The Essence/Energies distinction is “a means of explaining how God’s being is unknowable,” on the one hand, and yet, on the other, that truly “God does communicate Himself” (George Maloney, A Theology of Uncreated Energies, p. 60). It is the means by which God causes man to genuinely participate in His divine Life, His uncreated energies, given that God is also utterly transcendent and unknowable in His essence. In other words, it answers the questions: What do I receive when I am united with Christ and said to participate in the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4)? Do I participate in some one (or other) Attribute(s) of God, or do I more properly have communion with God in His very Person? How can God truly indwell the heart and remain God?
If this distinction is not made, then participation in the divine nature risks collapsing into man’s actually becoming/disappearing into God. The distinction thus, on the one hand, preserves union with Christ God while, on the other hand, guaranteeing that we retain our personal creaturehood, that our unique personhood is preserved in our union with Him. In short, it is the guard against monism.
The Essence/Energies distinction, it ought to be added, is not merely a rational deduction from abstract philosophical principles or categories, but in its essence is derived directly from the witness of Scripture (and confirmed in the experience of God’s children). In other words, it is a datum, a fact revealed in and gleaned from the Word of God, an item of Special Revelation. For example, as King David sings of God’s transcendence:
“O LORD my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.” (Psalm 104:1-2 KJV)
And yet as Christ speaks of our union with the transcendent God:
“That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us ... I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” (John 17:21, 23 KJV)
And as the Apostle Paul writes of God’s transcendence:
“Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.” (1 Timothy 6:16 KJV)
And yet as he writes of our union with the transcendent God:
“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15 KJV)
“Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” (2 Corinthians 1:22 KJV)
“And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” (Galatians 4:6 KJV)
In conclusion, the Essence/Energies distinction is a theological framework for understanding how God is both transcendent and immanent, how He is unknowable and yet capable of indwelling man Personally. It also explains how God’s union with man in Christ doesn’t destroy human creaturehood, but instead preserves it, raising it to the divine platform in communion (unto theosis) all the while preserving one’s unique, created personhood in an eternal relation to God’s Triune Personhood.
-Rev. Joshua Schooping
