The ontological meaning which Greek patristic literature of the. Byzantine period gave to the term prosôpon ("person") became the occasion of an ontology radically different from that which the Western theological and philosophical tradition represents in the course of its historical development. The West was trapped in a polarized view of Being as either analogically absolute and ontic or else mystical. This came about as the inevitable consequence of the priority Westerners gave, even in the first Christian centuries, to the intellectual definition of essence over the historical and existential experience of personhood — in contrast to the Greek East, which always relied for its starting-point on the priority of person over essence. [26]
The priority of the need to define essence within the context of the ontological question requires the objective definition of the existence of beings and an intellectualist (analogical-ontic) and etiological explanation of Being. The Scholastics established the threefold way ("via triplex') in the West of the analogical cognition of Being: the way of negation ("via negationis"), the way of eminence ("via eminentiae"), and the way of causality ("via causalitatis").[27]
In contradictory but historical conjunction with its cataphatic-analogical determination of Being, the West was also preoccupied with the apophaticism of Being, with the impossibility of the human intellect to exhaust the truth of Being by means of definitions. Apophaticism in the West arose from the need to protect the mystery of the divine essence. That is to say, it is always an apophaticism of essence. It is characteristic that the two thinkers who did most to shape the positive-analogical approach to the knowledge of God, Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), at the same time proclaim the apophatic nature of this knowledge, the essential unknowability of God, the inaccessibility of Being. [28] And we find following this line on the apophaticism of essence not only the leading Scholastics but also the great mystics of the Middle Ages — Peter Abelard (d. 1142), Albert the Great (d. 1280) and John Duns Scotus (d. 1308), as well as Meister Eckhart (d. 1327) and Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464).
But it is impossible for the apophaticism of essence to confront the ontological problem as an existential problem, as a question about the mode by which whatever is is, about the "mode of existence." [29] The absolutizing of the existential fact by the Scholastics, with regard to God, who is defined as "pure act" ("actus purus" [in Greek katharê energeia tou hyparchein]), interprets the mode in which the essence is and this mode is to exist ("essentia est id cuius actus est esse").[30] But it does not touch upon the mode of existing (tropos tou hyparchein), and consequently it continues to limit the ontological problem to the field of abstract definitions.
By contrast, Eastern theology had always rejected any polarization between the analogical-ontological and the mystical determinations of Being. The ontology of the Easterners was primarily existential because its basis and starting-point is the apophaticism of the person, not the apophaticism of essence.
In the tradition of the Eastern Church there is no place for a theology, and even less for a mysticism, of the divine essence .... If one speaks of God it is always, for the Eastern Church, in the concrete: "the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob; the God of Jesus Christ." It is always the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Ghost. When, on the contrary, the common nature assumes the first place in our conception of trinitarian dogma the religious reality of God in Trinity is inevitably obscured in some measure and gives place to a certain philosophy of essence .... Indeed, in the doctrinal conditions peculiar to the West all properly theocentric speculation runs the risk of considering the nature before the persons and becoming a mysticism of "the divine abyss," as in the Gottheit of Meister Eckhart; of becoming an impersonal apophaticism of the divine nothingness prior to the Trinity. Thus by a paradoxical circuit we return through Christianity to the mysticism of the neo-platonists.[31]
The distinction between the apophaticism of the person and the apophaticism of the essence cannot be fully accounted for as a theoretical difference. It represents and constitutes two diametrically opposed spiritual attitudes, two modes of life, in short, two different cultures. On the one side, life is based on truth as relation and as existential experience; truth is actualized as life's social dynamics and life is justified as the identification of being true with being in communion. On the other side, truth is identified with intellectual definitions; it is objectivized and subordinated to usefulness. And truth as usefulness objectivizes life itself; it comes to be translated into technological hype, into the tormenting and alienation of humanity.
But the historical and cultural consequences arising from the differences between East and West in the realm of ontology must remain the subject for another book. [32] Here I simply draw attention to the brilliant formulation by Martin Heidegger (perhaps the last "essence mystic" in the West) of the quandary created by the priority of the apophaticism of essence. [33] Heidegger's approach showed clearly how the apophaticism of essence defines and respects the limits of thought, and consequently the limits of metaphysics or of the ineffable, but leaves the problem of ontic individuality on the borders of a possible nihilism, reveals Nothingness as an eventuality as equally possible as Being, and transposes the ontological question to the dilemma between being and Nothingness: "warum ist überhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr Nichts?" [34] With Heidegger the apophaticism of essence proves to be as much a possibility of ontological and theological nihilism as an ontic-intellectual definition of essence.
[...]
God as Actus Purus
And for the principle of movement to be only active, since a transition frorn in potentiality to in act is inadmissible for the first mover, which no one has set in motion, its essence must be energy alone: "there must be such a principle whose very essence is actuality [energeia]." [80] And since movement is the transition from potentiality (dynamei) to actuality (energeia), and this transition is inadmissable for the first mover, the first mover, as pure actuality, is itself unmoved. [81]
At the same time, since the first mover can only be in actuality, and in no circumstances in potentiality, and since a being that is in potentiality is matter, it is evident that the first mover is immaterial and incorporeal. And since movement is neither begotten nor corrupts, but always is, at least as a temporal transition from prior to posterior ("for it was always"), and without temporal change nature does not exist, it follows that movement is eternal, just as time is eternal and the first mover is eternal actuality (energeia).[82]
The Aristotelian interpretation of energeia was transferred intact by Thomas Aquinas into the realm of Christian theology. [83] But the logical ascent to the first mover, which according to our reasoning must be, as regards its essence, eternal energy, pure and immaterial, entirely ignores the personal mode of existence of the Deity as he reveals himself as a fact in the historical experience of the Church. The question of energy interests Aquinas in the objective context of a rational-apodictic procedure which exhausts the mystery of the divine existence in the logically obligatory concept of productive and motive cause of creation. That is why there is no reference in the Summa Theologiae to the personal God of existential relation: there God is the object [84] of rational inquiry, an abstract intellectual certainty, an ontic essence absolutely in actuality, an impersonal and existentially inaccessible motive cause.
[...]
