Luther and Erasmus: The Controversy Concerning the Bondage of the Will

Re: uncreated energies and hesychastic "speculations."

Patristic understanding of energy is that every essence or nature has energy, i.e. a dynamic activity of such nature. Thus, God's nature, which is uncreated, has uncreated energies that result in hat we call "God's activity." It is paramount to understand that nature and energy is not one and the same, that the energy of the soul differs from its essence, and that there is no essence that does not possess energy, and that the energy proceeds from the essence and not vice versa.

These are hardly speculations. Patristic "speculations" are full of Scriptural references and therefore cannot be accused of being outside of Apostolic teachings.

Jo, maybe you can explain just what is created grace, being that it is the dynamic expression of uncreated God?

Man has free will And God desires that all men be saved. By arguing to aggressively "man has free will", it leaves God's divine sovereignty in apparent trouble. This is the problem with arguing such theological issues. We must not argue one too much - in either direction - that the other is excluded or contradicted. This is a difficult thing to do.

I appreciate your compromising tone, and I think you sum up our positions pretty well. My problem with "God wants all men to be saved" is NOT that I think God doesn't have enough love to spread around. :) Rather, it is that it is one of those statements that God, for His own reasons, is not willing to MAKE happen.

To me, it is like God saying He does not want anyone to sin. It's true, but God isn't going to effectuate it becoming true in full. I see this as very different from "God wants all of His elect to be saved". Here is a "real" example of something God wants, because He will do whatever it takes to make sure it happens in full. So, in a manner of speaking, God would have a "duty" to save the elect, but no such duty to the non-elect.

But why does God NOT give ALL men "efficacious grace"? Does He foresee their rejection? We have been arguing this off and on for quite awhile. All I can say for sure is that we must hold to both truths, not fully understanding the HOW.

I think it is the "HOW" we are mostly disagreeing on, the mechanics of what God does, and what God's "duties" are. I don't happen to think that God bases His grace decisions on His foreknowledge. But if He did, then He would detect a "no" answer on the part of someone who already had a "normal" level of grace. If God had really wanted this person to be saved, then at the point of foreknowledge (the beginning), why couldn't God have "upped the juice"? :)

God's promises are for those who persevere. THEY will be the elect after the fact.

But I thought you believed in single predestination. Is this a POV thing?

Christ only releases the burden of sin from those who turn to Him. Completely.

OK, I would call the group of those who turn to Him completely, the elect. If Christ only releases the burden of their sins, then we would agree that Christ did not die for the sins of all men, He only died for the sins of the elect.

Re: filioque

Patristic teaching does not contradict Catholic teaching of the filioque. St. Gregory of Sinai states that the Spirit proceeds from the father throughin real time, for instance. And St. Gregory Palamas says "Yet the Spirit belongs also to the the Son, who receives Him form the Father" and "The pre-eternal rejoicing of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit who, as I said, is common to both which explains why He is sent from both..."

St. Gregory Palamas then takes this one step further: "Yet the Spirit has His existence from the Father alone, and hence He proceeds as regards His existence only from the Father."

Thus, this is the bototm-line on the procession of the Spirit, and this is why the Creed insists on the (eternal) procession being only from the Father, and why St. Photios insisted filioque was/is wrong as regards Spirit's existence.

Its not the Holy Spirit, or uncreated Divine Energies which changes the bread and wine into the Body and Blood, but rather by the words of the priest

Yes, that is a good ovservation, but we must caution not to confuse the Holy Spirit with uncreated energies of God.

Patristic understanding of energy is that every essence or nature has energy, i.e. a dynamic activity of such nature. Thus, God's nature, which is uncreated, has uncreated energies that result in hat we call "God's activity." It is paramount to understand that nature and energy is not one and the same, that the energy of the soul differs from its essence, and that there is no essence that does not possess energy, and that the energy proceeds from the essence and not vice versa.

I agree with all of that, and Thomistic theology states the same basic things, using different terms. What I question is whether it is part of Patristic Tradition to call God's energies "uncreated" and to say that when Christ abides in us, it is an Energy and not the Essence of God Himself. From what I am reading so far, it appears that the East today do not believe that God really comes to abide in man, but rather, this uncreated energy.

Jo, maybe you can explain just what is created grace, being that it is the dynamic expression of uncreated God?

Grace, as the Greek Fathers uniformly state (as far as I know) is a communication of the LIFE of Christ by the Spirit, who takes abode in our souls. John's Gospel is pretty clear on this, as is Paul's Corpus. In the West, there didn't seem to be an issue regarding this until Peter Lombard suggested, against the Greek Fathers, that charity was THE person of the Holy Spirit.

