The Thomist 72 (2008): 173-231 AN INTRODUCTION TO DIVINE RELATIVITY: BEYOND DAVID BRADSHAW'S ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST ANTOINE LEVY, 0.P. Studium Catholicum Helsinki, Finland C ATHOLICS AND LUTHERANS more or less agree on what it is on which they disagree. It is more complicated to specify why the Orthodox disagree with them both. Speaking in "phenomenological" terms, the difference of "religious world" between Eastern-Byzantine and Latin-Western Churches is primary evidence for the faithful on both sides. However, defining what it is that makes those religious worlds so different seems a desperately tricky venture. The difference in ecclesiastical structure is not the cause, but the consequence of the splitting of the Oikoumene into Western-Latin and Eastern-Byzantine parts. Differences between specific religious rituals and practices can well express a difference of religious world views, but a harmonious religious world-view cannot be born out of specific rituals and practices. One can always point to dogmatic divergences between Western and Byzantine Churches, such as the famous Filioque. However, though the subjects of disagreement between Catholics and Lutherans are much more numerous, they do not give rise to a similar difference of religious worlds. Conversely, one cannot conceive of an agreement on matters of dogma or ecclesial practice between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches that would suppress the difference in the "religious world" between the Latin-Western and the Byzantine-Eastern forms of Christianity. 1 1 This conviction lies at the core of Uniatism as a specific historical phenomenon: nonWestern Churches claim to be respected in their "otherness" by the Roman Church even when there is complete coincidence of views at the dogmatic level. 173 174 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. It would seem that this difference is not really a divergence-it is rather due to the set of positive properties that makes one mental world different from another. Both John and Peter have their own mental worlds, and this can lead them to disagree on a number of things, like who is the most inept politician in England or what color they should paint the kitchen wall. These disagreements are consequences of their different mind sets, and not the other way round. It is difficult to explain what makes the mind-set of individual human beings so different. It is all the more difficult to describe the difference of the religious world-view between the Byzantine tradition and its Western equivalent. The clues that can be gleaned from the extant literature on the subject-cultural influences, conflicts of political ambitions, etc.-are disappointingly vague. What then about the constitution, throughout the ages, of two original, consistent world views which, despite the existence of a relatively wide consensus on dogmatic issues, seem to have remained utterly foreign to each other by successfully resisting any form of higher synthesis? Keeping these preliminary considerations in mind, one can fully appreciate the monumental undertaking of David Bradshaw in his Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom. 2 As the title and subtitle suggest, the author does not appeal to difference of dogmatic stances or to the infinitely contingent list of religious practices in order to explain the estrangement of the two Church traditions. It is in the living process initiated by the encounter between Christian revelation and Greek philosophy that Bradshaw claims to identify the reasons for the silent emergence of two distinct religious worlds within Christendom. This approach contrasts with the rash judgements and the confessional invectives to which, probably for lack of convincing arguments, theologians from both sides have had abundant recourse in the past. Relying on an impressively wide range of literary sources, the study possesses the basic feature of the scientific genre: it is open to further discussion. This is precisely the purpose of the present argument. As I launch 2 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. BEYOND BRADSHAW,ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 175 into a critical response to the positions of the author, I recognize that I owe this opportunity to Bradshaw's innovative approach. I am convinced that he will welcome the possibility to discuss his conclusions further and to scrutinize new perspectives sketched out on the very issues with which he wrestles. If the following argument fails to convince, the responsibility rests on the critic, not the original author. If, on the contrary, it opens the door to further debate, there can be no more rewarding result for the two researchers. I will start by summarizing the content of Bradshaw's view on the evolution of the two traditions. I will then focus on a point which I find to be pivotal, but unfortunately overlooked in his study: the relativistic aspect of God's operations ad extra. This will lead me to sketch another way of accounting for the genesis of the Byzantine and the Latin theological world-views. I. BRADSHAw ON THE MAKING OF Two THEOLOGICAL UNIVERSES: A PROMISING DISAPPOINTMENT It is not easy to synthesize the main line of Bradshaw's argument. He starts by carefully laying out distinct meanings intertwined in the writings of Aristotle that are said to witness the evolution in the philosopher's thought: energeia as pertaining to the very principle that makes things real in contrast with potentiality, energeia as defining the capacity on which all forms of activity rest, and finally energeia as the static condition of all physical movements (chap. 1, "TheAristotelianBeginnings"). This set of meanings circumscribes the conceptual field that will be exploited in various ways by later commentators, glossators and original thinkers alike. At this point the reader comes across the first problematic aspect of Bradshaw's study. Nowhere is the reason for the impressive speculative developments to which Aristotle's complex notion of energeia has given rise in later scientific, philosophical, and theological literature clearly stated. Is it the difficult harmonization ad intra of Aristotle's considerations on energeia? 176 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. If so, what is it that makes this harmonization so difficult? In what sense does a new formulation of the notion constitute an adequate solution? On the other hand, the developments could also be due to the desire to harmonize Aristotle with other schools of thought, such as the Platonic . . Leaving aside this question for the time being, it seems that the attention of Aristotle's readers has been drawn toward the type of causality exercised by the motionless being-in-actuality of God (chap. 2, "The Prime Mover") as the source of the understanding of natural causality. Being logically prior to potency and implied by any type of movement in the mode of a causal prerequisite, energeia is no longer seen primarily as the perfection of the natural ousia's being (the opposite of its being-in-potency) but as the power, the actual dynamis that the ousia possesses and exerts without movement upon other substances. In Plutarch's and Quintillian's comments on rhetorical art, in Polybius's Histories and Strabo's Geography as well as in the medical treatises of Galen, energeia, qualifying the efficiency connected with the condition of actuality, is used to designate an active power related to specific essences, ousiai, and therefore somehow emanating from them (chap. 3, "Between Aristotle and Plotinus"). Alexandrian Judaism (Pseudo-Aristeas, Philo of Alexandria) does the same in a theological setting: the deeds of God result from God's energeiaor energeiai.Human beings cannot know God's ousia, but they can make reliable theological assumptions on the grounds of his energeiai (Philo). In this manner, Middle Platonists such as Numenius and Alcinous assume that