[jo kus]

How can we know a nature unless through its energies? Unless I communicate with you you cannot know me. So it is a mistake to confuse nature with energies that make the nature known to others. But is it also naïve to think that your wisdom word or spirit is any less human than the other two. The reason the East stresses Trinity more than the Catholic West is because it is through the divine Hypostatic Economy that God accomplishes our salvation in real time.

Well, I can know you by analogy to myself, since we both have a human nature. As to knowledge of me through my "energies", I admit that I am still mulling over whether my (or more to the point, God's) actions are part of me (or Him).

To be honest, I don't know why the East stresses the Personhood while the West stresses the Nature of the Trinity. I would like to think it is two approaches to the same truths, complimentary and not contradictory.

After reading on St. Symeon and St Palamas on the development of the doctrine of energies, I understand it to be a valid interpretation of the Patristic writings that preceded it - although certainly not the only one. Much of it relies on several presumptions - namely, that God is totally unknoweable in His Essence, but knoweable in His Energies, and secondly, that the "light" of the Transfiguration, the Burning Bush, and in the mystical prayer of the monk are all God's Energies, properly speaking. The West has a difficult time basing doctrines on subjective and private interpretations of contemplative prayer or experiences. Certainly, we believe orthopraxy and orthodoxy are related and the latter feeds of the former. But since the West looks more to Aristotle than Plato, our views on these experiences differ, especially as laid out by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.

In the end, brother, I see neither "wrong", just different ways of approaching the Trinity. I still am a bit confused on the necessity of God coming to us as an Energy - while still being God who is Transcendant. I am sure one of you will be able to explain this, as I doubt that after 2 weeks of reading and thinking, I have discovered some fatal flaw in a doctrine that has held fast for some 700 years!

Regards

[kosta50]

Well, I can know you by an of alogy to myself, since we both have a human nature

And how do you know God except by analogy of His Energies -- justice, goodnes, mercy, love? Love is not a characteristic of God; God is Love. God is not virtious; He is Virtue. His nature can become our virtue, but never our nature.

But when it comes to nature, there is no analogy: how can created and uncreated be analogous?

What we know of God is through His Energies: unless God revealed to us that we are created in His image and likeness, we would not know that. We must not forget that we can become only symbolic representations of God, and that those who achieve theosis become vessels through which God's Energies become apparent (as in saints and some priests).

The problem with concentrating on God's nature is that the likeness and image of God in our minds becomes analogous rather than symbolic. We begin to think of ourselves as "just like" God, but in minuscule terms. Nonetheless, we think of Him as one of "us."

Your picture is not you. It conveys an image of you, but is not you; it's paper! Thus, in theosis we become the picture of God, by grace, what God is by nature.