Daily reminder that the light revealed on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration of our Lord is identified with the light...

By divine simplicity I mean scholasticism.
I've not said that. What I said that it isn't Palmist i.e. that Palmas is not just just faithful follower of saints but he added his own, or rather his teacher did after he reee'd out of Church and went to Mt. Athros.

He doesn't mean Divine Simplicity. He means Absolute Divine Simplicity

My explanation is that it is like running to infinity. Say if I am an infinite distance from you and you are running towards me then you can't get half way to me, for if you did then i wouldn't be an infinite distance from you. If you ran 100 miles and discovered that you are halfway to me then i'm not an infinite distance from you, but only 100 miles away.
That's just my take on it.

And as to you saying why we are limited from knowing Gods essence in the next life.
Lets say for example that the essence of a human being is that he has hair (This isn't true but for the sake of argument lets say it is.), now if in the next life I get all my hair taken away from me, every single one, and i cannot grow it anymore then I would cease to be a human, for I lack the very thing that makes a human a human. Its the same thing with God. If God is utterly transcendent, then if God can be comprehended in his essence in this life or the next, then he would cease to be God, just an incredibly powerful being.

Yes? The quotes don't say that the names affort us any real knowledge (even if limited) about the essence of God.

Both of you should have a look at:
ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9a1fd044-ad76-4b12-9e4f-8d33e34af08b/download_file?file_format=application/pdf&safe_filename=VC-Palamas-Cappadocians.pdf&type_of_work=Journal article

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They do. "The human soul endeavors by multiple notions to attain the ineffable nature. (There follow various examples of these multiple notions: God is wise, powerful, not caused, separate from evil, immutable, immortal, incorruptible.) We do not dividethe subject by these notions, but, believing that what he is by essence is one, we hold the view that the object of our thought has its own, close relationships with all these apprehensions.”

Humans have real knowledge of God: that He is wise, not caused, holy etc. And those are real description of God even if his essence is in itself ineffable.
We can know sun - we can say that sun is bright, hot, yellow - without comprehending essence of sun. I mean of course analogically, for those notions of sun are in it's accidents, not nature, but Palams used similar analogy so why wouldn't I?

Again, footnotes 16&17 would really help you grasp it. Or just reading careful what is given.

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Divine light, divine energies at his core is a monastic theology, like a late rationalization of a mystical experience.
As such I consider this as a theory, impossible to tell as true or false unless personally experienced. I'm open to this possibility but I stay absolutely undogmatic about it.

You seem to ignore that "ineffable nature" or "he who by essence is one" is still object of out thoughts. And if it's object of our thought then we have knowledge of him. Not to mention that if object of our thoughts, of whom it necessarily follows have knowlege, was not God then we would be all idolatres.
Moreover, by those notions we do not divide subject i.e. essence of God. Meaning that essence of God is subject of our knowledge.
Which as Cappadocians time and time point out exist only in relation to Creature, not in God himself.
Again, it's anthropocentric. For we are caused so we understand causality. God who is uncaused is not-like us. But objectively speaking, it is being caused what is negation of neccessary existence of God.
So you agree that even though God is incomprehensible he is truly knowable in his essence?

What is really funny about Palams is that his justification of theology of those practices (even though it boils down to "you cannot really' say that it's heretical from theoretical'' point of view") is one hundred times stronger than his justfication of practices themselves (and let us not go into how those bear the same results as pagan and jewish practices).

No offence but that rings a bell..

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Nothing that you accuse Latins of cannot be said also about Greeks. Or Ancient Israelites for the matter. Ark was a thing you know.

Mary is literally the Mother of the Church as said by Jesus on the cross.
Keep the equivalent of pictures of our Holy Mother and show them to everyone because we love her as her son commanded us to.

Our Lord is behind the Altar at his throne his Mother and the Angels under her command guard the door to the King.

This was an interesting paper. I have only one remark: the author seems to confuse the energy with its result. For example on page 55 we read:

"The 'knowledge of God' gained by observation of the energies (the movements of the forces of nature) in this letter is belief in God, or faith."

Since the movements of the forces of nature are obviously created things and Palama speaks about uncreated energies, the author concludes that the energies that cause the movements of the forces of nature are not the same as the Palamite divine uncreated energies.

This is not so. When Palama names the energies uncreated he means that the uncreated God is the source of these energies. Nothing more. For example when God causes the wind to blow, the wind, of course, is created, but the energy causing the wind to blow originates from the uncreated God, so this energy is uncreated. The activity of God is uncreated and the result of this activity, namely the wind, is created.

