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).

We see that the dogmatic doctrine of energies is not an abstract concept or an intellectual distinction: it is a concrete reality of a religious order, although it is difficult to grasp. Therefore, this teaching expresses itself in an antinomic way: the energies, by virtue of their procession, indicate an ineffable difference - they are not God in His essence, and at the same time, as inseparable from His essence, they testify to the unity and simplicity of the Divine being.

The opponents of St. Gregory Palamas, the Eastern theologians, who were strongly influenced by the teaching of Thomas Aquinas (these were the Calabrian monk Barlaam, who studied in Italy, and Akindinus, the translator into Greek of his "Summa theologiae"), saw in the real distinction between essence and energies an encroachment on Divine simplicity and accused Palamas of bitheism and polytheism. The apophatic and antinomic spirit of Eastern theology became alien to them, and they defended against such a theology the concept of God as a primarily simple essence, in which the Hypostases themselves become characteristic intra-essential relations.

The philosophical conception of God as a pure act cannot admit of something that would be God and would not be the very essence of God: here God is as it were limited by His essence. That which is not essence, does not belong to the Divine being, is not God. Consequently, according to Barlaam and Akindynos, the energies are either the essence itself, which is a pure act, or they are the results of external acts of essence, that is, created effects that have the essence as their cause, in other words, they are created. For the opponents of St. Gregory Palamas, there is a Divine essence, there are its created consequences, but there are no Divine actions, there are no energies. In response to their criticism, the Archbishop of Thessalonica confronted the Eastern followers of Thomas Aquinas with the following dilemma: either they must recognize the distinction between "essence" and "actions," but then, according to their philosophical understanding of essence, they must attribute to the created Divine glory, the light of Tabor, and Divine grace; or they must deny this distinction, which would lead them to identify the unknowable with the knowable, the incommunicable with the communicable, the essence with grace [115]. In both cases, real deification was impossible. Thus, such a defense of Divine simplicity, substantiated by the philosophical concept of essence, led to conclusions both inadmissible for piety and contrary to the tradition of the Eastern Church.

For St. Gregory Palamas, as for all the profoundly apophatic theology of the Eastern Church, Divine simplicity could not be justified by the concept of simple essence. The point of departure of his theological thought is the Trinity, a Trinity that is quite simple, despite the distinction between nature and Persons, as well as between Persons. This simplicity is antinomic, as is every statement in the doctrine of God: it does not exclude distinction, but does not admit of either excommunication or fragmentation in the Divine being. For St. Gregory of Nyssa could have asserted that the human mind remains simple, in spite of its various faculties: our mind, indeed, diversifies according to the objects known to it, but remains inseparable and does not pass in its essence into other substances. However, the human mind is not "above names" like the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, who possess in their common energies everything that could only be ascribed to the nature of God [116]. Simplicity does not mean uniformity or indistinguishability; then Christianity was not the religion of the Holy Trinity. In general, it must be said that we too often forget that the idea of divine simplicity, at least that taught in theological textbooks, derives more from human philosophy than from divine revelation. St. Mark of Ephesus, recognizing the difficulty of philosophical thought to admit in God a mode of being distinct from that of essence, to reconcile distinction with simplicity, paints us a picture of the wise economy of the Church, which, according to each epoch, is applied to the capacities of men to perceive the truth. "We should not be surprised," he says, "that we do not find in the ancients a clear and distinct distinction between the essence of God and His actions. If, in our time, after the solemn affirmation of the truth and the universal recognition of the Divine unity of command, the adherents of secular science have caused so much difficulty to the Church on this occasion and accused her of polytheism, what would not those in former times do who were proud of their vain wisdom and sought only an opportunity to catch the teachers of the Church in some errors? For this reason, theologians insisted more on the simplicity of the Godhead than on the distinctions available in Him. It was not necessary to compel those who could hardly admit the distinction of the Hypostases to recognize the distinction of energies. With wise caution the Divine dogmas were revealed in accordance with the times, and Divine Wisdom used for this purpose the insane attacks of heresy" [118].

