Protestants can quickly get themselves in a muddle when discussing the mystery of God’s existence. A good case-in-point is today’s (5 Feb. 2025) broadcast of American Family Radio’s Exploring the Word with Misters Harper and McFarland. A feller from Texas called in wondering about how to reconcile the statement in Holy Scripture that no one has even seen God with the historical fact of the God-man Jesus Christ’s presence on earth.
As sola Scriptura Protestants will do, they threw around some Bible verses and stated their own personal opinions and interpretations, but the whole thing was left a bit of a jumble.
It is precisely here that the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church would be of help to the Texan and to the hosts and to the others who are confused about the nature of the Holy Trinity. There is a basic notion in Orthodox theology that brings clarity to this discussion, the essence-energies distinction in God. It is essentially this: God is unknown to us in His essence, but He is known to us in His energies, in which we are even called to participate. Sts Basil the Great, Maximus the Confessor, and Gregory Palamas, amongst others, have spoken in some detail about this.
A passage from Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos will give the inquirer a place to begin on this subject:
One of the most basic teachings of St. Gregory Palamas is that of the essence and energy of God. To be sure, this did not originate with St. Gregory but is the teaching of the entire Orthodox Tradition, for the Apostolic Fathers referred to the subject of the distinction between essence and energy in God, and we see it again in the teaching of St. Basil the Great. Basil the Great was looking at this subject in relation to the heresy of the Eunomians.
St. Gregory laid great emphasis on the uncreatedness of the divine essence and the uncreatedness of God’s energy (activity). The word ‘uncreated’, is applied to God. God is uncreated, He has not been created, but is before all the ages. There is no beginning in God. Man and the entire creation were created by God, and are therefore created. Hence the uncreated is identified with the divine.
According to Barlaam, to whom St. Gregory Palamas is referring, only God’s essence is uncreated, but not His energy as well. According to the saint, he who regards only the essence as created, "but not also his eternal energies", is going against the Holy Fathers of the Church.
At this point St. Gregory Palamas is using a passage from St. Maximos the Confessor about the works of God saying that some of them "began to be in time" and others "did not begin to be in time". The former include the immortal, the living, and so forth, and the latter include immortality, life, that is to say the uncreated and eternal energies of God. Moreover, here the uncreated energies of God are characterised as eternal, for the eternal is beyond time and duration. And what is beyond time and duration is divine, uncreated.
This passage of St. Maximos the Confessor is the following: "All immortal things and immortality itself, all living things and life itself, all holy things and holiness itself, all good things and goodness itself, all blessings and blessedness itself, all beings and being itself are manifestly works of God. Some began to be in time, for they have not always existed. Others did not begin to be in time, for goodness, blessedness, holiness and immortality have always existed".
It is clear, then, that goodness, blessedness, holiness and immortality are energies of God, which are eternal and uncreated. There is a difference between the uncreated energy of God and the things created. Goodness is an uncreated energy of God, but the good things are created. Life is the uncreated energy of God, but the living are created things, effects of the uncreated energy.
According to another passage from St. Maximos the Confessor which St. Gregory quotes, goodness, life, immortality, simplicity, immutability and infinity, and in general whatever "contemplative vision perceives as substantively appertaining to God are works of God and did not begin to be in time". So then, God’s uncreated energies, which proceed from His essence, are without beginning, of course without thereby impairing God’s supranatural and incomprehensible simplicity and His triadic unity, which alone is intrinsically without beginning.
Therefore God’s energies are without beginning, eternal and uncreated. And, as God’s essence is divine, so are His energies as well. This is important for orthodox theology. For if we regard God’s energies as created, then we make it impossible for man to be deified. That is to say, if God communicates with the world through created energies, then we can attain union and communion with God only through created energies, which makes salvation impossible. God then remains entirely unknown to man, or if we commune with the essence of God, then the difference between created and uncreated is lost.
Because of the essence-energies distinction, it is possible for mankind to see God: He does not remain hidden in His essence.
And because that is so, we are led to another essential part of Orthodox theology that is also relevant: the holy icons. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity really did become man, really did unite His divinity with fallen humanity, really did communicate His energies to mankind, which all Orthodox Christians strive to acquire in their fulness through the Holy Mysteries, prayer, almsgiving, prostrations, etc. This reality of God in the Flesh means that we may also paint His image, He Who has been seen with human eyes, as the Orthodox have done since the time of the Holy Apostles (St Luke the Apostle and Evangelist was the first to write holy icons).
The holy icon of Christ is thus a formidable weapon against the doubts sown by the devil about the existence of the Lord Jesus Christ, His divine-human nature, and His dwelling here in the earth with men. He has appeared, and men have seen Him, ‘full of Grace and Truth,’ and the icons of the Lord Jesus are a testimony of those truths (for further discussion of icons and their significance, try this page and this one).
(Source of icon of the Lord Jesus Christ)
Those Protestants who want to know more fully the God they proclaim ought to seek out the wisdom of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, those precious vessels of the Holy Ghost:
https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/
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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