The consequences of accepting or rejecting the distinction between essence and energies
If knowledge of the personal God by human beings is possible, it must be as real as the experiential reality of the recapitulation of the natural energies in the personal otherness of the human body. Transferring the knowledge of God from the realm of immediate personal disclosure, through the natural energies, to the level of an intellectual and rationalistic approach, the restriction of the possibilities of the knowledge of God to the particular abilities of the human mind,[109] unavoidably exhausts the truth of God in abstract intellectual forms and etiological deductions, [110] that is to say, it destroys the very reality of divine personal existence.[111]
It is evident that the problem of the knowledge not only of God but also of humanity and the world — knowledge as immediate personal relation and existential experience, or as an abstract intellectual approach — is judged by the acceptance or rejection of the essence-energies distinction. The acceptance or rejection of this distinction represents two radically different concepts of reality, two incompatible "ontologies." This does not simply mean two different theoretical views or interpretations. It means two diametrically opposed attitudes to life, with specific spiritual, historical and cultural consequences.
The acceptance of the distinction means the recognition of truth as a personal relation, and of knowledge as participation in truth, not simply as the understanding of concepts arising from abstract thought. It therefore means the priority of the reality of the person and of interpersonal relationship over any intellectual definition. Within the unrestricted terms of this priority, God is known and participated through his uncreated energies, which are beyond the reach of the intellect, while in his essence he remains unknown and unparticipated. That is to say, God is known only as personal disclosure, as a triadic communion of persons, as an ecstatic self-offering of erotic goodness. And the world is the consequence of God's personal energies, a "product" revelatory of the Person of the Word, who witnesses to the Father by means of the grace of the Spirit - the "essentialized" invitation of God to relation and communion, an invitation which is personal and yet also "essentialized" in a manner differentiated according to essence. [112]
By contrast, the rejection of the distinction between essence and energies means the exclusion of universal-personal experience and the priority of the individual intellect as the path to knowledge. It means that truth is exhausted in the coincidence of meaning with concept, in the understanding of nature and person as determinations arising from intellectual abstraction: persons have the character of the relations of essences; relations do not characterize persons, but are identified with persons, with a view to supporting the logical necessity of the simplicity of essence. Finally, God becomes accessible only as essence, that is, only as an object of rational inquiry, as the necessary "first mover" who is himself "unmoved," that is, as "pure act," and whose existence must be identified with the self-actualization of his essence. And the world is the "effect" of the "first mover," just as God's grace is the "effect" of the divine essence ("supernatural" but created). The only relation of the world to God is the intellectual connection of cause and effect, a "connection" which detaches God organically from the world - the world is made autonomous and is subordinated to intellectual objectification and to a utilitarian intentionality. [113]
The problem of the essence-energies distinction set the seal on the differentiation of the Latin West from the Greek East. The West denied the distinction, wishing to safeguard the simplicity of the divine essence, since rational thought cannot tolerate the conflict between existential identity and otherness, a distinction not entailing division or separation.[114] In the West's understanding, God is defined only by his essence. What is not essence does not belong to God; it is a creation of God. Consequently, the energies of God are either identified with the essence as "pure act," or any external manifestation of them is necessarily of a different essence, that is, a created effect of the divine cause.[115]
But this means that theosis, the participation of human beings in the divine life, [116] is ultimately impossible, since the grace that deifies the saints, even if "supernatural," according to the arbitrary definition given to it by Western theologians from as early as the ninth century, [117] remains without any real explanation. And it was precisely the defense of the fact of the theosis of human beings, the participation of the hesychasts in the sensory experience of the mode of the divine life (in the uncreated light of God's glory), that led the Orthodox Church in the synods of the fourteenth century (1341, 1347, 1351 and 1368) to define the essence-energies distinction as the formal difference distinguishing the Orthodox East from the Latin West and to see summarized under the heading of the knowledge of God the heretical deviations of the Roman Church.[118]
In the following centuries the Eastern theologians were vindicated historically by the tragic dimensions of the impasse in which metaphysics found itself in the West. The transference of the knowledge of God from the realm of direct personal disclosure, through the natural energies, to that of an intellectual and rationalist approach had as an inevitable consequence the driving of a wedge between the transcendent and the immanent, the "exiling" of God to the realm of the experientially inaccessible, the separating of religion from life and restricting it to credal statements, the technological violating of natural and historical reality and subjecting it to the demands of individualistic comfortable living — ending up finally in the "death of God" of the Western metaphysical tradition and the emergence of nothingness and the absurd as Western man's fundamental existential categories.
[...]
The energies of the divine nature as the ontological presupposition of a relation "outside of" that nature
The nature's will or energy is distinguished from the nature itself. It refers to the nature's personal mode of existence, to the personal potentiality for the realization of relation outside of the nature. There is no necessity which determines the divine nature and can be regarded as the obligatory cause of the ecstatic summons that is the ground of ontic individuality and of humanity's personal existence. The Platonic and subsequently Augustinian and Thomist approach that refers the eternal causes of created beings to the essence rather than the volitional energies of God [19] attributes to God's creativity a character of natural necessity. At the same time it denies the ontological priority of the persons in relation to the nature, the fact that the nature's will or energy is expressed and realized only as personal disclosure, as a free act which is not determined by the nature but reveals the nature's personal mode of existence. [20]
If the ideas of beings are their eternal causes that are included in the essence of God, in the intellectual content of the divine essence ("in mente divina"), if they are determinations of the essence to which created beings refer as to their exemplary cause, the divine essence not only takes precedence but also becomes existentially autonomous with regard to the persons, and we are led inevitably to maintain that the principle of that which exists is predetermined by necessity, not by freedom. God in that event cannot not be that which he is required to be by his essence, and consequently the personal existence and freedom of God is dissolved by the necessity of the existential predeterminations imposed by the essence. On the epistemological level, we arrive at an ontic interpretation of the essence or at the identification of the essence with the intellectual conception of the whole. Any conception of the essence or nature in itself, as distinct from the mode of existence of the essence which is the persons, is a conception which is entirely schematic, divorced from the givens of existential experience, the experience of relation. The conception of the essence in itself, the rendering of the essence autonomous with regard to the persons, is the basis of an intellectualist ontology which restricts the question of being to an intellectual-etiological tracing back of beings to a causal universal (in the double sense of a common principle or a supreme divine cause) and restricts the fact of existence to the limits of ontic individuality, with no inkling of any question concerning mode of existence or the mode by which whatever is is. It thus becomes impossible for the uncreated divine essence or nature to share a common mode of existence with created human nature. It becomes impossible for God to be able to exist in the flesh as a person who unites two natures existentially, and it becomes impossible for man to be able to exist as a partaker of the fullness of the life of God.
