The revelation of God the Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – is the foundation of all Christian theology; it is "theology itself" in the sense that the Greek Fathers attached to this word, which most often denoted for them the Trinitarian mystery revealed to the Church. This is not only the foundation, but also the highest goal of theology, for, according to the thought of Evagrius of Pontus, which was developed by St. Maximus the Confessor, to know the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity in its fullness means to enter into perfect union with God, to attain the deification of one's being, that is, to enter into the Divine life, into the very life of the Most Holy Trinity, and to become, according to the Apostle Peter, "partakers of the Divine nature," ????????????????????? (2 Pet. I, 4). Thus, Trinitarian theology is a theology of unity, a mystical theology that requires experience and presupposes a path of gradual changes in created nature, an ever deeper communion of the human person with God the Trinity.

The Apostle Peter says definitely: divinae consortes naturae – "partakers of the Divine nature". After such words, there is no doubt about the possibility of a real union with God: it has been promised and proclaimed to us as the ultimate goal, as the blessedness of the age to come. It would be naïve and impious to see here only a figurative expression, a metaphor. For to attempt to remove difficulties by depriving of their own meaning those words of Revelation which might contradict our way of thinking and not agree with what seems appropriate to us in relation to God would be to apply too simple an exegetical method. However, it is perfectly legitimate to try to determine the meaning of any expression which, as it seems to us, contradicts other testimonies of Holy Scripture and the tradition of the Fathers about the absolute incommunicability of the Divine being. It would be possible to establish two sets of contradictory texts extracted from the Holy Scriptures and the works of the Holy Fathers, one of which would testify to the complete inaccessibility of the Divine nature, the other would assert that God allows Himself to be known by experience and that He can indeed be attained in union. St. Macarius of Egypt (or, if you like, pseudo-Macarius, which in no way changes the great value of the mystical works known under this name), speaking of the soul entering into union with God, insists on the absolute difference between the Divine nature and the human nature in this unity: "He is God, and it is not God. He is the Lord, and she is a slave, He is the Creator, and she is a creature... there is nothing in common in His nature and hers" [96]. But, on the other hand, the same author says that "our souls must be changed into the Divine nature" [97]. Thus, God is completely inaccessible and at the same time He can really communicate with man; here neither one nor the other side of this antinomy can be eliminated or in any way restricted. For if Christian mysticism cannot be reconciled with a transcendent God, how much more could it be reconciled with a God immanent and accessible to the created. Gilson beautifully expresses this fundamental principle of spiritual life: "Remove," he says, "even for a moment and only at one point, the barrier which the accident of created existence erects between God and man, and you will deprive the Christian mystic of his God, and consequently deprive him of the mystical life. He can do without any god who is not unapproachable, but only God, who is by nature unapproachable, and is the only one without whom he cannot do without" [98].

Thus, the real union with God and mystical experience in general confront Christian theology with an antinomic question, a question of the accessibility of inaccessible nature. How can God the Trinity be an object of unity and mystical experience in general? In the middle of the fourteenth century, this problem provoked vital theological controversy in the East and led to conciliar decrees that clearly formulated the teaching of the Orthodox Church on this issue. The Archbishop of Thessalonica, St. Gregory Palamas, the herald of the Councils of this great epoch of Byzantine theology, devoted one of his dialogues, entitled "Theophanes," to the question of the Divinity incommunicable and communicable. Analyzing the meaning of the words of the Apostle Peter "partakers of the Divine nature," St. Gregory of Thessalonica asserts that this expression is characteristically antinomic, which makes it akin to the Trinitarian dogma: just as God is at the same time One and Three, so the Divine nature should be spoken of as both incommunicable and in a certain sense communicable: we come to communion with the Divine nature, and yet it remains completely inaccessible to us. We must affirm both of these propositions at the same time and preserve their antinomic nature as a criterion of piety.