the First God, being eternally at rest, produces the whole universe in virtue of its intellectual, self-directed energeia, whereas the strictly demiurgic energeia, which is mixed with movement, pertains to the Second God. The teaching of Plotinus goes one step further: the motionless, unspeakable energeia of the One is conceived as the inner source of an outward, overabundant energeia which crystallizes hypostatically and animates the whole hierarchy of beings teleogically. While this creative energeia gradually disperses down to the unreality of pure matter, its source never comes to exhaustion BEYOND BRADSHAW,ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 177 (chap. 4, "Plotinus and the Theory of Two Acts"). In passing, Bradshaw observes that Alexander of Aphrodisias might have been the missing link between Aristotle's theory of the Prime Mover and Plotinus. In Alexander's comments on the mechanisms of sense-perception in De Anima, light, understood as a kinetic energy, gives the aerial medium substance by granting it actuality. According to Plotinus, the outward diffusion of the One's "inner" energeia likewise "substantifies" or "hypostasizes" the Intellect. As regards the Latin-speaking West, Bradshaw assumes that it came into contact with the Greek philosophical speculations on the energeiai through Porphyry or Porphyrian-inspired treatises such as the Commentary to the Parmenides (chap. 5, "The Plotinian Heritage in the West"). This explains the fact that the main Latin-speaking proponent of Greek Neoplatonism, the Christian Marius Victorinus, tends to assimilate the One's outwardly diffusive energy with the notion of being (einai/esse). In his triadology, Being, as a category, relates to the Father as to the first divine Hypostasis. According to Bradshaw, this "energetic" concept of being, elaborated in the Porphyrian line, lies behind Boethius's understanding of participation, based on the celebrated distinction between esse and quid quad est. With Boethius, however, diffusive ontology yields to a logico-grammatical approach. Bradshaw maintains that the Latin word operatio cannot express the semantic riches of the Greek energeia, designating a source of power, a motion, and the achievement of motion altogether. Moreover, the Latin tradition remains foreign to philosophical developments that take place in the Greekspeaking Neoplatonic (Iamblichus, Proclus) and Hermetic ambient (chap. 6, "Gods, Demons and Theurgy"). The physical universe appears here as pervaded by the energeiai of the One, continuously reverberating from one level of the hierarchy of Being to the other. Participating in these divine energeiai, by exercising the virtue of speculative intellect (Proclus) or using semi-magical, "theurgical" practices (Iamblichus), emerges as the main purpose of the human path towards perfection. 178 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. Bradshaw further asserts that the Eastern Church tradition integrated these later elaborations on Aristotle's energeia into a dogmatically orthodox framework (chap. 7, "The Formation of Eastern Tradition"). As a matter of fact, "unorthodox" Christian thinkers were probably the first to adapt this philosophical apparatus to their doctrine. Ironically, in striving to refute such erroneous positions, the Fathers also volens no/ens relied on the same apparatus. They modified it, though, to fit their own views on dogmatic truth. In this manner, Eunomius, the fourth-century theoretician of a renewed version of Arianism, distinguished between Ousia as designating the knowable essence of the Father and energeia as the Son whom the Father has once generated. Against this theory, the Cappadocian Fathers argued that both Ousia and energeia designate what Father and Son have in common but, whereas God's Ousia is unknowable and beyond participation, his energeiai are knowable and participatory. According to the Cappadocians, although creation provides a reliable basis to understand something about God, it does so only to the extent to which it discloses God's energeiai to the inquisitive mind. Conjectures based on created beings cannot tell anything about what God is beyond the free and eternal decision out of which creation itself stems. The divine Ousia as the principle on which rests the divine decision to produce something out of nothing remains out of reach. Still, while the names that qualify God in human languages are derived from an understanding of these various energeiai,knowing God according to his energeiai can go much further than the conclusions of a "scientific" or discursive reflection. There is a knowledge that comes out of an instantaneous participation in the energetic reality that produces and supports created beings. This is the work of grace which, through the synergy or cooperation of human freedom, grants access to the creative and life-giving energeiaiof the Holy Spirit (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa). The cosmic contemplation of the fifth- or sixth-century author known as Dionysius the Areopagite forms, according to Bradshaw, an almost perfect congruence with the Cappadocians' doctrine. BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 179 The energeaithat, originating from the unknowable One in some kind of discretive process of ek-stasis, produce and support existent beings, are the same energeaithat, through the purifying and illuminating synergy of the angelic hierarchies, bring finite intellects back into unity with the unknowable One. Bradshaw goes on to cite the crucial influence of the divine energeiaitheory on the insights of later Greek Fathers such as St. Maximus the Confessor, St. John Damascene, Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory of Cyprus (chap. 8, "The Flowering of Eastern Tradition"). In his ascetic writings, Maximus explains the synergy of human spiritual capacities with God's energeiai. His understanding of nature, in the Ambigua, rests on the intermediary role of the divine energeiaibetween created beings and their logoi, their eternal reasons which dwell in God's mind. Angelic and divinized created minds perceive the attributes of God (wisdom, goodness, etc.) as so many energeiai eternally emanating from God's unknowable ousia ("the things around God which have no beginning"). 3 Thus, divine energeiaiare at the same time conceived as eternal and diffused throughout the whole creation. Referring to the teaching of John Damascene, Bradshaw claims that the identification of Dionysius's proodoi with a divine light, divided into as many rays as there are finite beings capable of partaking in it, plays a fundamental role in regard to the theologian's way of conceiving the "energetic" mode of the presence of God within the world. The reader is cautioned that the understanding of the divine energeia as a supernatural light should not be taken as a mere metaphor. The mystic teaching of Symeon the New Theologian stems from the experience of the light which is manifested at the Transfiguration. Moreover, Gregory of Cyprus's triadology describes the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father through the Son as radiance originates in the sun and is conveyed through its beams. The last chapter of the book (chap. 9, "Palamas and Aquinas") is also the most decisive. As epitomized by the conflict between Thomism and Palamism, the difference of doctrinal fate associated 3 Maximus the Confessor, Chapters on Theology and Economy 1.48 (PG 90:1 lOOd). 