The whole of Western metaphysics, both theological and philosophical, having denied the primary ontological distinction between essence and energies (the difference between the essence and its mode of disclosure through the energies, which are always personal), is inescapably imprisoned in an intellectual conception of essence [21] and in an etiological interpretation of existence.[22] It thus sets essence and existence in antithesis to each other, polarizing the abstract and the concrete.[23] This leads inevitably to the deterministic idealism of the principle "essence precedes existence," which traces back the ideas or causes of beings to the intellectual content of the divine essence, and presents ontic existence as the only existential reality. [24] At the same time this antithesis polarizes the divine and human natures not only ontologically but also existentially, and consequently interprets the "salvation" of humanity by the legal model of the justification of the individual or by positing the intervention of an ontologically inexplicable (and therefore rather magical) "grace."
By contrast, the ontological concepts of Eastern theologians were grounded primarily on the experience of personal relation that is attainable through the energies of the essence. The energies differentiate and reveal the personal otherness while simultaneously disclosing the homoousion of the persons, since they are the common energies of a common nature or essence. The ontological concepts of the Eastern theologians are consequently based on the priority of the mode of existence in relation to the essence.[25] We know the essence or nature only as personal mode of existence, the nature existing only as the content of the person. That is why the acts of will or energies of the nature, as the potentiality for revealing the mode by which the nature is, are not identified with the nature but are distinguished from it, for they refer to the nature's mode of existence.
Notes
God as Actus Purus
And for the principle of movement to be only active, since a transition frorn in potentiality to in act is inadmissible for the first mover, which no one has set in motion, its essence must be energy alone: "there must be such a principle whose very essence is actuality [energeia]." [80] And since movement is the transition from potentiality (dynamei) to actuality (energeia), and this transition is inadmissable for the first mover, the first mover, as pure actuality, is itself unmoved. [81]
At the same time, since the first mover can only be in actuality, and in no circumstances in potentiality, and since a being that is in potentiality is matter, it is evident that the first mover is immaterial and incorporeal. And since movement is neither begotten nor corrupts, but always is, at least as a temporal transition from prior to posterior ("for it was always"), and without temporal change nature does not exist, it follows that movement is eternal, just as time is eternal and the first mover is eternal actuality (energeia).[82]
The Aristotelian interpretation of energeia was transferred intact by Thomas Aquinas into the realm of Christian theology. [83] But the logical ascent to the first mover, which according to our reasoning must be, as regards its essence, eternal energy, pure and immaterial, entirely ignores the personal mode of existence of the Deity as he reveals himself as a fact in the historical experience of the Church. The question of energy interests Aquinas in the objective context of a rational-apodictic procedure which exhausts the mystery of the divine existence in the logically obligatory concept of productive and motive cause of creation. That is why there is no reference in the Summa Theologiae to the personal God of existential relation: there God is the object [84] of rational inquiry, an abstract intellectual certainty, an ontic essence absolutely in actuality, an impersonal and existentially inaccessible motive cause.
[...]
The consequences of accepting or rejecting the distinction between essence and energies
If knowledge of the personal God by human beings is possible, it must be as real as the experiential reality of the recapitulation of the natural energies in the personal otherness of the human body. Transferring the knowledge of God from the realm of immediate personal disclosure, through the natural energies, to the level of an intellectual and rationalistic approach, the restriction of the possibilities of the knowledge of God to the particular abilities of the human mind,[109] unavoidably exhausts the truth of God in abstract intellectual forms and etiological deductions, [110] that is to say, it destroys the very reality of divine personal existence.[111]
It is evident that the problem of the knowledge not only of God but also of humanity and the world — knowledge as immediate personal relation and existential experience, or as an abstract intellectual approach — is judged by the acceptance or rejection of the essence-energies distinction. The acceptance or rejection of this distinction represents two radically different concepts of reality, two incompatible "ontologies." This does not simply mean two different theoretical views or interpretations. It means two diametrically opposed attitudes to life, with specific spiritual, historical and cultural consequences.
The acceptance of the distinction means the recognition of truth as a personal relation, and of knowledge as participation in truth, not simply as the understanding of concepts arising from abstract thought. It therefore means the priority of the reality of the person and of interpersonal relationship over any intellectual definition. Within the unrestricted terms of this priority, God is known and participated through his uncreated energies, which are beyond the reach of the intellect, while in his essence he remains unknown and unparticipated. That is to say, God is known only as personal disclosure, as a triadic communion of persons, as an ecstatic self-offering of erotic goodness. And the world is the consequence of God's personal energies, a "product" revelatory of the Person of the Word, who witnesses to the Father by means of the grace of the Spirit - the "essentialized" invitation of God to relation and communion, an invitation which is personal and yet also "essentialized" in a manner differentiated according to essence. [112]
By contrast, the rejection of the distinction between essence and energies means the exclusion of universal-personal experience and the priority of the individual intellect as the path to knowledge. It means that truth is exhausted in the coincidence of meaning with concept, in the understanding of nature and person as determinations arising from intellectual abstraction: persons have the character of the relations of essences; relations do not characterize persons, but are identified with persons, with a view to supporting the logical necessity of the simplicity of essence. Finally, God becomes accessible only as essence, that is, only as an object of rational inquiry, as the necessary "first mover" who is himself "unmoved," that is, as "pure act," and whose existence must be identified with the self-actualization of his essence. And the world is the "effect" of the "first mover," just as God's grace is the "effect" of the divine essence ("supernatural" but created). The only relation of the world to God is the intellectual connection of cause and effect, a "connection" which detaches God organically from the world - the world is made autonomous and is subordinated to intellectual objectification and to a utilitarian intentionality. [113]
The problem of the essence-energies distinction set the seal on the differentiation of the Latin West from the Greek East. The West denied the distinction, wishing to safeguard the simplicity of the divine essence, since rational thought cannot tolerate the conflict between existential identity and otherness, a distinction not entailing division or separation.[114] In the West's understanding, God is defined only by his essence. What is not essence does not belong to God; it is a creation of God. Consequently, the energies of God are either identified with the essence as "pure act," or any external manifestation of them is necessarily of a different essence, that is, a created effect of the divine cause.[115]
But this means that theosis, the participation of human beings in the divine life, [116] is ultimately impossible, since the grace that deifies the saints, even if "supernatural," according to the arbitrary definition given to it by Western theologians from as early as the ninth century, [117] remains without any real explanation. And it was precisely the defense of the fact of the theosis of human beings, the participation of the hesychasts in the sensory experience of the mode of the divine life (in the uncreated light of God's glory), that led the Orthodox Church in the synods of the fourteenth century (1341, 1347, 1351 and 1368) to define the essence-energies distinction as the formal difference distinguishing the Orthodox East from the Latin West and to see summarized under the heading of the knowledge of God the heretical deviations of the Roman Church.[118]
In the following centuries the Eastern theologians were vindicated historically by the tragic dimensions of the impasse in which metaphysics found itself in the West. The transference of the knowledge of God from the realm of direct personal disclosure, through the natural energies, to that of an intellectual and rationalist approach had as an inevitable consequence the driving of a wedge between the transcendent and the immanent, the "exiling" of God to the realm of the experientially inaccessible, the separating of religion from life and restricting it to credal statements, the technological violating of natural and historical reality and subjecting it to the demands of individualistic comfortable living — ending up finally in the "death of God" of the Western metaphysical tradition and the emergence of nothingness and the absurd as Western man's fundamental existential categories.
