Why the Essence-Energies Distinction is CRUCIAL to Orthodox Theology (w/ Dr. David Bradshaw)

well hey everyone what is up welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin this is gospel simplicity and i am so glad that you're here today today i have a really exciting interview for you with dr david bradshaw a professor of philosophy at the university of kentucky and we're going to be talking about the essence energies distinction in orthodoxy but also just in scripture and how this plays out and to a whole host of doctrines he is so articulate on this topic and man i had a great time i think you're really going to enjoy it while you're getting ready for it and before we go i would just want to say a couple thank yous first of all i want to say thank you to my patreon subscribers and merch buyers who make this channel possible thank you so much especially to my patrons who give monthly to help support this channel because of them not only is this channel able to continue to be sustainable but allows it to grow into exciting and new things and also because of them these videos don't have mineral ads anymore so we can thank them for that so anyway if you're interested in becoming a patron and supporting this channel you can do so using the link down below it would mean a ton to me also i want to say thank you to our sponsor today kindred kindred is a christian company that exists to help people reclaim sacred time with god and they do that through making these beautiful bibles that will help you engage with scripture and new and profound ways they're filled with full page images and it will encourage you to read more slowly and contemplatively i've loved them they're a great company and you should definitely check them out you can do so by going to kindredapostle.com and hey if you want to get one you can use the promo code gospel 10 to get 10 off your order today well with all that being said i will let us get to the interview i hope you enjoy it [Music] dr david bradshaw earned a bachelor's of science in physics from auburn university and has a phd in philosophy from the university of texas his research focuses on the ways that ancient greek philosophy shaped medieval philosophy and religious thought and how these in turn contributed to the formation of modernity most of his work to date has been on the philosophical roots on the division between the greek speaking eastern and latin-speaking western branches of christianity he's also the author and editor of several books including aristotle east and west and a recent textbook medieval philosophy dr david bradshaw thank you so much for being here today thank you it's a pleasure to be here well i'm really excited to have you here and today we're going to be talking a little bit about this thing called the essence energies distinction but before we jump straight into that i'd love to know just a bit of your background outside of what we had in the bio there how did you end up as a professor of philosophy well let's see i i'd say my love for philosophy began reading c.s lewis back when i was a teenager this is what 40 years or so years ago and um so i took a lot of philosophy in college even though i was a physics major and my initial interest was actually philosophy of science and i went to notre dame they had a program in history and philosophy of science i went into that as my as a graduate program right out of undergrad in 1982 and but when i got in the program i realized well you it's not that easy just to jump from science into philosophy without proper preparation so i realized i needed to get a lot more you know read a lot more in depth in the classics of philosophy beginning with plato and aristotle so i actually dropped out and uh worked for eight years uh mostly using the physics degree i worked in infrared research and all that time i was reading philosophy uh at night you know on my own and trying to get ready to go back to grad school and so it's it's been a lifelong love but um you know philosophy is great because you know you don't necessarily have to be an academic to do philosophy and i i experienced that and i'm very glad i did you know i think it's it's uh if you are a professor it's really helpful to have worked in the world uh so-called that other people do it work all you know their whole lives and you have to understand that's where the great majority of your students will be and you have to have some kind of connection with you know with what their lives are going to be so it was helpful also in that way well that's fantastic thank you so much for sharing some of that and so you mentioned cs lewis that he was influence in your early life did you grow up as a protestant or i know c.s lewis has a very uh wide audience so just out of curiosity oh yeah i was a protestant my parents are methodist and my father being in the air force so i attended mostly the protestant chapel services and um you know so i was sort of a non-denominational christian in college and uh most of what i knew and believed came really from reading lewis and i also you know liked the other inklings and then i was even active in campus crusade for a little while you know i was i was sort of part of that whole um evangelical movement that was strong back especially i think in the late 70s uh early 80s on campus university campuses so um yeah but i converted orthodoxy when i was in college wonderful thank you so much for sharing that and i i'm sure there's a lot to get into there but we'll leave that perhaps for another day on how that happened um but i'm sure this is true for you then as well that for me as an evangelical i didn't grow up in church hearing about this idea of the essence energy's distinction it just wasn't vocabulary that was uh in my repertoire of things so for those that are perhaps grew up in a tradition like myself or in a tradition like yourself could you just give us some background on what does this even mean this idea of essence energies could we maybe define terms here yeah well uh it's something that in a way we're all very familiar with if you read the new testament the word energy in english derives from the greek word inergia and that's a word that's saying well excuse me