Welcome to the club! Please note I am stumbling along trying to get a grip on what the Fathers have said on this.
"We know our God from His energies, but we do not claim that we can draw near His essence." (Basil, Letter 234)
From the same letter, he writes "For they [his opponents] confess themselves that there is a distinction between the essence and each one of the attributes enumerated. The operations are various, and the essence simple, but we say that we know our God from His operations, but do not undertake to approach near to His essence. His operations come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach."
and again ...
"I do know that He [God] exists; what His essence is, I look at as beyond intelligence. How then am I saved? Through faith. It is faith sufficient to know that God exists, without knowing what He is; and “He is a rewarder of them that seek Him.” So knowledge of the divine essence involves perception of His incomprehensibility, and the object of our worship is not that of which we comprehend the essence, but of which we comprehend that the essence exists."
I believe that St. Basil is saying that God's essence is beyond our intelligence and comprehension, not that it is totally transcendant to us and requires an "energy" for us to contact us. Thus, the mystics can contact that unknoweable essence, knowing intuitively that it is God, that blinding light of incomprehension. Thus, I believe that a mystic would say we can know God, but not intellectually or are able to categorize Him. Basil continues on about the faith of Abraham, rather than the comprehension of Abraham, closing with... "We know God from His power. We, therefore, believe in Him who is known, and we worship Him who is believed in".
Energy is the dynamic and essential activity of the nature." Thus one cannot separate energy from its nature, but the two are not one and the same
Thus, my question, energy is God and nature is God, but man can only contact the first distinction, energy, but not the other, His "nature"? If God is transcendant, how does His energy (God) become accessible to us while His essence (God) is not? Are we to believe that "part" of God is transcendant and "part" is not (and of course, God is not "parts")
Perhaps I am mistaken, but when the Logos became flesh, the Mediator became God and man, cannot we contact God THROUGH this Mediator? Sure, we can know God's "energy", His attributes, so to speak. God's essence is incomprehensible, but it doesn't follow that we thus cannot contact it. Sort of like me sitting next to a Greek Bible. I cannot comprehend it, but there it is in my grubby hands...
Rather it is the energy that proceeds from the nature, and not the other way around. The hypostases differ relative to each other but not to the nature, namely being divine
According to Chalcedon, the nature is what acts in Christ, not the hypostatis, as I quoted St. Leo. I agree that they are inseparable. But for Christ to have two natures and two wills, we naturally see that the NATURE, not the PERSON is noun in "God does".
St. Gregogory of Naizenzos specifically calls God's energy uncreated
Could you point out where so I could read about it, as I did with St. Basil? Thanks.
Regards
Well, if it's beyond our intelligence and comprehension then it is unreachable. All we know is that He Is. What we know of Him is through His Hyposases and His work of Creation.
That's why the Fathers refer to God as "incomprehensible, ineffable, transcendental, uncricumscribed, invisible Spirit." God is all around us and we can't see Him jo. We cannot detect Him. He is transparent to our senses. Yet, He comes into our lives when He wants to. Sometimes it is just an inner "knowledge," at other times it is some really bizarre stuff.
I think the difference is between recognizing the signs of a disease without knowing the cause or the mechanism of a disease. Thus, we can spot a disease as a result of the "energies" of the disease resulting in damage, but the signs do not tell us anything what makes that disease.
By the way, arguing that scholasticism is inferior to monasticism was the backbone of Palamas' victory over Barlaam. Eastern Fathers speak of "experiencing" God and not intellectually understanding Him or, worse, creating a partnership of sorts.
The quote from +Nazienzos comes from +Gregory Palamas, in Philokalia, Vol. 4, p. 407, as Op cit. 5 (137C).