[...]
The energies of the divine nature as the ontological presupposition of a relation "outside of" that nature
The nature's will or energy is distinguished from the nature itself. It refers to the nature's personal mode of existence, to the personal potentiality for the realization of relation outside of the nature. There is no necessity which determines the divine nature and can be regarded as the obligatory cause of the ecstatic summons that is the ground of ontic individuality and of humanity's personal existence. The Platonic and subsequently Augustinian and Thomist approach that refers the eternal causes of created beings to the essence rather than the volitional energies of God [19] attributes to God's creativity a character of natural necessity. At the same time it denies the ontological priority of the persons in relation to the nature, the fact that the nature's will or energy is expressed and realized only as personal disclosure, as a free act which is not determined by the nature but reveals the nature's personal mode of existence. [20]
If the ideas of beings are their eternal causes that are included in the essence of God, in the intellectual content of the divine essence ("in mente divina"), if they are determinations of the essence to which created beings refer as to their exemplary cause, the divine essence not only takes precedence but also becomes existentially autonomous with regard to the persons, and we are led inevitably to maintain that the principle of that which exists is predetermined by necessity, not by freedom. God in that event cannot not be that which he is required to be by his essence, and consequently the personal existence and freedom of God is dissolved by the necessity of the existential predeterminations imposed by the essence. On the epistemological level, we arrive at an ontic interpretation of the essence or at the identification of the essence with the intellectual conception of the whole. Any conception of the essence or nature in itself, as distinct from the mode of existence of the essence which is the persons, is a conception which is entirely schematic, divorced from the givens of existential experience, the experience of relation. The conception of the essence in itself, the rendering of the essence autonomous with regard to the persons, is the basis of an intellectualist ontology which restricts the question of being to an intellectual-etiological tracing back of beings to a causal universal (in the double sense of a common principle or a supreme divine cause) and restricts the fact of existence to the limits of ontic individuality, with no inkling of any question concerning mode of existence or the mode by which whatever is is. It thus becomes impossible for the uncreated divine essence or nature to share a common mode of existence with created human nature. It becomes impossible for God to be able to exist in the flesh as a person who unites two natures existentially, and it becomes impossible for man to be able to exist as a partaker of the fullness of the life of God.
The whole of Western metaphysics, both theological and philosophical, having denied the primary ontological distinction between essence and energies (the difference between the essence and its mode of disclosure through the energies, which are always personal), is inescapably imprisoned in an intellectual conception of essence [21] and in an etiological interpretation of existence.[22] It thus sets essence and existence in antithesis to each other, polarizing the abstract and the concrete.[23] This leads inevitably to the deterministic idealism of the principle "essence precedes existence," which traces back the ideas or causes of beings to the intellectual content of the divine essence, and presents ontic existence as the only existential reality. [24] At the same time this antithesis polarizes the divine and human natures not only ontologically but also existentially, and consequently interprets the "salvation" of humanity by the legal model of the justification of the individual or by positing the intervention of an ontologically inexplicable (and therefore rather magical) "grace."
By contrast, the ontological concepts of Eastern theologians were grounded primarily on the experience of personal relation that is attainable through the energies of the essence. The energies differentiate and reveal the personal otherness while simultaneously disclosing the homoousion of the persons, since they are the common energies of a common nature or essence. The ontological concepts of the Eastern theologians are consequently based on the priority of the mode of existence in relation to the essence.[25] We know the essence or nature only as personal mode of existence, the nature existing only as the content of the person. That is why the acts of will or energies of the nature, as the potentiality for revealing the mode by which the nature is, are not identified with the nature but are distinguished from it, for they refer to the nature's mode of existence.
From the book Person and Eros by Christos Yannaras
Notes
26. "Latin philosophy," says The. de Régnon, "first considers the nature in itself and then proceeds to the person; Greek philosophy considers the person and afterwards passes through it to find the nature. The Latins think of personhood as a mode of nature; the Greeks think of nature as the content of the person" (Etudes de theologie positive sir la Sainte Trinité 1:433, quoted in Vladimir Lossky, Teologie mystique de l'Egllse d 'Orient [Paris: Aubier, 19441,57; ET, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church [London: James Clarke, 19571,57-58). See also H.-M. Legrand, "Bulletin d'Ecclesiologie: Introduction aux Eglises d'Orient," Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Theologiques 56: 709, where, commenting on the Western scholastic structure of P. N. Trembelas's Dogmatics, he notes: "puis vient le traité de Dieu (livre I), où le De Deo uno précède le De Deo Trino, comme dans la Somme de S. Thomas d'Aquin (cognossibilitd de Dieu, vrai notion de Dieu, attributs divins et aprés seulement le dogme trinitaire 'en general' puis 'en particulier')."
27. See M. Schmauss, Katholische Dogmatik, vol. I (Munich, 1960), 306ff.; Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik, 2:390; Ch. Androutsos, Dogmatiki (Athens, 1907), 47ff.; P. N. Trembelas, Dogmatike, vol. I (Athens, 1959), 186ff.
