The concepts of Divine energy, or energies, occupy an even more important place in the theology of St. Gregory of Nyssa, like the expression near the Divine nature. Sometimes, following St. Basil the Great [94], he speaks of "the energy of God, which alone descends to us" [95] (distinguishing, of course, it from the Divine nature). On another occasion, speaking of the works of God, of which the prophets testify in the Scriptures, he clarifies, distinguishing between nature, power, and energy: "The prophetic word," he says, "has revealed to us in such sublime words a certain part of the divine energy, but the very power from which (the energy proceeds), not to mention the nature from which the power proceeds, it has not shown or named" [96]. In another place, Gregory clearly distinguishes between the energy of God and His essence: "Just as, having said that God is the Judge, we understand by the word judgment a certain energy near Him, and the word is directs thought to the subject itself, thereby clearly showing that it should not be assumed that the concept (λόγος) of being (του είναι) is the same as the concept of energy, in the same way, having said that He is the begotten or the unbegotten, we divide in our thought two statements, implying by the word there is a subject, and by the word begotten or unborn the belonging of the subject" [97]. The divine energies are many and varied, and it is according to these energies that we invent different names for God, but corresponding to something that really exists in God. The energies belong to nature,[98] and their multiplicity does not prevent the Son of God from being one in His unknowable nature (this is paramount to understanding what Gregory means by the concept of divine simplicity). Thus, Gregory says, borrowing a text from Eunomius, that "the Lord is in Himself what He is by nature, but, named collectively according to differences in actions, He does not have the same name in all cases, but enters into the name according to each concept produced in us by the action... for according to the difference in actions, as well as in relation to those to whom these actions are directed, it is possible to apply many names to the Son of God, Who is one in essence, like the wheat, which, being one, receives different names derived from various concepts about it" [99]. The disagreement between Eunomius and Gregory concerns, as it were, "the meaning of names," "whether they denote nature, or are they named after actions by means of invention" [100]. Gregory refutes Eunomius' slanderous accusation of St. Basil, who, according to Eunomius, identifies the essence and energy of the Only-begotten [101]. Gregory, on the contrary, asserts that the meaning (λόγος) of essence and energy are not the same, and that the two expressions are different. Here the real character of this distinction between essence and energy is very clearly expressed.

In the numerous quotations from St. Gregory that we have considered so far, the question of the simplicity of the nature and essence of God and the question of the energies in God have been treated by him rather on the intellectual plane. It would be interesting to study these questions from a spiritual point of view, both in the totality of his works and, in particular, in those where he writes about the spiritual life. However, it is not easy to draw a line between the intellectual and the spiritual in Gregory. In general, he disputes the efficacy of the intellectual method of knowing God by means of syllogisms, contrasting it with enlightenment by a ray of grace, which warms us, but does not allow us to comprehend the Incomprehensible: "(The Eunomians), seeing that the Divine power enlightens souls by the ways of Providence and miracles in creation, flowing like a ray and warmth from the nature of the sun, do not, however, admire grace and do not revere Him Who is meant by all this, but, stretching beyond what the soul can contain, they seize the sophisms of the Inviolable One and think to hold Him by syllogisms" [103]. Grace for Gregory (by the way, he says the same about energy [104]) is the Divine power that descends to us; it is a manifestation of God, Who, out of love for people, conforms to our weakness; it is the Manifestation of Light, in which, however, the Divine nature remains unknowable and incommunicable. This is not only an invention by which we ascend to God, but also the descent of God to us. Gregory often speaks about this in the traditional language of patristic and Byzantine mysticism. Here are a few examples. "We affirm that love for mankind is the reason why God allows communion with man. Inasmuch as it is impossible for him who is by nature small to rise above his own measure and to touch the height of nature superior to us, so He Himself, inclining to us, as far as we can contain, His loving power, thus distributes the grace that proceeds from Him" [105]. And Gregory cites the example of the sun, whose rays and heat are tempered by the air, while the luminary itself remains by its nature unapproachable to us because of our weakness[106]. In the same way, the unapproachable Divine power descends to us in the Manifestations of God, and we perceive it in the ways of Divine Providence: "Thus the Divine power..., which infinitely surpasses our nature and is inaccessible to any communion (μετουσίαν), bestows upon human nature only that which it is able to receive, like a compassionate mother repeating with her child his senseless babbling. For this reason, appearing to people in various ways, the Divine power takes on a form accessible to man and speaks in an intelligible language, in order to direct our infant life with all these manifestations commensurate with us and allow it to lightly touch the Divine nature by the ways of Divine Providence" [107]. As we see from all these examples, it is a question of the Divine power that descends to us, conforms to our weakness so that we can receive it, and allows us to touch lightly the unapproachable Divine nature.

