ABSTRACT
Even before his final debate with Nikephoros Gregoras in 1355, St Gregory Palamas and his distinction between God’s essence and energies had already been definitively vindicated by the landmark Council of 1351. Shortly after his death, Palamas’s fame and achievements would be celebrated and commemorated annually in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy, solemly proclaimed on the first Sunday of every Lent. As attributes of the divine essence, the energies of God, Palamas insists, are not only divine but uncreated, eternal, and timeless, being not the activities of God in time but the internal entelechy, operation, and first actuality of the immutable God. The distinction between God’s essence and energies is very much meant to preserve the principle that God is his own existence, wisdom, and so on, and that God is not what he is by participation. As Palamas conceives it, essence and energy are not two divinities or two parts of God.