that saint paul uses about two dozen times uh anarghia as well as the the verbs that are cognate to it uh entergain the active voice and integrates by the passive voice they're quite prominent actually and it's especially striking if you sort of do a word study in that word group in the new testament you find that saint paul uses them pretty often hardly anyone else does i think there's maybe one occurrence in the in the gospel of mark but otherwise it's sort of a term that he picked up and and you might say made his own and made distinctive of his own theology and uh early christian readers recognized that because then when you go to the apostolic fathers right after the new testament they're using it in the same way that saint paul did and so do the greek apologists in the second century so it becomes a kind of term of art in christian theology quite early and you know so anyone who's interested in basics of christianity the new testament really should know about this uh the reason we people typically don't is because it's not translated of course it's energy in english versions of the new testament and there's a whole story about that um uh the law the short version is that our english translations are are sort of in the wake of in the tradition of uh though the vulgate and the other latin translations including the old latin that were they were used in the west uh in the middle ages and when you try to translate this word group and argue and enter gain and integrate thy into latin you hit a a couple of problems the nearest noun you can find to inergia is operatio okay opera which operation working uh perhaps activity but um the verb after otter is a deponent and so it there's no distinction of active and passive voices and what happens as the verb is used to translate the two verbs intergain and inner gaze thigh in greek a lot of st paul's meaning sort of gets washed away and the idea of energy which i think is there in the greek um sort of disappears and what what what's left is the idea of operation or working and that's the way it's normally translated in english new testaments um and so part of what what gets lost then that's that you see if you're reading this in greek with attention to the sort of the nuances of this word is the whole concept of synergy is really really important in saint paul and it just doesn't come through not as strongly not as clearly in the latin translations or the english translations and of course this was not something that anyone ever intended uh no one translating the new testament set out to sort of distort what's going on it's just a natural occurrence when you try to render one language into another and i think the whole process was exacerbated because of course in the late 4th early 5th century people in the west really were no longer reading greek i mean you find that even with august and he talks about this in the confessions how they tried to teach him greek as a child and he wasn't interested and he was you know a highly educated man so what happened was in the west in the middle ages the latin new testament sort of was the tren was the new testament and western theology came to be sort of grow up on that basis and i think this pauline idea of synergy really didn't become central in the way uh for the west that it did for the east and um uh that has a lot of implications so uh anyway that's i haven't really answered your question about essence and energies okay the word essence usia in greek that's not in the new testament at least not in with that meaning of it that's a term that comes up sort of you might say through conciliar theology particularly the nicene creed homo usion of one essence with the father so it becomes part of christian theology as well and once it does beginning in in the fourth century and later then you find people contrasting the divine essence or usia with the divine energy energia and um you know we can talk about this as we get into it but roughly the contrast the essence being what god is in himself how he knows himself to be independently of his relation to creation you might say his eternal being and the energy being god as he is manifest and active including among creatures and that again that's the meaning that it has in the new testament and so um that contrast essence and energy then becomes for greek the greek patristic tradition you know those who are reading the new testament in the original greek uh it becomes a central idea and it just really never even appears in the west it's not that people rejected it they just didn't know about it um so i think it's a it's a great treasure treasure uh waiting to be rediscovered really by uh by you know the the mainstream of western christianity well that was really helpful thank you and that's fascinating to me how language ends up shaping theology and i've heard people hypothesize about what would have happened if augustine would have paid a little more attention in his greek classes growing up and of course we can't know but the way that that has shaped the divide which i know is something that you know a great deal about it's also interesting for me to hear as someone growing up in the west and as a theology student here in the west it the term essence feels a little more normal to me it's something we might not have like said it a lot growing up in church but as you get into theology like okay that's the word you hear but energies isn't something that we talk about in the west yet that's the word that we find in scripture versus that usia word and so you mentioned that you think there's kind of a great uh treasure trove of insights here for the the west to reclaim if they can really just dig into this and this great patristic tradition that mainly grew up in the east after the uh separation of languages between the east and the west and i imagine there might be people that are out there and they're saying oh okay that that sounds true i mean this sounds interesting but what are those consequences of accepting this or rather what are their what are they lacking in not growing up with this or having never heard of this are there legitimate theological consequences to this or i i can imagine people sitting back and saying man