DIVINE ENERGIES OR DIVINE PERSONHOOD: VLADIMIR LOSSKY AND JOHN ZIZIOULAS

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         DIVINE ENERGIES OR DIVINE PERSONHOOD: VLADIMIR LOSSKY AND JOHN ZIZIOULAS

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Introduction

Contemporary Orthodox Christian theology, and perhaps even the Eastern Christian tradition in general, has almost become identified with the soteriological and mystical notion of "deification" or theosis. One cannot think of theosis, however, without reference to the Orthodox Christian understanding of "energies". The centrality of the realism of God's energies for deification—i.e., that God's energies are truly God—is affirmed by virtually every contemporary Orthodox Christian theologian. These theologians would also add that the concept of the "energies" of God functions as the interpretive key to the Greek patristic tradition. The Greek fathers affirmed from the beginning a distinction between God's unknowable essence and God's energies through which a real communion with God is possible. This distinction would receive clarification throughout the centuries culminating in the writings of the last great Byzantine theologian, Gregory Palamas. At the heart then of the Orthodox Christian tradition, and what separates it from other Christian traditions, is the notion of deification through the "energies" of God, which are God. Vladimir Lossky, the Russian emigre theologian, played no small part in constructing this narrative, beginning with his early writings on Dionysius the Areopagite, but especially with his well known and widely read The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, first published in 1944.

There is, however, one contemporary Orthodox theologian who has not joined the consensus of his colleagues in affirming the centrality of the concept of "energies" for the Orthodox understanding of deification. For John Zizioulas theosis is not about participating in the "energies" of God but in the hypostasis of Christ. While the notion of "energies" is useful and necessary in understanding a more general relationship between God and creation, salvation in Christ, i.e., deification, can only be expressed in terms of the category hypostasis, or "person"—or so says Zizioulas.

This essay will explore the differences between John Zizioulas's and Vladimir Lossky's understandings of salvation or theosis. Although Zizioulas could be compared to many Orthodox theologians who affirm with Lossky the centrality of the concept of God's "energies", the focus on Lossky is primarily due to Zizioulas himself attributing to Lossky a certain influence in determining the shape of contemporary Orthodox theology. Zizioulas's own attempts to understand salvation in terms of an ontology of personhood is developed, in part, over and against Lossky's emphasis on apophaticism and the related notion of God's energies. The first two parts of this essay will attempt to make transparent the logic behind the theologies of Lossky and Zizioulas. The final part of the essay will attempt to account for the differences and make a judgment regarding the adequacy of their theologies on the basis of internal coherency.

The implications of this debate extend beyond the possibility of a paradigm shift in Orthodox theology with Zizioulas's ontology of personhood. Insofar as the Orthodox notion of theosis attempts to convey a real communion with the Triune God, the debate between Lossky and Zizioulas is about how to adequately conceive of God as immanent and transcendent. In this sense, its significance expands to encompass the recent discussions on the revival of trinitarian theology.

Vladimir Lossky: Apophaticism and the "Energies" of God

For Vladimir Lossky, theology begins with the revelation of God. This revelation is not simply that which God gives in the act of creation, but the revelation, which for Lossky is the Incarnation in Jesus Christ. The Incarnation reveals who God is, i.e., God as Trinity and as such "forms the basis of all Christian theology; it is indeed, theology itself, in the sense in which that word was understood by the Greek fathers, for whom theology most commonly stood for the mystery of the Trinity revealed to the Church."1 The Incarnation reveals God as Trinity as "a primordial fact",2 i.e., a word or proclamation about God's being. As such, it is what makes "theology possible".3

The Incarnation, however, does more than simply communicate a particu¬lar "fact" or piece of information about God. As the event of divine-human communion, it makes possible the human ascent toward union with the living God. The true goal of theology, knowledge of God, is not abstract ideas, but an encounter of mystical union with the personal God. The Incarnation makes possible knowledge of God not as gnosis, an intellectual knowl¬edge, but as "mystical experience" which lies beyond thought. Although the Incarnation may reveal the Trinity as a "primordial fact", "to know the mystery of the Trinity in its fullness is to enter into perfect union with God and to attain to deification of the human creature".4

As the event of divine-human communion which enables the human ascent to union with God, the Incarnation reveals not simply that God is Trinity as a "primordial fact", but a God who is both transcendent to and immanent in created existence. The Incarnation is the event of real commu¬nion, such that the created human nature in Christ is deified through par¬ticipation in God's life. This participation is in God's energies, which is to be distinguished from God's essence. The latter refers to the transcendence of God, God's radical otherness from created existence. God's essence is ontologically distinct from created being, and it is only in and through the revelation that God's transcendence as ontologically other is known. "For outside revelation nothing is known of the difference between created and the uncreated, of creation ex nihilo, of the abyss which has to be crossed between the creature and Creator."5 The Incarnation reveals the distinction between the uncreated, unknowable essence of God that lies beyond being, and created essence whose existence is identified with being.

The well-known essence/energies distinction within Eastern Orthodox theology is thus an expression of the transcendence and immanence of God revealed in the incarnation, the energies being the bridge of the unfathomable gap between the uncreated God and God's creation. "Implied in the paradox of the Christian revelation: the transcendent God becomes immanent in the world, but in the very immanence of His economy...He reveals Himself as transcendent, as ontologically independent of all created being."6 The God whose essence is ontologically distinct from created being is unknowable to thought, which is inherently linked to created being; but such a God is known through participation and union with God's energies.