In what respect can we enter into unity with the Most Holy Trinity? If at a certain moment we could be united with the very nature of God, at least to some extent participate in it, we would not be what we are at that moment, we would be God by nature. God would then not be God the Trinity, but God "with a thousand hypostases" (?????????????), for He would have as many hypostases as there would be persons who participated in His essence. It follows that God in His essence remains inaccessible to us. Can we say that we are united with one of the three Divine Hypostases? But this would be a hypostatic union, inherent only in the Son, God, who became man and remained the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. Although we have the same human nature, although we receive in Christ the name of the sons of God, nevertheless, by virtue of His incarnation, we do not become the Divine hypostasis of the Son. This means that we cannot be participants in either the essence or the Hypostases of the Holy Trinity. However, God's promise cannot be an illusion: we are called to partake of the divine nature. Consequently, it is necessary to confess in God a certain ineffable distinction, different from the distinction between essence and Persons, such a distinction according to which He would be both completely inaccessible and in many respects accessible. It is the distinction in God between the essence or, in the proper sense of the word, nature, unapproachable, unknowable, incommunicable, and the energies or divine actions, natural forces, inseparable from the essence, in which God acts outwardly, manifesting, communicating, giving: "Illumination and grace, Divine and adoring, is not the essence, but the energy of God" [100], it is "the general energy and Divine power and action of the Triune God" [101]. Thus, according to the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas, when we say that the Divine nature is communicated not in itself, but in its energies, we remain within the bounds of piety" [102].

We see that it was precisely the need to dogmatically substantiate the possibility of union with God that compelled the Eastern Church to formulate a teaching about the real distinction between the Divine essence and the energies. However, St. Gregory Palamas did not create this teaching. Although expressed with less dogmatic clarity, this distinction can be found in most Greek Fathers up to the first centuries of the Church. This is the very tradition of the Eastern Church, closely connected with the Trinitarian dogma.

The Holy Fathers saw in "theology" in the proper sense of the word the teaching of the Divine Being in itself, the teaching of the Most Holy Trinity, while the external manifestations of God, the Trinity, cognizable in Its relationship with the created, entered into the realm of "oikonomia" [103]. The ecclesiastical writers of the first centuries, the epoch preceding the compilation of the Nicene dogma, often confused these two aspects of doctrine when they spoke of the Person of the Word as ???????????????? , the Logos, which manifests the Divinity of the Father. It is in this way of thinking, in the plan of the Divine economy, that they sometimes call the Logos the "power, the might" (???????) of the Father, or His "action" (????????). Athenagoras called the Logos the divine "thought" and "energy" manifested in creation [104]. The text of the Apostle Paul about the invisible things of God, His eternal power and Divinity (?????????????????????????????????????), which became visible from the creation of the world (Rom. 1:20), is interpreted either in the sense of the Logos - "Power and Wisdom", manifesting the Father, or in the more precise sense of "energies" - the general action of the Most Holy Trinity, manifested in creatures: "what can be known about God" (???????????????????), according to the same text of St. Paul (Rom. 1:1). 19). It is in this sense that St. Basil the Great speaks of the manifestation action of energies, contrasting them with their unknowable essence: "We assert that we know our God by actions, but we do not promise to approach the essence itself. For although His actions descend to us, yet His essence remains unapproachable" [105]. In the act of creation, the One-in-Essence Trinity gives knowledge of Itself through Its natural energies.

The author of the Areopagiticus contrasts "unity" in God (???????) "distinctions" (??????????). "Unifications" are "secret abodes that do not reveal themselves" - a superessential nature in which God dwells, as it were, in absolute rest and does not manifest Himself externally in anything. "Distinctions," on the contrary, are the processions (???????) of the Godhead outward, those manifestations of Him (?????????), which Dionysius also calls "powers" (????????), to which all things participate in each other, giving knowledge of God in His creation. The opposition of the two paths of knowledge of God – the theology of the negative and the theology of the positive – is substantiated for Dionysius by this ineffable but real distinction between the unknowable essence and the energies that manifest the Divinity, the "unions" and the "distinctions." Holy Scripture gives us a revelation about God, forming the divine names according to the energies in which God communicates, remaining unapproachable in His essence; differs while remaining "simple"; multiplies without departing from His unity, for in Him "unity prevails over differences" [107]. This means that discernments are not divisions or ruptures in the Divine being. The forces (????????) or energies in which God manifests Himself outwardly are God Himself, but not in His essence. St. Maximus the Confessor expresses the same thought when he says: "We can commune with God in what He communicates to us, but we cannot commune with Him, because of His incommunicable nature" [108]. St. John of Damascus repeats, clarifying it, the thought of St. Gregory the Theologian: "And what we say about the affirmative God does not show us His nature, but that which pertains to nature" [109]. And he designates the divine energies with the figurative expressions "movements" (????????) or "impulses" (??????) [110]. Like Dionysius, the Holy Fathers call the energies "rays of the Divine" that penetrate the entire created world. St. Gregory Palamas calls them simply "deities," "uncreated light," or "grace."