St. Gregory here speaks of grace as a Divine manifestation. In another place he speaks of light as one of the names of God attested to by the Scriptures. He calls it by its name, in order to make it clear that the name is not applied to the divine nature itself. "Moses, who saw God in the light," he writes, "and John, who called Him the true Light, also Paul, who was all illumined with light at the first Theophany, and then heard voices from the light, saying, 'I am Jesus, Whom you persecute,' are not enough to bear witness?" [108]. Gregory also speaks of the ineffable and pre-eternal glory of the Only-begotten God and is indignant at the Eunomians, who considered it created. "They are impious," he declares, "for, belittling as far as possible the ineffable glory of the Only-begotten God, they place Him on a par with the creature [109]... They are not able to cite the voice of even one saint who would suggest contemplating the eternal glory of the Only-begotten God together with the enslaved creature" [110]. This is obvious, for there can be nothing created in that which is contemplated in God: "It is evident to all without exception that God has in Himself nothing created or brought in from without, neither power, nor wisdom, nor light, nor life, nor truth, nor anything in general that is contemplated in the fullness of the Divine bosom (and all this is the Only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father). Thus, it is in no way possible to properly apply the name of the creature to anything that is seen in God" [111]. And Gregory returns to his thought about the difference between the divine nature and that which is around it, considering the first and the second in connection with the degree of their cognizability: "Prophecy says that the greatness of God has no bounds, and preaches quite definitely that there is no limit to the splendor of the glory of His holiness. And if that which surrounds him is infinite, how much more is He Himself in His essence, whoever He may be, in no way grasped by any definition" [112]. It should be noted that here Gregory refers Divine glory to that which is near the Divine nature. When he says that it does not belong to the category of the created, it must be borne in mind that for Gregory the greatest of all the differences that can exist is precisely the difference between the created and the uncreated, as he himself asserts: "The most important division in everything that exists is the gap between the uncreated and the created. The first is the cause of everything that comes into being, and the second takes its origin from the first" [113]. And there is nothing intermediate between the uncreated and the created: "Reason does not know anything intermediate between the two, so that it would be possible to assume, on the border, some newly appeared quality, located between the created and uncreated natures and partaking of both, without being completely neither one nor the other" [114]. And, speaking of God, Gregory uses the expression Uncreated Force (ακτίστου δυνάμεως) [115].

In his treatise On the Holy Spirit, Gregory of Nyssa develops in more detail his doctrine of grace and glory as trinitarian energies common to the three Hypostases, distinct from the Divine nature and belonging to what Gregory usually designates by the expression of the Divine nature. "Scripture teaches," he says, for example, "that faith in the name of the Father, Who gives life to all things, precedes ... that life-giving grace, having in Him its origin (αφορμηθεισαν) and giving birth as from a fountain to life through the Only-begotten Son, Who is true Life, by the works of the Spirit may make perfect those who are vouchsafed it" [116]. This is the Trinitarian movement directed towards people: "Grace pouring out inseparably from the Father through the Son and the Spirit upon the worthy" [117]. And, recalling John 17:15 about the glorification of the Son by the Father Himself, Gregory speaks of the circular glory of the Holy Trinity: "Do you see the circular movement of glory? The Son is glorified by the Spirit; The Father is glorified by the Son. Once again, the Son is glorified by the Father, and the Only-begotten becomes the glory of the Spirit. For with what will the Father be glorified, if not by the true glory of the Only-begotten? In what will the Son be glorified again, if not in the greatness of the Spirit? Thus, according to the Scriptures, the Son is glorified by the Spirit, and by the Son the Father, as in a certain circle" [118]. Nevertheless, this glory is only that which is seen around the divine nature, while it itself remains invisible and unapproachable. St. Gregory puts it very clearly: "(The Prophet) did not praise nature. How could he praise what he does not know? But he glorified something of what is seen around it [119]... Do you see how the prophet quenched his amazement at the things contemplated near the Divine nature? But for thoughts there remains invisible and inaccessible what it is, the Divine and blessed Power, which has left far below itself, even farther than our bodies are removed from the stars, all curiosity of the mind, every power of the word, every movement of the heart and sensual impulses" [120]. This distinction, which Gregory draws between what can be seen around the Divine nature (grace, glory, etc.) and the unapproachable Divine nature itself, does not violate the unity of God precisely because His trinitarian power is one. "Not dividing faith into a multitude of powers and deities, but believing in one power, one good, one life-giving power, in one Godhead, in one life" [121] – this is how he formulates his theological position. And in the following words he briefly expounds the antinomy of the visible and the invisible in God: "The invisible by nature becomes visible through energy, is contemplated in certain things around Him" [122]. In the language of inner experience, Gregory says this: "Purity, holiness, simplicity, all these rays of the Divine nature, through which God is seen" [123]. However, there are two ways of seeing God: the intellectual way, which seeks to know His nature, which is impossible, and the other way, mystical, the only suitable one: to unite with Him. "Since the promise to see God has a double meaning," writes St. Gregory in his Homilies "On the Beatitudes," "one consists in knowing nature, which surpasses all, and the other in mingling with Him in the purity of life, the first way of understanding is declared impossible by the voice of the saints, and the second is promised to human nature by the present commandment of the Lord Himself, Who said: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they see God" [124]. In this way, the distinction between the knowable and the unknowable in God is overcome, as it were, by mystical union with Him. This is deification by grace, when "man goes beyond the limits of his nature, becoming immortal from mortal, from perishable to incorruptible, from the essence of transient life to immortal creation, and, to say everything as it is, from man becoming God" [125]. Or, as he expresses himself in the same Homilies "On the Beatitudes": "... Does not the Word also call you to become God, as created by the attributes of the Godhead?" [126]. By mentioning here the Divine attributes, Gregory, as it seems to us, indicates that deification is not performed by nature. And the sorrow that we do not know God by nature remains in us, although we are comforted abundantly according to the promise given to us by the Lord: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" [127].