Because of this confusion, the author endeavors to discern carefully the usage of the word ενεργεια by the Cappadocians – when it denotes "created" energies (that is energies whose result is in the creation) and when it denotes some "higher" energies. This investigation is interesting and instructive, but unrelated to Palama. Of course, it is possible that I am wrong, but right now I can not remember even a hint for such a distinction in the works of Palama I have read. All energies have ultimately God as their source and that's what matters.

I have the feeling that the disagreement between us is not as big as it may seem because at least partially it is caused by different usage of the terms. Unfortunately, what exactly causes the disagreement evades me. I want a simple sentence that formulates clearly this disagreement but I don't have one. Below I will continue to "attack" you. But please notice that what I am attacking here is only your words and not your way of thinking. The goal of my "attack" is not to persuade you but only to show you my way of thinking. If you decide to reply to my "attack", I will consider your "attack" as your attempt to show me your way of thinking. So feel free to do so.

The essence of God can not be an adequate object of our thoughts. At the very moment we try to make the essence of God an object of our thinking, what we have in fact in our mind as an object is not the essence of God but His energy. This is the meaning of the citation of Palama in .

The citation we are discussing now says: "The human soul endeavors by multiple notions to attain the ineffable nature" This doesn't mean the soul succeeds in having notions about the ineffable nature. What the soul has are notions about the activities of the divine nature.

The object of our thoughts are the activities(energies) of (the essence of) God. The citations say this clearly. Are these activities related to the essence? Yes, they are, just as the brightness of the sun is related to the sun (if I may use your example). The brightness is an activity of the sun and by knowing this activity we know the sun even if we don't know the nature of the sun.

????
Meaning that the essence of God is not a subject of our knowledge, or else we would have had divided the subject, i.e. the essence of God.

Which as Cappadocians time and time point out exist only in relation to Creature, not in God himself.
The source is in God, the result is in the Creation.

God is truly knowable in his activities. If you want to call these activities "activities of his essence" I won't object.

One of the hesychastic practices is to use the prayer position of prophet Elijah (1 Kings 18:42). Yes, this is a Jewish practice.

I'm saying that your saying that Hesychasts bear the same results as pagan and jews is the exact line of reasoning the protestants use against statues.

See above.

First of all, let's state terms clear.
By essence I with scholastics mean "what thing is". And of course, essence of God and let say man are both "essences" rather anaologically than in any way univocal.
Energy of God is act of God and all of his acts are acts of his essence. But taking this act as some real distinction is not right.
He says latter that it does though viz: "we hold the view that the object i.e. ineffable nature, of our thought"
And it says even more clearly that essence and energy is the same thing and that we see it as multiple flows only from us, not reality.
On the contrary, meaning that if the essence of God is not a subject of our knowledge we would have had divided the subject, i.e. the essence of God.
But that does not follow that those acts are distinct from God who is absolutely simple as Augustine teaches.
And activities of his essence are essence itself - for God works by his essence alone, pure and perfect act.
General body position is not hesychastic practice yet. Especially seeing that it was all together scrapped in recent years.

Ok. Although it is not entirely accurate to say that the acts of God are acts of his nature. Such expressions do not lead to big confusion only because the three Hypostases of God have the same acts because there is only one God.

Humans have will. The decisions of my will or your will, however, are my acts or your acts, but not acts of the human nature. And the same goes about God. The acts of God, for example His will, are His acts but not (strictly speaking) acts of His nature.

But since God is one, we can speak of the activities of God as activities of His essence.

What do you mean by "real distinction"? I suppose that you don't claim that an act of God (for example causing a wind to blow) is the same as the essence of God. Therefore, you agree that there is some distinction. What exactly you don't agree with?

God, not the essence of God.

Here is the translation of this place from newadvent.org/fathers/2902.htm with its context:

"From the skill apparent in the Universe, we get the idea of skill in the Ruler of that Universe, from the large scale of the wonders worked we get the impression of His Power; and from our belief that this Universe depends on Him, we get an indication that there is no cause whatever of His existence; and again, when we see the execrable character of evil, we grasp His own unalterable pureness as regards this: when we consider death's dissolution to be the worst of ills, we give the name of Immortal and Indissoluble at once to Him Who is removed from every conception of that kind. Not that we split up the subject of such attributes along with them, but believing that this thing we think of, whatever it be in substance, is One, we still conceive that it has something in common with all these ideas. For these terms are not set against each other in the way of opposites, as if, the one existing there, the other could not co-exist in the same subject; but the force of each of the terms used in connection with the Divine Being is such that, even though it has a peculiar significance of its own, it implies no opposition to the term associated with it."

Where?

I don't understand your point.