this seems like just something for the theologians and their ivory towers so what is the consequence of this doctrine well again i think the single one that's most important there are several but the most important is synergy um you know it makes a huge difference to your life as a christian if you think of what you're doing you know your your every breath you might say as something that you're doing in cooperation with god god is enabling you god is working through you god is um strengthening you and and um you know you're never just a passive vessel you're a co-worker but as a co-worker you're not uh shall we say sort of you know it's like two men working not like two men working together built to build a house who are equal and so forth it's rather that god imparts to you the energy to do his will and as you do his will your acts become his acts all right um you know and of course this is runs through the new testament um let me just you know remind you i'm sure you're you're well familiar but for instance in first corinthians 3 you have saint paul saying i have planted apollos watered but god gave the increase for we are laborers together which is synagogue with god you are god's husbandry you are god's building so we're god's co-workers his cinegoy and the question is what does that mean you know i think it's um natural if you haven't really thought very carefully or read you know much of the the larger teaching that's behind this just to think in those terms of two men working together to build a house and i'm cooperating with god but god is something external to me uh well that's not what saint paul is talking about at all you know so another passage that again i'm sure is very familiar philippians 2 12 to 13. um and i think this is the king james which i always love the king james wherefore my beloved as you have always obeyed not as in my presence only but now much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is god which worketh in you and worketh there is the verb entergain that i mentioned a minute ago both to will and to do and again to do is energaine both to will and to do of his good pleasure and the interesting thing in that passage is you can ask the question well who's doing the willing and the doing at the end is it god or is the philippians and it's ambiguous both in greek and english it says god works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure um he shifts to the infinitive there to will and to do and of course the infinitive doesn't have a subject at least not one that's stated so you have to infer what's the subject and in the context i think it's equally both it's the philippians who are willing to doing excuse me willing and doing and it's god and so their willing their doing becomes that of god and that's the pauline idea of synergy where what we do is um enabled and realized and made effective through the power of god working in us um another example that this one doesn't use the word an anergia but i think it's it's another one that kind of leaps to mind is uh saint paul you know when he describes his conversion on the road to damascus there's that episode where the lord says to him saul saul it is hard for you to kick against the pricks and the fact that he says that tells you that he has been trying to direct saul trying to influence him against this evil path that he's taken and saul has been resisting he's been kicking against the pricks and as paul looks back on that you know and and in all these passages where he's reflecting on his ministry there are many of those you can see that for him this is the moment when not only you know is he enlightened and he comes to know who jesus really is but also he becomes you might say now he's really himself now he's no longer in that state of resisting god internally now he is open to receive that influence and grace and energy from god and it's made him more who he really is right it's made him able to be the person god intends him to be and uh so when i refer to synergy that's that's what i have in mind and i mean the christian life is all about that and we don't have that clear and have a way to articulate it as well as understanding the biblical basis for it um then we can just sort of drift and and have a really wrong idea of of what we are as christians that's really interesting the way that you connect this doctrine about god and that he has you know essence and energies and there's a distinction here and then how that plays out in us with kind of this idea of synergy and i think that's really helpful and i think it's helpful to be thinking theologically in such ways that we're able to make those connections if you would i can imagine there's people that are saying okay like the language he's using it's different terms than i might use but yeah i would say for the most part like yeah that there's this dynamic of this synergistic dynamic now of course we could get into it in some protestant circles that might get you in some trouble but could you maybe connect the dots as to why you see this as why you see a doctrine of divine simplicity um there's something and perhaps correct me if i'm wrong i'm definitely a bit out of my depth here um but in the east we generally have this essence energies distinction whereas the west has a more strong sense of absolute divine simplicity why would this idea of synergy not work on that model or not work as well yeah that's that's a good question and this too is very important it's it's sort of a discussion that takes place uh more at the academic level academic theologians philosophers in the middle ages but you know those ideas filter down and they shape the way the church operates and what the teaching is that's given to the people how the how christian belief even scripture is interpreted so divine simplicity all right this is an ancient idea you can find it already in aristotle uh maybe even the pre-socratics if you want to go back that far that the god is simple he has no parts um he is immaterial he's also at least essentially unchanging now i mean that's a that's a tricky issue because if god is active in history as christians believe then um and particularly if he becomes incarnate the son of god becomes