Thoughts on the Nicene Creed?

[The Liturgist]

One other thing @Andrewn Gregory Palamas did not invent the idea of divine incomprehensibility; my submarine analogy rather is more related to a quote from St. Gregory of Nyssa someone on the forum uses; my understanding is Palamism clarifies the separation of the revealed, revealable and knowable aspects of God from the unrevealable and unknowable essence, by characterizing the former as the divine energies, likening them to the the sunlight, and the latter to the interior of the sun which even today with our advances in heliology remains a mysterious and impenetrable wonderland of life-sustaining nuclear fusion which, if encountered at close distance, would be non-survivable for any manned or unmanned spacecraft yet envisaged.

 

[Andrewn]

One other thing @Andrewn Gregory Palamas did not invent the idea of divine incomprehensibility; my submarine analogy rather is more related to a quote from St. Gregory of Nyssa someone on the forum uses; my understanding is Palamism clarifies the separation of the revealed, revealable and knowable aspects of God from the unrevealable and unknowable essence, by characterizing the former as the divine energies, likening them to the the sunlight, and the latter to the interior of the sun which even today with our advances in heliology remains a mysterious and impenetrable wonderland of life-sustaining nuclear fusion which, if encountered at close distance, would be non-survivable for any manned or unmanned spacecraft yet envisaged.

My problem with Palamism is not the essence-energies distinction. In fact, this distinction makes a lot of sense. The problem is that the uncreated energies add to the Trinitarian belief what seems like a 4th person.

Hesychasts and others occasionally experience God's Light. Even before Christ this was referred to as the Shekinah. Christians have already identified God's Shekinah with Christ (and the Holy Spirit). So, what's the point in adding other energies beside the energies of the Holy Trinity?

 

[The Liturgist]

My problem with Palamism is not the essence-energies distinction. In fact, this distinction makes a lot of sense. The problem is that the uncreated energies add to the Trinitarian belief what seems like a 4th person.

Hesychasts and others occasionally experience God's Light. Even before Christ this was referred to as the Shekinah. Christians have already identified God's Shekinah with Christ (and the Holy Spirit). So, what's the point in adding other energies beside the energies of the Holy Trinity?

Where do you think Palamas taught that the existence of the uncreated energies stems from an extra-Trinitarian source? The idea makes no sense; the uncreated energies are of God and God is a Trinity of three Coeternal Persons. It is the internal functioning of the Trinity and I would argue to a specific extent Patrology and the nature of the eternally begotten Son and the eternal Procession of the Spirit that we begin to enter into unrevealed areas proper to the essence of God and not known through His energies, which we can still extrapolate, using apophatic theology in lieu of sonar if I might refer again to my earlier example of a submarine navigating the unknowable waters of the divinity. (Which is a metaphor I quite like, for one of the Cappadocians did describe God as an “unlimited sea of being.” I also am as it happens fond of the sort of submarine action film where the navigator and the skipper attempt to plot their position on the chart table with an enemy vessel equipped with depth charges - an apt metaphor for the devil - closing in).