In my previous post I meant that there is a multitude of activities by God. If this multitude of activities belonged to the essence of God, then the essence of God would not be simple. Here is one activity of God:

Knowlege of God here on earth is always analogical to some extent.
And here analogies break really. For there is no genus, or kind of "God". God is One. Humans are inducalised by thier matter. God does not have matter.
Better analogy would be that of angels (and even it falls short) for every angels is unique in itself.And this unique being wills thing.
But when it comes to God his Will is joined to his Intellect - and his intellect is his essence.
I know and believe that God's cause of thing by his willing those things. And that his will is joined to his intellect. And that his intellect and essence is the same thing.
That we distinguish those acts of God as diffrent is imperfection on our side.
"God" is to be taken two ways. First is divine essence i.e. what God is. Second divine person i.e. who God is (and all three have fullness of first sense).
Nothing in context in the slightest disprove what I said.
"in substance, is One" among other and then three quotes starting from “The divinity cannot be named" in above article.
That there is but one divine will (dogmatised by Church on fifth [or sixth, the anti-monothelite one] ecumenical council). And this will is joined to his intellect, which is essence of God.
As the divine intellect is one, as seeing the many only in the one, in the same way the divine will is one and simple, as willing the many only through the one, that is, through its own goodness. The will of God is one, since it is the very essence of God. Yet sometimes it is spoken of as many, not because they are many but because same unchable will have diffrent, let's say manifestation.

This post makes the things clearer. But in order to be sure that I understand you I have two questions.

First: If I say that the saying "Let there be light" and the saying "Let ther be an expanse in the midst of the waters" are two different acts of God from our own point of view, will you agree?

Second: If I say that you think that the different acts of God are distinguished because of our imperfection but they are one when looked from the absolute point of view of God, will you agree?

I only claimed that your identification of "we think about God" and "we think about the essence of God" does not follow from what the Cappadocians wrote. I never suggested that this identification is disproved by the writings of the Cappadocians. Maybe it is, or maybe it is not.

I finished reading the two parts of this article.
First, thank you for sharing it. It is a breath of fresh air to read a Catholic perspective of Palamas in which the author has actually bothered to read the Triads.

However…
That's not the point your article makes at all. Did you even read it? The conclusion of the article is that the essence-energy distinction is perfectly correct and in line with patristics (although Palamas gets a forced reading of Maximus here and there), but it is only theologically sound if the distinction is virtual (as in, understood on the level of the economy). The author repeatedly points out that medieval Latin theology takes a different approach from the Greek fathers and, obviously, from Palamas, who is in line with said Greek fathers for the most part (although the author considers hesychasm itself to be a 13th century, new practice).

There is obviously the issue here that it would appear from the hesychast councils and from Palamas's later writings that the essence-energy distinction is supposed to be -in God-, not just from our perspective and understanding as we receive God's grace. The author unfortunately does not address this. But this was still a much more pleasant thing than the retarded Most Meme Monastery video about Palamism.

Since both are acts of creation, and creation was willed by God, yes.

I did and I concluded that both Palamas and Aquinas is patristic, and even that Palamas can be reconciled with scholasticism.

I perfectly agree with this. But that wasn't the point you were making, which was that:

Perhaps I should be clearer. I meant "Super Essentialism is not inherently Palamite ethier

I see.
Then I'll add something else - that according to the author, Palamas is very much reconciliable with scholastic theology if we consider the essence-energy distinction to be virtual. However, the hesychast councils and Palamas's later writings make clear that the distinction is not virtual, but real.

Well, it's not like those councils are actually binding. At Florence greek theologians were somewhat content to de facto ignore them and sign creed with absolute simplicity. And then, before Vatican I, when EOs issued letter with "all that is wrong with you" to Rome, there were classics such as filioque, but there were no a single mention of Palams.

What? The hesychast councils are binding (and gathered as the 5th Council of Constantinople). Bishops have never written specifically against divine simplicity or scholasticism or Thomism because what was condemned was Barlaamism. There has never been an Orthodox statement against Thomism, even if the neo-palamites of the 20th century really wanted to make Palamas some kind of anti-Aquinas and this has persisted today among people who don't even know what either of these theologians actually meant.

I just state facts user. That's how they acted. I am not God (nor baptist, lol) to know minds of those guys.

Let me give one of the arguments why the distinction is real. St. John Damascene in Book 8 of his "Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" writes:

"Generation in Him [that is the generation of the Son] is without beginning and everlasting, being the work of nature and producing out of His own essence, that the Begetter may not undergo change, and that He may not be God first and God last, nor receive any accession; while creation in the case of God, being the work of will, is not co-eternal with God."

Therefore, the begetting of the Son is work of the nature and not an act of the will of God. The creation was a free act of the will of God and as such it is not co-eternal with God. If the will of God and the nature were one and the same then the creation would become co-existing with the Son and either both would be co-eternal with the Father or both would not be co-eternal with Him.