180 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. with the notion of divine energeia is presented as accounting for the estrangement between the Eastern and the Western traditions. Bradshaw starts by pointing to the "non-energetic" aspect of the "school-master" of Western theological thought, St. Augustine. Construing God as Being in its fullness, Augustine defines this divine Being in terms of essentia, not of operatio: no divine operatio exists distinct from God's essentia. Finite beings thus participate in God's essence (whereas from the Eastern perspective they participate in God's energeiai) and the vision granted to the elect has God's essence as its perceptive object (whereas the East defines God's Ousia as beyond the knowledge of finite beings, even of angelic minds). The fourteenth-century dispute over hesychast prayer, in the East, has been instrumental in revealing the gap between the two theological traditions. Criticizing the Athonite monks' claim to contemplate the uncreated light of the Transfiguration through the exercise of uninterrupted prayer, Barlaam of Calabria is described as being deeply influenced by the theological views of Augustine. This happened either directly through Planudes' translations, or indirectly, through Barlaam's familiarity with Western Scholasticism. Defending the spiritual practice of the Athonite monks on doctrinal grounds, St. Gregory Palamas, on the contrary, emerges as an heir to the genuine Eastern tradition: God is the unknowable Ousia, but he is also the knowable energeia, divisible in so many distinct energeiaias there are finite participants. The divine energeia eternally emanates from the Ousia, the former being "enhypostasized," as it were, in the latter. In this context, grace is nothing else than human beings' participation in God's uncreated and sanctifying energeiai according to their own faith and free-will. Quite naturally, as set in Bradshaw's historical perspective, this account of the dispute raises some questions: if the Byzantine East appears to be unconsciously indebted to Aristotle, via the Neoplatonic and Christian elaborations on the philosophicotheological notion of energeia,what about the West? What can be said about a type of theological thinking that, underlying the BEYOND BRADSHAW,ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 181 critical attitude of Barlaam, is so often associated with Aristotelianism? Bradshaw focuses here on Thomas Aquinas, as being both the main theoretician of Western Scholasticism and the main authority which the anti-Palamites usually put forward (with the exception of Barlaam himself, notorious for his anti-Thomistic treatises). Bradshaw argues that the Augustinian framework combined with the deficient reception of Aristotelianism's later developments by the Latin West prevented Thomas Aquinas from finding an appropriate use of the notion of energeia within his theological vision. Thomas's understanding of God asActus purus led him to conceive of the communication of esse to creatures almost only in terms of causal, "extrinsic" efficiency. According to Bradshaw, God's all-productive actuality, identified with his essence for the sake of divine simplicity, never unites with the being nor with the activity of creatures. This metaphysical escape from pantheism comes therefore at the price of a genuine concept of synergy. Moreover, it implies philosophical inconsistencies. If the act of creation follows from God's nature, since operation and will are identified with the essence in God, it seems difficult to conceive this act as being entirely free, according to the contingent nature of its object. Conversely, if this act is conceived as free, that is, as bearing on mutually exclusive possibilities, it is difficult to hold any longer to the idea that God's will and operations are identical uno numero with his intrinsically necessary nature. In his "Epilogue," Bradshaw claims that the doctrine of Palamas, by postulating a real distinction between Ousia and energeia in God, is spared from inner contradictions of such kind. Some energeiai are temporal, willed by God in a contingent mode, in contrast to the necessity of the divine Ousia; others are eternal, emanating from God's unknowable Ousia in a "natural" way. However, all the energeiai of God are self-manifestations of God; all are "relational" as "indicative" of the eternal relations between the divine Hypostases. Bradshaw's general conclusion includes considerations on the evolution of the Western and Eastern types of civilizations. In Thomas's failure to secure a proper under- 182 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. standing of the synergy between God and creatures, Bradshaw discerns the deepest source of the Western world's process of "laicization." The order of nature, and even the order of grace, now stand at a distance from the divine being. According to Bradshaw, this shift lies at the root of the radical questioning of faith bound up with the modern age, as a purely Western development. One has to look therefore towards the Eastern tradition to find an adaptation of Aristotle's insights that really fits a Christian vision of the world. Against the background of classical East/West confessional polemics, the whole of Bradshaw's demonstration stands out as quite idiosyncratic. The apologists for the Eastern tradition usually claim that an excess of philosophy-that is, of Aristotelianism-is responsible for the manner in which Western theology was led astray from a correct interpretation of the revealed truth. Bradshaw claims the exact opposite: in contrast with the East, the West falls victim to a much too narrow, shallow, almost pietistic treatment of the metaphysical insights expressed in the writings of Aristotle. Of course, at the end of the day, the consequences of this comparison are exactly the same-unfortunately for the West. In this regard, the gauntlet that I threw down at the beginning of this review, that of defining the positive properties that make the Western and the Eastern religious universes so different from each other, is not really taken up. One seems to be inevitably led back to conceiving the difference between the two worlds in terms of superiority versus inferiority, fullness versus deficiency. As I have written above, I believe that there is much to criticize in Bradshaw's historical "demonstration." Nonetheless, as I have also mentioned above, I believe that his study opens a path towards a correct understanding of the estrangement between the Western and the Eastern religious worlds. The conceptual history of energeia does indeed, in my view, provide the thread that is vital in unwinding the maze of defining the precise nature of the divide between the two religious worlds. By localizing the exact point on which the analysis of Bradshaw comes up short, a critical BEYOND BRADSHAW,ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 183 approach to the book could enable us to recover this vital thread, so that we might follow it to the exit of Ariadne's labyrinth. Let us then start from the point where the historical itinerary sketched out in the book ends. Retracing KaTa nafltvo&fav the steps that the author has made in a false direction provides perhaps the only opportunity to find the crossroad that he seems to have missed. II. THOMAS AQUINAS VS. GREGORY PALAMAS: A QUESTIONABLE DIVERGENCE The core of Bradshaw's comparison between Gregory Palamas and Thomas Aquinas is the opposition between Thomas's "extrinsic" approach of divine causality through efficiency and Gregory's "intrinsic" approach through the energeiai, which Bradshaw calls "synergistic." I would like to question the coherence of this supposed opposition by arguing that it rests on a double misunderstanding. It is not easy to understand exactly what Bradshaw has in mind when he so emphatically writes about the "synergism" of the Eastern tradition as being the key philosophical principle that distinguishes it from the Western tradition. 