Out here in the wild West, this was a cause for a storm of protest. No one questioned that the Spirit came to man, but to say that the Spirit was literally the "forma informans animam, giving supernatural life to the soul wich is materia informata, provoked strong criticism. The Divine dwelling was admitted, but always on supposition that in some mysterious way, the Third Person was united to the soul through some CREATED forma of unique charecter... There were thus two gifts, the uncreated donum Dei and the created form which results from the presence and action of the Spirit in the justified soul. Romans 5:5 is a text often used to show the gift giving the gift, two separate things.

Now, why a created energy? St. Thomas argued, relying on the authority of ancient Fathers, that sanctifying grace must be created because of the universal norm of Providence, which implants in creatures forms and powers that are principles of action for the nature in question. Consequently, it would be unthinkable that on the supernatural plane, God would act in any other way. Thus, our key term of Catholicism, Sacramentalism. Visible signs pointing to invisible graces. Also, a parallel between the natural and supernatural world.

St. Thomas continues, saying that sanctifying grace CANNOT be a substance, but rather, an accident, an effect of the presence of God. "For what is substantially in God, becomes accidentally present in the soul which participates in the Divine goodness, as is evident with knowledge" Summa I-II, 110,2

It is capable of growth and decline in the manner of other spiritual accidents. It is a quality, since it makes the soul quantitatively different than it was or would be without such modification. As such, we say that Sanctifying (habitual) grace is created.

All of this is rather new to me, and I have not read through the Cappadocians (yet!) to see the Eastern point of view on all of this talk on energy. I see they discuss it, but it is not clear that they call it "uncreated". But the more I read on it, the more I am understanding that there is more than a subtle difference in how we understand how the supernatural comes to man.

Forgive me if I misunderstand all of this, this is a totally new way of looking at God that I have never conceived of before... I am certainly not trying to say one is wrong and the other is right. As Vatican 2 stated, I think we are more complimentary than contradictory. Thanks.

Regards

My problem with "God wants all men to be saved" is NOT that I think God doesn't have enough love to spread around. :) Rather, it is that it is one of those statements that God, for His own reasons, is not willing to MAKE happen. To me, it is like God saying He does not want anyone to sin. It's true, but God isn't going to effectuate it becoming true in full. I see this as very different from "God wants all of His elect to be saved".

Yes, as I have pointed out previously, God has two wills, which you seem to have picked up on. What "keeps" God from actually saving ALL men regardless is that God is Love. Love cannot but give of itself. Thus, God freely gives man that ability to choose. Even when God graces said man, it is the man in the end whom God allows to choose Him or not - as Moses and Joshua state: Choose! God has shown His "personality" to us through the Christ. Thus, we know that God "condescends" to man by allowing man to Love as well. God desires deeply a loving response to His initiatives. Thus, the result is the possibility of rejection! That is the chance we (and God) takes in Love. We (and God) makes themselves "vunerable" to the beloved, allowing the beloved to choose. Most certainly, God shows His love to us first - a very persuasive love.

I don't happen to think that God bases His grace decisions on His foreknowledge. But if He did, then He would detect a "no" answer on the part of someone who already had a "normal" level of grace.

As a Catholic, I can choose either option. I can believe that God uses His foreknowledge or not when choosing His elect. I happen to believe He does, but that's me.

If God had really wanted this person to be saved, then at the point of foreknowledge (the beginning), why couldn't God have "upped the juice"? :)

Good question, one we'll probably not know on this side of life. God must have some sort of a "balance" that says "That's enough. I have tried enough and this guy refuses me. He has decided to reject Me, so I leave this man to his own ways." On the other hand, if God DOESN'T use this foreknowledge, does God randomly choose men to elect? Who can say...

I thought you believed in single predestination. Is this a POV thing?

Yes, God predestines the elect, but WE don't know whom God has predestined for glory, only for grace. Once baptized or once we realize that we are obeying the commandments, we can know we have been predestined for grace - but this doesn't mean we are predestined for eternal glory - as the Bible clearly states that Christians return to the vomit of their past life, disinheriting the gift of Love. Again, this goes back to our different definitions of "salvation". You say it is a past event only. We say it is an ongoing event, past, present and future.

He died for the sin of the world, as the Bible states. The problem is that the gift is freely given - and some men CHOOSE not to accept it. Again, understand that love is given freely and the beloved must accept the initiatives. When Christ talks about faith, He also invariably talks about man's response to God, for example, in John 3.

Regards

kosta: Yes, that is a good ovservation, but we must caution not to confuse the Holy Spirit with uncreated energies of God.

jo: I think I am beginning to understand your point of view regarding "uncreated energy". We would say that BOTH are present - the Spirit HIMSELF and His energy (grace). It sounds like you see this energy as the mediator between the Transcendant God and man. Would that make the Incarnation an "uncreated energy"?