incarnate then you know god is at least viewed from a temporal standpoint there are ways in which he his activity his manifestation definitely does change but essentially he doesn't okay he's eternal and he's not even changed in the act of creating the world he already is fully and completely what he is um that was you know the common belief even among pagans who believed in one god and christians as well both east and west and when you get into the church fathers you find them you know developing this idea but they begin to articulate it philosophically in different ways you really have and i talk about this in in my book that you mentioned aristotle east and west you have in uh one in the eastern fathers like say saint gregory of nisa is a good example of this the idea that one of the ways in which god is simple is that he's not a good or wise or powerful by participating in some reality external to himself the way that we are you know they're thinking in a sort of platonic way where for a human being to be wise is to participate in wisdom uh and to be good is to participate in goodness now they also think that wisdom that we participate in the goodness we participate in that's god okay they're not platonus in the sense of bleeding and believing in sort of self-standing forms they take over a lot of that platonic language of participation and apply it to the relation between creatures and god and of course what also follows from that is god does not participate he is the very thing itself god is goodness itself god is wisdom itself god is life itself being itself and that kind of dovetails you know with some scriptural passages like exodus 3 14 i am he who is they took that to be indicating god is in some sense being itself um i am the way the truth and the life god is life itself you know in him was life and the life was the light of men um god is also love agape you know and first john so all these perfections that god has he has them in a different way than we do there's not you might say uh ontological composition in the case of god as there is for us for us we only have those perfect uh perfections in virtue of our relation to something external to ourselves and that's not true for god well okay so that's that's an understanding of divine simplicity that was already there in in the fourth century in the east people like gregory vanessa uh in the west about that same time a little later you have saint augustine also for him divine simplicity is is crucially important it's one of the central themes of his thought um and he agrees with gregory vanessa i mean he has that similar idea i don't know if he's read gregory per se but he has the same idea god is not what he he doesn't have his attributes by participating in anything else but he also adds to it another way of articulating or sort of stating philosophically how god is simple that god is identical with his attributes um how shall i say this uh all together okay when gregory for gregory yes god is the good god is wisdom god is life but those are ways that god manifests himself gregory uses the word energia or energies uh plural for those and he says when we name god with these various terms we're actually naming energies of god energies activities operations however you want to put it but ways that god is active and manifest that we recognize and and name um augustine since he doesn't have that term or concept doesn't go that way he just says no we're naming the divine essence um god is his own essence essentia and that essence that is also the divine goodness power wisdom life and in fact he then goes further uh to add two other at least implicitly one is explicit um that are really even more important um his activity operatio okay and his will voluntas um god is his own will now that's where i think theologically you can see this is going to lead to some problems because if god is eternal and unchanging doesn't matt that mean that the divine will has to be eternal and unchanging uh well yes and actually augustine does draw that very conclusion he talks about this at several points in the confessions i think if i remember it's book 12 chapter 15 i think is maybe the the most emphatic um uh eternal unchanging and furthermore god as i was saying what god is what he is independently of his relation to creatures okay because i as i mentioned he's already eternally full and and fully realized even prior to creating he doesn't need to create the world to be what he is well if that's true of god then on augustine's view it's also true of the divine will which is just one of the names that we give to the divine essence all right and the implication of that is that god's will is not only eternal and unchanging it's also sort of fixed fully from his own side without uh any interaction or response to what creatures do okay and this i think is something where you can you can see the metaphysical roots behind augustine's understanding of predestination in which god's election and he says this you know explicitly and emphatically is not a response to what creatures will it's something that god determines and then he gives grace in accordance with that and that grace enables some creatures to to will good and those who do not receive the grace they're not able to will good and uh the point though is that all the initiative is fully on god's side so you see how synergy has disappeared from that picture um it's really not synergy that he's describing it's uh monergy or monument energy however you want to say that that uh it's just god's activity god's will god's determination that's behind everything and that whole idea that we're active cooperators with god through our own free choice um i think is what's lost uh and yeah that has huge huge theological ramifications and you know if you know much about the history of theology in the west in the middle ages you know this this is something they just wrestled with repeatedly because uh it it's just it's such a bitter pill to swallow frankly you know the idea that god just determines of his own initiative to whom he will give grace to whom he will not give grace um and um i would think at least i would i would add i mean this may be more controversial that that