4 He describes it as "a way of knowing another by sharing in his activity" (177), "a sharing of life and activity" which is "an on-going and active appropriation of these aspects of divine life which are open to participation"(265). Similar expressions are distressingly vague when it comes to defining the specific type of relationship between God and creatures to which the term is supposed to refer. One might get a dearer idea about what Bradshaw believes synergy to be by taking a closer look at what he thinks it is not. Thomas Aquinas's understanding of creation as a communication of being is said to fall short of synergism, since the divine Being, albeit conceived as a living source of activity, Actus purus, in the Aristotelian model, remains beyond the reach of creatures (25 04 "If one were to summarize the differences between the eastern and western traditions in a single word, that word would be synergy" (Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 177). 184 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. 53). One wonders however what a truly synergistic participation could mean here. Should the activity of God mix ontologically or essentially with the activity of the creature? Should the esse of the creatures fuse with the esse of God? Bradshaw seems to blame Thomas for making a distinction between esse commune and the divine being, as if the medieval theologian did not take Dionysius's saying on God's being "the being of the existents (to einai tois ousi)" seriously enough (244-45, 251). One may spare Bradshaw accusations of pantheistic tendencies akin to those which were so repeatedly rejected by the Eastern Fathers. Contrasting synergy with the ontological stance of Aquinas, Bradshaw describes it as a "fusion of efficient and formal causality in that God would cause the being of creatures by enacting their esse" (251). However, if this is "precisely" what Dionysius's formula intends, is it not also "precisely" what Thomas does when he writes that "God is the esse of all things not essentially but causally" (STh I, q. 4, a. 2; quoted on p. 245)? It is true that, according to Thomas as well as almost all Western theologians, the activity of God is one realiterwith the divine essence. Yet the fact that causal efficiency is not to be thought of as a combination of mutually exclusive essences-uncreated and created-does not, in this framework, prevent creatures from partaking of God's activity by virtue of the communicatio esse. Creation does not only allow creatures to participate in God's esse by reason of their form, which implies a determinate analogy with God's infinite perfection (this holds for Bradshaw's "formal causality"). It also grants them participation in God's esse through a transcendent communication of existence which continuously actualizes their specific forms. In this way, nothing lies deeper in the creature than the relationship that binds it to God as to the Actus purus: "Being itself is the most universal [communissimus] effect of divine power which is more intimately [intimior] inscribed in the creature than all its others effects. " 5 Yet at the same time, this communication is to be understood in a causal sense, via efficientiae, and not as a transmission or 5 Aquinas, De Pot., q. 3, a. 7. BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 185 mingling of substance. The Agent and the "patient" realities remain ontologically distinct from each other. As Bradshaw observes (251), the interaction between the sun and the air during daylight provides Thomas with the most consistent representation of this communicatio. Even when the air becomes radiant under the causal impact of the sun's own radiance, the illuminated air remains substantially different from the radiating sun. As the sun recedes (end of efficient causation), without its radiance being in the slightest diminished, the air loses the quality that bore a certain resemblance to the sun's radiance (end of formal causation). Is there any reason to think that Gregory Palamas, as the legitimate heir of the whole Eastern tradition, conceives some other way in which God produces and maintains the universe? If the doctrine on God's energeiai is so crucial in Palamas's plea for the hesychast way of prayer, it is because union with the divine light does not imply any substantial nor essential unity with God. The divine energeia deals with the deifying effect of a determinate power, so that Barlaam's accusations of pantheism cannot hold. 6 As Palamas holds, the same idea is present in the writings of the Fathers, as when they conceive of the relationship between God and the world. Drawing a comparison between the way God regulates the universe and the interaction of soul and body, Gregory of Nyssa writes: there is no sort of communion [Kotvwvfa nc;], as has been just said, on the score of substance [Kma TOY Tfj<; oucrfac; Myov ], between the simplicity and invisibility of the soul, and the grossness of those bodies; but, notwithstanding that, there is not a doubt that there is in them the soul's vivifying energeia [aAA' oµwc; TO EV TOUTOt<; 1:1vm Tfj<; \jluxfic; f.v£pynav], exerted by a law which is beyond the human understanding to comprehend [Myl\l nvi KpcfTTOVl Tfj<; av8pw1TLYT]<; avaKpa8£1crav]. 7 6 "There will be no participation in the substance of the Creator" (Gregory Palamas, Capita 94); "All things participate in the sustaining energeia but not in the substance of God" (Palamas, Capita 104). 7 Gregory of Nyssa, Dialogue on the Soul and the Resurrection (PG 46:44c; Eng. trans. NPNF 5, slightly amended). 186 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. I cannot see why Gregory Palamas's idea of created substances, endowed with natural faculties of their own, is to be thought of as more "synergetic" than its equivalent in Thomas's theology. For both theologians, created substances enjoy a legitimate autonomy at the natural level, while simultaneously depending on God as on an unceasing and utterly pure source of activity. Should we then suppose that the alleged synergetic superiority of Gregory Palamas is more obvious at the supernatural level, when dealing with the participation of the faithful in the grace of the Holy Spirit? Here also, Bradshaw blames Thomas for his extrinsicism, due to the excessive role of efficient causality. The speculations of Karl Rahner on uncreated grace are dismissed in the book as so many vain attempts to salvage Thomas's theory from this extrinsicism. If the activity of God cannot be dissociated from his essence, there is no way in which it could play the role of a "quasi forma" that would raise the created mind from the inside to the reality of communion with God (257-59). Even the divine light that enables the elect to contemplate God's essence as they participate in his eternal life is something created as a result of God's causal efficiency according to Thomas (or, rather, according to Bradshaw's interpretation of Thomas [253]). But here again, one wonders what kind of relationship between the faithful/the elect and God is required in order for the former to participate in the latter's uncreated activity in a truly synergetic mode. Should they fuse in a unique divino-human intellectual activity? According to Thomas, the relationship between the created mind and the uncreated reality, as contained inchoative in the gift of faith and as fully developed in the vision of the elect, rests on a supernatural transformation of the faculties of the soul due to the inner influence of an utterly transcendent source of activity. The source of activity is uncreated, the result is created, namely, the supernatural transformation of the soul, becoming fit to sense a Reality beyond any material sense. 8 This creative 8 "the communication of grace [infusio gratiae] comes within the principle of created realities [accedit ad rationem creationis] insofar as this grace does not have any cause in the subject, either in the mode of an efficient cause or of some matter in which it would be potentially contained" (Aquinas, De Pot., q. 3, a. 8, ad 3). BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 187 communication from which grace, as a supernatural habitus, originates, respects the ontological distinction between the uncreated cause and the created receptacle. As Bradshaw observes, the best analogy is once again provided by the relationship between the air and the sun: The creature must be "elevated to a higher operation .... by the imposition of a new form" (Contra Gentes, III, 53.6) much as the diaphanous object becomes luminous by being filled with light. 