@Samuel_23
You quote Palamas with lofty jargon, but the apostles did not preach essence, energies metaphysics, they preached Christ crucified. Let me show you why Palamas collapses under the weight of Scripture.
First, the Bible never divides God into “essence” and “energies.” God declares “I the LORD do not change” (Mal 3:6). His works are His own being at work, not ontological projections. When Paul says God “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25), that is God Himself acting, not an “energy” distinct from His essence. Scripture teaches divine simplicity, not a metaphysical two-tiered deity.
Second, Palamas says God’s essence will forever remain unknowable, only His energies are known. But Christ Himself defines eternal life: “that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). This is not half-knowledge, not an abstract participation, but full covenantal knowing. Paul echoes it in 2 Cor 4:6: “God… has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The face of Christ, not “uncreated energies,” is where God is truly known.
Third, Palamas builds his scheme on the Transfiguration as if the disciples beheld “uncreated energies.” Yet Peter himself interprets it differently. He writes, “we were eyewitnesses of His majesty… when we were with Him on the holy mountain” (2 Pet 1:16–18). He does not construct a metaphysics of energies, he points us back to the prophetic word made more sure. The Transfiguration reveals Christ’s majesty, not an ontological split between essence and activity.
Fourth, Palamas claims the same uncreated fire both deifies and torments, as if hell is merely misexperienced love. Scripture says otherwise. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness” (Rom 1:18). Hell is not distorted love, it is “eternal punishment” (Matt 25:46), “the second death” in the lake of fire (Rev 20:14). Judgment is God’s holy wrath, not a mystical experience of divine energies.
Fifth, Palamas reduces the cross to a “hypostatic nexus of energies.” The apostles declare it as something far more concrete: “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23). The cross is the once-for-all atonement (Heb 9:26–28). Christ “bore our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Pet 2:24). Not energies, not metaphysical categories, but blood, substitution, reconciliation. That is the gospel.
Paul warned of this very danger: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition… and not according to Christ” (Col 2:8). Palamite speculation is exactly that, a philosophical fog distracting from the simple, saving word of the cross.
Scripture cuts through all this mystical clutter. God has not hidden Himself in inaccessible “essence” with mediating “energies.” He has revealed Himself fully in the incarnate Son. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory” (John 1:14). Not “energies,” but glory. Not speculation, but crucifixion. Not mysticism, but the gospel.
So if you want to exalt Palamas alongside Augustine and Aquinas, remember this: Paul said “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2).
That single sentence annihilates Palamas’ entire edifice. Because it is not by energies that men are saved, but by the blood of the Lamb.
J.
. A week ago, I was discussing this with him.