Distinguishing in God three hypostases, one nature and natural energies, Orthodox theology does not allow any complexity in Him. Like the Persons, the energies are not elements of the Divine essence, which could be considered separately, separately from the Most Holy Trinity, for they are Its common manifestation and Its pre-eternal radiance. Nor are they "accidents" (??????????) of nature as pure energies, nor do they presuppose any passivity in God. Nor are they hypostatic beings like the three Persons [120]. It is not even possible to ascribe any energy exclusively to one of the Divine Hypostases, although we speak of the Son as the "Father's Wisdom and Power." One might say, to use the common term, that the energies are attributes of the Deity; however, these dynamic and concrete attribute-properties have nothing in common with the attribute-concepts that are ascribed to God by the abstract and sterile theology of school textbooks. According to the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite, the energies reveal the innumerable names of God: Wisdom, Life, Power, Justice, Love, Being, God, and an infinite number of other names that remain unknown to us, for the world cannot contain the fullness of the Divine manifestation revealed in the energies, just as, according to the words of the Evangelist John, it could not contain the books in which all that is written what Jesus did (John 21:25). Divine names, like anergia, are innumerable; but the nature which they reveal remains unnameable, unknowable; darkness hidden by the abundance of light.

For the Orthodox contemplation of God, the energies signify the manifestation of the Holy Trinity outwardly, which cannot be introduced or "implanted" into the Divine being as his natural predisposition. This was the starting point of theology and the main mistake of Father Sergius Bulgakov, who saw in the energy of Wisdom (Sophia), which he identified with essence, the very beginning of the Divine. God is indeed not defined by any of His attributes (properties). All definitions are below Him, they logically follow His being in Himself, His essence. When we say: "God is Wisdom, Life, Truth, Love", we are talking about His energies, about what is "after" the essence, about His manifestations that are natural, but in relation to the Trinitarian being itself - external. Therefore, in contrast to Western theology, the teaching of the Eastern Church never defines the relationship between the Persons of the Holy Trinity by the name of any of Its attributes. It will never be said, for example, that the Son proceeds in the image of reason, and the Holy Spirit in the image of the will. The Holy Spirit is never likened to the love between the Father and the Son. In the Trinitarian psychologism of Blessed Augustine, one can see a figurative analogy rather than a positive theological teaching expressing the relationship of the Divine Persons. St. Maximus the Confessor refused to apply to the Holy Trinity definitions of a psychological nature relating to the will; he saw in them what the nature of the Godhead would follow, as external determinations, its manifestations [121]. When they say: "God is Love," or "The Divine Persons are united by mutual love," they mean their common manifestation, love-energy, which is possessed by all three Hypostases, for the unity of the Three is higher even than love itself. St. Gregory Palamas sometimes applies to the energies - the real properties of the Divinity, which will follow the Holy Trinity, the name of "Lower Divinity" (???????????????) in contrast to the essence - "Higher Divinity" (??????????), which greatly tempted his opponents. Nevertheless, the expression is quite legitimate, since it refers to a manifestation logically following Him who manifests Himself, "for God signifies Him who acts, Divinity (as energy) signifies His action" (122).

As we have already said, the Holy Trinity can be contemplated in Itself, which, according to the terminology of the Fathers, is "theology" in the proper sense of the word. But it can also be contemplated in its relation to the created: it is the realm of oikonomia, of divine action or distribution. The eternal origin of Persons is the subject of theology taken in its definite meaning, while Their manifestation in the act of creation or in providence, the mission in the time of the Son and the Holy Spirit, belong to the realm of "oikonomia" or "economy"; it is the "House-building Trinity," according to the rather inaccurate expression of some modern theologians. The energies, in accordance with this division of the dogmatic order, occupy a kind of middle place: on the one hand, they belong to the realm of their own theology, as eternal and inseparable from the Holy Trinity, existing independently of the act of creation of the world; but, on the other hand, they also belong to the realm of oikonomia, for God reveals Himself to the created world in His energies, which, as St. Basil the Great says, "condescend to us."