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The question isn't whether or not Latins use the term "created grace", but rather what it means.

It does not mean that Latins believe grace is a creature, nor that Latins believe that we are not operating with the Divine Energies. The entire point of the Thomistic expression of "created" and "uncreated" grace is for the purpose of expressing that we participate, and utilize, the Divine Energies.

The Thomistic expression is explained by St. Thomas Aquinas, which is that men are created with reference to Grace, in other words, men start to use the Divine Energies, unlike God who never starts to use them but rather always uses them from Eternity. Our energies after deification are uncreated, they are God's own Divine Energies, but we must come to have them, they are not a part of us from birth. We come to have them by becoming "new creations in Christ", and this is what is called "created Grace". This new creation has the uncreated Divine Energies as opposed to its own created energies, but it is still a creation that has the Divine Energies.

To use an example, let's take the Divine Energy of Love (or Charity, in Latin terms). God's Love is uncreated because it is God, and God's Loving is uncreated because God has Love for all Eternity without beginning; God never "starts" Loving. Humans who have Charity have God's Love, there is no substantial difference between the Love that humans in Grace have, and the Love that God has. When we Love, we are Loving with the Divine Energy. We must "start" Loving, however, as we do not have Eternal existance without beginning. We "start" by becoming "new creatures in Christ".

This is what is meant by "created Grace", namely that people must start doing what God has never had to start doing. What we are doing is God's Energy, His Love, His Wisdom, His Life, ect. How we do it is by becoming new creatures that do an uncreated action, and this much is straight from the writings of St. Paul. When we are Loving, we are not doing a "created energy", as in merely human affection, we are doing an uncreated, Divine Energy. When we are Living with God's Life, we are Living an eternal Life, the Divine Energy of Life, but we must start Living it, whereas God never has to start.

I have no problem with the Byzantine language and terms being used, but I have a strong disagreement with mischarictarization of Thomistic beliefs to make them appear to say heretical things when in fact they do not.

Peace and God bless!

Yes, and this is exactly the Thomistic belief on the matter as well, the belief you are trying to say isn't.

Peace and God bless!

Now, since you freely admit that grace is not a "creature," it follows logically that it should not be called "created." Grace is God; and so, there can be no such thing as "created" grace.

Sadly, St. Thomas is confusing the created being into whom the uncreated grace is infused, with the nature of the grace itself. Thus, he is applying the properties of the created being to grace, rather than applying the uncreated characteristics of grace to man, because -- properly speaking -- it is man who takes on the properties of grace, and not the other way around. In other words, grace is, and always will be, uncreated, because it is God Himself as energy, and so it can never become, nor can it ever be called, "created." Man, on the other hand, becomes uncreated by participating in God's energies, that is, man becomes energetically uncreated, while remaining created in his essence.

The uncreated energies do not become "created," nor can they ever be called "created," simply because they enter into the temporal order. Moreover, that is why the doctrinal tradition of the Byzantine Church holds that each man's theosis is an eternal and uncreated gift, and -- as such -- it cannot become "created" even when it enters into time; instead, it makes man uncreated and eternal in his own natural energies.

Theosis is an eternal and uncreated participation in God's own existence; and so, there is no sense in which it can be called "created." Moreover, when God enters into creation at a particular moment in time, He does not thereby become "created." In other words, grace is immutable, because grace is God.

As I have said many times already, there is absolutely no sense in which grace (i.e., God as energy) can be called "created."

God bless,
Todd

Here is St. Thomas himself on grace from Question 112 (summa) treatise on grace. The question he is addressing is, "Whether God alone is the cause of grace?"

I don't know if he ever uses the term "created" grace. I think I have read a scholar who maintains he never uses the term "created" in relation to grace.


I think one does not have to hold (and I am not confident that the Fathers held - though I understand that this was the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas) that there are "uncreated energies" which are not God in order to explain theosis. Positing "uncreated energies" creates the problem of having something uncreated which is not God.

If one considers God like the ring which stamps its image in the wax, then one has the image of God (the Uncreated) in the soul (the created). The soul has not become God, but has His Divine Image. Moreover, between the two (ie the soul and God) there is no "medium," ie, "created grace" or "Uncreated God-like substance".

Grace, in relation to the creature receiving it, is "uncaused" because it is uncreated, that is, it is God Himself. Thus, the problem with Aquinas' viewpoint is that he is reducing the relationship between God and man in the order of grace to one of cause and effect, while the Eastern Fathers see this relationship as uncreated and enhypostatic instead. The divergence between the two sides on this issue is rooted in the Aristotelian metaphysical system that St. Thomas Aquinas accepts as valid, but which the Eastern Churches reject as invalid.

God bless,
Todd

Dear lm:

Positing uncreated energies does not create the problem of having something other than God that is uncreated. The uncreated energies are God; they simply have been identified by the Eastern tradition, going back at least as far as St. Basil the Great, as aspects (right now I can't think of a better term) of God that are other than God's ousia, or essence. St. Basil and his contemporary and friend, St. Gregory the Theologian (usually known in the West as St. Gregory of Nazianzus), were very concerned to safeguard the teaching of the transcedence of God and an apophatic approach to Trinitarian Theology-so they refused the define exactly what is the essence of God (their Eunomian opponents, who only consider the Father to be divine, defined the divine essence and "un-begottenness). Yet they realized that God, while transcendent and in some respects, unknowable, is at the same time experienced by Christians. St. Basil the Great, in Letter 234, writes, "His activities are various, but his essence is simple. Our position is that it is from his activities that we come to know our God, while we do not claim to come anywhere near his actual essence. For his activities reach down to us, but his essence remains inaccessible." God's grace, God's love, God's creative activity-all of the works of God are not created. We do not idenitify them as something "other than God," but neither do we identify them with God's ousia, or essence.
In peace,
Ryan

OK - I think I can agree to that - sounds like grace.