9 Although the diaphanous object has to be filled with light in order to become luminous, the luminosity that becomes a qualitative determination of its being remains distinct from the light. In a similar manner, the lumen gloriae, operating as the continuous medium sub quo of the beatific vision, never becomes a created reality (the species increata remain increata). At the same time, this lumen produces the supernatural quality, habitus gloriae, which enables the intellect, henceforth released from any medium in quo, to perceive God directly. Do Gregory Palamas and the Eastern tradition understand the union of grace between created intellects and God differently? It has been said that Gregory, striving to dismiss the accusations of Barlaam, had built his line of defense on the traditional distinction between substantial and "energetic" participation. 10 In order to stress that energetic participation involves some kind of real blending between the created and the uncreated, Bradshaw puts forward the Ambiguum 7 of Maximus the Confessor, one of Gregory's more respected authorities. In this text, the elect are said to possess "one single energeia" with God, since the energeia of God has totally taken hold of their own. 11 Seeing the divine light, they are themselves transformed into light. Yet in the same passage Maximus emphasizes that he does not conceive here of "a Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 254. while remaining entirely in himself, dwells in us by his superessential power, and communicates to us not his nature, but his proper glory and splendor" (Triads 1.3.23 [Gregory Palamas, The Triads, trans. Nicholas Gendle and John Meyendorff, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1983), 39]). 11 PG 91:1076bd; quoted in Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 194. 9 10 "God, 188 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. destruction of self-determination." This means that the elect are not deprived of their own natural energeia. They freely use it to welcome the divine one, so that this divine energeia might raise their own created energeiaifar above their natural limits, allowing limited minds to contemplate an infinite Reality. 12 This indwelling of God in human beings is therefore described as a circular or perichoretic chain of energeia and pathos, perfective actio and perfected passio, generated by the causal influx of God and implying the free will of the creatures. The elect are able to see God as long as their intellectual faculty is raised to a supernatural level of activity under the influx of the divine energeia.13 This circular synergy, manifesting the uninterrupted movement of God's energeiawhich pours forth from the divine essence towards the elect and comes back to its source through their contemplation, does not involve a blending between the uncreated energeia of God and the created energeiaiof the creatures at any stage. The energeiaof the reality that moves does not mix with the energeia of the reality that it sets in movement. If it happened otherwise, the energeia of the creature would blend with the essence of God, there being no ontological separation between God's ousia and his energeia. AB stated in Ambiguum 41, the union between God and the elect is complete according to the "hexis [habitus] of charity." It is total but in the "identity according to the essence Km' oucriav In summary, the alleged divergence between the two theological traditions regarding the causal process involved in creation and divinization is far from convincing. It seems to derive 12 In an another text explicitly intended to clarify this passage, Maximus does away with any possible ambiguity pertaining to this Ambiguum. Writing about the unique energeia of God and his saints, Maximus "did not intend to suppress the natural energeia [of the saints] ... but I have only shown the superessential power which produces the divinization and becomes these realities for the sake of those who are divinized" (Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula Theologica et Politica [PG 90:33ad]). 13 See Maximus,Amb. 42 (PG 91:1341): in any supernatural event (the miracle of the Red Sea, the birth of Christ, etc.), the created effect of the divine energeia is to raise the "mode of activity" (Tp61m; Tfj<; EVEpyda<;) of the creature to a degree which is far above its natural possibilities, as defined by the "word of nature"(Myoi; Tfji; ucrcwi;). 14 Maximus,Amb. 41(PG91:1307b). BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOILE EAST AND WEST 189 both from a prejudiced reading of Thomas and from a superficial treatment of the Greek Fathers' notion of synergy. Dealing with the principles of cosmic order and deifying grace, the Greek Fathers and Thomas equally believe that participation without confusion rests on efficient causality. However, this does not suppress the basic problem which Bradshaw tackles in the line of a great number of theologians from the time of Demetrios and Prokhoros Kydones. Whereas Gregory Palamas formulates a distinction between God's essence and his energy(ies), Thomas Aquinas postulates an identity between essentia and operatio in God. Whereas Gregory, although not denying the existence of a created grace, emphasizes the uncreated aspect of divinization, Thomas seems to do exactly the opposite when he advocates the created nature of grace despite its divine cause. Finally, Thomas is interested in defining how the elected will attain to the contemplation of God's essence, whereas, according to Gregory, God's essence cannot be known by any creature. If there is no significant divergence between the manners in which the two theologians conceive the natural and the supernatural orders, where does such heterogeneity of views stem from? In order to shed a new light on this old problem, I suggest pondering the metaphysical conditions of God's transcendent interaction with the world. In my view, one of the major shortcomings of Bradshaw's argument lies here. Bradshaw blames the Western tradition, as permeated with the theology of Thomas Aquinas, for being inconsistent when it comes to the articulation of necessity and freedom in God (see above). In this regard, Gregory Palamas's distinction between God's Ousia and his energeia, resulting from a long and innovative maturation of Aristotle's insights, is presented as much more satisfactory than the Augustine-based assimilation between essentia and operatio in God. Of course, one can hardly expect Bradshaw to take a sympathetic look at the most essential claims of Aquinas's metaphysics (although when reading contemporary theologians, one cannot help but yearn after the generous manner in which Aquinas treats adverse doctrines). Still, one is at least entitled to 190 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. require a similar level of philosophical precision when it comes to the metaphysics that Bradshaw advocates as supremely consistent. It is not the case here, and this vagueness might conceal a major problem of understanding concerning the very issue the book claims to settle. It is tempting-since it seems to make things simpler-to think of the distinction between God's inner being and his free act of creation in terms of a one-to-one correspondence with Gregory's distinction between Ousia and energeia in God. However, following Bradshaw's line of argument, this would lead back to the flaws he attributes to Thomas Aquinas's theory. If the energeia of God, identified with the divine act of creation, proceeds from God's Ousia in a natural or necessary way, how would this act be really free? And if dealing with possible worlds is the condition of a free act of creation, why would it imply the imperfection associated with passive potency in the case of Thomas's God but not in the case of Gregory's? The interesting point is that Gregory does not make such a simplistic assumption. If all the divine energeiai which rule the world and divinize the saints reflect God's providential design, the converse is not true. Not all the energeiaiof God appear as having an external, temporal end, like creation and divinization. Bradshaw eagerly acknowledges this aspect: No essence can be without its powers or 'natural energies' so in the case of God these two are without beginning (Triads III.2.6). The same is true of the 'things around God', or what Maximus has referred to as His uncreated works: His foreknowledge, will, providence, and self-contemplation, as well as reality (oYTOTT]c;), infinity, immortality, life, holiness, virtue and everything that is 'contemplated as a real being around God' (III.2. 