picture of god is partly why uh so many in the west have turned away from christianity itself because that picture of god is really um deeply alien and um call you know just it's not a god you want to believe in it's not a god you know you don't want the world to be like that um and what does it say about yourself and your own hopes and so forth um so anyway that's another way in which uh uh the lack of the idea of synergy then he sort of gets carried over into philosophical theology beliefs like predestination uh via this other key idea of divine simplicity and uh they're more too i mean you can go on but you can see how everything's connected everything else in theology and once you start with a bad premise it's just going to to kind of multiply well that was really helpful and i really enjoyed listening to that so thank you so much and i i think it's very helpful for people to be able to trace how one idea impacts another in theology because like you said they are all interconnected or at least they should be we we struggle when our we have these cognitive dissonances but i think as you pointed out in the history of the west we do experience some of that because we see despite the like laudatory praise of augustine throughout time that people struggle to fully take in the implications of his monarchism i mean if you read it in in augustine it's there and it's it's pretty strong at least on my reading and then in the reformation you certainly see luther and calvin pick that up and run with it but despite the the love for augustine it does seem difficult for people to live that out and i i would think that one of the reasons and kind of the more uh conservative protestant circles that i've grown up in that you know this idea of monarchism becomes such a an important thing is because it becomes this almost like this gatekeeper like you have to affirm it and they double down on it because they realize it's really hard to affirm consistently it's hard to live that out and because of that it becomes this thing well you you have to or you're out and even though i had seen so much of that i never connected that to this doctrine of divine simplicity versus the essence energy's distinction so thank you very much for that well um yeah there are probably people listening who just who think i'm teaching heresy here um because yeah it did become a marker of orthodoxy sort of little orthodoxy in the west and that was true already in the middle ages you know people often associate this with calvin but it's really already there in augustine uh calvin just sort of doubles down and makes some things more emphatic but uh the basic idea is there and it and in my opinion it's it's a necessary philosophical consequence of a certain way of understanding divine simplicity and i think that that conditions the way that augustine reads the biblical passages on predestination and election and you can see that if you compare what he says to the way that other church fathers read those same passages uh you know if you go back to origin now origen of course has its own problems in a way but book three chapter one of on first principles by origin is the the sort of the locus classicus in the east for the discussion of election and predestination uh it was judged to be itself sufficiently orthodox that you know what the collection called the philicalia that basil the great and gregor and natsianzen put together of selections from the works of origin they included this chapter in the philicalia and that's why we have actually for it we have the greek as well as the latin translation by ravinus because it's in the philicalia well anyway if anyone is interested in this issue for an eastern point of view i would encourage them to read that chapter because origen goes through all the biblical passages romans 9 ephesians 1 etc and points out how you can take those um in a way that you know leaves plenty of room and does full justice to human free will and to the reality of synergy okay because as he sees it you know for instance um god hardening pharaoh's heart um well he says that's sort of like the way the sun hardens mud okay makes it clay but the sun also melts wax and it's the same sun that does both and it's the same activity the same presence of that sun it's just it's within the thing itself how it's going to respond or you know mud doesn't have free will right this is an analogy but you could say the mud determines that it will be hardened the wax determines that it will be melted um so he uses that analogy and he has others i mean it's a long discussion but uh just to try to sort of incorporate the idea of free will that clearly is in saint paul in these teachings about synergy and uh i think when you try to read the predestination passages without that um then you get very much a wrong picture of what saint paul is saying so um anyway you can find that in origin and then another great source is saint john chrysostom um i mean i've i kind of first became aware of this when i read augustine's homilies on romans at the same time i was reading christians homilies in romans and it just left out to me how augustine really has a philosophical system and he's reading everything in romans in light of his philosophical system and chris system is not he's following the text and he's also reading it in the original greek um and so um that too i would encourage anyone who who you know isn't sort of on board with this just read those two together maybe especially on romans 9 and the other key passages and make up your own mind um i think you know one thing you see in chrysostom he is very alive to that pauline idea of synergy um another great passage he has a commentary in that passage in philippians 2 in his homilies on philippians that's very uh interesting you might say philosophically because he he really zeroes in on this concept of energia and energane and he envisions a little dialogue between the philippians and saint paul where the philippians are saying well what do you mean so does god do everything and we're just kind of passive recipients of what he does and and uh he envisions in saint paul answering back and saying no didn't you read what i said that uh it's god who's working