Monotheism’s exigencies.]
Nothing can still be God while being distinct from God’s essence, i.e., ousia, i.e., His very being. If it’s not God, yet it’s still uncreated, what is it? ‘Energy’ is a name, not an ontological term, not an ontological definition. Only God is uncreated; energies can not be uncreated, yet distinct by God. If they are uncreated, then they are God Himself. The three Persons are not distinct from God; but the energies are claimed to be. The energies are claimed to be distinct because we cannot know God from them fully; but we cannot know these energies themselves fully ….
The unifying God is not a principle, He is an individual, a concrete being. Each of the Persons is God, so that there are not three divine individuals, as in Tritheism.
The essence of the innovation, of the theological innovation, in the pejorative sense, is that it is unnecessary, not present in the Revelation, etc..
The real distinction Es—En has these characters.
It brings nothing useful; it does not explain otherwise unexplained things. It is unnecessary and purely speculative and rather idle.
It is weird that its proponents cling on a single misinterpreted place in S Basil as patristic testimony; while they seem unimpressed when the Filioque is documented in another Father, S Augustine, or when divine simplicity is documented in S Cyril, etc..
On the other hand, I believe that the inferiority of the Son is as temporal as the sending of the Holy Spirit by the Son in the NT—it is not meant about the Logos, but about the Messiah. The Father is greater than the Messiah, not than His own Logos. If we are to take the sending of the Spirit by Jesus as meaning a sending in time, then I think the inferiority of the Son is also meant with respect to the temporal order—it is the Messiah, the man Jesus Christ, who is inferior to the Father. I would not apply the term of causation within God to imply the inferiority of the caused; I also do not think that Jesus the Christ was meaning the inferiority of the Logos, but that of the Messiah as such—like the ignorance of the Son and other places, which are meant about the true man united to the true God—not about the Logos as understood in his eternal existence.
You cannot hold that the NT teaches the temporal sending of the Spirit by the Messiah—but the eternal inferiority of the Logos. Moreover, within God ‘inferiority’ is another concept that needs a purified understanding.
۞
Let us, Veritas, bring a bit of metaphysical purification to our notions of cause and ‘inferiority’. Causation in God more unlike than alike the causations we know. To a certain degree alike, and to a higher degree unlike.
That is we I would be unwilling to ascribe inferiority to the Logos inasmuch as he is caused by the Father. I would refrain from ascribing such inferiority in view of the falsified notion of ‘inferiority’ we might use here.
We know this language of ‘inferiority’ has been much used by the Christian writers in the first centuries; we also know that it was linked with certain unhealthy understandings, and that Monarchianism knew different trends, some better, some worse. Subordinationism is a convenient nickname for proto—Arianism. The language of the ‘inferiority’ of the Son has its dangers, when misapplied; for the 1st century authors, by ‘the Son’ was always meant strictly the Son of God id est the Messiah, the man Jesus Christ taken together with God’s Logos. By ‘the Son’ they never meant the Logos understood as independent of the Incarnation, but only the man taken together with the Logos. This Messiah was traditionally understood as the Servant of God. What is valid in the temporal plane—the subordination of ‘the man Jesus Christ’, as the Apostle calls Him, cannot be transferred as such in the Triadological plane; anyway, not without certain reservations and a purifying of our understanding of the notions. To the Messiah can be ascribed the ‘inferiority’ of the Servant of God; to the Logos, in a very restrained sense, with serious reservations, the ‘inferiority’ of the Caused, presumed we can ‘describe’ causations in God. Again, the life of God is not a subject for quiz shows.