Why does Lossky find it necessary to affirm an unknowable essence of God, a God-beyond-being, in order to express the transcendence of God? For Lossky, the essence/energies distinction is the only way to affirm the reality of a personal communion with the living God in freedom and love. The notion of the unknowable essence of God affirms both the freedom of God from created existence and the integrity of created existence. It also expresses a communion between the divine and the human that is based on freedom and not necessity.

The :cheesy2: of the unknowable essence of God protects against a monistic conception of God which conceives the relationship of God to the world in terms of necessity. Lossky often cites Plotinus and the Sophiology of the Russian theologian Sergius Bulgakov as examples of a monistic klapklap of God.7

The shadow of monism hovers, according to Lossky, even over the God of Thomas Aquinas and scholastic theology. Lossky is aware that for Aquinas there is no necessary link between God and the world, as is suggested in the thought of Plotinus and Bulgakov. Like Bulgakov and Plotinus, Aquinas is guilty in Lossky's estimation of a rational approach to God. Such a rationalistic approach to theology, attempts to know God through concepts derived through the method of abstraction. The fundamental mistake of this Thomistic approach is that it links knowledge of God to the created nous. If mind or nous is created, then its sphere of activity is linked to the created realm or the realm of being.8 Lossky sees these Western thinkers as isolating the locus for the union with God in the nous, and ultimately continuing the mistakes of such patristic thinkers as Clement, Origen and Evagrius.9 The end result, according to Lossky, is not an encounter with the personal, living God, but a limited, conceptual knowledge of God's being.

The danger of such an approach finds its fullest expression for Lossky in the way Aquinas and the scholastic theologians conceive the Trinity, and in particular, their understanding of the filioque. For Rowan Williams, "it is, of course, Lossky's attack on the filioque which is the most immediately striking feature of his polemic against Western theology".10 It is also a position for which he will receive much criticism, by both Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike.11 Without doubt, Lossky considers the issue of the filioque as a serious obstacle to East-West unity. He does not, however, necessarily see the filioque as "the most crucial problem between the East and West".12 The crucial problem for Lossky consists in the differences in theological method, and the filioque is the most evident example of how a faulty theological method can lead to a doctrine which threatens personhood, the independence of the Holy Spirit, and, ultimately, the possibilities for deification.13 As even Rowan Williams admits, "his [Lossky's] unfairness and inaccuracy in particular criticisms of the West are not of primary significance; the essential complaint about Western intellectualism and subordination to philosophy remains unaffected, raising the whole question of rival conceptions of precisely how God is known, and how His activity is mediated in the world to created subjects".14

The controversy between East and West over the filioque is essentially a debate over the most adequate expression to explain the relations between the persons of the Trinity, particularly the person of the Holy Spirit. For Lossky, the most adequate expression is "relations of origin", whereby the Father is the origin of the Son and the Spirit, while for the West it is "relations of opposition", "according to which the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father and the Son as from one principle of spiration".15 The mistake of the West consists in attempting to understand the diversity within the Trinity from the perspective of the unified essence. He essentially agrees with Fr. Th. de Regnon, who writes that "Latin philosophy first considers the nature in itself and proceeds to the agent; Greek philosophy first considers the agent and afterwards passes through it to find the nature."16 It is the attempt to understand how the simple, unified essence can be diverse that leads the West to affirm that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

Lossky lists three problems with this approach to understanding the diversity within the unified essence. For one, "the relations are the basis of the hypostases, which define themselves by their mutual opposition, the first to the second, and these two together to the third".17 The "relations of opposition" here for Lossky introduce a type of dependence and necessity in God, especially in terms of the distinctiveness of the hypostases. Lossky further explains that "the relations only serve to express the hypostatic diversity of the Three; they are not the basis of it. It is the absolute diversity of the three hypostases which determines their differing relations to one another, not vice versa."18 The diversity of the hypostases is then a "primordial fact" not dependent on relations based on mutual opposition.

The second problem for Lossky is the depersonalization of the Trinity. Insofar as the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son "the two persons represent a non-personal unity, in that they give rise to a further relation of opposition".19 The third problem, and really a summation of the previous two, concerns the primacy of essence over the hypostases. The "relations of opposition" indicate that "in general the origin of the persons of the Trinity therefore is impersonal, having its real basis in the one essence, which is differentiated by its internal relations. The general character of this triadology may be described as a pre-eminence of natural unity over personal trinity, as an ontological primacy of the essence over the hypostases."20 The solution does not consist in giving primacy to the hypostases over the divine ousia.21 In trinitarian theology the antinomy between the unity and diversity, expressed as that between person and nature must be maintained, and this only through the "relations of origin" which emphasize the monarchia of the Father. In the person of the Father the unity and diversity is presented simultaneously.22 It is the antinomic character above all which distinguishes the Orthodox approach to the Trinity from that of the West. Lossky explains the difference in a lengthy quote worthy of citation:

The positive approach employed by Filioquist triadology brings about a certain rationalization of the dogma of the Trinity, insofar as it suppresses the fundamental antinomy between the essence and the hypostases. One has the impression that the heights of theology have been deserted in order to descend to the level of religious philosophy. On the other hand, the negative approach, which places us face to face with the primordial antinomy of absolute identity and no less absolute diversity in God, does not seek to conceal this antinomy but to express it fittingly, so that the mystery of the Trinity might make us transcend the philosophical mode of thinking and that the Truth might make us ...

The rest you can read here:

Link [PDF] --> http://www.box.net/shared/yi4eitzu8p

Modern Theology 19:3 July 2003 ISSN 0266-7177 (Print) ISSN (Online)

ARISTOTLE PAPANIKOLAOU --> http://www.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/theology/faculty/aristotle_papanikola_26156.asp

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