Notes on Created and Uncreated Grace

According to St. Basil (both in his letters and in his Contra Eunomium) it is impossible to know anything about the divine essence (ousia). He insists - against the teaching of Eunomius, who held that knowledge of the divine essence (ousia) was possible - that knowledge of God comes only by participation in His energies.

“We say that we know our God from His operations (energeiai), but do not undertake to approach near to His essence (ousia). His operations (energeiai) come down to us, but His essence (ousia) remains beyond our reach.” - St. Basil the Great

The essence / energy distinction also protects God’s hetero-essentiality in relation to creation, while allowing for a real energetic participation in His divinity by creatures. To put it another way, God is essentially (and wholly) transcendent, while He is simultaneously energetically (and wholly) immanent.

In Scholastic theology "created" grace is ". . . a quality, a light that enables the soul to receive worthily the indwelling of the three divine Persons," [Charles Journet, The Meaning of Grace, page 19], but in Eastern theology this Light (or "quality") is the very uncreated energy of God. In other words, the effects of grace in man in Western theology are seen as "created"; while in Eastern theology these "effects" are seen as a participation in the uncreated God Himself as energy. In fact St. Gregory Palamas points out that, ". . . the divine Maximos has not only taught that it [i.e., the gift of theosis] is enhypostatic*, but also that it is unoriginate (not only uncreated), indescribable and supratemporal. Those who attain it become thereby uncreated, unoriginate, and indescribable, although in their own nature, they derive from nothingness." [St. Gregory Palamas, The Triads, page 86] Thus, in Eastern theology there is no such thing as "created" grace, nor can there ever be such a thing, because grace is God Himself.

Now the differences between East and West on the issue of grace were highlighted by Fr. Joseph Gill, S.J., in his book on the Western Council of Florence, for as he pointed out in his treatment of the topic of grace, the doctrinal differences between the two sides became particularly evident during the discussions between John Montenero, O.P., and St. Mark of Ephesus in the fifth session of the Council on March 14, because during a very heated exchange on the issue of the effects flowing from power of grace, Fr. Montenero ". . . pressed Mark [of Ephesus] as to whether the gifts of the Spirit were different from the Spirit Himself," which is what the Latins believed, or if the gifts flowing from the Spirit were the Spirit Himself, which is what the Byzantine Church holds. St. Mark of course rejected the Latin position and this caused further heated exchanges, culminating in an intervention by the Emperor ordering that the subject be dropped. Now even though the exchange ended abruptly (i.e., because of the Emperor's interference), it did show that the two sides disagree on the nature of grace, and in fact as Fr. Gill went on to say, it was this line of debate that brought up the ". . . Palamitic question of the divine energies, which Mark with most Greeks held to be really distinct from the divine essence, an opinion that the Latins both then and now consider wrong." [Fr. Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence, pages 205-206] Thus, it is clear that East and West understand the nature of grace differently, because for the West the effects of the Spirit within man are "created" realities, i.e., they are a "created" grace; while for the East the effects are a true participation in the uncreated divine energy, which is God Himself as He exists outside of His ineffable essence.

*Enhypostatic is used as a contrast to the terms authypostatic and anhypostatic. That which is enhypostatic is not self-subsisting (authypostatic), nor is it merely transitory or illusory (anhypostatic), but is instead a real quality inhering in a hypostasis.

Fr. Hardon on sanctifying grace (http://www.therealpresence.org/archives/Grace/Grace_003.htm):

Nature of Sanctifying Grace. What is sanctifying grace? It has been called the “masterpiece of God’s handicraft in this world … far more glorious than anything we can behold in the heavens above us or on the earth at our feet.” Is it just God’s favor toward us, as Luther wanted? No, it is much more. Is it God’s life or nature or God’s love, as some have called it? No, for God’s life and love and nature are uncreated, are God Himself. Sanctifying grace is not God, it is not the Holy Spirit, it is not just God’s favor. It is something created, given to us by God out of love and mercy, which gives us a created likeness of God’s nature and life. It is a supernatural gift infused into our souls by God, a positive reality, spiritual, supernatural, and invisible. 

Divine Quality. According to St. Thomas, sanctifying grace “is neither a substance nor a substantial form, but an accidental form, a permanent quality placed by God in the very essence of the soul, which causes it to participate by means of a certain likeness in the divine nature” (1-2q110aa.2-4). No wonder, then that the Roman Catechism calls it a “divine quality.”

