That God Transcends His Energy According to Essence

¹ But after the divine energy too had appeared to be named “Godhead,” we sought to have it demonstrated from the theologians whether God transcends, according to essence, this divine energy and the things contemplated essentially about it; and this too appeared to be proclaimed by all the saints. And it was demonstrated together that those who do not accept this are polytheists, speaking of many principles, as not referring to one cause and one principle the things contemplated essentially about God. For the great Basil, in the Antirrhetics, says: “There is a kind of order, not constituted from our positing, but coinciding with the very sequence according to nature, as to the fire is the light that is from it. For in such things we speak first of the cause, and second of that from it; not separating them from one another by an interval, but in our reasoning conceiving the cause prior to the caused. How then is it reasonable to deny the order, in those things in which there is a first and a second, not according to our positing, but from the sequence inherent in them according to nature?” But also, in the [letter] to Amphilochius, he writes: “And what are the energies of the Spirit? Unutterable by reason of their magnitude, innumerable by reason of their multitude. For how shall we conceive of the things beyond the ages? What were his energies before the noetic creation? And how many are the graces from him about creation? What is his power toward the ages to come? For he was, and pre-existed, and co-existed with the Son and the Father before the ages. So that even if you conceive of something beyond the ages, this too is below the Spirit”—declaring the pre-eternal energies of the Spirit to be below the Spirit. And in the discourse On the Godhead of the Son and the Spirit, the divine Gregory of Nyssa says: “The divine nature remains unutterable and unpronounceable, surpassing all signification by voice. Therefore the appellation of Godhead presents not nature, but the contemplative power of the Spirit.” And the great Athanasius, in the second discourse Against the Arians, when the heretics said that the Son is of the will, but not of the nature of the Father: “If,” he says, “they grant to God the willing concerning the things that are not, why do they not recognize that in God which transcends the will?” And in the third against the same: “The heretics have seen the opposite of the will; but the greater and transcendent they have not seen. For as to the will is opposed that which is against purpose, so there transcends and precedes the willing that which is according to nature.” And writing against Macedonius, the same: “Know,” he says, “that to be God is second; for even we, if we become imitators of God, according to Paul, become gods; but of the very same nature we cannot become.” And the divine Maximus: “Beyond all beings, both those that participate and those that are participated, God is infinitely transcendent.” But also the divine Dionysius, in the twelfth chapter On the Divine Names, says: “In the degree that beings transcend non-beings—holy, or divine, or lordly, or royal—and the self-participations transcend the things that participate in them, in that degree is the one who is above all beings exalted above all beings; and above all that participate and all participations is the imparticipable Cause.” And in the second letter to Gaius: “How,” he says, “is the one who is beyond all things both above the divine-principle and above the good-principle? If you conceive Godhead and goodness as the very thing of the good-making and god-making gift, according to which we are deified and made good—for if this becomes the principle of being deified and made good to those who are deified and made good, then he who is above every principle is beyond the principle even of the so-called Godhead and goodness,”

² as of divine-principle and good-principle, is beyond. And again the same: “We must now pass to the truly existing theological essence-naming of the truly Existent. But this much we will recall: that the aim of the discourse is not to declare the supersubstantial essence as supersubstantial—for this is unutterable and unknowable and altogether unmanifest, and surpassing the union itself—but to hymn the essence-making procession of the divine-principial essence-principle into all beings.” And the divine Maximus, in the Scholia, says that “procession” here is the divine energy, which brought forth every essence. And the divine Chrysostom, in the first discourse On the Incomprehensible, says: “The prophets appear not only ignorant of what the essence of God is, but at a loss also concerning his wisdom, how great it is. And yet the essence is not from the wisdom, but the wisdom from the essence. And when they cannot comprehend even this with exactness, of how great madness would it be to suppose that one can subject the essence itself to one’s own reasonings?” And in the Gospel according to John, the same again says: “Not by measure does God give the Spirit. For we all received the energy of the Spirit by measure”—for here he calls the energy “Spirit,” for this is what is shared—“but this one has it without measure, and whole, the entire energy. And if his energy is unmeasured, much more his essence.”