However, the distinction between the divine nature and its energies is set forth with particular clarity by Gregory in the Commentaries on the Song of Songs, and in particular in the eleventh discourse, on the Bridegroom and His hand, and in this place the realism of these differences is most revealed. Thus, after mentioning that it is no longer the voice of the Bridegroom that strikes the heart of the bride, but the Divine hand itself, which has penetrated through the hole into the house,[128] Gregory draws attention to the fact that the hand is not the Bridegroom Himself, although it belongs to Him: [the well] "into which the Bridegroom Himself could not enter, and His hand could hardly be contained, so that with it He only penetrated and touched the one who desired to see the Bridegroom, and from this the bride gained only this benefit, that in the hand that touched she recognized the hand of the Beloved" [129]. Further, Gregory explains (according to the expression of St. Basil, which, as we have already seen, he likes to use) that the hand symbolizes the Divine grace descending to us: "The soul, having set in motion all the powers of the intellect and all its capacity for conceptual investigation, and striving to comprehend what is sought, finds that the limit of the knowledge of God is only one energy, which descends to us and is felt by our life" [131]. What seems most striking to us in this passage is the double movement that brings us into communion with God: the Divine condescension, the energy that descends to us, and our life (more than our imagination: it seems to lead to nothing special), which enables us to feel this condescension of the divine energy. St. Gregory returns once again to this theme, stressing that God is known only by His actions: "When the soul rises from below to the knowledge of that which surpasses us, it comprehends the wonders of His energies and cannot then advance further by the forces of its intellectual curiosity, but admires and worships the Eternal, Who is known only in His actions (δι ων ένεργει)" [132]. It should be noted, however, that in this text, as in the following, the word energy acquires a slightly different meaning. It is no longer a manifestation of His Divinity that unites us with God, but rather His creative power that allows us to know that He exists. "The soul, seeing all this and everything else in which the Divine energy is manifested, mentally admiring everything visible, by analogy reasonably concludes that He Who is understood by His works exists" [133]. Thus, understanding here the knowledge of God by His energies as the knowledge of the Creator by His works, Gregory admits that such an incomplete and indirect knowledge of God comes from our weakness and is characteristic of earthly existence, but that in the future life one can hope for another, higher knowledge of God; such a statement would seem to contradict his other writings, in which he speaks of the utter unknowability of God according to His essence or nature, even in the age to come, even to Angels and all other creatures. Thus, he says: "Perhaps in the age to come... and when we pass into the other world... then we will no longer know the nature of the Good in part and not by His works, as we do now, and we will comprehend that which surpasses reason, not through the energy that creates the visible, but in a completely different way we will comprehend the kind of ineffable Blessedness, and the way of enjoying it will be different, such as cannot now arise in the heart of man" [135].