28 See Etienne Gilson, La Philosophie au Moyen Age, 2nd ed. (Paris: Payot, 1962), 2411T. , and Johannes Hirschberger, Geschichte der Phi-losophie, 8th ed., vol. 1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1965), 504-5. See also M. -D. Chenu, La Thiologie comme science au XIIIe siécle, 3rd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1969), 97ff., where the author affirms in the works of Thomas Aquinas a "grandiose" synthesis of theology's mystical-theoretical character with the demands of scientific rationality: "Verbe éternel ou Verbe fait chair, speculation contemplative ou règles de vie morale, symbolisme sacramentaire et communauté des saints, relevent tout uniment du mêrne principe de connaissance. Les catégories si fermement tranchées du philosophe entre le spéculatif et le pratique ne divisent plus ce savoir ... ces savoirs sont campés dans un même champ d'intelligibilité, que constitue la lumiere de foi en oeuvre de science: intellectus fidei."
29. This is an expression well established in the theological literature of the Greek East, and the starting-point of its approach to the ontological problem. Cf., for example, Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua (PG 90:285a) and Mystagogia (PG 91:701a); Gregory of Nyssa, Against Enomius 1 (PG 45:316c); Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 3 (PG 6:1209b); John Damnscene. Against the Jacobites 52 (PG 94:1461b).
30. See Gilson, La Philosophie au Moyen Age, 589-90: "Il y a, dans le thomisme, un acte de la forme elle-même, et c'est l'exister ... L'acte de l'essence n'est plus la forme, quo est du quod est qu'elle est, mais l'existence."
31. Lossky, La théologie mystique, 63-64 (ET, 64-65)
32. I have tried in an earlier study, again on the level of theoretical differences, to demonstrate on the basis of Heidegger's writings how the scholastic theological tradition of the West leads inexorably to the modern phenomenon of "European Nihilism." See Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God, ed. Andrew Louth, trans. Haralam-bos Ventis (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2005), with reference to the Dionysian corpus and Martin Heidegger.
33 Cf. his characteristic aphorisms: "Sein erweist sich also einhoch-stbestimmtes volig Unbestimmtes" (Einführung in die Metaphysik, 59); "Das Sein ist das Naschte. Doch die Nahe bleibt dem Menschen am weitesten" (Ober den Humanismus, 20); "Die Unbestimmtheit de-sen jedoch, wovor und worum wir uns angstigen, ist blosses Fehlen der Bestimmtheit, sondern die wesenhafle Unmoglichkeit der Bestim-mbarkeit" (Was ist Metaphysik? 32); "Das Sein als das Geschick, das Wahrheit schickt, bleibt, verborgen. Aber das Weltgeschicht kundigt sich in der Dichtung an" (Ober den Humanismus, 26). Cf. also J. Hirsch-berger's revealing comment on Heidegger's philosophy: "Was bleibt, ist eine Art Mystik und Romantik des Seins, bei der alles auf die Hinnahme ankommt" (Geschichte der Philosophie, 2:648).
34. Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, 1.
80. Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.6:1071 b19-20.
81. "and the first mover must itself be unmoved" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 4.8:1012b31 [Oxford trans.]).
82 "But it is impossible that movement should either come into being or cease to be; for it must always have existed. Nor can time come into being, or cease to be; for there could not be a before and an after if time did not exist. Movement also is continuous, then, in the sense in which time is .... There is therefore a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal substance (ousia) and actuality [energeia]".
83. This transference took place within the context of the subordination of theology to Aristotelian epistemology: "par l'introduction de l'épistémologie aristotélicienne, s'était constituée au XIIIème siècle, dans une réflexion explicite, la théologie comme science. Saint Thomas d'Aquin etait le maitre de cette operation" (Chenu, La Theologie omme science, 9). And on p. 11: "Saint Thomas le premier a su — et osé — poser nettement le principe d'une integrale application du mecanisme et des procedes de Ia science au donndé revelé, constitutant par là une discipline organique où l'Ecriture, l'article de foi est non plus la matiere meme, le sujet de l'expose et de la recherche, comme dans la sacra doctrine du XlIe siecle, mais le principe, prealablement connu, pair duquel on travaille, et on travaille selon toutes les exigences et les lois de la demonstatio aristotelicienne."
84. Cf. Summa Theologiae 1.1:7: "The object of our science is God .... In sacred science the ruling idea, to which everything is subjected, is God ...." See also Chenu, La theologie comme science, 55: "La foi qui a pour object la Verité premiere..."
109. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a:12.2: "Hence as other intelligible forms, which are not identical with their existence, are united to the mind according to a sort of mental existence by which they inform and actualize the mind, so the divine essence is united to a created mind so as to be what is actually understood and through its very self making the mind actually understanding" (Blackfriars trans., 3:11). Also 1a:12.5: "When however a created intellect sees the essence of God, that very divine essence becomes the form through which the intellect understands" (Blackfriars trans., 3:19.). Cf. P. N. Trembelas, Dogmatike, 1:139: "Man, being intelligent and possessing the capacity to know God, is led up by automatic reasoning from visible things to those which are beyond the senses and proceeds through the mind to the investigation of God."
110. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a:12.1: "If therefore the created mind were never able to see the essence of God, either it would never attain happiness or its happiness would consist in something other than God .... The view is also philosophically untenable, for it belongs to human nature to look for the causes of things — that is how intellectual problems arise. If therefore the mind of the rational creature were incapable of arriving at the first cause of things, this natural tendency could not be fulfilled. So we must grant that the blessed do see the essence of God" (Blackfriars trans., 3:5). The same conclusion is found in the Summa contra Gentiles 3:51: "Possibile sit substantiam Dei videri per intellectum."
111. "A person can neither pray nor even sacrifice to such a God ('causa sui'). Before the First Cause a person can neither fall on his knees in awe, nor can he praise or worship him. That is why atheistic thought which denies the God of philosophy, God as First Cause, is perhaps closer to God as he really is ('ist dem gottlichen Gott vielleicht naher')" (Heidegger, Identitat and Differenz [Pfullingen: Neske, 1957], 70-71). "The final blow against God and against the suprasensible world ... did not come from those outside, those who do not believe in God, but from the believers and their theologians" (Heidegger, Holzwege [Frankfurt: Klosterman, 1963], 239-40).
80. Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.6:1071 b19-20.
81. "and the first mover must itself be unmoved" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 4.8:1012b31 [Oxford trans.]).
82 "But it is impossible that movement should either come into being or cease to be; for it must always have existed. Nor can time come into being, or cease to be; for there could not be a before and an after if time did not exist. Movement also is continuous, then, in the sense in which time is .... There is therefore a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal substance (ousia) and actuality [energeia]".
83. This transference took place within the context of the subordination of theology to Aristotelian epistemology: "par l'introduction de l'épistémologie aristotélicienne, s'était constituée au XIIIème siècle, dans une réflexion explicite, la théologie comme science. Saint Thomas d'Aquin etait le maitre de cette operation" (Chenu, La Theologie omme science, 9). And on p. 11: "Saint Thomas le premier a su — et osé — poser nettement le principe d'une integrale application du mecanisme et des procedes de Ia science au donndé revelé, constitutant par là une discipline organique où l'Ecriture, l'article de foi est non plus la matiere meme, le sujet de l'expose et de la recherche, comme dans la sacra doctrine du XlIe siecle, mais le principe, prealablement connu, pair duquel on travaille, et on travaille selon toutes les exigences et les lois de la demonstatio aristotelicienne."
84. Cf. Summa Theologiae 1.1:7: "The object of our science is God .... In sacred science the ruling idea, to which everything is subjected, is God ...." See also Chenu, La theologie comme science, 55: "La foi qui a pour object la Verité premiere..."
109. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a:12.2: "Hence as other intelligible forms, which are not identical with their existence, are united to the mind according to a sort of mental existence by which they inform and actualize the mind, so the divine essence is united to a created mind so as to be what is actually understood and through its very self making the mind actually understanding" (Blackfriars trans., 3:11). Also 1a:12.5: "When however a created intellect sees the essence of God, that very divine essence becomes the form through which the intellect understands" (Blackfriars trans., 3:19.). Cf. P. N. Trembelas, Dogmatike, 1:139: "Man, being intelligent and possessing the capacity to know God, is led up by automatic reasoning from visible things to those which are beyond the senses and proceeds through the mind to the investigation of God."
110. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a:12.1: "If therefore the created mind were never able to see the essence of God, either it would never attain happiness or its happiness would consist in something other than God .... The view is also philosophically untenable, for it belongs to human nature to look for the causes of things — that is how intellectual problems arise. If therefore the mind of the rational creature were incapable of arriving at the first cause of things, this natural tendency could not be fulfilled. So we must grant that the blessed do see the essence of God" (Blackfriars trans., 3:5). The same conclusion is found in the Summa contra Gentiles 3:51: "Possibile sit substantiam Dei videri per intellectum."
111. "A person can neither pray nor even sacrifice to such a God ('causa sui'). Before the First Cause a person can neither fall on his knees in awe, nor can he praise or worship him. That is why atheistic thought which denies the God of philosophy, God as First Cause, is perhaps closer to God as he really is ('ist dem gottlichen Gott vielleicht naher')" (Heidegger, Identitat and Differenz [Pfullingen: Neske, 1957], 70-71). "The final blow against God and against the suprasensible world ... did not come from those outside, those who do not believe in God, but from the believers and their theologians" (Heidegger, Holzwege [Frankfurt: Klosterman, 1963], 239-40).
112. [The Greek expression: klese prosopike heterorousios ousiômene conveys more elegantly than the English the hypostatic reality of God's reaching out to us in the third Person of the Trinity. Trans.]
113. My setting down here the difference between the acceptance or rejection of the essence-energies distinction highlights what is perhaps a genuine weakness, or even non sequitur, in this book as a whole: I speak of the priority of personal relation and experience and the transcendence of conceptual definitions, using, however, conceptual definitions which I set out systematically. It is therefore possible for the reader to conclude that what this discussion is about is merely two different systems of ideas — not two radically opposed modes of life or attitudes towards it. Of course, the use of intellectual ideas and their systematic discussion can have a "semantic reference" to life, provided that the objectification of truth in concepts is constantly resisted. This resistance is not purely and simply a literary form. It articulates a social dynamic of the word. In the works of the Greek Fathers, readers may find and confirm for themselves this expression of personal experience, which gives language the iconological depth of the experiential dimension. Such an achievement is beyond my powers in the present work. Here an attempt is made to go beyond the objectification of truth in concepts, but again only through ideas expressed in concepts.
114. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles 2:9: "God's actuality [=energeia] is his essences." And 2:8: "This divine power is the essence of God." See also Barlaam of Calabria, Against the Messalians, in The Works of Gregory Palamas [ed. P. Christou, 1:300.24-301.3]): "For if even the light [of God's energies] is uncreated, what is caused and participable and visible ... is necessarily called a divinity (theotes), and the nature of God, which is beyond any cause and participation, vision and apprehension, naming and exposition, how will it be one and not uncreatcd divinities, one superior and the other inferior?" And St. Gregory Palamas replies: "Not knowing that with regard to the uncreated energies and the essence such a distinction and the superimposition (hyperthesis) that goes with it does not impair the fact that there is one divinity. Indeed, rather, it strengthens it, as without it the things that are distinguished could not be brought together into one divinity in an orthodox manner" (Exposition of Impieties [ed. Christou, 2:579.18-22]).
115. "God's activity (actio), however, is not distinct from his power (potentia); each is the divine essence, identical with the divine existence .... we justify the meaning of power in God, not as being the principle of divine acting, which is identical with his being, but as the principle of an effect" (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1 a:25.1 [Blackfriars trans., 5:155]).
116. See the expression of this in the encyclical Mystici Corporis of Pope Pius XII: (in La foi catholique — Tales doctrinaux du Magistere de l'Eglise [Paris: Ed. de l'Orante, 1961], 364): "Ce qu'il faut rejeter: tout mode d'union mystique par lequel les fideles, de quelque façon que ce soit, depasseraient l'ordre du créé et s'arrogeraient le divin au point que meme un seul des attributes du Dieu éternel puisse leurs etre attribué en propre." And cf. the Eastern viewpoint expressed by Gregory of Nyssa: "Man transcends his own nature, becomes immortal from having been mortal, and imperishable from having been perishable, and eternal from having been transient, and wholly god from having been man .... For if what he [God] is by nature he grants as a property to human beings, what else is this other than that he promises an equality of honour through kinship? (On the Beatitudes 7 [PG 44:1280cd]).