The definitions given by Fr. Hardon in connection with sanctifying grace are completely foreign, and even inimical, to the teaching of the Byzantine tradition on grace. There is no such thing as “created grace,” nor is there a “created supernatural,” etc., and in fact the whole approach taken by the West since the time of the Scholastics is contrary to the teachings of the Eastern Church Fathers.

Fr. Hardon is saying that man receives a “created” quality, i.e., something other than God Himself that makes us only like God in a created manner. This take on grace is simply unacceptable to Eastern Christians.

Eastern Christianity teaches that grace, both in itself and in its reception, is uncreated, and has the effect of making the recipient uncreated energetically. There are no “created” acts of grace, and so when a man loves as God loves, he loves in an uncreated way.

Once again, for the West - according to Fr. Hardon (and the Scholastics he accepts as normative) - there is a “created supernatural,” but there is no such thing in reality; instead, there is only God and creation, for there is nothing that exists in between the Creator and His creation. That being said, it is clear that man does not receive a “created” sanctifying grace, and in fact such a thing (i.e., a created grace or quality) could never divinize a man; and that is why in Eastern theology it is said that man receives God Himself as energy, and that gift of God’s energy is what makes man eternal and uncreated by grace.

Roman Catholic: There is the dogma de fide that “By reason of His endowment with the fullness of created habitual grace, Christ’s soul is also accidentally holy.”

I reject that “dogma” as you call it, because Christ’s soul is holy, not because it has received some alien “created habitual grace,” but because His human soul as been infused (and even permeated perichoretically) with divine energy, and so it has been divinized in reality and not in mere appearance by a some kind of non-existent “created” quality.

It is an ancient axiom of the Eastern Fathers that only the uncreated can divinize the created. So there can be no “created grace,” because such a thing could never elevate man into the very life of the Triune God. To put it another way, man becomes God in God in the Eastern doctrinal tradition; while in the Western tradition (at least since the time of the Scholastics) man becomes divine through a “created grace” that gives him a mere likeness to God in a created fashion. The Western teaching, at least from an Eastern perspective, is very similar to Arianism.

Roman Catholic: The Holy Spirit consists of the created accidental grace and the uncreated substantial grace.

I find this notion utterly repulsive. The Holy Spirit is uncreated, both as to His hypostasis and when speaking of the energies that flow from Him. Grace is not an accident (in the Aristotelian sense); instead, it is God Himself personally (enhypostatically) as He comes down to us. There can be no such thing as “created grace” in the doctrine of the Eastern Churches. The idea of there being “created grace” is as nonsensical as saying there is a “created God.”

Roman Catholic: East and west can agree that God does (actus purus) aside from what he is the ineffable, and the grace of the Holy Spirit is uncreated.

I do not believe that God is “actus purus”; instead, I hold that God is essence, energy, and a triad of divine hypostaseis. Quite frankly, God is beyond the concepts espoused by Aristotle, and that is why it is unwise to try and use pagan philosophy to create a novel Christian theology. It is one thing to use the terms (words) formulated by Plato and Aristotle, and in fact the use of the Greek language will inevitably require that one use terms coined by the pagan philosophers, but it is quite another to absorb the pagan conceptual theories devised by those men into the Christian tradition.

John 14:21: Jesus answered and said to him: If any one love me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him and we will come to him and will make our abode with him.

That is a wonderful text of scripture, and it beautifully supports the doctrine of the Eastern Church, which holds that man is deified by God through entering into His uncreated life, and not by receiving some alien “created grace” or habitus.

Grace occurs in time in the sense of reception, but nevertheless is, and always remains, timeless in itself; and moreover it makes the man who receives it timeless as well, for as St. Gregory Palamas wrote in opposition to the heretic Akindynos:

"According to the divine Maximus, the Logos of well-being, by grace is present unto the worthy, bearing God, Who is by nature above all beginning and end, Who makes those who by nature have a beginning and an end become by grace without beginning and without end, because the Great Paul also, no longer living the life in time, but the divine and eternal life of the indwelling Logos, became by grace without beginning and without end; and Melchisedek had neither beginning of days, nor end of life, not because of his created nature , according to which he began and ceased to exist, but because of the divine and uncreated and eternal grace which is above all nature and time, being from the eternal God. Paul, therefore, was created only as long as he lived the life created from non-being by the command of God. But when he no longer lived this life, but that which is present by the indwelling of God, he became uncreated by grace, as did also Melchisedek and everyone who comes to possess the Logos of God, alone living and acting within himself."