The presence of God in His energies must be understood in a real sense. This is not the effective presence of the cause in its effects: energies are not the "effects" (effects) of the Cause, as the created world. They are not created, not created "out of nothing," but eternally pour out of the one essence of the Most Holy Trinity. They are an abundance of the Divine nature, which cannot limit itself, which is greater than its essence. It can be said that energy reveals to us a certain way of being of the Most Holy Trinity outside of Its unapproachable essence. Thus we learn that God exists simultaneously in His essence and outside of His essence. Referring to St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Gregory Palamas says: "Energy is proper to create, but nature is proper to produce" [111]. Denying the real distinction between essence and energies, we could not draw a sufficiently precise distinction between the origin of the Divine Persons and the creation of the world: both would be natural acts. For St. Mark of Ephesus (fifteenth century) says that the existence of God and His works would then appear to be identical and equally necessary. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish in God the one nature, the three hypostases, and the uncreated energy, which proceeds from nature, but in its manifesting outpouring is not separated from it.

If we, to the best of our ability, partake of God in His energies, this does not mean that God does not fully reveal Himself in His procession ad extra. God is not diminished in His energies; He is fully present in every ray of His Divinity. However, we should avoid two misconceptions that we may have:

1. Energies are not conditioned by the existence of created things, although God creates and acts through His energies that permeate all that exists. The created could not have existed. God would nevertheless manifest Himself outside of His essence, like the Sun shining in its rays outside the solar disk, regardless of whether there are beings capable of receiving its light or not. Of course, the expressions "manifest" and "outward" are not appropriate here, since the "external" begins to exist only from the creation of the world, and "manifestation" can only be perceived in an environment alien to that which is manifested. By using these inadequate expressions, these inadequate images, we point only to the absolute, and not the relative, nature of the natural power of outpouring, which is eternally inherent in God.

2. But the created world does not become infinite and co-eternal with God only because such are the natural processions or Divine energies. The energies do not imply any need for creation, which is a free act performed by the Divine energy, but predetermined by the general will of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. This is an act of God's will, which evoked "out of nothing" a new plot "outside" the Divine being. Thus begins the "environment" in which the Deity manifests. As for the manifestation itself, it is eternal; this is the glory of God.

Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, speaking of the angelic doxology "Glory to God in the highest," expresses this teaching characteristic of the Eastern Church in his sermon on the Nativity of Christ: "God had the highest glory - from eternity... Glory is a revelation, a manifestation, a reflection, a garment of inner perfection. God is revealed to Himself from eternity in the eternal birth of His consubstantial Son and in the eternal procession of His consubstantial Spirit; and thus His unity in the Holy Trinity shines with essential, imperishable and unchangeable glory. God the Father is the Father of glory (Ephesians 1:17); The Son of God is the radiance of His glory (Heb. 1:3), and He Himself has glory with His Father, before the world was (John 17:5), in the same way the Spirit of God is the Spirit of glory (1 Pet. 4:14). In this own inner glory the blessed God lives above all glory, so that He does not require any witnesses in it and cannot have any partakers. But, as in His infinite goodness and love, He desires to communicate His blessedness, to have grace-filled partakers of His glory, so He strives for His infinite perfections, and they are revealed in His creations. His glory appears to the heavenly powers, is reflected in man, and is clothed in the splendor of the visible world. It is given from Him, received by communicants, returned to Him, and in this, so to speak, the cycle of God's glory consists the blessed life and well-being of creation" [114].

In the created world, created "out of nothing" by the Divine will, in beings, limited and changeable, there are infinite and eternal energies, reflecting the radiance of Divine splendor, manifesting also outside of "all" as Divine light, which the created world cannot contain in itself. This is the light of which the Apostle Paul speaks: God... "Who dwelleth in unapproachable light, Whom no man has seen, nor can see" (1 Tim. 6:16). This is the glory in which God appeared to the righteous of the Old Testament, the pre-eternal light that permeated the humanity of Christ at the moment of His transfiguration and gave the apostles the ability to see His Divinity; it is an uncreated and adoring grace, the lot of the saints who live in union with God; finally, it is the Kingdom of God, where "the righteous shall shine like the sun" (Matt. 13:43). The Holy Scriptures abound in texts which, according to the interpretation of the Eastern Church, refer to the Divine energies, as, for example, the following words of the prophet Habakkuk: "God is coming from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His majesty covered the heavens, and the earth was filled with His glory. Its brilliance is like sunlight; from His hand are rays, and here is the hiding place of His power!" (Hab. 3:3-4).