In modern theological discourse, the Catholic Church is often looked down upon for her teaching of “created grace.” Although I’m by no means an expert in philosophical theology, my experience tells me that oftentimes the reason for this isn’t merely because the non-Catholic critic doesn’t understand this doctrine (which they often do not), rather the problem goes deeper than this.
It is true that a disposition of the heart must been created to find God.
I think the question that arises with created grace is this:
(A) Does God create a *substance* called grace that comes to us?
(B) Or does God operate on our heart in such a way that it becomes compatible with the good, or at least seeking the good, allowing access to an uncreated material I just call "G"? So that we can absorb this uncreated material G within us, but because our heart must first be operated on, G is called created grace, and it becomes grace only when G, which is itself an uncreated material, can enter into us, which requires an act of destruction and creation by God in us.
God is “in” us through His uncreated power of causality. However, the formal cause (effect) of God’s uncreated power is a created reality necessarily, since it goes from a state of not being in us, to being in us, and uncreated things cannot change like that.
True, however, I still wonder about the specific form of it. Let us imagine God, with His eternal grace approaching us, drawn as an arrow of light, and us humans as black-colored marbles, impermissible to the light except at a small spot. If this spot is aligned with the light it can enter, but before that can happen the marble must be rotated, which represents a movement of the created. The uncreated, God, may then enter the marble and, through internal processes of the marble, thus part of our own created notion, bring forth the experience of grace. All three steps, the approaching light, the turning of the marble and the inner receptors to the light are things we might reference with grace, individually or in conjunction, some created and some uncreated, and indeed further divisible into more specific processes.
But “the experience of grace,” in your view, is this an effect resulting from the entrance of grace, uncreated in substance and created in the causal fact that it can only enter through the movement of the marble (1) *and* a created effect to the resonance between inner receptors and the light (2); or is the experience of grace the resonating of our inner receptors themselves with the uncreated reality of God without need to cause a further effect, thus only (1) is created and (2) does not exist beyond the mere resonance?
-> Thus, after the created effect of the light entering us and our [created] receptors resonating with it, does it come to a further step of creation or manipulation of creation to output the effect, or is this resonance itself the experience of grace without a further step?
The uncreated, by definition, does not change. If God's "uncreated grace" can go from a state of not being "in" my soul, to being in my soul, then it's not uncreated because it just changed. God, in His uncreated nature/power, stands in a relationship of efficient causality to creation. That's the one and only uncreated dimension to grace there can be: it's efficiently caused or created by the uncreated God. Anything else makes God a creature.
Thank you for the clarification. I understand the concern about maintaining the uncreated nature of God and avoiding any implication of change within the divine nature. Let me refine the analogy and my understanding of grace within this framework.
When discussing grace, we must be careful to distinguish between the uncreated and created aspects. I see your point that if something were to change by entering our soul, it would necessarily be created, as the uncreated cannot undergo change.
To address this, let's consider the relationship of what I think is God's uncreated grace to our created reality in the following way:
1) God, in His uncreated nature, efficiently causes grace. This means that the movement or change happens within the created realm, initiated by God's unchanging will and action. The light (uncreated grace) itself does not change; rather, it is our created reality (the marble) that undergoes transformation.
2) The process by which our heart becomes receptive to this grace is a created effect. This "rotation" of the marble represents the created disposition, a change within us, making us open to God's action.
3) The resonance between our inner receptors and the uncreated grace does not imply a further creation but rather an alignment and participation. When our soul aligns with God's uncreated grace, we experience this as grace, though the effect (the experience of grace) is still within the created order.
4) It seems to be equally possible at this point that the resulting experience is of a created nature: even if the uncreated reality came to touch us, we experience it by our own, created substance or the movement of substance because our faculties and their functions are equally created.
Yet, one can also propose that the movement of [our] substance and thus the created reality is necessary to experience God's grace as outlined above (created reception) while the experience or phenomenal reality of grace is just another eternal aspect of the [substantial] reality of grace and thus our movement inside or towards it is the created aspect, while the phenomenal reality or experience of it isn't. In that case our faculties are created but they have no "function" on their own, they are empty and do not experience anything if not by intersection with the uncreated.