According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the coming age only knowledge by analogy will be perfected. We will then have a different, more direct way of knowing God. But for the time being, be that as it may, we have no other way of knowing God than through His energies, symbolized by the hand: "In any case," he says, "now for the soul the limit of ineffable knowledge is the energy that manifests itself in existing things. And we understood that it is allegorically called a hand" [136]. Explaining this limitation by our weakness, Gregory again insists on the difference between the Bridegroom and the hand: "A pure soul... who intended to receive the Bridegroom Himself, who had fully entered the house, was satisfied for the time being with the fact that she saw only His hand, in which we understand His active power... for human poverty is incapable of containing boundless and incomprehensible nature" [137]. It seems that we are talking here more about mystical experience than about knowledge by analogy. However, Gregory offers another explanation of what the hand means: it symbolizes the grace of the Gospel and the miracles of the Incarnate Word, through which the divinity of Christ manifested itself, "since by the hand we understand His miraculous power" (138). He finds that all these designations are spiritually beneficial, for "one presupposes that the Divine nature, completely incomprehensible, is known by energy alone, and the second speaks of the foreshadowing of the grace of the Gospel" [139].

We could quote St. Gregory of Nyssa for a long time, explaining his teaching about God in general and about the simplicity of the Divine nature and the differences in God in particular, but we will confine ourselves to what has been stated above, so as not to stretch our report immensely. What has been said is probably enough for some conclusions and conclusions. And, first of all, about the simplicity of the Divine nature. We must try to understand what Gregory means by this expression. As we have already seen, he often resorts to it, attaching to it meanings that are not always identical, but they, in our opinion, do not contradict each other, but rather complement each other. Thus, he opposes simplicity to complexity, that is, to something that consists of parts that together make up a certain whole, and which, due to its multiplicity of components, is subject to disintegration. The divine nature, on the contrary, is simple, does not contain parts and, therefore, is indissoluble, cannot be subject to decomposition. It is also simple as having no form, no image expressing it, and thus limiting it. In this case, simplicity is understood as infinity. We see that Gregory often identifies the simplicity of the Divine nature with its infinity, with the absence of any spatial or temporal boundaries in it, with its eternity. All this fundamentally distinguishes the Divine nature from all created things. Sometimes Gregory understands the simplicity of the divine nature as its unity, that is, that it cannot contain any internal contradictions that would fragment its wholeness and, consequently, its simplicity. For this reason it is impossible to ascribe to the Divine nature any contradictory qualities, and Gregory exerts great diligence to prove that what we distinguish in God is not contradictory, but complementary. Simplicity also means that God has no acquired attributes, but that He is what He possesses. Let us add to this that in the writings of St. Gregory we do not find such a concept of Divine simplicity as the absence of any ontological differences. This idea, so close to Latin medieval scholasticism, is alien to St. Gregory of Nyssa.

As for what Gregory distinguishes in God, whether it is a question of the trinitarian differences of the hypostases among themselves, of the differences between them and the divine nature, or, especially, between the divine nature, on the one hand, and that which is near the divine nature (energies, names, light, glory, grace), on the other, he does not directly indicate in his writings what nature these differences are. And to ask him such questions directly would be anachronistic on our part. Nevertheless, from his writings it is clear enough that for him these differences, although they are seen by the action of the mind, which he calls invention, are not subjective, but correspond to something that really exists in God. It can even be said that each of the names that we apply to God signifies something special in Him, corresponding to the special manifestations of His energies. But they do not denote His nature, however, it remains unknowable and unapproachable. This distinction between the unknowable nature or essence of God and the energies by which we are given a certain knowledge of God and communion with Him is a fundamental feature of the theology of St. Gregory of Nyssa. He insists, however, that our human mind is incapable of conceiving God as He is, cannot contemplate Him as one, and is inclined to divide Him. But in fact, the differences between nature and energies do not violate the simplicity of the Divine nature, which is understood as formlessness and infinity and as the absence of contradictions. Energies do not contradict each other and do not introduce complexity into the Divine nature, especially since they are not the nature itself, but what is around it. Therefore, the Divine nature remains simple. With even greater clarity, St. Gregory of Nyssa reveals the difference between the divine nature and its manifestations, turning to mystical experience. It is a hand that is not the Bridegroom Himself; it is grace that descends to us, light, glory, the Divine powers that make man a god. And Gregory of Nyssa emphasizes that there is nothing created in God, otherwise He would be complex. That is why the deification of man by Divine grace is true, and at the same time it is a dynamic, endless process that does not lead to a confusion of natures, for the Divine energies are not identical with the unapproachable divine nature.

Notes

1

The opposite could be said of St. Basil: he prefers the term "essence" to the term "nature."