7, cf.III.3.8). All are uncreated, yet none is the essence of God, for God transcends them as cause. 15 However, what is the difference between those divine energeiai which have a beginning and an end and those which are deprived of beginning and end? Discussing E. Perl's interpretation of Palamas's energeiai as referring to God's eternal act of creation, 15 Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 238. BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 191 Bradshaw writes: "Just as some energeiaiare fully temporal, some could be different than they are." 16 According to Bradshaw, some energeiai are eternal, as pertaining to "the things around God," others are temporal and purely contingent, as produced in relationship to creation (272-73). The unique feature that these "extremely heterogeneous" energeiaihave in common is that they all are "God's self-manifestation." One cannot help contemplating with some sense of perplexity the idea that God's act of creation is to be wholly subsumed under the categories of space and time: Palamas says specifically that God's creative act has a beginning and an end. In this, he is typical of the Greek Fathers, who generally think of creation as a specific act taking place at the beginning of time, not as the relation between an eternal Creator and a (possibly beginningless) temporal world. 17 Is the existence of such created entities as space and time required in order for creation to take place? This assumption sounds like the best possible example of a self-contradictory statement, and gives way to many similar interrogations. Are the eternal logoi or reasons of the things that are created in time and space also created in time and space? If time is in the mind of God, is God eternal? Ultimately, is God God? That God's creative decision does not imply time, although time depends on this decision, is a fact unambiguously stated by Gregory himself: My discourse (guided by the absolute and eternally preexisting nature) now leads me briefly to show the unbelieving that not only the divine powers (which the Fathers often call "natural energies"), but also some works of God are without beginning, as the Fathers also rightly affirm. For was it not needful for the work of providence to exist before Creation, so as to cause each of the created things to come to be in time, out of non-being? Was it not necessary for a divine knowledge to know before choosing, even outside time? But how does it follow that the divine prescience had a beginning? How could one conceive of a beginning of God's self-contemplation, and was there ever a moment when God began to be moved toward contemplation of Himself? Never! 18 Ibid., 273. Ibid., 272. 18 Gregory Palamas, Triads 3.2.6 (Gendle and Meyendorff, trans., 94). 16 17 192 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. The "natural energies" from which creation stems preexist creation and are eternal. Writing somewhat earlier about God's power of prescience, creation, deification (Triads 3.2.5), Gregory points out that if these energeiai had begun in time, God would have acquired them, and therefore God would be imperfect. However, as Bradshaw rightly points out (238, 272-73) creation, providence, deification are also said by Gregory to have sometime a beginning (deification), sometime an end (prescience), sometime both (creation). Could it not mean, contrary to Bradshaw's interpretation, that one and the same energeia is to be conceived as simultaneously without beginning and with a beginning, depending on the point of view chosen? Bradshaw dismisses the notion of relativity put forward by Perl in the case of the energeiai"with a beginning and an end" on the grounds that there are energeiai without end, and that all these "finite" energeiaiare not related to the act of creation, as for instance deification (240). Notwithstanding, this relativistic aspect is implied in the very passage that falls under these controversial comments: "there is a beginning and an end, if not of the creative power itself, at least of its action and clearly of the energeia relating to created things (KaTa 8d5T]µtoupy1iµ£va)." 19 Deification pertains to creation in the sense that it is an event occurring within space and time, which is therefore related to created things. Oddly enough, Bradshaw refuses here to translate energeiaby energy, as he does everywhere else: "Palamas does not mean that there is an end of the divine energy in relation to created things, but that there is an end of the divine activity of creating. " 20 But again: how can this divine activity be conceived in the categories of time and space? The interpretation of Gregory's sentence that Bradshaw dismisses here is an exact repetition of the words of Gregory himself: in relation to created things, the divine energeia has a beginning and an end. It is worth paying some attention to the singular form of energeiain the previous passage. As Perl has rightly emphasized, it is in relationship to the 19 Gregory Palamas, Triads 3.2.8, quoted in Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 238 (emphasis added). 20 Ibid., 239. BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 193 multiplicity of those who are to participate in it that the one and unique energeia of God finds itself proportionally multiplied 21 • If the partakers undergo the perfective influence of this unique energeiaaccording to their own finite dimensions, why should not the unique, infinite, and absolute energeia of God be described here as simultaneously finite and transient? It is indeed such, insofar as its praxis, that is, its creative and deifying action, is limited. Bradshaw seems at pains to explain how Gregory can bluntly ascribe God's energeia to the sphere of the relative: Not everything which is said about God refers to the essence. For the 'toward something' (To Tipoc; n) is also said; which is relative (avacpoptK6v) and is indicative not of the essence but of a relation to another. Such is the divine energeia in God. 22 Although this idea is never mentioned in the wntmgs of Gregory, Bradshaw argues that "relationship" here refers to the relationship between the divine Persons. All the energeiaihave the capacity to be God's self-manifestation, which implies a Trinitarian dimension (273). In this case, however, the energeiai would not be more related to the divine persons than they are related to the divine essence-so why should they indicate the persons and not the essence? It seems more reasonable to assume that "indication of a relation to another" is meant of the mode in which creatures relate to God. In actual fact, the manner in which creatures relate to God prevents them from understanding God "according to His essence," or "according to what He is absolutely" (if the expression has any meaning, "absolute relationship to God" is the privilege of God himself). Creatures merely understand God according to the conditions induced by his free decision to create and sanctify them: "Therefore, as Creator and Cause of these things, God is known and is named from them and 21 Triads 3.2.13: "[The divine] essence is one, even though the rays are many, and are sent out in a manner appropriate to those participating in them, being multiplied according to the varying capacity of those receiving them" (Gendle and Meyendorff, trans., 99). 