ABSTRACT
This chapter looks closely at Gregory Palamas’s understanding of divine simplicity and how he defends this doctrine in his writings on essence and energies. Focusing especially on the debate over the unity of God, and the philosophical problems of accidence, quality, and essential differences, this chapter uncovers many details of how the historical encounter between Palamas and his opponents shaped Gregory’s approach to divine simplicity. Shedding still more light on the character of the divine energies, especially regarding their subsistence and denomination as ‘divinity,’ this chapter further examines the question of a ‘real’ versus ‘conceptual’ distinction and the relationship between metaphysics and epistemology.