If I might offer an Anglican perspective (which seems to me much closer to the Orthodox than the Catholic position), essence and energy are abstract terms that we use for convenience of discussion. God is not an essence. He is not first an essence that gets differentiated into Three Persons. God is God because he is first of all Father--a Divine Person.

The uncreated energies are the ways in which the Personhood of God manifestes Himself to us that we might know Him. This is the only way a man can know or experience God; it is always as Divine Person--a hypostasis. What better or more complete manifestation of Grace could any man ask for?

To ask for the vision of the essence of God is to destroy the Personhood of God--it is idolatry.

The action of the Church in Baptism is the application of Christ's Salvific work on the cross to the individual. It is a case of Subjective Redemption. Christ died for ALL men, Objective Redemption. But not all men are saved. Thus, Christ's Work must be applied to the individual. Subjective Redemption. The Spirit works through Baptism to bring the Redemption won by Christ to the individual - the remission of sins.

Well, if redemption is a two-step process, and neither step involves belief, then how does a believer who is never baptized in his entire life go to heaven? I know there are special dispensations for such things as the pygmy problem, but there are tons of Christians out there who do not believe baptism is salvational, and are never baptized. Do you think God makes that many exceptions, or are most of them lost BECAUSE their sins were never remitted through a proxy baptism?

BTW, what church was John the Baptist a part of when he did his baptisms? How does the Church now get credit for effecting the work of Jesus on the cross? How could JTB effect work that hadn't been done yet?

It is by Baptism, when the believer takes on, in faith, the works of Christ into his heart.

Except this rarely happens in practice, right? In normal practice there is no believer, there is no faith, and there is no "taking" into the heart. These are supplied on the side, and are wholly apart from the baptizee. It seems an odd situation for something so important to take place.

The Spirit worked within Paul, prompting him to believe in Christ and to accept Baptism. It is only with his Baptism does Paul's sins become remitted. Thus, we personally are saved through Baptism, normally.

And by "personally saved", you mean unto that person is no longer saved.

"I don't believe I said we have a relationship with an "Essence"."

I didn't say you did. What I said what that the unity of the Holy Trinity is found in a single person -- the Father -- not an abstract and impersonal essence or nature. When you stated that the Spirit proceeds from a single Principle, that sounded awfully abstract and impersonal. We say that the Spirit proceeds from a single Person: the Father.

"We share in the Divine Nature in that we share in the communion of love between the Father and the Son."

I don't think that Orthodox theology would say that we share in the Divine Nature. We have one nature, and that is a human nature. Only in the God-man Jesus Christ are human and divine natures (physis) found in the same individual. We *partake* of the divine nature, as St. Peter writes -- but we would never imagine that when we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Mystical Supper that we become divine by nature, let alone in essence/substance.

"We enter into this communion because of Christ's Incarnation, which is HOW we come to know the Father."

Yes and no. If this were the only way of looking at it, we would be forced to say that the Old Testament Righteous did not reach states of theosis -- that they did not directly encounter God as far as they were able to bear it, etc. Patristic teaching is that they did reach theosis, although in a necessarily temporary form, since death had not yet been conquered through the Resurrection. That said, the Incarnation radically changed the way and extent to which man can be drawn to God.

"This is not the language of metaphysics, in practical terms. Our relationship with God is personal. But when discussing the terminology of the Godhead, we use such terms as "essence" to more properly describe the relationship between the Father and the Son."

I agree with much of what you have written in this section. But again, the fundamental relationship between the Father and the Son is not that they share a common essence or nature -- it is that the Father begets the Son and the Son is begotten of the Father. This is the starting point of what we know about their relationship.

The point I have been trying to convey is that in Orthodox understandings of the Trinity, all metaphysical definitions are secondary. The personal and the practical are the starting points -- and the Incarnation is of course at the center of that: "he who has seen me has seen the Father."

In subsequent posts, you and Kolokotronis have gone much further down the uncreated energies path, so I limit my comments.

I would say, though, that the terminology of the uncreated energies is a way of expressing a number of truths that are throughout Scripture and the patristic writings, none of which began with St. Gregory and the hesychasts:

1. We are partakers of the divine nature, as St. Peter says -- this tells us that there is a direct participation in the life of God, without created intermediaries of any sort.

2. We not only cannot become God in his essence or his nature, we cannot even presume to *know* or apprehend the essence of God

3. Our participation in this life of God is not experienced only by our souls, but is also meant to be experienced by our bodies

Remember that Paul wrote to CHRISTIANS that they could be DISINHERITED from their inheritance that was set aside in heaven.

I couldn't find it easily. Could you give me the verse?