I am wondering, when speaking of a real distinction, do you mean one of substance? For, of course, there is no distinction of substance between God as essence and acts, those are the same. And I do not know of an Orthodox Theologian (that is, one that didn't gave themselves this title on the web) that would speak of the Essence and Energies being distinct by substance.
Speaking from the Orthodox perspective, I'm not sure that we differ substantially on this issue. It seems that "created grace" refers to the fact that grace effects a change in the creature (unless I'm misunderstanding you), which the Orthodox Church would affirm. We would simply say that God giving us that grace, and indeed bestowing existence upon us, are part of the divine energies. The whole point of the essence-energies distinction is to account for how God is both transcendent and immanent. It's not saying that there is somehow a "gap" between God and his creation that is filled by something called "energies", but it is to say that God is truly present in His creation.
Catholicism would deny any need for a *real* essence energy distinction. What makes God distinct from creatures is that, whereas my act of being (that I am) is distinct from my essence (what I am), and thus I need an extrinsic cause to myself to join these together, God's essence is identical to His existence. In other words, God is His existence. Thus, there's no need to posit something conjoined to God's essence that causes things external to Him, since He, in His essence, can do that no problem. So we would say that God's uncreated essence is the *cause* of a change within creation, which is properly called grace.
Well firstly, I'm pretty sure there is some disagreement to what extent the essence-energies distinction is a *real* one. But that aside, God's energies are not an external thing conjoined to Him. This would make them created. God's energies are God acting in the creation. It's still God.
The point Palamas is trying to make is that creatures can't know or experience God in His essence as it is incomprehensible, but we know Him as He acts in the world. I feel like Catholics and Orthodox are usually talking past each other here and Palamas and Aquinas are dealing with a whole different set of questions when explicating their theologies.
I don’t think this is a matter of talking past each other. It’s certainly true that Palamas and St. Thomas approached these issues from completely different angles, and asked the same questions for vastly different reasons, they nonetheless truly did come to opposite conclusions. For St. Thomas and the Catholic dogmatic tradition, there can be absolutely no real distinctions within God that aren’t relations of opposition. Otherwise, any distinction that isn’t a relation of opposition would result in composition, since the definition of composition is two really distinct things being united. That would require something greater than God to cause the unity of His parts, and then that thing would simply be the purely simple God.
It is true that a disposition of the heart must been created to find God.
I think the question that arises with created grace is this:
(A) Does God create a *substance* called grace that comes to us?
(B) Or does God operate on our heart in such a way that it becomes compatible with the good, or at least seeking the good, allowing access to an uncreated material I just call "G"? So that we can absorb this uncreated material G within us, but because our heart must first be operated on, G is called created grace, and it becomes grace only when G, which is itself an uncreated material, can enter into us, which requires an act of destruction and creation by God in us.
God is “in” us through His uncreated power of causality. However, the formal cause (effect) of God’s uncreated power is a created reality necessarily, since it goes from a state of not being in us, to being in us, and uncreated things cannot change like that.
True, however, I still wonder about the specific form of it. Let us imagine God, with His eternal grace approaching us, drawn as an arrow of light, and us humans as black-colored marbles, impermissible to the light except at a small spot. If this spot is aligned with the light it can enter, but before that can happen the marble must be rotated, which represents a movement of the created. The uncreated, God, may then enter the marble and, through internal processes of the marble, thus part of our own created notion, bring forth the experience of grace. All three steps, the approaching light, the turning of the marble and the inner receptors to the light are things we might reference with grace, individually or in conjunction, some created and some uncreated, and indeed further divisible into more specific processes.
But “the experience of grace,” in your view, is this an effect resulting from the entrance of grace, uncreated in substance and created in the causal fact that it can only enter through the movement of the marble (1) *and* a created effect to the resonance between inner receptors and the light (2); or is the experience of grace the resonating of our inner receptors themselves with the uncreated reality of God without need to cause a further effect, thus only (1) is created and (2) does not exist beyond the mere resonance?
-> Thus, after the created effect of the light entering us and our [created] receptors resonating with it, does it come to a further step of creation or manipulation of creation to output the effect, or is this resonance itself the experience of grace without a further step?