I certainly agree with St Basil. His activities are not Him, though from them we come to know Him.

But I still don't "see" the "energies."

Certainly one can't define God's essence. I am not aware of any theologians (East or West) who have attempted to do that.


Is there a dogmatic statement that indicates that the Eastern theologians reject Aristotle?

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I don't understand what you're saying but I would love to hear more.

This statement is false, because the Cappadocian Fathers insist that there is a distinction between essence and energy in God, and that this distinction must be real, or theosis becomes impossible. In other words, for the Cappadocian Fathers it is an absolute truth of divine revelation that God's essence is utterly beyond any kind of participation by a created being, and that it is only through God's uncreated energies, which as St. Basil said, "come down to us" [St. Basil, Letter 234], that man can participate in God.

The divine image is "natural" to man, and this image (eikon) is not lost or disfigured by the fall of Adam; instead, it is the divine likeness that is disfigured by sin and death, and only the uncreated energy of God (i.e., the gift of theosis) can restore that likeness. Now, the word likeness in this context is not being used in the Western sense (i.e., as some kind of "created" similtude); instead, likeness (i.e., omoiosis in the Greek) means to be "assimilated" to God, that is, it means to be deified, and so it cannot be a "created" reality.

Now sadly as far as St. Thomas' theology of grace is concerned, I do not see how it can be reconciled to the teaching of the Eastern Fathers, because -- for example -- his answer to the question about whether or not the grace of Christ (i.e., the grace within the incarnate Logos) is infinite, is incompatible with the Byzantine tradition. Here is what he says:
He then goes on to describe "habitual" grace as finite, for as he said, grace as a being:
The problem with St. Thomas' teaching is that he is reducing grace to the finite and created order of being, that is, he is saying that when grace is received by a man it takes on the characteristics of the man receiving it. Now, this is precisely what the Eastern Churches deny, because, in the Eastern doctrinal tradition, the man who receives the uncreated grace of theosis takes on the properties of grace, and not the other way around. Grace is God Himself as energy, and -- as a consequence -- it is immutable and cannot become, nor can it be called, "created."

Finally, St. Thomas teaches that the "light of glory" by which the saints see God is a created reality (n.b.: Thomas holds, in opposition to Eastern tradition, that a man can see the divine essence in the eschaton), for as he puts it:
Now for the East, the "light of glory" is an uncreated, and not a "created" reality, for as St. Gregory Palamas said:
Thus, the Light of Glory (i.e., the Taboric Light) is an uncreated reality, and the man who receives it becomes Light within that Light, because he is deified by the uncreated energy of God. Finally, as the ancient Fathers always insisted, only that which is uncreated can deify a man.

God bless,
Todd

Your conclusion here is precisely the opposite of what St. Basil is teaching, because he is teaching that God's energies are God, and not some kind of "created" thing. In other words, His activities (energeiai) are Him.

God bless,
Todd

In a certain sense St. Thomas has done precisely that, because he teaches that "[God's] essence is His existence" [St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Q. 3, Art. 4], and that is -- for lack of a better term -- a definition of what God is for St. Thomas. Now, as an Eastern Christian, I reject this Thomistic definition of what the divine essence is, because the divine essence is in reality, utterly incomprehensible and incommunicable; and so, it is beyond any category of human thought or predication.

This simply means that the uncreated relationship established between God and man by grace is personal (enhypostatic), rather than being a relationship of cause and effect. Sadly, because St. Thomas was so heavily influenced by the thought of Aristotle, he has reduced a theological mystery to a category of Aristotelian metaphysics.

Dear lm:
The translation of Letter 234 that I quoted uses "activities." I have also seen translations that use "operations." In either case, I'm virtually positive the word St. Basil uses is "energeiai," as Todd has suggested in one of his posts. God's love, God's grace, God's holiness, God's omnipotence, God's mercy, God's goodness, etc., must be uncreated-unless you reject the Christian teaching that God does not change. If they are uncreated, then they must be God himself, for God alone is uncreated. But, according to the teachings of the Fathers, the essence of God cannot be identified by any of these "energies." The closest I know that any patristic figure who was not condemned as a heretic comes to identifying the essence of God is when St. Gregory the Theologian (in his celebrated Theological Orations) seems to suggest that the extent to which we might speculate about the essence of God is in saying that God is uncreated-yet he still insists that we ultimately cannot say what God, in God's essence is, because we simply do not know. I hope this has been helpful.
In peace,
Ryan

Does anyone know of an online source of the Fathers in the original Greek and Latin?
Peace,
Ryan

I believe that the Migne texts (both the Latin and Greek Fathers) are available online, but you have to subscribe to the service, and I think it is rather expensive. You might try doing a Google search under Migne or under Patrologia Latina and Patrologiae Graecae.

God bless,
Todd

Yes, I have photocopies of many of St. Basil's letters in Greek (including letter 234), from the Cappadocian Fathers class that I took at Franciscan University, and St. Basil uses the terms energeia and energeiai throughout the letter.

God bless,
Todd