22 Capita 127 (PG 150: 1209); see Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 271. 194 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. according to them, and 1s seen in a certain relation (crxfoEt) according to them. " 23 God's absolute energeia, proceeding necessarily and motionlessly from God's essence, as radiance stems from the very being of the sun, is also and at the same time the efficient cause of what happens to the creatures in time. Consequently, it can be considered simultaneously from two distinct points of view: relatively to the creatures it affects, and as subsisting ("enhypostasized") in God 24 • Deification has a beginning (albeit no end) in the sense that no ordinary human being is holy from birth: he eventually becomes so under the influence of the Holy Spirit's sanctifying energeia working within the bonds of space and time (and ultra for the elect). Yet, and at the same time, deification has no beginning, since it means nothing but the participation of the creature in a holiness that is utterly foreign to the bonds of time and space. It is the holiness of God himself, perceived as an eternal irradiation of God's essence. Probably alluding to the famous saying of Maximus on the "unrelated or absolute (acrx£To<;) grace" of Melchisedek as the paradigm of deification, Gregory writes: This grace is in fact a relationship (axfou:;) albeit not a natural one; yet it is at the same time beyond relationship (aax£TOc;) not only by virtue of being supernatural, but also qua relationship. 25 23 "On Union and Distinction," in Syngrammata, ed. P. Chrestou (Thessalonike, 1988), vol. 2, p. 83. 24 The weakness of Perl's interpretation lies in the identification of Gregory's divine energeiai with God's eternal decision regarding creation, as if these energeiai had no other existence but "in-relationship-to-creation," the divine essence assuming alone the dimension of God's absolute being. However, the consequences of Perl's complete relativization of the divine energeiai appear as inconsistent as Bradshaw's "absolutization" of the same. What about energeiai such as wisdom, kindness, etc-? Is God kind only in relationship to creation? Is it not, on the contrary, the good of creation which is relative to the absolute goodness of God? In actual fact, the divine energeia is both relative, as a creative/perfective cause and absolute, as enhypostasized in the divine essence. 25 Gregory Palamas, Triads 3. 1.29; see Maximus,Amb. 10 (PG 91.1141ab): "it is not by virtue of created nature, created and coming from nothingness, nature according to which he has started and ceased to exist, but by virtue of the divine grace, uncreated, immortal, above all nature and all times-and only by such virtue-that [Melkisedek] has been considered as being totally and in everything generated from God according to the practical intellect." BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARIST07LE EAST AND WEST 195 The same can be said about prescience. On one hand, this energeia has an end, since it strives to move creation towards the goal that God has assigned to it. On the other hand, it has no end, since it does not differ numero from God's eternal act of selfcontemplation. 26 The first conclusion that can be drawn from this rectification of Bradshaw's interpretation is that a correct understanding of Gregory's idea of creation is liable to the very same criticism that Bradshaw formulates against Thomas's thought. If the energeiaof creation stems from God's essence naturally, as being among "the things around God" (Triads 3.2.5), how can it at the same time pertain to God's freedom? How can it relate to the eternal choice between the opposites (Triads 3.1.29)? Is it not because the "necessity" of God's nature should not be conceived, following Thomas's teaching, as the hold of a foreign law on God that would restrict God's possibilities of choice, but precisely as an unlimited possibility of choice entailed by the absence of such a law? The necessity of God's being, properly understood, cannot be conceived separately from the exercise of an absolute, unrestrained freedom, as the positive power (and not the imperfect potency) of choosing between opposites. 27 The second conclusion that can be drawn from the same considerations raises concerns about the global framework of Bradshaw's foray into conceptual history. Leaving aside the succinct treatment of the Latin tradition, Bradshaw's study seems to have overlooked a pivotal aspect of the notion of divine energeia, as elaborated within the Greek-speaking philosophical and theological tradition: the dialectics between the absolute and the relative. After all, if it is true that Gregory's doctrine merely displays the thought of the Fathers without adding anything to it, this dialectics is likely to have appeared at a much earlier stage of the tradition. How could Bradshaw effectively measure the estrangement between East and West without taking this crucial element into account? Conversely, exploring this neglected aspect 3.2.6. See for instance Aquinas, STh I, q. 19, a. 3. 26 See above, Gregory Palamas, Triads 27 196 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. of energeia as a theological notion might lead us to a more balanced understanding of the estrangement between the Latin and the Byzantine religious worlds. III. THE PORPHYRIAN PRINCIPLE A) The Byzantine Tradition The paradigm of the solar radiance, as expressing the way in which the divine energeiaiinteract with the created sphere, comes up several times in the course of Bradshaw's historical survey. It plays the role of a leitmotiv that appears at every important step of this exploration. The productive function of light in Alexander of Aphrodisias's gnoseology is said to have inspired Plotinus to form a new concept of energeia from the principles sketched out by Aristotle. 28 Basil of Cesarea draws a parallel between the sun's illumination and the participation of the saints in the energeiaiof the Holy Spirit. 29 The very same paradigm is used by John Damascene to account for the providential activity of God within the created sphere. It is also a vital element of Symeon the New Theologian's mysticism as well as of George of Cyprus's triadology. Finally, the whole dispute between Barlaam and Gregory Palamas hinges on the perception of God's uncreated light, identified by Gregory as the Holy Spirit's divine energeia. Regarding the Latin tradition, Bradshaw shows that the paradigm of the sun's light is pivotal in Thomas Aquinas's accounts on God's creative and deifying activities (251), but he neglects to comment on the convergence with the Eastern tradition. If this is a coincidence, it is a peculiar one: are not the two traditions supposed to be mutually exclusive precisely on this very point, that is, in the understanding of divine activity? 28 "That which is supremely visible, such as light, is the cause of other things being visible; likewise that which is supremely and primarily good is the cause of other good things being good" (De Anima 88.24-89.9; quoted in Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 70). 