So at what point does a person take on the Work of Christ and apply it to his own personal situation? Or do you say all men are saved - since Christ DIED for all men?

A person takes on the Work of Christ from his POV at the point of belief. From God's POV, he always had it. I do not say that all men are saved because Christ did not die for all men, He died for all men of the elect.

A person can also be "baptized by desire" or "Baptized by blood". Catechumens, those who have not been baptized by who are beginning to come to the faith through our RCIA program are bound for heaven if they died before the actual ritual.

OK, that helps, thanks. What is "Baptized by blood"? I mean, I think that our sins are remitted by the blood of Christ, as it says in the Bible (Col. 1:14 and Eph. 1:7) Does the Bible speak of the two-step method as applied by the Church, or of these other methods you mention.

"If I might offer an Anglican perspective (which seems to me much closer to the Orthodox than the Catholic position), essence and energy are abstract terms that we use for convenience of discussion. God is not an essence. He is not first an essence that gets differentiated into Three Persons. God is God because he is first of all Father--a Divine Person.

The uncreated energies are the ways in which the Personhood of God manifestes Himself to us that we might know Him. This is the only way a man can know or experience God; it is always as Divine Person--a hypostasis. What better or more complete manifestation of Grace could any man ask for?"

Very nicely stated. You've been reading more of those Eastern Fathers, haven't you? For shame -- when there is all of that good stuff being written by modern Anglicans! You are on the path to irrelevancy, my friend... :-)

In response to those who pointed that some of the martyrs had never been baptized (often a soldier standing by as someone was being tortured and martyred for the faith would be so moved that he would loudly proclaim himself to be a Christian, and be martyred immediately himself), there arose a phrase that said that these martyrs had been "baptized in blood," rather than in water.

Orthodoxy tends not to be as much into defining things out like that. We would, I think, simply say that there are unquestionably those who are saved who have not been baptized in water in the name of the Trinity. How this exactly is, other than through God's mercy, we tend not to define. We certainly do not feel a need to show that thus and such a person was "really" baptized, even though he wasn't -- just to keep rigidly consistent the idea that one must be baptized to be saved.

Very nicely stated. You've been reading more of those Eastern Fathers, haven't you? For shame -- when there is all of that good stuff being written by modern Anglicans! You are on the path to irrelevancy, my friend... :-)

Yes, well as I said, I was offering an Anglican perspective--not The Anglican perspective. There are many; it has been a broad church ever since the Elizabethan Settlement. But at this time the whole thing is coming apart at the seams.

I have been aware of the Orthodox perspective in the mix most of my life. I don't think it is simply coincidence that after the French Norman invasion, much of the English nobility ended up in Constantinople. The daughter of the defeated King Harold ended up in Kiev married to a Russian prince.

A person who claims to be a member of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church cannot ignore the Eastern Fathers. Even if it makes you irrelevant.

In John 10, the Evangelist implies that SOME of those in the sheepfold (those of the Church) do NOT follow Christ's voice. We all hear it, but some do not follow it. Only those who HEAR AND FOLLOW will enter into green pasture. All those in the sheepfold are not necessarily sheep, as Christ makes clear:

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." John 10:1

Some are in the sheepfold (Church) who don't belong. Only those who CONTINUE to FOLLOW the voice of the Shepherd are considered "sheep".

I respectfully disagree with this analysis. In this parable, I begin by looking at whether a non-sheep can be a member of the sheepfold. I would say "NO". Only actual SHEEP can, by definition, be members of the sheepfold. Other non-sheep-entities [NSEs] can be AMONG the sheepfold, or "ENTER" a sheepfold and mill about, but they cannot be a part of the sheepfold. So, I disagree that any of these entities can be a part of God's Church. They can show up and hang around, but they are not part of God's family, the Church, and never have been.

Since this is a parable, I paid particular attention to who the actors are here, noting that the sheep are the believers, God's Church. Now, the first verse says "HE" who climbs in some other way, not by the door, is a thief, etc. The second verse says "HE" who enters through the gate is the shepherd. This "HE" is clearly Jesus.

So, the first "HE" must be an entity who has an ability to harm a sheep, but is NOT a sheep, just as a shepherd is not a sheep. Verse 1 DOES NOT say that "a sheep who hops the fence ...", it says "HE". I take this to either be satan himself, or a false prophet or something along those lines. But I don't think it can be a member of God's Church. Sheep pens were specifically designed to prevent sheep from jumping out, so why would we assume that a sheep could jump in? Only an evil entity, other than a sheep, could, in order to steal the sheep away. Therefore, the sheepfold is not corrupted with sheep that will fall away. As it says a few verses later in John, God allows none of His sheep to be lost. NONE!

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