The East rejects any notion of a “created grace” saying instead that man takes on the qualities of the uncreated grace (i.e., God’s uncreated energies) received; while the West reduces grace to man’s created nature, saying that it becomes created in man as a habitus. There is no parallel to this novel Western teaching in the East.

I am reminded of what Vladimir Lossky wrote in his book The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, “Eastern tradition knows no such supernatural order between God and the created world, adding, as it were, to the latter a new creation. It recognizes no distinction, or rather division, save that between the created and the uncreated. For [the] Eastern tradition the created supernatural has no existence. That which Western theology calls by the name of the supernatural signifies for the East the uncreated—the divine energies ineffably distinct from the essence of God.”

To put it bluntly, there can be no “created grace,” nor can there be a “created supernatural,” in Eastern theology.

* * * 

Roman Catholic: Created Grace does not refer to the substance of Grace, which is God himself (the energies of God or His life in us). The substance of Grace is God and is uncreated. Created Grace is the effect.

There are three forms of uncreated grace:

1. Hypostatic Union (John 1:14; 17)

2. Indwelling Presence of God in the just soul (John 14:17)

3. The Beatific Vision (I Peter 1:13)

The effect of each uncreated grace is created and is (respectively):

1. The Second Person of the Trinity unites with a human nature,

2. Sanctifying grace in the soul, and actual graces, making one a partaker in the Divine Nature,

3. The light of glory, in Heaven, allowing to see God face to face.

Blessed Pope John Paul II said 12 September 1984, for the Homily:“We thank the Father for the Son and the Holy Spirit. We thank the Son for the Father. We thank the Holy Spirit because through the love of the Father and the Son he is the uncreated Gift: the source of all the gifts of created grace.”

Roman Catholic: The substance of Grace is God and is uncreated. Created Grace is the effect.

Answer:

In the Byzantine tradition the effect of grace in man is also uncreated, and so when a man loves with the divine energy of love he loves in an uncreated manner, for the effect of the reception of divine love in man is an uncreated and eternal reality, which is why there can be no such thing as “created grace” in the tradition of the East.

Roman Catholic: The effect of each uncreated grace is created and is (respectively):

1. The Second Person of the Trinity unites with a human nature

Answer:

In the Byzantine doctrinal tradition the effect of the union of the divine and human natures in the one person of Christ is uncreated, because the human nature is permeated with uncreated grace and becomes energetically eternal and uncreated at the very moment that the divine Logos assumes human nature.

Roman Catholic:  2. Sanctifying grace in the soul, and actual graces, making one a partaker in the Divine Nature

Answer: 

The deifying energy that permeates man’s body and soul makes him uncreated and eternal by grace, and no “created sanctifying grace” (however one tries to dress it up to make it more palatable) could ever have that effect. So as I have said several times now, the effects of the reception of the uncreated energies by the saints are themselves uncreated.

Roman Catholic:  3. The light of glory, in Heaven, allowing to see God face to face.

Answer:

The Taboric Light, which is the Light of God’s glory, is in itself, and in its effects, eternal and uncreated, and nothing created can empower a man to see God face (prosopon) to face (prosopon).

That being said, the Eastern Churches have always rejected, and will always reject, any notion of “created grace,” for just as the created Arian savior could not save anyone, so too “created grace” cannot divinize anyone.

* * * 

The question of whether or not grace - as it is operative in man - is created or uncreated is not merely an academic debate. The Eastern Churches say - as they have always said - that nothing uncreated can divinize a man; while the West - since the time of the Medieval Scholatistics - has said that grace, as an effect in man, is created. These two viewpoints are not compatible.

Only the uncreated can make man uncreated, which is why I reject the teaching of the Western Council of Trent about justification when it says that man is justified by a justice that is not God’s own justice. To be just, or holy, or merciful in the Christian sense requires participation in God’s own energy of justice, holiness, and mercy, and not created habitus can make a man energetically divine. As I pointed out earlier with my quotation from St. Gregory Palamas’ Triads, theosis is an eternal and uncreated reality and the man who receives the light of glory in theosis becomes eternal and uncreated (see also Palamas’ letter to Akindynos).

The above commentaries were written by Steven Todd Kaster and can be found here and here