117. See Chenu, La theologie au XIIe siecle, 294n. Scc also La foi catholique, 321: "La grace est gratuite et surnaturelle," with references to Roman Catholic dogmatic sources. See also Nicolas, Dieu connu comme inconnu, 218ff. On created grace there is a characteristic fragment of Gregory Akindynos cited by Gregory Palamas: "The hypostasis of the All-holy Spirit creates deifying grace in the saints, but in spite of that this created grace is said to be a hypostasis of the All-holy Spirit. And those who receive this created grace are said to receive the Holy Spirit, the very essence and hypostasis of the Spirit" (To Athanasius of Cyzicus 33 [ed. Chrestou, 2:443.20-25]).
118. See the study of Stylianos Papadopoulos, Ellenikai metaphraseis thomistikon ergon: Philothomistai kai antithomistai en Byzantio (Athens, 1967), 20, 137.
19. "[Selon Augustin, Dieu] contient éternellement en soi les modeles archetypes de tous les etres possibles, leur formes intelligibles, leurs lois, leur poids, leur measures, leur nombres. Ces modeles etemels sont des Idées, increées et consubstantielles a Dieu de la consubstantiabilite même du Verbe" (Gilson, La Philosophie au Morn Age, 132). See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.44.3: "In divina sapientia sunt rationes omnium rerum, quas supra diximus ideas, id est formas exemplares in mente divina existentes." "Puisqu'elles subsistent dans l' intelligence de Dieu, les Iddes participent nécessairement a ses attribute essentiels. Comme lui-même, elles sont éternelles, immuables et necéssaries" (Etienne Gilson, Introduction a l'Etude de Saint Augustin [Paris: Vrin, 1969], 109). See also Augustine, De diversis questionibus 83, ques. 46.1-2, vol. 40, col. 29-30; Etienne Gilson, Le Thomisme (Paris: Vrin, 1972), 146-48.
20. "Dans l'explication de la Trinite, Augustin conçoit la nature divine avant les personnes. Sa formule de la Trinité sera: une seule nature divine subsistant en trois personnes, celles des Grecs au contraire disait: trois personnes ayant une même nature .... Saint Augustin au contraire, préludant au concept latin que les scolastiques lui ont emprunté, envisage avant tout la nature divine et poursuit jusqu'aux personnes pour atteindre la realité complete. Deus, pour lui, ne signifie plus directement le Pere, mais plus généralement la divinité" (E. Portaléd, "Augustin (saint)," Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, vol. I, col. 2268tf.).
21. "Toute essence, ou quidditd, peut etre conçue sans que l'on conçoive rien au sujet de son existence. Par example, je peux concevoir homme ou phénix et ignorer pourtant s'ils existent dans la nature. Il est done clair que l'existence (esse) est autre chose (aliud) que l'essence ou quiddite" (Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, ch. 4, ed. M.-D. Roland-Gosselin [Paris: Vrin, 1948], 34).
22. For an interpretation of existence within the context of an objective-rationalist causality which bypasses the question concerning the mode of existence and confines the existential fact to an intellectual-aetiological combination of being and Being (ens = rem habentem esse) see Mar-tin Heidegger, "Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins," in Nietzsche, vol. 2 (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), 41611.; Gilson, Le Thomisme, 88-89, 186-87; Aime Forest, La structure métaphysique du concret selon saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1931); Jacques Maritain, Court traiti de l'existence et des existants (Paris: Hartmann, 1947).
23. "Les scolastiques opposent essentia et existentia: l'essence est la nature conceptuelle d'une chose; elle est conçue comme un pouvoir d'être; l'existence au contraire est la pleine actualite, ultima actualitas" (R. Eucken, Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie, cited by Andre La-londe, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la Philosophie [Paris: PUF, 1972], 318). See also Heidegger, Über den humanismus, 18: 'Die in ihrer Wesensherkunft verborgenc Unterscheidung von essentia (Wesenhcit) and existentia (Wirklichkeit) durchherrscht das Geschik der abendlandischen und der gesamten europaisch bestimmten Geschichte."
24. "La signification principals et directe d'ens (selon saint Thomas) n'est pas l'exister, mais la chose même qui existe. Le thomisme devient alors un 'chosisme' que l'on peut accuser de 'réifer' tous les concepts qu'il touche et dc transformer en une mosaique d'entités closes dans leurs propres essences le tissu vivant du réel" (Gilson, Le Thomisme, 187).
25. St. Gregory Palamas writes in a famous passage: "When God was conversing with Moses, He did not say, 'I am the essence,' but 'I am the One Who is.' Thus it is not the One Who is who derives from the essence, but essence which derives from Him, for it is He who contains all being in Himself" (Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 3.2.12 [ed. Christou, 1:666; trans. Gendle, CWS]).
113. My setting down here the difference between the acceptance or rejection of the essence-energies distinction highlights what is perhaps a genuine weakness, or even non sequitur, in this book as a whole: I speak of the priority of personal relation and experience and the transcendence of conceptual definitions, using, however, conceptual definitions which I set out systematically. It is therefore possible for the reader to conclude that what this discussion is about is merely two different systems of ideas — not two radically opposed modes of life or attitudes towards it. Of course, the use of intellectual ideas and their systematic discussion can have a "semantic reference" to life, provided that the objectification of truth in concepts is constantly resisted. This resistance is not purely and simply a literary form. It articulates a social dynamic of the word. In the works of the Greek Fathers, readers may find and confirm for themselves this expression of personal experience, which gives language the iconological depth of the experiential dimension. Such an achievement is beyond my powers in the present work. Here an attempt is made to go beyond the objectification of truth in concepts, but again only through ideas expressed in concepts.
114. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles 2:9: "God's actuality [=energeia] is his essences." And 2:8: "This divine power is the essence of God." See also Barlaam of Calabria, Against the Messalians, in The Works of Gregory Palamas [ed. P. Christou, 1:300.24-301.3]): "For if even the light [of God's energies] is uncreated, what is caused and participable and visible ... is necessarily called a divinity (theotes), and the nature of God, which is beyond any cause and participation, vision and apprehension, naming and exposition, how will it be one and not uncreatcd divinities, one superior and the other inferior?" And St. Gregory Palamas replies: "Not knowing that with regard to the uncreated energies and the essence such a distinction and the superimposition (hyperthesis) that goes with it does not impair the fact that there is one divinity. Indeed, rather, it strengthens it, as without it the things that are distinguished could not be brought together into one divinity in an orthodox manner" (Exposition of Impieties [ed. Christou, 2:579.18-22]).