29 Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 22 (PG 32:108c-109a; quoted in Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, 173). BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 197 Leaving for later an examination of whether this unexpected convergence is meaningful or not, I will be satisfied for the moment with showing that the solar paradigm contains a clue regarding the origin of the dialectics between the absolute and the relative energeia. In his Life of Plotinus, Porphyry claims to have "worn out" (rrapETELVEY chro&nKVU<;) his master Plotinus asking him questions about the mode of the union between the soul and the body three days and nights in a row. 30 It is probably an oblique way to draw the attention of his readers to the originality of his own approach. The truth is that Plotinus developed more than compelling considerations about the mode of this interaction. He laid down the precise nature of the problem as well as the elements of the solution, as reported in book 4 of the Enneads (Enneads 4.3.1823). What is the kind of state-of-thing involved when we say that the soul is in the body? According to Plotinus, the idea that the soul is contained in the body as things are said to be contained in space or in a vessel involves a series of logical contradictions. Plato's image of the steersman emphasizes that an intellective substance such as the soul remains distinct from the body while interacting with it. Still, the simile does not indicate the mode of this active presence of the soul to the body. In actual fact, the only way in which real causal interaction can be achieved without any substantial mixing is provided by the relationship between the light of the sun and the air: This certainly is presence with distinction: the light penetrates through and through, but nowhere coalesces [01' o.Aou rrapov ouoEvi µ(yvurnt]; the light is the stable thing, the air flows in and out; when the air passes beyond the lit area it is dark; under the light it is lit. We have a true parallel to what we have been saying of body and soul, for the air is in the light quite as much as the light is in the air. 31 The "illumination" of the body by the soul sets the body in movement. More precisely, specific parts of the existing body 30 Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 31 Plotinus, Enneads 4.3.23 1916], 35-36). 13. (trans. S. MacKenna [Boston: Charles T. Branford Company, 198 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. become instruments or organs of the soul when they come into contact with its powerful presence. As the rays of the sun fill the air with light, the soul diffuses its power throughout the body by means of the nervous system, which connects the specific bodily organs to the brain. However, one should not think that the soul is located in the brain simply because the brain is the physical starting-point of rational action is not accurate. The brain is rather the initial place where the soul exercises the energeia which corresponds to its power: [it is considered] that, obviously, the one who uses the instruments is present where the instruments have their source [oo OT)AOVOTl al apxal TWV opyavwv], but it is wiser to say that "there" indicates the energeiaof the faculty, as the point oi: i\f.yf.lv Ti)v from which stems the movement of the instrument cipxitv EKE! o8Ev yap l:'µEAAE KtvE1a8at TO opyavov]. 32 One of the main treatises in which Porphyry discussed the issue of the mind-body interaction, Symmikta Zetemata, is lost. As H. Dorrie has shown, the third chapter of De natura hominis, a famous treatise written by a Christian theologian, Nemesius of Emesa, between 390 and 400, contains a summary of Porphyry's position. 33 The problem of the interaction between the soul and the body is set here in similar terms to that of book 4 of the Enneads, including the reference to Plato's steersman. Furthermore, the paradigm that helps to formulate a solution is also borrowed from Plotinus. The clue to a correct understanding of the union between the soul and the body lies in the relationship between the sun and the air. It deals both with a causal interaction and with a union without confusion, dauyxuTo<; £vwcrt<;: as the sun through its sheer presence [Tfj transforms the air into daylight by endowing the latter with a luminous form [<1JwTOEtofi], and as daylight is united to the air in a manner which is both foreign to mixing and selfIbid. H. Dorrie, Porphyrios' Symmikta Zetemata, Monographen zur Klassischen Altertumwissenschaft 20 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1959). Dorrie methodically compares the content of the chapter with a text of Priscian, the Byzantine grammarian, which clearly refers to the Symmikta (see ibid., 15). 32 33 BEYOND BRADSHAW, ARISTOTLE EAST AND WEST 199 diffusive [cicruyxlhwc; aµa mhQ K£XUµEvov], likewise the soul is united to the body while remaining totally deprived of mixing. 34 Porphyry has discovered a general principle of metaphysics that accounts for any form of interaction between the intelligible and the material levels of reality in Plotinus's insight concerning the main-body interaction. Energetic causality is the mode in which union without confusion can be achieved: whenever an intelligible entity comes to be implicated in a relationship [Ev crxfon] with a place or with a thing located in space, we take liberties by saying: "it is here." Since it is the farmer's energy which is there, we use the term "place" instead of relationship and energy [Tov TOTIOV dvTi Tfjc; crxfoEwc; Kai Tfjc; EYEpydac; One should say: "it operates here [&ta £v£pyELav mhoG Trjv fKE'T]" rather than: "it is here." 35 Porphyry's concept of the interaction is fairly precise. Although there is a relationship, skhesis, between the place and the intelligible entity, the latter is not spatially, but merely energetically, related to the former. In virtue of this "relative-state-of-thing" between the two entities, the material entity "suffers" (mfoxa) the energeia belonging to an intelligible entity which itself remains "unmixed," independent of the material dimension. This "relative-state-of-thing" is therefore fundamentally asymmetrical. The fact that the intelligible substance A affects the material 34 Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis (PG 40:597b). The fact that the "union without confusion" is originally a Porphyrian formula, belonging to the lost Zetemata, has been contested by J. Rist, who believes it to come from an independent source, the scholia of Ammonius attributed to Theodotus, which would have been common to Nemesius and Priscian; see J. Rist, "Pseudo-Ammonius and the Soul/Body Problem in Some Platonic Texts of Late Antiquity," American journal of Philology 109 (1988): 402-15. Theodotus would have attributed a Christian formula to Ammonius in order to refute Porphyry. This intricate reconstitution often relies on slight indications. Among other points, Rist points to the mention of skhesis, position-in-regard-to or relationship (habitudo ), in the Sententia to minimize the Porphyrian paternity of the passage (ibid., 404). However, as said here, there is no other way to understand this "union without blending" than to refer to the notion of skhesis, en skhesei,, one of the key concepts of Porphyry, De homine chap. 3. On the whole, it is unlikely that, if the formula ever had a Christian origin, it had evolved into a system of metaphysics before-or independently from-Porphyry. 35 Nemesius of Emesa, De natura hominis § 136-37 (ed. M. Morani [Leipzig: Teubner, 1987], 42). 200 ANTOINE LEVY, O.P. substance B through its own energeia, induces a relationship from B to A, but no relationship from A to B. A remains absolute, askhetos, at the very moment when it affects relatively, en skhesei, B. We will designate this asymmetrical system of causation which Porphyry derives from Plotinus as the "Porphyrian Principle" (or PP). As it is plain to see in the interaction between body and soul, the intelligible substance is not unaware of its own causal effect upon the heterogeneous substance. Since it is deliberate action that comes into focus, one has to conceive of an "intellective relationship" to the body that would subsist in the soul. This is an "idea-will," an intention, existing in the soul. In one of the few original treatises of Porphyry that have managed to find their way down to us, the Sententia ad intelligibila ducentes, he states: Since the incorporeal realities are not present in bodies in a spatial sense, they because they have a are present in the latter at their willing [chav natural inclination [ij lTE