in you to realize and make effective the good and you have to respond to the good that he presents to you and that's why he says work out your own salvation with fear and trembling because it's up to you to respond to the good that god puts before you and that's not a one-time thing that's at every moment of your life everything you do you're always in this sort of dialogical relationship with god he's presenting the good to you it's up to you to respond um so um i'm maybe getting off topic but anyway if people are sort of fixated on that mono energistic idea that is so prevalent in western theology i encourage them just read start reading the greek fathers who don't have an axe to grind um they're you know they're long before this was anything like a controversy they're just interpreting the text as they understood it as native speakers of greek and when you see what they say i think you'll recognize that it's it's actually right well that's really helpful and i think what an instructive um opportunity for people to read chris systom side by side with augustine and we live in a time when we're so lucky that it's so accessible to do that they can do that for free online albeit in english but that really does seem like a great opportunity if people are saying hey i'm just not sure about this or i want to see what this looks like that that seems like a great way of doing it and i loved the illustration you gave by origen as well that's a really insightful way of thinking about that so thank you for that and i think that philippians verse is a beautiful illustration of this idea where we have these two things that depending on your approach either seem contradictory so this idea of hey work out your salvation with fear and trembling because it's god who's at work in you and i think on some readings that just it doesn't seem to work but the reading you propose does seem to at least offer a way of reading that that seems to have some explanatory power now i want to get into a little more of the history of this and people might be saying a little more it feels like we've done a lot but i think there there's so much development here that's interesting one thing i did want to clarify a bit is i think often this conversation i brought this up earlier is cast in the light of essence energy's verse divine simplicity but then you began your conversation on divine simplicity by citing gregory of nisa and his understanding of what simplicity meant which did have room for essence and energies so would you say it's a bit of a mischaracterization to say it's any type of absolute or sorry any type of divine simplicity versus essence energies or hey on one side we have a particular view of divine simplicity that's perhaps more absolutist and then essence energies over here in other words can someone in at least some sense accept the essence energy's distinction while saying god is simple in a sense oh yeah yeah yeah everyone uh every orthodox you know little orthodox christian believes god is simple um he's immaterial he's eternal he's unchanging has no parts all that you know that's common ground the question is then how do you sort of develop and articulate that idea philosophically and that's where you get different interpretations um you know one thing i argue in my book i mean this may get too much into sort of the weeds on philosophy perhaps but you know augustine describes in the confessions in book seven how for him the crucial point in his intellectual conversion to christianity was reading what he calls the books of the platonus which probably was less plato himself than it was platinus and porphyry who had been translated into latin and also in the city of god bouquet chapter six there's a really interesting discussion where he describes what he thinks the platonus got right about god and if you read that if you know much about platinus you'll see what he's really describing is um what pla in platinus is intellect it's the second hypostasis all right in in platinus you have the one that's the first hypostasis that's the source of all things intellect comes forth from the one through the process of emanation it's not created the one doesn't intend or consciously do anything but just there's this process of emanation that gives rise to intellect and then below intellect intellect gives rise to soul but intellect is simple in pretty much the way that augustine identifies with the simplicity of god and you know i talk about that in my book but the just the basic point is that um he's not getting his interpretation of divine simplicity just from scripture you know this is a philosophical reflection uh it has to be i mean this is a it's a philosophical concept and um he i think in my opinion uh at least he sort of absorbed what the platonus had to say about intellect the second hypostasis he doesn't really absorb what they have to say about the one the first hypothesis and that's another way in which you can see some characteristic differences between eastern and western christian theology that in the east i think there's in my opinion again a more balanced approach because what what's lost when you sort of lose the the one the one that is beyond being okay you sort of if you don't incorporate that language as well you lose the sense of god beyond any human concept god a mystery whom we can name through his activities through his energies through the way he manifests himself but his essence is always beyond beyond our knowing okay that's something you find in like i said greg of nisa saint basil the great um and others you know again i i reference all them in my book uh so they have this sort of polar view in which there's god as he is manifest and known to us and that we can participate in but there's also what's always beyond okay and in augustine uh it seems to me that gets sort of flattened out and there's not that polarity there's simply god who is his own essence who is his own wisdom and will and activity and so forth and uh that god who is not now beyond being okay augustine rarely if ever refers to god as beyond being in that sort of a way that the eastern fathers do so often um he's sort of more readily adaptable to a philosophical system okay it's the