The Distinction Between God’s Essence and Energy: Gregory Palamas’ Idea of Ultimate Reality and Meaning

In presenting St. Gregory Palamas and his distinction between God’s Essence and Energy, we hope to share with URAM readers and researchers his mystical notion of Ultimate Reality and Meaning. Our goal will be achieved if this presentation can expand their understanding of the experience of God, and, in particular, of the possibility of having a mystical union with God. Many in the more rational West are not familiar with the teaching of this Eastern saint. It is also true to say that the Eastern mystical heritage does not seem to be widely understood even among the Orthodox (cf. Halleux, 1973, 441-442). Because we are dealing here with a permanent mystical treasure of the universal Church (Meyendorff, 1983, x), the discovery or rediscovery of Palamas would be to our benefit. It is our hope, too, that the following brief treatment of Palamas and his distinction might help to shed some light on one of the most serious obstacles between the two mainstreams of Christian tradition (Coffey, 1988, 329; Istina, 1974, 257). Historically the most serious of these obstacles had to do with the ‘Filoque’ (‘and the Son’) addition to the original creedal formula by Western Christianity. According to Western Christians the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, as witnessed in the earliest Creeds. The arguments over the ‘Filioque’ question continue, but it has been superseded by the topic of this article. For the majority of Orthodox theologians in Europe and North America, the heart of the doctrine of St. Gregory Palamas is ‘the real distinction in God of the essence and the (uncreated) energies’, and this had become for them the key to the theological dispute between the Orthodox against Catholicism, replacing the ‘Filoque’ question as the most serious obstacle in the way of union between the two Churches.