115. "God's activity (actio), however, is not distinct from his power (potentia); each is the divine essence, identical with the divine existence .... we justify the meaning of power in God, not as being the principle of divine acting, which is identical with his being, but as the principle of an effect" (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1 a:25.1 [Blackfriars trans., 5:155]).
116. See the expression of this in the encyclical Mystici Corporis of Pope Pius XII: (in La foi catholique — Tales doctrinaux du Magistere de l'Eglise [Paris: Ed. de l'Orante, 1961], 364): "Ce qu'il faut rejeter: tout mode d'union mystique par lequel les fideles, de quelque façon que ce soit, depasseraient l'ordre du créé et s'arrogeraient le divin au point que meme un seul des attributes du Dieu éternel puisse leurs etre attribué en propre." And cf. the Eastern viewpoint expressed by Gregory of Nyssa: "Man transcends his own nature, becomes immortal from having been mortal, and imperishable from having been perishable, and eternal from having been transient, and wholly god from having been man .... For if what he [God] is by nature he grants as a property to human beings, what else is this other than that he promises an equality of honour through kinship? (On the Beatitudes 7 [PG 44:1280cd]).
117. See Chenu, La theologie au XIIe siecle, 294n. Scc also La foi catholique, 321: "La grace est gratuite et surnaturelle," with references to Roman Catholic dogmatic sources. See also Nicolas, Dieu connu comme inconnu, 218ff. On created grace there is a characteristic fragment of Gregory Akindynos cited by Gregory Palamas: "The hypostasis of the All-holy Spirit creates deifying grace in the saints, but in spite of that this created grace is said to be a hypostasis of the All-holy Spirit. And those who receive this created grace are said to receive the Holy Spirit, the very essence and hypostasis of the Spirit" (To Athanasius of Cyzicus 33 [ed. Chrestou, 2:443.20-25]).
118. See the study of Stylianos Papadopoulos, Ellenikai metaphraseis thomistikon ergon: Philothomistai kai antithomistai en Byzantio (Athens, 1967), 20, 137.
19. "[Selon Augustin, Dieu] contient éternellement en soi les modeles archetypes de tous les etres possibles, leur formes intelligibles, leurs lois, leur poids, leur measures, leur nombres. Ces modeles etemels sont des Idées, increées et consubstantielles a Dieu de la consubstantiabilite même du Verbe" (Gilson, La Philosophie au Morn Age, 132). See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1.44.3: "In divina sapientia sunt rationes omnium rerum, quas supra diximus ideas, id est formas exemplares in mente divina existentes." "Puisqu'elles subsistent dans l' intelligence de Dieu, les Iddes participent nécessairement a ses attribute essentiels. Comme lui-même, elles sont éternelles, immuables et necéssaries" (Etienne Gilson, Introduction a l'Etude de Saint Augustin [Paris: Vrin, 1969], 109). See also Augustine, De diversis questionibus 83, ques. 46.1-2, vol. 40, col. 29-30; Etienne Gilson, Le Thomisme (Paris: Vrin, 1972), 146-48.
20. "Dans l'explication de la Trinite, Augustin conçoit la nature divine avant les personnes. Sa formule de la Trinité sera: une seule nature divine subsistant en trois personnes, celles des Grecs au contraire disait: trois personnes ayant une même nature .... Saint Augustin au contraire, préludant au concept latin que les scolastiques lui ont emprunté, envisage avant tout la nature divine et poursuit jusqu'aux personnes pour atteindre la realité complete. Deus, pour lui, ne signifie plus directement le Pere, mais plus généralement la divinité" (E. Portaléd, "Augustin (saint)," Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique, vol. I, col. 2268tf.).
21. "Toute essence, ou quidditd, peut etre conçue sans que l'on conçoive rien au sujet de son existence. Par example, je peux concevoir homme ou phénix et ignorer pourtant s'ils existent dans la nature. Il est done clair que l'existence (esse) est autre chose (aliud) que l'essence ou quiddite" (Thomas Aquinas, De ente et essentia, ch. 4, ed. M.-D. Roland-Gosselin [Paris: Vrin, 1948], 34).
22. For an interpretation of existence within the context of an objective-rationalist causality which bypasses the question concerning the mode of existence and confines the existential fact to an intellectual-aetiological combination of being and Being (ens = rem habentem esse) see Mar-tin Heidegger, "Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins," in Nietzsche, vol. 2 (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), 41611.; Gilson, Le Thomisme, 88-89, 186-87; Aime Forest, La structure métaphysique du concret selon saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1931); Jacques Maritain, Court traiti de l'existence et des existants (Paris: Hartmann, 1947).
23. "Les scolastiques opposent essentia et existentia: l'essence est la nature conceptuelle d'une chose; elle est conçue comme un pouvoir d'être; l'existence au contraire est la pleine actualite, ultima actualitas" (R. Eucken, Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie, cited by Andre La-londe, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la Philosophie [Paris: PUF, 1972], 318). See also Heidegger, Über den humanismus, 18: 'Die in ihrer Wesensherkunft verborgenc Unterscheidung von essentia (Wesenhcit) and existentia (Wirklichkeit) durchherrscht das Geschik der abendlandischen und der gesamten europaisch bestimmten Geschichte."
24. "La signification principals et directe d'ens (selon saint Thomas) n'est pas l'exister, mais la chose même qui existe. Le thomisme devient alors un 'chosisme' que l'on peut accuser de 'réifer' tous les concepts qu'il touche et dc transformer en une mosaique d'entités closes dans leurs propres essences le tissu vivant du réel" (Gilson, Le Thomisme, 187).
25. St. Gregory Palamas writes in a famous passage: "When God was conversing with Moses, He did not say, 'I am the essence,' but 'I am the One Who is.' Thus it is not the One Who is who derives from the essence, but essence which derives from Him, for it is He who contains all being in Himself" (Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 3.2.12 [ed. Christou, 1:666; trans. Gendle, CWS]).
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