kind of thing that philosophers then sort of take over and run with uh this idea of a god who is perfectly simple in the way augustine described etc etc that becomes really central to philosophical theology as it develops in the west and um you know if you didn't know much about early modern philosophy people like descartes and even leibniz and spinoza they too they're still working within that tradition and that way of thinking about god and it and frankly it lends itself to eventually being secularized uh because you've got a philosophical concept of god as the supreme being that is that has all these nifty attributes like perfect simplicity and so on that you can philosophize about you can build a whole philosophical system um and it gets pretty far removed from the god of scripture you know whereas if you keep the polarity in mind you know scripture is full of divine mystery when god speaks to moses from the burning bush and he says i am he who is that's not a philosophical proposition that's that's that's warning moses you know you've asked my name here's my name it's something that's beyond you you can't you don't know what that means you can't you can't define and articulate and and philosophize about this this is beyond you this is a holy mystery this is why moses has to remove his the sandals from his feet right and and the very burning bush itself is a symbol a kind of a visible representation of god is this uh presence from beyond the bush burns but it's not consumed right this ever living fire that's manifest but it has its own inner secret of being that that we don't know and we can't know um so anyway that's very scriptural um and scripture is not a philosophical system so i think uh you know this is sort of a big picture claim i realize a lot of people might uh take offense of this but i i think western philosophy western christianity became much too philosophical in the middle ages um and we're still living with the effects of that today um and if you read the greek fathers you find they just they just don't do that they have a different way of thinking this has been fascinating and the more we talk about this the more i see that you know i think throughout this you have done such a great job of answering this initial question of is this just an issue for ivory tower theologians because the further we dig into this the more i realize so many of the things that to me as someone growing up in the west that seem very distinct about eastern christianity all in some way seem to touch back to this idea whether it's that idea of synergism or even this idea of mystery as you bring it in now and the different approaches to philosophy that they all come back to this and i'm getting the sense that this is so much bigger than just a intramural debate between medieval theologians who wanted to quibble over whether you know god was uh absolutely simple or had some you could meaningfully distinguish between essence and energies that this this isn't inconsequential this touches a lot of things and i've really enjoyed getting to hear so many of those and the way you're able to draw in how history has shaped these things have been really helpful as well as just hey not only is this this isn't just a philosophical debate but scripture hey like this seems to have great explanatory power for what we see in scripture and so as we begin to wrap up here i just kind of want to give you the floor if there's anything we haven't covered that you want to say hey like this this is really important because of this if there's something you could have people know about uh this essence energy's distinction as as they walk away from this that maybe you haven't been able to cover yet i'd love to just give you a second to do that [Music] well thanks see there's at least one other theme from scripture that we haven't talked about yet that enters into this in an important way uh the divine glory okay and of course that too is so prominent both old testament and new testament um culminating i think with the transfiguration of christ where you know he's seen enveloped in this radiant glory um that clearly whatever it is it's not just it's not like the light you get when you turn flip on the light switch right there's something about that radiance that surrounds christ at the transfiguration that is sort of the visible emblem representation or manifestation of his eternal divine being and of course in john 17 in the high priestly prayer he when he prays to the father he refers to the glory that i had with you before the world was and how he wants his disciples to share in that glory uh well this too is something that is so prominent in the eastern christian understanding that um much less so in the west for whatever reason i mean i think divine simplicity is part of in the background there um because the way the west or at least people like augustine you know augustine has a whole in de trinitate book two he has a discussion of the theophanies in scripture the places where god appears um like the pillar of fire in the wilderness like the divine glory at the tabernacle in the temple or like the tongues of flame at pentecost and the transfiguration the light of the transfiguration and um he says well these are creatures they're not god because you know there's only two options if it's god it is the divine essence um and so they have to be creatures and he kind of speculates are they angels that that just took this certain form or was it something distinct that god created for that moment and then it vanishes out of being but for the eastern fathers these are manifestations of the eternal glory of god that he through his you know condescension he makes visible to us and he sort of transforms the eyes of the disciples so that they're open and they can see what's eternally always there christ always had had his divine glory it's just that the eyes of the disciples were open to enable them to see it so that becomes what in the east they refer to as the uncreated light i mean it's the idea what it doesn't become but that they give that the name they call it the uncreated light and later in during the byzantine era in eastern monasticism particularly it's thought that prayer can be a