The uncreated, by definition, does not change. If God's "uncreated grace" can go from a state of not being "in" my soul, to being in my soul, then it's not uncreated because it just changed. God, in His uncreated nature/power, stands in a relationship of efficient causality to creation. That's the one and only uncreated dimension to grace there can be: it's efficiently caused or created by the uncreated God. Anything else makes God a creature.
Thank you for the clarification. I understand the concern about maintaining the uncreated nature of God and avoiding any implication of change within the divine nature. Let me refine the analogy and my understanding of grace within this framework.
When discussing grace, we must be careful to distinguish between the uncreated and created aspects. I see your point that if something were to change by entering our soul, it would necessarily be created, as the uncreated cannot undergo change.
To address this, let's consider the relationship of what I think is God's uncreated grace to our created reality in the following way:
1) God, in His uncreated nature, efficiently causes grace. This means that the movement or change happens within the created realm, initiated by God's unchanging will and action. The light (uncreated grace) itself does not change; rather, it is our created reality (the marble) that undergoes transformation.
2) The process by which our heart becomes receptive to this grace is a created effect. This "rotation" of the marble represents the created disposition, a change within us, making us open to God's action.
3) The resonance between our inner receptors and the uncreated grace does not imply a further creation but rather an alignment and participation. When our soul aligns with God's uncreated grace, we experience this as grace, though the effect (the experience of grace) is still within the created order.
4) It seems to be equally possible at this point that the resulting experience is of a created nature: even if the uncreated reality came to touch us, we experience it by our own, created substance or the movement of substance because our faculties and their functions are equally created.
Yet, one can also propose that the movement of [our] substance and thus the created reality is necessary to experience God's grace as outlined above (created reception) while the experience or phenomenal reality of grace is just another eternal aspect of the [substantial] reality of grace and thus our movement inside or towards it is the created aspect, while the phenomenal reality or experience of it isn't. In that case our faculties are created but they have no "function" on their own, they are empty and do not experience anything if not by intersection with the uncreated.
I am wondering, when speaking of a real distinction, do you mean one of substance? For, of course, there is no distinction of substance between God as essence and acts, those are the same. And I do not know of an Orthodox Theologian (that is, one that didn't gave themselves this title on the web) that would speak of the Essence and Energies being distinct by substance.
Speaking from the Orthodox perspective, I'm not sure that we differ substantially on this issue. It seems that "created grace" refers to the fact that grace effects a change in the creature (unless I'm misunderstanding you), which the Orthodox Church would affirm. We would simply say that God giving us that grace, and indeed bestowing existence upon us, are part of the divine energies. The whole point of the essence-energies distinction is to account for how God is both transcendent and immanent. It's not saying that there is somehow a "gap" between God and his creation that is filled by something called "energies", but it is to say that God is truly present in His creation.
Catholicism would deny any need for a *real* essence energy distinction. What makes God distinct from creatures is that, whereas my act of being (that I am) is distinct from my essence (what I am), and thus I need an extrinsic cause to myself to join these together, God's essence is identical to His existence. In other words, God is His existence. Thus, there's no need to posit something conjoined to God's essence that causes things external to Him, since He, in His essence, can do that no problem. So we would say that God's uncreated essence is the *cause* of a change within creation, which is properly called grace.
Well firstly, I'm pretty sure there is some disagreement to what extent the essence-energies distinction is a *real* one. But that aside, God's energies are not an external thing conjoined to Him. This would make them created. God's energies are God acting in the creation. It's still God.
The point Palamas is trying to make is that creatures can't know or experience God in His essence as it is incomprehensible, but we know Him as He acts in the world. I feel like Catholics and Orthodox are usually talking past each other here and Palamas and Aquinas are dealing with a whole different set of questions when explicating their theologies.
I don’t think this is a matter of talking past each other. It’s certainly true that Palamas and St. Thomas approached these issues from completely different angles, and asked the same questions for vastly different reasons, they nonetheless truly did come to opposite conclusions. For St. Thomas and the Catholic dogmatic tradition, there can be absolutely no real distinctions within God that aren’t relations of opposition. Otherwise, any distinction that isn’t a relation of opposition would result in composition, since the definition of composition is two really distinct things being united. That would require something greater than God to cause the unity of His parts, and then that thing would simply be the purely simple God.
Fair enough! St Gregory Palamas also affirms divine simplicity, so it is also Orthodox dogma.