way of sort of opening yourself up to that radiant divine presence you find stories in like the early monks the desert fathers fourth fifth century of when they pray people see this light around them and you know if you're protestant of course i was a protestant at one time this sounds weird it sounds like oh man that's just wacky mysticism but you have to take seriously what is that divine glory what is that light that radiates around christ and when he refers to the glory that he had with the father from before the world was that he wants to share with his disciples what does he mean by that so they took that very literally and they thought that that's something too that we can experience in this life um so i realize again this is sort of you know walking on the wild side a little bit if for the protestant folks but i you know just to take it back to scripture uh if you look at sort of the way theology developed in western thought the divine glory that uncreated light of christ and they hardly talk about it it's just not there within certainly the philosophical theology of of the west uh and it's so prominent in the east that's something else that i think uh we as western christians really need to try to recover and the best way to do that is by looking at how it was understood within the greek church fathers well that's wonderful and i think people are going to have so much to walk away from this with to think about and to mull over to say man like there's some really good points here and i imagine for a lot of my audience that the largest section is catholic followed by orthodox than protestant and so i think both catholics and protestants are going to have a lot here to think about and i think for a lot of people you know some of my more high brow theologically minded people might have thought about this before but i think for a lot this is just kind of like a almost a background hum to their theology the idea of divine simplicity it's not something that we're actively thinking about a lot but then as you walk through this they're able to see oh this does connect to different ideas i hold and i wouldn't have even thought that these were you know a couple dominoes down from that and so i think this is going to be great for people and you've referenced it a couple times i want times i'll let people know at the beginning but as well if people are interested in reading your book on aristotle east and west that will be in the description i think they would love doing that you've given some recommendations on where to go next reading origin reading well i should maybe um say the specific section of origin that you referenced i know some of my orthodox viewers won't like me saying just go read origin as a blanket statement but uh and also uh the the challenge to read augustine crystal stone side by side on romans nine and elsewhere i think it's a really good one if people want to go deeper here but i would love to kind of give you the floor to say if someone has watched this and said like i want to dig in i want to get my teeth into this is is there anything else you would recommend for them we've got your book those different uh church fathers but is there a next step they should take well um so could i put in a plug again for that textbook of medieval philosophy it's called medieval philosophy a multicultural reader okay if i'm on the web here i guess i can show the cover and it's multicultural because it's the first textbook of this kind that allows each of the great religious traditions to kind of speak for itself so you have a section on jewish philosophy a section on islamic philosophy a section on western christian philosophy and a section on eastern christian philosophy and that last one is the one that i edited so it's essentially the greek church fathers it has selections from them that are some of their more philosophical teachings that are most of them relate to some of the things we've been talking about like synergy free will essence energies divine simplicity also you see other aspects of it you know how that leads to the way they understand god's presence in the natural world that nature itself is a kind of theophany nature itself is if we could see it rightly you know if our eyes were open we would see that it's radiant with the presence of god and so you know all these ideas sort of develop gradually through time and it has selections beginning with justin martyr in the second century and going through gregory palamos in the 14th century and they're not too long you know so i tried to edit it in a way that would be readable for college students um so that i would encourage people again there's just no substitute for getting to know the primary sources i've also written a lot else besides my book more recently than the book i have a lot of articles and they're posted on on the web web on academia.edu so if you want to you know put that link up as well people are welcome i have an article for instance called the divine glory and the divine energies that goes into more detail about how the greek fathers interpreted the divine glory if anyone's interested in that so those would be some places one could go well i will be sure to link to all of that i think people will be excited to dig into more of that dr bradshaw it has been a pleasure having you on today thank you so much for your time and thanks to everyone that watches this for your time i know neither of us take that lightly so thank you so much for being here as always i want to encourage you listeners that until next time be on the lookout for more videos and as always go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

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Keywords: Gospel Simplicity, Dr. David Bradshaw, Dr. Bradshaw, Essence Energies, Divine Simplicity, Orthodoxy vs Catholicism, Orthodox Theology, Orthodox doctrine of God, Energies, Synergism vs modernism, Synergism, Synergistic theology, Orthodox philosophy, Orthodox theology, orthodox theologian, orthodox channels, ecumenical dialogue, aristotle on god, aristotle divine simplicity, augustine divine simplicity

Id: -280DS1W4BU

Length: 56min 20sec (3380 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021